Geekery

This is just a random geekiness post. You may experience turbulence as it jumps rather abruptly from topic to topic. Please fasten your seatbelt.



When we lived in CA, I started a tradition of blowing up as many balloons as possible and trying to fill a room with them, then letting the kids frolic. This started on Sluggie's third birthday, when MuNKi was out of the country on her special day. With just the four of us (me and 3 kids aged 5 and under) I was feeling a little bummed, and not "festive" enough, so voila: Balloonorama was born. We've missed a birthday or two here and there, but I think the tradition has been re-revived. All I can say is that whoever invented the air compressor is my hero! ^_^ (I used to have to do these all by lung.) There are at least 4 kids in this picture. Maybe more.

We're going through a massive Star Trek phase here. When I learned that Pfaltzgraff had made some Enterprise dishes, I was totally geeked up. Then I saw the price tag: $300.00. Um, no. Thank goodness for eBay! 10% of that was much more reasonable. We use these every day. The kids take turns with the cup ("Tea, Earl Grey, hot") and share the plates. I need to find more! :)

And speaking of being geeked up about stuff, I tried Paper Piecing for the first time yesterday. Here's what I made:


I started with something simple, but I can see a lot more of this happening. In fact, I'm off to look for Star Trek and LOTR piecing patterns now. ^_^ I love the web!

On My Soapbox

I think I'm going to make soap today. Yay! I may even get crazy and make more than one batch. I'm going to do smaller batches, though, so I can play around with scents and have at least 2 different ones, instead of 30 bars of the same kind. I'm also going to use some of my fun moulds. Last time I just used PVC pipe, creating a soap sausage that I then sliced into hockey pucks. I'll likely end up using both, actually, since I don't have a ton of moulds.

Hmm, Mozilla says it's "molds." Isn't that what grows on old food? I am the only person on the planet, it turns out, who cannot intentionally grow mold. I tried for one of our Biology lessons and failed spectacularly. I made mummified bread. I'm still unsure of how that happened, but I may try to patent the process and produce mummified bread on a large scale to sell as survival food. Fortunately, it turns out that I can grow molds UNintentionally, so we finally have something to look at under the microscope now.

I've been teaching myself to play the guitar (at last!) and am moving past the sore fingers point, which is nice. Chordie rocks! I remember several chords now (variarions of F, C, G, G7, Am, D, Em) but there are some I cannot figure out how to play for the life of me, short of pulling a Zaphod and having quite a few extra fingers grafted on, or perhaps having my hand cut and stretched between the 3rd and 4th fingers. That could be the latest "hot" surgery. You know, like tongue splitting, and other body modifications. Yep, I should patent that, too. "Guitar Player's Hand."

Observations From The Mattress

Well, I'm blogging in bed, so it seemed an appropriate title. . .

I keep swearing to myself that I will keep Wednesdays free of obligation.

I keep failing.

The good part is that it's always something good that comes up, so I can't complain. :)

My kids have the chance to be exposed to chicken pox tomorrow, but with a 10-20 day incubation period, that puts us in range of the next black belt testing, so I have to say no. Can't have poxy kids trying to survive a 7-8 hour test. Bummer.

Yeah, black belt testing is coming up again. (Aug 16th) Urf. ^_^ This will be our second "check test." After you make black, you keep testing with the other black belts, or bb candidates every 6 mos. On the 5th or 6th test (I can never remember which), if you passed them all, you get your second degree. So yeah, 2nd degree is still a ways off. Our last one was, I think, only 4.5 hours long, as opposed to the 7.5 hour one the first time around. But last time everyone was just doing check tests, and this time we have a new candidate, so it will probably go longer. Argh.

Sluggie turned 11 on July 15th and Gogo Fishy will turn 9 on Aug 13th. Yikes!

I see a lot of names on Facebook that are really familiar from high school, but I really don't remember a lot of the people. There are a few I do, though. The trick is finding any of those who remember me. ^_^

I kicked one of my sparring partners in the butt tonight. (spinning back kick) Apparently I got him pretty hard. *cringe* The good news is that I didn't hurt my ankle again. ^_^

I have a new hogu (chestguard) that I like very much, but I can't dress myself in it, and must thus rely on the charity of others who are willing to tie me up in it. O_o ^_^

Thus ends the random update.

W00t!

Woo hoo! Pic uploading is enabled once again!!

If you haven't deserted me after all this time, I guess I really do need to cough them up. :)

Mollusc and I are ultra-chic in our sparring goggles. ^_^ But boy were we glad we had them on! Even with the strap, mine got peeled off my face at one point.

Oh, and the latest post on Mollusc's new blog is crackin' me up bigtime. ^_^

Wet 'n' Wild

Please stand by for pics, as Blogger is being a poo.