Tag: post a week 2012

F is also for Friday: And now for something…. Sweet

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Sweets for the sweet

Slices of heaven – vanilla never looked so good…

Fridays are usually when Across the Bored highlights art and artists but today is somewhat different in that Travel. Garden. Eat. has graciously presented us with the Liebster Award!  Around the Cake by Wayne Thiebaud – one of the penultimate painters of common objects – is a sweet offering to express my gratitude to Kat and all those who read, comment, follow and inspire me with something new on a daily basis.

Someone once said that we form an opinion about the person from their actions – from what we see of them. Certainly true and often limiting in realworld situations, the multiverse of blogging gives total strangers an idea of who we want to be, who we think we are –  from the words and images we present. By following the Rules for the Liebster Award (see farther below) we throw another wrench into the gears…

11 things very few people know about me:

  1. I had a creative alias as a teenager
  2. Much to my mother’s consternation, I once got off a bus in a rural town looking like Ziggy Stardust
  3. My step-father was an astrologer
  4. I am still waiting for that MG promised to me for my 16th birthday but that is not a problem because
  5. I fear I will turn into Mario Andretti if I learn how to drive standard
  6. I am convinced my ancestors coined the proverb “You can choose your friends but not your family”
  7. which may account for why I am able to trace my lineage on that side over 400 years to one of the first boats that landed in this part of the New World…
  8. I do not hesitate to straighten paintings in other people’s houses
  9. I keep the Christmas tree up for far longer than most people think is sane
  10. I hate IQ tests because I am always finding fault with the wording of the questions
  11. I still don’t know everything my iphone does

11 answers to 11 Kat questions:

  1. A place you have never traveled to that is on your travel bucket list?
    Australia – lovely blogs have convinced me to overcome any arachnid-related doubts…
  2. Book you are currently reading?
    The owner’s manual to my camera.
  3. Have you ever bungee-jumped?
    No, and I never will.
  4. Morning bird or night owl?
    Both, it depends on whether the Professor is home.
  5. How long have you been blogging?
    Since August 12, 2012.
  6. Which movie can you watch again and again?
    Priscilla Queen of the Desert.
  7. One of your favorite quotes?
    “With the arrogance of youth, I determined to do no less than to transform the world with Beauty. If I have succeeded in some small way, if only in one small corner of the world, amongst the men and women I love, then I shall count myself blessed, and blessed, and blessed, and the work goes on.”
    – William Morris, The Well At The World’s End: Volume I
  8. Your favorite recipe (in full or via link)?
    Can’t say I have a favourite but this one is pure comfort food – Gourmet Magazine’s Macaroni and Cheese – best quality bread, cheese and pasta make all the difference…
  9. Pet peeve?
    Where do I begin… people who hang up the telephone without saying goodbye.
  10. If you could invite anyone to join you for dinner — fictional or real, from the past or the present — who would you invite?
    Leonardo daVinci
  11. Your favorite blog post — from your blog!
    Not fair! The first one as it is at the root of all creation…

Now here is the really good stuff:

The Rules for the Liebster Award are as follows:

  • Include a link back to the blogger who gave you this award
  • Grab the badge above and post the award to your blog
  • Post 11 things about yourself
  • Answer the questions below asked of you plus create 11 new questions for your nominees to answer 
  • Nominate 11 people that you think deserve the award and link them to your post (see below)
  • Go to their pages and tell them they have been chosen – please “pay it forward, don’t pay it back”

Due-diligence has unfortunately shown that a few of the blogs up for our nomination already had their Liebster awards while others clearly had over 200 followers eliminating them from this particular award; confirmation of follower numbers was unavailable for many, so being new at all this, we offer hearty congratulations to these 11 Liebster nominees:

So all my lovely lucky nominees, Across the Bored would love to see your answers to these 11 Across the Bored questions:

  1. What is the first toy you remember?
  2. What is your favourite animal?
  3. Sweet or savoury?
  4. What is your favourite item of clothing?
  5. If you could have any car (without having to pay for it, the gas, insurance, etc…) what would it be?
  6. Name one of your favourite books.
  7. Where is your favourite museum?
  8. Who is your favourite artist?
  9. What is the song you have played the most this week?
  10. If you could time-travel, what year would you visit (and yes, you do have a return flight)
  11. Would you travel into outer space?

