Rare Cheese Flavor / What kind of express?

Kerry . Tara

Kerry: Rare Cheese Flavor - Yes, this really is "rare cheese" flavored orange juice. (Well, 51% juice. Maybe the other 49% is cheese.) I bought it. It's been in my fridge since yesterday. I haven't been able to psych myself up to try it yet.

Tara: What kind of Express? - I saw this in a dollar store and it took me way too long to realize that that was an "s" in "Fast" and not an "r." Also, I just noticed that I've inadvertently given my photos this week a WTF? theme.

Arc Light / That's Easy!

Kerry . Tara

Kerry: Arc Light - At Ikea I found these awesome glass vases that, if you put six of them together, form a circle. They come in six different colors, so naturally I got one of each. Today I finally bought some flowers to put in them. I had wanted *white* sweet peas and tulips, but I do like how the pink and purple turned out. I put a candle in the middle of the circle and it's really lovely how the light glows through the different colors of glass. From above, though, it just reminds me of a multicolored, flowery Iron Man chest. Iron Girly Girl, maybe?

Tara: That's Easy! - I work with my kids using educational workbooks. This was found in one of Maggie's books. Not sure what she's supposed to do here since it's kind of already done.

Stained Glass / Balls Out

Kerry . Tara

Kerry: Stained Glass - I was blown away when I cut up this orange; I've never seen one before that was sectioned in this way. I'm not thrilled with how this picture came out, but I was only able to take one shot before my son came over to the table and demanded to know why I was taking pictures of his orange, because he was hungry.

Tara: Balls Out - I'm not sure the car balls are helping to make this pink car more manly.

No I Don't / What's Outside?

Kerry . Tara

Kerry: No I Don't - I've never quite been able to figure out the point of this poster. It appears to be something along the lines of "If you think the Spice Girls are hot, you should try our Blazin' Cajun Burger! It puts those ho's to shame." The fact that cajun food was trendy around the same time as the Spice Girls adds credence to that theory. The problem is, there is no way that this poster is that old. It just hasn't aged enough. It looks brand new. So I think that the underlying message here is actually, "Hey you, pull your ass out of 1997 and come eat another f'ing burger, you fat sack of loser."

Tara: What's outside? - Every month of Maggie's first year, I would take a picture of her sitting with a big stuffed bunny so we could see how much she was growing. Now I take a photo of her with the bunny every year around her birthday. I was only able to get a few shots in before she got bored and jumped up to go look out the window for awhile. Gavin would have gotten slightly annoyed but would have stayed until I was finished taking pictures. Maggie has more of a, "I'm gonna do me, so deal with it." type of attitude. I don't where she gets that.

Contradiction / Shadow

Kerry . Tara

Kerry: Contradiction - My kids are both in swimming lessons, and this month for the first time, their classes were back-to-back instead of simultaneous. So I've been spending a lot of time at the pool - long enough to finally notice the odd placement of the "no running" sign. (There's a treadmill and a stationary bike along the wall near the diving board - for triathalon training, I would assume.)

Tara: Shadow - This is an older picture that I found on my phone. My daughter has caught whatever fever cold/flu thing I had last week along with a nasty cough that I had the week before. So most of this day was spent with a sick three year old cuddling up next to me. So this picture represents a shadow of her healthier self. Ba-da-bump!

Hexagonal /WWJStick on his truck?

Kerry . Tara

Kerry: Hexagonal - Brandon on the playground, through one of those domed plastic window thingies.

Tara: WWJStick on his truck? - Every single sticker on this truck is Jesus related. Actually there are a couple of Rescue sticker but most of them are about Jesus. My favorite is "Yo quiero Jesus?" [This is a backup picture. I am on vacation.]

Obscenity (Theme) : Graffiti / F#@$

Kerry . Tara

Kerry: Graffiti - I was all set to upload a different picture, and then I saw the one that Tara had on tap as a backup for today and I thought, hey, why not make today a theme day? I took this picture at the playground yesterday because I am making an effort to document as much of the graffiti as possible, in case I ever get around to writing a complaint letter about the lousy job that security has been doing around housing. Anyway. It's hard to take pictures of graffiti on this plastic playground stuff because of the way the light comes through it; the letters end up looking translucent and not really showing up in the picture. In this case, it looks kind of cool. (Also, if you look closely, you can see that this picture is actually on its side. I usually upload directly from my camera and I'm too lazy to put it through photoshop first to rotate it.)

Tara: F#@$ - No cussing signs at the oceanfront in Virginia Beach. [This is a backup picture. I am on vacation.]

Wispy-Puffy / Giddy Up

Kerry . Tara

Kerry: Wispy-Puffy - Clouds. How horribly unoriginal. They were really pretty, though!

Tara: Giddy Up - I thought this carousel horse was funny because it had a dead bunny and a gun hanging off of it. [This is a backup picture. I am on vacation.]

