A Reprise

Josian (DikaDoll Kay) is currently sporting the Edward Cullen-esque wig. I photographed him amid the pokeweed, ubiquitous here south of Fort Worth.  I have had Josian since July of 2015. I am currently reading Evermore  by Alyson Noel and have been feeling some YA fiction vibes lately.  

  Today we had lunch at the HG SPLY CO in WestBend, Fort Worth. It was amazing as always. I got beans and rice side dishes, both of which were huge portions, plus we shared chips and salsa which also had great flavor. The restaurant is right off the Trinity River, with a view of the skyline. After lunch, we went to the Botanic Garden. It was a little different in that we had to pay to enter the entire garden, and the Japanese Garden could be entered at will, with no separate entrance fee. The Zen Garden in the Fort Worth Japanese Garden is one of my favorite places on earth. I've taken so many photos of the Zen Garden over the years, with so many different cameras. It was exciting to use my keychain camera today. The Suzuki Garden is one of my favorite places in the Japanese Garden. All of the above pictures were edited with the keychain cam's bundled software (Arcsoft PhotoImpression 4). I edited them a little further in Adobe Lightroom just to see the difference. I prefer the

  Frances, a Volks Super Dollfie Cute Kaede from 2004, is the latest addition to my doll family, purchased October 2019. She has been hanging out with me this week while I studied for comps and started teaching online. 

  Recently I found my Mug Cakes  cookbook and have been trying some of the recipes. 

  This week I got my "Smallest Digital Camera" from 2002 in the mail. I was really excited to see what kind of pictures it would take. Both of these shots were edited with the bundled Arcsoft PhotoImpression 4 software to bring out the shape and colors in the clouds, which I thought were striking. Below is the unedited photo of the barn. Unfortunately, I saved over the original shot of the pasture.

In the afternoons, I usually take my laptop or a book to the bed and study, and a doll for company. Gertrude is sitting on my bed desk. I got her in 2015 from the Korean doll company Dollmore. She's a "Flocke" sculpt. Willow is sitting with my headphones. She's made by the Chinese company Angel of Dream. I got her in 2013. She's a "Qing" sculpt.

I've been having a lot of ups and downs lately. Studying for comps has been rough. I get burned out; then, it's hard to stay caught up. I waste a lot of time just trying to get the work done.  I've been struggling with my clothes and my hobbies, too. Because things are still really bad with the pandemic, I don't go out much anymore, unless it's to the park to walk. When I actually dress up nice to go to somewhere public, I end up hating my clothing. Pieces I used to love I have ended up throwing in the trash at the end of the evening because they look so worn-out, not even good enough to donate to Goodwill. I don't like the styles I used to wear. I also really don't like the styles that are popular right now. I look at lookbooks on YouTube, but they often boil down to either youth culture styles or middle-age-lady styles, neither of which I want to emulate. I do feel really attracted to the scene emo styles that are still around, but not the Bermuda shorts-m

  I bought this Laura Geller eyeshadow palette at Ulta after my hair appointment. I was so disappointed to open it up and see that three of the shades were smashed up.  However, I followed an online tutorial to use drops of alcohol to reconstitute the smashed shadows. It worked perfectly. I cleaned the palette all up, and now I'm really pleased with it.

 

 

My favorite animals to see at the zoo are the primates. I went around to the back of this exhibit to get a better look and one of the gorillas was lying beneath the plexi-glass window. I made eye contact with her, and she glanced away uneasily and rolled to her other side. I could tell I made her uncomfortable and felt bad. Their facial expressions are so similar to humans'. The bonobos are another primate that are very human-like. They and chimpanzees seem to be tied as far as being genetically similar to us. I read that bonobos are fifty times as violent as humans and chimpanzees are one hundred times as violent as humans. However, I think, in general, our entire group is incredibly violent compared to other animals.  The flamingos appeared to be roosting and hatching eggs when we visited. There were many baby flamingos around. We happened to visit at a time when the tortoises were much more active, it being relatively early in the morning, and we able to watch them move around q