Picture of the Day for 2/22/2011. By the end of the year, I suspect I will have photographed every square inch of my dad's assisted living facility since I spend so much time there. The hallways are decorated with nostalgic displays of vintage clothing and photographs from the 30s and 40s- about the time many of the residents would have been young men and women. I've always liked the outfit pictured above. It's something I would wear.
Picture of the Day for 2/21/2011. I have frequently used this blog as an instrument of evil by ruthlessly taunting friends and family members. Things have escalated as I've now been asked to taunt one of my readers by proxy. I took my friend Suzanne to my favorite boutique where I purchase a lot of my clothing. She bought some shoes that I already own and which she has coveted for the past several months. Sharla- Suzanne wants you to know that she and I are both in possession of these really cute shoes and you're not.
Picture of the Day for 2/20/2011. I've been spending a lot of time visiting with my dad in his bedroom since he is mostly bedridden now. I've always liked the pictures of me and my sisters he's had hanging on the wall- first at his house and now at his apartment at the assisted living facility.
Picture of the Day for 2/19/2011.
I'm going to post a couple of images that will make your head explode due to the following reasons:1- Overwhelming cuteness. My friend Judy's husband brought home a Great Dane puppy (yes- this massive dog is only a few months old and will surely grow much larger in the coming months) named May. May has already consumed the living room furniture. 
2- Bafflement. I was standing behind this woman at a store this afternoon. Why would anyone do this to their hair on purpose??????
Picture of the Day for 2/18/2011. I have a friend who sells a lot of books on eBay. With each auction, he always seems to get at least one high-maintenance winning bidder. He forwarded this email from his latest high-maintenance customer and I've been chuckling over it all day. There were some subsequent email exchanges between my friend and the bidder and let's just say the transaction ended very badly.
(Sorry- the image is kind of small. You'll need to click on the photo to enlarge it.)
Picture of the Day for 2/17/2011. My sisters and I visited my dad this afternoon. He had a hard time staying awake, but was content to be in the company of his daughters and have his hand held. The three of us girls rotated seats and each took a turn holding his hand. It was a very tender visit.
Watching my dad fade away is breaking my heart.
We are moving into what I believe is our 147th consecutive month of winter. We enjoyed a couple of positively balmy days in the 50s (trust me- that's balmy for Salt Lake this time of year), only to be slammed with a major storm front that hit this evening. I had to drive home in the snow; my maximum speed on the freeway was about 40MPH.
In the spirit of posting mostly blurry pictures on my blog in 2011, here's a fuzzy one I took of the snowplow driving in front of me tonight. The plow was throwing up a huge plume of snow about 20 feet in the air. I tried to capture the image since it was a pretty interesting sight, but unfortunately, this is the best I could do. Driving in a blinding snowstorm is not conducive to picture-taking.
Picture of the Day for 2/16/2010. If you read my blog last year, you know that I suffered a few embarrassing wardrobe mishaps. I narrowly averted another embarrassing one today. At the last minute before leaving for work, I realized I had not removed the size sticker from the front of a new sweater I was wearing. I'm glad I noticed. Phew.
Picture of the Day for 2/15/2011. I'm guessing this moldy bread is past its prime. What do you think? I just noticed the sad state of this loaf of bread. That should tell you how little time I spend in my kitchen. One of the perils of being a single woman who doesn't spend much time at home is that most of the food I purchase tends to spoil before I have a chance to eat it. I have a fanciful image of the food quavering in fear on the shelves of the grocery store, hoping I'll pass it by since it knows that the Merrill household is where food goes to die a sad, lonely death.
Picture of the Day for 2/13/2011. I should start calling this blog the "Assisted Living Chronicles." I've been spending a lot of time with my dad lately since he's not doing well at all. The residents of his assisted living facility provide a lot of interesting material for my "picture of the day" photos. I'm finding that human behavior doesn't change much, no matter how old you get. There are cliques and gossip and intrigue. The women at this table are BFFs of the highest order. Shave a few decades off of them and you'd see these high-spirited women sitting at a high school cafeteria together, talking about boys and fashion and getting into mischief. I was actually witness to a food fight these ladies started. I'm just glad I was out of range of the carnage.
Picture of the Day for 2/12/2011. I am not neurotic. At least for the most part. I'm starting to experience a little bit of worrisome OCD though when it comes to clothes hangers. I hate using a mismatched assortment of clothes hangers when I do laundry. I prefer to use the clear plastic hangers only, but currently I don't have a sufficient number of them for all my clothes. Tonight I had to use a combination of the clear plastic hangers with the white plastic hangers. Oh the horror! I joke, but it kind of bugged me.I finally tackled the dirty clothes from last week's trip to Florida. The smell of cigarette smoke when I opened up my suitcase was so strong it nearly reached up and slapped me in the face. I believe the shady motel where I stayed in Stuart requires you to be a smoker. I suspect I would have been fined if they had discovered I don't smoke.One last comment about the fascinating topic of laundry- as you can see from the photo above, yes, I do have the ugliest laundry room on the face of the planet.
Picture of the Day for 2/11/2012. I've been home from Florida for nearly a week and my suitcase is still firmly entrenched in the backseat of my car. I should probably consider bringing it inside the house, but that would require effort.
