Snow, sledding, and fun!

We drove up to the mountains and went sledding. It was soooooooooooo much fun. Sledding is one of my favorite things ever!

Riff Ram Bah Zoo, Lickety Lickty Zoo Zoo, Who Wah Wha Hoo, Give 'Em Hell TCU!

Thought this was a great shot from this year's Bowl game win for TCU!

FROGS WIN IN SAN DIEGO!

Frogs made Boise State non-undefeated this season! WOO HOO!
Riff Ram!

Vay-Cay Time!

I get to get away ... starting tomorrow. Hurray! First Cali, then Ari. Merry Christmas!

Henna time

So, I went to a threading place (eyebrows, lips, etc.) yesterday because my friend wanted a girls' day getting henna done. So, we went and I tried something new. I not only had my eyebrows threaded (first time ever), but I got a henna tattoo as well (first time ever as well). It was interesting and eventually some of it was hard to get off, but it was fun and many of my students asked me about it today. :)It's even darker today ... not sure how that works, but here it is.

Bunny ... not alien

Well, well, well. I made little Lisa a bunny for one of her mom's baby showers. The first one came out looking like an alien. I finally redid it and now it doesn't ... it almost looks like a bunny ... or a bunny in pajamas as my friend told me.



This is the alien looking bunny.

I did save the face (although I had to cut it down for the second body).





Here's the bunny I did give to little Lisa:

Starbucks Birds

I'm not sure why - I have my theories - but I have a huge thing about birds right now. Not just any birds, mind you, but certain ones. Swallows or ones that look like old fashioned tattoo-ey ones.

So, I'm sitting in S'bux, procrastinating on my final paper of this semester, and I'm sitting right under these birds. Starbucks has a lot of art that I like - not sure why, just do - and these caught my eye.

Everytime I see some birds I like online I try to save the picture of it in my special birds folder (of course, robots and anatomical hearts and purses/bags have made their way into this folder as well). Well, these were good enough to keep so I snapped a pic with my cell and here it is. Better than writing the paper, right? (-;

My first quilt

QUILT!

It's not a good picture (forgot to take the plastic off my camera phone - got a newish phone since I lost mine).

I am mostly done with the top part of my quilt. I am going to add a border and then I'm not sure what.

It has mostly orange squares (different shades and patterns), one white with orange flowers calico print, and the one green print with orange and white flowers.

I'm really looking forward to getting this thing done!

I guess that snake scared me away from blogging.

I have been so crazy busy that I have not had time to blog, but am hoping to get something things posted soon ... especially since I started some new hobbies. FUN!

Mrs. Snake

Here's Mrs. Snake in all her snakey glory. She's been living in a hole in the outer wall of my house between two bricks.

Usually, she just sticks her head out, but today when I got home from church she was out getting a tan while freaking me out. From the size of her head (the one that sticks out between the two bricks), I didn't think she was so long, but she is. I saw how long she was as she tried to climb up the wall before going quickly into her hole.

I'm guessing the little baby three inch snake that Andie had killed a couple of weeks ago belonged to this lovely one. And yes, the baby was inside when I found it dead ... probably played to death with by Andie!

Pity Pat the Kitty Kat

Say hello to Pity Pat the Kitty Kat. This little creation was made from Bre Pettis's (www.brepettis.com) pattern that he shared on Make Magazine's Weekend Project Podcast.
















I really enjoy Bre's ideas (including the icosahedron project I had my class do!) and loved his sympathy doll idea.

Here's an excerpt of what he says about them:

The sympathy doll idea is to make a doll that is so sad and pathetic that it inspires empathy and love from people. You really can't feel too bad around these dolls because you just know that no matter what, you don't have it that bad!

So there you have it.

I have only made one and I gave that to Lia's daughter for her birthday. I plan to make more, though since I think they are fun and cute, although sad.

Stuff I made in Cali

The top two pictures show the purse/bag I made for my friend, Lia. She picked out the materials and I put it together. The other two are bags that I left with her to see if they would sell at all. I think they came out rather cute. There's something about each of them that I really like.

