Shutterbug: Heroes

The Eternal Flame at the National Fallen Firefighter's Memorial along with two flags placed by someone attending the National Fire Academy the week I was there.

9/11 Memorial on the Emergency Management Institute's campus

-Catch of the Day
-Unlikely Duos
-Murals
-Those were the days
-Milestones
-State Parks
-Birds
-At the Fair
-EEK!
-Fall Leaves
-Curious Cats
-Man's Best Friend
-Heroes
-Cemeteries
-At the Cook-off
-Fun with Photoshop
-Baby, It's Cold Outside
-Going Nuts

Shutterbug: Cemeteries

Mortuary Chapel in St. Joseph's Cemetery at the Shrine of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton in Emmitsburg, Maryland.

-Catch of the Day
-Unlikely Duos
-Murals
-Those were the days
-Milestones
-State Parks
-Birds
-At the Fair
-EEK!
-Fall Leaves
-Curious Cats
-Man's Best Friend
-Heroes
-Cemeteries
-At the Cook-off
-Fun with Photoshop
-Baby, It's Cold Outside
-Going Nuts

Shutterbug: Man's Best Friend

Fly Bike, Fly!

-Catch of the Day
-Unlikely Duos
-Murals
-Those were the days
-Milestones
-State Parks
-Birds
-At the Fair
-EEK!
-Fall Leaves
-Curious Cats
-Man's Best Friend

-Heroes
-Cemeteries
-At the Cook-off
-Fun with Photoshop
-Baby, It's Cold Outside
-Going Nuts

A bit behind the times

So...Boehner says that we need to reduce the national debt by spending a lot less and not making any more money. Isn't that a bit like deciding to fix your family budget by cutting out food and not asking for a pay raise at work?

Furthermore, if the Republican plan is to fix the debt problem just long enough to get a new president, aren't they just setting up THEIR president. I mean, isn't the goal to make sure that we have a Republican as president in 2012? In which case, why would you want to make sure that they're going to have to be the bad guy when they have to raise taxes? Wouldn't it make more sense to let the current president raise taxes so that it can be used against him during the gubernatorial election?

I'm just saying that congress is making less and less sense. But then politics is made up of two words - poly meaning 'many' and ticks meaning 'blood sucking parasites'...Or, even better, if con is the opposite of pro, what's the opposite of progress?

Cleaning

I'm having a contingent of garden bloggers over to the house on Saturday. Most people spend their time leading up to the party prepping the yard (these people, after all, are gardeners). Not me. Other than watering, I'm not doing anything new to the yard, or doing anything special. Shawn will probably have an 11th hour clean up the yard frenzy (raking and mowing is my guess). But not me. Nope. Instead, I am prepping the house. Because you just know those wily garden bloggers will find a way to sneak into my extra bedroom closet and tsk about how it's not organized. Yep. That's totally going to happen.

Expedition: Watch TV

You can tell it's the summer hiatus for most of the TV shows we watch. This is mostly because we've started watching totally random shit on Hulu.com.

So far we've watched My Own Worst Enemy, Wilfred, Misfits, Love Bites and Expedition: Impossible. This, of course, is in addition to our normal summer viewing of So You Think You Can Dance, Master Chef, Burn Notice (via Hulu), Royal Pains (via Hulu) and White Collar (via Hulu). And I can't wait for Eureka and Warehouse 13 to start again (both via Hulu).

So, the summaries:
My Own Worst Enemy: A man signs up to give himself a split personality where one personality is a 'normal' guy while the other is a government trained operative (along the lines of Ethan in Mission: Impossible). But what happens when switching between the two personalities becomes uncontrollable? A decent concept, but I can also see why it was cancelled - Henry (the normal) was getting a bit whiny and Edward (the operative) was a cad. I mean I liked the show, but I ended up more interested in one of the other operatives, Tom/Raymond. (1st and only season available via Hulu)

Wilfred: A man sees his next door neighbor's dog as a man in a dog suit. It's not like Son of Sam (though the dog does egg on said man to do things - like take a dump in the jackass's boot), but it's more like the fact that we all have conversations with our animals and tend to anthropormorphise them. In this case, the dog just talks back. Oddly, if they went with a real dog and did CGI to get it to talk, it probably wouldn't work. The show is HIGH LARIOUS. The first episode is a little weak, but the second and third are capital. (via Hulu)

Misfits: A British dramedy that is similar to Heroes, but with a lot more cussing, comedy and sex. 5 delinquents are doing community service when they're caught in a freak electrical storm that gives them special powers. As they all find out what powers they have, they find that they weren't the only ones given special powers during the storm. Hijinks ensue. I like this show and find it quite entertaining - even if I can't understand what some of the characters are saying (attributed to their accents and British slang). So far there are only 4 episodes available, but I think the show is currently still on air so that means there are at least 2 more seasons of it. So it's lasted at least as long as Heroes. Available via Hulu.

Love Bites: When I first saw this title, I thought it was like Bites as in "this sucks", but no, it's Bites as in little bits. Each episode usually has 3 stories that are sometimes inter-related, sometimes not, sometimes using the same characters, sometimes not. Admittedly, the reason why I even watched the first episode was because of the title, but I actually like the show. I don't think Shawn really likes it very much (it's my new Glee, if you will). My favorite episode was the one with Kurtwood Smith as a father coming to terms with the fact that his son is gay (Episode 2: How To...). Of course, since the stories aren't necessarily told in any chronological order, nor do stories continue over multiple episodes, I could see how it would drive some people nuts...but at the same time, it also means that you don't have to watch all the episodes to know what is going on - oh sure there are recurring characters, but generally you don't have to know the whole back story on them for the little vignettes to make sense. Only downside is that it is unlikely to continue into a second season based on how much trouble it was to get the first 9 episodes aired. Currently airing on NBC Thursdays 10/9c. Also can be found on Hulu and NBC.com

Expedition Impossible: A Mark Burnet production that is like the Amazing Race on steroids. Where the Amazing Race would have the teams drive 7 miles through the Sahara, Expedition makes them walk it. Where the Amazing Race has teams wait 5 minutes before making a second guess at the clue, Expedition doesn't tell them they're wrong and lets them hike 30 minutes in the wrong direction before telling them they chose the wrong option. We only started watching this because the "Gypsies" team trained for the show by doing CrossFit. It's stronger than TAR in some aspects - makes the teams work harder to complete the leg, but it's also weak - the clue challenges are set up in a way that allows teams to piggy back on the earlier teams. Something to think about if you did the Tough Mudder... Currently Airing on ABC Thursdays at 9/8c. Also available on Hulu and ABC.com

Punched in the boob

A little over a month ago, Shawn found a lump in my boob. That's right, Shawn found it. Even though I do a self exam every month (or roughly every month). The crazy thing was that said lump (ah...Lumpy) was about the size of a dime and felt very much like that gel stuff that they put in wrist supports for computer geeks. So in other words, it had probably been there for a while and I kept missing it. Some of the reason why I kept missing it was because it easily moved about (within a certain distance--it's not like I could push it from one side of my boob to the other...though that would be kinda cool). In any case, Shawn started freaking out since his mom had breast cancer about 10 years ago whereas I felt it and said, "eh, I don't think it's cancerous. My parents' vet at one point said that cancer doesn't move easily and this moves easily." Shawn said, "I think there's a big difference between you and an old dog."

