The Olympic Games.....a retrospective....

I love the whole idea about the Winter Olympics. There’s an aura to it that I find appealing, including the gut drumming song that accompanies each opening segment on TV. 

And, of course, the games.

OK. Most of them I get. Ice skating (ice dancing, figure skating, racing, .....), skiing (nordic, cross country, jumping....), the fairly new snowboarding (whatever...too new to me to interpret), and ice hockey.

No prob.

However.....

Please. Come on. 

For example....

....the Luge?

Lying on a little sled, face up, feet first careening down an icy track at 87 miles an hour while clad in spandex? 

And then, AND THEN .....there’s the DOUBLE luge!???  Two men lying on top of each other on same sled, in the same slippery spandex with no seatbelts! WHAT is holding the second man in place on top of the first?? I shudder to think. 

(yeah, I know, women do it, too, but they’re probably cushier.) 

sigh....

And then the Biathlon. 

(The following is a re-enactment of the founders deciding what this event should be in  the 1924 Winter Olympics .)

Olympics President: “OK, we know we need to use ice or snow in this event, but what should we do?”

Olympics trustee: “Pour raspberry syrup on the snow, eat it, and call it a day?”

Olympics President: “No. Come on. This is serious. These are the Olympics, you know, Athens and all....just in the winter.”

Olympics trustee: “I know. (thinking)  Well.....(more thinking).....maybe they can SKI!”

Olympics janitor: “Brilliant! Now let’s go out to lunch.”

Olympics President: “No, no. Wait. I think we need more than that. Something to......”

Olympics trustee: “I know. I know! Let’s have them carry rifles on their backs while cross country skiing mile after mile and then have them stop every so often to lie down on the snow and shoot at a target, get up and ski some more! Let’s make it a race!!!”

Olympics President: “I. SAID.THIS. IS. SERIOUS! That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”

True story.

And then there’s Curling......

Don’t even get me started on that!

Sidebar:  You know about Dubai? In the Middle East? The place that is LOADED with money?

THEY have an indoor skiing facility. Look for yourself......

They should apply for the Olympics. 

New painting....

After one week of school vacation, I have a painting of Monument Square in Portland, Maine.

It's not too big, about 17" x 11". Tempera Paint.

Getting high......

Last night, our local news decided to show videos of runway models falling down. Apparently a slow news night, the co-anchors got quite a kick out of watching these waifs tumble to the ground. Considering most of them don't weigh enough for gravity to kick in, I suppose this really was a news worthy event. 

Here is a video showing what they were so amused about....

With my sharp eye, I noticed that some of the issues were with the chosen footwear.

For example:

The Guinness Book of World Records documents the weirdos/ weirdo things of this world.  It's not so easy to get a slot in that book. These high, high, high heels have made the cut.

My niece is a dancer, sometimes performs ballet. I suppose these would be her formalwear.

These are kinda cute.

These would be excellent for camping. That's about the only time I find I don't have access to a bottle opener. I never remember to pack it. (toilet paper-check. bug spray-check. bottle opener-oops!) (Oh wait, I have my heels on!)

Come to think of it, these might come in handy for camping as well! Never know when varmints will raid your cooler.

Usually when you see a photo of a baby, the response is, "awwww".  I saw this photo, and I'm sorry to say, I said, "ewwwww".

Ummm.....well.....ah.......love his man-bag.

The reason I chose this topic was because yesterday I experienced an almost disastrous fall because of my footwear and if it wasn't for a wall, I would have fallen right over. The culprit?

These......

Don't even ask.......

My first cookbook....

When I was in the 7th grade a hundred years ago, my mom bought me this cookbook from the TAB book club in my Junior High. (No 'Middle School' jargon, we were the Junior HIGH!)

I still use some of the recipes to this day. 

The recipes were great, but my favorite things were the photographs and the illustrations. I had the children illustrated in the book memorized and they came to life for me upon perusing the pages hundreds of times. 

One of my favorite is the recipe for Apple Crisp. Since an apple a day keeps the doctor away, this is a wise choice for today's health conscious population. (Disregard the butter...)

I should have taken a photo of this luscious concoction in a bowl with coffee ice cream, which is the way we served it, but it's hard to take a photo at the moment when you are shoveling this into your mouth.

