Artistic Artichokes

Someone had too much time on their hands (and hopefully is not in trouble for misuse of an MRI machine), but the images of vegetables and fruits in the MRI are very interesting!!

Food Porn

We've been trying to eat better here at Chez Phouka, more fresh veggies, cooking at home more often, just trying to do a bit better.

I've also been watching a lot of Food Channel and Cooking Channel shows as I huddle in the living room cross stitching, so I've been trolling the internet for recipes and new ideas. There are only so many ways to cook zucchini, you know?

And I discovered a blog that is a collection of the "foodie" sites -- TasteSpotting. It's just food porn, really -- beautiful pictures of fabulous food, descriptions of meals, and some really interesting recipes. It's just fun to browse.

The Grass is Greener

I was thinking about this today, after a conversation with a friend over kids vs dogs.

One of the few times I wish that my dogs were actually human children is when they wake me up urgently at 3am.

With a human child (at least a verbal one) they could tell me if the urgency is "hurry up I'm bored and you should play with me" or "I forgot to pee before I went to bed can I go now?" or "Imminent butt-splosion from all the bacon I ate! Defcon four! 911! HELP!"

That would be helpful. With the dogs, it's all the same facial expression, and "I just want to go outside to bark" has the same urgency as "I think I'm gonna barf now".

Most often, it's the former--they sleep all day and want to go out. One benefit, though, I can just close the door, leave them outside, and go back to bed. Probably not a good idea with children, right?

I wonder if she'll do it

Back in February, a facebook page went up:
MY SISTER SAID IF I GET ONE MILLION FANS SHE WILL NAME HER BABY MEGATRON

It took 13 days. Do not mess with the power of the interwebs!

Galapagos Pictures

I've posted a quick set of pictures from the Galapagos Islands on Flickr. Just a quick run through - there are tons more! I'm working on it!

I'm not dead! Really!

Busy, busy, busy, though. I missed an entire month of posting. Oy. You must all think I've crawled under a rock or fled the country or something.

Well, I did sort of flee the country -- spent two weeks in Ecuador and the Galapagos Islands with our family (wow! just wow!), celebrated our 21st wedding anniversary, my birthday (for an undisclosed number of years), and have been helping my sister plan her wedding. Apparently posting to the interwebs fell by the wayside.

No worries, we're alive! I promise.

Am I nuts?

Probably. I love doing counted cross stitch -- something about the precision, detail, and twiddly stitching really appeals to me; I find it calming, really (despite the fact that it makes the Adorable Husband twitch to watch me stitch).

I realized that I haven't stitched anything in almost two years. Not sure why - too much going on, not enough leisure time, always something else to do instead of plopping down for a bit of zen-like focus on a blank piece of fabric, a printed chart, and a photo of what it will eventually look like.

So I spent some time web-surfing and looking for what sorts of patterns are out there now. I've always like the huge charts from Mirabilia and the extremely detailed architectural charts that I've found. I tend to not like the "crafty" sort of charts that abound -- kittens and teddy bears and amish-style samplers aren't my style.

And then I discovered that, in the last few years the 'fine art' style of cross stitch has simply exploded. Scarlet Quince and Heaven and Earth Designs have page after page of absolutely stunning charts -- huge, detailed, multi-year projects. I'm in heaven. My wish list at both sites is embarassingly huge.

So, I've resolved to start a project - -and picked a piece designed by John Godward called 'Pompeiian Lady', which just leapt out at me on the site when I saw it. I ordered it immediately and expect it to arrive this weekend.

The chart that is. I still need to figure out what I'm going to stitch it on and collect the whole 'kit', which is at least part of the fun.

At my normal 'resolution', this thing is 22" x 47". I'm going to have to work smaller than I'm used to, or I won't be able to actually hang it anywhere, it will be too huge. 334,400 stitches.

I'm insane, aren't I?

And now I'm going to have to get the other charts for this artist from HaED, or risk them disappearing/being retired before I can finish. (hm, possibly a birthday gift? Must tell the Adorable Husband...)

Definitely insane. Possibly certifiable.

Balloooooooons!

Yesterday was the Erie Town Fair, and there is usually a huge air balloon launch in the morning to kick off the festivities -- but Saturday dawned gray and cloudy, so no balloons.

