Recently.

Well , it was another exiciting weekend over here that involved a lot of dozing on the couch. Seriously. But it also involved a preview of the new Simpsons ride in Universal Studios, Hollywood, some dinosaurs, a “rock and roll music” concert, extremely high temperatures and…dozing on the couch. Most notably, we turned the air conditioner on…twice! How exciting is that? Very exciting in our house. But high temps and too much sun gave me a migraine and the only thing that would soothe it was cool air and a couch.



To be fair. The picture above was taken near sunset. When the sun is actually hitting the wall on which the thermometer is positioned. So, one wall of my living room is getting the 114 degree blast while the back of the room isa more reasonable 95 degrees. The room itself stayed cool-ish. But the air conditioning helped get it down below 85.

So the Simpsons ride? Very cool. Very fun. Very fast. As one of the guys I was with pointed out, the most exciting part of it was being on a ride that was not yet sticky from the hands of a thousand tourists. Personally, I am not much a fan of Universal Studios. There’s not a whole lot there and…eh. But I can see it from my back window so when the chance came to ride the ride, I didn’t turn it down.

The Simpsons Ride before it gets all...sticky.

Apparently, the style of the ride is similar to the old Back to the Future ride (which it has replaced) but I don’t remember if I was ever on that ride (my husband claims that I was, but he also claims that my favorite cookies are gingersnaps and he is wrong so…you know…grain of salt and all that). It’s a virtual thing where you kind of start off in a virtual rollercoaster and then the story progresses into a wild chase. All your favorite characters are there and it’s pretty darn exciting. Lots of detail went into the whole set up, from the entrance throughout. I enjoyed it immensely. And I would say if you are a Simpsons fan, it may be worth it to go to Universal just for the ride.

And while I was in the park, I got to ride the Jurassic Park water ride for the first time ever. I am assured by those in the know that it was much more awesome ten years ago. Nonetheless…yay! Dinosaurs! So, you know…cool. I did try to get on this ride one other time, maybe 8 years ago. I made it all the way to the front of the line when they closed it down due to too many baseball caps in the water filtering system. Yeesh. But still..dinosaurs! (Stegosaurus is my favorite.)

What else? Oh the rock and roll musical concert was Crowded House. Very nice. It was the husband’s birthday and he was gifted with a ticket so away we went. Nice venue. Good music and lots of old people rocking out. What more could you want? Ok…old is a relative term. They were all about my age. Which is old. But clearly not too old to rock out because that’s what the audience did. And I personally never thought of Crowded House as a WOOOHOO! YOU ROCK! I GOTTA DANCE! Sort of band, but the rest of the world apparently does. That’s ok, have fun old people. I’ll sit here quietly and watch.

And then there was the dozing. And the cleaning of the bathroom. And the nice sushi dinner. OH! and Doctor Who! With Tim McInnerny. I love him so very much. Thank you Doctor Who writers. You are doing a bang up job of employing my favorite actors. How about a little Alan Rickman now? Or maybe some Stephen Fry? You know you want to…


OH MAN! In searching for a wee picture of Tim McInnerny because you know I can’t resist, I came across a review of him in OTHELLO, my favoritest of favorite Shakespearian things. I had read the glowing reviews of Eamonn Walker’s Othello and somehow glossed right over the fact that one of my favorite actors played my favorite part in my favorite play. Tsk. I should pay closer attention. I know you think I am a little goofy when I get all swoony over him, but dude...talent.

Mild?

I am currently that kind of tired where I think something like “Gee, my stomach hurts, I think I’ve had too much caffeine.” And then I think “Caffeine? You’re soaking in it!” and then I chuckle softly to myself but then…THEN…I realize that my joke to myself made no sense and I try to defend my joke, “You know, like Madge and the Palmolive? Mild? It’s more than just mild, you’re soaking in it!” and then I realize that when I have to explain my own joke to myself and then defend it as being valid humor, something has gone terribly, terribly wrong in my head.

And it’s a pathetic tired because what kept me up was a very simple problem, which I believe I may have solved but if I come back tomorrow and make more Palmolive jokes, you will know I haven’t.

