Cat Thursday: Valentine Kitties

Cat Thursday is a weekly meme hosted by The True Book Addict, and celebrating "the wonders and sometime hilarity of cats." You can join the fun by posting a favorite LOL cat pic, famous cat art or even pics of your own beloved cat(s). It's all for the love of cats!

It's been a really long time since I posted any photos for Cat Thursday. (Where've I been?) But as we're getting very close to Valentines Day (or should that be Valentine's Day?), thought I'd share a few vintage cards with images of cats.

I love cats (though I'm allergic, darn it) and I've always loved/collected greeting cards. So what's better than a greeting card with a cat on it, right?

A couple of these are from my personal card stash, and the rest are images I've collected over the years from various sources (internet sites like Graphics Fairy and Free Vintage Digital Stamps are great places to explore).

They're all wishing you a Happy Thursday and a Purrrr-fectly lovely Valentine's Day.

Wordless Wednesday: Mr. Mockingbird

Keeping an eye on me

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Blue Monday: Blues for the New Year

Blue Monday is hosted weekly by Smiling Sally.

To see more offerings, or to participate yourself,
please head on over to her blog.

So, 2016. And my first Blue Monday of the year. Now that Christmas and New Year's and the hubby's birthday are over, we're beginning to get back to normal around here. Finally took down the trees and all the holiday decorations and stowed them away for another year. And we managed to finish up the puzzle we've been working on for the last couple of weeks (no blue there, but a nice nostalgic picture):

It turned out to be a LOT harder to put together than we expected it to be. All those dark pieces looked exactly alike!

We ended December with a visit to the Blanton Museum at the University of Texas in Austin, to see the exhibit of Latin American modern interior design they have going on right now (I think it's there through January 17th, if you're interested). It was a good time to go -- classes were out for the winter break, so parking wasn't a problem and the campus was very quiet. I remember when we were students at UT back in the Pleistocene era, we always loved that time during vacations and between semesters, when the other students cleared out. We were Austin residents year-round, so we got to stick around and enjoy the slower pace.

The exhibit was fun -- lots of interesting mid-20th century decor, which I love. Wonderful furniture, paintings, wall hangings, and ceramics. And a lot of the walls were painted a lovely turquoise blue, my favorite color and very appropriate to the time period. (Sorry if they look a little greenish on your screen -- it's a difficult shade to photograph.)

There was also a lot of art glass I coveted, like this 1950s blue glass table lamp:

Before we left the museum, we browsed another exhibit -- paintings of the Virgin Mary from 18th century Bolivia and Peru. One of them (Our Lady of Cocharcas, 1751 by an unknown artist) included some nice touches of blue (although I think it was supposed to represent a silver processional cart):

And on our way between galleries, I snapped a couple of shots of George Segal's life-size sculpture Blue Woman in Black Chair. I'm not sure exactly what he was trying to achieve, but she was several lovely shades of blue...

and kind of spooky close-up.

So, I guess now I'm ready for 2016 to begin unfolding. And I'm hoping for more blue skies like the one we had yesterday....

I Suck at Holidailies plus a Saturday Snap

OK, it's official now: I just can't handle Holidailies. I think this is the third year in a row that I've completely bombed out at trying to "regularly update" this blog during the Christmas season. I did have some pretty good excuses this year (two rounds of oral surgery, lots of pain meds which kept me comatose a good deal of the time), but still.... Three years in a row?

Actually, the whole month of December has been kind of weird around here. In addition to the fore-mentioned dental adventures, the weather here in central Texas just hasn't been very cooperative lately. Which is OK with me -- I love the sun and warmth and blue skies. But it did sort of keep me from getting into a festive, Christmas-y mood. It shouldn't really bother me that much, having grown up in San Antonio where Christmas Eve was usually 90-degrees and humid. When we'd gather at our grandparents' house for the family get-together, my grandmother would spend the entire evening yelling at people to "close the door and stop letting all the air conditioning out!"

But now the day has come and gone, I'm (sort of) on the mend (we won't discuss the reaction to the antibiotic at this time -- luckily for ya'll), and I think I'm finally getting into the spirit of the season. Also getting the urge to blog again. Maybe there's life after tooth-removal after all.

So I'm going to try to post to this blog a little more often during the rest of December. Maybe not daily (I think the hubby has planned a few out-and-abouts), but enough to keep me from feeling like such a slacker. Because I know you're all on the edge of your comfy chairs, waiting for my next bit of bloggy trivia.

Well, here's today's. On Christmas Eve, I generally try to take a photo of Michael and me together. Nothing formal -- just a snapshot of the two of us, for my own personal album. Usually with the tree or some of our toys. Neither of us is really great at posing, and even though we both love photography, we both also dislike having our own pictures taken. So it's usually a bit of a struggle. But this year it turned out to be pretty impossible. All of the photos were generally disastrous -- trouble with the lighting, camera timer doing strange stuff, but mostly because in every one of them I looked like I was being tortured. This was one of the worst of the lot, but at least I don't look like I'm ready to punch somebody.

Total Fail: Attempting to Take the Annual Christmas Snap

And just one more tidbit. See that skirt? Red-and-green plaid, pleated, rayon-silk blend. I bought that item at Talbot's in downtown Washington DC around 1989. It's older than most of you are, Dear Readers! I've worn it on either Christmas Eve or Christmas Day (or sometimes both!) every year for the last 25 years. One of these days, I'm going to take it out of the closet, and it's just going to crumble into dusty bits and blow away in a poof. It'll give me something to write about for Holidailies!

Linking up with Saturday Snapshot, too. I know that's a terrible snap, so here's a better one. I call this one Michael, the Mail, and the Blue Skies of Christmas:

Christmas just the way I like it