Tag: fun

The peeps return to their rightful home.

Witness the beauty of the bird food filled vase I constructed for my Aunt Pat’s birthday present. The vase is a fancy, heavy one–good for smashing on an intruder’s head. It also looks nice with flowers in it. I bought some seed at Fred Meyer and made pretty layers and it turned out quite well, if I do say so myself. I was left with a goodly amount of bird seed and realized this would be a perfect method for transporting the peeps back to their true home.

Witness “The Peeps”

“The Peeps” have been traveling back and forth between their rightful home, Aunt Pat’s and my own for several years now. There are no rules for moving the peeps, but they mostly have to be snuck into the house. I have the advantage here, as I go to my Aunt’s house much more often than she comes to mine, but she is quite sneaky. Once she packed me a bag of leftovers and upon unpacking at my home there sat the peeps in the bottom of the bag. Most recently she dropped off the quarter of beef in my freezer and threw in the peeps. I didn’t discover them for several months. I’ve added the cartoon to the peeps. The bubble says, “Jus‘ chillin‘ wif my peeps. Sup wichou?” But today, the peeps go back to their proper home.

I found a bucket and poured in part of the bird seed, dropped in the peeps and covered them with the rest of the seed.

I was so excited, I forgot to take an “in process” picture.

How can I tell you all this, without her finding out? She has no computer and does not read this blog. My mother does, but she will side with her only daughter and not reveal that the peeps have been transferred back. Right?

Flash Mob

A sunny day at Pioneer square with not much going on.

Except zombies.

Suddenly, children cluster and point at, what are they pointing at?

People in Pioneer square wonder what they are pointing at, as do the zombies.

The zombies try pointing at the children

Random passers-by record the scene.

More pointing, more confusion.

Suddenly the group of children break into spontaneous laughter.
Then they separate and drift away, leaving the zombies in a cluster.

Jo’s 4/5 class has been studying humor this spring and they planned a flash mob as part of their studies. The zombies weren’t part of the plan, they were a marketing effort by Ron Tonkin, who wants you to buy cars. It was a fun mob and I’m glad I got to chaperone.

Freegal rocks


http://www.multcolib.org/services/tech/freegal/

Like, really rocks. The library has this new service where you get to download three songs per week for free and keep them forever. I (and you if you are a Multnomah County Library patron) can chose from Sony Music’s entire catalog. Just now, I downloaded three Elvis songs. Amazing!

I’m a member!

Have I found more of my people?

From their website: (http://dillpickleclub.com)
The Dill Pickle Club organizes educational projects that help us understand the place in which we live. Through tours, public programs and publications, we create nontraditional and interactive learning environments where all forms of knowledge are valued and made readily accessible. Founded in 2009, we are a volunteer-driven organization, with a shared belief in the vitality of community education and democracy.

I’ve become a member (and received a publication already!.) I can’t wait for my first event.

vlog brothers

I myself always have trouble striking a balance between things that are worth my time and things that I get obsessed with for a moment and they are very interesting, but then their presence in my life is not really necessary, but still hangs out and takes up mental space. The Internet is horrible for exacerbating this problem, as there are an infinite number of interesting things out there that are instantly assessable and yet still the same number of hours in the day.

My Google Reader reflects this state perfectly. I currently have 38 subscriptions to blogs divided into nine folders and I currently have 126 unread items. In ideal life, I would read every single Leonard Pitts, column as well as keep up with the super awesome Multnomah County Library blogs and read all of the Portland-centered posts of the Portland-centered blogs I follow as well as all the tiny house blogs and all my friend’s blogs. But in reality? I make it a priority to read the friend blogs and flip through some of the others when I have time to kill. Google seems to understand this, as I think it only keeps the last month or so of blog posts in the Reader before it stops linking to them. At first I didn’t like that, but now I find it comforting as there is no way to keep up with all my online interests without giving up too much of my “away from the internet” time.

All this is to say that I try not to have too many things I follow with any regularity. However, I am posting this to heartily recommend that everyone follow the Vlog Brothers. My friend Sara, who seems to follow many, many more things than I do online, sent me one of their video blogs back in October. It was so smart and witty that I had to find out more. They publish videos three times a week. Their videos are less than four minutes, creative, and funny. Like every other Nerd Fighter, I love them and I think you will too. This last week has been great:

Hank starts out the week by talking about 5 Conspiracy Theories. Hank is the more spastic of the two, I think. Of the two, I would marry John, but would be happy to have Hank as my brother-in-law.

Then John comes back on Wednesday with Top Six Conjoined Twins, inspired by a very large zit on his head. This is also the John Green, author of the YA books Looking for Alaska and An Abundance of Katherines.

On Friday Hank comes back with Top 5 Actual Conspiracies:

Here is the video blog before the first one I every watched (the first one I ever watched makes more sense when you’ve already seen this one)

And the first one I ever saw:

Also, if you need a workout, you could do the Fitness for Nerds, which is making me laugh so hard right now I can’t type. And I’m just listening.

At any rate, if you, general public, are feeling grumpy and blue or just need some smart talk, I recommend some viewing of Vlog brothers videos

Cian and the Timbers

Beginning this year, the Timbers, our minor league (not sure if that is the proper soccer term, but it get the concept across) will be converting to a major league soccer team. It’s a big deal and the Timbers Army is excited. To celebrate this big conversion, there are billboards all over town with real Timbers fans on them. One of the real fans happens to go to the school where I work. He has enjoyed all the publicity and I enjoy seeing him at the foot of the Broadway bridge when I ride home from work.

See this link for an interview with Cian and a picture of another billboard where he is shown by himself:
http://www.portlandmls2011.com/news/2011/01/we-are-timbers-cian

You can also see this local news interview with him and some of his friends talking about the billboards:
http://www.kgw.com/sports/Young-Timber-fan-becomes-billboard-star-114695174.html

What should Be capitalized?

I’m quite guilty of this myself, so yes, call me the pot.* However, I would assume that a casino paying a good chunk of money to advertise would employ the services of a copy editor. Why is “Live” capitalized but “bands” is not? Why is nearly every thing in the second half capitalized except “favors?”

*note that all of my pots are blue enamel and my kettle is some sort of silver colored metal. I do have a dutch oven that is black, but for this saying to match my own pots and pans it would have to be “the dutch oven calling the cast iron skillet black.”