Thursday Thirteen: People on the Beach

Game in progress.

Sandlot football for real.

Sun, surf, sand.

Walking the boardwalk.

Taking baby for a walk.

A tender moment.

Did she say yes?



Time to fold the blanket.

Done for the day.

Bike versus skateboard.

A stroll with a seagull.

Just after sunrise.

Waiting for the sunrise.

________

 

Thursday Thirteen is played by lots of people; there is a list here if you want to read other Thursday Thirteens and/or play along. I've been playing for a while and this is my 524th time to do a list of 13 on a Thursday.

Happy Halloween!

Bird on the Wing

Seeking the Photo

Sunday Stealing: More Monsters

Sunday Stealing

The goblins and ghouls ask questions:

Ghost: What would you like on your tombstone?

A. Words. (Ghost: Smart aleck.)

Dracula: Are you afraid of aging? Or death?

A. I'm more afraid of being old than I am of dying.

Nosferatu: What, as a child, did you imagine went bump in the night?

A. Just the usual monsters, I suppose. Living with two parents who fought all the time and threw things at one another was scary enough; I really didn't have to imagine much.

Godzilla: What do you do when you are angry? Are you ever destructive?

A. I yell sometimes. Mostly I fuss. Sometimes I slam drawers. I am not destructive. Although the drawer might beg to differ, I suppose.

The Blob: Do you collect anything? If so, what and why?

A. I collect Christmas mice, because I think they're cute and I have a long history with them. I also collect signed books and have a nice collection of works signed by their authors.

Zombie: When was the last time you trusted your gut? Was it successful?

A. My gut and I are not on speaking terms.

Mothra: What is something dangerous that attracts or fascinates you?

A. Fire.

King Kong: What are some questionable choices you've made lately?

A. I have put off seeing a doctor about an issue with my foot for far too long.

Alien: What is your strangest feature?

A. My sense of humor.

Cthulhu: Do you like the ocean? Why or why not?

A. I like to watch it. I am not much on getting in it. It is hard on my skin.

Nessie: Have you ever felt invisible to people -- the feeling of not existing?

A. Yes.  (The answer is invisible.)

Mutant spider: What is one of your biggest fears?

A. Growing old and living under a bridge and eating out of dumpsters.

Werewolf: If you could change into any nonhuman animal and back at will, what animal would you change into and why?

A. A deer, because they are curious animals and can blend in and move quickly. Or a dragon. If you can be a dragon, you should always be a dragon.

Golem: If you could make up an imaginary friend, what would they be like and why?

A. I had imaginary friends when I was a child. They were always nice although they did occasionally get blamed for thing that somehow sort of happened.

Leprechaun: What is your "pot of gold" (or white whale, if you'd rather).

A. Um. I don't understand this question. I guess that is why I can never find the end of the rainbow.

Sharktopus: What is something you've done that was ridiculous or a bad decision?

A. I once left a job that I shouldn't have, a very long time ago.

Robot: What is a habit you do without thinking?

A. Eat.

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I encourage you to visit other participants in Sunday Stealing posts and leave a comment. Cheers to all us thieves who love memes, however we come by them.

Saturday 9: Monster Mash

Saturday 9: Monster Mash (1962)

Unfamiliar with this week's featured song? Hear it here.

(Just so my Sat 9 friends know, I DID visit your blogs last week and left messages supposedly under my google account from my cell phone. But when I look they are not there. Sorry. I don't know what went wrong.)

1) In your younger days, did you ever trick or treat while dressed as a monster or ghoul?

A. I think I was mostly a hobo, although there may have been a year somewhere in there where I was a witch.

2) Do you enjoy being frightened by celluloid boys-gone-bad, like Michael Myers (Halloween) or Jason (Friday the 13th)?

A. Nope. I don't watch those movies anymore.

3) When you were a kid, did you ever TP a neighbor's house or indulge in any other Halloween acts of vandalism? (Don't worry, the statute of limitations is up.)

A. Maybe the year I was 16 we might have tossed a little toilet paper.

4) Will you be attending any Halloween parties this year? If so, will you dress up?

A. No and no.

5) Can you see any Halloween decorations as you answer these 9 questions?

A. No, I'm afraid not. Well, there is the spider in the corner of the room that I can't reach with the broom.

6) While Halloween is most popular in the United States and Canada, and isn't really celebrated at all in Japan or South Korea. How would you explain our Halloween customs to a visitor from another land?