Have fun!

Back to the usual by next Friday…

Two Cents Tuesday Challenge: Morning

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Start every day off with a smile and get it over with – W.C. Fields

Many of the habits that we acquire as young adults last far longer than we expect and some of them are hard to break.  We all have relatives, or know of someone, who rises before the crack of dawn and expounds on the joys of being up while even the birds are still asleep, gets so much accomplished before breakfast and wonders why we do not do the same with as much relish.  They have been doing it forever and cannot seem to break the cycle.  One tries to convince them that this can be changed, that there is much to be said for the pleasure of rolling over and pressing the snooze button, but to no avail.

In truth, many of us have dogs or small children, teenagers who need rousting from their comatose state, a daily commute, a shower that needs taking, bread that needs baking, a million reasons to get out of bed…  In another city, another time zone, on vacation or just away, it is easier – a pleasure – to get up and out and see what the world in the wee hours has to offer: the similarities can be remarkable and the differences incredibly alien.  Across the Bored has gotten accustomed to the sun rising each morning and so the Two Cents Tuesday Challenge casts first light upon – Morning.  

“How does morning appear to you?” – does it creep in or blast you out of bed, is it routine or haphazard, the last of the night or the dawn of a new day, do you fortify with granola or revive with hair of the dog that bit you…

We would love to see your vision.

For all those who are new readers to Across the Bored, here are some guidelines for the challenge: HOW DOES THIS WORK?

  1.  I will post some commentary on a random topic that pops into my head (such as the above) and then ask you to respond on the same.
  2. Your point of view on the current week’s challenge can take any form: a quote, a motto or saying, an essay, poem or opinion of yours or attributed to someone else, a piece of music, a song, a video, a work of art, photograph, graffiti, drawing or scribble – but it has to be about the topic!
  3. Please, don’t just link to an old post… challenge yourself.
  4. The Challenge will be open for 6 days after it is posted upon which I will post another.
  5. ENJOY, have FUN and TELL your friends and fellow bloggers.

 SO – Create your Two Cents Tuesday Challenge post

  1. Then add a link to your blog in my comment box.
  2. To make it easy for others to check out your post, title your blog post “Two Cents Tuesday Challenge” and add the same as a tag.
  3. If you would like your reader to see what others are presenting for the same challenge, add a link to the “Two Cents Tuesday” challenge on your own blog.
  4. Feel free to pick up your badge on the Two Cents Tuesday Challenge page
  5. Remember to Follow My Blog to get your weekly (hopefully) reminders.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Thankful

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Yes, we did get snow!

This week has been both chaotic and calm, a series of days where lots gets done but nothing seems achieved – could be worse.  American Thanksgiving has reminded us to be both grateful and content, but in truth this is something that should be a part of our daily lives. The Weekly Photo Challenge: Thankful would have us reflect on “good things in (our) life” – from where we sit those are almost too many in number, a laundry list of how lucky we are to be in this place in this time.  We should add to that canon all the experiences, all the elements that have come together in our particular sphere of influence to make us who we are – no matter what type of adjective we use to describe their condition.

So on that note, if there was only one thing to be thankful for at this precise minute in time, it would be you – the 100 plus followers and many readers of Across the Bored – you who read and laugh, comment and disagree, present a new perspective and point us in directions we may not have ventured otherwise.  Thank you.

F is also for Friday: Landscapes of Memory

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Unseasonably warm, it was more of a grey day than most but the weather warns that this will be the last of it for awhile.  Light rain still falls and with each drop we wonder why it feels more like March than it should in the short weeks leading up to the winter holiday  – where is the first snow, the one that makes us run to the window and just stop, in silence, to look out.  City or country, it is always magical.

In another lifetime and at about this same time of year, it was a tradition to look for a Christmas tree in the bush before the snow became too deep, mark it and then return with a sharp axe once the house was ready to receive it.  On one such mission accomplished, the walk back was a quiet one when the scene above unfolded before us.  There was no choice but to just stop – and watch as the light along the horizon slowly changed and the clouds rolled through blue, mauve and apricot.  The moment marked a lifelong predilection for big sky landscapes, a quality of light and softness that makes one sigh or draw breath and hold it in as if to capture a part of this beauty for ourselves.

