The Orchid Show

I used to love going to the orchid show. It covered two floors of our local mall & had hundreds of varieties.

Then I moved, and it moved, and I missed several years.

This year, it's back over by the mall, and I'm back in the area, so I went with friends.

It wasn't quite what I'd promised them--dozens of varieties rather than hundreds--and that was a disappointment, but there were some real beauties there to enjoy, all the same.

Cutlery

I have to admire a store that sells everything from axes to melon-ballers and that has a nice, packeged "my first knife" kit.

The total effect, though, is a little overwhelming.

Creepy Dolls

The creepy thing about these is that I don't think they are intended to be the ideal companions for the Zombie Petshop kit, also available at the toy store.

A Merry Christmas You Will Have

You WILL have a Merry Christmas.

2005. Hmmm.... I wonder why these didn't sell out?

The Great Carousel Hunt: Part the VII: The Irvine Spectrum Carousel

The Irvine Spectrum Carousel is a nice, pseudo-antique carousel with lovely little images from Orange County history on the top.

It has an impressive variety of horses and a good collection of other animals to ride. As always, choosing one was difficult, but I settled on a white tiger, and my co-quester of the day chose the well-mannered, beautifully decorated brown horse next to him.

The carousel was one of the slower ones, and a little juddery in spots, but, as always, made me smile.

I didn't get as many pictures as I'd have liked because, when I came back in the evening to try to catch the end of twilight--you know the time, that moment when it's not quite dark but the lights have come on and everything is just a little more real than usual--a very polite security guard came up and informed me that, unless I was taking pictures of family members, I couldn't keep on, since the entire mall was copyrighted.

That did put a damper on things, as did the prospect of another pictureless quest entry. Fortunately, I looked at the website, and I don't think he was quite right: The mall is copyrighted, so I can't sell pictures, but images for personal use are fine (I think questing counts, don't you?).

Great Carousel Hunt, Part the VI: The Balboa Park Carousel

This is, I'm afraid, a belated entry, dating from last week's visit to the San Diego Zoo.

It also, of course, included a visit to the Balboa Park Carousel, my friends being kind enough to suggest stopping there first "So we don't forget." Not that I'm likely to forget a carousel, but I had confused the carousel locations, thinking I'd be riding the San Diego Park Conservation Carousel, not the lovely, antique Balboa Park Carousel. If I had remembered correctly, I would have brushed up on my facts first.

And I would have tried to figure out where the brass ring was, what it looked like, and how to grab (or try to grab) it. As it was, I had to settle for knowing this was one of the old carousels, admiring the bright orange ostriches, and t

horoughly enjoying the ride round on the zebras.

It was a long ride too, much longer than any I've been on yet--the five minute number I see on various websites may very well still be true. It's one of the faster carousels, but it doesn't whisk round the way the Long Beach Pike Carousel does.

Fish Stories II

Fish Stories

There are fish with transparent heads:

"I wonder," I said, "if we have a wasps' nest somewhere around? I've seen so many wasps around this summer."

Then I looked up.

Virtual Chocolate.com

Virtual Chocolate doesn't really seem to update often, not as often as I'd like, anyway, but it is a lovely site full of all sorts of chocolate facts, quotations, and, of course, pictures.

The Great Carousel Hunt: Part the Fifth

No pictures of this one, unfortunately, because my camera batteries conked out, and it turned out that those were my spares.

Anyway, I went to the Long Beach Aquarium Monday (beautiful place, by the way), and afterward, when it had gotten cooler, I walked around the area for a little while. i decided to by the Pike, figuring that a place which had a Ferris Wheel outside just might also have a carousel. Sure enough, it did--tucked away and with not sign outside.

It had all sorts of nature scenes painted on it, and a group of brown and yellow horses. Lots of mirrors circling the area, giving a sort of infinite carousel effect.

I had time to admire because it took a while for someone to come. She was very pleasant when she did come, and, though she seemed surprised that I wanted to ride, did let me have a nice long gallop on the horses.

I thought the OC fair one was fast--this faster, more like a gallop. There was no music (there apparently is, sometimes as there was an organ), but the sound of the horses going up and down turned out to be remarkably like the sound of galloping, so that was quite all right.

This, by the way, is the only carousel I've ridden so far where the sign advised "extreme care" in getting on and off of the platform and warned that the management was not responsible for any grease or oil that got on the rider (Hmmm..maybe there is a reason the operator was surprised that I actually wanted to ride).

The Broken Hourglass Update

Yep, still busy writing for The Broken Hourglass.

The characters finally started to come clear to me, after a long conversation with jcompton.

Well, that, and a drive to Disneyland. I was mulling them over on the way there, and, finally, started hearing them whisper to one another, so as soon as I got there, I pulled out my trusty laptop and started typing in Downtown Disney. Some survey-taking person came up to ask questions about what I was doing and pretty patently didn't believe that I was working. Just cause I was having fun!

Anyway...banter count is waaay up now (more than fifty, not counting what others had already written), most of them are pretty solid, some are downright good, and one has a great last line but needs the entire approach rewritten--but then, Jason just might take care of that. We shall see which of us gets to it first...

Oh, and another has a last line we keep debating.

So, seven more to go til I hit my self-imposed minimum-banter ratio.

In between banters, I've been working on the "atmosphere" encounters for two areas of the game and am about to start on a third.

Speaking of atmosphere, Liam/K'aeloree was hard at work this summer, sticking all those incidental bits and pieces of background noise into the game's world. I really noticed it this time, walking around the University and listening to the wood floors creak and the clop of feet on a stone floor. Amazing what a difference that makes. I mean, the music has been top-notch all along (as I believe I've mentioned, once or twice), but now the game has a lived-in feel to it.

Well, now to go back and see if inspiration will strike (Inspiration really does strike, sometimes, you know, though it always helps to stand outside in the rain, waving a lightning rod while you wait).

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