Thousand Dollar Weaver

#NatureTwinning Part 34: Brought to you by the birds and the color pink

Columbine--Tuesday, 2/13/18

Today's outfit formula: black and white plus one color, a salmon-y pink for Valentine's Eve.  I doubled down on birds on this one with a lovebird print blouse and a peacock pendant.

Outfit cost per wear (OCPW): $14.81

It feels a bit creepy but appropriate posting a photo of the flower columbine after the Florida school shooting that has brought other shootings--Sandy Hook, Columbine--back to our thoughts.  At the time of the massacre at Columbine HS, I didn't even know that columbine was a type of flower.  I'm of the generation that will always think of columbine primarily as a term for a school mass shooting.

Missouri Botanical Garden

Salvadori's Weaver--Wednesday, 2/14/18

For Valentine's Day, instead of doing a major pink/red thing, I decided to go very sedate with the background outfit and let a statement scarf do a pink splash. OCPW: $16.20

The birds on my scarf are some kind of fictional Old World sparrow-bunting, and since the Reverse Inspiration has not yet caused this bird to appear in the wild, we will have to substitute a different bird: the Salvadori's weaver (aka Juba weaver, or you could just call him Sal) from the Horn of Africa.

Henry Doorly Zoo

In other news...For my sister's consideration, and the amusement of those of us not about to give birth, realistic birth announcements.

Today's Half-Assed Book Review:

Veronica Mars: The Thousand Dollar Tan Line by Rob Thomas

Did you know that the creator of the TV show Veronica Mars has written two books as well?  This one is, well, very like the show--lots of snark, a strong dose of southern California culture at its most annoying, the whole noir Nancy Drew in a sexy costume worn with an eye-roll.  Veronica is 10 years older than in the show, but not appreciably different as a character, so you know what you're dealing with.

However, the mystery itself was pretty weak sauce.  The premise was promising enough--college girls on spring break start going missing, a national TV personality is warning people to stay away from the dangers of the Neptune scene, and Veronica is hired by the head of the local business bureau to find the girls and save the local economy--but Veronica did not bring her A game to solving the mystery.  There were multiple times I was sputtering in my head: But, but, but...isn't it obvious that...Come on, V, get your brain gear!  I thought Mac let us down on the cyber-investigation front as well.

There was also one big hyper-implausible development, but I was like, OK, I guess I'll grant you that.  But it cost.

Another caveat: I was a bit confused by the fact that there was a lot in the early chapters outlining Veronica's return to Neptune as an adult that was confusing to me--why wouldn't you start the book with all those major events instead of giving what feels like a recap?  Then it occurred to me that I haven't seen the Veronica Mars movie yet so I looked that up and yep, the movie sets up the situation in the book.  So if you were planning to see the movie, you should probably do that first because the first few chapters of this book is a big-ass spoiler.  But I don't think there's any confusion if you skip straight to the book.

Nevertheless, I believe fans of the show will find it a quick and entertaining, if sometimes exasperating, read.

Bedtime Hacks

#NatureTwinning Part 33

Wild Butterfly and Blue Flower at African Grasslands--Friday, 2/9/18

This blouse keeps challenging me with new ways to wear it, so I decided jeans, a navy scarf, and leopard print smoking slippers was a good Friday option.  I do ascribe to the concept that leopard print is a neutral, but admit to feeling a little twinge of happy matchy feeling when I saw that the orange-ish tone of the shoes brought out the yellow centers in the flowers.

Outfit cost per wear (OCPW): $28.09

Blue flowers for the win!  With a bonus (possibly painted lady) butterfly to match my shoes.

Henry Doorly Zoo

Something Tells Me--Monday, 2/12/18

Sometimes your Monday feels like it needs to be another Friday, and it's going to be all of 15 F at some warm midpoint of the day you won't be outside, so welcome to the jeans, sweater, quilted vest + scarf outfit formula.  On a sad note, when I was leaving work, I did momentarily think that it was Friday before reality came crushing back.  Waaaaah.

OCPW: $8.17

Upon seeing these palm trees...

Los Angeles Arboretum

Robert said:

I think he's right.

In other news...For fans of the "self experimentation / I did this crazy thing for a week/month/whatever so I could write a story about it" genre of news, here's one woman's experience with the bedtime routines of successful people.  Do you do any of these things on the regular?

Plus Ants

#NatureTwinning Part 32

Stanley Crane at Red Rocks Antelope Yards--Wednesday, 2/7/18

Another outfit featuring the marvelous headless crane sweater.  When they said 15% off, I thought they meant 15% off the price, not off the crane!  Anyway, "headless crane" feels like some kind of weird Sleepy Hollow mashup between Ichabod Crane and the Headless Horseman.