On New Year’s Eve decades later, a hushed midnight stroll down the main street of a small town found us awestruck once again.  There in the window of a gallery was our very private memory, every detail captured as if the artist had been there with us.  Morning couldn’t come soon enough.

This is what art is all about – having it grab your heart and wring from it something so deep that there are no words.

Here are a few 21st century landscape painters whose work speaks for itself:

Douglas Edwards
Renato Mucillo
Frank Corso
Ed Roxburgh

Two Cents Tuesday Challenge: Style

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Whenever one needs a reminder of exactly how things looked and sounded at any point, in say the last 75 years, all we have to do is surf through virtual reality. The closest repository of all manner of trend, fashion, vogue and design, simple searches can bring back very particular memories – whether it is the sinewy curves of a buffed e-type jag, the pout of a hollywood icon, the grandeur of a world-class opera house or a melody long-forgotten, every bit is like a prompt out of the past.

Pull out your red shoes… and let’s dance

We all have ways of expressing ourselves and pretty much everything we lay hands to becomes impressed with a personal, distinctive hallmark.  Across the Bored marvels at so many ways of seeing and the manner in which we put our stamp on this world and so the Two Cents Tuesday Challenge topic spotlight is on – Style.  

“What is style to you?” – can it be acquired, assumed or inherent, is it old or new, the tilt of a hat,  swagger in a walk or lilt in the talk, styling or stylish…

We would love to see your vision.

For all those who are new readers to Across the Bored, here are some guidelines for the challenge: HOW DOES THIS WORK?

  1.  I will post some commentary on a random topic that pops into my head (such as the above) and then ask you to respond on the same.
  2. Your point of view on the current week’s challenge can take any form: a quote, a motto or saying, an essay, poem or opinion of yours or attributed to someone else, a piece of music, a song, a video, a work of art, photograph, graffiti, drawing or scribble – but it has to be about the topic!
  3. Please, don’t just link to an old post… challenge yourself.
  4. The Challenge will be open for 6 days after it is posted upon which I will post another.
  5. ENJOY, have FUN and TELL your friends and fellow bloggers.

 SO – Create your Two Cents Tuesday Challenge post

  1. Then add a link to your blog in my comment box.
  2. To make it easy for others to check out your post, title your blog post “Two Cents Tuesday Challenge” and add the same as a tag.
  3. If you would like your reader to see what others are presenting for the same challenge, add a link to the “Two Cents Tuesday” challenge on your own blog.
  4. Feel free to pick up your badge on the Two Cents Tuesday Challenge page
  5. Remember to Follow My Blog to get your weekly (hopefully) reminders.

F is also for Friday: Japanese Pre-War Painting

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The first snows are almost upon us.  The light is changing, becoming more muted, much like the sky filtering through in this late 19th century watercolour.   There is nothing like a good mystery to keep indoor life interesting and the search for information about the artist who captured the very breath of winter in these few sure brushstrokes proved riveting.

We have become accustomed to being able to find what we want with a tap on the keyboard – names, biographies, archives – and when all else fails we resort to Wikipedia, but sometimes the trail has been cold for so long that little remains.  Such is the case with Japanese Pre-War painter Ginnosuke Yokouchi (1870 -1942) whose slate, apart from images of some recent reprints and works in a private collection, seems to have been wiped clean.

Oddly, the scene (above) of the little group on their way through the snow to the local temple made one think of Pissarro – it is as if the two painters were inspired by the same soft light, the crispness of the winter air and the serenity of daily village life unfolding around them, even though they were worlds and years apart.

Road to Versailles at Louveciennes – Camille Pissarro, 1869

Was Yokouchi a part of the group of Japanese painters during the Taishō period so greatly influenced by European Impressionist works?  Perhaps, but for lack of a backstory, we may never know…

More to look at:

Impressionism
Ginnosuke Yokouchi at the Hanga Gallery
Japanese Watercolours
Camille Pissarro

Weekly Photo Challenge: Renewal – Urban

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A fascination with graffiti and architecture combines for the Weekly Photo Challenge: Renewal – Urban.  Talk about the changing face of the city in some circles and you’ll either be met with suspicious glares, get embroiled in a heated discussion about the lack of civic leaders’ adequate foresight or will be pleasantly surprised by the rehabilitation of a down and out neighbourhood.  A vision, conception, the wrangling of red-tape and public consultation,the first scarily destructive steps taken towards revitalization – all these are but part of the protracted birthing pains leading up to the awakening of a unique community. Like a newborn child, the shell of this building only hints at what it could possibly become.