(chances* of me having cancer, 50/50)

We came back home (oh yes, we were at a friend's wedding when this was all going down), I didn't immediately make a doctor's appointment since I had to go to the doctor anyway in a week and a half.

I went to the doctor. She said "I think it's an adenoma. But just to be sure I want you to go have an ultrasound."

(chances of cancer, 25%)

I set up an appointment for the ultrasound and then spent about 4 hours trying to figure out what I should tell my boss since I'm sure he doesn't want to know I'm going to go be felt up by a stick (the ultrasound wand), but at the same time I can't just say "My doctor says I need to have an ultrasound, so Imma do that on my lunch break" because then the rumors would fly fast and furious that I was pregnant (NOTE: I AM NOT PREGNANT). I finally opted for "my doctor felt something she didn't like, now I have to go see a specialist", and went on my lunch break the following work day.

The ultrasound doctor said "I agree with your doctor, I think it's an adenoma, but we recommend having a biopsy done just to be sure. And we can't do the biopsy today - you'll need to talk to your doctor and she'll refer you to a surgeon who will do it; but she may send you back here to have it done. One just never knows."

(chances of cancer, 12%. Level of annoyance at not being able to have a biopsy done right away, 50%)

Two days later my doctor called (thank god I didn't have to go into her office), and said that I should go see a surgeon and have a biopsy. She gave me a number.

I called and set up an appointment for that for the following Monday. Based on how horrible the DJ on the radio made it sound, I made Shawn take the afternoon off so he could drive me hither and yon in case I was in too much pain.

The surgeon said "I think it's an adenoma. Your choices are to either come back in 6 months and have us look at it again; or you can have the biopsy done now, though we'd still want to see you again in 6 months to see if anything has changed." I opted for the biopsy. 20 minutes later I was on my way home.

(chances of cancer, 5%)

Contrary to the radio DJ, I didn't have to ice my boob, nor did I even take any pain killers. In fact the only thing that seemed to hurt the incision was driving, and even then, it was only if I was turning the wheel while shifting, so as long as I didn't drive like a maniac, everything was good.

3 days later the doctor called and said everything looked fine, no cancer for me.

(chances of cancer, 0)

Oddly, I didn't get a bruise until the day the doctor called with the biopsy results. And even though my incision has healed and you can't even tell I had one (unless you know where to look), my boob is still all black and blue and tinged yellow (so we're going on what, 2 weeks now of it being bruised, sigh...at least I wouldn't make a good abused child - I bruise too easily).

Of course when something like this happens, you start thinking back to see if there was anything that could have tipped you off. And I remembered about 9 months ago, a spot on my boob just started itching, and itching and itching, but it wasn't a surface itch, it felt like it was under my skin. About 3 months after that I thought I had felt something (and it would have been in the right spot), but since we had just gone to the Boston Museum of Science which had a breast cancer section where you could feel what cancer felt like and what cancer didn't feel like, Shawn even said he thought it didn't feel like cancer, but I should keep track of it. After that, I obviously didn't find that same spot again, and so I didn't think anything of it. But now... Ah hindsight: always 20/20.

Also: Feel your boobies.

* = These are not real chances, these are just an indication of how my level of confidence increased as time went on.

Snuggles

I went for a jog the other day. And by 'other day' I mean 'over a week ago'. About half way through my jog, I passed three women walking in the opposite direction walking a small Lhasa Apso-esque dog on a retractable leash. As I neared them, the dog comes running toward me tail wagging and tongue lolling out. The dog was about 3 feet from me when the one holding the leash suddenly yells, "Snuggles! NO!" and pulls so hard on the leash the poor animal falls ass over tea kettle and probably made two full rotations. As I jog past, the lady says "I'm so sorry, she's not friendly." and after I pass, I hear her say to the dog, "Snuggles, bad dog! You went all running up to that nice lady pretending like you wanted pets...why would you do that?" And I'm left thinking "you have a dog that isn't friendly at all named Snuggles? That's just lunacy."

Gimpy

Shawn's gimpy (achilles tendonitis and plantar fascitis from running, and he just hurt his ankle today biking).

I'm gimpy (somehow hurt the top of my foot running the other day)

Yep...30 is going to be wonderful for us...

Washington State Vacation Pictures (all of 'em)

Washington State Vacation

Yakima - Camping, Round 2

EWG

Today we went to Walmart to get an air filter for our furnace...you know, since it hasn't been changed in a year and a half. while there, we spent a good part of an hour just staring at the sunblock display. The reason why we stood there for 45 minutes was because Shawn insisted that he had read an article about how you should only get sunblock that has active ingredients of "Zinc Oxide" and "Titanium Dioxide."

So yes, we spent 45 minutes looking at the ingredient list for all the sunblocks available. And the only ones that ONLY had Titanium Dioxide and/or Zinc Oxide (other than the stuff the lifeguards put on their noses), are a few of the "free and clear" for babies/sensitive skin varieties.

After getting home and figuring out that he was reading something by EWG.org and not the World Health Organization, we spent the next hour searching for sunblocks that we've heard of (thankfully, they have a searchable database here). We had found the Aveeno Natural Protection Mineral Block (as well as a similarly named Baby formula which, as far as we could tell, is the exact same thing) at both Walmart and Target for $10 per 3 oz bottle (it gets a rating of 3); and had figured that the Neutrogena Pure & Free Baby (also $10 per 3 oz bottle) would have received a similar score. So you can imagine how surprised we were when the Neutrogena got a score of 7 (note: this is like golf, you want lower scores). Apparently the reason for the disparity is that the Neutrogena contains Vitamin A, a vitamin that, while it does reduce the signs of ageing, breaks down in the sun and actually may lead to a higher risk of skin cancer.

