It's a new day

The sun is shining, the birds are singing, and the sky is bright, bright blue.

It's a new world today my friends. A beautiful new world, full of hope and promise. Let us use it well and BE that change we've been so desperately hoping for.

Congratulations President Obama!!!

Tel Aviv Beach

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Find more Wordless Wednesday participants here on this monumental day after.

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Fire Hydrant

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(I will not dwell on the election. I will not dwell on the election. I will not dwell on the election. I will not dwell on the election. I will not dwell on the election...)

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It's old and beat up looking, and could use a fresh coat of paint, but it's just that element of grittiness that appealed to me. Of course since it's also red I suspected when I shot it a few months ago (has it really been that long?) that if I didn't post it together with a bunch of other photos from the same day that it would eventually come in handy for a Ruby Tuesday post.

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And now it has.

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Nostalgia

(To give you fair warning I'm feeling quite introspective and self-indulgent today. If you have a low tolerance for crap you're probably better off skipping this one.)

It's so trite as to be almost embarrassing. It's one thing to let a song take you back, but to be totally blown away by the radio's latest must-play hit? That's never been me. I'm not a top-40 kind of girl. I'm all about classic rock, folk music, the Grateful Dead, music with history, a sense of place and time. But there I was, minding my own business, listening to my car radio (thank god Maya is finally outgrowing her insistence on children's music All! The! Time!) and Kid Rock's (Kid Rock's. Good lord.) All Summer Long came on.

I sat there in the car listening to the words, and they just blew me away. Not because they were so meaningful, or lyrical, or poetic. They're really not. But they were singing my own past back to me. The details are a bit different, I grew up far from Northern Michigan and its lake, I've never even seen a walleye, let alone caught one, and the song was more likely to be Stairway to Heaven than Sweet Home Alabama, but it was my life. My history.

I started laughing when I heard the chorus, remembering how we too spent our days, and our nights, doing the same things, with the long-haired guys and the girls in skimpy bikinis (oh to be that thin again) drinking that Jack Daniels straight out of the bottle that my best friend used to hide in the back of her closet. And all the rest. Yeah, that too. We weren't hard-core delinquents, at least not most of us, but we did know how to teeter right on the edge of the line, sometimes falling one way and sometimes the other. We had the world by the tail. We were so arrogant. We were so clueless. We may not have been half of what we thought we were, or known half of what we thought we did, but damn, we did have a good time. It was a hell of a ride.

Nostalgia is a powerful force. It dulls the edges. Wipes out the hard times. The tears. The fear. Of course it wasn't all good, but that's the thing about time. It softens things. Hides things. Makes you forget. You lose touch with people you once cared deeply about and persuade yourself that it doesn't matter.

It does matter though. It isn't life or death, but it is an anchor. An anchor to who you used to be. I haven't been that rebellious teenage girl in a very long time, such an incredibly long time, but she's still in there somewhere, still a part of me. The shit she pulled, the trouble she got in (or avoided - I was pretty good at the avoidance part), they all combined to form one of the basic building blocks of Robin. Of who I am today, far removed though it seems from the Robin that was.

As I sat there listening, and remembering, I began to think about M, my best friend all through junior high and high school. The one I'd swap bras with (before she got boobs and I didn't, and yes, it does seem gross now, but we were 13 and didn't always remember to wear one when we were going out), the one I'd double-date with, and sneak out of the house at 2am with (M, if you're out there, remember Officer Cole's hat?). The one who was right there with me as I was "tryin' different things" and who was still there to pick up the broken pieces of the ones that didn't work. The one who didn't stop me as I left to go on a date in my slippers - because she too was walking out right next to me in hers! The Be Fri to my st ends. (See, I told you this was going to be a lot of self-indulgent and overly sugary crap. Can't say I didn't warn you.)

M and I went different ways many years ago, and as tends to happen we lost touch. I'd think about her sometimes and wonder where she was, but her mother had moved away and M was living off the grid somewhere in Vermont, ungoogleable except for an outdated reference to Semester at Sea (her, not me). Still, I'd try on occasion as the years went by, but I never found her, and the few other friends I'd kept in loose touch with had no news either.

As I sat there the other day listening to Kid Rock (oh god, there he is again, I sound like a starstruck 14 year old) sing about the good old days I started thinking about her again, about everyone from back then, and decided it was time for my biannual attempt at googling. Except this time, I got a hit. Her name was right there in black and white. She had a Facebook account. I promptly shoved my principles back onto a high shelf (I'd deleted my Facebook account when they'd forbid pictures of nursing mothers - see the Great Virtual Breast Fest button in my sidebar) and signed up for an account, and two minutes later there she was. We've just gotten back in touch now, and haven't really had a chance to talk yet, but we will, and it's good to be back. It feels good to be back.

