WITWWW and happy halloween!

It's Halloween and it's election time! I've got a collection of blogs, videos and sites for your enjoyment. Thanks for the links friends!

Tell 5 friends video. 

This one took me a while to get into but it's timely and pretty funny!

Proper facebook etiquette blog.

Love it!

Here is an example of one of the posts:

The writings on the wallCan you please confirm as to whether it is necessary to immediately post back after a Wall post? My friends and I have fallen out over my ‘neglect’, and their ‘obsessiveness’ of this.
I would only immediately post back to make a pleasant, delicate, intelligent and refined retort. Perhaps your lack of ‘attention’ to your friends posting is a reflection on either their lack of inspiration (boring posts), or your lack of judgement to offer a clever reply.
As a suggestion, there are all kinds of things that one might say. ‘Hello’ offers a universal nice start.Though three postings to avoid are: ‘Sorry, do I know you?’, ‘Wipe your post off my Wall’, and ‘Ooo I think I left my underware at yours’.

Cake Wrecks blog

Think your wedding cake or birthday cake was the worst? Compare your disaster to these priceless confections. This site has cool cakes and bad decorating jobs.

Here are 2 of my favorites.

Good:

The van gogh

The bad: 

excerpt from the blog:

Lost in translation?

"I know what you're thinking, you crass people, you. You're just bursting to say something devastatingly witty that involves the word "crap" right now, aren't you? Uh-huh; I knew it.
Alright, then, rather than stifle it, let's just get this all out of systems, shall we? It'll be cathartic. Turn to the person next to you...what, there's no one nearby? Ok, go get someone. I'll wait.Ok, are there at least 2 of you here now? Good. Now, look at the cake, turn to the person(s) next to you, and make all the obvious, disgusting, and profane jokes you can think of. You get extra points for saying the exact same thing at the same time. Running low on material? Try guessing what that inscription says, or what occasion the cake was for. (For example: Just-Found-Out-My-Boyfriend-Is-Cheating-On-Me Day, with an inscription that includes the word "eat".)All done? Got it all out of your system? Can we discuss this like rational adults now?
Nah, I didn't think so, either."

Graph jam blog

Can't really explain it. It's graphs that diagram pop culture things? Pretty funny! This one makes me laugh because I just bought another laser pen yesterday. For my cats.

Pumpkin sculpting

Amazing!

Want to live on the Shire?

This is for you, Jashley and Grant. I could TOTALLY see you guys living here!!

Gin the Dancing Dog from Britain's got talent.

This dog is so awesome!

That's all I got for  now! I'll have photos from the weekend... after the weekend! We had a costume contest at work and my department won again!

Falling in love with Fall!

The past 2 weekends have been so much fun. I got to have friends come and stay with me! That doesn't happen too often, so I was really excited. I've got some photos to share--offf course. :-)

First though, I wanted to show y'all Alfred's latest Pierre-proof spot--the top of the refrigerator. I walked in the house to see him perched atop one of the higher spots in my house. Pierre's maximum altitude is the coffee table.

Alicia hung out with me weekend before last, and we had a great time. We played the piano, watched Northanger Abbey, ran errands, went to see Willy and played with the cats.

The highlight of the weekend was getting to see Michelle Branch at the State Fair of Texas. If you have known me for any length of time, especially the high school days, you know that Michelle is one of my top 5 favorite artists, and I wore out her cds. I'm pretty sure i've listened to the Spirit Room more than any other cd I own, know all the words to all the songs and her music has gotten me through all of life's romantic highs and lows. Zach and I saw her last year at Billy Bob's with her duet partner in the Wreckers, but I was sadly disappointed that she didn't play even one of her solo songs. 

This was NOT the case at the State Fair. Lucky for us, she delivered a solo acoustic concert of all her older hits and some new ones coming soon. I loved her updated versions of my favorites, and I was so happy that she played almost all the songs I love the most! I'm so glad Alicia and I got to go!