So, why don't I finished the one that is supposed to be for myself? ;-)

1 Peter 5:10

Okay, I had to do just one more.

1 Peter 5:10:

And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast.

Thanks to Biblegateway.com for being the go to place for getting any scripture in any version immediately!

I really need to lose this url! ;-)

Exodus 14:14

Well, I combined my new favorite Bible verse with my new favorite time-waster and got this:




My new favorite time-waster is wordle (http://wordle.net/).

It's a little online program (java) that takes your words and puts them into a word cloud. I think I'll go play with it some more.

Crazy thing is that I discovered it from one of my classes - who woulda thunk it? ;-)

Here are more versions of the same thing:






Okay, now I'll try some lyrics - here's the lyrics for Marvelous Light by Charlie Hall.




This is too much fun! :)

Here's a bigger version of the last one so you can see it better (I hope!):

Mr. Lizard is back!

Here he is.

Mr. Lizard is back. Evidently, the front yard is much nicer than the back yard now. Usually the lizards would stay in my backyard where the trees are (I've heard he's a tree lizard), but I guess they like the new layout of the front yard because here he was today. He was lounging on one of my rocks. I guess he thought it wasn't as hot today since we had sort 0f some rain today and clouds.

I hope I see him around more. I tried to get closer to take more pictures, but he didn't like that one bit and ran away.

(Click on the photo to get a better look at Mr. Lizard looking back - I saved the image as a pretty large one so you can get a better view of him.)

Smokey in Cali

I've not been in the middle of a bunch of fires before, but on my latest trip to California brought me upon scorched earth and tons of smoke and occasional ash.

The photo here was taken by my friend as we were driving up to Paradise, CA. It was very strange to see black ground and trees that had brown leaves about half way up their length and then green leaves at the top.

The day after we went to Paradise more evacuations took place there because of different fires going crazy.

The strangest thing is seeing ash fall like snow and it looking like a dark overcast winter day outside, but when you go outside it's 105 degrees.

Needless to say, I stayed inside much of the time that I was there, which is fine by me, but thank goodness for a gym pass so I could get a day of running in without clogging up my lungs.

Real Life "Danny Deckchair"

Have you seen the movie Danny Deckchair?

This guy in Oregon may have:


He's trying to make it from Oregon to Idaho.

Interesting - who woulda thunk balloons would work? ;)

Find the story here:
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D91NPF1G0&show_article=1

Well, it's almost official!

Guess who got a new job?








Me!

Hurray!

Accepted today, but still need to do paperwork with HR!

Hurray!

Andie's Bath - on YouTube

This is her during the bath.



At the end of the bath.



Shaking off that nasty bath (and on command, I might add ;).

The New Toto in Illinois

Sure this dog, Chase, is a little bit bigger than Toto, but like Toto this dog was swept up in a tornado!

The full story and video can be found at http://cbs2chicago.com/watercooler/tornado.lifts.dog.2.743773.html.

This poor doggie was swept up out of his back yard, flown through the air, and tossed into the woods. Thankfully, he's okay now.

My only question is why is the dog in the back yard during a tornado? I guess if the family wasn't home to get him? I hope they weren't home. :(

Cellphones make Popcorn

Bath Time for Andie

It's been a while.

Andie hasn't had a bath in a long time.

I was actually surprised at how well she did in the water.

I got the temperature right and put her in and closed the drain. I think that helped her adjust better. She still doesn't like water, but her tail went up after a minute or two.

Now she's all fuzzy and clean.

It's funny how small and puppy-ish she looks when she's wet.

Now, I just need to do her nails (I did her teeth while we were waiting for the tub to fill up with water).

She's not sticky anymore! :)

The Japanese Office

I love me some Office.
I didn't realize this until this past year.
I watched the original The Office from the UK last fall and then this spring break started watching the US version of The Office on DVD. I think watching TV shows on DVD (or on Hulu www.hulu.com) are the way to go for me.

Here's an SNL digital short with Steve Carell.
The Japanese Office

140,000

My little car made it to 140,000. Since I noticed it, I thought I would document it.