You can't go home again, but sometimes it's awfully nice to visit.

We interrupt our regularly scheduled posting...

I'm in the middle of a long and fairly self-indulgent post about nostalgia but I had to stop writing because a friend just came over and installed an older but perfectly legal copy of PHOTOSHOP (Elements, but still - it's Photoshop!) on my computer! And, once I've gotten my feet wet, he's got a copy of the full version I can have!

Squeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!

Up until now I've been doing all my post-processing on Picasa - a freebie download from Google. It's fine for what it is, quite good actually, but it's incredibly limited when it comes to more serious messing around photographic needs. There have been so many times that I wanted to change this or play with that or do this that or the other thing, knowing it would really enhance my photos, only to discover, again, that Picasa couldn't do whatever it was that I was looking to do.

I CANNOT WAIT to get my grubby little paws, and my photos, in there and start playing around.

Squeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!

Oh wait, I said that already. Nevermind.

Anyway, stay tuned, who knows where this madness will take me.

Yippee!!! *Robin runs around the room like a crazy person*

PS Apparently somewhat sour but very fresh red grapefruits can leave a taste remarkably similar to cloves in your mouth. Who knew.

PPS For those following along, the fire in the flat downstairs apparently started because they forgot a pot on the stove. Good thing their mistake didn't get anyone hurt.
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NaBloPoMo, Scandals, and Houses on Fire

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Every year I think about doing NaBloPoMo, and every year I've had houseguests, work deadlines, or some other kind of domestic issue that would make it impossible. This year November nothing major is looming (famous last words I'm sure) so I've decided to take the plunge and commit - 30 posts in 30 days. I suspect it will be harder than it looks.
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So, jumping in...
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The Sunday Scribblings prompt this week is "scandalous". How appropriate, we had a bit of a minor scandal around here this week.
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There I was the other day, sitting at the table working, minding my own business, when I suddenly heard a lot of yelling over a megaphone coming from the street down below.
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I looked out my kitchen window (on the 8th floor) to see that there were FOUR firetrucks and an ambulance in my parking lot! Holy crap. I started to head downstairs to see what was happening but when the elevator door opened it was full of smoke and so was the stairwell, so I went to check on my neighbor's kids, who are watching their house while they're parents are away, and then promptly turned around and went back into my flat. I then called the head of the building committee who told me that a flat on the 2nd floor was in fact on fire! Yikes. (Scary and sad for them, but thank goodness it didn't spread beyond their own home, though I'd guess their neighbors' homes are smelling a bit barbecued today, since the hallways and lobby still reek of burned plastic. Hey *lightbulb moment*, maybe that's why I've been having all these breathing issues this week. Note to self: god you're dumb.)
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Oh, and buildings here are made of concrete, so fires are fairly rare, and when they do happen they rarely spread beyond the individual apartment. I saw that the people on the ground were calm and doing a lot of standing around, so I wasn't at all concerned that the fire would come up 6 stories. Also, when I called the fire department to ask whether they wanted me to move my car out of the way they didn't tell me I was in any danger or to evacuate.
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Just so you don't all think I'm insane for heading back inside.
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This is the sight that greeted me when I looked out my kitchen window. My car is the gray sedan that's blocked in by the ambulance. (Ignore the weird blurring in the photos - we had anti-pigeon netting put up a few weeks ago. It keeps the flying rats off of my laundry, but I really hate what it's done to the view.)

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(Here's a gratuitous shot of a cute firefighter, because why not?)
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So where's the scandal in all of this commotion? Well, years ago, before we bought our flat, the previous owner's kids apparently decided to play with fire, literally, and set half the patio and a nice chunk of the building's exterior on fire. As if that wasn't enough, a notice was posted on the message board in the lobby just a few weeks ago reminding people that throwing LIT CIGARETTE BUTTS off the balcony was in fact a fire hazard. (Gee, you think? Sad, but I'm guessing that someone felt a notice like that was necessary. Asshats. The throwers, not the notice-poster.) So, now that someone's apartment has in fact caught on fire (no, I don't know whose, though I'm sure I've been in the elevator with them at some point) everyone is wondering - are they the throwers, do they live below the throwers, was it negligence or some kind of innocent and unfortunate electrical malfunction. I admit, I'm not above a bit of curiosity, I too plan to ask the head of the tenants' committee, who happens to live next door, what he knows next time I see him, under the guise of "making sure the building's infrastructure hasn't been damaged" and "do they need anything", of course. I'm not completely without feeling or neighborly spirit.

And I think it's definitely time to sit my son down for a "what do you do if there's an emergency" discussion. Yikes...

So there you have it, a little excitement and a little scandal. Never a dull moment around here...

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Update: I just found out the fire started because they forgot a pot on the stove. Lovely.

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