Today, though, is gorgeous, and I was woken up by the hiss and pop of balloons heading over the house -- sometimes very, very close!.

Yes, it's done!

The Adorable Husband reminded me this morning that I had not posted evidentiary pictures of the "finished' garage door trim job. Yes, it's done -- primed, waiting for the painters to come and do the rest of the trim, but it really did only take one day to get all the new trim planed and put up.

Ta-da!

Surprise!

I woke up this morning, a lovely Sunday morning, to THIS....The Husband is dismantling the garage!


We're having the trim painted again this summer (dark colors + mile-high-city-sunshine = peeling paint) and as we looked around at the house, we realized that the trim on the garage -- just one corner, on the header over my garage door -- was a bit water damaged. Should be easy enough to replace, right?

So, the Adorable Husband got up early this morning to pull down the damaged piece and replace it.

Apparently it was a bit more troublesome than we imagined. Now there is a pile of red-painted ex-trim in the driveway, holes in the garage, and two carloads of new lumber.

I spent the afternoon helping him plane 2 x 8s into 1" x 6" headers and 2 x 6s into 1" x 4" frames. Seriously - nothing is nominal size lumber. It's all weird "exact" sizes that apparently don't exist at a regular Home Depot! Luckily the garage includes tools, including a planer. It is a most inefficient way to create eighteen bazillion cubic feet of sawdust, I promise!

The Adorable Husband is outside finishing up the caulking now, and I'm trying to snort out the sixty pounds of sawdust I inhaled. Not quite how I envisioned my Sunday!

Oooh, Retro!

I totally forgot to post this, and I really should have!

The Adorable Husband wears Gargoyle sunglasses -- remember Terminator? -- and has for twenty years or so. He likes them, and hasn't found anything else that blocks enough light and that don't make him look like a deranged bug.

So he was up skiing with my nephew last month, and one of the lift operators thought they were pretty cool -- "Really neat, man -- totally retro!"

I don't think you can be considered fashionably "retro" if you have been wearing the style the whole time. I'm not sure what that is, exactly, but retro it ain't! The Adorable Husband disagrees, of course, and he's feeling quite fashionable and stylish.

Only 2166 Chickens

Senate hopeful Sue Lowden’s plan for Healthcare reform is to barter for medical procedures. It's eminently mockable, not because the barter system is a bad idea (it's honestly not), but because she simply doesn't seem to grasp that the same people who don't have money for health care, have little to barter, and continues to repeat it. People bartered chickens for medical care becuase they couldn't afford to pay. That is not a solution to healthcare - bartering won't "Bring down prices in a hurry", unless, perhaps, you're a car dealer, it is a desperate, last-ditch attempt to get care and it turns medical care into a 'maybe you'll get it, maybe you won't" proposition. That's not acceptable.

Sue Lowden (R), the leading Republican Senate candidate in Nevada, recently articulated her vision of how the American health-care system should work. At a local candidate forum, Lowden, a former state senator and chair of the Nevada Republican Party, encouraged Nevadans to "go ahead and barter with your doctor." It would, she insisted, "get get prices down in a hurry."

"I'm telling you that this works," the Republican candidate explained. "You know, before we all started having health care, in the olden days, our grandparents, they would bring a chicken to the doctor. They would say, 'I'll paint your house.' I mean, that's the old days of what people would do to get health care with your doctors. Doctors are very sympathetic people. I'm not backing down from that system."

I would point out that "Before we all started having health care", people died of simple things that we can now prevent, and people with easily treatable diseases got no treatment at all because they couldn't pay for it. It just wasn't an option. The reason why people paid with chickens was because they were broke. Not because it was some idyllic time when things were simpler. It was because it was a horrid time when there were more poor people and there was no social safety net.

But, I really posted this because the following website made me laugh. A lot.

Some enterprising person has put up the Sue Lowden Chicken for Checkups web page, which just make me laugh uproariously.

Double Standards

Apparently bra- and panty-clad women prancing around in Victoria Secret ads are ok becuase the women are thin and have a-cup breasts. But try airing an ad for plus-sized lingerie, and the networks balk. Lane Bryant has a new Cacique lingerie ad that the networks didn't like, and apparently didn't want to air. The only reason I can see? Because the women aren't thin.