A. "We dress up as whatever we want in order to be somebody else for a little while, and stuff our faces with candy. It's a secular holiday now, though it once had sacred meaning. Mostly it's an excuse for Mars and Hershey's to sell candy. It's like Christmas - a consumer holiday, only with scary stuff instead of Santa Claus."

7) "Monster Mash" is one of Halloween's most played songs. Are you happy to hear it every year? Or does it set your teeth on edge?

 

A. I think it's a cute song, so I don't mind hearing it.

 

8) This week's featured artist, Bobby "Boris" Pickett, started as a stand-up comedian who incorporated his imitations of Boris Karlof and Bela Lugosi into his act. Can you impersonate anyone?

 

A. Not anyone famous.

 

9) Dick Clark was an impossibly young looking 33 in this week's featured clip. Are you often told you look good for your age?

A. Not often, no. Mostly I am told I have pretty skin, whatever that means.

 

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I encourage you to visit other participants in Saturday 9 posts and leave a comment. Because there are no rules, it is your choice. Saturday 9 players hate rules. We love memes, however.

Thursday Thirteen: Virginia Aquarium

We visited the Virginia Aquarium and Marine Science Center while we were in Virginia Beach last week.

It's very hands-on facility, and while I am never a fan of seeing anything behind glass or in cages (the critters always look sad to me), it was an interesting afternoon. We saw birds, komodo dragons, snakes, sharks, sting rays, lots of different fishes, read about the geology of the area and the meteorite that supposedly landed in the Chesapeake area a very long time ago, and felt pieces of said rock (it was soft and slippery).

Here are some photos of our afternoon. I don't know the real names of the things we looked at.

Bright blue fish.

Yellow fish

Snouty fish.

Sad-looking blue and yellow fish.

A growing coral reef.

A sea turtle.

A striped old man fish.

A bird.

A yellow bird.

A komodo dragon.

Up close with the komodo dragon.

Pink fish.

________

 

Thursday Thirteen is played by lots of people; there is a list here if you want to read other Thursday Thirteens and/or play along. I've been playing for a while and this is my 523rd time to do a list of 13 on a Thursday.

Edgar Cayce Building

One of the buildings that caught my eye while we were in Virginia Beach was the Edgar Cayce building.

Edgar Cayce's Association for Research and Enlightenment was something I was familiar with, but not overly so. The place had a visitor center, so we stopped in.

 



You might call Edgar Cayce (1877-1945) the father of New Age. Or something like that. He was an American Christian mystic who answered questions on subjects as varied as healing, reincarnation, wars, Atlantis, and future events while claiming to be in a trance. A biographer gave him the nickname, "The Sleeping Prophet". A nonprofit organization, the Association for Research and Enlightenment, was founded to facilitate the study of Cayce's work.

Cayce was considered a psychic and he offered up a number of cures for various ailments. Therapies as divergent as salt packs, poultices, hot compresses, color healing, magnetism, vibrator treatment, massage, osteopathic manipulation, dental therapy, colonics, enemas, antiseptics, inhalants, homeopathics, essential oils, mud baths were prescribed. Substances used included oils, salts, herbs, iodine, witch hazel, magnesia, bismuth, alcohol, castoria, lactated pepsin, turpentine, charcoal, animated ash, soda, cream of tartar, aconite, laudanum, camphor, and gold solution. These were prescribed to overcome conditions that prevented proper digestion and assimilation of needed nutrients from the prescribed diet. The aim of the readings was to produce a healthy body, removing the cause of the specific ailment. Readings would indicate if the patient's recovery was problematic.

You might recognize a lot of that stuff from New Age holistic treatments today. Some of it I have tried; most I have not. I've tried magnets and they make me hurt. I tried castor oil on the weird issue with my stomach. I don't think it helped but I had very soft skin on my stomach for a while. Plus I discovered castor oil will eventually shrink a skin tag.

The visitor's center was essentially a New Age book store:

The facility has lectures and readings and things like that. Some were on fairly normal things; others on phenomenon like ESP. There is a garden labyrinth somewhere on the grounds that I did not see but would have liked to have looked at. It was difficult for me to get to without climbing stairs or wheedling my husband into driving around to find some place else to park.

The wares in the visitor's center were a bit pricy, so I bought nothing, but it was an interesting stop.

Cape Henry Lighthouses

Our trip to Virginia Beach was different for us. For one thing, we never went into the ocean and barely set foot in the sand.

The weather was great - it never warmed above 76 or so, with cool evenings. There weren't a lot of folks on the beach, so we were not alone in looking for other things to do in the area.

