A little yellow beauty

About a month ago we had a few birds in our backyard that we had never seen before.  They were so beautiful and, we thought, unusual for Utah.  My son took a picture of one in the pine tree next to our backyard.  I just thought I'd post it on my blog and wondered if anyone knows what it is.  I could research it but no time right now.  I also asked my author friend, Bob Tarte (he wrote the wonderful book entitled "Enslaved by Ducks") if he knows.  Now I'm waiting to hear back. 

What happened to me?!?

The Pie that Chris and Charlie made.  Chris put a skull and crossbones on it because he bet Charlie that I would say he was an "idiot" for doing it.  They both lost.  I just looked at it and said, "Hmmm.  Well, this looks interesting.  Skull and cross bones, huh?  It will still taste good."  And it did.  Best part:  I didn't have to make it.

Well, this has been the most boring blog, almost, ever, lately.  I have just been glued to my new job-3 weeks of training and now into the job itself.  I'm thinking part time is looking awfully good right now.

So, we did go to Las Vegas (no pics-Charlie took the camera to San Diego).  That was so wonderful.  Lots of swimming and looking at the new hotels.  I've gotta tell you that the Aria wins our vote as the coolest and most beautiful one that we saw.  We wanted to look at the Vdara but ran out of time.  The Aria is all contemporary, which I don't normally like much but this was soooooo cool.  Waterfalls that didn't look real.  I just can't fully describe it.  You've just got to see it for yourselves. 

I got terribly sunburned because of the Doxycyline I've been taking for my ocular rosasea.  I just couldn't figure it out because I had put tons of sun block on and constantly applied it.  It was splotchy like a rash.  When we left the hotel to go out on the Strip and look at more hotels the sun just lighting on my skin for even a minute felt like it hit the frying pan.  I had to run from shady spot to shady spot.  That's not easy in Las Vegas.  I wondered what in the world could be the matter and then I remembered the dr. saying I would be photo sensitive.  I took Tetracycline for years and never had this happen and it was supposed to be like the other med.  The dr. should have told me he wasn't kidding.  But then he was such a bland bedside manner dr.  Anyway, that wasn't a fun part of the trip but we still went all over the place.

I just had to show you all my gorgeous hollyhocks.  They are a new breed for me and the most beautiful I've ever seen.  The plants are gigantic.  Love em love em.

That's all for now.  I'm just going to have a very relaxing day, I hope.  Fair warning for the future to all my friends-now that I talk on the phone all day for my work I'm going to be a dud for having long visits that way.  I mean, after 8 hours of that it is so tedious to come home and get on it again.  In person and short phone calls for the most part will be the best for me.

Guernica - What has always stuck in my mind about Picasso

 

Okay.  There is a work of art by Picasso that I just always think about.  It's called "Guernica". It's a painting about the bombing of the city of that name in Spanish Basque country in 1937 by the German and Italian forces.   It was ordered by the Spanish Nationalist forces during the Spanish civil war and led by General Francisco Franco.  The little village was kind of like a "testing site" for German bombs.  A precursor to the Blitzkrieg of Germany.   In other words-it was bombed to smithereens.  Picasso was commissioned for a large mural in the Spanish exhibit of the 1937 World Fair in Paris.  It struck a cord in the world of the horrors of what a human can do to another human being.  It's such a graphic representation.  While it's not what I'd like on my wall-it really does fulfill an artistic mission to try to better this world.  I have never been able to get it out of my consciousness.  Now it can be stuck in yours.

It must have inspired me in some way when I did this small drawing a few days before 9/11. You can read about it in my post earlier on (I think I mentioned it twice before this).  You all might think that I copied Picasso but I really wasn't even thinking of him when I did this.  It was truly an inspiration from my feelings over the horrors in Ireland-the little children that had to be guarded on their way to school.  Then, like I said, 9/11 happened I think 3 days after I did this.