:: The Wendy House ::

is the title of this painting. Photographs showing paint coats attached below. The composition was inspired by a lover declaring how deeply he enjoyed watching my back as I walked away from him. This throws a whole new light on the phrase

‘glad to see the back of you’.

What do you think? Like it?

Should I give it to the ‘ex-lover’ for ‘ex-mass’ or hang it in the

garage

bedroom

front room

workplace office

back of the wardrobe

rubbish-bin

For painting I’ve learned that

• I need lessons - I can’t work out how to ‘blend’ effectively, produce ’smooth’ colour changes. Poor paint management.
• skin tones are difficult to mix. Poor paint management.
• details take more patience. Decisions like ‘oh that will do, its good enough’ are winning over planning and care in application.
• My hand is woBbly WobBLy, wOBblY on colour boundaries even when resting my hand against a prop. Too much cheese, tea, beer and bouncing.

I’m going to use smaller canvas(’s) to develop paint management skills while making Chrismas pressies!

W renaissance-womb’n-making-merry-mass-pressies

The film was enjoyable.  True to the main themes of the book containing some excellent directorial moments that are especially impressive given this is Joe Wright’s directorial debut.  

Working title ‘Pride & Prejudice’ Strengths:

• Convincing and entertaining portrayals of Mr (Donald Sutherland) and Mrs (Blenda Blethyn) Bennet.  The best I’ve seen.
• Fabulous sets and scene locations (e.g. the tree rest-spot on the way to Derbyshire).   
• Directional details used to clearly conveyed messages without ‘words’ or heavy reliance on acting skills. Particularly when conveying Mr. Darcy’s affection for Elizabeth.

Unlike the outstanding Capote, or Goodnight and Good luck, I was distracted from full immersion in the whole fantasy film-experience by irrtating trivialities.  This left me prefering the longer,  more captivating, 1995 BBC TV version. 

Irritating trivialities included:

• Tightly laced bodice in one scene that is incosisitent with the regency style. 
• General make-up inaccuracy:  Glossy peach coloured lip gloss.  Lizzie,  NO!  While lip gloss was available in white and red choice and use of colours was limited. HEAVY use of eye-liner by Bingley’s sister.
• Kiera Knightley’s posture and deportment was just POOR.
• Most characters appeared to be under instruction to make their hair look like it had never seen a comb.  Many of the hairstyles were ‘rigidly’ held in scruffy-in-place (hairspray?). 

The heavy advertising spin had overplayed the quality of this production which left me slightly disappointed.

As with all high budget period productions the ‘house’ film locations are stunning.  Here are the main locations used for the Working Title production:

• Netherfield Park:  Basildon Park
• The scene where Darcy proposes was filmed at the Temple of ‘Apollo’, Stourhead, Wiltshire
• Pemberly Exterior and some interiors:  Chatsworth house, including the sculpture gallery.  Chatsworth is actually mentioned in the book & is actually in the Derbyshire peak district where the fictional Pemberly is based. 
• Pemberly interiors:  Wilton house.
• Inn at Lambton:  Haddon Hall, Lizzie’s bedroom.
• Longbourne:  Groombridge place.
• The Rosings:  Burghly House, Stamford, Lincolnshire. Lady Catherine de Bourgh’s house.
• Meryton:  Stamford, Lincolnshire.

I spent many summer days in Stamford,  visited Burghly house once and Chatsworth half a dozen times.  Happy memories.  No real equivalent in Washington State….

W

For a typical night-in the dining room table has recently regained its status as the happy-hub of my singletudiness pleasures:  painting,  cheese,  wine, charismatic lighting, texture (soft velvet & heavy gold brocade), scent (food and candles), research and blogging… 

…not enough room to dance around it… …moving it slightly might solve that…

W pretentious-pseudo-rennaissance-womb’n

According to the British Cheese Board (snigger):  

‘all female participants who ate British Brie had nice relaxing dreams’ (my emphasis)

Nice? 

I’m looking for action-adventure with good and bad guys,  shape-shifters, magic,  high-speed chases and unexpected wackiness.  ‘Nice’ doesn’t really describe what I’m looking for. 

NICE?!

