A Month Is Not That Long

Well, it might not seem that long, but I really haven't felt like blogging.  Now I have to howl at the moon because I have lost a month's worth of pictures when I lost my camera on Saturday.  Thank God I had the rest of them in my hold-it-in-your-hands foto album.  As you know, I haven't mastered the art of computerizing my fotos so when I lost my camera it was bye-bye memory stick.

The up side is that I did have a wonderful weekend.  GTG came up on Friday night and he and I did a FUN happy hour at Don Cuco's in Moorpark.  On Sat. WLT, GTG and I worked like slaves in the yard...have to have it ready for all the company we are having this summer!!  Now why can't I just do it because I love to see all the color around me???

Late Sat. evening GTG and I drove the entire final stage of the Amgen Tour of California which is now the most elite bicycle race in America.  I was amazed to see parts of the back roads that I had never been on before.  Because GTG used to ride, I had seen a lot of it....nervous mother who would drive over the mountain passes to make sure that he was ok on that ride to and from Bev. Hills to T.O.  It really is just a suicide run on parts of the passes.  There were a couple places that I just had to stop and take pictures and I guess at the last foto op... a ranch where they had a zebra AND a camel grazing on the property...I must have dropped the camera while I was getting back in the car.

I didn't even realize it was gone until the next day when we went to The Oaks Mall for the start of the race.  We found spots right exactly on the starting line and I was soooo excited about what fotos I would get.  Duh...no camera.  We still had a memorable day and enjoyed every minute of it.  However...when I came home and still couldn't find my camera in the car or anywhere in the house, that was a different matter.

GTG was such a good sport that he drove me to the leg of the race where Decker Canyon turns into Westlake Blvd. so that after the race we could drive up to the spot and look for my camera.  That is when we learned from the police that the road would be closed until 6:00 AM on Mon. ... and that every bicyclist and hiker in half the country had hiked or ridden up before 6:00 AM Sun.  They said that there wasn't a spare inch of roadside to stand on.

Sooo...now I've learned my lesson and I will get a new camera this weekend and learn how to use it perfectly AND learn how to do every computer trick there is.  Well...maybe not everything but I am going to sign up for a class and I'm really going to try not to be such a schlump.  I PROMISE.

Boring

I have to apologize for this boring post.  I can't even believe that I am doing a post with no pictures.  Today was a very busy day for me.  Kim came this morning and we were going to work on my art project for Art From Scrap, but I had gotten the wrong kind of styrafoam ball and so we had to go shopping...oh darn.  We ended up at Michael's in Westlake Village but they didn't have what we needed so we went to lunch at Tika Chicken instead.  What a treat !!!   We hadn't been there in so long that they didn't even recognize us.  Both of us licked our plates.  Then Kim went home and I went to Mission Hills to see my Mom's best friend Frankie who is in the hospital again.  My heart breaks for her.  After an hour with her I went to pick up GTG in Bev. Hills and then we went to an Irish Pub for dinner.  Too much drinking and eating but really good company.  We ended up at a table of about eight people who were regulars at the Crown & Anchor in T.O.  One of the people we were with was a band member from Warrant and his wife who was really funny.  The other couple were an old time T.O. family...he makes hot sauce that is so hot you could die from it.  We know that because he had a caddy of four different sauces that he put on the table for us to try.  Fun people and we are invited back any Fri. night for the Weekly Meeting.

Home Again

This is for you Brigitte !!!   Just to show zou (oops...my fingers are still on the German keyboard) that I'm able to access my blog from home.  Aren't you proud of me???  Now I just have to figure out how to do the fotos and I'll be ready to go!!!

Auf Wiedersehen Munich

This is the worst day of the visit...saying good bye to the family.  I'm still waiting for the Star Trek transporter to become a reality so I can just pop in and out of the places I want to be.  It totally pisses me off that they could do that on TV all those years ago and we haven't figured it out in real life

Yesterday Brigitte had to go back to teaching and the boys had to go back to school so I took off on my own and went to town.  I walked for four hours straight just looking at everything and breathing in the ambiance of the city I have loved for forty years.  Here are some of my favorite places.
This is the hotel at the Viktualien Market.  I could stay here forever and just walk over the the market and eat Curry Wurst and drink beer until I fell off my chair.

 This is the passage way to the Hofbrau House.   If you look with your imagination you can see Joey and Dee Dee running like crazy to catch the tram to Perlacher Forrest.

 Here is the wall of clear beer steins at the Hofbrau House.  They will be gone in minutes as the waitresses fill them up and deliver them to the tables and then like magic, more clean ones will appear out of nowhere.

And of course...I couldn't leave with out a trip or two to my favorite candy shops.  The first on is a favorite because of the light fixture...modern lights hung in a row with crystals hung abound them.

But this candy store I love not only because it is a work of art in itself, but each piece of candy is like a small treasure.  They are beautiful!!!!  And the bad news...they are so very delicious.  One of the reasons that  I will have to have a seat belt extender for the flight home.

Now comes the most difficult test of my new blogging experience...will I be able to find a  way to do this once I am on my own and don't have Brigitte to come running every time a come up against a problem that I don't know how to solve.  Hopefully I will be motivated enough to find my path so I won't be blogless until she arrives in Los Angeles in August.

Artist Market in Herrsching at Ammersee

Of course Brigitte loves Art Fairs as much as I do so off we went to find this beautiful spot outside of Munich.  A wrong turn on the autobahn put us on side roads which was like magic for me as I was riding through parts of Bavaria that made me travel back in time to 1969 when the outskirts of Munich also had the Bavarian look of these small towns.  Now the suberbs of Munich are like every big city..you have to go further and further away to see what life was like in the past.

Of course, at the Art Fair, I was most impressed by the things that we do not have in our everyday life.  This is the brush maker.  I loved him and all of the brushes he had made.  They were true pieces of art..the original meaning of being an artisan.
The Brush Maker

And what a wonderful idea...heart shaped waffles on a stick.  You buy the waffle then decide what you want on it...chocolate, strawberries, whipped cream...nuts.  I didn't have one because I had bigger and better plans for my daily calorie allotment.
The Waffle House

Oh yes...and the man with the puppet band.  I think the music was a recording but each puppet played an instrument and of course the tunes were all Ompa Ompa.
The Puppet Band

And of course...a rest time for coffe and whipped cream cake.

This was a great day for the girls to share their artists' sensibilities.

Nymphenburger Palace

Oh boy...our first outing.  To the Palace and park estate of Mad King Ludwig.  The palace was for the family but all throughout the park, which is enormous, the bad boy built little estate type houses for his mistresses.  I told Brigitte that I wanted to live in the mistress house furthest away from the palace so that he would be too tired to make it out to my place very often.  What a life that must have been!!!  I'm sure he would have chopped off my head withing two weeks.
The Palace

I wonder if any of his women would be allowed to walk all around the grounds and enjoy a little sun and fresh air or if they could meet together for a few moments and talk to each other and discuss what a lunatic this guy was.  I'm pretty sure they didn't have that much freedom.

The mistresses on the bridge

Greetings from Gronsdorf

Mosaic production has had to ramp down in order for the creative team to participate in the Soggy Man festival in Gronsdorf, Germany.  Visit our tent next to the Haar/Munich city limits.  If you get lost, just ask for Sepp.