Outfit cost per wear (OCPW): $15.48

Not to be confused with the railroad executive with the same name, this Stanley crane (aka Blue crane aka paradise crane aka Grus paradisea aka Anthropoides paradisea) is the national bird of South Africa.  I know it's just a trick of the light, but this one looks like it has cataracts or cloudy blind eyes or some kind of strange zombie eyes...or maybe it's a statue.

St Louis Zoo

Fire Ants From Fallout 3--Thursday, 2/8/18

This fun blazer purchased at one of the thrift store 88 cent sales I attended with my mom is still going strong.  Even though I am a sucker for a tipped blazer, for my style, it's a bit distinctive/memorable for frequent wearing, but it doesn't take much (like, really, one wear) for the 88 cents to be worth it.  Purchased in December 2014, worn 5 times, cost per wear = $0.18.

OCPW: $7.04

I have been completely unable to figure out what part of the garden these fire ant sculptures are from or any information about them (both the garden's own website and Google image search have let me down.  Google's best guess for this image? "Animal."  Um, thanks?).

My sense it that in some parts of the garden, they do seasonal displays, so perhaps this one was up for a while, then disappeared.

In any case, of course they reminded me of the fire ants in Fallout 3, just not as ugly or as dangerous.

Missouri Botanical Gardens

In other news...This Buzzfeed article about what plus size clothes look like on actual plus size women was amusing.  The snarky commentary is spot on.  It's weird how even the texture of the clothing looks totally different (i.e., acceptably matte rather than superhero shiny) on the models.  We know they photoshop the hell out of the pictures in online stores, but it's clearly even more all-encompassing than I'd imagined.

Drivetrain Malfunction

#NatureTwinning Part 31

September Splendour--Monday, 2/5/18

Some Mondays are all, Go bright or go home.  I didn't go home until after work (and that was a bit of an adventure due to the revisitation of the Drivetrain Malfunction, discussed below), but I did wear a very bright ensemble to work.  Defying all that is right and holy, I even put a cobalt sweater into this mix, instead of a more reasonable white or cream sweater, even though there isn't another bit of cobalt to be seen here.  But in the dark it looked close enough to navy to pass, so that was that.

Outfit cost per wear (OCPW): $16.04

This is a variety of the pink silk floss tree of South America.  Dazzling flowers with a nectar that attracts insect pollinators and hummingbirds but trunk and branches covered in prickles that require "safety buffer zones" to protect people and pets from injury.  Please view this photo from a prudent distance.

Los Angeles Arboretum

Sleeping Snow Leopard at Cat Complex--Tuesday, 2/6/18

To counteract Monday's ocular assault, Tuesday's outfit was much more sedate, depending on subtle pattern and texture mixing for visual interest.  Let's see...silky top, slightly nubbly cardigan, smooth leopard print scarf, mini check pants, rough-textured striped socks, and shiny fabric shoes with contrasting ribbon.  And all in somber shades of grey, black, white, and dark green.

OCPW: $18.81

For gods' sake, she's wearing a leopard scarf, will she finally bring out some more big cats?  Too many pink flowers, ugly aquatic beasts, and assorted hoofstock.  We want charismatic megafauna of the feline variety!

OK, fine, how is this then...an adorable dozing snow leopard, lolling about on his back with his giant soft paw propped up, his ears smooshed, and his white furry belly all exposed?

Henry Doorly Zoo

But you know, if you're kind of missing some of my uglier animals, you can always check out this "ugliest animals on earth" photo gallery.  (Axolotl, ugly animal 6 in the slide show, was covered in #NatureTwinning Part 3!)

In other news...I mentioned back in late February 2016 that I'd gotten a "drivetrain malfunction" message on my car, but that it went away the next time I started the car and didn't return.

Well, then in early February 2017, I got the message again, only it didn't go away after restarting the car.  But because the car was still drivable, I started driving home. 

Very close to my apartment (which is only 5 minutes away from work), it developed an engine oil with stop driving immediately type message.  I got into the parking garage, then we had it towed to the shop and they fixed it.

Fast forward to early February 2018 (I believe one year to the day) since the previous time and it did the exact same thing again--drivetrain malfunction, then engine oil message.  We took it to the shop AGAIN and the mechanics verified from the computer log that it was the exact same series of errors as happened one year earlier.  They conferred with BMW central because it was a repeat issue, and they ended up replacing the cylinder head (which was different from last year, though I can't recall exactly what it was and am too lazy to look it up--crankshaft? camshaft? drive shaft?).