The other thing that my mind spent way too much time processing today was the six degrees of literary separation of Shakespeare and Audrey Hepburn. It’s actually way less then six degrees…any idea how? And for the record, it does not involve Audrey acting in any Shakespearian plays.

I also only just realized that Palmolive probably comes from those two words…palm and olive and suggests the moisturizing properties of the olive on the palm. Duh.

Chilly.

Well, I just ate a Lean Cuisine Chicken…something, what was it? Oh, Carbonara for lunch. It wasn’t good. It was edible but you know, not really tasty. It just seemed like a good day for something warm and starchy, as it’s chilly and grey and kind of…it’s not rainy really, it’s more like the heavens are giving me rapberries (or Bronx cheers, if you prefer) and I keep kind of getting sprayed but not wet. In general, it’s vaguely miserable but not entirely horrible. Gloomy. That’s a good word for it. Gloomy. So, I guess the Chicken Carbonra was fitting because that too was pretty gloomy and not at all satisfying. So I had a cracker with some Rosemary, Apricot Chicken Salad but that too was not as pleasureable as it should have been. And it had almonds on it. Which, in theory, is fine, because hey, I like almonds. But in practice? With the rosemary and the apricots and the chicken, was just too much going on. And the crackers were kind of eh too. So I got rid of that and had some yoghurt. Which was good. So it’s not a total wash. But you know what? I could have milked the impending anniversary of my birth for a lunch out. But I was foolish. I am not one to have the week long celebrations (ahem, BFF and husband, it’s a birthDAY not a birthWEEK).

So, the point? Um…it’s chilly? See, that’s how I tie today into something I started writing yesterday and didn’t finish.

Now that it is getting chilly here in L.A. (but don’t get used to it, we will have some randomly blisteringly hot days still…probably around the time I need to do any large amount of cooking. Thanksgiving maybe, or whenever I decide I need to make 20 dozen cupcakes for a party or something). But for now…chilly. Not cold, not icy. Just cool enough to be uncomfortable if you weren’t paying attention and didn’t put on a jacket before you left the house. Chilly enough, for a normal person, to maybe want to sleep UNDER the covers. Chilly enough for me, an unnormal person, to sleep in three layers with two blankets and a hot water bottle. Yes, I took a hot water bottle to bed with me the other night. My feet and nose were cold and I couldn’t decide where to put it for optimal heating. It ended up on the feet. The nose suffered.

We have lit the heater and washed the winter comforter. The cat has begun burrowing under blankets begging for cuddles. And it’s what? 60 degrees? That’s nothing. But it’s enough nothing to make me shiver.

Currently regretting: lunch
Currently talking about: Beau Brummel and prison versions of Hamlet
Currently wishing: I had another sweater

Sign.

So here is my Illustration Friday for this week. The topic was “signs” and I kind of…well…here’s the evolution of my drawing, and a little peek into how my brain works, which may or may not be disturbing.
When I saw the theme “signs” I immediately thought of the image I posted for mother’s day, the mommy x-ing sign.
But since I had JUST posted it for that, it kind of seemed like a cheat so I looked to older pictures to see if I had anything interesting I could use. This is what caught my eye:

I liked the idea of sign language but since the rock and roll devil horns aren’t actually a part of ASL, I wasn’t sure how to make it work. Then I started thinking about pictographs and I came up with this:


Now I like the "Caution: Rock Ahead" idea, but it still wasn’t quite what I wanted AND, since I try to limit the time I spend on Illustration Friday images (kind of part of the challenge for me) I felt like I was running out of time. Oddly, the next thing that popped to mind was…Shakespeare? How does that happen? How does my mind always go back to the bard? Well, perhaps that’s a post for another time BUT I had been talking about Marlowe and Shakespeare with a friend, and I did buy myself a Shakespeare necklace last week AND someone had asked me what my favorite Shakespeare plays are just a few days ago…so I guess it was already in my brain…but how it got to signs? Well, portents are signs and there are some interesting portents in Julius Caesar and the idea of a flaming hand pictograph just seemed like a natural…so…

Twisted logic, I know, but there it is.