This past weekend, my friends Faith and Damon came to visit.(sorry! I think I'm done with the blog links already!) These talented graphic artists both like to take photos, and so we spent some time checking out what Dallas and Fort Worth had to offer in the way of architecture. 

Here's Faith and Damon taking photos of the skyline. I'll do some PS work, Faith, to get ride of those powerlines... :-) I just wanted to show you!

Shooting in the evening/night made me really want to get a tripod. There were so many shots I would have liked to have taken, but I made do with leaning against things. Here's my Dallas skyline pic.

Zach was keeping watch over my car, but the light was perfect for a silhouette. He was in his suit for work, not to model for me this time. ;-)

After dinner at El Fenix, we went over to Victory Park. I was surprised at how well this photo came out sans tripod!

The next day, Zach and I  went to Six Flags Over Texas theme park with Faith and Damon--thanks to their season pass coupons! But first, Pierre got some more love. What a chunk he is! Also, I have to tell y'all that my piano definitely got a lot of use because Faith is an amazing pianist. :-)

I'm a big chicken, but I braved all the rides yet again. Faith has always been able to get me to ride scary coasters, ever since I was little!

After our hard-hitting theme park trip, the four of us tucked into burgers at Al's burger joint in arlington. I didn't bring my camera into the park--good thing--so here is the proof of our excursion. :-)

Here are Faith and Damon. Aren't they just precious? ;-P

We ended our fun day with a double feature of rented scary movies. yikes!

That's all I've got for now folks! This weekend should be super fun, so I'm sure I'll have more photos in the next few days! Hope you have a happy Halloween!

Back in the saddle

Willy got his special laminitis-preventing tennies reset this week and I finally got the go ahead to ride him. So tonight was the first time we saddled up in several months! I turned him out in the arena to blow off some steam before I got on because he's been raring to go for weeks. He spooks at every little thing on our walks. Last week, my 24 year old ranch pony stopped dead in his tracks, then ran sideways away from---2 black cows he's seen before. So, I was glad to let him snort and buck and race around before I got on for sure! We just walked and trotted for half an hour, but riding a good horse just does something for the soul. Willy loves to be ridden. He was so happy when we were done! I think he hated not having a job and being cooped up for all this time. 

It's funny how priorities can shift. I've had Willy in DFW with me almost as long as I've lived here(nearly 2 years) and this past year I just got really busy. I'd go see Willy maybe once a week and I wouldn't always ride. Besides always having a full schedule that made trips to the barn difficult, I just got bored riding without a competitive goal. There's only so much tuning up I could do when the horse is trained as much as he is, and I always felt guilty for not going out there more. But when Willy foundered, I realized that I can make it out to the barn more often and I enjoy it. It's been a while since I've ridden, and I didn't feel like I missed the riding part all that much until I found out I could ride him today and I got back in the saddle. I'd forgotten that this is as much a part of me as anything. Isn't that ironic, since I spend my workdays researching, writing about and photographing horses? I'm so glad I have a horse like my Williford, and I'm looking forward to his recovery so we can get after the cattle again. I'm convinced that's his favorite activity.

Do any of you have a hobby or pursuit that you feel is really a part of you?

Photo magic

I'm one step closer to getting my photos to look how I want them and it is so exciting! I took some photos recently but was lamenting at my inefficient workflow to my friend Faith when she recommended I try Adobe Lightroom to manage my photo processing. I'm totally in love! And I am so happy to present to you the results of my last few shoots! Lightroom makes everything that was hard about photoshop basic processing easier. I'm also really glad to have a boyfriend who'll let me take his picture, otherwise you would be looking at a whole bunch of photos of my cats and horse.

First off, I have to tell you how excited I was about this shoot. Zach has his own suit company: D-Jones Collections. His alumni university is writing a story about him and they needed photos. I figured downtown Dallas would be ideal to showcase his suits, so we set out early Saturday morning. I'm very please with the photos, but my model boyfriend does help with his Zoolander talent. :-) So what do you think? Note: these are not the photos going in the magazine! I just had a lot of good ones.