We like history so we set out on Friday, October 20, to see the Cape Henry lighthouses.

The oldest of the two lighthouses there, which is also one of the oldest in the nation, is the first federally funded lighthouse. The government built it to guide maritime commerce at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay. It stands near the “First Landing” site where English settlers arrived in 1607.

The structure, authorized by George Washington and overseen by Alexander Hamilton, was completed in 1792. It was designed by New York architect John McComb and it was used for about 100 years before being replaced by a cast iron lighthouse that still stands about 100 yards away.

Preservation Virginia acquired the Cape Henry Lighthouse in 1930. Over the years lighthouse and its surroundings have been restored including repairing the lantern after damage from Hurricane Barbara in 1953, repairing the damaged original Aquia sandstone and restoring the surrounding dunes.

Visitors to the Cape Henry Lighthouse can climb to the top of the tower.

Our first surprise occurred at the entrance. We thought this was a historic site - which it is - but it is also part of Fort Story, an active military base.

To get in to see the lighthouses, you must be searched and you must allow your car to be searched. If you go beyond a certain point, you will be arrested and charged with trespassing.

This is not exactly the welcome I've come to expect at historic sites.

When you accept the four-hour "historic site access pass" from the soldiers who declare you fit for entrance, you agree not to use text messaging or hands-free cellular telephones and to only photograph the historic sites.



This happy little dolphin greets you.



It immediately becomes not so happy when you realize
you're on a military base.



You were not supposed to take photos of personnel. I
took these photos before I was told that and I have
altered the faces and the license tag of the car in front
of us.



This is the original 1792 lighthouse.



This is both lighthouses as you approach them from the
entrance.



This is the new lighthouse. I don't think
it is in use.



No clue what the other buildings beside the lighthouse are.



The old lighthouse.



A nice poster in the gift shop.



The lighthouses from the backside.



The old lighthouse from the back side.
 

I had never been searched before. It was intimidating though the soldiers were polite. They asked if we had any weapons and I produced a tiny little knife that I use sometimes to trim my nail cuticles with, and the guy waved it away like it was a plastic fork. My husband had his pocket knife and produced that, which was also waved away. Our drugs consisted of our prescriptions, and the only other thing in the car was my MS Surface which wasn't working so we'd stowed it in the trunk.

I would not have consented to any kind of body search but they didn't ask to do one. I would have asked to turn around and be allowed to leave had I been told that would be necessary. No one is touching me without reason, which is why I don't expect to ever get on an airplane again. I don't consider searching me - because that implies I have done something when I have not - to be a good reason to feel me up. I still believe in innocent until proven guilty, not the other way around. Searches assume you are guilty. (For the record, it is also why I don't go to many things at the local coliseum - I hate the searches, especially when they make women open their pocket books while the men walk in with guns holstered to their ankles, something I have personally observed. How stupid is that?)

The one thing it showed me is that the "land of the free" - isn't. And anyone who thinks otherwise is a fool.

I did wonder why, since there was a vast expanse of land between the historic areas and the closest military buildings, they didn't just move the checkpoints back behind the historic areas so the public could access them without all the rigmarole.

Anyway, this colored my appreciation of the historic structure quite a bit, and not in a good way.

It is nice that it is still there, though.

It is not so nice that my government considers me guilty of something simply because I want to see a historic structure that my tax dollars are keeping up. I'm sure others see searches like this differently, and simply accept it, but this is why I am not like everybody else. I have never been one to abide by arbitrary rules and accept the status quo.

Guess Where I've Been

Virginia Beach, VA, October 21, 2017

Sunday Stealing: Sleepy Rambles

Sunday Stealing

1. Have you ever eaten at restaurant and you realized you forgot your money?

A. No. But I have gone to the hairdresser's and realized I'd forgotten my money. But she's been my hairdresser for over 30 years, so it was cool.

2. True or false-you can pat your head and rub your tummy at the same time.

A. True.

3. Do you prefer to drink out of cans or bottles?

A. Bottles.

4. Do your socks match today?

A. Yes.

5. What was the last book you read? Would you recommend it?

A. Fire is Your Water, by Jim Minnick. He's a local author. It is an interesting book set in PA and has some intriguing Appalachian lore in it.

6. Are you currently borrowing something from someone?

A. I have audiobooks on loan from the library.

7. Write an extremely random statement.

A. The chocolate and the tree ran smack into each other, and the resulting rainbow created a chocolate rain that sent all of the world racing outside to taste the flavor.

