No Judgment Zone

Cup o' Goodness - It might look disgusting here but it was a beautiful thing.

Today was one of the bosses birthday and so we had cake. In fact there were three cakes. Now I can't eat wheat and so I never get to indulge in the cake at the office birthday parties.  But luckily most store bought cakes come with copious amounts of frosting which I can eat, and I do.  I am quite adept at stripping a piece of cake of its frosting without disturbing the cake underneath.  There is pretty regularly cake in our building and my coworkers know that I enjoy eating the frosting so some actually bring me their frosting off of their cake. It's a nice system.

So today there were three cakes in honor of a birthday and for some reason, most likely meetings, the party was at 9:30 am which meant cake for breakfast.  Breakfast cake is the best.  Because there were three cakes there was plenty left over by the time lunch rolled around.  I happened to be in the kitchen area microwaving my lunch when I realize that the sheet cake was on the table and it had some frosting flowers on it.  Now frosting flowers are the best because they come off the cake easily without disturbing the base frosting and cake below so removal doesn't waste the pieces below.

Yes that picture is a cup full of frosting.  It is two flowers worth and some of the decorative edging.  And yes I did eat it for my dessert after lunch.  And I enjoyed every minute of it.  And I am secretly hoping that there is still cake tomorrow that I might take the frosting off of again. And yes, I might have a problem. 

Cake with the two full frosting flowers removed. 
Notice how the underlying structure is undisturbed? Yup, I'm that good.

Happy Birthday Mom - February 16th

 

Mom and I on a black sand beach on the Big Island, Hawaii
December 2009

I have the best mom in the world. I know that everyone says that, but I am pretty sure that I am the only person telling the truth. 

My mom is the most generous and kind-hearted person that I know.  She is constantly thinking about and doing things for other people.  I benefit from her generosity more than I probably should since I am a full grown and almost fully functioning adult. 

When I started this post I thought it would be so easy to talk about how amazing my mom is but I have been sitting here trying to adequately describe the level of awesomeness of her but I find that mere words can not express it. I think that the only adequate way to express it would be to have all the adjectives that describe her spelled out in the sky... by fireworks.  That might come close...maybe.

All I can say is that if I am even a quarter of the person that my mom is when I grow up, I'll be pretty lucky.

Happy birthday to the undisputed most awesome mom in the world!

Grown up kids - February 13th

I have a confession to make, I love motorcycles.  I am a little bit scared of them and know that I will never be the owner of one simply because the one time I tried to learn how to ride failed miserably. But I love riding on motorcycles.  There is just something so freeing about it.  I think it must take us back to when we learned to ride a bike as a kid.  The area that we were able to go suddenly increased just because we learned how to ride a bike.  Things that were just too far to walk to weren't too far on a bike.  And there was the wonderful feel of the wind rushing by.  With a motorcycle all those feelings that we had when we rode our bikes as kids are there but they have grown up.

I was walking to class on Wednesday night and parked in a lot near the building was this motorcycle and sidecar.  You don't see many sidecars that aren't in some WWII era movie.  How cool would it be to ride in that side car whizzing down the road.  Just the perspective would be so different than any other.  Of course whoever was driving the bike would probably get sick of me humming the Indiana Jones theme song incessantly. 


(Note: This flu/cold thing has really knocked me on my butt so I'll be back dating a few posts.  Hopefully this will be over soon and I'll be back to my regularly scheduled life.)

Down for the Count

My first aid station for the weekend.  Keep them all within reach.

Just as I was restarting my attempt to blog every day I was struck down with the flu.  I think it's been a long time since I had the actual flu.  I felt odd beginning Tuesday evening and again Wednesday morning.  I was bound and determined not to come down with the dread disease that seems to be making its way through the population.  Even before I went to Hawaii I was taking Emergen-C and drinking a lot more fluids than normal.  And Wednesday morning I took my first break at work to go to the pharmacy and stock up on prevention tools.

