I’m pretty happy that I have only missed writing a post the two days that I was out of town this month. I could not convince myself to try blogging from my phone. Still, maybe there’s hope for me figuring out the whole consistency thing after all. Maybe not, we shall see.  🙂

Today I want to get caught up on the Photo 101 prompts.  I don’t usually get this far in monthly ‘challenges’ to myself so in the interest of not cheating and skipping any prompts here are the two I missed.

Landmark:

After you walk a little bit into the woods across the way from my neighborhood you run into this bathtub with a working well pump in the middle of a clearing.  There are a couple of picnic tables there too.  It really threw us for a loop for a while but we used it as our landmark to tell family how far we were going to go.  Meet you at the tub!

We figured out after going for a while that this is a spot where a lot of people camp with horses and the tub is for watering the horses.  Not as good as the initial mystery but still pretty cool.

Warmth:

I took my lunch time walk in a different direction Friday and since it was a somewhat shadowy walk I looked for places the sun shone through the trees on an area. I didn’t quite catch what I wanted but I still like the pictures. And the multiple pictures gave me a chance to try out the whole gallery thing.  Kind of neat.

How would you picture warmth?  Would it be something like my pictures or would you go for something that portrayed warmth as an emotion? Maybe something else entirely?

You know how ‘a body in motion stays in motion’ and all that?  Well, my life has a slightly modified law which is, ‘once I mess something up it shall only get more messed up for the rest of the night’.  This is true when practicing my forms at Tae Kwon Do, it’s true of a bad run, and it’s true when I get lost.

It’s that last one that happened in such grand style Thursday night I have to tell you about it.

Lately my GPS has been acting weird and telling me that it has lost it’s power source and will turn off in 30 seconds every few minutes while I’m driving. Mind you, it’s plugged in at the time. Annoying but since I hold the GPS on my steering wheel while driving not a total disaster.

Thursday I was going to a restaurant in Tampa that I’d never been to before and since I was worried about my GPS I also used Google maps on my phone, which I never did before. I was pulling out of the parking lot at work and my GPS told me ‘turn right on Linebaugh’.  At the same time Google told me ‘turn left on Linebaugh’.  And so went the rest of the drive.  In spite of that I got there on time and with no problems (though I accidentally parked behind the restaurant and took a few minute to figure out where I was supposed to be). I knew I was using up an awful lot of luck right there.

So on to the Straz Center.  The person I was supposed to be following turned left, Google said turn right.  Quite the rebel, Google.  Turns out traffic was thick enough I finally turned right just to be able to pull out. Sorry for doubting you Google.  I found the place no problem, but I did go around the block 3 times finding the parking garage that was kind of in plain site.  All well and good.

Then I wanted to get home.  No matter how many times I typed my address into Google it said there was no such thing.  I figured out after I got home it was changing FL into flight instead of Florida. Yes, I turned off stupid spell correction immediately.  My evil cracked out GPS would not even turn on for the first time ever. I (in all my wisdom) decided screw it, I have to run into a freeway soon no matter what direction I go in, right?

Lets just pause here a moment for the photo prompt of the day.  Mystery. What? You don’t think this quick pic captures the meaning of mystery? Well read on fearless reader, read on.

Of course the first thing I did was turn the wrong way and go over a draw bridge. Fifty third u-turn of the night, many more to come. After passing several signs for the 275 south and none for the 275 N (home sweet home was north) I decided screw it, I’ll get on going south and then get off and back on going north.  Because there is ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS a way to get right back on the freeway in the other direction.  Right?

Not so much.  I got off after going a wee bit out of the way (passing a couple of probably nice, probably drug dealers on really, really dark and decrepit streets) with no way home in site and now a good 5 miles further away.

I gave up and just started driving and because the streets in Florida are really, really weird I eventually ran back into the 275 and was able to get on the the right direction, I made it home and everything.

But it just goes to prove, mystery (like everything else) is defined by the moment.Oh yeah, in the name of full disclosure I also got lost in the (stupid) parking garage trying to find my car.

I am SO happy to be typing this at home.  🙂

Ya.  That’s really a thing.  From Straz Center’s site:

“College kids in an abandoned cabin in the woods for the weekend. What could go wrong? Well, first they accidentally unleash an evil force that turns them into demons. The rest is Evil Dead the Musical, a splatter-fest of camp, gore and one-liners so bad they’ll kill you before the Candarian demons do. This sing-along cult hit is a bloody good time, and for die hard fans, there are always seats available in the Splatter Zone if you get your tickets early. You’ll laugh your guts out.”