Since it is possible to look at all the sunscreens listed on the site by score, that's what I did and just scrolled down until I found a brand I had actually heard of (since I don't make a habit of shopping at the Whole Foods). The best well known brand I could find was the Coppertone Pure & Simple and Sensitive Skin varieties (with a score of 3)

Of course, if you wear makeup you've probably already heard of EWG'sSkin Deep Cosmetics Database.

Naturally I spent the next hour looking up the soaps, shampoos, conditioners and lotions we use. Shawn is trying to get more into the Organic Thing (but not with food...which I think is odd), and so he's purchased some lotions, lip balms, and soaps that are supposed to be better than the traditional stuff. So it's kinda surprising to find out that his lotion (Nature's Gate Fragrance Free) got a 4 while mine (Curel Continuous Comfort Fragrance Free) got a 3. His Nutribiotic Skin Cleanser gets a 6, my Noxzema Triple Clean Cleanser gets a 5.

Happy hunting, kids!

Yakima - Hiking

Yakima - Camping

Washington State Vacation

Front fender bike decal, outside of Pike's Market in Seattle, Washington

Q-dids

War

I have a new coworker. His name is Henry. Henry is a skinny as all get out Mormon. Yesterday, I kid you not, one of our other coworkers asked, "So, Henry, you did your mercenary work in Taiwan, right? That's how you learned Mandarin?"

And I couldn't stop laughing at the thought of one of the nicest people I know in the world being Rambo. It'd be like if Ghandi joined the mafia.

Miracles

Shawn: Whatcha reading?

Me: An article about how to take better
photographs. This guy says that everyone
should read their user manual.

I agree. And you never read the
one that came with your camera.

It's a Canon Rebel XTI, I figure it's close
enough to the film Rebel that I didn't need
to re-read the manual.

I'm just saying that I read the
manual for your camera and you didn't.

A few days later when I pulled the manual out to read it:

Shawn! Quick! we need to call the Pope!

What? Why?

Because you've performed a miracle and
we should let him know so you might be
canonized one day.

hunh?

You managed to read the user's manual
for my camera without opening the packaging
that the manual came in. That's a miracle!

Wordless Wednesday: Bevo

Squat Stand

A few months ago, Shawn decided that he wanted to REALLY get into Cross Fit. That meant we needed to buy rubber bumper weights. So after a trip down to Houston to pick up said weights, we had an Olympic barbell (45 pounds) with 230 pounds of bumper weights plus an additional 30 pounds of weights we had purchased at Academy.

The problem with this whole set-up? we didn't have any where to store the stuff, AND possibly more problematic was that in order to do squats, we'd have to load up the bar, do a hang clean, do a push press, lower it to the shoulders, do the squat, stand back up, do a push press, back to the clean position before putting the weight back on the ground. So basically it was a ton of extra work to do one measly squat, and you could only squat as much as you could clean because there was no way to put the bar on something, load it with weight, and then do a squat.

So we needed a squat stand or rack or power cage or something. Shawn found some that he liked online. They could be flattened for storage, and they had added features like pull up bars, dip bars, and what have you. After balking at the cost of these stands (starting at about $700), Shawn started lamenting that if only he knew a welder who could weld the stand for him. When I told him he did, he scoffed and was like "yeah, sure, in COLORADO." So I reminded him that Garden Blogger Bob (to differentiate him from 'your father, Bob') was a welder by trade, and he would probably be happy to weld together some stand thingy that Shawn would design.

That's how it came be that a few weekends ago we spent the day at Bob's place where Bob actually let Shawn weld (with supervision and with an eye toward making sure that the welds would actually hold) the squat stand together.

Here are the men-folk after the stand has been welded and was placed in the truck ready to be taken home. I spent the day with Bob's wife, who broke her arm a few weeks earlier.

Of course, when using raw materials, you will have to paint things. So we went to the store and got some rattle-can black spray paint.

Shawn rattle-can painting the squat stand so it won't get black dust on us every time we move the thing.

Total cost of this adventure? about $100 which was the cost for the materials as Bob didn't charge Shawn anything for teaching him how to weld.

Of course, Bob also has some cool Jax looking things which are apparently .22 pistol walking targets which look pretty cool, if I do say so myself...and, while I wouldn't use them for target practice, I probably would like them for decoration purposes. Oh the possibilities!

Shutterbug: Milestones (part 2)

Ground Breaking Ceremony for the Waller Creek Tunnel. The tunnel will divert water from 12th street to Town Lake and significantly reduce the floodplain of Waller Creek in the Downtown area. More information can be found here: http://www.ci.austin.tx.us/wallercreek/

-Catch of the Day
-Unlikely Duos
-Murals
-Those were the days
-Milestones
-State Parks
-Birds
-At the Fair
-EEK!
-Fall Leaves
-Curious Cats
-Man's Best Friend

-Heroes

Queens, New York

"Katina..."

"Yes, Ma-Belle"

"Do you want me to put this make up on you?" (while holding up an eye-shadow palette that has all the colors mixed and is obviously one of the ones that her mother gave her because the make up is old)

"Not particularly"

"But if I can put the blue eye shadow on you, you'll look like a queen!"

::laughing snort:: "Yes, I'd definitely look like a queen. Thanks, but no thanks."

Shutterbug: Milestones (part 1)

I took my camera to the groundbreaking of the Waller Creek Tunnel on Friday. I took photos. I downloaded all of the photos to my computer. I deleted the photos off of my memory card. I came home. I went to post a picture on my blog. I remembered that I deleted all of the photos off of the memory card, but they're on my work computer. Now I have to email myself from my work computer at some point in time in order to put the one photo I want on this blog for the world to see. Damn.

Critter

A few weeks ago, our friend's wife delivered a healthy baby boy. Jesse (the husband/father/best man at our wedding), dutifully, sent out an email to everyone letting them know about the fact that "critter" was finally here. What follows is the conversation that Shawn and I had...

Shawn: Looks like Jesse and Kristie had the baby yesterday.

Katina: Cool, what's his name?

Riley Race

ooo, they went with the superhero name.

:::I sign into facebook to see photos:::

Dork. The baby's name is Owen.

Ah, that explains it.

Explains what?

The email was signed "Jesse, Kristie, and Owen", and I thought it was odd that Jesse was including the dog on the email signature instead of the baby.

The dog's name is Hendrix, remember?

Well, NOW...Okay, so Jesse and Kristie had the baby yesterday, his name is Owen Riley Race.