I think I lost my fight around noon when I started to get cold.  Now I am normally always cold but this was down to the bone, teeth chattering cold.  I had class that night though and since I had already missed two classes and you can miss three without penalty I was not going to miss class. So I sat in my art class with my coat on, zipped all the way up and shivered.  When I finally made it home the first thing I did was get out my thermometer.  I can't tell you how many times I have felt like garbage, been freezing, and could swear I had a fever only to pull out that thermometer and find out my temp was just fine.  Not on Wednesday - 100.3.  I have never been so happy to have a fever in my life.  It felt like vindication of some sort.  (Don't ask, I was feverish and you don't think clearly when you are feverish.)

The next four days (Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday) consisted of me laying on my couch watching hour after hour after hour of Netflix.
On Thursday afternoon my mom brought me a care package.  I had called my parents on Wednesday night to check and see how they were doing.  They have been battling the same thing for two weeks now and Wednesday my dad had actually gone to the doctor and he never goes to the doctor willingly. In our conversation I told them that I had secumbed.  So it was nice when mom dropped by Thursday with a complete care package and I mean complete.  Powerade, Ginger Ale, Cough Drops, Alka Seltzer Plus, Kleenex with fancy lotion, and a homemade batch of chicken soup.  I don't care how old you are, when you are sick the only thing that can make you feel better is mom.

So that was my weekend.  For the most part I feel better although I have entered the hacking cough stage of this thing.  I feel fine then suddenly a tickle then I cough but it's never just a cough or two.  No, this is a 5 minute hack out a lung cough-fest.  Once the cough-fest is done I'm good for another half hour or so.  I feel for the poor people who live above me and have to hear me hacking.  Another interesting thing about the cough is that this whole time my nose has been clear.  My sinuses have felt plugged but my nose has been clear.  Except when I cough.  After a coughing fit I always have to blow my nose so even though I haven't had a runny nose this whole time my nose is still raw.  Not fair.  At least I have fancy lotioned up tissues to try and keep it under control.

Stop and Smell

 

Flowers received while in the hospital Sept 2008

I have noticed several people on facebook posting pictures and with the caption, "Day ___ #February Challenge"  So not being privy to what February Challenge was referring to I went to Google.  I found out that there is apparently an February Challenge on Instagram where you are supposed to take a picture everyday of the month and they have themes for the days.

My first thought was, "They stole my idea!"  but after a second I realized that I could use this to my advantage.  There are bound to be days in this month where I don't know what picture to post.  Well I can use their suggestion for the day.  Combine their idea with mine.  :)  Of course this was instantly complicated by finding that there are only about 57 different lists for each day.  The only day that they seem to agree on is the 14th.

The list that I looked at in my searching that I remembered said that today should be "Something I smelled."  Well I didn't really smell anything picture worthy today.  My dinner smelled wonderful but it was not the type of dinner that translates well to photographs.  So I thought, "Well they always say 'Stop and smell the roses' so I guess flowers would be appropriate." 

I love having fresh flowers.  They are so cheerful and smell so beautiful.  But I don't get them very often because it always makes me sad when they wilt and I have to throw them out. I tend to hold on to them for longer than I probably should.  It seems so sad that flowers are so beautiful but really only for a brief moment.  That is probably a metaphor for life. It is has truely beautiful moments but they are fleeting and pass too soon.  Which is also I guess where the saying stop and smell the roses comes from too.  The roses will only be beautiful and fragrant for a moment so you have to take advantage of the moments when they are.

It's not as if I am discovering these ideas for the first time but sometimes its good to be reminded

Critique

Color Wheel Collage

 

 

Analogous Color Collage - The colors are hard to see but it is
blue, blue-green, and green.  I will be changing the center of the flower
to a slightly darker color based on feedback from tonight.

 

 

I work for a college and part of my benefits include getting to take classes tuition free and so I take a class or two every term. My coworkers don't really understand me because I have a degree, there is no need to take academic classes, and there is definitely no reason to take them for grades. And yet I do. I love to learn and enjoy taking classes. I have always been that weird one who likes school. And it doesn't really matter the subject. I was talking to a friend telling her that I got to take classes for basically free and she got very excited and said,

"That is so cool! What have you taken?"

