Monday Misc for Oct 26, 2015

I try not to stop and think about how close to the end of the year today is... The time is just flying by! It will soon be time to do my 2016 Bucket List and yes, I am already thinking about it. I usually do that on or about Jan 1st of each year. I look at what is still open on my list and may delete some things or add new things and then prioritize the list. Larry and I did this for  several years and I have continued it. I'm realizing that based on how many birthdays I have already had, I may not get everything done that I used to say "I'd like to do that someday" so I have to decide what is really important for me to do/see and focus on those tings.

Weather: I am loving these cool days like today and hopefully the 80 degree days we had last week are gone until next spring. My sweaters are screaming to get out of the drawers! I haven't turned the heat on yet in the house and this morning it was 67 degrees when I got up. I keep seeing squirrels go by the office window with acorns in their mouth.

Royals: Yes, I am thrilled that they are going to the World Series but I will be so glad when the next 7 days are over. It seems to me that baseball has been going on since last Christmas!  I never knew before that they played so many games in a season. I can't believe that I stayed up till midnight last Friday night watching the game knowing I had to get up early the next morning for a genealogy seminar.

On a positive side, it is fun to be in a town where people are so fanatical about their sports teams even if I do get tired of hearing it all the time. Above is the decorations on a lion statue along Ward Parkway last week. Below is a horse blanket on the bull outside of Jack Stack BBQ last Saturday night.

Working on my next trip: I know - I just got home from a trip..... However, I think I mentioned that I am going to see if being a "snowbird" is for me this year. I will leave here in early December driving to Tucson for a couple of weeks and then onto the San Diego/LA area before heading back east via the Grand Canyon, Santa Fe and not sure what else. I spend commercial breaks while watching TV going through AAA Tour Books and looking at maps or Google things to see/do in various towns. I plan to be back home by mid January.  My goal is not really to get out of here because of the cold weather since I really don't mind the cold weather. My reason is that December and the holidays are really hard for me since Larry died on Dec 17th and then there was everything that went with that which added to my "Christmas not being a big thing for me" attitude that I have had most of my life.  I have found that if you area in places like Arizona, Calif, etc where so many people are from other places and don't have a big family there, the major holidays are more "just another day". That was certainly true last year at Thanksgiving when Jane and I were in San Diego. We'll see how it goes this year....

Odds and Ends for Oct 21st

Reilly: Reilly was one of the colts we saw on our tour of Warm Springs Ranch last month. He was born August 27th so was about 3 weeks old in the picture below.

The specs on him is sawdust because he had been laying down and just got up. 

Yesterday, the Ranch put this picture of Reilly and his mother on their Facebook page noting that he is now out in the pasture and growing. By the way, the mother's name is Judy.... What a handsome little guy!

Speaking of Facebook: Facebook has started sending "Memories" to it's members. It is a post that was posted that specific day of the month in the past.  I have mixed feeling about receiving these.... Some are o.k. but some are sad... For instance, I got one a couple of days ago from exactly 4 years ago when Larry and I were in Prescott, AZ trying to decide if that is where we wanted to move to or not. Some have been pictures of Morris and his antics. I don't know....

Book Signing: I have been to several book signings in Tucson where you just showed up at the listed location and time, listened to the author and the author would sign a book for you.  Well what a surprise I got here!  I knew that Ree Drummond, The Pioneer Woman, has written a new cookbook and would be doing a book tour. She announced her tour schedule on October 12th via Facebook. One of the stops was Kansas City so I asked Vivian if she wanted to go. On the 15th, I was in the vicinity of the book store that is sponsoring the book signing so stopped in to get more information.  Well....I found out that I needed to buy the book ahead of time and that included a ticket.  The signing would be at the Unity Chapel, down on the Plaza, where they do most of their big author signings. My tickets were #917 & #918 out of a possible 1200 which is all it will hold. After her talk, they call people up in groups to get their books signed which will mean we will have to wait a long time to get ours signed which we are not going to do - we just want to see and hear her. Today I went in to get my book and tickets and found out that they sold the last of the tickets yesterday.  I asked when we should get there and was informed that people will probably be lining up by 4 p.m. for the 7 p.m. start time. As the clerk said, "She is really popular around here." Oh well.......

