I plopped this Santa in my piece of Russel Wright china and Don said it looks like Santa is traveling by boat to his studio. When you add in the blue-green color of the table, it makes sense! Santa is bringing a big star to the studio. Isn’t he thoughtful?
Today we do a little prep for the big old storm headed our way. There’s still some question about how much we’ll get – our local guys are saying 7 to 14 inches, which is a big spread, but it depends on where the storm is when it veers eastward and moves out to sea.
So. At least 7 inches. More likely 12. Oh boy. Most of it will happen overnight on Wednesday into Thursday and there will be winds and snow drifts. Oh boy again. I would have preferred about 4 or 5 inches. The snowblower will get moved to the porch to plug it in so that it can be charged. I’m going to empty the remainder of my porch pots and move the antique pots in the secret garden to the porch, as well as that outdoor furniture. Then I’ll cover the former kitchen island with a tarp, as I do every winter.
Yesterday, as I was putting in this floor, I had a message from my friend Kaliswa saying that someone was posing as me on Instagram. So grateful she tipped me off! Instead of claudiahillsparks, this account had my same photo and hillsparksclaudia as the account name. Shockingly, over 200 people had already followed it, people that were taken from my list of followers. Kaliswa reported and blocked it and I immediately reported it, saying the account was posing as me. I have to say, I’ve never seen IG work so fast, that account was gone within about 15 minutes.
The same thing happened to Don a few months back. In Don’s case, they copied a lot of his post photos as well. I reported it, as did several others, but it wasn’t deleted until I made Don sit down and report it himself.
Which begs the question, do these people have nothing else to do with their time?
Just as on Facebook (and I’ve made this mistake myself) make sure ‘follow’ or ‘friend’ requests are legitimate before you automatically click yes.
And consider using two-factor authentication. I’ve had that on IG for quite a while. It makes it virtually impossible for someone to steal your account (I’ve seen two cases of stolen accounts just this week) because the verification goes to your phone and you confirm who you with a special code. I believe Facebook has it, too.
Okay. Not that we didn’t already know it because we’re sane people who deal with facts, but the Electoral College confirmed Joe Biden as the President-elect. I’m sure there will be more shenanigans. I have no time for them. January 20th is going to be a holiday in our home!
Stay safe.
Happy Tuesday.
What a cute Santa…A collection of all your photos would be lovely Christmas cards. I hope you are planning for the storm. I would be helping my husband now but I am sitting on the couch with ice packs on my knee and a heating pad on my lower back. Yesterday I went first thing in the morning to send my Christmas box to grandkids. Had to take my old lady cart that folds up but lets me carry bulky packages. On the way out , my glasses steamed up and I lost my footing and fell forward three steps and landed on cement sidewalk. Two men, bravely helped me up. Luckily I was wearing a heavy winter down coat but wrenched my back out. So, today I will binge on movies and tylenol. A warning…..steamed glasses, masks and rushing are deadly.
Oh no! I’m so sorry, Maria! Yes, it’s best to take it easy now and let your body heal.
Stay SAFE!
oh, no! maria …i am glad there were people nearby who could and did help
you. and i hope and will pray that you heal quickly and completely!
stay safe in every way!
kathy in iowa
Love this photo
Stay safe
Jan 2021 celebration time
Prayers
Thank you, Brenda!
Stay safe!
Is that a “Crystal” Santa? No matter — he’s darling and I love the idea of the “boat.” (Don’t doll house studio is really terrific!)
I’m impressed with instagram’s speed in taking care of your account. and you’re right — don’t these people have a life?
Please tell Don I listened to his song yesterday — several times. He has such a lovely voice and it was a beautiful song. Well done!
Hope the snow is on the low end for you. Don’t hurt yourself shoveling (says the woman recently recovered from back spasm!) Just sayin’…!
Yes, that’s a Crystal!
I will pass your kind words on to Don. Thank you for listening, Jeanie!
Stay safe.
hope your back is pain-free and recovered 100% and stays that way!
stay safe in all ways, jeanie!
kathy in iowa
Oh, I hope you don’t get the high amounts that they are forecasting. I have always said if we could get just one 24 inch snowfall for the entire season, that would be my kind of year. Just get it all over with at once. At least in 2 or 3 days the sidewalks and roads would be do-able and we wouldn’t have those worries going forward. But the many days and months of dirty snow would be pretty depressing, also, I guess. Hope you have your groceries, etc. stocked up so you can stay home for a couple of days.
That Santa looks a bit like Washington crossing the Delaware!! So sweet. And we could all use a little star shine. The bigger the better! Take care.
We’re prepped. Don just has to plug in the snowblower and charge it, which he’ll do tomorrow.
Haven’t checked the forecast again, I’ll do that tonight.
