awesome art!

On Wednesday Bird Nerd took me to the Getty. I had not yet been there, amazingly enough...
Well, in this one display section "Zoopsia", I fell in love!!! Check this out. The artist: Tim Hawkinson. The piece: Leviathon. The inspiration? Obviously dinosaurs... but also, ROWING!

learning lessons

Back in February friends of mine who have property in a place called Borego Springs, and who have grapefruit trees on this property, gave me some fruit. It was too much to eat by myself, so I tackled turning the remainder into marmalade. It turned out pretty great!

So, as a thankyou, I gave my friends a jar of marmalade. It was gone in a week, so I gave them a 2nd.

Then, when they returned from Borego Springs a couple of weeks ago with a "present" for me, I realised what a mistake I had made!!! So, with 5kg of grapefruits in my kitchen and no assistance (Kiki actually counts as minus-one assistant) - I learned some lessons:

• always sharpen knives BEFORE your hands are covered in sticky citrusy pulp
• even if your hands are covered in goo, it is better to stop and sharpen the knife than to carry on hacking away and getting blisters on your fingers
• rubber gloves are NOT heat proof, and even if you are wearing them, it does not make your hands invincible against boiling water to pull marmalade filled jars out out of the sealing pot
• don't bother cleaning your kitchen before making marmalade
• the pot is never big enough
• trying to share marmalade from one boiling sticky seething mass into a 2nd pot to prevent disaster is messy, dangerous, and not recommended for one
• when buying sugar in the USA, always read the fine print to find the weight in kilos - or get some grasp of what 10lbs feels like, and that it's HALF of 9kg
  
• 5kg of grapefruits makes 24 pints of marmalade - anyone want to buy some?
  

wedding

Yesterday Texas Gal, Emarathoner and I scuttled off to the coast (San Luis Obispo) for that wedding we (I) made the quilt for.

We stayed at the Vagabond Inn, which had this super map on the back of the door. Please note the geological aspect of it (at the top).

In the morning, on the way to the ceremony, we stopped at the Farmer's Market to get a snack to stave off hunger before we would see food at the reception. Here I saw the awesomest of parking spots! Wheee!!!

The three of us upon arriving to the vineyard where the ceremony was held. (I, the short one, was the only one NOT in heels... *sigh* - of course, I was also one of few who had no desire to remove my shoes due to discomfort)

Having just been "pronounced" - the happy couple go skipping off to sign multitudes of forms.

unicorns

At the end of a particularly good exam was a little present for me. Yay!

And, while we're on the subject of unicorns. Subject yourself to the silliness below - IF YOU DARE!!!

pre exam fun

On Monday evening I gave my first exam. Now I am faced with an Everest sized pile to mark.

*sigh*

So, rather than dig in and get the red pen out, I will post a short entry on my fun (TIRING!!!) hike (uphill climb in the blazing heat) that I did on Monday BEFORE giving the exam. I sat in my own sweaty stink for 2 hours while my night class plugged away at their questions...

en route to Packsaddle cave

a sign that we were going in the right direction!

a butterfly satisfies a salt craving by feasting on Bird Nerd's thumb

our destination! the cavern just went on and ON and on!!!

and the view looking back down the mountainside.

wedding quilt

Well, next weekend 24th St Cafe Girl will be marrying Captain Kindness. Texas Gal, Emarathoner and I are all going. In my usual tradition of ignoring the registry, I suggested we make them a quilt. This of course meant that we (mainly, I) had to squeeze in hours of cutting and sewing in our already hectic schedule... especially since I insisted on doing a reversible quilt... with "wedding" side and "traditional" side.





Nonetheless, last night, fueled by snacks and wine, we got through the bulk of it and this morning I finished up. Kiki "helped" too.

and then we made pasta

What's the sense in having a pasta machine if you're not going to use it??? None! None at all! Especially not when Extreme Chef (below - giving instructions to Apollo) has one too.

Hard at work making tortellini, tortelloni, ravioli, and other creatively stuffed pastas in plain, beet and spinach noodle.

Despite a few distractions, I got creative with the dough making... check the parsley out!

Tada!

Introducing: ridiculous! (Ridiculously CUTE that is)

Oh... and also procrastination central.

The quote from the site:

"shivering kittens is a panic-inducing puzzle game for Mac OS X, where you must rescue kittens from their icy imprisonment! A block-matching puzzle game, shivering kittens tasks you with forming lines of frozen kittens to release them from their icy imprisonment, and then with forming groups of those thawed kittens to rescue them!"

Where to get it: shivering kittens

I apologize in advance to all you MAC users.

Grossest Cake EVER!

As the semester draws to an end in the next couple of weeks we have goodbyes and retirements to attend. Tonight is the party that celebrates the departure of our dear friend "Hot Hands" before he runs away to Wyoming.

For such a momentous occasion, and for someone who manages to bring up poo at almost every meal, only the best of cakes could be made.

This week I purchased a new litterbox and scooper so that Anthro Girl and I could make the "famous" kitty litter cake. With a few variations, of course.

Behold!


Ugh!