home again, home again, jiggety-jog.

Back from Vegas. Sat next to Typhoid Mary on the bus ride to L.A., that was a hoot. She was nearly seventy years old, was wearing a strumpy lace dress with a man's suit jacket over it, and dirty white slippers that said "Junior Mints" on them. A hacking, phlegmy cough and all of her belongings were in plastic grocery bags. Very sad... apparently she thinks that in downtown L.A., everyone is an jerk, but that on the strip in Vegas they treat you like a queen. Not sure exactly what she meant by these remarks, but i'm not really keen on delving much deeper into it. i gave her the window seat so she could sleep (hacking cough lessened a lot with that development, thank goodness), and a tissue because she was sniffling and wiping her nose on the back of her hand. Not that i've never done that, obviously, but i could tell she was not having a good time.

The craft show was sort of a bust; the economy has definitely taken its toll there. Lots of lookers, not a lot of buyers. But hey! Experience is good to be had. We sat for 3 days in the empty strip-mall store, smiling at people and buying things we didn't need form other crafters. And on Sunday, we packed everything back into the car, strapped the metal display shelf on top, and drove on home. As we were pulling into the garage, we heard a loud, horrible screeching sound and then suddenly stuff was raining down onto the windshield. It was a split-second of bizarrity. Then it hit us- we had forgotten (is that a proper word?) to stop in the driveway and remove the damned shelf from the top of the car. i laughed so hard my belly hurt. There was stucco everywhere, but only minor damage to the garage door mechanism. Whew! Good times. i certainly hope the neighbors were watching- there's some cheap entertainment to be had in Vegas yet! Tune in next time, folks, for Heather and Linda's Driveway Comedy Revue, Redux!

In other news, i guess i'm a nephophile. i mean, not to the extreme, but a mild obsession is definitely there. i am always looking up at the sky, searching for clouds. Photos of them almost always take my breath away (do NOT start singing that song), and when the sky is nothing but blue it bums me out completely. Speaking of clouds, here is a really fun optical illusion segment from Bill Nye that you should absolutely check out. Don't worry, it's not a Rickroll.

What else is new? Hm. Think i've got one too many houseplants at this point... seventeen pots, at last count. Wow! i never even realized that until this moment. Unfortunately, i'm nowhere near what you would classify as green-thumbed, so a couple of these are hanging on by a thread (the plants, not my thumbs!), and a couple of the others are not exactly thriving... But the rest do pretty well, and make the apartment a much happier place. i'm telling you: green is where it's at.

Even though this is boring, here is a list of them all, because i'm obsessive.

~Orchid (Brassidia x Odontoglossum, yellow star-shaped flowers with chocolatey mottles)
~Aloe (gotta have one of these, right? nature's burn healer.)
~hanging Ivy (because the bedroom is dark.)
~hanging Philodendron (the tendrils!)
~Arrowhead (Syngonium podophyllum)
~Dieffenbachia (because they are hard to kill)
~Croton (stunning rainbow leaves)
~Spathiphyllum (peace lily, also hard to kill!)
~Lithops (because they look like upside-down elephant feet to me)
~Fenestraria aurantiaca (a succulent that i'm busy killing)
~Maidenhair fern (delicate and lovely)
~Table fern (hearty goodness)
~Hypoestes phyllostachya (pink and green mottled)
~yellow Bromeliad (tropical!)
~Two Lucky bamboos. (just for the heck)
~a nearly dead Lily of the Valley (::sniff::) i got this for Nat's birthday, and it was so cute and delightful, until it slowly withered away and now i don't know what's going on there.

So there. Yeah. Glad i typed all of that out. Real interesting for you all, i'm sure. Time to go. Working on scanning some photos, but i'll probably just put them all on my Flickr account. It's long, tedious work when you're not digital, let me tell ya.

TTFN.

Oh, and apparently i travel so much on Amtrak that the lady at the ticket window recognizes me now. She's all, "do you work in Vegas?" Hah. At first i got really offended because for some reason i thought she thought i was a stripper, then it occurred to me that she probably thinks i'm an entertainer of some kind. Circus, or something. i wish!