Weekend, and we went up north, to see Karl's gallery art showing. Stayed overnight with Mom n Charlie. Got there in time to watch PBS Now, Bill Moyer's last broadcast. He is retiring and this was his last show. He laid it on the line, and it is worth viewing as he outlines the growing merging of mainstream media under fewer and larger umbrella corporations. He indicates his fear of loss of journalism and lays out the challenge to the future for media and integrity in journalism. I will find and save the transcript to one of my other blogs.
Saturday morning, sister, Nita, came over with gift she had for us and we had a YaYa morning, with coffee and sweets, and had her make her hat, inducted her into the Ya Ya sisterhood. I will post the photos on the family site. The gift she had for me is quite unusual, it is a Native American creche which fits well my spirituality in religiosity. She was tickled with herself in having found it at a collectible shop.
Then we went up north, stopping to pick up Cheri, and we went to Karl's gallery. Well it's not his gallery, but he does have a show there once a year and he invited us to come last year and again this year.
We wanted to stop by a Walmart afterwards as they have very good sale on computer. Now we're boycotting Walmart, so this was crossing the line to go there, but the price on computer was too good to miss out.....yep, we didn't hold to the courage of our convictions. We have needed a second computer for months now, as both Sweetie and I use the puter extensively, and we have to save deliberately and carefully when we want to make such a purchase. This was my Christmas present to Sweetie this year.
I've never been fond of going into Walmart, as my daughter can tell you and I took her and kids to Walmart many, many times this past year as she does like to shop there. I find it just too frenetic and have to adjust myself to the huge parking lot, the tons of people in the store and they are always short-handed with help, but the prices are great and there is plenty of all the items families need and use. I just happen to be among those that object to how they are corporatized, and how the short-hour and short-benefit their employees...deliberately. As well, many of the items they do carry come from the third-world countries where labor is exploited at great human expense.
We got into the store, I had my usual disorientation and Sweetie could see it. Found our way over to electronics, and of course, they were "out" of the model we went for and we went for the slightly more spendy model. The help didn't want to help..what's new about that and especially at holiday season. Sweetie knowing my discomfort was ready to leave, but I encouraged him to finish the purchase.
After all we'd already crawled at a snails pace on the ramp to exit the freeway, navigated the parking lot (no fun) and navigated the busy shoppers so it made no sense not to finish what we came for and he wound up carrying his own big box to the counter to check out. So much for the "help", but shrug, it goes with the territory, I guess. I really did want him to have the puter, and he's so reluctant to spend on himself.
We aren't really having Christmas this year, no decor, gifts or presents going out this year. It's an extension of the keen disappointment with the election outcome and spending money in Bush's America doesn't quite fit for us right now. Usually we get gifts for all the kids and grandchildren, and wind up with not much left over to get for each other, so I am happy to see Sweetie get something he really wants and will use this year. He never complains and always remains upbeat, and I so much wanted to gift him this year. Glad we could do this. Now he can work without interruption on his op-eds, his online activities towards trying to preserve our democracy on his very own computer.
We've worked out a sharing of the one puter, and I get it day time, he gets it night time and weekends we share. I spend a large amount of time on puter in my own blogging, op-eds, and family stuff but this last 6 weeks, I've had a full-blown intense project following vote fraud. It has become more difficult for each of us to have satisfying and adequate time with sharing one computer. Needless to say, we've assessed the need to get a second computer, and I'm happy we were able to do so as our Christmas gift to ourselves this year.
Today, then, Sweetie, set up his new puter (it's just like yours, Bree, remember last year at Christmas when you got yours ... same for us this year). He is just tickled with it. He helped me make some slight modifications to our front room where I decided to move my painting studio from upstairs cupola to downstairs. My "studio" has been set up in so many different places in this house, and I haven't been able to get quite comfortable so we are trying yet another place to set it up.
The light in the upstairs cupola is fantastic for paining, but there is inadequate and little ventilation, which doesn't work out as well. The painting paraphanalia is messy and doesn't lend itself well to the home decor, and I've been reluctant to incorporate it into the main areas in the house. We'll see how this works out, and Sweetie is so attentive to accomodating my painting (more so than I am myself). He arranged for good lighting for these short days when the daylight evaporates so quickly.
I painted 2 paintings last week, kind of trial and error on a new project and I can see I will need to work more to get the hang of the new project. Today, after we made the change-over, I painted a new painting taking on a different subject as I knew I didn't have time left in the day to concentrate on the learning curve I need for the new project I'm working on teaching myself.
Sweetie keeps me in coffee and makes dinner when I paint, so we had pizza and are wrapping up the evening with him on his New computer and me on "mine" (guess now that he has his own, this one becomes mine, how about that).
And that wraps up the weekend, except for the call I got from my daughter and they had an unkind holiday experience..... the kind you read about in newspaper or hear on the news every holiday.... they got mugged, wallet and paycheck stolen....there won't be Christmas for them this year. Rotten, rotten, rotten.
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