Stay safe, Chris.
hi, Claudia !! do not envy your forecast –ours is rain w/snow, sleet, freezing rain before temps warm up a little–hope wxman is wrong, ha!! how in the world has our country survived four yrs w/no leadership, no logic, no sanity, no direction???? it is beyond scary. hoping we all have some brighter days in the new year — I mean — can’t be much worse than what we have endured, can it? thks for listening — sometimes we feel overwhelmed here. stay safe, well
I understand! I sometimes feel completely overwhelmed. You can always share that feeling here, Linda.
Stay safe!
I am thinking about all the work to prepare for a storm, not sure I have it in me to do all that so it’s good I live in GA. I love that Santa so much. I usually don’t click on the friend request from an already friend unless I check it out. So much going on in cyber world. It makes me tired. Stay safe and warm my friends. Hugs!
We will. Thanks, Linda.
Stay safe!
stay safe and cozy! you’ll be living inside a real snow globe soon!
I just love Don’s studio that you’ve done. I like them all. but there is something about it.
it’s so happy. perhaps because it’s truly yours and Don’s life together.
music and dogs and light and happiness. and TALENT.
be careful. and as you say… stay safe!
and blessings to dear Maria. you can get very HURT falling like that. xoxoxo
Thank you, Tammy!
Stay safe.
Scary about the hacking. I told my husband everything you said as he has a Facebook acct. Even with all of our protections, I still get startled by how much gets thru in the inbox without going directly to junk/spam in my email program, too; just have to be really careful and don’t click.
Yes, watching that huge Mid-Atlantic/Northeastern storm that’s about to crash down on y’all. Best of luck with prep and riding it out! I hope it can be fun/exciting rather than worrisome.
Prepping here today for the first of errands tomorrow (mail, banking, etc.) since before Thanksgiving and facing it with trepidation but it can’t be helped and we are also dropping off a gift (drive-by Santa) to someone; we’d rather, though, just not be going out; so, as you’ve said, will do with EVERY precaution possible, and I’ll just be so glad to get home and out of the Covid-infested Southern Calif which is my county.
I’m conversely ‘dying’ to go to the beach and see the ocean after many weeks and the weather is clear, just lovely here; great time for a ‘drive’ (somewhat local; scenic). But there’s also always in the past year now, SO many people in their motorhomes and trailers that it can tend to alter the serenity I seek at the seashore although of course it’s understandable that folks want a safe way to get out from under the house with so much lockdown. We have a friend who’d, months and months ago, scored a far-in-advance weekend reservation for his motorhome on a popular ocean parkway (waiting, waiting), so he kept the reservation (two weeks ago) even though it was recently a cloudier weekend for beachgoing, but he said there’s a sort of ‘underground’ travel group that contacted him and offered him $100 for his 2-day reservation when it usually just costs like $30/day. Apparently you can get a reservation for your ‘rig’ through the County (county beach) for as much as a 7-day stay although these spaces are booked well in advance as said, more so of course since the pandemic; but, now, they’re coveted because it’s actually how people are LIVING, either to get away from the more virus-prone cities/urban areas indefinitely or because, sadly, this according to him, they’ve had to sell or leave/walk away from their houses (i.e., it’s already happening, with the economy; evictions and foreclosures; I know of a woman [middle-aged divorcee with health issues; fell on hard times starting in The Recession] who this happened to some years back, when she was able to still sell her ‘regular’ home and scrape out just enough money to buy an old motorhome which she then lived in but it was a hassle for her because you have to keep moving it, can’t park it on a city street for very long, etc.; really a sad circumstance; I don’t know what happened to her and hope perhaps she was eventually able to move in with one of her adult children). I guess if you could stay a week at the beach for about $200 and alternate it with other parking spots found that are ‘free’, your monthly ‘rent’ would surely be less than if you’d had a piece of SoCalif real estate where conventional rents and mortgages are always so high.
I had a real indulgence last night: My husband rented a VERY expensive movie for me as a Christmas gift called Wild Mountain Thyme with Emily Blunt, Chris Walken and Jamie Dornan, completely filmed in beautifully-green Ireland (countryside; farms), almost a fantasy but it was beautiful to look at, a whimsical romance, had me in laughs and tears; frankly, maybe because of everything harsh going on in the world, it’s why I found it sweet and delightful. Later read about it, and it got panned for not-true Irish ‘accents’, some stereotyping and unevenness but, I don’t care, it made me happy for the moments. Was just so different and ‘fresh’; filmed in the Fall of ’19 and wrapped before the pandemic. I want to watch it again when I can afford it (I still buy CDs and DVDs; I’m a dinosaur when I know everybody else does Netflix/etc.) but I guess it only just hit (vacant/closed-down?) theaters; and, for instance, Amazon prime video (the movie was based on a play).
Aforementioned actor Jamie Dornan (of the silly Fifty Shades trilogy; his character was the disturbed “Christian”) IS Irish … a ‘real life’ Irishman … born in Northern Ireland, so his ‘accent’ is definitely authentic! (I refuse to let ‘critics’ alter my joy!)
My advice is to never read reviews. They’re subjective.
That being said, I’m always picky about dialects – I can’t help it. It’s what I’ve been teaching and coaching for over 30 years!
