I’ve decided to return to the original idea for this site and remove the more blog-like elements to a separate, straight-forward blog. Plain ol’ barrelofapples.com will be more general stuff, preludetosorrow.blogspot.com will be more personal, and I’m getting rid of tara.barrelofapples. The new url sounds gloomy, but Nina fans will know that the prelude to sorrow is love, and heck, love is a happy thing! Heh, mostly. I imagine the same can be said of the blog’s future content as well.

New photos updated to the Food, Friends, and tarataratara pages as well the all new Europe Extravaganza page! Hoooo boy!

Instead of pondering the universe in search of insights and meaningful joy, I’ve been working a lot, taking a kind-of-stupid class, and getting chemicals put on my head.

(More on the TaraTaraTara page)

So usually I take a whole bucket of photos when I go on vacation or have guests, and this past month has seen plenty of both, but I just wasn’t into picture-taking this time. Therefore, I’m going to smoosh the few that I have from our family reunion excursion to Spokane, our annual Christmas voyage to Reno, and Kayla’s week and a half New Year’s stay with us here at the Seattle homestead onto one page. This one.

My dad was appointed Family Photographer by my aunt for the Spokane shindig and he’s posted the results: Anderson Clan Getogether and Whathaveyou.

It containts such gems as

and

I’ve been cleaning out closets lately, as I’m prone to doing, and have found a number of old cards and trinkets, as are likely to be found in dark places like closets. Inspired by this rummaging I’ve started a new section to house scanned drawings and things resembling drawings. It’s currently almost entirely stuff by my little sister, mostly from when she was 8 and 9 (and should therefore prove a tad embarrassing since she’s now well into her eye-rolling years), but I expect to add things as I can get my hands on them. Things like, oh, I don’t know, crayon creations of a confusing nature, epileptic pen scribblings, and so on.

If you have ever heard me or Ian say, “I divorce!” or
“. . .by the panda” (in an ominous tone) and then giggle, you will note that the origens of these phrases are two of Kayla’s 8-year-old-penned stories.

I’m currently working on what I guess should be called a poetic autobiography, but that sounds terribly pompous and isn’t at all descriptive of its point. Each story or sentiment either occurred or is best represented by the number of years indicated in its title. As yet I have only a few.

I want to be a cowboy.

I’m afraid of becoming a desperado.

Also, the miscellany section has been busy.

Inspired by Heather’s reorganization, the photos section has been revamped and is much easier on the eyes and more navigable. There are also A LOT more photos in each area.

NEW 4/20 triple update in the miscellany section.

This is where I’ll be putting blog and news type things like “I’ve posted stuff in the ___ section,” “Over the weekend I did ___,” and “OH MY GOD WATER GEYSERS ON ONE OF SATURN’S MOONS!” The site is very ugly right now, but hopefully that will change sometime soon.