I've read online that the drivetrain malfunction is a pretty generic message and that it can happen when something goes wrong (or your car thinks something is wrong) and your car is trying to "protect itself."  I've read about it being a problem with everything from a software issue fixed by getting it updated to bad fuel injector, fuel pump, turbo actuator gate, and a bunch of random things that I don't recognize.

I wonder if it's cold weather related in some way because February is definitely the coldest month of the year, and my car sits out in the work parking lot in below 0 F temperatures during the day (at least it sits in the garage at night, where it's significantly warmer).

Anyway, I'm hoping that this recent fix (still under warranty) keeps me going for AT LEAST a year.  I'm nervous about what will happen when the car is no longer under warranty and I have to pay to get it fixed!

Painting Rhizomes and Amphiuma

#NatureTwinning Part 30:  Brought to you by cold-weather blazers

Pink Water Lily Close Up--Thursday, 2/1/18

I have been so pleased with this velvet blazer.  When you have winters as long as we do, you...well I...get tired of dark, drab wintry colors, so it's nice to have something that is completely appropriate to the weather but a bit more bright and spring-y.  I'm not 100% sold on this blouse/blazer/scarf combo, but this jacket + skirt duo is putting the win in winter.

Outfit cost per wear (OCPW): $10.43

Huzzah for more bright pink flowers.  Looking at this photo, I realized that I'd had no idea what the center of a water lily looks like.

So I looked up water lilies and laughed my way through the "description" of Nymphaeaceae in Wikipedia, which I will share here for your edification:

"The Nymphaeaceae are aquatic, rhizomatous herbs. The family is further characterized by scattered vascular bundles in the stems, and frequent presence of latex, usually with distinct, stellate-branched sclereids projecting into the air canals. Hairs are simple, usually producing mucilage (slime). Leaves are alternate and spiral, opposite or occasionally whorled, simple, peltate or nearly so, entire to toothed or dissected, short to long petiolate), with blade submerged, floating or emergent, with palmate to pinnate venation. Stipules are either present or absent. Flowers are solitary, bisexual, radial, with a long pedicel and usually floating or raised above the surface of the water, with girdling vascular bundles in receptacle. Sepals are 4-12, distinct to connate, imbricate, and often petal-like. Petals lacking or 8 to numerous, inconspicuous to showy, often intergrading with stamens. Stamens are 3 to numerous, the innermost sometimes represented by staminodes. Filaments are distinct, free or adnate to petaloid staminodes, slender and well differentiated from anthers to laminar and poorly differentiated from anthers; pollen grains usually monosulcate or lacking apertures. Carpels are 3 to numerous, distinct or connate. Fruit is an aggregate of nuts, a berry, or an irregularly dehiscent fleshy capsule. Seeds are often arillate, more or less lacking sperm."

That clears up any lingering questions, right?

I clicked on the link to rhizome and learned that they are also called "creeping rootstalks," which is a term I just love for a thing I don't really understand.

I'm pretty much like: Plants, what the hell?

Missouri Botanical Garden

Two Toed Amphiuma--Friday, 2/2/218

More olive and navy, which makes me feel like it's fall again.  Spring, fall, any season but winter, I guess.  I tried my olive T + olive blazer combination for the first time, and I approve.  It seems appropriate that I followed up my velvet blazer with my corduroy blazer as I work through my small collection of "jackets it will eventually get too warm to wear."

OCPW: $10.63

From water lilies to slippery aquatic salamanders of the southeastern US is a bit of a leap.  But the amphiuma won't be leaping himself, since he has four tiny, useless little legs.  Apparently these guys are commonly called "congo eels" or "conger eels" even though (1) they are amphibians, not fish (eels are fish), and (2) the actual congerA eel is a marine (ocean-dwelling) critter, whereas these salamanders live in stagnant swamps, bayous, and (eek) drainage ditches.

Cincinnati Zoo

In other news...another Half-Assed Book Review.

The Last Painting of Sarah de Vos by Dominic Smith

After reading a lot of genre fiction lately, it was nice to read a bit of literary fiction again.  The story is suspenseful, but it is not a whodunit in which you feel obligated to figure out what happened.