Were the girls using ‘nice’ as a euphemism for something more ‘naughty’ (unpublishable)?  That might explain why the boys eating Brie reported experiencing ‘cryptic’ dreams.  At a euphamistic level more girl-’nice’ dreams would be an EXTREMELY good result for Brie.  Just incase,  I’ll double the planned portion for tonight.  I had a ‘long’ dream last night but I wasn’t sufficiently lucid to know if it was ‘nice’ or not….

Wendy anticipating-’nice’-dreams

PRESSIES

I lurffff pressies

Today IS posty-present-prince-parent-parcel-’preciation day. Two parcels!!!

1)  The WhitePrince of Barcelona (aka Eyan girl-sort-your-’postrophes) mixed some Club-bub-bub-bub-bubbing CDs of ‘Pyjama non-classics’ that I’m listening to now.  NAUGHTY Lyrics.  UNPUBLISHABLE. 

D-D-D-Dancing

in the Wendy House toooooooonight!

2)  Christmas present with STRICT instructions not to open before December 25th.  Mumzie KNOWS how to taunt me!   

I’m way behind on making packages for the last Christmas post to Europe.  Planning for a creativity weekend followed by parcels to posty…  FUN!

Wendy D-D-D–Dancing-B-B-B-Bouncing

Paper is fun;

Your cat may well prefer high-tech entertainment;

DVDs

First report in my ongoing cheese investigations

Eating phase (supper):  Throughout the 7 nights after eating soft goat cheese I was unaware of any dreams.

Decontamination phase (no cheese supper):

• 1st evening had a fairly short ’dull’ dream.
• 2nd evening  dream involved steering a thick Persian rug down a steep tree-covered mountainside.  Hooray!  Much fun. 

Conclusion?   For me, soft goat cheese is a dream supressant.

Tonight I’m shifting to Brie.  …mmmmMMMMmmmmm….

W Loves-Cheeeeeeeeeeeese-and-dreams

Production of the book ”In Cold Blood” from inception to execution.

Intensely harrowing

Exceptional

.

From ‘Utterpants” (UK):

“Nine out of ten prostitutes are habitual coffee drinkers, seven out of ten women convicted of shop-lifting admitted to drinking coffee only hours before the offence, and almost all female car thieves drink coffee..”

And:

“Since the 1920s, coffee drinking has almost completely destroyed all decency and morality in the United States and Europe. During that time, violent crime, burglary, divorce and the inappropriate use of large vegetables by bored American women, have all increased to almost epidemic dimensions”

W never-touches-coffee-has-been-seen-in-produce-isles

We’ve already established that, for me, Making lists is more fun than tidying.  Today I discovered that making lists is more fun than replacing a wireless access point  (WAP) and router within a really simple home Network.  The goodness is that Tinkerbell (Laptop) is now securely, reliably, wirelessly, connected to the internet via NeverLand (home network). 

What did it take to get there?

• 1 trip to nerd heaven.
• 3 hours from opening the new WAP box to getting Tinkerbell online wirelessly.
• 2 phone calls to the Internet Service Provider.
• 2 phone calls to the WAP equipment provider.
• No beer or tears

To calm down after this unexpectedly lengthy an fur-rust-traiting experience I’ve added a picture for the voyeurs to scrutinise:

• Dead Microsoft WAP
• Boxed LinkSys WAP (802.11g,  and 802.11g PC card)
• Blue ethernet cable
• Bottle of beer
• Bowl of grapes
• Morrissey CD case
• Coldplay CD case
• Stuffed cat
• Will
• 4 half read books
• Drawing kit
• Denim hat
• Snakeskin tights
• Pliers
• Mouse
• Camera battery charger
• pile of unsorted mail
• sunlight on the wall

W

My ‘kick-ass’ sage Brennifer wrote:

“How can you not like broccoli? It’s LITTLE TREES! That FIT IN YOUR MOUTH! It’s TREELICIOUS!”no, No, NOThat’s just wrongBrocolli and Celery just ARE wrong.

Wendy will-not-shift-on-this-spiritual-point

Is it time for some editorial reform? This month even my adorable readers are politely REVOLTING:

Geek:  “How did you manage to write your doctoral thesis?”