Thomas Hart Benton

Yesterday I went to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art to see their temporary exhibit titled Thomas Hart Benton and Hollywood. The show opened last week.  I went at 10 a.m. when they opened and there was only 3-4 people in the exhibit so I could really enjoy it.  Before yesterday, the only thing I knew about Benton was that he painted the large mural in the Truman library. Yesterday I found out that early in his career he painted movie sets. He had a strong connection to Hollywood and painted the illustrations for several posters promoting movies. He also did some graphics, including the cover, for the book The Grapes of Wrath by Steinbeck. Benton was born in Neosha, MO and lived most of his life in Kansas City where his studio was. His home at 3444 Belleview in KC is now a historic site with his studio the way it was the day he died in 1975. Before he painted on a canvas, Benton drew the scene on a grid paper, then made a dioramic clay model of the painting, then painted the model so he could play with colors and light before starting to paint the picture on canvas. If it was a really large mural he was painting then he might do several clay models of different parts of the mural. The museum isn't allowing pictures to be taken of the exhibit so I got these from the advertisement brochure for the exhibit.

This is Benton's mural in the Truman Library that I took when I was there in 2013. . He spent many hours with Harry Truman discussing what should be depicted in the mural. 

Brochure for the exhibit.  The painting is a self-portrait of Benton and Rita, his wife, set against a Hollywood backdrop. 

Painting Benton created for a poster promoting a movie by Burt Lancaster. 

A different type of subject for Benton. 

Benton  walked over to his studio from his home next door to sign a 6' x 10' mural that he had just completed and died suddenly in the studio.  The mural had been commissioned by the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville and now hangs there. His wife died 6 weeks later. 

Back to Monday Misc.....

As you may have noticed, I'm back to doing the blog about once a week.  I will do it more often if there is anything to write about or share.....

Yesterday was another glorious fall day so I headed down to the Plaza to get some pictures in the morning. I like going down there on a Sunday morning because it isn't as busy and parking is easy to find.

 Last year the water was a pale blue when I got to the Plaza to see it.  However, they must have just added dye because it was bright blue yesterday. 

The median on 47th Street through the Plaza is lined with Royals flags. This town does love their Royals!

 Both of the concrete horses in front of PF Changs had pick ribbons for Breast Cancer Awareness. Very pretty. 

 Brush Creek is just so pretty on a clear day like it was yesterday!  I keep trying to find out how it goes from a trickle on one side of a bridge and then is this canal on the other side of the bridge.  The same thing happens in reverse a couple of miles downstream. 

 Then it was on to Kauffman Gardens which is one of my favorite places in Kansas City.  I have now seen the Gardens in all 4 seasonal plantings and I think I like this one the best. These are all mums and they were in full bloom plus a lot of other flowers around the gardens were in bloom. 

 And of course, I had to go into the conservatory and say "hello" to Crazy - the Gardens cat.  I don't think he has lost any weight since I saw him a few months ago.  There were 2 chairs next to him where people were setting there reading the Sunday paper. I got right in his face with my cell phone and he never moved.

 The dahlias were just magnificent!  This one was my favorite.  It was about the size of an 8-9" plate.

Monarch Butterflies were all over the place.  This one was nice enough to pose for me. 

By then, I had worked up an appetite so went to Bill and Vida's for a Sunday dinner of her pot roast.  She makes the best pot roast I have ever had.....

I'm back....

The recent trip is but a fond memory right now and I will soon begin working on the travel book for the trip which will bring it all back to the front of my memory and I can relive it again.   But in the meantime, I needed to catch up on rest, laundry, commitments made before I left, 135 emails and did I say rest? I looked at emails while on the trip and deleted many of them but I needed to really read and/or respond to the 135.

One cup of energy: I took many seminars and classes during my 20+ years of management on prioritizing, goal setting, etc. Many of them said that pretend you only have 1 cup of energy that must last for the full day so decide how you are going use it by prioritizing what you spend the cup of energy on.  Well that was all fine and dandy before I had so many birthdays... Now I think my daily cup of energy is down to about 3/4 of a cup per day. I had to admit I just can't do as much per day as I used to. Bummer!  But.....it's better than the alternative!

Amazon: Ordering from Amazon is becoming my favorite thing to do.  Where else can you order 2 bottles of room odor neutralizer, a current best seller book, a hair care gel that has been discontinued so no longer in the stores and a CD of Cajun music on a Friday afternoon and get it all delivered on Monday? Plus it is usually cheaper than what I can get it for in the store.  The CD isn't even available in a store. I am about ready to agree that you can get anything through Amazon!

Overland Park Arboretum: It was chilly this morning, about 45 degrees, but I put on my turtleneck sweater and a fleece vest before heading out to the Arboretum for the morning walk. It was beautiful out there - cool, blue skies with a feel of pending fall in the air. Besides walking where I usually do, this time I took off on some of the back trails through the woods. The only sounds I could hear were birds, wind in the leaves, squirrels rustling leaves, etc. It was also a trial test for the camera on my new phone which passed with flying colors. Here are some of the pics from this morning.

A life-sized bronze statue of a painter who is looking at the Monet Garden. 

Waterfall near the Water Garden. 

Collage of blooms left over from summer and a wooden bridge on the trail back in the woods.