Mosaics, Hair Tea, Aliens, and Poetry

 

This is my 500th post! Thanks to everyone who reads this random blog. Starting a blog was on my birthday list for 35 and here we are four years later.

In a few days, it will be the final 30-day countdown for this year’s list. I have 10 items left! It’s always a race to the finish.

I banged out four over the past week:

Mosaics

Mary and I took a mosaics class last weekend, and I subsequently have a newfound appreciation for this art. It is time consuming. Really time consuming. It took two-and-a-half hours to make this:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I haven’t “grouted” it yet. I wonder if that will make it look any better? I found it nearly impossible to cut straight square pieces of tile. I’m definitely willing to try it again sometime. I’ve always loved mosaics.

Hair Tea

This was another Groupon-inspired trial. I recently bought a Groupon for vegan cosmetics, and when I searched the site, I found hair tea. It sounded intriguing and was easy enough to make. A bunch of Indian herbs come in a tea bag that you steep in a gallon of boiling water. I was amazed that I didn’t need to use conditioner with it. I like the idea of not using chemical-laden shampoo and conditioner on my hair. My hair looked fine after using it, until I walked around on a windy day. After an hour of the wind blowing my hair this way and that, my hair looked unwashed. Wasn’t thrilled about that.

But I’ll definitely use it once in a while to give my hair a break.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Aliens

I’m almost done with the AFI’s Top 100 Film List! I watched Close Encounters of the Third Kind (#64) the other night. I found it a little slow at times, but overall it was entertaining. The special effects were pretty kick-ass for 1977. A national monument that I had never heard of before, called Devils Tower, was featured in the film. I was a little weirded out when, a day or two after I watched the film, I attended a student service-trip presentation at the college where I work, and one student showed a photo of Devils Tower and talked about the Native American folklore behind it.

Poetry

Yesterday, I visited Grolier Poetry Book Shop for the first time. It is one of the smallest shops I have ever visited, but there are a lot of books packed into that space! I bought an anthology of e e cummings’s poetry and prose. I’ve heard a number of snippets of his work over the years and have always liked it. So I look forward to reading it.

But first, I have to make my way through Henry James’s The Golden Bowl. I’m about 60 pages in and I couldn’t tell you what the book is about. But I’m keeping at it, confident that it will start making more sense at some point…