Second-Hand Make-Over

Remember when I helped out with that yard sale and inherited tons of stuff and it even jumpstarted my gardening endeavors? Well the thrifty tendencies didn't end there.

My office had actually relocated to where we are now semi-recently, from what I understand, and not even all of the offices here are in use yet, and are being used for storage. Since we are making a few more hires, they were clearing out offices they planned to use, which meant that almost all of their decorations and trinkets came out of the woodworks for awhile, since they haven't yet had the time or energy to decide how to utilize them with the current space, especially given that we don't have many display cases or panels here. My coworkers told me that I should go through them all and find stuff to decorate my office with, since otherwise they'll just be sitting in boxes for the foreseeable future... and I did... and I love it! All of these things are old, original, and actually from the part of the world they represent.

Look at this beautiful Egyptian picture, it is done on some sort of reed or papyrus or bamboo base and I am in love with it

Then, you may look at this and see the windmills and assume that it's Dutch, but I actually think it's Swedish. There was another one in the set and it had a Swedish dala horse on it.

Here is a collection of small trinkets... two Japanese fans, a wooden African box, and a little Japanese curtain divider thing (there has to be a real name for those). That crystal ball was my birthday gift from Cousin Bobby, the Mask of the Sichuan Opera is mine from a Chinese tour group that came to San Diego when I worked at Embassy there, and that pregnant Statue of Liberty (ironically from a company called California Cryobank) was included in my hodge-podge birthday package sent from my old coworkers in New York. Lulz.

And here is my CROWN JEWEL. Atop that Japanese linen is a Centennial plate of RIVERSIDE depicting our history and historic sites. I want to put it in a glowing golden orb and make students look at it every time they come in my office... but I'll also settle for a small plastic display stand.

And now here's something that should make us all cringe. On Monday nights I go to a meeting in a room that has what I assume is supposed to be a handpainted backdrop of Paris, or some familiar French sites. I assume this because of the "Cafe", the "Chocolatier", the "Hotel Fleurs de Lys" and the rendition of the Eiffel Tower rising in the background.

However, according to the FLAG, this place doesn't even EXIST because my searches proved to find no national flag with three horizontal stripes in the order of blue, red, and white!

I'm sorry to be chaamp, but this is the biggest eyesore I've seen since Lorde came on the music scene. So far both weeks I've ended up with seats facing this mural, and my eyes are constantly twitching as this ghastly error. Sketching and painting, especially a mural this nice, is not a quick after-thought... there were blueprints, thought, sketches, paint bought and decided on, meticulous brush strokes... but no one could be bothered to look up what the French flag actually looked liked?!

FYI, it looks like this.

And I'm not just indignant because I lived in France... this kinda thing always annoys me! But you can ask lots of my friends, I love knowing geography, capitals, and flags... just ask Jayna about Josh Evans' flag game that we would play at the Triple Crown in midtown Manhattan at our monthly happy hours. I would be irritated if they messed up any flag! Why not take the time to look it up when you're painting a mural on a wall?!

I know, I know, I'm being a prissy and pretentious little brat. So I'll try to recreate the emotion. How would you feel if you saw THIS:

...anything yet?

Okay, lesson learned: go early on Monday nights and sit with my BACK to the mural!