52Frames Modes of Transportation Weekly Photo Challenge

The 52Frames photo challenge subject this week was “modes of transportation.” The little flying carpet mobile that I gave to my husband almost fifty years ago immediately came to mind. It started off with three individual photos of the carpet riders, a photo of the sunset from our balcony, and a photo of a photo that I took in Isfahan of Naghsh-e Jahan Square fifteen years ago. The finished product is a composite image. The sunset image was flipped, the Isfahan photo was cleaned up to eliminate the cars and light poles and also made transparent so that the orange sunset shined through to the magic carpets that overlooked the beautiful city below. I really liked the overall vibe. We were lucky to visit Isfahan twice - once with my husband’s family 28 years ago and then again with some of our American friends who made the trip with us to Iran fifteen years ago. I don’t have any idea what my fellow framers will think about my image. I so much enjoyed piecing it all together. 

Happy Birthday Balloons

I can’t remember the last time we blew up balloons. So when our neighbor asked us to come over to celebrate her husband’s 88th birthday we agreed. She mentioned she needed to get some balloons. Then I remembered we had a package of balloons that we got for a medical reason - believe it or not. Only one was used, so there were plenty left over. I told her we would be happy to bring some with us to help with the celebration. So this morning my husband and I made sure we picked out every color and started to blow the balloons up. Whew! But it was even more difficult to tie each one - I even broke a fingernail. I wish I had watched a video on how best to tie the bunch of balloons together. We were having quite a time getting them all hooked together using a long piece of string. Apparently you should make bunches of two or three and then twist them all together. If I had to do it again I would tie a string to each one and then pull all of the strings together. We were glad we could help celebrate someone having an 88th birthday. That - and blowing up and tying the balloons together - is quite an accomplishment! 

Impressionism at the Paris 1874 Exhibit at the National Gallery of Art

Last week we went in to town for a morning walk. We stopped in at the National Gallery of Art to see the Paris 1874 Impressionist Moment Exhibit. Since the exhibit has just opened there was a twenty minute wait to get in to the gallery. And once in the gallery it was much too crowded for my taste! I am by no means an Art connoisseur - in fact I never really cared to visit art museums. Now we enjoy walking through the building and visiting both the old and new exhibits. And there is always plenty of opportunity to take photos for my weekly challenge. We didn’t spend a lot of time observing each painting because we knew we would probably visit again. It was difficult to get a close up view anyway because of the crowds. But I was happy to see several of the paintings that have been stuck in my head since first seeing them many years ago on greeting cards and posters. I always liked the Impressionism vibe - the colors and the subjects. We even visited Monet’s haunts when we were with our friends who live in France over twenty years ago. So this is a compilation of some of the art we saw. 

Paris 1874 at the National Gallery of Art

We visit the National Gallery of Art all of the time. When we lived on Capitol Hill we would oftentimes have lunch after a morning walk. Now when we drive in to town we like to visit any new exhibit, but it’s also a great place to get out of the extreme heat and cold. Last week we stopped I. To see the Paris 1874 exhibit. It was all about Impressionism and Monet and others. Since the exhibit just opened and had a lot of press, there was a twenty minute wait time. This exhibit was next to the regular gallery of Monets, and we could see the line coming down the hallway from the lovely courtyard. There were a lot of staff and a lot of people. It was like being at Disneyworld or any other place where the crowd is in single file winding its way to the entrance. There was a film playing that showed the streets of Paris in the old days and an explanation of the art when it was first exhibited in 1874. I am no art historian but I’ve always like Monet and Impressionism. The colors are dreamy and pleasing to the eye. When we finally got in it was much too busy for my taste. At some points the rooms were so full of people all I wanted to do was pass right through them. Luckily we will have ample opportunity to visit again. And we did see the paintings that we wanted to see. It was an “experience.”

Trying Peter Chang Again

Since my husband can no longer eat spicy food or tomatoes or coffee or wine or a lot of everything else he loves, we thought we would try something different from take out at Peter Chang Chinese restaurant. We used to order spicy pork along with the fried rice combo. This time we had to eliminate the spicy pork and thought we would try fried noodles and vegetables. I had a very different idea about how fried noodles looked. The fried rice and spring rolls were good, and the what you could call potstickers were also good, but we didn’t care for the egg drop soup. The fried noodles were shriveled up - sort of like chop suey noodles. We tried putting the noodles on the soupy mixture, in the soupy mixture, next to the soupy mixture. The vegetables were not familiar, but we did recognize the pea pods and the broccoli and the carrots. It actually didn’t taste too bad. I’m sure we will order most of this again, but we are still in search of the perfect non spicy option.