Shutterbug: Murals

-Catch of the Day
-Unlikely Duos
-Murals
-Those were the days
-Milestones
-State Parks
-Birds
-At the Fair
-EEK!
-Fall Leaves
-Curious Cats
-Man's Best Friend
-Heroes

Flying

So, as most of my loyal readers (all 2 of you!) knew, I was in Colorado last week for my cousin's wedding. We, of course, flew there because we only drive when we have to take kidney-failure cats with us.

I dislike flying. Not as bad as the Spiteful Chef, but I don't relish it either. The funny part is that I actually somewhat understand airfoils and fluid dynamics thereby keeping the tin can with wings aloft (damn you engineering!). This does not, however, really assuage any of my plummeting fears. Though, as a plus, I'm not scared of flying; I'm scared of falling.

But do you want to know the best part about flying? Skymall. That's right. Skymall. I love paging through the magazine and looking at all the crazy lawn/garden statues that I find absolutely ridiculous. Since I wanted to include some pictures of the statues that are my particular favorites, I actually went to their website this evening. I don't think you can understand how surprised I was that my personal favorite, the Zombie of Montclaire Moors (pictured below), is by far the most popular statue with 36 reviews, most of them rating it at 5 stars.
If you still want to scare the bejeebus out of your friends, postman, and neighborhood cats, you can opt, instead, to get this realistic 4' alligator which is on backorder until the middle of April:

Not recommended for those in Florida as it may instead train your grandchildren and dogs to ignore the actual REAL alligators in your neighborhood.

If, for whatever reason, scaring the crap out of your friends is not your goal, then you can always go the unicorn route.

Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of good things in the Skymall magazine, and plenty of very helpful things (plus it's beginning to aim more at the business travellers, so there's a bunch more office related stuff), but those things don't really do much to take my mind off of the fact that we're bouncing and jostling, and great scott! we MUST hit 88mph before liftoff! So yes, thank you Skymall for making my flight a little more pleasant every time we take off.

All pictures are from the Skymall website.

Council

The other night the City of Austin Council approved a measure to lengthen the time frame for when people have to feed the parking meters downtown. Specifically the meters are going from 8-5 M-F to 8-midnight M-Sa.

Considering how many people would drive downtown to party on Friday and then take a cab home (doing the responsible thing), it would not surprise me in the least if we see a sudden jump in number of DUIs because people will be driving home on Friday night so that they don't get a parking ticket on Saturday morning.

Of course, if they had changed the rule to be 8-midnight M-F and 6pm-midnight on Saturday, I would be rooting them on and in agreement.

Though, I guess council said that they'd be willing to talk about a parking pass of some sort so you would be able to park downtown at a meter without having to worry about getting a parking ticket if you took a taxi home instead of driving. So that's good, at least.

State of the State

So yesterday (Valentine's), the flags were at half staff.

"Don't look now, honey, but I think Texas has shifted to a Catholic State and is commemorating the martyrdom of St. Valentine by putting all flags at half staff. I think it's probably best if we just quietly go with it."

6 Years

6 years ago when I moved down here, I found out that the garage had a little kitty door. I decided that this seemed like a brilliant idea to catch myself a pet cat and so I turned the little lock knobby thing to the point where an animal could come in, but couldn't get out.

Of course, after Ivy found us, I left it that way because she and Quazi would frequently go out into the garage and sit at their little kitty window and look outside trying to figure out a way to get out. (What happens if I push on it? hmm, Nothing. Okay...What happens if I push on it now? hunh. Odd. Nothing happened)

Since it's been 6 years and we've never had a problem with animals coming into the garage, I completely forgot about it. Until the other night when we had a feral cat in the garage. Well, we can't blame the cats - they tried to warn us (they both REALLY wanted out in the garage even though it was fuh-reezing outside). It also should have tipped us off as we came home and the garage smelled like cat piss, but I figured that the smell was because I had been cleaning out the litter boxes and throwing the waste in the garbage and we hadn't thrown away any other trash. So instead we sat in the house until the poor animal knocked over a rolled up rug Shawn had next to the garbage can. When we saw the cat, Shawn just opened the garage door and the cat left (though I feel like we should have put food and water out for it first because who knows how long it was stuck in the garage).

But man, can those feral cats jump. It was jumping about 6' straight up in the air trying to get away from us (and it was already in the opposite corner of the garage).

Pawprints

Taken after the cats went outside on Friday, Feb 4. (The most snow in Austin, TX since 2004)

Shutterbug: Catch of the Day

Upcoming photos will be as follows (and not necessarily in order):
-Catch of the Day
-Unlikely Duos
-Murals
-Those were the days
-Milestones
-State Parks
-Birds
-At the Fair
-EEK!
-Fall Leaves
-Curious Cats
-Man's Best Friend
-Heroes

More Cross Fit

Since yesterday's Cross Fit workout consisted of needing nothing other than a pull up apparatus (bar or rings), Shawn decided that it was a perfect opportunity to use the rings.

The workout: Burpee Pull-up.

How: Place hands on ground, hop your legs out so you're in pushup position, drop to ground, push up and hop a little to pull your legs up under your body, stand up, jump. As you jump, grab onto the pull up bar/rings, do a pull up, drop to ground on feet. Repeat.

Reps: 100. that's right. ONE. HUNDRED.

The goal: Do this as fast as you can. Record your time.

Shawn's time: 28 minutes give or take.
My time: 24 and a half minutes.

Of course, to be fair, I was doing hops instead of jumps since I can't do a full pull up and so the rings were set up to be a little above my head instead of a foot above my out-stretched hands like Shawn did.

Still. I win.

Now Shawn's out in the garage filling a basketball with 20 pounds of sand so he can do Wall Balls (that's what I'm calling them anyway). Wall Balls are where you take a 20 pound ball, do a squat with it, stand up and then throw the ball up 10', catch the ball, repeat. The reason why you do this by a wall is because it's probably pretty dangerous to just be outside throwing a 20 pound ball up in the air and trying to catch it, so you face a wall and aim for 10' up on the wall - then the ball only has a small area where it will come down and you don't have to move around as much to try to catch the damn thing.

But today's goal: 150 wall balls. in as fast as you can.

Is there anyone out there wondering why the unofficial mascot of Cross Fit is called "Pukey"?

Rings

Shutterbug

I have decided that I need to start taking more photos again. But, since my normal theme is "garden" so I can post the photos on my other blog; and since it's currently winter, it sometimes means that I don't get any action shots or anything of that nature.

Since I feel that I need some indication of WHAT exactly to take a photo of, I'm going to be using the photo contest in my Texas Co-Op Power magazine (yes, our power company sends us a magazine every month) as a guide.