F is also for Friday: Impressionism

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A favourite amongst many masterworks

Across the Bored had the privilege of visiting the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts to see the French Impressionist collection currently on tour courtesy of the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts.  Consisting of four relatively small spaces whose walls were hung with the cream of the Impressionist crop, this exhibition was filled to capacity at the time of our visit.  Nonetheless, the works on display are truly jaw-dropping.

Now, here comes the but – we were acting as field-trip chaperone for a group of grade 9 students from a friend’s art class…

Although well-behaved, polite, reasonably responsive (for 14 year-olds) and happy to have the afternoon off, only about 10% of them had any idea of what they were about to see. This wasn’t for lack of preparation on their teacher’s part but rather that they just didn’t care…  Luckily, we had a lovely tour guide who not only knew fascinating details about the paintings presented but also had the magical gift of keeping the group relatively engaged for what could have been a very long hour otherwise.  The only time she cringed was when one student kept repeating “Is it real?”

The temptation to blurt out “NO, it’s a digital reproduction – it’s a knock-off made in CHINA and you can get one in the gift shop” was great.

Afterwards, as they all sat on the stairs of the museum foyer, we made the mistake of asking them if they had liked their visit.  Blank faces.  Really?  Well, what type of art did they like?  “Music art”, “Dance art”…  what?  Do you mean like Warhol, Richard Hamilton or Banksy?  Blank faces.

Here is what they did like…

OK, so it’s cute…

Didn’t get a chance to look at the date on this installation but it sure has echoes of Brazilian design team, Fernando and Humberto Campana’s 2002 Banquete chair…

Where is the snake?

Oh well, looks like we will be going back to the Museum.  Solo this time.

More to look at:

Impressionism
Impressionist Masterpieces from the Clark Collection
Giovanni Boldini
Claude Monet
Edgar Degas
Statement Furniture: Fernando & Humberto Campana – RETROSPECT

Two Cents Tuesday Challenge: Pressure

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This is our last dance – not much has changed since 1982…

For those of us of a certain age, the saying there there is nothing new under the sun starts to have greater meaning.  Trends in many circles – art, music and fashion – come and go, then reappear, reinvented with a new coat of paint, appropriated riff or brighter shade of lipstick.  The cycle seems to get shorter as time goes on but then our life experience alone suggests that we have probably seen or done it at least once before.  It is said that people born between the first World War and 1960 have witnessed more changes to our planet and the way we conduct our daily existence than those at any other point in history.  Some days, life plays out with nary a hiccup, on others it is “full of sound and fury” but on most we are, at best, reacting to circumstance.

The heavy load that man doth bear…

When the stresses of the 21st century seem about to collide all at once in some sort of weird cosmic finger-pointing, all that is necessary is to step back – or to the side – and think about how someone else is dealing with the vagaries of life at this precise moment in time.  Such visualization can have dramatic and profound results: Would you really want to be in those shoes?

Today, of all days, when a good portion of the population on this continent feels the onus of civic responsibility weighing down upon them, Across the Bored puts forward the Two Cents Tuesday Challenge topic – Pressure.   In all its incarnations as a verb or a noun, action or reaction, as a social construct or in the animal kingdom, from architecture to hydraulics, sound to weather, our world is an example of how everything is affected by compelling and constraining influences.

So,  “How does pressure appear to you?” – As a butress flying out from a gothic cathedral, the force of a hurricane bending trees to its will or as that long line of voters snaking into the distance?

If this is all too much, just Relax…

We would love to see your vision.

For all those who are new readers to Across the Bored, here are some guidelines for the challenge: HOW DOES THIS WORK?