What can go wrong indeed?

Who doesn’t want to laugh their guts out? No one I know! Well. No one that I know that I like anyways, and who else counts?

Exactly.

I don’t think I can tell it better than this guy:

Want to come out and get your Evil Dead on?

It’s playing Thurs. at 8 p.m. and Fri. & Sat. at 7:30 p.m. You can pick up tickets here.

Are you a fan of zombies in general or Evil Dead in particular? Do you agree that adding ‘the musical’ to just about anything is kind of awesome?

I think that nature is healing. Think about it, when you are in a house full of sick people don’t you feel the need to open up the house and let the fresh breeze come through?

Of course, when nature is in the form of a shark following you it doesn’t see quite so healing but everything has it’s down sides.  And it does make a pretty neat story.

The photo prompt today was ‘the natural world’. That’s one I can get pretty easily! This is a picture that I actually took with the prompt ‘connect’ in mind because of the way that 4 different plants are all intertwined. I like the way the dry moss frames the other plants.

I want to share a second picture that illustrates the natural world in an equally honest way these days.  Nature and us humans (I know we are animals but I can’t quite bring myself to label much of what we do as part of the natural world) have become intertwined on a daily basis.

I passed these two while driving out of my neighborhood.  I took the picture out the window of my car.  These birds are incredibly cool, and here in this neck of the woods they are seen pretty often.  A couple live in both Publix parking lots that I shop at.  They must like the relatively clear space because I only ever see them in parking lots and neighborhoods – never in the woods or non-humanized places around here.

See why I love Florida?  It’s a wee bit like living in a zoo. We’ve also spotted wild boars, 2 bear cubs, and a wildcat or two while driving. And of course tons of armadillos and possums when running at night. Oh, and sometimes bunnies which always makes me smile.  You never outgrow getting excited when you see a wild rabbit do you?

Cross your fingers for me that I never run into a boar while running, I’d probably have a heart attack even if it saw me and ran the other way.

What creatures do you find in your neighborhood?

How do you connect with your family?  Today’s photo prompt was connect – and as usual a few ideas came to mind but I decided to go with family.  A couple years ago we all REALLY connected –  everyone got together, and went tubing for a few hours – with all of our tubes tied together.  This picture is about a quarter of the total.

I connect with my daughter usually doing things like watching Supernatural and Walking Dead (Do I get an awesome mom of the year award for that?) or hysterical videos she is always showing me of things like this. Strangely addictive.  You’re welcome.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=diU70KshcjA?rel=0]

Then there’s my son’s, our biggest thing right now is Tae Kwon Doe, but there’s also the occasional Mine Craft session.  I’ll spare you a photo.  🙂

I swap seeds and gardening photos with one of my nieces, talk dinosaurs and super heroes with my littlest nephews, everyone has their own thing!

How about you, is there any particular way you connect with your family? Do you find yourself doing completely different things with everyone in the family?

I decided to try something completely different for me for this post.  That was supposed to be the point of this month, right?  I prefer to take pictures of non-human animals and of places and things but today I had my daughter (an actual person!) pose for my pictures.  The prompt today was solitude.  As my daughter COULD be mistaken for the girl from The Ring she was perfect.

As usual I couldn’t pick out my favorite picture but instead of creating a collage of my choices I though I would just post them individually and ask you to let me know which one you like best for the prompt ‘solitude’.

  You can see that they are all 3 really the same picture, it’ just a slight style difference.  You can also see that they are taken with a cell phone camera and that I haven’t had it long enough to figure out the settings.  🙂 We were asked to use the ‘rule of three’ when framing the shots, which is why I tried the different angles of the same shot. Ignoring the quality of the photo, what do you think?

The photo prompt today was bliss.  What’s bliss? Happiness and joy and all that sort of thing.

I can think of lots of images to represent bliss. Everything from a dog let outside the first time coming home from the shelter, to pictures of family, to images not so appropriate for my blog.  But as I was trying to think of what to take a photo of while driving in to work this morning really all I could think of was why on earth was traffic moving so slow all morning and how was it possible that I sat at the same light 3 times? I should have been to work early and now if I sat here long enough I was going to be late.

And then I saw this. BLISS.

Green means GO!

Funny how a word can mean different things at different times.  What’s your interpretation of bliss?

It’s only about 10:00, this still counts as Wednesday.  🙂

The prompt for today’s photo is water.  That kind of made me laugh because I realized that most of my pictures are of water.  Easy peasy.  In the interest of fair play I went on my lunch break today and took a few pictures.  As seems be the trend I couldn’t decide on my favorite so I cheated and created another collage.  I cheat at pool too, these things are out of my control. Really.

