May

12

Rotary Gardens, Janesville Wisconsin

Filed Under regular, tout le fromage | 2 Comments

reLR_6341.jpg

Spring was just waking from its Winter slumber and leathery new growth was spotted in the Rotary Gardens of Janesville, Wisconsin. We last visited the gardens together late in 2005. We wanted to take a photo of ourselves on the bench where we had sat and taken a self-portrait back then, but there was someone occupying the bench this time, busily writing in a notebook and we would certainly not disturb a writer. We instead turned our lenses to the bursts of growth and to the unfortunate flood damage that had recently devastated large areas of the Gardens.

I haven’t written much over the last day or two due to a preoccupation with with a mysterious illness that has hold of Neil. Hopefully, tomorrow is better.

There are 11 new photos on my flickr page from Janesville. It’s much easier for me to play with photos than to recall holiday details and form sentences when I’m worried about Neil’s fever and pain. With some luck, he’ll be better tomorrow, otherwise it’ll likely mean a trip to the doctor.

Technorati Tags: , , , , ,

May

9

Best shop in the world

Filed Under regular, tout le fromage | Leave a Comment

Behold, the fantastic stuff of Carousel Consignments in downtown Janesville, Wisconsin.

reLR_6194.jpg

If you can’t find a treasure at this shop, then you have a heart of stone. Or a very tidy house. Either way, I wouldn’t ever trust you.

I bought the most gorgeous little salt and pepper shakers (my treasure had to fit neatly into luggage) but, believe it or not, I have not yet photographed them! I’ll get around to it.

reLR_6206.jpg

Carousel Consignments is magical. For more pictures from the shop, please visit my flickr page.

Technorati Tags: , , , ,

May

7

We started in Janesville Wisconsin

Filed Under regular, tout le fromage | 3 Comments

Before plucking the delicate internet flower that is moi to be his partner in life and crime, Neil had no reason to ever be in Wisconsin. Since marrying me, he’s been there at least twice. I lived there for ten years before making the trans-Atlantic move to England and consider it as much my home state as Indiana. We spent the last week of April in Janesville in a slightly dodgy Motel 6. The woman who runs the motel is lovely, but the thin walls kept no secrets. We had the sex maniacs next door doin’ their thing between 4 and 5 AM one night, the clown car-esque group of illegal immigrants with their sleeping bags on the other side for the next, and the drug deal bust and unhappy buyer the following morning in a room upstairs and opposite. Oh, and the all night packers who seemed to gather their things for a couple of hours, then nap, then get up and shuffle some more stuff. They could have been touring troupe of Stomp for as much noise as they made. It’s not the kind of motel you complain about, as you get what you pay for and you just have to stay positive about the daily police presence. I have never felt such an even split of safety and danger anywhere. It was weird. But they had free wifi…

Moving right along…

reLR_6221.jpg

Big, yellow, school buses are still a magical thing Neil first saw in movies and television, so I took him to see a whole depot of the things in Janesville.

reLR_6162.jpg

When I first moved to the UK, it was early November and I assumed that snow management would be on the minds of everyone. I asked Neil if we had a shovel, to which he looked perplexed. Snow was not on his mind. I explained that I meant a SNOW shovel and he explained that we did not have one. I then asked if there is a specific time or day for us to move the car out of the lot so that the managers of the flats could plow the car park. His response (complete with British spelling), “Plough?” Yeah. So, evidently I was the only person with snow on her mind. I have still, more than three years on, never seen a snow plow in Southern England. Grit trucks, yes. Plows? Pretty much unheard of. And you can pretty much forget buying a bag of sidewalk salt too. Add British “snow management” in the age of global warming to my list of things I love about my adopted country.

Technorati Tags: , , , , ,

May

7

I’ve launched a specialist site today

Filed Under regular, tout le fromage | Leave a Comment

I’m wading through my own holiday photos and thoughts, but decided that now is the time to launch my collection of other people’s holidays…

Introducing: Box of Postcards.

Bop

It’s a site to showcase my vintage postcard and Hood’s Photos of the World collection. I aim to update it every few days until I run out of things to scan. Trust me, it will take awhile… in fact, you may want to subscribe to the RSS feed to be sure to catch every weird and wonderful upload.

My thoughts and photos of our own, recently concluded, holiday will be uploaded in instalments over the next few days. SO much to process…

Technorati Tags: , ,

May

3

Alive and well and still on holiday

Filed Under expat, regular, tout le fromage | 1 Comment

I am sitting outside the Steve Alford All-American Inn on 3 just outside New Castle, Indiana. They have free wireless internet for guests and although we aren’t staying here, they have range enough for me to leech teh internets through their walls. Hooray!