  1.  I will post some commentary on a random topic that pops into my head (such as the above) and then ask you to respond on the same.
  2. Your point of view on the current week’s challenge can take any form: a quote, a motto or saying, an essay, poem or post by you or attributed to someone else, a work of art, photograph, graffiti, drawing or scribble.
  3. The Challenge will be open for 6 days after it is posted upon which I will post another challenge.
  4. ENJOY, have FUN and TELL your friends and fellow bloggers.

 SO – Create your Two Cents Tuesday Challenge post

  1. Then add a link to your blog in my comment box.
  2. To make it easy for others to check out your post, title your blog post “Two Cents Tuesday Challenge” and add the same as a tag.
  3. If you would like your reader to see what others are presenting for the same challenge, add a link to the “Two Cents Tuesday” challenge on Across the Bored’s blog.
  4. Remember to Follow My Blog to get your weekly (hopefully) reminders.

Two Cents Tuesday Challenge: Temptation

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Coffee and chocolate or something a little more sinful?

Hurricane Sandy has howled inland, blowing away the last of autumn and leaving no doubt that the first flakes of snow will soon follow.  We can smell the change in the air, see by the height of the sun and know by the cravings for winter foods that November is but days away.  The season that encompasses Halloween, the December Holidays and New Year’s can be one where we get carried away, so this week’s Two Cents Tuesday Challenge topic – Temptation – is timely.

The first entry that appears when the word is googled is:
Noun:  A desire to do something, esp. something wrong or unwise: “he resisted the temptation to call Celia”; “we gave in to temptation”

(or “the temptation to chew on the USB key was too much for the dog…)

A thing or course of action that attracts or tempts someone: “the temptations of life in New York”

(or “the temptation to redecorate the house while Jack was away left Jill with no choice…)

One imagines that the writers of dictionaries were a cranky lot who didn’t really have much fun in life.  Whether we are enticed, influenced, allured or seduced by a person or an idea; when we have an inclination or an impulse to do or achieve some thing; when the thing itself is so appealing that we are left breathless with desire, is this really so terrible?  It sometimes has beautiful results.  Or not…

So,  “How does temptation appear to you?”

We would love to see your vision.

For all those who are new readers to Across the Bored, here are some guidelines for the challenge:

HOW DOES THIS WORK?

  1.  I will post some commentary on a random topic that pops into my head (such as the above) and then ask you to respond on the same.
  2. Your point of view on the current week’s challenge can take any form: a quote, a motto or saying, an essay, poem or post by you or attributed to someone else, a work of art, photograph, graffiti, drawing or scribble.
  3. The Challenge will be open for 6 days after it is posted upon which I will post another challenge.
  4. ENJOY, have FUN and TELL your friends and fellow bloggers.

 SO – Create your Two Cents Tuesday Challenge post

  1. Then add a link to your blog in my comment box.
  2. To make it easy for others to check out your post, title your blog post “Two Cents Tuesday Challenge” and add the same as a tag.
  3. If you would like your reader to see what others are presenting for the same challenge, add a link to the “Two Cents Tuesday” challenge on Across the Bored’s blog.
  4. Remember to Follow My Blog to get your weekly (hopefully) reminders.

The view from here

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A slow, enveloping change

The same pear tree that produced such succulent fruit only a few short weeks ago has undergone a seasonal transformation – like the lady she is, she clothes herself in all of autumn’s glorious colour.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Foreign

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One of these things is different from the others….

This week’s  Photo Challenge: Foreign opens up a whole world of images with great visual impact. Although the text on this wall-sized butcher’s sign needed translation, the graphic content was fuel for a hot debate between travellers to ShenZhen.  Unpalatable to many of the group, vegetarians and carnivores alike, it proved once again that when travelling everything is relative – a matter of taste, so to speak – and that, like a good book or film, the enjoyment lies in our suspension of belief.

Two Cents Tuesday Challenge: Manipulation

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As is: iphone photo taken through car window at 130 km per hour

This week’s Two Cents Tuesday Challenge topic – Manipulation – was inspired by Ohm Sweet Ohm, a recent photo challenge and a series of articles and discussions circulating about the validity of iphone photos as “real” art (see the bottom links for more).  Actual or virtual, raw or enhanced, point and shoot, SLR or DSLR, good or not – beauty, art and an appreciation of the world around us are where we find it. Judgement shouldn’t rest on the effort taken, and the tools that we use, to bring images to a state where we are satisfied with them.  As a friend once said about the unwanted gift of a print from a relative – “I don’t care whether it’s a Picasso – I don’t like it!”

