Saturday, March 31, 2007

sorry for the pic bergie

if you like to know about this kind of thing, you can take a look at heidi's blog to see what i've been up to. showers had the cutest party friday involving bunko. what?? heidi, lynnieT and i were not popular amongst most of the other guests, but we had a good time. and now heidi and i have matching pedis. i know that's queer, but bergie had this color (grand central carnation) last summer and i loved it and so did heidi. thank you, god, for giving us OPI. the pedi place has an awesome rack of OPI that I want to recreate in my home.

apologies to bergie and anyone else who is freaked out by pictures of feet. also, i think my feet kind of look like weird little hands in this pic.

Friday, March 30, 2007

Here's a surprise

I'm ONE HUNDRED PERCENT Christian Protestant (mainline to liberal, of course). I actually thought I'd be a 60-percent-something-random, because I am sooo neutral on pretty much everything. I see life and the world in shades of grey. Not dark or light grey, just middle-of-the-road, straddling-the-fence grey. Heh.


Look, Jenn and Amy, I'm a lot Quaker, too! Quaker is the new black.


The UU, Hindu, and Baha'i were only surprising to me in that they are as low as they are. I expected to be 100% UU/Baha'i. I guess 84% Hindu fits, too. I'm pretty much right there with them until the multiple-incarnations-of-God thing.


How in the world am I 63% aligned with Secular Humanism? That can NOT be right.


1. Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestants (100%)


2. Liberal Quakers (93%)


3. Orthodox Quaker (91%)


4. Unitarian Universalism (90%)


5. Hinduism (84%)


6. Seventh Day Adventist (76%)


7. Bahá'í Faith (76%)


8. Neo-Pagan (76%)


9. Jainism (72%)


10. New Age (71%)


11. Eastern Orthodox (69%)


12. Roman Catholic (69%)


13. Mainline to Conservative Christian/Protestant (64%)


14. Mahayana Buddhism (63%)


15. Reform Judaism (63%)


16. Secular Humanism (63%)


17. Theravada Buddhism (61%)


18. Orthodox Judaism (60%)


19. New Thought (52%)


20. Sikhism (51%)


21. Jehovah's Witness (49%)


22. Taoism (48%)


23. Islam (46%)


24. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) (43%)


25. Nontheist (39%)


26. Scientology (38%)


27. Christian Science (Church of Christ, Scientist) (38%)

Thursday, March 29, 2007

persistence

here is stella with her newest toy. why did i post this pic? because she moved 2 boxes, opened a cabinet door that was rubber-banded closed, and pulled this out of a package of toys. so, she pretty much earned it.

Monday, March 26, 2007

My latest obsession

OK, it’s not really an obsession. More of an interest. A love interest. OK, it’s not a love interest. This is the latest Person-I-Don’t-Know-and-Will-Probably-Never-Know that I have a crush on. But, since he isn’t exactly “famous,” it seems somehow not correct to say he’s in my 5. Which, by the way, has been totally ruined for my by TMob’s relentless ad campaign of the same name. Thanks, effers.

 

Meet Reed. Reed is a tornado chaser. Here are all the reasons I can think of why Reed and I are perfect for each other:

  1. Reed likes meteorology, and I’m working on a book on meteorology, complete with a tear-out cloud chart that I have torn out to confirm my cloud sightings. As a side note: “Cloud Sightings” will soon be replacing the previous “Dead Deer Count,” which, while interesting, was also slightly offensive to some of my fine readers.
  2. Reed likes to chase tornadoes and is pretty much out-of-pocket for 4 months of the year. And I like a man who isn’t around too much. So that’s perfect.
  3. It would not bother me one bit if my sig-o called one day and said, “Honey, I can’t go to dinner/meet you later/make it to our wedding/be there for the birth of our child because there are warm and cold fronts colliding in Podunk and I need to go film the funnel clouds dropping.” Ok, it would probably bother me a little about the wedding day, but we could always schedule it for the off-season.
  4. Reed likes lizards. I like lizards.
  5. Reed is admittedly not playing with a full deck. Neither am I, admittedly and obviously.

 

In all seriousness, there is a really cool documentary, Tornado Glory, that features the work of Reed and his friends. I watched it a few weeks ago thinking it was one of the Independent Lens series, which it turns out not to be, but it is definitely well-filmed and edited. There is also some footage on Reed’s web site of various storms he’s chased. He’s apparently the “bad boy” of storm chasing. (what the h-e-double does that actually mean?)

