Thursday, 14 June 2012

• Pictures of lost Atlantis & other random things and thoughts

  When I came online yesterday morning, it was to see a dismaying lot of negativity and actual name calling going on.  Xanga drama as usual?  Well not all Xanga drama.  A lot of it comes from elsewhere.  My cage is being rattled.  Not me personally.  Just that I was very tempted to speak up on some of these issues, not just today but within the last week, and decided to refrain for now, especially as regards politics and religion.  That rant/sermon/essay/stand up/whatever is for later.  I’m just too busy and preoccupied lately to want to get tangled in that right now:

   

  1.      I need a new car.  I feel helpless without wheels of my own now.  What sort of car should I get?  I need to take into account more important considerations than just rose, mint, or some shade of purple and being comfortable.

   

  2.      The work load in my cal lab where I work has been heavier than we few can quite handle lately.  Just pour on the stress already!  We seriously need to hire two more cal techs.  Desperately, as a matter of fact.  But it’s hard to find good cal techs.  Most I know of are ex-military as it doesn’t seem to be a course of study available to most civilians.  We are all ex-military.  So anyway, if you happen to know of any good cal tech floating around loose looking for work, please send them my way.  Resumes would be nice.  Good spelling and grammar in addition to calibration skills are a must; special emphasis on electronic disciplines.  Procedure writing is part of the job.  Military background in calibration is a PLUS.

   

  3.      My HGTV software is being a challenge for me.  I’m not complaining though.  I like challenges.  It’s kind of been obsessing me to the point of shuffling everything else off to the side.  It’s a BAAAAAD addiction.  It’s so much fun and I’m make it so deliciously complicated for myself with such things as organic shapes, underground passages, roof gardens, sky lights, water falls, floating floors, split levels, raised floors, sunken floors, columns, arches, floor openings, composite structures, and all sorts of things the program really wasn’t designed for.  I’m tweaking its capabilities just as much as it’s tweaking mine.

   

  4.      My hamster Gizmo has been quite the cute little furry pill lately, attentions demanding extremist and escape artist extraordinaire.  He’s lovable though.  Jeb and the boys irk me by calling him a “rat” and threatening to throw him outside to the cat if they find him loose again.  Heaven help them if they do.  They will know my wrath.

   

  5.      Menopause.  Wrath fueler?  Not sure.  Prior to our Atlantis trip, my mom, sister, and doctor unilaterally and separately all declared to me that I should have gone through that by now and seemed… - what exactly? Disappointed or shocked? - that I hadn’t gone through it yet.  My period has been absent ever since.  Is that psychosomatia dependent on their expectations?  Am I really that suggestible?  Dang.  I don’t really feel any different though, so that’s cool.

   

  Anyway, as said by  @BoulderChristina, pictures are better than words on some days.  So here’s a picture of me on my Atlantean throne in one of the antechambers outside Casino Royale and if I don’t perch on it just so, I’m certain to fall in. 

   

  

   

  It’s a mighty big seat to fill, don’t you know?  Makes me feel positively small!  Oops!

   

  

   

  Makes me think of a same-age cousin of mine: J.  She fell into a throne of another sort and got stuck there on Thanksgiving at my house the year we were both 6 and have very skinny butts.  I wondered where she’d gotten to until I heard her cries for “HELP!!!!” coming from behind the locked bathroom door.  Seemed like everyone was soon gathered around the door rattling the knob and debating whether or not it would be decent to break down the door.  I spotted a bobby pin on the floor and had a better thought.  Heck.  Me and my older sister took turns locking each other out of there and I’d gotten fairly good at wielding bobby pins in locks.  So I jimmied the lock with my bobby pin.  My first sight of her predicament was her skinny arms and legs waving frantically above the seat, her head hidden somewhere beneath.  So I shut the door on the others and tugged out with all the strength I could muster.  It’s been tease fodder for years.

   

  Jimmying locks with bobby pins was a skill I considered of value when I was in Iran.  Every time that family would leave the house without me, they would lock me in a room… usually without a bathroom.  If I was content, had a book to read, and didn’t have to go to the bathroom, I’d stay there.  More often, because it really pissed me off to be treated like a prisoner, I’d jimmy the lock or get out in some other way, climb over the wall of the courtyard (since the pin didn’t work on the front door lock), and go for a walk just to satisfy myself that I could.  I’d have run away entirely if there’d been someplace to run to.  There wasn’t of course, of course, but I ran away a few times despite this.  Feeling like a trapped animal, I didn’t always think these things through properly.  In less irrational states of mind though, I’d more often get back to the house and lock myself back in again before they got home.  The fact that they felt they could usually lock me up tended to make them more trusting than they should have been and actually gave me more options to run than I’d otherwise have had.

   

  What is it about hardliner religious males and the cultures they dominate that so terrifies them of women they can’t entirely control?  Why their compelling need to subjugate women through whatever means come to hand?  Geeze!  You’d think we were man-eating tigers or something.  They sh*t themselves just thinking about having us on the loose, making our own decisions about our own lives!  RAWR!!!!!  Lions and tigers and bears, OH MY! 

   

  Such wimps! I do happen to have been born in the year of the tiger and the month of the lion so maybe I am a scary beast.  LOL. 

   

  Anyway, this Chihuli sculpture is in another antechamber of the casino, not one of my favorites, but was a novelty to see his artwork so far from home when we haven’t yet seen his new exhibit at the Seattle Center: Chihuli Garden and Glass.  Dale Chihuli is a local to us, another Washingtonian.

   

  

   

  Here are a couple more pieces of Chihuli's art in the casino itself:

   

  

  

   

  The Dig Atlantis is just beyond the Casino.  It begins with these grand steps down into a beautiful foyer lined with underwater windows into what is essentially another world. 

  

   

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

   

  

  

  

  Then you go through like the office of 1920s type archeologist into a labyrinth of tunnels through an underwater realm.  There’s a story that goes with this, a regular tour, but we didn’t go with the tour.  We just went on our own, snapping pictures every step of the way.

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  Is it just me, or do these moray eels look flat out evil?

  

  

  

   

  

  

  

  

  

  King Jeb on his throne of a much more appropriate size:

  

  And that's all for now.  Next time we go a prowling among the pirates of the Carribean!

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