Check out my latest story on Constant Chatter, Grains: Got to Get You Into My Life.  There’s a link to this recipe for Simple Harvest Grains, too!

Hydra and I were going to go to the Devi’ls Punchbowl on the 5th, but when we arrived the parking lot was jam packed.  Good to see so many people enjoying the park, but we had something else in mind, so we drove another 15 minutes or so around to Big Rock Creek in the Angeles National Forest.   It was a great day for hiking up the creek bed.

Nice clear water coming off the mountains.  Hydra played with some of the rocks.

A lot of a SoCal winter is like a long Midwestern autumn.

Hydra pointed out the adventuresome driveway to this cottage.   I think it would be worth it, in the right vehicle!

I just love all the different shapes and colors in nature.

Our car waiting for us after a peaceful sojourn.  Lovely day to be alive.

This is the 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzle of Georges Seurat’s (1859-1891) “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte” (1884-1886) as it appeared on Christmas morning.

The California cousins put most of the border together while I put the finishing touches on Christmas dinner.  Then, sated and happy, they left.  Utterly abandoned me with this monster.

Finally finished on the evening of January 3, 2012.  The first part I filled in was the lake in the upper right.  The last was the green lawn at the bottom center.

I haven’t done this much of a puzzle by myself in ages.  Maybe ever.   It’s an interesting pursuit, after all.  I found myself engaging areas of my brain that don’t typically get an overt workout.  Sometimes it’s all about the big picture, how things fit into the whole.  Sometimes it’s about giving oneself over to sheer color and shape matching.

Toward the end, it amazed me how I could visualize a missing piece, scan the unplaced pieces, and pick the one I was looking for out of the pile.  Or how a random piece suddenly made sense and I could plop it right into place.

It’s interesting, too, to spend time with a famous painting in this way.  I’ve seen the original, and it’s wonderful.  But I’m not sure I appreciated exactly how many slightly varied patterns in similar colors that Seurat used until I got up close and personal like this.

Anyway….Challenged, with small victories along the way and a goal accomplished is not a bad way to transition from 2011 to 2012!

p.s.  This is my 2501st post on Any Given Sundry.  I was toying with the idea of quitting at 2500, but then I just had to tell you about this puzzle!

Riding to the staging area in the back of Antipasta's truck!

Riding toward the Rose Parade staging area in the back of Antipasta’s truck at 6:30 a.m.  Just a short drive to where we parked and walked to see the floats where they lined up for the parade.  It was the first time Hydra and I had done this.  Really interesting to see people getting ready to ride the floats, last minute attention to the floats’ engines, etc.

The faces on the clock are all organ donors.

I took almost 400 photos.  So hard to choose what to include, but I realized the ones I liked best when I was telling Kitty about them on my drive to work this morning.

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So here’s a slideshow of a couple of dozen photos, if you have a few minutes!  It was a fun morning!  Hydra and I drove home on the Angeles Crest and Angeles Forest highways, through the mountains.  Great day for it.

Remember my adventure with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives earlier this year?  Well, I wrote about it for Constant Chatter.  Check out my true confessions on the experience in my personal essay “Special Agent Training Saved My Creative Life.”

After breakfast and chat with our overnight guests, we went for a nice long walk/hike in a different direction than usual.  It was sunny but an annoyingly chilly wind was blowing, so we decided to go downhill from our place rather than up.

In cutting through an open space near where our RV is stored, we rediscovered this erosion ditch, which has gotten a LOT worse since the last time we saw it.  It’s kind of scary deep.  At least 15 feet.   Because the neighborhood just south of ours doesn’t have proper drainage and is creating this damage.  Sigh.  There’s a big culvert at one end.

There are no pumas in this crevasse, for those of you who remember The Smothers Brothers.  But the possibility was discussed.  In some detail.

Love the back light on these desert plants.

03 Hooked On Swing 1

This could be you, circa 2062.

Just a friendly reminder that whatever you get up to tonight, everyone and her three-year-old has a camera.

I love this photo. I’m not sure exactly what’s going on in this photograph, but I am pretty sure the man wearing the crown is also wearing a diaper.  This is one of my junk-shop finds.

Finished reading a charming book called Clara’s Kitchen: Wisdom, Memoriesa and Recipes from the Great Depressionby Clara Cannucciari and her grandson Christopher Cannucciari.  There is a definite tendency toward dressing everything in olive oil, garlic, salt and  pepper.   Though I don’t think kale shows up in this book, since Trader Joe’s made it easy for me to include super-healthy kale in my diet by offering it chopped and pre-washed, I’ve been trying to think of ways to use it.

For a single serving I steamed about a cup of kale in the microwave while I sautéed  three or four mushrooms in olive oil with a small clove of garlic.  Added the kale to the cast iron skillet in the last minute or two of cooking, which seems to have given it an interesting flavor.  Tossed that with the angel hair pasta and sprinkled Parmesan over it with a bit of salt and pepper.  Delicious and satisfying!

DT & JP invited us out to Adelanto for dinner and games.  No, we didn’t play Get the Guests, we played Scattergories.  It was so much fun we lost track of time and stayed till 11:30.  This is late for us!   Gorgeous drive out Pearblossom Highway.  Yummy turkey tacos at the end of the road.  Good times!

Just another evening on the edge of the Mojave Desert.

Surrounded!

Hydra and I went for a drive out to Fillmore on Wednesday to see our friend who runs the Kenney Grove campground there.  We picked up tacos on the way and had lunch at one of the picnic tables.  Beautiful weather for it, and great company.  We walked around the park feeling a little homesick (we camp here four times a year) while RL regaled us with tales of her tree trimming trials and triumphs.  She keeps this 15-acre campground like a well tended backyard/botanical garden.

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