 

There was a section of the film where they were discussing how someone had asked Reed how fast he was going chasing a storm and he said something like 100, or maybe 140. I really can’t recall, but what I do recall thinking was, “well who hasn’t gone that fast a time or 2 in their lives?” And oddly enough, a day or 2 later, I found out that a lot of guys have, but hardly any chicks have. How did I find this out? Because I got a Stats book to work on and the very first example in the book is about plotting data points for “highest speed,” separated by gender. So now is when I want to hear what is the fastest YOU have ever driven? What about the fastest you’ve ever been driven? I’m a 140/150 myself.

 

Sunday, March 25, 2007

merry xmas

this is the view from my front door today. just this morning, i had taken my xmas tree downstairs to the basement. i guess the ARMY boyz decided to save some time and use the express option instead.

Saturday, March 24, 2007

bleh.

Much to my dismay, I am sick, again. Having just had a nasty cold last month, I was really saddened when I started feeling sick on Tuesday. Fortunately, I was able to get in and see the doctor on Wednesday and get a prescription for some antibiotics. It turns out that this is actually a sinus infection, which I had never experienced before. 4 days later, I am still really tired and stuffy. Each day is a little bit better, but it's not "good" by any means.



It's getting harder and harder to recover from a cold.

Is this what they mean by "it's hell getting old"??

Saturday, March 17, 2007

Sugar Eggs, anyone?

I've always been fascinated by the tiny scenes inside the panorama sugar eggs that appear this time of the year.


There's a local Cake Shop that's teaching a class at the end of the month to make these eggs. Bri and I did this a few years ago while Rob just watched with amusement. I think our eggs turned out OK, but I'd like a little professional guidance so my eggs look really nice.


Would anyone be willing to give up an evening and $25 to take the class with me?

Thursday, March 15, 2007

sweet-@zz prezzie

check out what cubeneighborkelly gave me today. i love prizes! i can hardly wait to fill this up with tiny things. she also pointed out to me that the compartments are removable and i said "yay, i can take them to all my job sites". "at your house." she said. ah, kelly. how well you know me.

Tuesday, March 13, 2007

Monday Night's Project

here's what i did last night. this is an idea i've had for awhile but needed a good block of time and the right weather to get it done. now i can run the mower along the row and get all the grasses on the edge.

Sunday, March 11, 2007

Kewl stuff from the weekend

Wow. It's been a busy weekend for me. Saturday, I went to a couple of flea markets, the Goodwill, Big Lots, and the scrapbook store in search of interesting junque and great bargains. I found some good stuff and I put pictures of it on Flickr. I cannot, however, figure out how to put my Flickr reel on the side of the blog like Heidi and Rachel, so please, please -- someone tell me how. For now, you can go here and see what I have posted so far.

**I definitely need to stop stepping out of the house for "just a second" when I'm not dressed for the public eye. I was dragging something out onto the porch this morning and one of the ARMY boyz came around the corner and pretty much got a full-on shot of the girls because of the way my undershirt was gaping as I bent over. I hope he'll be OK.

Today, I found a lady on Freecycle who does tree and stump work and was looking for people to take the chippings. She brought a full truckload over and dumped it in the driveway. For reference, a full truckload of tree chippings creates a pile roughly the size of a small car. So, after a couple of beers and a couple of hours moving that around, I came inside and collapsed into a nap and I've just woken up from that.

Man, it felt good to be working outside again!

Monday, March 5, 2007

painted canvi

i forgot to mention that these are available at dickblick.com for $5 each. sweet!

Lots to Say

I’ve been into a little bit of everything the past several days.

 