Judicious cropping, the use of levels, curves and contrast, topped with the graphic pen filter from photoshop result in the American gothic novella illustration

The noun “manipulation” has a bad rep; most of the dictionary definitions have negative connotations but perhaps, in this century of change and alteration, the editors should append their entries to include a few words on a positive note.  The very act of creation is making something out of nothing (although the opposite could be argued as well), it is manipulation of the best kind. We assign meaning by presenting images in a certain way – whether our audience gets it or not is irrelevant, what is important is that they take away their own impression.

Sofa size: tweaking vibrance, hue and saturation, cropping and the application of artistic and brush strokes filters in photoshop

Nature is the mistress of manipulation, from animals using tools to the strangling vines that plague our gardens in their climb towards the sun.  Babies are manipulative in a sweet, endearing way; small children learn it early as part of their skill set; teenagers start to refine it by practicing on each other in a microcosmic mimicking dance;  but, adults take the art of manipulation to a whole new realm, infusing the word through action with as many variations as there are synonyms and definitions.

So  “What does manipulation mean to you?”

We would love to see your vision.

For all those who are new readers to Across the Bored, here are some guidelines for the challenge:

HOW DOES THIS WORK?

  1.  I will post some commentary on a random topic that pops into my head (such as the above) and then ask you to respond on the same.
  2. Feel free to attach photos or artwork you have that fit the current week’s challenge.
  3. The Challenge will be open for 6 days after it is posted upon which I will post another challenge.
  4. ENJOY, have FUN and TELL your friends and fellow bloggers.

 SO – Create your Two Cents Tuesday Challenge post

  1. Then add a link to your blog in my comment box.
  2. To make it easy for others to check out your post, title your blog post “Two Cents Tuesday Challenge” and add the same as a tag.
  3. Remember to Follow My Blog to get your weekly (hopefully) reminders.

Interesting articles:
Binoculars and iPhone Give Pro Cameras Stiff Competition at Olympics
Stop Arguing About Instagram and Go Make a Picture
How the iPhone changed my photography
Pix Before Pixels

Weekly Photo Challenge: Silhouette

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to new ideas…

The learning curve has been a little steeper than usual this week.  Here, all things tech are absorbed at a pretty much need-to-know speed, manuals and instruction books a luxury for those few minutes when there are no deadlines or last minute tasks.  iphone, ipad, laptop, the computer itself with all its magic programs, the big camera (or “my baby” as Miss Z covetously likes to call it), each has its own universe of creative possibilities but also the caveat that you have to figure out how to get there.  This week’s Photo Challenge: Silhouette arrived in the middle of a work-related road trip to the wilds of Ontario. Yahoo! No archives to consult, a tight schedule and wi-fi became the borders to cross.

Out of the city and into the trees

Silhouette is not an easy challenge – it is a way of seeing we often bypass in favour of close inspection of the thing itself.  It is the shadow, the outline, the impression left by complex forms that sometimes says more.  Toying around with the iphone proved artistic salvation. Who knew one could get quite lovely results through the window of a fast-moving car in less than ideal conditions or just by pointing at the sky and hoping for the best?

Two Cents Tuesday Challenge: Compromise

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Your choice

The last few days dealing with surly clients were fraught with high drama and the gnashing of teeth but fortuitously, offered up this week’s Two Cents Tuesday Challenge!  Daily life, whether technicolour, monochrome or gray-scale can be, at best, give and take.  How we deal with it relies solely on how we react – with logic or emotion, fact or fancy, nature or nurture. This week’s topic – Compromise – can be found in all the spheres that intersect: human, animal, plant, even things inanimate. It is sometimes as simple as our summer garden where the neighbour’s zucchini plant wound its tendrils along a shared fence and down into our tomatoes – the compromise rested between plant and static architecture, between friends’ understanding that sometimes nature needs to seek its own way rather than bend to our will.

So  “What does compromise mean to you?”

We would love to see your vision.