I actually do have a favorite, it’s the middle picture. I love photos of reflections on water where you can hardly tell which way is up and which way is down.

Water, water everywhere.

Now that I’ve decided to follow the Photo 101 prompts I’ve suddenly thought of all kinds of other things to write about too.  I’m busily getting back into running and the garden is (semi) growing again, tae kwon do is going well. If all of that isn’t enough to inspire me I’m heading out this weekend to the WOWsummit in Orlando. If you are in the area check out their site. It’s a weekend full of healthy parenting speakers and brands like Zevia and EnviroKidz giving out samples and answering questions.  I’m pretty excited about it and hoping to find some healthy, non-GMO products that my kids will love.  I’m not sure how I’m going to do on my photo prompts while I”m there though!

Hello strangers! Welcome to complete randomness.  Maybe for a while, maybe permanently, I’ll let you know if you care to come back and find out.  🙂

When I started writing here in January 2011 this was a personal journal of something new I was trying – running.  I just wrote about how far I ran and how hard it was.  Then I started writing about other things as well, mostly fun things here in Florida like paddle boarding or festivals and posting the occasional recipe.

I’ve gone back and forth between writing quite a bit and not writing at all for long stretches of time, and I’ve tried several ‘writing challenges’ to get me back into the swing of things but I haven’t finished any of them.  Why?  Because I tend to feel that I should stay ‘on subject’ and write mostly about running.  But just like with writing I go through phases of not running at all.  I’ve just started running again after several months off, I want to start writing steady again too.  But how to get back to writing consistently?

This month I am trying something totally different for me.  I’m joining Blogher.com’s NaBloPoMo, which is a commitment to write a post every day this month.  I’ve tried challenges like this before, but I usually stop writing because I have a hard time tying the writing prompts into anything related to what I usually write about.  So this time I’m going to go at it a bit different.  I won’t be limiting myself to any subject at all for the entire month.  I might write about running and things fun to do in Florida, but I also might try writing a piece of fiction related to nothing at all or I may do a post that is just pictures.  Photography is an area I think I’d have fun doing more of.

So if you’ve been following this blog please bear with my wandering and rambling, but I think it is time I get more zen out of writing Kinda Zennish.  🙂

Just to get the randomness officially started, here is a picture of Boots, one of our 3 would-have-been-snake-food rats. How do all people not see how cute and friendly rats are??

Have you ever found you have set limits on yourself that were unnecessary in hindsight?

Are you joining NaBloPoMo or another writing challenge? If so what made you decide to join or what are you doing differently than you have before in your writing?

I received two VIP tickets to Guavaween in exchange for hosting this giveaway and writing a review. As always, my opinions are all mine.

Are you in the Tampa area? Do you have a distinct lack of (awesome) plans this Saturday night? Well, I have a solution for you!

Guavaween is back. For 2014 it’s been recreated into a Voodoo Carnival at the Cuban Club! Now I really wish I could have binge watched Season 4 of American Horror Story last weekend… because YES there will be a freak show. As if just plain people watching won’t be worth the trip. 🙂

I have to admit, I’ve never been to Guavaween before.  I love a good party and all, but this one always sounded a little over the top and uncontained.  But not this year!

This year Guavaween is at the Cuban Club, the same location that The Summer of Rum Festival was, which I loved so much.  This may be because the same team, Big City Events, which put on that festival has taken over Guavaween this year. Lucky for us!

There are going to be 5 themed areas:

Funhouse Avenue with voodoo magic and a Freakshow Carnival

Dumaine Street Courtyard – music, a costume contest, and random street performers

Laveau Lounge to get your fortune read (and more voodoo juice)

Sideshow Theater for live performances from Burlesque troupe shows, freak shows and a midnight showing of the Rocky Horror Picture Show. (I used to watch Rocky Horror every weekend, I’ll have to stop in!)

Club Ju-Jū – where to go for dancing and laser lights (I’m not a big dancer but I can be amused for untold hours by blinking lights…)

So now that you’ve decided that you are going too, what do you need to know? You can get your tickets here.

General Admission Tickets : $18 Limited Presale | $20 Advance | $25 Regular| $30 Door (if available)
VIP Voodoo Experience: $80 Limited Presale | $85 Advance | $95 Regular| $125 Door (if available)

You can find out everything else you need to know including where to park on Guavaweentampa.com.

Want to save your money to spend on your costume and voodoo juice?  Enter to win one of 3 pairs of General Admission tickets here!
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