Whew! That's a lot of hotness right there! 

I did a photo shoot last week with Zach to get some holiday-esque photos. If anyone in the DFW area is interested, I will take photos of you and your family(pets included if you wish) to put on your Christmas cards or to use as holiday gifts. For $35 you'll get a short photo shoot and a disc of high quality photos. I can even recommend places to get your photos developed and cards made. If you don't know it already, you can e-mail me at abbyw06@gmail.com. Here are some more photos with Zach and his dogs.

WITWWW?

I found some great stuff online this week! Check it out!

Robocat

This is adorable. I wonder what lil' Alfred and Pierre would do with that robot. Thanks for the link Faith!

Holocaust love story

My friend Megan sent this to me. I think it is a really sweet story!

Costume ideas

There are some really great ideas on that site! One example: 

Chia pet: Wrap yourself in duct tape so that the sticky part is facing out, then roll around on the lawn.

Sad Guys on Trading Floor blog

So sad, yet so funny. I borrowed the photos and the captions from this blog-- check it out for yourself!

Oh my! I knew that Jim was going to propose to Pam eventually but at that gas station... in the rain? SWOON!

I'm no financial genius, but I'm guessing that the stock market is run by various sizes and colors of men with 60s-era phones attached to their ears.

*faint*

YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG.

Oh. My. God. Do you see what Philip is wearing today? It's a financial crisis, honey, not a fashion catastrophe.

Yeah, so I told the salesguy that I only really needed one TV but he was all like, "Why stop there?" So one thing led to another and... yeah... here's my wall 'o TVs.

Thank you for tuning in to What In The World Wide Web. :-) See ya next time!

Pisa tourists and Florence friends

The day has finally arrived! I've been putting off writing this post because I knew it would be a long one. :-) But in the last few weeks, I've finished reading both The Monster of Florence-- a true story of a serial killer in the 1970s in Florence, and The Birth of Venus-- a historical novel based in the Renaissance era in Florence. Both books actually mention some of the same areas in Florence and I learned a lot more history about the city. I wish I'd read up more before we went!

After our fun few days in the Cinque Terre, Zach, Jonathan, David and I boarded a train for Florence. But first, we stopped in Pisa. The architecture was amazing. I loved it. But the tourists were way worse than even Venice! Yes, yes, we were tourists too, but it was madness! :-) I tried hard to avoid them in my photos though. Here's the famous tower:

The lawn of the Field of Miracles was immaculate, with signs in certain areas telling people to keep off the grass in several languages. Which made it kind of sad to see people tramping all over the grass after stepping over the fence. As an Aggie trained to stay off the grass at the MSC, I was outraged! :-) Below is the Baptistry.

This seemed to be the official pose for tourists in Pisa, so we figured, why not!

After all the obligatory "hold up the tower" photos, we got ready to board a bus to get back to the train station. Zach had to run to get us tickets for the bus, but while we were waiting, Jon and I did our own impressions of this random mailbox.We made it to the train station on time--thank you Zach-- and arrived in Florence during the "golden hour" which would be perfect for photos, but we were starving so we grabbed some pizza. Mine was the frutti di mare kind, so it had calamari, shrimps and crab on it. It was really good! We boarded a bus to go to Zach's friend Massimo's house in Fiesole, and I found this beyond cute Vespa. I think I'm in love. ;-)Fiesole is just north of Florence, in the Tuscan hills. Our short bus ride dropped us off and I ran to get photos of the view. The light was fading, but I hiked down to a clear spot and started snapping. The most prominent dome in the photo is the famous Duomo of Florence. 

On the other side of the hill where Fiesole's town square is located, you have a completely difference view of the countryside. We were waiting for Massimo and his girlfriend Stine to pick us up, so I kept taking photos.