So, upcoming photos will be as follows:
-Catch of the Day
-Unlikely Duos
-Murals
-Those were the days
-Milestones
-State Parks
-Birds
-At the Fair
-EEK!
-Fall Leaves
-Curious Cats
-Man's Best Friend
-Heroes

If you have any suggestions, just let me know!

Eclectic

So...Remember how I told you Shawn had been spending a bunch of time at a Cross Fit Training website? Yeah. Cross Fit is kinda like a cult. A cult of working out. And lifting a bunch of weight. And doing it a lot of times in a row (or in a circuit). And based on how frequently dogs are featured on their websites and/or videos, apparently they also all own pit bulls (awww...doggies!)

He hasn't actually started doing all of the workouts or anything. But he has been inspired by the Cross Fit Culture. He has bought Olympic Gymnastic Rings. Let me say that again. Olympic. Gymnastic. Rings. (where the hell are we putting these you may ask - why in the garage. We'll have to reinforce the roof framing in order to do this, but that's small peanuts because we REALLY need the rings...). He also would like a set of Olympic Bumper weights (those are the weights where the guys lift the barbell above their heads and then they drop the weight (usually on the range of 1000 pounds) to the ground...thus bumper weights). He hasn't been as into getting the pull-up bar, climbing rope or kettlebells.

If we're not careful we'll probably end up with a rowing skull and olympic sized pool in our back yard.

In other exercise news, we are also the owners of a giant red balance ball. AND I can officially jog a mile. Sure it's like an 11 minute mile. But it's a MILE!

yellow bubby

Cast Ironman

Shawn made dinner tonight. Entirely in the cast iron skillet.

Here I present to you breakfast potatoes with bacon and fried eggs:

Oh no

Heaven help me, Shawn's been spending a bunch of time at this website: Crossfit.com

New equipment

Sorry for the food-centric posts recently, it's almost like I'm going through food blog withdrawls. But that's not really the case, it's just that there's not a whole lot else going on.

Last weekend, Shawn decided that he needed this:


This is a Lodge pre-seasoned 10" skillet (picture is from the Lodge website which you can find here: Lodge Cast Iron Cookware). I originally was going to post a picture of our actual skillet, but then I realized that I would have to clean the stove top first, and if I'm going to do that, I might as well clean the counters, and once that's done, it's not that great of a leap to clean the kitchen table. And I'm too lazy to do all of that, thus the canned picture.

We've used it twice so far. The first night, Shawn made breakfast potatoes. Which all stuck to the bottom of the pan in spite of the fact that the skillet is 'pre seasoned' and all the added oil that Shawn added to try to prevent the sticking. The second time we used it (last night), Shawn made goulash which did much better. Eventually, supposedly, this will be just as good if not better than our non-stick pans. I think Shawn opted to move to the cast iron because the 'everyday' pan my aunt got me as a college graduation present is starting to lose it's hard anodized aluminum coating...which likely means no more non-stick for us.

In other gadgetry, Shawn purchased a new computer mouse for me since my current mouse is iffy at best, but it hasn't arrived yet. And let me tell you, it's WEIRD using only the keyboard to do everything. Shawn also purchased a microplane for me as well - he decided that rather than having me spend $4 for orange zest that it made more sense to spend $15 for a piece of equipment I'll use maybe 4 times in my life. But whatever.

Also, I need to find a seller for delicious wild game. Specifically venison. Delicious, delicious venison...drool.

The Tradition: Cinnamon Rolls

Growing up, my mom made cinnamon rolls every Christmas morning. We'd eat cinnamon rolls with an orange on appropriately festive paper plates and then we'd go look at all the goodies that Santa left us in our stockings. (Ah yes, I remember the year that Dad got a bag of coal. That was a fun year.) Mom originally started out making cinnamon rolls by scratch using a recipe from my great-aunt (dad's side). By the time we were older (in middle school), she found Rhode's Cinnamon Rolls in the freezer section of the grocery store and after we all agreed that they were just as good as the home made ones, she never went back.

For the past 5 years, I've dutifully made cinnamon rolls for Christmas day (and yes, I've made home made ones, pillsbury ones, and rhodes ones at various times - and mostly depending on when I went to the grocery store, if I had any yeast, and how quickly I wanted to make the rolls).

This year, for December Food Month (which is what I've affectionately named the tradition at work where someone brings in some food item to share for one day during December - the goal is to have at least one person signed up for every work day during December. Thus obviously turning us all into gluttons; who, on the first work day of the new year, walk down to the break room in a zombie-like fashion hoping and praying that someone was nice and brought in left over Christmas candy), one of the co-workers brought in home made cinnamon rolls. HOME MADE CINNAMON ROLLS, PEOPLE!! She used Ree Drummond's recipe which can be obtained through her website: The Pioneer Woman. The cinnamon rolls were Delicious and I single-handedly ate half a pan (so like 5 or something). I do not feel bad about this because she brought in 6 pans, and I waited until after lunch to have the 3rd, and until the day after to eat the other two. I was just being helpful and trying to make sure that we did not end up with an ant problem. It has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that cinnamon rolls are quite possibly my second favorite food in the world.

When I figured out that the recipe was easily available, I decided that I would make them instead of any of my other methods. Below is a pictorial process of the making of the cinnamon rolls.

Step 1: obtain all of the ingredients below. Including the foil throw away pans--the full recipe makes 6 of the square pans, 7 or so of the rounds.

Step 4: mix half the flour with the milk, yeast and sugar.

Step 5: Let rise.

Step 6: While dough is rising, make yourself useful and butter down those cinnamon roll pans.
Step 9: Turn out dough on well floured surface and form into a rough rectangular shape.

Step 10: Roll out into large rectangle. I rolled it too thin though, so you definitely want to go a little thicker than I did...maybe about 1/4" to 1/2" thick.

Step 13: Sprinkle well with cinnamon. Very well.

Step 15: Cut in 3/4" to 1" rounds and place in buttered pans.

Step 16: Find an appropriately festive towel, cover the rolls and let rise. I only did a half batch and managed to get 4 full pans out of the deal (as I said, I rolled the rolls too thin, and then I also cut them a bit on the skinny side)

Step 18: While the rolls are baking, break out your coffee maker and make the glaze. This is the third time it has been pulled out of the cupboard. Hot diggidy! The other times it has been pulled out are for French Onion Soup Night and during March when the Inlaws came to visit. We do not drink coffee, and Shawn told me I was a dum-dum for making frosting with coffee in it--I couldn't taste the coffee at all in Andrea's rolls, but apparently using a Dark French Roast with the setting on the coffee pot set to "Strong" is not the best option for those of us who do not like coffee flavored things.
Step 20: Glaze your finished cinnamon rolls making sure to get as much into the nooks and crannies as possible. Step 21 is to enjoy them, but step 22 is to listen to your husband complain about how the rolls taste like coffee.