Wendy: “it was referred for editorial re-writes based on my inconsistent use of apostrophe s“

EnglishTeacher:  “I d’ont mind spelling so much as the apostrophe’s in the wrong place´s. It drive’s me mad !!  Ill just help you with one thing if I may - apostrophe’s are not for plural’s.  Please correct thi’s paragraph by putting apostrophe’s in the right place’s and taking out the one’s which arent s’upposed to be there.

To check if I could actually apply the apostrophe s rules I tried this self-test. 

The results are UNPUBLISHABLE.   

Wendy persistently-creative-punctuator

According to rumour,  that’s what some boys kiss like 

Wendy slightly-scar(r)ed

To paraphrase Jesse a character from “The fast show“ (aka “Brilliant” in US):  

<BORING entry warning>

My home wireless connection has been getting progressively dodgy. 

Blinking lights all over the show.

• The PC card can find multiple networks nearby (wireless cards ok)… …interference?
• Plugging a cable directly from the DSL modem to Tinkerbell gives good connectivity speed (Modem ok).
• Cable plugged into the wireless router gave a connection strength so low that Tinkerbell couldn’t get an IP address.  Router/gateway and Wireless dodgy.

Naturally I tried switching everything off-on, in every possible order of switch-on-off-ability.  Patiently watched all the blinking* lights and tried connectivity after waiting for several minutes incase there was a refractory period.  Conclusion?  Looks like time to buy a new gateway, router and wireless access point.  What’s a good one to buy,  reliable, versataile, strong signal, easy to ‘configure’?  I don’t have a clue.  Sigh.

With Tinkerbell taking a dive in September and now this it looks like maintaining a home network requires the ‘user’ to develop all sorts of trouble-shooting skills.  Sigh.  Guess I’m becoming a geek despite myself!

Wendy can-plug-unplug-power-up-down-and-wait-for-connections-to-not-happen

*blinking

1: off-and-on; “the blinking signal light”

2: closing the eyes intermittently and rapidly; “he stood blinking in the bright sunlight”

3: (used of persons) informal intensifiers; “what a bally (or blinking) nuisance”; “a bloody fool”; “a crashing bore”; “you flaming idiot”

The night before Snewtea moved I dreamt about the move.  In the dream I’m

Driving through the backroads of Leicestershire.  I drive straight to SnewTea’s new home in Leicester city center.  His home is a stunning victorian townhouse near ‘The Charlotte‘  concert venue. This is wonderful.  I think I’ll move to Leicester too.  I’ll be able to walk to great gigs and  find my home and car easily because I know my way around.

• the commute from Leicester UK to NW USA is impractical.
• I got lost trying to find my way back from SnewTea’s actual new home.
• I miss local Leicestershire produced, fresh, red leicester and Stilton.   Dreamy cheeeeese!  Excerpt,  from this research where the sponsor has a major investment in ’spinning’ the results:

85% of females who ate Stilton had some of the most unusual dreams of the whole study. 65% of people eating Cheddar dreamt about celebrities, over 65% of participants eating Red Leicester revisited their schooldays, all female participants who ate British Brie had nice relaxing dreams whereas male participants had cryptic dreams, two thirds of all those who ate Lancashire had a dream about work and over half of Cheshire eaters had a dreamless sleep.

As reported the research is fundamentally flawed because we don’t know what these people dreamed about when they weren’t eating the specified cheese, or what other potential dream modifiers they were experiencing (e.g. alcohol, waking-events etc)…. Doh!  Nonetheless,  it is a fun little read.  That the UK has an official body called the “Cheese Board’ caused rampant, cat-scaring, guffawing in the Wendy House.

I will start investigating the US-cheese-dream relationship for one gal, unsponsored, uncontrolled, and un(counter)balanced, on high doses of tea….  

What the HECK? 

It is CHEEESE!

Wendy on-dreamtastic-week

This Autumn I’ve been lucky enough to join the moving parties for a Bohemian writer then, today, SnewTea. At one point today there was a convoy of 6 cars behind a moving van. Fun-fun-fun. Pump the music up and sing-out LOUD until even the cars are literally rocking!

The best thing about SnewTea’s new house is that the garden has a

REAL Wendy House

Wendy wants-a-sleep-over-party-NOW!