It appears that ABC and Fox have made the decision to define beauty for you by denying our new, groundbreaking Cacique commercial from airing freely on their networks.

ABC refused to show the commercial during “Dancing with the Stars” without restricting our airtime to the final moments of the show. Fox demanded excessive re-edits and rebuffed it three times before relenting to air it during the final 10 minutes of “American Idol,” but only after we threatened to pull the ad buy.

These are the same networks that run Victoria Secret ads. What was their complaint? "Too much cleavage". Well, yeah, when you look at real women and not coat-hangers and they tend to have breasts. Real women look like this -- far more than look like the airbrushed version of beauty that the fashion mags would have us believe. Talk about a double standard.

Cool Science Badges

Just popping in to link to Cool Science Merit Badges.

"I work with way too much radioactivity, and yet still no discernable superpowers yet” is my favorite!

I can't believe you said that....

I can't believe that they actually used the name. I can't. It's just too damn funny. I'm laughing so hard I nearly ruptured something. Yup. I'm twelve.

Duluth Trading Company Ballroom Jeans. Yup. Ball Room.

Unfamiliar Rules

I've been trying to help my sister with her wedding planning--getting the guest list put together, figuring out when things have to happen, that sort of thing. She's got most of it in hand, and when she was out visiting, we picked invitations and the associated bits and pieces that are included (rsvp, maps, ceremony/reception cards, etc). They are shipping now and she's getting ready to start the long evenings of addressing the things.

We, as a culture, just don't have big formal parties very often - weddings are about it for most people. There are all sorts of weird rules for things that we simply don't know (and if you don't pay attention you can miss them entirely). I didn't have placecards at my wedding, because I had absolutely no idea that I was supposed to, for example. Placecards? When was the last time you saw those? It all worked out, and in terms of faux pas it was a pretty minor one, but as I went through the books with Nin about what to do and when to do it and how to address things and the rest, it struck me that we really have to learn a whole new set of rules.

Take the RSVP card that's included in nearly every wedding invitation you've ever seen. It's actually a no-no in really formal circles, but everyone finally surrendered to the reality that no one writes personalized letters of regrets or acceptance anymore and has them delivered on little silver platters. We don't do it - and the etiquette for weddings finally realized that if the average person wanted to know how many people were coming to the wedding, providing them with an easy way to tell you is important. Now people are arguing whether the postcard version of the response card (instead of the little card and envelope) are acceptable, and whether providing a website or email address to response to is 'tacky'. This is all new to most people.

Which was hammered home when I started trolling a few of the wedding websites and forums looking for some general tips. Every single one has a dozen brides asking how to explicitly ask for cash as wedding gifts, or how to invite one person and not another, or how to make it clear that no children are invited to the wedding.

The "no children" thing is a serious hot-button issue with a lot of people. Some view a wedding as a huge family event at which everyone should be there and all kids should be included. To them, not inviting their children is insulting and rude. Others view a wedding as a formal adult celebration and do not want to have a dozen children running around. Sometimes it's a financial issue, sometimes it's a preference - want kids, or don't want them at the reception, either option is ok. You're not rude for not inviting them, if that's what you want. If you want kids, great. I'm not judging one way or the other.

Nin is definitely inviting kids to the wedding. She and her fiance are in their thirties, all their friends have kids - it is what they want. So for her, the issue is moot.

But there are a ton of couples out there who are struggling with the problem of not wanting to invite kids to their wedding - they aren't set up for it, they can't afford it, they simply want an adults-only affair. But this is apparently very hard to communicate to today's wedding guests. Every single forum is filled with questions on how to explain to guests who return a response card + 3, or communicate through family members how excited their kids are to come to the wedding, and when told that they aren't going to be able to bring them, announce that they aren't going to attend, either.

The thing is, there really is a rule about this -- it's just that we're so unfamiliar with the etiquette of formal invitations that no one knows what it is anymore. It's simple: only the people NAMED on the invitation are invitied. Makes perfect logical sense, but there are a lot of people out there that think an invitation to Mr. and Mrs. John Smith automatically includes their three children and the dog. I think we all intuitively know this, but given the conversations I've been reading online, a lot of people don't want to accept it. It should be enough that the invitation is written out to the two adults, to inform them that they should plan for a babysitter, but that's not always the case. Every bride was bemoaning the fact that they had to call people on their list to clarify that no, Junior is not invited and we simply cannot accomodate him. Sorry.