Note: I add raisins to the apples and walnuts to the topping....I like a good crunch.

Happy Valentine's Day.....

The best of Valentine's Day to all the lovers out there. 
Roses from my Birdman. I love you.

Its a Mall world after all........

Nude Descending a Staircase -  Marcel Duchamp

A type of walking.....

Walking. How we manage to move and keep balanced on only two feet is unexplicable to me. I have been making various types of 3-D ‘art’ in my life and I know how hard it is to get something that only has 2 ‘feet’ or ‘legs’ to stand up. It has to have perfect balance. And I mean, perfect balance.

I do not have perfect balance, but I do manage not to fall over 99.8 percent of the time. (the other .2 percent of the time is none of your business.)

So Mr. Downeastdoingstuff, recovering from open heart surgery, needs to walk. Walking is good for his heart. It’s good for lots of stuff, but there are only so many times he can walk from one end of the house and back again to get a good workout.

So off to the Maine Mall we go. To walk. Before hours. They actually open at 6:00 am for walkers!

He still is having a bit of trouble with fluid in his innards and sometimes he experiences what appears to be hyperventilation because of that. (He’s on some new meds for that...hopefully he won’t have to experience possible deflation again by having a hole punched into him with the biggest needle ever made.) Walking from the car in the subfreezing temps to the mall caused a little episode of this, but he quickly recovered.

“Are you OK?” (A question I have asked him about every 5 minutes since the surgery. Heck, I asked that question every 5 minutes even before the surgery.)

“Yeah, I’m fine” said Mr. DEDS as he was sitting on the curb trying to breathe. “Let’s go.”

So in we go. None of the stores are open yet so I don’t even recognize the place. Who knew the Mall had halls!

I read somewhere that if you walk around the perimeter of the mall, into every nook and cranny, it’s about a mile.

So here we go, walking at a pretty good pace, into every nook and cranny. ) (OK, so maybe we missed a cranny or two...)

All the way around....non-stop. Us and a bunch of other athletes doing the same thing.

When we got back to our starting point we sat down on a couch to rest. I had picked up a local community newspaper along the way and started reading a story. I barely got through one paragraph when he said, 

“OK. Let’s go.”

“OK”, I replied, ready to put on my mittens and bundle up my scarf.

“No. Let’s do it again.”

“What?”, I gasped.

“Let’s do it again.”

So off we went and did it again. Two miles (ish).

Not bad for our first marathon, doncha think?

Two new little paintings.....

Both of these are from photos Mr. Downeastdoingstuff took and was kind enough to let me use.

This is only 4 1/2"x7". (tempera)

This is an 8"x10". (tempera)

They're OK.....

That'll be Seventy Five dollars, please....

So on Monday morning, I open the fridge to get out my cottage cheese and notice that it is rather balmy in there.

I examine the icetray in the freezer and see that global warming has finally hit my icebox.

My refrigerator is silent.

It has died.

I am panic stricken because I now have a fridge full of perfectly good food that I have to do something with. I realize that I have very little time left to make breakfast, get dressed, pack my lunch, check blogs and head off to school. 

Fortunately we have an unheated summer porch right off of the kitchen, so I empty out every dang piece of food and jars of condiments (many) and heave them it out onto the porch.

(What's the shelf life of fish sauce ? ) (Several years, I hope.) (What IS fish sauce?)

I inform Mr. Downeastdoingstuff, who is still recuperating in bed at the moment, that: 

"The refrigerator is dead."

"What????" (I think he only heard the word 'dead'.)

"The fridge has died. I put all the food out onto the porch. Call the repairman. I have to go."

"OK" +  "(unheard comment under his breath)"

Text message later in the day informs me that soonest the repairman can come would be on Wednesday....... two days later!! 

So the temperature on the porch is cold enough for most food, too cold for veggies and not cold enough for ice cream and ice cream sandwiches. But it'll have to do.

Wednesday, the repair man arrives.

He opens up the bottom freezer, turns a knob (that I have never laid eyes on, even while cleaning it), and the dagnabbit thing starts up.

$75 please.

Apparently cramming an ice cream container into an already jam-packed freezer may or may not turn  off the entire refrigerator . Beware.