Hodgepodge 61/365 - Objects

When I can't think of anything to write about here, I scan my Flickr albums. I have several that are so random I don't even remember why I made them in the first place. Such as one called "Objet du jour." It has eleven entries. Here they are, in most cases complete with the Flickr captions. (The dates suggest that these were all included in my fourth—and last—photo-a-day project, Project 365. I've been that crazy for years, it seems.)

Scoop
1/9/13. Our garage is still full of boxes—we are taking our time moving in. (Who needs all that stuff?) But I'm trying to tackle at least a box a day. Yesterday I encountered a box with some of the things I brought from my mother's house, including some tools and a few kitchen utensils. This is the ice cream scoop I grew up with. I am very fond of it, and will probably (sigh) keep it. I mean—just look at it! It's beautiful in a fabulously vintage way. [Four years on, the garage is still full of boxes. Project for 2017! For realz!]

Rubber band ball
12/2/13. My husband has been working on this rubber band ball since at least 2007 or '06. I started documenting it in 2008, and it was already 5 inches in circumference then. In 2010 it weighed 2.4 pounds. Today it proudly clocks in at 3.0 pounds and 18 inches in circumference. It's grown! It's also been featured in every one of my Project 365s, which speaks either to a lack of inspiration or to tradition. [I have not seen the rubber band ball lately. I must ask about it.]

Mouse in bondage
11/21/13. I found this travelbug in a soggy geocache in Hawaii. Today he went through the laundry, and now, except for the rust stains (Polynesian tattoos?), he is white and fluffy again. I took his portrait in part because our kitty has gone missing; so this is a symbolic lure to coax her home. (The "bondage" is the chain holding the travelbug tag, which is wrapped securely around this little guy.) [I moved this bug along a long time ago, but it's amusing to be reminded of it. The kitty, sadly, stayed missing . . .]

Patriotic darts
10/16/13. It's just how they came; if I'd had a choice, flags (especially, at the moment, the U.S. flag) would not have been it. I bought the dartboard as a decision-making tool. I find that I have too many interests, so sometimes I get stuck—making NO decision rather than (oh the horror) making the "wrong" one. Now I'll let random chance (since I'm not much of a dart thrower) decide for me! I look at it as a FUN way to get certain things accomplished. We'll see how it goes! [I do not remember what was going on in October 2013 that made me feel unpatriotic. Can't have been much compared to today's black feeling. As for the dartboard—it was a silly idea that remains in the garage. I'm still no better at getting unstuck, but maybe I'm learning to accept it.]

Piggy
7/12/13. Nothing jumped out at me to take a picture of today—except this little pig. He seemed quite eager to have his portrait done. How could I not oblige? [This little piggy, whose nose lit up with white lights, has moved on in life.]

Golf counter
[Intended for use as a behavior modifier, but I've lost track of its whereabouts.]

Babar Rex
7/24/13. I have a moribund project called "Où est Babar?" He's been giving a look lately, like, "When do I get to go out and hide in plain sight again?" So, to kick off "Où est Babar, partie deux," here is a formal portrait of M. le Roi. ["Babar, partie deux" did not go anywhere. I keep thinking I'll pick up this project again. It's very fun, in fact. Especially the bad French titles!]

Kuksa
8/7/13. Not a photography day today, so here's a "precious item" from our inventory. It's called a kuksa in Finnish, kåsa in Swedish, and guksi in Saami, the language of the herders of the far north of Scandinavia. It's hand carved from birch burl, and often decorated with reindeer antler (as is this one). My brother-in-law married a Norwegian woman—they live in Oslo—and a few years ago they took a trip to the Saami lands. There, they bought us two of these beautiful mugs, which are traditionally used for anything liquid. A sort of Lappish Sierra cup, but much, much more beautiful. When we were in Norway last year, we got a couple of cheap machine-made ones on an outing to a sea cave. The genuine ones are too beautiful to use, but I did take one of the cheap ones this weekend on my wilderness rangering trip. It worked just fine! [The one shown here and its partner are still too beautiful to use. They live on a shelf in the kitchen.]

Nikki & Ewald
8/21/13. This evening a bunch of geocachers got together for pizza. They do this every so often, very randomly. A little icon shows up on the geocaching.com map of the area indicating an "event." I'd actually never noticed such an icon before, but I did notice on a log recently someone asking if someone else was going to be at this event. So I went looking—and found it. Now, geocaching is a funny thing. It's a pretty solitary sport. You tend not to do it in groups. (Well, some do, but they're a little odd.) But yet, you keep running into people—or into their "geonames," anyway, pretty much every time you log in at a local cache. So I was delighted this evening to be able to put faces to such names as coralteach, golfer01, C Major & C Minor, trailreader, Daisy831, and rainbow guyz (who in fact was wearing a t-shirt bearing a rainbow travelbug—a geo-gamepiece, so to speak—and so I "recognized" him right away). Although the sport is solitary, friendships are made. And in fact, this evening we were celebrating the recent wedding of a couple who met... geocaching! Pengvin and Samm99—aka Ewald and Nikki—are also, as it turns out, neighbors of mine. Anyway, coralteach (Natalie), who organized this wingding, also treated us to a geocaching bingo game (find someone with more than 2,000 caches logged; find someone who's solved a Mimring puzzle; find someone who's climbed a tree to log a cache; find someone who went geocaching on their honeymoon; etc.) and scattered treats on the table. Including little bags of pink and white M&Ms with the happy couple's faces on them. What a nice group of folks. [Yes, I have since then gone to other similar events, and even gone geocaching with some of the people I mentioned above. It's a funny and fun little community.]

Escape
9/19/13. The book is called Escape—about a woman who did manage to escape the FLDS, the "fundamentalist" Mormon sect that practices polygamy, together with her eight children. Though the story's not quite done, so whether she gets to keep them all remains to be seen. The book, which is plainly written, is horrifying—and riveting. Very hard to put down. [This is the sort of book that makes me very glad I was born into the family I was born into.]

Heart
[As seen right here just the other day, together with the rest of my collection.]