All is well from the road. We’ve driven miles and miles and miles and have stories and photos to share. Most of that stuff is going to wait until we get back, as we will not always have drive-up wifi access on our routes.

We’ve seen the family and friends we needed to see, and found the places I wanted to photograph. Roads are mostly familiar and food is more wonderful than it should be. In short, life is good.

More from us when we get back to the UK.

Technorati Tags: , , ,

Apr

19

On acting my age and then some

Filed Under regular, tout le fromage | 3 Comments

Neil and I went down to the Post Office to take care of the car tax due and decided to stop for a Costa coffee to properly start the day. We walked through the shopping centre and passed a (high quality) shoe store. A display caught my eye.

J - ‘Oh! Those look comfortable!’

This is how I know that my age and my attitude are sometimes in the same room now. I was drawn not to the sexy, funky shoes, but rather the ones that you could spend all day in, travel in, do the laundry in, write your will while soaking your dentures in…

Next thing you know, I’ll be appreciating the elastic-waisted, permanent press slacks that are advertised in those little catalogues that come with Reader’s Digest. “Almond” — yes! that would go with everything and the elastic waist would be so comfortable.

Technorati Tags: , , ,

Apr

14

As our Spring holiday nears

Filed Under expat, regular, tout le fromage | 2 Comments

…I have come to notice that I am planning, quite possibly, the white-trashiest vacation ever.

Here’s what’s on the list (so far) for our upcoming trip back to the American Midwest:

  • Firearms lesson and range time.
  • Tattoo work. Call it, an expansion of my already colourful body art.
  • An evening of ogling and over-priced drinking in a strip club. (Gotta love the weak American dollar! Lap dances for everyone!)
  • Gorging at Taco Bell.
  • Meeting my Mom’s pet possum. (If Gerald hasn’t already moved on from her garage. Yes, she named him Gerald.)
  • Edgerton. (My friends in Wisconsin will understand that one without being offended by it. That’s part of why I love them.)
  • Waffles. Possibly at ‘bar-time’.
  • All-You-Can-Eat Friday Night Fish Fry.

There is more to our visit that the above list of amazingly exotic options, but it really struck me as amusing when I was getting them down on paper. Good God— we should pack Neil’s banjo and plan a canoe trip while we’re at it. ;)

Technorati Tags: , , , ,

Apr

6

on listening to audiobooks

Filed Under regular, tout le fromage | 1 Comment

Although I don’t make nearly enough time for it, I am an excellent reader. I love the whole experience of books— the feeling of it in my hands, the reaching of the bottom of each page and the excitement of starting another. I love the feeling when I pass the halfway mark and know that I’m in the home-stretch, which for me, is particularly thrilling given my ratio of started-to-finished books on the shelf. I like looking at the typography, both inside and outside the cover. I’ve even been known to peel open a book like an exotic fruit and smell the ink and paper as if it was nourishing in some way. The experience of a book is so much more than the words pulled together by its author.

I think the above illustrates why I can’t really find a place for audiobooks. I’ve tried. In fact, I recently got a free audiobook from eMusic (yes, requires a credit card, but you can cancel the subscription after you try the free downloads) and really worked hard to find a book I wanted. I searched the classics, the abridged, the unabridged, fiction, essays, foreign language lessons, and even brain entrainment for a desired title— one that I could see myself devoting hours of listening time to…
What I ended up with was a four-hour vocabulary booster. I already have a reasonably broad vocabulary, but I can certainly improve. Yes, I passed over the triple Cormac McCarthy release read by Brad Pitt for learning words like circumlocutory. It is difficult to measure the life I don’t have.

So, when do I listen to audiobooks? Despite the first paragraph here, I do listen to one or two of them. One is my husband’s audiobook TableRappers and the other is Stephen King’s On Writing. I have others, but I just can’t make the time for them. TableRappers is offered up in easily digestible twenty-minute (or so) episodes and On Writing is non-fiction, anecdotal, and easy to dip in and out of. I have The God Delusion in audio (as well as print) but cannot seem to muster the time or attention span it requires. I also have Rant by Chuck Palahniuk. Can’t see myself with the attention span for that either. Audiobooks need me to settle into some knitting or dishwashing or other mindless task. I can’t do it. Hell, even my longest commute is a twenty minute walk to a part-time job in town. This is not enough. I like the way a book engages me with tactile pleasure as well as mental stimulation. I can devote the time to a book because it requires the whole of me, whereas the passive audiobook says, “fit me in while you’re doing other stuff, I don’t mind.”
I prefer the demands of paper even if it means my started-to-finished ratio is destined to remain severely out of balance.
Sorry, audiobooks.

Technorati Tags: , , ,

Next Page →