Well, I was reading somewhere (maybe Wiki, can’t recall [Roger Ebert.com skewered it]), that the writer/director (again, this was a play, and it was Tony-nominated) defended the accents (which it seems were modeled [characters; their voices] after his own Irish relatives). He said if he’d coached the actors to speak as his relatives in Ireland sounded, no one watching could have understood-deciphered what the actors were actually saying (so I guess he toned down the thick ‘brogue’; it was intentional).
The NY Times said it’s not a film for everyone; I guess it’ll have a love/hate audience. Actor Jamie Dornan’s real-life wife did the music for the movie; apparently she’s a musician/composer. The writer & director of the film is a New Yorker (I think I read age 70) but he was, as indicated above, born into an Irish-American family. I picked up this: “John Patrick Shanley is an American playwright, screenwriter, and director. His play, Doubt: A Parable, won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the 2005 Tony Award for Best Play. He won the 1988 Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for the film Moonstruck.”
My thought for quirky-film Wild Mountain Thyme is just lighten up, will ya? It’s a little fairytale; just go with it! I wasn’t looking for anything I had to think about too hard; just wanted to have something take me away for a little while, and it did. I’ve had a few days where I simply canNOT watch one more iota of television or internet ‘news’ which is disturbing, sad, scary. It’s Christmas; I want to have something help me smile, even if it’s fleeting.
Part of what a dialect coach does is gauge how difficult a dialect might be for an audience to understand. Many, many times I have fiddled with the sounds of a difficult dialect, dropping or modifying some changes that would make it unintelligible. Those who criticize fail to realize that it isn’t real life, it’s ‘pretend.’ Films are pretend. Plays are pretend. And if, for even one second, the audience cannot understand something, then you’ve lost them. We both have great ears, due to our work in the theater. Last night we watched something that we turned off after 15 minutes because we couldn’t understand the actors. A big no no!
I’ve coached some of Shanley’s work. He’s a wonderful playwright and screenwriter. I have friends who know him personally.
Glad you enjoyed it, Vicki!
xo
It wasn’t really a hacking. It was someone who created an account and contacted people on my list of followers.
Pathetic!
Stay safe, Vicki.
I do like to see the light shining into Don’s studio! It looks so real – like a full-size studio! I really detest hackers and scammers on the internet. It is so cruel to try to take advantage or steal from others like that. Good thing you find out quickly and were able to shut them down.
Hope you get just the right amount of snow so you can enjoy its beauty without any troubles!
I hope so, too, but I’m afraid we’ll get walloped.
We’ll see!
Stay safe, Ellen!
Sweet Santa! Love the dish he’s sitting in too. Cold but sunny here in OB. King Tides were here & the ocean was wild!! Stay safe & warm in your cozy home, Claudia. Best place to be when it’s storming outside.
I’m not much of a FB user. Just” like” a few things on occasion & I have been known to voice my opinion on a few OM comments!! I’ve seen too many people get hacked, etc. No thanks!!
Oh! Your French vintage shop on Newport Ave is so pretty right now. We’ve been through there a couple of times in the past week. All decorated with such pretty lights, etc.
Could easily spend lots of $$ in there, but need to be careful. Oh well!!
Oh, I love that shop! I really miss it. But it’s been 3 or 4 years since I stopped in when Don was doing Margaritaville in La Jolla. Lori, the owner, is lovely.
Stay safe, Priscilla!
sorry you had to deal with the scammer. glad a friend found it and instagram fixed it so quickly for you.
hope the tasks are long done before the snow starts falling. sure hope you get just enough snow and no more!
sure like that arrangement and everything in it. the green adirondack chairs and red metal siding of don’s studio naturally add to the Christmas color scheme (and look great together all year around). and santa does look like he’s sailing back home. :)
no news about the mri. did call them about that, but had to leave a message. hopefully will hear results tomorrow. otherwise usual here.
hope you have a nice night and stay safe!
kathy in iowa
Hoping you get news today (Wednesday), Kathy!
Stay safe.
When I saw your Santa in the boat, I immediately started singing How’d you Like to Spend Christmas on Christmas Island? How’d you like to see Santa bring your presents in a canoe? XO
Hope you are ready for the storm. Last night when I went to bed our forecasters were saying between 6-12″ or more. I guess it will be a holiday surprise for everyone! My little tree is lost in translation (as well as a few other packages, and a few have arrived now that it’s virtually too late to mail them on to the recipients–I think it’s a good lesson not to keep buying gifts–the cost of shipping usually is more than the gift anyway, and now our poor postal service is gutted so that they can’t keep track or keep up). Anyhoo, stay safe and warm and thank you for sharing your holiday spirit with us.
We are as ready as we can be, save for charging phones and ipads and chargers. A lot of my mail has been delayed this year. I think the changes DeJoy made to the Postal Service did not help, but also the mail demands are so high this year because of the pandemic that lots of things are delayed.
Stay safe, Nora.