YAY! Jacket!

To tide you over while I write the cinnamon rolls entry.

I swear

I swear I'm going to get around to posting an ACTUAL post about the cinnamon rolls. With pictures even! But life's been busy. You'd have figured that I could easily have written said post during the entire week I took off of work to do nothing but sit around on my ass at home. But you'd be wrong. I had very important things to do--like watch all of my DVDs that my sister sent me. And it's not like they're easy peasy DVDs, they're all TV shows DVDs. That means like 12-24 hours of viewing pleasure from EACH GIFT. So, there you have it. You can blame Dani for the fact that I haven't blogged about anything for the last week.

TRADITION!!

In my family, especially around Christmas-time, you inevitably will yell "TRADITION!" at some point. Sometimes, this exclamation comes while in your underwear, and at others, it comes while opening gifts. In my case (this year) it has come with the revelation to Shawn that I will be baking cinnamon rolls.

Traditionally, my family had lasagna on Christmas Eve, opened all the Christmas gifts from each other, went to midnight mass, came home to find our gift from Santa, went to bed, woke up, ate cinnamon rolls, "opened" stockings. The rest of Christmas is open to either playing with your new gifts, or, as my sister and I got older and had boyfriends, it meant that we could spend the rest of the day with them and their families.

So, yes, cinnamon rolls. Of course, this means I need to go get all the stuff to make them (okay, not ALL the stuff - just the milk, butter, stuff to make the glaze, and a bunch of those square throw-away pans).

Now then, if you want to follow along, you can find the recipe I'll be using over at Ree Drummond's site: Pioneer Woman

You put the lime in the Coke you nut

As a gift for one of my coworkers for his wedding, I offered to make a pie of his choice. His choice was coconut cream. A pie that I would normally avoid as if it were carrying a new strain of ebola because of two reasons: 1) Coconut, 2) cream pie. The best part about Matt choosing the coconut cream pie is that he chose it BECAUSE his new bride does not like it. Not that he ever even told her that I was going to make a pie for them, but that's beside the point (I think he totally told her today that I just gave them a dirty pie plate as a wedding gift so she would never even know that there was a pie).

I went out on Saturday and bought supplies (notably that sweetened coconut flake stuff ::shudder::). Then I came home and went to pet my cat. Except that my cat didn't want to be pet, and I think I surprised him. So he kicked out with his hind leg and this happened (note: picture taken 24 hours AFTER the scratching incident so it's not a bloody mess in this photo):

This of course meant that I needed to wash and bandage up my hand good and proper to prevent the gangrene from setting in. It should be noted that the cat scratched me, I went and washed my hand for 5 minutes, then got out the cotton wrap and compression wrap, broght them to the couch, sat down, wrapped my hand myself, and it still took my loving husband WHO WAS SITTING NEXT TO ME ON THE COUCH THE WHOLE TIME another 20 minutes to notice that my hand was wrapped up. This event (the scratching not the fact that my husband is unobservant) meant I spent all of Sunday with my hand wrapped thusly (FINALLY a use for all that left over cotton gauze and compression wrap):

Don't worry, I wore a nitrile glove the entire time I was actually doing the cooking, but I just wanted to point out that I had to do things left handed because I couldn't touch my thumb to any of my fingers without feeling like I was going to re-open the wounds.

The recipe:
This one. The one from Emeril Lagasse. The one that I've never tried (see aforementioned disdain of both coconut and cream pies). So I figured "What the hell, how bad can it be?"

Step one: Make the pie shell. Okay, this isn't too bad, but I much prefer the dump and press style pie crust--there's no rolling or chilling. way easier than this version. but it turned out okay (though I think the crust could have used more sugar, but whatever, I was following the recipe). Besides, there are so many other places to go off course anyway. Pricked because I don't have pie weights...or dry beans...mostly because I don't make this type of pie crust and I don't eat beans.


Step two: Make the custard. I've never made custard (okay, that's a lie, I made creme brulee once. But it was a mix and all I had to do was heat some milk, mix and chill). This custard required actually separating eggs and what have you. And, as I've learned from The Spiteful Chef, there are certain steps that must be followed with a custard. These steps basically mean don't follow the recipe as written on Food Network. There's a part where it tells you to boil the custard. I'm pretty sure that's a bad idea. So I used the ingredients, but followed Kristie's steps (which are actually written out and explained). Here is my set up:

Milk is being heated to 185 (yeah, we only had fat free...probably not the best idea to use that in a CUSTARD, note to self for the next time I don't make coconut cream pie), icebath is ready with a strainer to catch insolent little pieces of egg that don't want to become a custard, a wooden spoon for stirring and consistency checking of said custard, and a ladle to aid in the tempering of the egg yolks. Speaking of egg yolks, here they are just before having the almost boiling milk added to the cold, uncooked eggs:

Since the recipe doesn't explain it, tempering is basically adding a tiny amount (I used half a ladlefull) of the hot milk to the eggs. whisk, whisk, whisk. Add a little more milk. whisk, whisk, whisk. wash, rinse, and repeat until half the milk has been added to the yolks and then add the yolk mixture back into the hot milk pot where you heat but NEVER BOIL the mixture until it is thick and gelatinous. Pour into the strainer over the bowl in the icebath, press through the strainer, pour into the prepared pie crust. Now then, I'm not sure if I actually had to strain it, but I did since it seemed like a good idea. Cover in plastic wrap (like a Christmas present!) and place in the fridge to chill throughly. It will look like this (note: you will need approximately a 6-pack of Coke and chocolate chips to complete this look):

You can't really tell in the picture, but I wasn't sure if this would form that disgusting skin on it so I pressed the plastic wrap down until it touched the gooey innards of the pie (minimizing the amount of air that can get to the pie) and let it chillax for about 2.5 hours. Then I moved on to the meringue.

