The Best Laid Plans of Mice and Men (and Women)

🦋🦋🦋 Changes have been happening lately: Our buyers pulled out. They were a young couple in Seattle, and I think they got cold feet about moving to Sacramento. So now the condo is on the market again. But the good news is that it is generating interest again. We had one viewer earlier this week and another is coming tomorrow. 

🦋🦋🦋 Meanwhile, the airline called to say the flight of one leg of our journey was cancelled and had to be rescheduled to another date. Now - toca madera (touch wood) that it isn't re-scheduled again - we leave here on February 24th instead of 21st. The good news is that there is one stop less.

🦋🦋🦋 So those two things have called for a lot of scrambling — paperwork to cancel the sale, emails to friends in Portugal, new arrangements for dropping off our car to the woman who is buying it, changing the dates of our stay at the B&B, the date of our Covid tests, etc. All of that is done, now, and we had a nice zoom conference with our immigration attorney in Braga, who . . .

💗💗💗 . . . informs us the flat will be ready for us when we arrive: newly painted (she showed pictures, beautiful white walls), basic furniture we asked her to pick out for us - bed, bookshelves, dining table, chairs, sofa, chests - all good. The heating/a/c will be in. And we have changes of clothing in our suitcases until the shipping arrives next month.

So that leaves time for taking more walks around Sacramento (which we have always loved) and taking pictures of more murals and a couple of sculptures. There is quite a range of styles. Enjoy. 

This is called "Peace" 

This stylized dragon
is also a bicycle rack.

The next three murals are all part of the front of the regional transit building on R Street:

                    

I don't remember the name of this building, but it also is on R Street:   Cool, huh?

And then the next two walls. The first is in the R Street Corridor. The second is just before the R Street Corridor on the side of the 515 Grocery Store and Deli. It's a sylized ocean/beach scene.

The next three were on S or T Street. All by the same artist and marvelous.

And these last three were somewhere on Q Street (I think). Sorry I can't be more specific, but I vary my walks and then put the camera aside for a couple of days. 

                                    

I've become addicted to finding new murals. I think they beautify an area so much. How about you? How have you been using your lock-down time? Are there many murals in your town or city? Do you like them? Or do you prefer unpainted walls? (These murals are all samples of artists who take part in "Wide Open Walls" (whose acronym spells — appropriately, I think — "WOW.") 

SORRY FOR THE LONG SILENCE: WE MOVED!

 

We moved to small condo downtown at River Front Plaza from our beloved midtown home of 22 years. And if you don't think moving even just 2 miles away is disruptive, think again! For about three months leading up to the move, all we did was cart things to Good Will or Friends of the Library, and call friends to see if they would like certain pictures and momentos, since we were downsizing from a three bedroom, two bath, plus basement and garage to a two bedroom, one bath with a parking space below the complex. Then there was the move. Then unpacking and finding a place for things. Here I am at our front door, masked, of course. Below, I am unmasked, proof I still look like a real person. (In that pic, I'm taking pictures for a "guided tour" I gave on Facebook, lol.)

 

Before I move on, speaking of masks and such things, how are you weathering the Covid challenges? I hope none of you have been ill or lost someone. (We haven't lost anyone, but we learned three of our relatives in India were hospitalized with it. Thankfully, it was not fatal and they are home, now.)  

I'm not doing a guided tour here. Instead, I want to share with you some of the fun things I've seen on my walks. I love street art (well every kind of art), and I especially like murals. In midtown,  there were many, and I'm afraid I took them too much for granted to take pictures. But there are many here downtown, too, and here are two of my favorites:

  Aren't they lovely? Each So different, but they give me a lift. I especially love the mother and child to the left.

Then there are the painted utility boxes! I had noticed a few in midtown, but usually I was usually on my way to somewhre and didn't wonder too much about them. But there is a project all over downtown and midtown called the Capitol Box Art Project. Various local artists paint one of the utility boxes, and on all sides. Here are some samples from my walks: 

Cool, right? Here is their link if you want to know more about the project or the artists: https://capitolboxart.com 

On another note, in the months I've been away (since April!) things seem to have changed in Blogger's layout. I'm going to have to study the changes, because, frankly, these pictures are much more spread out than I wanted them to be. Sorry.

But it's great to be back!

How about you? Do you like to take walks around your neighborhood and look for special sights? Yard art? Beautiful trees? Lovely gardening by someone who loves plants? Did you enjoy these painted utility boxes? Do you find moving disruptive?