Picture of the Day for 2/10/2011. Today's blog entry is hair-centric. Pictured above is my great-niece Sadie combing her grandfather's hair. David is a good sport.Pictured below is my hair, notable for the fact that when I haphazardly piled it on top of my hear tonight, I inadvertently achieved polygamist hair- characterized by the distinctive swoop at the front. I'm not sure I could replicate this if I tried. I've always wondered how polygamist women achieve this hairstyle on purpose. There must be a manual of some sort.
Picture of the Day for 2/9/2011. Heads-up to any readers who may have delicate sensibilities- this post is going to be slightly naughty. My nieces held a "marem" party tonight. Marem = male harem and consists of handsome men (usually famous movie/TV stars and/or musicians). My nieces spend a LOT of time discussing the members of their individual marems and the labyrinthine rules and regulations regarding marems. For example, each marem is headed by a captain and a lieutenant. If someone has called dibbs on a particular man for their captain, no one else is allowed to have him in their marem. After dinner (which as you can see featured phallic-shaped food- corn-dogs for the main course and Twinkies for dessert), each of the attendees was given 15 minutes to show clips from DVDs or pictures of the members of their marems. It turned out to be a very fun party and there are now plans to turn this into an annual event.
Picture of the Day for 2/8/2010. My friend Aurora Billings is from New York, a follower of this blog, a fellow space geek just like me, and most important, the artist who painted this moonscape- a composite of all 12 men who walked on the moon. I just received a print of her painting in the mail today. I love it! I can see that I'll have no choice but to get as many astronauts as possible to sign this.
Picture of the Day for 2/7/2011. I flew home from Florida today. The pilot announced we were over the Continental Divide so I hurried and snapped a picture of it. Pretty cool.
Picture of the Day for 2/6/2011. I spent a couple of nights in Stuart, FL (about 1/2 hour north of West Palm Beach). I chose my accommodations poorly. This was the first place in all my travels over the years where I shoved a chair up against the door and slept with a light on and one eye open. I think my mistake was selecting an extended stay hotel. The clientele were scary. I had to laugh when I witnessed some people carrying a big screen HD television INTO their room. I'm really hoping it wasn't stolen. Now that I'm home safe and sound, I can laugh about it.
Picture of the Day for 2/5/2011. A friend and I attended a book signing/talk by Sharon Potts (pictured above) at Murder on the Beach, a small bookstore in Delray Beach, Florida that hosts regular events like this. It was fun! Sharon gave a great talk and I saw several familiar faces that I recognized from my attendance at Sleuthfest last year so it felt a little bit like a reunion. The writing community in Florida appears to be a tight-knit group of very nice people. I'd like to be one of them and presenting at my own book signing. Someday...
Picture of the Day for 2/4/2011. I spent the day exploring West Palm Beach and the evening browsing the stores at CityPlace, a large and trendy shopping complex. This was a LOT more fun than my usual Friday routine of spending the day working hard at the office. It was also nice exchanging the frigid winter temperatures in Utah for a pleasant day in the 80s in Florida. Not that I'm trying to rub it in for my Utah readership.
Picture of the Day for 2/3/2011. I spent the day making my way to Florida- West Palm Beach in particular. Since I didn't arrive at my hotel until 9:30 p.m., I decided to grab dinner at the closest establishment which happened to be the Palm Beach Ale House. When I arrived, they were in the middle of a very loud and raucous 20-question trivia quiz. First and second place winners would win a free pitcher of beer for their next visit. Thanks to my tendency to be a bit of know-it-all (an insufferable one people might say, but they would be wrong) and my blithe willingness to insert myself into other people's conversations, I was able to help the gentlemen at the table next to me win one of the prizes. Good thing I knew that Jefferson Davis was the president of the Confederacy during the Civil War.
Picture of the Day for 2/2/2011. Ever since I moved into my parents' house a year and a half ago, I've been wondering where all of my hairstyling tools were hiding. I finally discovered the box. I thought I would be more excited, but I guess I haven't really missed the items since my reaction upon finding them was an underwhelmed "huh." Sadly, this reveals just how little attention I pay to my hair. I just brush it and go.
Picture of the Day for 2/1/2011. I'm starting to think I should rename this blog as "Michelle's Blurry Picture of the Day." Sheesh. An inordinately high proportion of my pictures in 2011 have been blurry. They look fine on my iPhone which is why I don't usually discover the problem until I download the photos to my laptop.Anyway, you might think from this slightly blurry photo that the topic of my picture of the day is TLC's What Not to Wear. You would be wrong. That's not to say I don't enjoy watching the show. I'm mesmerized though by the opening credits that feature a pair of electric blue shoes. I'm obsessed with these shoes- primarily because of the color. Now, here's where I veer into weird tangent territory. Stick with me. I usually have really wild and interesting dreams that unfortunately I fail to remember when I wake up. I just remember that they were intriguing. However, whenever someone in my dream is wearing an item of clothing in this deep color of blue, I can remember the dream. Weird, huh? I always laugh when people claim that you only dream in black-and-white. I know better.