Questionable Hiring Practices / Faceoff

Kerry . Tara

Kerry: - Questionable Hiring Practices - Talk about your dead-end jobs. (Click on the picture to see it close-up. Hint: it has to do with some kind of contradiction...)

Tara: Faceoff - Our new neighbors have two dogs that they just leave on their front porch. For the most part they seem to stay there. This is their puppy that snuck over to visit my son.

And yes my son is just wearing a onesie. It's summer so he hardly wears bottoms unless we're going somewhere.

Child Care / Looking Out

Kerry (Top) . Tara (Bottom)

Kerry: Child Care - This is one of my favorite pictures that I've taken, ever. I took it shortly before we left New Orleans, and yes, this was before Hurricane Katrina. This is (was) an actual, operational, daycare center. [This is a backup entry. I am lazy.]

Tara: Looking Out - This is old. I wasn't feeling so creative yesterday.

This is my son looking out the window.

Now With Flavor! / Mini Tree

Kerry . Tara

Kerry: Now With Flavor! - We are getting on a plane at 11:30PM tonight. I bought little "juice boxes" of soymilk, in the hopes that I will be able to get them through security. (Seeing as how they're factory sealed and all.) The last time we flew out at night (before we knew that Brandon was lactose intolerant), we weren't even able to find whole milk at the airport. So I know I won't be able to find soymilk.

Anyway, I just love the way it's labeled. "New! Great Taste!" Because, you know, the old recipe tasted like bottled ass.

(By the way, I will be gone for two weeks. I have uploaded "backup" entries for each day that I'll be gone in case I can't make it to a computer.)

Tara: Mini Tree - On the normal walk my son and I do, there is a particularly wooded part. This little leaf was growing out of the sidewalk and it looked like a mini tree. I couldn't get my camera to focus on the leaf itself so the picture didn't come out exactly like I wanted but I still like it.

Shadow / Cock of the Rock

Kerry . Tara

Kerry: Shadow - I took this picture because I liked the contrast between the sunlit tree and the cloudy sky. It wasn't until afterwards that I realized that the shape of the clouds mirrors the shape of the tree almost exactly.

Tara: Cock of the Rock - We went to the bookstore yesterday and I browsed the children section. I found a cute ABC book. This one had different animals for every letter. I flipped it open and found the page for "C" and saw they chose to use the Crowned Cock of the Rock. Seriously? They couldn't have used Cat?

Revenge of the 99 Cent Store / Twisty Bamboo

Kerry (Top) . Tara (Bottom)

Kerry: Revenge of the 99 Cent Store - I have several pictures in my Flickr photostream of things I've found at the Marukai 99 cent store (cheap crap - and some steals - imported from Japan). This is a (very cool looking) bento box that I bought two of the other day. (I got one pink, one blue.) They don't actually stay closed and I have to put a rubber band around them to keep the pieces together, but I don't care. They're still the coolest thing ever. They say "feel at ease... enjoy a quiet lunch time while feeling a season. nature put a person at his ease". Awesome.

Tara: Twisty Bamboo - Kerry gave me this bamboo plant when we were both living in New Orleans and she and her husband were about to move to Hawaii. They were three stalks of twisty bamboo. When we moved from New Orleans to Memphis, I put this plant in the cupholder. I love it so much. Since Kerry has had them, there have been some changes. I had to change vases to a bigger one because they are so tall now and just recently, one of the bamboo broke. It's still alive just considerably shorter than the others. I hope the next place we get stationed, we get to drive to because I don't want to get rid of it for awhile. My dream is that someday I can give it back to Kerry when we are about to move. This means that we will live in the same city one day. That would be nice.

Branches / Engineering Wonder

Kerry . Tara

Kerry: Branches - Obviously I have a thing for plumeria trees and clouds lately. I think that plumerias might honestly be my favorite thing about Hawaii.

Tara: Engineering Wonder - This picture is not all that pretty but I find it interesting. I'm no engineer or electrician, so I don't know how important this box of wires is, but I have to wonder how effective it is to fix this broken box with lots of rouge electrical tape. Want to know the most ironic part of this? This superb craftsmanship is being displayed right here on the military base I live on. (It's probably totally illegal to take pictures of a military base and then show the Internet. Shh, don't rat me out.)

You might say that this is just a temporary solution until they got the necessary parts to finish the job. I said that too. Back in September of 2005 when I first saw it. I'm starting to think that this is really the finished product. Yay for taxes!!

That's Just Wrong / POV of a Gear

Kerry . Tara

Kerry: That's Just Wrong - We found this today on the back of a box of Pop Secret popcorn. I think it speaks for itself. It reminds me of the one episode of the Sarah Silverman Show that I saw (due to some time-zone weirdness, it was on at the same time here as 30 Rock) - the one with "Black God". But I mean, Sarah Silverman was trying to be wrong. I don't think the folks at Pop Secret were going for the same effect.

Tara: POV of a Gear - My son loves these gears. He loves to bang them together, chew on them and pretty much just hold them. He had piled them up on the coffee table when I took this shot.