This book flips around among 3 settings:  Holland in the 1600s, when Sarah de Vos is doing her thing; 1950s NYC, when an art history PhD student encounters the panting; and 21st century Australia, when the student-now-professor encounters the panting again.  The switching around among the settings and points of view is not at all abrupt or difficult to follow as can often be the case--even if every transition is not immediately smooth-feeling, it quickly becomes apparent why the story is told in the order it is.  I liked the way the story was structured very much.  I preferred the 1600s and 1950s parts of the story to the modern piece; while the latter was necessary for making the story cohere, less time could have been spent there, I think.

Both the female protagonists are likable.  The painter character is better developed than the art historian.

The mood of the story goes like this:  Very sad, interesting interspersed with bits of kind of dull, interesting-er, kind of sad again.

To compare it to its obvious counterparts, I liked this book better than Girl with a Pearl Earring and not as much as The Goldfinch.  Still, I would recommend it overall.

Red River Education

#NatureTwinning Part 29

Red River Hog Bathing at Rivers Edge--Tuesday, 1/30/18

I love this combination of navy striped top and floral scarf.  It wasn't nearly warm enough to wear that on its own (high 27 F), so I put this dress length cardigan with it, and was pleased to tie in with the beige color on the scarf.  I don't wear beige very much at all, so matching that element of this scarf is not a common thing.  But of course I am happy with pattern mixing + matchy-matchy in one outfit.

Outfit cost per wear (OCPW): $11.75

This beast isn't named after a place called the Red River; it's a reference to the fact that it's a red colored hog (though dusty enough in this photo to look more beige) that lives in the African rainforests near rivers or swamps.

St Louis Zoo

Bufflehead at Upper Newport Bay--Wednesday, 1/31/18

Another day, another black and white bird blouse + tipped blazer outfit, this time with a dark purple skirt for a low-contrast combination.

OCPW: $19.44

I was very pleased with how this (wild) bufflehead photo turned out--you can really see the iridescent purple and green on his head.  The white feathers look so soft yet crisply snowy white...which is entirely inappropriate given that he is wintering in southern California.  Buffleheads can be challenging to capture because they love to dive, dive, dive, and dive some more, but this one was very cooperative.  I guess he was just feeling that laid back California vibe.

Upper Newport Bay Nature Preserve

In other news...A really depressing article about how screwed K-12 education in Oklahoma is right now.

Escape from the Ice Palace

I went to work today and didn't have to cross a picket line because the teachers union settled their contract with the district early Monday morning, canceling the strike that would have started today.  The details are not yet known, but I have a bad feeling about this, as the man said.

#NatureTwinning Part 28

Displaying Peacock--Friday, 1/26/18

Simple sweater + jeans with a high contrast scarf and fun shoes (leopard print Oxfords) for easy living Friday.

Outfit cost per wear (OCPW): $9.39

The Los Angeles Arboretum has over 200 Indian Peafowl, a species that was initially imported by the owner of a ranch (that is now part of the arboretum) in 1879.  I think I photographed about a dozen of them over the course of our visit, never quite getting the result I desired.  But just before we left, a peacock decided to reward my diligent efforts with this glorious display.  Magnificent!

Los Angeles Arboretum

Winter Carnival Ice Palace--Monday, 1/29/18

Over the weekend, while Robert was visiting his mom in TX and seeing all the animals (rabbits at the stock show, rodeo, Fossil Rim, etc.), I took a long Pokemon Go walk and visit to the ice palace that was constructed for Winter Carnival...which I then continued to celebrate by going to work on Monday wearing a wintry black and grey outfit with a long scarf the same color as the ice palace.  What's weird to me about this is that the outfit had been pre-planned for months, well before I knew about the ice castle or had any intention of going.  One of my more inspired Reverse Inspirations of late.

OCPW: $8.03

The ice palace was actually pretty impressive.  It was fun to meander through.

I even found the ice block with the walleye frozen in it.

In other news...Historically, my desire to do an escape room has fluctuated depending on how much the idea of it triggered anxiety about being locked into a room (I realize that they will in fact let you out whenever you want).  But it was pretty much destroyed by watching the Big Bang Theory episode in which the group solves the puzzles in an escape room in 6 minutes after spending $200 for the experience.  I guess my mom and I will stick to playing the Mystery Case Files series of games, which is much less physically anxiety-producing, more challenging, cheaper, and keeps you occupied for a good bit of time.

But even less appealing than the zombie / haunted house / prison cell / science lab / pirate ship style of escape room is any of these "realistic" escape rooms!

There are a lot of candidates, but perhaps my most dreaded realistic escape room is the "in a room of strangers at a networking event where there is nothing to do or look at except talk to people you don't know and probably don't have anything obviously in common with."  Well, I mean, that or the room of cockroaches. UGH.