Turtle Tchotchke Tuesday

A tealight holder.

Turtle Tchotchke Tuesday

Three Avon products. Two for candles and one perfume bottle.

(It's not that we especially like Avon turtles. They're usually not even out much of the time. They just were in antique stores when we still had room for such things. You don't need to find Avon turtles for us.)

Turtle Tchotchke Tuesday

You've seen this nightlight before but it was in the background of another tchotchke.

Here it is in its full glory!

What could it mean?

Years ago, Peggy decorated a mug for each of us. Mine has a Valkyrie hollering her war cry (as Peggy understood it):

What could it mean?

A-TEN-shun!

I usually don't pay attention to ads on web sites. I especially try to ignore the ones that have annoying animations going on. A year or so ago, there were some ads on the New York Times site for Design Within Reach. Their ads were simply their name on a red background. For some reason I checked them out. And spent hours looking through their products. I've gone back to drool over and over again.

I want a second house that we can decorate with contemporary furnishings.

One of the stops of our trip last month was Penzeys Spices in Santa Monica. Just across the street from Penzeys happened to be a DWR store. Oh, boy! Oh, boy! Oh, boy!

One of the things I wanted to see was a miniature of a molded plywood elephant designed by Charles and Ray Eames. The only one they had was in their display case. Jerry bought it for me!

I hadn't heard of Charles Eames and the Eames Chair until Charles Eames gave the commencement address at my college graduation.

I wish I could remember the address. I'm sure it was full of wonderful ideas to help us to do great things with our lives. The one thing I remember is that he showed us his film "The Powers of Ten." My friend Walter Kubilius was excited that we were going to see Mr. Eames and his movie. If it hadn't been for his excitement, I might have let the whole experience pass as just another inspirational speech. Sadly, Charles Eames died just three months after that address.

I'm glad I know a little about the Eameses. And I now have my own little Eames-designed piece. Now I'll have to go back and get a chair.

"The Powers of Ten" is a very interesting little movie. I hope you watch and enjoy it.

Happy Powers of Ten day!

How smuggy can you get?

I had to put the icing on the cake. My Prius now has an Apple sticker on it.

A collective noun proposal: A smugness of Prius drivers.

The Smug gets thicker!

Yesterday, I took the Prius to the dealer to have the security system installed and the paint and upholstery protection applied. When I picked up the car, the service manager gave me a prize!

Now, when I shop for groceries, I can be greener yet! And proudly display my dedication to the environment! (We already use canvas bags but we need to increase the smug level in these parts.)



By the way, in case you're interested, here's a link to an excellent episode of South Park on this very subject.

Turtle Tchotchke Tuesday

A nightlight.

Level IV Smug Alert!

My little Corolla was almost 12 years old. It was getting rather frayed around the edges. It had a cracked windshield. Its headliner was starting to sag. The plastic trim around the doors had shrunk and had pulled away from the door frames. Its fuel economy had dropped to only 28 miles per gallon tooling around town.

It was time to think about getting a new car.

Thanks to BEA being bought last year and Mom's advances on our inheritance, I had some money sitting around screaming "SPEND ME!"

Today was the day to obey the money.

I didn't record the results of the poll I had with my BEA story but I remember what the outcome was. The choice with the most votes was "Buy a Prius."

I bought a 2010 Prius IV.

You thought I'd get your basic model? I thought I would have but I didn't. I wanted the solar powered ventilation system and the remote air conditioning system. I didn't really want heated, leather seats but, hey, why not? I've been rather frugal with my cars for a while.

Now I have to read about all the fun things I can do with it. I have to learn how to get my phone to talk through the bluetooth connection to the car. I have to figure out all the buttons (there are a lot of buttons).

It's going to take a while to be able to just walk up to the car and get going. Cars need keys in an ignition switch to run. At least they used to.

Well, I need to read up on this thing.

It was Fate

There was a hobby that Jack introduced me to that I embraced completely.

For a long time I was fascinated by the paranormal.

Out of the blue, Jack got me an issue of Fate magazine. I guess I really enjoyed what I read. Jack got me a subscription to the magazine!

One of the first issues I got in the mail really got me hooked.

The article "Table Up! or How to Tilt a Table" got the ball rolling. This is a way to get answers to all of your questions.

It was easy. Three people sit at the east, south and west sides of a card table. You then rub your hands together until they are warm then place your hands on the table so that your thumbs are touching and your pinkies are touching the person's pinkies next to you. You then chant "Table Up! Table Up! Table Up!" After a short time the legs on the north side of the table rise off of the floor! The table then will answer your questions. You tell it to dip up and down to give the answers. For example, for a yes/no question, you could have it dip once for "yes" and twice for "no." I suppose you need to give it an option like three dips for "I'm not telling!"

It actually worked! Three of us got out the card table, sat around it, did the chanting, and, miracle of miracles!, the legs on the north side of the table rose from the floor! It did its dipping to answer our questions!

I can't remember what sort of questions we asked. I certainly don't remember if the answers were very accurate. But it was a miracle that the table ignored the laws of gravity and dipped out answers.

This led me to the 130s section of Mesa Public Library. I must have checked out every book of their paranormal collection.

I investigated dreams. I studied the Tarot. I got a Ouiji board. I read about UFOs. I thought about telepathy and psychokinesis.

A weird thing about the Ouiji board was that whenever Peggy was on the other side of the planchette, the board would give very rude or obscene answers. I guess Peggy was channelling unhappy spirits. I hope they have found their peace.

I never got good at reading the Tarot cards. I probably needed a teacher. Like most of the things I learned outside of school, I was self-taught. Book learning about mystical things isn't the best way to go. The knowledge probably has to be passed empathetically from master to student.

But mostly I learned about testing hypotheses.

I never saw that any of these mystical activities were shown to be real through reproducible tests.

Fate had features where readers would send in their proofs of survival (of this plane's life) and of mystic experiences. Most were rather silly. One woman told about waking up one night to see an otherworldly surgeon operating on her chronically sore hips. She woke up the next morning and the pain she had experienced for years was gone! She had scars on her hips that were proof that she had had the overnight surgery! Even though I was trying to be a believer and I was rather young, my eyes rolled and I thought, "Lady, you have stretch marks. Maybe you lost some weight and your hips aren't working as hard holding you up."

I couldn't be a believer. But I still have fond memories of my time trying to find more in this universe than can be experienced by our five traditional senses.