8. Are there any major holidays you don’t celebrate?

A. I don't celebrate Jewish holidays. I don't celebrate Easter. I love Halloween but I don't celebrate it, either.

9. What is one thing you will never understand?

A. Why I was born.

10. Have you ever stepped on a bee?

A. Yes. I was stung, too.

11. What helps you wake up in the morning?

A. The best part of waking up is . . . hot tea in my cup.

12. What did you have for breakfast this morning?

A. Yogurt and oatmeal.

13. What is your favorite thing in your room?

A. My computer.

14. Who was your first kiss with?

A. The only first kiss that matters is the one I had with my husband.

15. Do you worry about small things?

A. I worry about everything. Big, small, liquid, solid, valid, invalid, theoretical or real. You name it, I worry about it. I even worry about the things I don't know I should be worrying about.

__________

I encourage you to visit other participants in Sunday Stealing posts and leave a comment. Cheers to all us thieves who love memes, however we come by them.

Saturday 9: Voices Carry

Saturday 9: Voices Carry (1985)

Unfamiliar with this week's tune? Hear it here.

This song was chosen because October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month. Please share this link to The National Domestic Violence Hotline. Let's spread the word that there's help out there.

1) In this song, a woman is "hushed" by her lover. When were you last told to "keep it down?"

A. I can't recall. I am not a very loud person and I live in the country where my little noise doesn't carry far.

2) Her lover tells her tears are something to hide. Researchers tell us that crying can be good for us, because by releasing emotional stress, it lessens physical stress on the cardiovascular system. Are you comfortable crying in front of other people?

A. No.

3) In this video, the woman makes a scene by speaking up in a theater. Today theater goers are more likely to be disturbed by a cell phone ringing or its screen illuminating. Are you careful to turn your phone off in the theater, church, etc.?

A. I am still figuring this out. I have finally gotten a smart phone (yay, I can text!) and I am still trying to understand how people carry the thing with them constantly. It makes my pocketbook heavy and I don't wear a belt. How do women deal with these things?

4) When this group, Til Tuesday, was still struggling, Cyndi Lauper was already a star. Cyndi offered to record this song, which would have brought the group some fast cash, but only if they agreed not to record it themselves. Obviously they didn't take the deal. Tell us about a time you took a risk on yourself, and it paid off.

A. I suppose that would have been when I decided to start freelancing full time, which was a very long time ago. I did well with it until the recession and suddenly everyone was doing the "gig" economy. Between an onrush of unanticipated competition (every out of work journalist in the nation) and the lack of people paying for writing, it became less of a good idea. Another time might have been when I decided to put myself through college and when I earned my masters' degree at the age of 49.

5) Til Tuesday's lead singer, Aimee Mann, went to Open High School in Richmond, Virginia. This charter high school is dedicated to helping students become "self-determined thinkers and learners." Do you recall your high school as permissive or regimented?

A. It was permissive when I began but we had a new principal come in my senior year, and he was  a tyrant. He wanted everything done by the book. Our school ended up in the newspapers nationwide because we had a big food fight and he called in the police over it. Up until then you rarely saw a cop on a school campus.

6) Aimee has been on the road through 2017 and, like most artists, sells tour merchandise. Her line includes reusable tote bags. Do you bring your own bag to the grocery store?

A. I do a bit of both. I used to use my own bags more but they fill them so full I can hardly carry them, even if I ask them not to.

7) Aimee has tried her hand at acting and appeared on Buffy, The Vampire Slayer. From Dracula to Barnabas Collins to Lestat, vampires are a popular culture staple (especially in October). What do you suppose accounts for their enduring popularity?

A. Because everyone wants to live forever and we do not like to think we must die. It would be better to be a soul-less vampire than a memory.

8) In 1985, when this song was popular, Bruce Springsteen was at the top of the charts with Born in the USA. A massive commercial success, Born in the USA has sold more than 15,000,000 copies in the United States alone. Is it in your collection?

A. I don't think so. It might be in my husband's, though. We haven't looked at our vinyl in years.

9) Random question: In which race would you do better -- the Iditarod, with sled dogs in Nome, or speeding in a car at 200+ mph at the Indianapolis 500?

A. The speeding car. I tend to drive fast anyway. Plus I'm allergic to dogs.


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I encourage you to visit other participants in Saturday 9 posts and leave a comment. Because there are no rules, it is your choice. Saturday 9 players hate rules. We love memes, however.