I typed

Mail instead of Main

within an email

to a male

I chuckled to myself.  This possibly isn’t amusing for you unless you are actually on Planet-Wendy* with me.   No map available to Planet-Wendy.

”cars ‘eee ain’ begit’n maw carn-tex’  

Regional accent outbreak.  It means ‘context UNPUBLISHABLE’.

*photograph of Planet-Wendy painting** attached.

** the painting*** actually IS hung on the wall in my garage. 

***I’m open to painting purchase offers,  make me a bid…  ….I promise not to cry… 

Wendy still-nesting-footnotes

Etymology: Mrs. Malaprop, character noted for her misuse of words in R. B. Sheridan’s comedy The Rivals (1775)***
1 : the usually unintentionally humorous misuse or distortion of a word or phrase; especially : the use of a word sounding somewhat like the one intended but ludicrously wrong in the context.

This was a high school English literature class text for me.  The whole class read it out loud taking turns to play respective roles.  Fun!

 

This is a phrase used by a UK gal to express her feelings when she discovered where I’m living and working now.

W out-of-touch-with-topical-UK-expressions-of-’something’

• giving birth (0)
• getting married (0)
• sprouting a pair of home-grown boobs (1)
• living 5+years with toy-boy (2)
• falling in luuuuurrrrrffffff (3)
• breaking-bone falls (4)
• moving cities (4)
• moving jobs (5)
• criminally insensitive (700+)* 

<Warning: useless personal trivia blog-entry>

In last night’s dream:

i painted a fabulous picture and hung it on the wall in my garage

At this point I was unable to distinguish between dream-state and wake-state.  The fabulousness of the picture was a clue to dream-state I completely missed.   Then:

i went upstairs from the garage to gather friends to give me constructive feedback on my picture. 

This is when I realised it was a dream because:

my home was full of beautiful people having a party. 

Nice,  but not realistic that I’d be in the garage painting while there was a party going on upstairs.  I’m not a complete Sociophobe.  Now I know I’m in a dream things could really start to swing pleasant ways for me: 

I herded a couple of trusted friends to the garage which had unexpectedly morphed into a flea market. We pushed our way through the crowds to where I’d originally hung my painting.   

It had been sold!  I couldnt show it to my friends as promised.

Lucidly I tried to find out

who to? how recently? could I get a photograph of it? an address of the purchaser?….. 

NO joy

I cried

Non-lucid behaviour.  It was a beautiful picture,  I wanted to keep it.  The picture had gone and the dream wasn’t letting me find it using typical wake-state strategies.  Lucidity didn’t help me out on this one.  Next time I’ll try something more radical and less ‘realistic’  like

• simply go somewhere-else and just ‘find’ it there.  
• forget about it…  …theres fun to be had!

Wendy Woke-up

why, Why, WHY?

I’m not complaining. They’re very easy to please… …dare I say - ‘like me’?

Wendy Wondering-Why

<BORING entry warning>

I want a usable blog,  and I want it,  NOW!  Hah,  I’m still on planet fairy-tale,  but I’m coming down to earth FAST.

MoveableType

A quick read of the ‘MoveableType’ instructions revealed that they are very complex and very clearly written.  To set-up a blog I need a ‘Web Server’.  MoveableType let me know that broadband Internet Service Provider’s (ISP) normally include Web Server facilities in the subscription.  Yes Yes Yes!  Other requirements included something about being able install software on the Web Server,  something to do with ‘Perle’.

WebServer

My ISP provide 20MB of web storage and a web-page (not blog) development UI.  They recommended that I purchase a File Transfer Protocol (FTP) package to support moving files between my computer and the Web server.  They provided one specific recommendation that I would have to purchase.  Hmmmmm    No mention of the ability to install software (MoveableType,  Perle).

Are you bored yet?

Shheesh, I was!

Everything I checked out raised more questions.  Are there free FTP thingys, how do I choose between FTP thingys, etc . All potential thingys that would make setting-up a ‘good’ blog painful and drawn-out.  What are the pro’s and cons of using web-server service that is NOT my ISP?  I dont want to learn about how to set-up a useable (by me and YOU) blog. 

 I just want it DONE.