For all those who are new readers and in the spirit of this week’s topic, Across the Bored has made a few (minor) changes to the challenge:

HOW DOES THIS WORK?

  1.  I will post some commentary on a random topic that pops into my head (such as the above) and then ask you to respond on the same.
  2. Feel free to attach photos or artwork you have that fit the current week’s challenge.
  3. The Challenge will be open for 6 days after it is posted upon which I will post another challenge.
  4. ENJOY, have FUN and TELL your friends and fellow bloggers.

 SO – Create your Two Cents Tuesday Challenge post

  1. Then add a link to your blog in my comment box.
  2. To make it easy for others to check out your post, title your blog post “Two Cents Tuesday Challenge” and add the same as a tag.
  3. Remember to Follow My Blog to get your weekly (hopefully) reminders.

Weekly photo Challenge: Big

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Anyone remember Devo? Close your eyes, flash back to the 80s and listen to the words…

“I am a (wo)man with a mission and yes, I’m in a big mess”

The blogosphere resounds this week with a wild variety of pics for the Weekly Photo Challenge: Big. Our household vibrates with largeness of a different kind – the ever-expanding, threatening to swallow one whole, can’t get a handle on kind of volume that results from  its occupants less than domestic skills and acquisitive tendencies.  We are all, by nature, collectors: books and paper ephemera, photos, slides, paintings, shoes, action figures (don’t ask), silver oddments, bits collected on trips, the list goes on. While it makes for an interesting nest and provides many a topic of conversation for first-time guests, it does entail some time-consuming curating.

Miss Z takes great pleasure in saying that our house is more organized, cleaner and “way better” than those of her friends and while this may be true and is some small consolation, we are still overwhelmed by ….. a big mess.

Big pile of laundry: not mine – at least it’s clean

This particular Monday arrived with a big thumping of construction equipment down the street accompanied by the barking of the big dog making a big deal about the big cat that likes to harass him.  A big argument about the correct way to compost got things off to a big start and now a big pot of chili sits simmering on the stove while a big pile of laundry slowly gets done and a big pile of ironing increases hourly. A big window full of emails to be answered and notifications to view could have been a big headache but were softened by a big cappuccino. So it is only a blog about Big to finish with…

Ample are the resources at hand and
Astronomic the patience needed to endure
Bear-sized muddy footprints
across the floor;
Colossal are the olives plunging
Deep into the pot
Enormous;
Formidable are those whose efforts
Gargantuan become even more
Heroic in the retelling;
Immense are the skies above,
the stars a
King-sized,
Larger-than-life
blanket to wrap you in;
Monolithic proportions abound
around us
Newsworthy, noteworthy
Oversized and over-promoted
Preposterous art;
Queen-sized media
Rotund in its
Stupendous glory
a 21st century
Titanic of information so
Unbelievable, so
Voluminous in its pervasiveness
yet
Wide-ranging are the possibilities…

Two Cents Tuesday Challenge: Procrastination

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From a tuppence to a toonie

Procrastination is the order of the day and in a effort to remain productive while still managing to avoid doing the really pressing work at hand, Across the Bored presents the Two Cents Tuesday Challenge!  What better way to waste time and let everyone know your tuppence worth (yes, we actually are soliciting your opinion!).  So without further ado, this week’s topic is all about that time-sucking void we all know and love (or despise) – Procrastination.

“How do you waste time, delay, put off, goldbrick, postpone, or shilly-shally?”

HOW DOES THIS WORK?

  1.  I will post some commentary on a random topic that pops into my head (such as the above) and then ask you to respond on the same in 2 lines.
  2. Feel free to attach photos or artwork that you have that fits the current week’s challenge.
  3. Please enter only once!
  4. The Challenge will be open for 6 days after it is posted.
  5. ENJOY, have FUN and TELL your friends and fellow bloggers.

Create a Two Cents Tuesday Challenge post

  1. Then add a link to your blog in my comment box.
  2. To make it easy for others to check out your post, title your blog post “Two Cents Tuesday Challenge” and add the same as a tag.
  3. Remember to Follow My Blog to get your weekly (hopefully) reminders.

Thanks to Cee for the simple format and to everyone who has visited, been reading and followed. You provide endless good reasons to procrastinate….