Stine and Massimo rented the bottom floor of this adorable house. Check out their door!

This is the view from their front patio where Jonathan and Zach slept.

Their front gate. Zach took these photos.

That evening, Stine and Massimo barbequed for us. We had sausage, potatoes, salad and delicious wine. Zach met Massimo when he studied abroad in Florence for 6 weeks a few years ago. They became great friends, so it was really cool to meet him and Zach enjoyed catching up with his friend.

The next day, Massimo had to work and Stine needed to plan their future trip to Vietnam the day after we were leaving, so Zach, my brothers and I headed out to explore Florence. We walked everywhere that day, and it was a lot of walking! I was still feeling under the weather, so we didn't rush anywhere though. Zach found the house he lived in while he studied and showed it to us. He said he had parties and kicked his soccer ball around on this patio.

Walking around, I discovered the car I've decided I really really want: a Fiat 500. It's so beautiful and tiny and I loveeee it! I can't wait for them to come to the US. I came home and researched it because I fell in love. Please Fiat, give me my 500! I also found out that Luigi from the Pizar movie "Cars" is based on the original Fiat 500. Adorable!Don't know what this statue is, but I thought it was really cool so I asked the boys to watch for cars and took a photo from the middle of the road. :-)

Here's another car we all liked. I don't really know what it was called, but it's pretty sleek!After some more walking around, we went to the Accademia gallery. We waited nearly an hour in line because we didn't listen to Rick Steves to book a reservation beforehand(we didn't know when exactly we'd be able to go) and we couldn't make reservations the day before because it was Sunday. The line took much less time than we thought, and we only melted for a little while in the heat outside. :-) It was totally worth it because we were able to see Michelangelo's David. We weren't allowed to take any photos inside, but I have to tell you I was blown away much more than I expected. It's incredible! Also in that museum is the statue that is on the cover of The Monster of Florence book.

Here's one of the photos I took of the Duomo-- the Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore. It was mentioned alot in both the books I read! To the left is the facade, the center is the Dome and the right is the bell tower. I loved the bell tower the most! I read somewhere that when the church was being built in the years beween 1296 and 1436, there was no technology to create a dome of this size, but they built the opening anyway, trusting that someone would come along who could do it. During that time, Filippo Brunelleschi was born and won a contest to design the dome. Funded by the Medici family, this piece of architecture was revolutionary!After shopping in the market around the Duomo for a while, we met up with Stine and Massimo. We headed over to the Palazzo Vecchio where we found an outdoor replica of the David and lots of other statues. I didn't like the replica near as much as the original. :-) Near there is the Piazza della Signoria, where we found this statue of Perseus with the head of Medusa. I was intruiged by the detail! Look at that hair!

 

Right nearby was a long courtyard that I've since learned is part of the Uffizi Gallery. It had a lot of statues along the walls of famous Florentines. I don't know who this guy is, but I swear his eyes are alive. Uber creepy!

This was a "live" statue. He was really funny so I had to get a photo with him.

As you walked through the courtyard, you could hear angelic voices echoing all around you. This group below sang the whole time we were there and it really made the atmosphere something special!

At the end of the courtyard a bride and groom were taking wedding photos with the Arno river behind them. The whole area was just beautiful.

I was so happy to be able to experience the city Zach fell in love with. 

As we all walked around Florence, we passed this building. I don't know what it is, but I loved how the light was shining.We headed back to Fiesole because the final day of the town festival was happening that evening. We all decided to go. Here is the view along the road we walked up to get to the festival.

I know this photo is blurry, but it's another view of Florence behind us!

Zach took this photo. Below is the festival where we met up with some of Zach and Massimo's friends. 

We had the food and drinks from the region, listened to live music and just hung out with a bunch of people from Fiesole. Here is our table with Massimo(wearing yellow), Stine(right behind him) and friends.

The next day, we had to say good bye and headed on to Milan!