Next step - look into Blog creation and delivery services,  how much to pay for someone who already has this knowledge and skills to do the whole thing for me,  then tell me the advantages and disadvantages of different decisions.  YEA!

Guess what I’m doing tonight? 

Drinking Tea and beer

Hooray!

Wendy avoiding-learning-techy-skills-that-wont-get-re-use

“Good night and Good luck” is an outstanding film.  It draws on events in March and April 1954,  the CBS TV News business,  the power of the media to influence, Senator McCarthy, the rights of the individual within the US political system, the use of fear as a manipulative tool,  and the central heroic character of Edward R Murrow.   

The film is excellent on multiple levels.  For example:

• Storyline,  script, direction.  The writer (director and co-star), Clooney, makes the film ‘feel’ topical without wasting time detailing analogies for the audience.  Carefully placed humour that moderates without breaking the tense moments,  for example,  early TV advertisements,  an interview with Liberace.
• Acting: while I recognised the faces of key actors their previous ‘roles’ weren’t spontaneously interrupting the experience and setting my expectations for their character ‘type’.  They were so convincing. 
• Sound.  Poweful use of ’silence’ and ’soft’ sounds like clearly being able to hear the burning pattern of a cigarette in a tense moment as the smoker inhaled.   ….ssssSSSZZZZZZZSSSsssss……
• Camera work.  Visual construction of scenes.  Very stylistic and contributing rather than distracting from the storyline. 

Wendy allegedly-immoral-alien

Late evening downtown with PartAnimal.  We serendipitously encountered a Fridge.    I could see the fascinating,  shiny, produce,  through the dangerous floor-to-ceiling glass wall.

Wendy: ”Can we go in there and investigate the produce?”

PartAnimal: “That’s my ex-wife’s mother”

Wendy:  <WOW!  He’s surprisingly more bizarre than me.  This could be way toooooooo much fun for one evening.  Especially since my last Tea-intake was over 4hrs ago.  Must get a beer….>

General bizarreness was confirmed by PartAnimal’s Brithday present choice:

According to rumour,  that’s what some boys kiss like 

Wendy safely-brewing-Tea

To who?

To ME!

Thanks a whole BIG BUNCH (of blooms) Tigerteeth.

When they float shares in Tigerteeth on the open market I’m INVEST-TING.  That boy knows how to treat an UnBirthday gal.  Huge hugs across the sea

W sweet-smelling-home 

In the dream lucidity hit me when I realised that:

I was sat in the bleechers of an Amercan Football game with a group of friends in the DAMN cold, with cloudy skys and poor view of the game.

What?!  Outrageous,  why on earth would I want to be outside in the cold unable to see the boys on the field?  Lets get this dream on track! 

I persuaded my friends to go in search of a warm drink (probably Tea) as we moved through the crowd there was a speedy, spectacular sunset,  the temperature rose,  the wind stopped,  the crowd stood up and started dancing and drinking beer. 

The best bit was that the changes took on their own momentum.   Unexpectedly: 

the football team turned up on a stage right in front of us.  They weren’t a football team at all.  Close up I could see they were actually ‘Martin Stephenson and the Daintee’s” all wearing Zorro outfits and singing “Candle in the middle”

OUTSTANDING Result!  The song sent me back to relaxed deep sleep

W sleep-singing

When pronounced with my regional accent 7 sounds like:

SE’vUUUUURRRRRRRn

The River Severn is Britains longest river and local to my formative youth.  It has the 2nd highest tidal rise and fall in the world and helps constrain splushy fraternization between the English and Welsh.   The name Severn is published all-over-the-house,  in folklore stories, on road signs,  businesses,  bridges ”anna loik‘  (regional pronunciation).  The once local ‘Severn Trent’ water authority was purchased by an US company during the Thatcherite sell-offs of British publicly owned resources.  It now has research sites on the Columbia River in Tri-Cities, WA.

When pronounced with my regional accent Severn sounds like:

SE’vUUUUURRRRRRRn

This marvellous river is responsible for many numerical spelling errors that I loyally persist to this day.  

7 = Severn

On the positive side:

• None of my Cheques have bounced…    ….yet.   
• To help local USians understand me I can ‘awmows tawk praahpaaaah’    

Wendy Spelling-pronunciation-atrocity-perpetrator