marcel & me: January 2011

Monday, January 31, 2011

500 days of ...

mermaids? Well maybe not. But I did finally see the movie 500 Days of Summer. Yes, I'm a bit late on this one but it looked too much like teen-age-melancholia for me and frankly I thought the tone was a downer. However, I became obsessed with this image:

Not of Zooey Deschanel, although she is lovely - the painting in the background. Because I'm kinda obsessed with mermaids. I've been trying to find a good quality image of this for quite some time:

These are The Darling Mermaid Darlings from the wonderful (and sadly no longer on the air) show Pushing Daisies. But the show wasn't popular enough for there to be scads of merch or photos or much of anything to be had even though the art direction was spectacular.

So I went on a new search for the painting from 500 Days of Summer. First I found this:

Cave of the Storm Nymphs - Edward Poynter

I'd never seen this before and although they're not mermaids, I love it. But something about that sea shell lyre was looking very familiar. Then after some more googling I discovered that the scene from the movie was shot at the Redwood Bar & Grill and the painting was actually commissioned for the bar itself:

Ship of Death - Louie Metz

I was very pleased with myself to have found it, but upon closer inspection (and I invite you to click and see for yourself) I found this mermaid to be looking a bit, well, sea sick ... disappointing. And then I went back and looked at the pretty storm nymphs again:

A tribute perhaps?

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Marcel's patience - rewarded!!

This is a happy cat!

And a happy sister!!

I'm happy that she's here and they are both happy!!

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Marcel has been very patient

I told him she was coming. So he's been waiting for her in the spare room.

You see although he is definitely my cat, he loves my sister the most. And she's coming to visit!

So he's waiting and napping in here until she comes.

Thursday, January 13, 2011

Julia's turn

Julia and I usually just do mini-me shots. She's the one who started this actually. When I come and visit she rifles through my stuff and creates an outfit.

Some classic Jessica styles from the last couple of years.

I swear I did not put her up to this.


This was my x-mas eve outfit.

But I thought it was high time to include her in the back-to-back ritual.

She's almost 8. She'll have me beat by the time she's 11 for sure.

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Tomio is 10 and a half

Yes, it's finally happened ... here he is last year at this time:

Here he is just a couple of months ago in November:

And here he is at 10 and a half:

What is she feeding him?!?

Thursday, January 6, 2011

the New York City blizzard of 2010

I gotta say, for me this was just fun fun fun!! We awoke after a day of Xena to the city looking like this:

And I had not brought gear of any kind, but since Tomio is so tall I just wore his stuff from last year! We all got ready, grabbed the sleds and walked to the park.

Julia was still in warrior-princess mode attacking me with snowballs along the way.

And we bypassed the kiddie hill for a more challenging course where we spent the better part of two days.

In true snow-day fashion, we made lots of friends in the park as people played in the snow. A lovely group speaking Arabic stuck in the city on their way to Boston who said I looked like a movie star (which was funny in my snow gear and red face); a quartet of early 20's Asian boys intent upon making our trail run smoother as they used a snowboard as a sled 2 at a time; and a huge posse of Brazilian boys who when I pointed out that they were ruining the jump we'd been building with their shenanigans, pitched in and fixed it up.

We were so busy having fun building a snow fort and taking turns bombing down the hill on Tomio's new sled that I forgot all about the camera.

Wednesday, January 5, 2011

it was a very Xena X-mas!

December 25th was a busy day, what with opening all those prezzies and having dinner with my young hosts grandparents. It had been so mild and dry that I even remarked to 10 year old Tomio "tomorrow we should go for a bike ride in the park". But then, as you all know, there was a blizzard.

So although Emi was cursing me when she saw me wrapping up those swords and chakrams, let me tell you that stuff made the being stuck inside pretty fun!! First we watched a bunch of videos and the kids practiced their battle cries - ai ai ai ai ai aiiiiii!