My little car does so well ... I'm proud of him!

Here's the dirt.

So, in the last two days I've put 960 pounds of dirt in my back yard. This is per the structural engineer who checked out my house a couple of times (before and after the foundation was fixed).

There's something about working with dirt that is just great. I don't know what it is, but I really enjoy it.

I also have put down mulch. A lot of mulch. I think I like working with the mulch even more. There's something about the warm mulch in my bare hands that is just earthy and lovely.

Hurray for dirt and mulch!

Oh yeah, it's helping my foundation too!

April Showers bring April Flowers - Peony

Well, even though I lost almost half of my buds off my only flowering peony bush/plant, the ones that survived are blooming!

Because of the placement of my other two peonies, they won't be blooming anytime soon because they need to be moved ... at least one of them needs to be moved anyway. I have some work ahead of me.

I have lots of plants to move because my swail is going to be redone and there are still lots of plants in there. Also, there are plants in other places when the dirt out of the swail was moved.

Maybe I'll have some time this weekend to work on my yard!

April 17, 2008 Fort Worth Hail Storm aftermath part 2

I think it may be hard to see on the second picture, but you can see how the hail was so hard and icky that it made holes plumb through the leaves of my magnolia tree. The first picture actually has some good holes that you can see very easily.

The last one is a close up of the almost perfect circle hole in a fallen leaf.

I'll have to take a picture of my fence so you can see how pounding the hail was.

Dallas Stars

Hurray for the Stars! They beat the Duck! Even though the Duck were the Stanley Cup Champions from last year, they are one and done this year.

I look forward to more good hockey from the Stars coming up.

Congrats Stars!

Expelled

This is the newest movie/documentary that I want to see. The trailer is pretty funny (Ben Stein in school boy shorts), but the movie is a documentary about how certain thoughts/beliefs (i.e. Intelligent Design) are not allowed on college campuses and how faculty have been fired/expelled for teaching such things. I'm looking forward to seeing this!

The web site for it is http://www.expelledthemovie.com and explains much better than I what the movie is about.

Fort Worth Hail Storm - not so bad

Alright - so afterwards the damage wasn't too bad. The roof looks okay from what I can tell.

I took a few pictures of plants and leaves from my backyard. You can see how the Magnolia leaves (which are pretty tough, btw) got pummeled. My dill and fennel plants got hit a bit too. I didn't take pictures of my banana plants because they are just too sad - I think they'll be fine, but they just look really sad right now.

Fort Worth Hail Storm

Tonight we had a lovely little storm come through. I took Andie to the park an hour and a half earlier and the storm clouds coming in signaled that we should get on home.

The storm didn't hit until later (about 7:50 or so where I live) and it was nasty.

The first picture was taken from my front porch. It shows my neighbor's side yard and you can see the hail on her driveway.

Thank goodness that the hail wasn't bigger because it would have done major damage (wondering if this stuff killed my banana plants that were only 2 inches high or so) like holes in roofs and such.

When the hail was coming down it was very scary. I was in the bathroom with Andie (in the tub) and we had the TV going and the radar going on the laptop. I shut all the doors I could in the house in case it was grapefruit size like they reported west of here. It sounded large and scary, but it was only about nickel to quarter size.

The second picture is of the swail on the side of my house. The hail itself is not as deep as my swail (about 6-8 inches). What that is, is the largest cup of ice water ever. I'm not sure how that worked, but there you have it. I stuck my hand down in it and it was just like ice water except dirtier.

The third picture is of the hail up close. I grabbed some right after the pounding on my roof stopped and I put it in the freezer. I put the quarter next to it for reference. That make the hail look a bit bigger than quarter size!

Loveliness.

Glad that's over and I'm praying that there's no damage on the roof!


They said that there was a tornado that touched down not far west of here. Oh yeah, you know it's bad when the sky turns green. It's the third time I saw the sky turn green since I've lived here. The first time was the huge hail storm on May 5, 1995. The second was the tornado that hit downtown Fort Worth. This was my third. It never turns out good when the sky is green.