I think I tried to make meringue one time back in the day and it was disastrous. I found some tips online--like have the egg whites be at room temperature (yeah, I didn't do that, I took them straight from the fridge), and using 2 tablespoons of sugar per white (I didn't do that, I did double the amount of sugar from the recipe, though). It did have a tip that I did follow--I whipped those whites like a jockey on a horse in the Kentucky Derby BEFORE adding the sugar. Spread on top of the pie and place in the preheated oven...of course after doing that I decided I should actually Google whether or not Pyrex can indeed go from a 37 degree refrigerator into a 350 degree oven (apparently it can as long as the oven is preheated. That...doesn't make much sense to me--"yes, this dish can go from cold to hot as long as you don't try to ramp up the hot. quick and fast, that's the way to do it"). Then I decided I should take a picture of the pie in case the dish didn't make it through the oven cycle so I could at least say "look! I made you a pie! too bad my oven ate it. It liked it though, so be glad for that." Picture of pie in oven:


After about 10 minutes, it looks like it might be done, and because the recipe told me so, I take it out of the oven and TA-DA:

Look! It's ANGEL PIE! With the haloing effect...get it? no? yes...well...crap.

Of course it didn't look so pretty after I re-wrapped it in plastic wrap and took it to work this morning--it didn't like the 45 minute car ride in a warm car very much. Matt was still nice and said that it looked good. Plus I guess he ate all of it tonight for dinner. But then, I don't know if that really means anything because I think he'll eat just about everything.

Boston

Here are my Boston Photos...

Boston

700

As I'm sure you've noticed, I failed miserably in my goal of posting something every day of November. Le Sigh.

Fini

I'm FINALLY finished with the latest (and possibly last?) of my "projects for my friends' babies." And I'm only a year behind. for this project, I once again made cubes with 4 sides being embroidered hot-iron transfers and the 2 remaining sides being a bandanna skull and crossbones number. I, however, did not take a picture...this is mostly because I was finishing up the sewing on it as we were driving to the kid's 1-year birthday party. Because that's just how I roll.

Big Bang

Have you ever paused the television while watching the end of the Big Bang Theory in order to read the Chuck Lorre vanity end cards? I did. Once. But good news, now there's no need to pause the tv and get all close to it to read it, now you can just go to this handy website which catalogues all the vanity cards for you.

http://www.chucklorre.com/

Fall

from my mom when she was down here in October:
"So the leaves haven't started turning yet. What color will they turn when fall finally hits down here?"

from my coworker:
"Do you consider brown a color?"

Backpacking

on my birthday, Shawn and I went backpacking with our friend Lon, and his 4-year old daughter, Ma-belle. This is the only photo I took. I figured that it's his kid, he's the one that's in charge of taking the photos of her, right? I let her wear my hat the entire hike in because that's like an ounce that I don't have to carry myself.

Patriot Place

Mark Twain

"When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years."

Columbus

And I shall call him 'Lord Farquad'

Cat Food

I don't know how I managed to start feeding our cat a food that can only be found in 6 pound bags. And I can hear you asking me, "well, isn't that because your cat is on special kidney food?" and the answer is, "yes, but it's not that cat."

That's right, Quazi was put on a special food around this time last year. That food was Oral Sensitive by Royal Canin. The reason why he was put on this food is because he has the bad habit of scarfing food and then regurgitating it on the floor about 20 minutes later. The Oral Sensitive variety helps prevent this because he actually has to chew the food before swallowing it which means he eats slower and therefore won't act like an angsty high school girl. The food is good, Ivy likes it too, the only problem I have with it is that the big name box stores around here only sell it in the 3 pound bags, so I have to go to the ONLY store I've found thus far who sells it in the 6 pound bags.

Since I have to call in Ivy's food to the vet (prescription diet), I think I might ask if it's possible for them to order me Quazi's food too. Kill two birds with one stone.

Christmas

It's like I'm on a Holiday roll around here....

But, Machu Picchu, December 2011. What do you think?

November

You know what today is, don't you? It is November 2. 2 days into National Blog Post Month (NaBloPoMo). In other words, it is the month in which I regale you with crappy-ass stories in order to prove to myself that I can, indeed, post something on one of my blogs at least once a day for 30 consecutive days.

And you want to know something else? I've already screwed it up. I forgot yesterday was November 1. But, in the grand scheme of things, this is peanuts compared to the other atrocity that happened yesterday. The atrocity of which I speak is naturally the travesty in which I forgot to have the first two words out of my mouth on the 1st of the month be "White Rabbit."

Obviously this is Shawn's fault because he bothered to ask me a question right after getting out of bed. The question, of course, was whether Daylight Saving time ended on the 31st or not. I think he was looking forward to sleeping in for another hour. In any case, I'll take my semi lucid answer of "no, it ends next weekend, at 1am" over the phrase I kept uttering last night every time there was a clap of thunder that woke me up in the middle of the night...Though I would guess it'd be easier to remember to say "Holy Crap!!!" (and yes, apparently when I'm tired I cuss like a Mormon instead of a Sailor) the first of every month, rather than that silly "White Rabbit" phrase.

Nostalgia Sunday: Halloween Edition

As it is Halloween, and it is a Sunday, I figure a Halloween Edition of Nostalgia Sunday is in order. However, since there are so many preshus memrys, I am doing a bulleted thing instead of coherent paragraphs (oh who am I kidding, this is hardly ever 'coherent')

-My mom had the habit of making our costumes, this meant that a) we had to help out, and b) we had to fit them over our winter coats (okay not really, but it did help a bunch if we left extra room to wear sweatshirts and sweat pants underneath). One year we got some 'cut and sew' costumes that had glow in the dark piping. I was a witch, and Dani was Be-bop the robot. We'd go to the houses and Dani would say "Doop, beep, bop, eep! That means Trick-or-Treat in robot!"

-I don't ever remember truly going as a princess, but I think I went as an Indian (feathers, not dots) Princess when I was in third grade. And in 6th I was a Harem girl, which most people took to mean Jasmine from Aladin since that movie had come out fairly recently.

-Mom always made apple dumplings in the fall, and since it doesn't get cold down here until Christmas, it doesn't feel like fall, so I force myself to make apple dumplings on Halloween for preparation.

-My dad always decorated the front yard by raking all the leaves into a big pile under the tree, he'd then take an old pair of pants (usually Dani's), stuff them full of leaves and position them under the leaf stack like there is a dead little kid under the leaves (yes, they always told us the kid was supposed to be "sleeping"), the look would be completed by using Dani's old tennis shoes so you couldn't tell the pants were actually stuffed. Supposedly, one year the cops came to the house because someone had called it in saying that we had a dead kid in our yard. Of course, this all happened after Dani and I went to bed, so I question the validity of this claim.

-And finally, for YEARS I wasn't allowed to eat candy on Halloween night, all because of one measly sweet tart and an unfortunate event that happened later that night.