"Oh, Western Civ, Psychology, Sociology..."

"...Oh..."

I know that people think I'm strange but I love taking classes. And I have taken some "fun" classes. This term I am taking an art class which is very fun. It is ART 116 - Color Design. 

 

Tonight was our first critique for our first two assignments; the Color Wheel Collage and the Analogous Color Collage.  I was nervous about the critique but it went really well.

 

The Color Wheel collage was a very fun assignment.  We had to find examples of all of the colors on the color wheel in magazines and create a collage... just like the name implies.  I was nervous about it to start but I am very proud of my finished project.  I spent quite a bit of time choosing from the wide variety of pieces of magazines that I cut out and arranging them in a way that I thought was pleasing.  When I started out I wanted all my pictures to be a theme but I found myself getting frustrated and so I just decided to let it be random and I am so glad that I did.  I have tried to figure out which wedge is my favorite but I can't do it. I look at each one and see all the parts and how they come together and I am just pleased.

 

The Analogous Color Collage assignment was to take a black and white picture and convert it into a color picture using an analogous (next to each other on the color wheel) color scheme.  It was all about matching the values of the colors.  I got the assignment right before I left for Hawaii and didn't actually start work on it until Wednesday.  So over the weekend.  In fact when I pulled it out and my instructor saw it she said, "Wow, you really did a lot.  I know what you did this weekend."  (Don't tell her it was only a few hours on Saturday night.)

I chose a very simple picture of mine because I didn't have the time to go into detail.  It was incredibly stressful. I started with one color scheme which didn't seem to work because my original picture has some very large contrasts in value and I just couldn't find the right papers.  However after going to Michaels and spending like $20 on paper and raiding the paint chips at Home Depot I decided I just needed to start.  And surprisingly I am quite pleased with it.

 

That didn't stop me from being very nervous about the critique however. My picture is very simple and I knew that other people were doing incredibly complicated ones.  I thought that the simplicity would be detrimental.  But when I took it out the people at my table expressed their amazement at it.  Then critique the first thing that the guy who critiqued it said was, "It's perfect."  That is not true but it was nice to hear.  Overall the comments were really good, which was surprising but nice.  There are a few comments about things I could change which I will try and do before I turn it in on Wednesday. 

 

So whew...  I am sure that the next critiques may not be as positive but at least I know that I am not completely devoid of artistic talent.  

I Left My Flip-Flops in Hawaii

The path along the ocean from Kapa'a Kauai to Donkey Beach - Jan 27th 2013

 

 

Metaphorically of course... 

You know that song, "I Left my Heart in San Francisco," well I think that I have discovered the Hawaiian version. 

The place that we were staying in Kauai is right next to a path that runs from Kapa'a (the city where our resort was) to Donkey Beach, which is approximately 3.5 miles north.  On Sunday (Jan 27th) afternoon, my friend was reading and I felt the need to go for a walk so I walked this path.  And on the way back I happened upon the most unusual site; a lone pair of flip-flops on the path placed side by side. 

At the time I was completely alone on the path and had seen no one going in either direction for several minutes.  There is a beach down a steep hill to the left and there was no one on that section of beach to which the flip-flops might have belonged.  It got me wondering what the circumstances were which brought those flip flops to be on that path alone.  Perhaps the next time I go back to Hawaii I will leave a pair of flip flops along a beach path so that a part of me can always be in the islands.


Side Note:  My intention with this blog was to make a post every day of the year.  But as you can see by the date that hasn't happened.  I went to Hawaii on January 22nd and took a laptop with me full intent on continuing my streak.  But it turns out that places just don't have free wi-fi like they used to.  So rather than pay for internet I spent my money and time on more important things, like relaxing. And after I got back I had to get caught up with real life. So I might catch up with missed posts as time goes one.