I wonder if you asked people randomly whether they would assume their "and family" was invited to a party, if the invitation was addressed to "Mr and Mrs...". We simply aren't aware of what the subtle wording is supposed to mean anymore. Our society isn't geared to that uber-formal sort of lifestyle, so the whole wedding etiquette thing is a monstrously huge list of do's and don'ts that are confusing. No wonder the bridal industry makes a mint on etiquette books and wedding planners. Oy!

As I said, it's not an issue for Nin's wedding - they want, and are inviting, kids. Ok, so how does that work? Technically, you're not supposed to write "and family" on the invitation, if you're being formal (and let's be honest, this is faux-formal nowadays, since we simply don't do it very often) you write all the names on the inner envelope - that's how you know that little Susie and Jimmy are invited. There are entire books out there with examples of how to address wedding invitations. What about "and guest"? Nin's fiance pointed out that he always got invitations addressed to him "and guest" and taht was perfectly fine. We pointed out to him that if the person is in a long-term relationship (as most of their friends are) then you are obligated to find out what the 'and guest's' name is and write that on the invitation (and in fact, they should receive their own). He was confused about this (well, so were we sometimes..everyone is.)

But we get to dress up, drink champagne, and pretend we know exactly how this high-society thing works. And I'm sure we'll mess up something, somewhere. It will still be fun!

Semantics, again

The christian militia group (calling themselves "Hutaree") was recently in the news -- its members were arrested for plotting to kill law enforcement personnel. I haven't really followed much of the story, except to wonder - why is this not being called what it is: terrorism. Is it because the group is white? Christian? American? What they were planning is the very definition of terorrism, and yet that word has yet to be applied to them by the media. I guess American's don't like the idea that there are native terrorists. Weapons of mass destruction? WTF?

According to the indictment, “The general concept of operations provided that the Hutaree would commit some violent act to draw the attention of law enforcement or government officials and which would prompt a response by law enforcement. Possible such acts which were discussed included killing a member of law enforcement after a traffic stop, killing a member of law enforcement and his or her family at home, ambushing a member of law enforcement in rural communities, luring a member of law enforcement with a false 911 emergency call and then killing him or her, and killing a member of law enforcement and then attacking the funeral procession with weapons of mass destruction.

After the attack, Hutaree members would retreat to one of several “rally points” to wage war against the government and be prepared to defend with “trip-wired and command detonated anti-personnel improvised explosive devices, ambushes, and prepared fighting positions,” the indictment says. That action, Hutaree believed, would serve as a catalyst for a more widespread uprising against the government, the indictment says.

Terrorists. C'mon, let's see it being reporting properly: these people are a dangerous cult, planning a terrorist attack.

Small but still there

Even though I ate cheese and drank wine and avoided the treadmill for ten days (including having my sister and entourage at the house, wining and dining), when I finally ordered my bridesmaid dress for her wedding, it was a size smaller than I was wearing before.

And I feel better. That's the whole point, of course, but there is a slim chance (a slim one, but one there, nonetheless) that I might be able to wear a sleeveless dress in August and not be all freaked out about it.

And I've graduated to walking uphill on the treadmill, since walking without any incline doesn't get my heart rate up high enough anymore. Hah!

Eek. Long Absence

Back after a long hiatus -- travel for work, spring break vacation with my sister, her son, and fiance, and now...tons of snow.

Seriously - a foot and a half, at least, since 5pm yesterday. Everything pretty much shut down - including I25 from Denver to Colorado Springs, and most of I70 west of the city. Schools closed, and all the foofaraw that accompany a "spring storm"

Tomorrow (thursday) is supposed to be in the fifties again. Gotta love spring!

Weather woes

I arrived in Vegas this morning (spending the week on-site at my client) and it was *SNOWING*.

SNOW.

In Vegas. I supposed it is March, and weather is still wintery...but I was totally not expecting snow. And, I've been told it will be in the seventies later this week.