  1. Cool places on the Internet:
    1. Bubbledog is a gal (I think!) who has really great stuff for sale on etsy.com, but the way that I found her was by searching for old stickers. I have most of my sticker collection from the 80s and bubbledog has taken the time to go through and categorize many of the old scratch n sniff stickers from that era. I am working on consolidating my collection so that I can confirm that I do, in fact, have every one of Trend’s “Stinky Stickers” in my collection. And if not, well, that’s why God gave us e-bay. I especially love bubbledog’s snap wallet collection on her Etsy shop.
    2. Speaking of Etsy (your source for everything handmade), they rock! I love their “shop by color” feature. Click it and you’ll see why. This is probably where I’ll be buying any future gifts for people, because everything is unique and cool.
    3. Ephemera is a guy who collects vintage papers and other old junk. From his site, I learned about…
    4. The JunkPirate, a guy who works at a Junk Shop where they take in donations of art supplies and “raw materials” for assemblage art. I’d love to start something like this and be able to go through all the people’s junk searching for treasures. He also has a great site link where he displays his artwork and studio. Very cool stuff.
    5. P.O.S.H. is a cool store where they get and then resell stuff from hotels, diners, etc. Bri and Rob brought me this great mug from there last week, so I thought I’d post the link to the site so you can all take a peek at their goods for yourselves.
  1. In the spirit of Junque collecting, I went over to Salvation on Saturday. They were having a 49-cent sweater sale. If one sweater for 49 cents is a good deal, then ELEVEN of them must be, well, eleven times as good! Plus, they arrange all the shirts and sweaters ROY G BIV style, so you know I was thrilled just with that. I still need to wash my eleven sweaters. They had to stuff them into a big black Hefty bag for me to carry out of the store. In all the sweater excitement, I forgot to look for any cool junque.
  2. That’s OK, because I went to Urbana on Sunday and picked up a bunch of free junque. I went up there to visit my papa and grandma because they’ve been sort-of stuck at home lately. Joe D slipped on the ice a couple of weeks ago and landed on his ribs, breaking one and cracking 2 more, and what with all the ice and snow of late, they’ve just been staying inside and trying to keep from having any more unfortunate incidents. Papa Joe is in terrible pain, but he seemed to be OK otherwise. Well, probably a bit restless from being pinned up in the house for that whole time, but otherwise OK. It totally rocked the way things worked out, because I got in touch with Cathy and she and Tommy were available for lunch. We picked up Chinese and went over to the house. So, everyone got to see Tommy and everyone got fed. That kid is so freaking cute. Also, for no apparent reason, while we were all eating lunch and Tommy was extolling the virtues of sharing and having all of us try whatever was on his plate, he suddenly exclaimed “SON of a BITCH!!”, which must have been the first time he’s ever said that in front of Cathy, because the look on her face was complete and utter shock. And of course, we all laughed. He was so confident in saying it, you’d think he was a little 4-year-old trucker or something. AWESOME. Also, he remembers some of the weirdest things, for example, there was a dinosaur sticker on grandma’s fridge from Cathy’s graduation and he pointed it out and said “that’s what I gave you when we went and mommy was a nurse!”. Which totally blew my mind, especially because he also remembered that I gave him the stickers and that he gave each of us one. Uh-dorable. He also asked where my kitty was (STELLA!) and where Grandma’s kitty was, and then talked about their kitty, and then told us about how he used to have a dog, but the dog got hit by a car. He was not even two when that happened. I can’t believe he can remember all that. Anyway, sorry for all the Tommy-babble, but man, I get excited when I talk about him. This was going to be more about the junque I found in the attic. I’m going to post photos later this week, but I’ll say right now that I found 2 more sticker books, a bunch of little plastic toys, and 2 more sets of the antique Christmas ornaments. Yay! I’ve also come up with an official moniker for one sub-stream of the Stealth Organizational Project: Toy Reclamation Project. This is where I gather up every toy I can find in the entire house (believe me, there are still TONS) and then clean, organize, and re-order. Then I’ll decide whether to keep them for future kids, sell them, donate them, or what. Ah, sorting and organizing. I need more drawer and shelf space!
  3. I also brought my scroll saw back from dad’s workshop. I’m going to start use it to make dovetail and finger joints for some boxes I’m working on. But on the way home, I also “designed” a scrapbook cover for my “50 states” scrapbook that I can make with the scroll saw. It will be a wooden binder with a wooden inlay puzzle of the continental US. I will probably end up making 4 extras because I think it takes 5 colors to fill in all the states without having the same color touching. I want to use 5 different species of wood to make the little states. This will make more sense when I sketch it.
  4. Some folks have been commenting or querying things about the MiniFarm, so I’ll have a post later this week about some ideas I have for how we’ll support ourselves down there.
  5. CubeNeighbor and I got into a conversation about how Mirm and I did a paint-by-number set one afternoon. Mirm will tell you that she did the set, because in the time it took me to fill in the tiniest parts of my board with a toothpick, she had finished her board and started on the big board. She actually finished up my board after I left. Anyway, I was telling that story to CNK, and she said I should check out these cool paint-by-number kits for grown-ups. So I did, and I ordered a set for me and a set for Mirm. They look simple, but it still took me 8 hours to do 2 canvi on Saturday. The effort was well-worth-it, though, because they turned out great! I highly recommend getting a set. 5 bucks is a great price and they are huge, like 16”x16” or so. I also found a bunch of unfinished paint-by-numbers in my K-12 memory box, so I’m going to finish those and post the pics here. Probably some time next year at the speed I work.
  6. I can feel the spring in the air! Yay! I spent about 40 minutes last night sort-of cleaning up the yard, which had gotten really full of trash. The Cav is going to finally go to that great car lot in the sky this week (thank YOU, St. Vincent DePaul!), and all the branches I trimmed last fall are actually kindling now, so we’ll be ready for more firepit action this spring! J