On Fairy Tales

As we were backpacking this last weekend with a four-year-old (Ma-belle), we (her dad and I) started talking about fairy tales...don't worry, we were quite careful to make sure she wasn't listening as it probably would have crushed her heart to find out that living "happily ever after" sometimes just doesn't happen in the fairy tales. Generally speaking the fairy tales that originated in Germany are meant to scare the ever-living crap out of children so they'll do what their parents tell them to while the French fairy tales are totally raunchy and meant to entertain adults.

Here are some quick synopses of the original fairy tales:
Snow White (German): Disney was fairly accurate to the source material here; the evil stepmother queen has little (7-year-old) Snow White taken to the woods to be killed, but the hunter lets her go. Snow White lives with the dwarfs, and the queen tries to kill her 3 times; by poison laces, poison comb and finally poison apple (however, in the first two cases the dwarfs save her and in the last the apple essentially gets stuck in her windpipe). The dwarfs put Snow White in a glass coffin in the woods and the dashing young prince comes, falls in love and begs the dwarfs to let him take poor, comatose Snow White with him. During the move, the apple piece becomes dislodged and Snow White wakes up, falls in love with the prince and they marry. The evil queen goes to their wedding (not realizing that it's Snow White), and, at the wedding, is forced to wear iron shoes that have been placed in the fire until they were red hot. She either dances until she dies, or has a heart attack. In either case, I'm sure wearing the fire hot iron shoes didn't help any.

Sleeping Beauty (French): Again, Disney follows the source material at the beginning, but when Sleeping Beauty (who doesn't have a name, though her eventual daughter is named Aurora) is in her sleep stupor in the woods, the prince comes and rapes her, thus impregnating her. When the babies (yes, twins) are born they suckle on Sleeping Beauty's finger, thus dislodging the piece of poisoned wood that was embedded in her finger (apparently human babies now act like most other mammals where the babies must find their way to their mother's teat). Said prince keeps all this under wraps (as was the fashion of the times), but his mother finds out and plans to have the babes and Sleeping Beauty killed, prepared in a sauce Robert, and ultimately served to her son (to teach him a lesson I suppose?). In some way, shape, or form, it comes to pass that the cook tricks the mother by giving her prepared meats instead of the prepared humans. When the King finds what she's done (that she tried to kill the mother of his children and his children), he has his own mother thrown into a pit of vipers (Why'd it have to be snakes?).

The Little Mermaid (Dutch): The little mermaid goes to the water's surface on her 15th birthday and saves a prince from drowning. Since she wants to be human to be with the prince, she goes to the sea witch who agrees to give her legs in exchange for the mermaid's voice. The mermaid agrees even though the witch has warned her that it will feel like she is walking on swords, her feet will bleed, and if the prince doesn't love her, she will die. The prince falls for the little mermaid, but ends up marrying another girl at the behest of his father (it helps some that he thinks the girl he is marrying was the one who saved him from drowning instead of the little mermaid). On the morning after the wedding, the mermaids sisters come to the surface with a knife. If the little mermaid kills the prince, she will regain her fins and live on as a mermaid. In the end, she can't kill the thing she loves and so she dies and becomes sea foam.

Beauty and the Beast (French): Belle is actually a princess, who, to protect her life, is sent to live as a merchant's daughter. The merchant loses all his riches, and when he gets news that one of his ships has returned to port, he asks his daughters what they want for gifts. The two older sisters (who, by all accounts, sound about as nice as Cinderella's sisters), ask for finery while Belle asks for a rose. When the merchant finds that his ship has been taken to pay his debts, he can no longer afford to buy the gifts he promised. On his way home, he spends the night in a seemingly abandoned castle. He tries to take a rose from the garden and that's when the Beast makes him a prisoner who can only leave if he agrees to send his youngest daughter. Belle arrives at the castle and is well taken care of, but refuses to marry the beast (even though she dreams of a handsome prince telling her to marry the beast). At one point, she convinces the beast to let her go home to visit her family. He agrees but states that she must come back within one week. Belle's sisters trick her into staying longer, and when Belle arrives at the Beast's castle, he is almost dead from heartbreak. She agrees to marry him and he is magically turned into the handsome prince. They live happily ever after. It should be noted that the prince was turned into a beast because he refused to be seduced by an evil fairy (newer versions indicate that he was turned into a beast for not being nice to a homeless woman).

Cinderella (originally Greek):
Greek version: An eagle makes off with a maiden's sandal and drops it in the king's lap thus starting the quest to find the girl who owns that sandal.
French version: The Disney version (sans talking mice, and helpful birds)
German version: This is the version where the sisters cut off pieces of their own feet in order to get them to fit into the slipper. Pigeons alert the prince by pecking out the eyes of the sisters after their lies. (Sound familiar?) They spare the prince because he's just a dumb dumb.

And all this exercise really made me want to do is watch "Into the Woods." Most of these stories I pulled from Wikipedia and my memory from when I researched fairy tales for a history class project. We filmed the original Sleeping Beauty using He-man action figures and Barbies. Don't worry, we used a censored sign for the inappropriate scenes...though we did make reference to the JonBenet case, which was probably in bad taste.

Birthin' Butterflies

I helped this butterfly be born. I had gone outside to take photos of flowers and noticed that the chrysalis I had on the passionvine was really dark, which indicates that the butterfly is ready to hatch. Unfortunately, the chrysalis was already in the shade for the day, so I picked up the stem the chrysalis was attached to and moved it to the sun. Not 10 minutes later and the butterfly was out and sunning off its wings.

Ugh

I'm pretty sure we can now add a new allergy to my list: Ragweed. In addition to the Cedar Fever I already suffer from, this now means that from October til February I will be holing myself up indoors and getting high on allergy meds. And that's during the best part of the year down here. dangnabit!

Water droplets on Cat tail

The cats got stuck out in the rainstorm this afternoon. They weren't too happy about that turn of events.

Car2Go: FTW

Skillz

Two nights ago, I decided to make jambalaya. the zattarain's variety. (by the way, that scream you just heard is Kristie all the way in colorado.)

Anyhow, in this jambalaya mix, I decided to use our deer sausage (the link variety) that I got from a coworker.

Opening the vacuum sealed package requires using a knife.

A knife I sliced toward myself.

A knife that slipped and I ended up nicking myself on the hip.

Put a nice little hole in my shirt.

So I sewed that up right after eating dinner.

Yes, I have mad knife skillz.

I'm sorry, did I say 'mad'? I meant 'bad'.

Cricket

No matter what type of day I've had, nothing warms the cockles of my heart more than seeing the kids playing cricket at the park on my way home from work.

Frost Bank Billboard

"If you want something done, tell a Texan it's impossible."
- Anonymous