Oh, sheesh... like I didn't see this one coming...

My son has become a serious Trekkie. He and his dad watch an episode of Enterprise every morning before we leave for school, and any time Next Gen is on, we have to watch it. I shouldn't be surprised, really, considering the stock he comes from. Now he's wondering when and where the nearest Trek convention's going to be, because he wants to attend it. If I were a really good mom, I'd make him a little Ferengi costume or something.

Fun bumper sticker of the day

Photo interlude

Species Tulips, originally uploaded by gradualdazzle.

Nothing of huge significance to say tonight, so I'll just share a photo I took a few weeks ago of some of the little species tulips that came up in the yard. I'm especially fond of the way the green foliage contrasts with its complementary color red.

Noooooooooooo!!!!!!!

First they came for my peanuts. Now they're after my pistachios.

Federal food safety officials warned Monday that consumers should stop eating all foods containing pistachios while they figure out the source of a possible salmonella contamination.

Still reeling from the national salmonella outbreak in peanuts, the Food and Drug Administration said central California-based Setton Farms, the nation's second-largest pistachio processor, was voluntarily recalling all of its 2008 crop—more than 1 million pounds of nuts.

"Our advice to consumers is that they avoid eating pistachio products, and that they hold onto those products," said Dr. David Acheson, assistant commissioner for food safety. "The number of products that are going to be recalled over the coming days will grow, simply because these pistachio nuts have then been repackaged into consumer-level containers."

When will this END? My very favoritest ice cream flavor in the whole wide world is Braum's Pistachio Almond. I love to snack on pistachios, too.

This is just WRONG. Isn't there some way that nuts can be irradiated or something to get rid of any risk of salmonella?

Cue the world's smallest violin

Nichols sues prison over food

According to the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Denver, Nichols "is compelled to consume daily those unhealthy dead and refined foods that are abhorrent to plaintiff's sincerely held religious beliefs causing him physical, mental and spiritual torment, and to sin against God."

Suck it up, [expletive omitted]. You're really, really lucky you ain't already dead... and as for that, we could probably arrange it. Or you can bring it about yourself by refusing all that refined and unhealthy food.

[second expletive omitted]

Oh, puh-leeeze

Lobsters and crabs can feel pain, researchers say

If crabs are given medicine -- anesthetics or analgesics -- they appear to feel relieved, showing fewer responses to negative stimuli. And finally, the researchers wrote, crustaceans possess "high cognitive ability and sentience."

Really? My Lobster Thermidor was once a sentient being?

Actually, I've never had lobster thermidor in my life. In fact, I'm going to Google it right now to find out exactly what it is. It just sounds very hoity-toity.

Sentient my pinkytoe. I still get to eat him for supper alongside a lovely, juicy ribeye. What, are they going to insist that the cow who provided that ribeye can do calculus? Sheesh, people.

UPDATE: Okay, yeah... Wikipedia says this about Lobster Thermidor:

Lobster Thermidor is a French dish consisting of a creamy cheesy mixture of cooked lobster meat, egg yolks, and brandy or sherry, stuffed into a lobster shell, and optionally served with an oven-browned cheese crust. The sauce must contain mustard (typically powdered mustard) in order to be true to the original recipe and to have the distinctive Thermidor taste.

I CAN HAZ LOBSTER THERMIDOR? PLZ? NAO?

I read the Wikipedia definition out loud to Rick, who also has never had Lobster Thermidor. "And they'll put on your tombstone, 'She Died Happy,'" he sez.

Hear, hear.

Conversation at 8:15 on a Sunday night

Rick: It's eighty-three degrees in here. [heads over to the gas space heater right next to ME] I am going to turn down the space heater.

Me: [sigh] If you insist... [heading into the bedroom to retrieve my long furry bathrobe]

Rick: I insist.

Eight more days...

'Til Fringe comes back.



[dusting off my conspiracy theories]


Have I mentioned that I love Fringe?

Awesome book

Life of Pi cover, originally uploaded by gradualdazzle.

This book, Life of Pi by Yann Martel, was copyrighted back in 2001, but I was a stay-at-home mom with three little kids and just didn't have the wherewithal to read actual BOOKS at that point in my life.

Now that I have a little more emotional and intellectual energy to keep up with a novel, I try to always have something I'm reading. And just to keep it real, I will confess that I keep the book I'm reading on the back of the toilet. Hey, it's what works for me. Don't judge.

Anyway, I finished this book yesterday and wanted to share it with y'all because it was so unusual and made me smile. I haven't read anything so refreshingly odd in a very long time... there's nothing formulaic about it, but I bet you won't be able to put it down.

We're celebrating Earth Hour

So it's been Earth Hour for, what, seven minutes now? Eight minutes?

I'm going to go around and turn on a few extra lights in honor of The Planet.

Wow... that's really, really nice

Our church does the Angel Food Ministry each month, and today was the distribution day. I was, as I wrote previously, out of pocket and not aware of the goings-on, but apparently they called Rick to tell him that we had a couple of boxes of food waiting for us. Some good, kind, anonymous soul provided us with lots of frozen meat and vegetables.

The Lord is really good, and He always knows when we need stuff.

Really?

Woke up this morning and let the animals out back for their morning bathroom break, and was stunned to see SNOW on the back deck. This isn't supposed to happen after Spring Break, is it? I should lodge a complaint with the department in charge of such things.

Yes, the moisture is a welcome thing, but does it have to be frozen?

I'm just askin'.

Today I will be out of pocket most of the day. This morning I get a haircut (had to forego the color job this time around, no money) and this afternoon I am going up to Okra-Homa for a wedding of a distant relative-of-a-relative who might as well be an actual relative because I've known her my whole life and thought of her as an Aunty. Any-hoo, her husband of many years passed away a while back and she is getting re-married, so lots of The Fam is coming together to celebrate with her.

The roads are clear down thisaway, and I don't expect the Okra-Homa section to be a problem by this afternoon when I'm up thataway.

Can you tell I've been listening to a Jerry Clower CD? heh

"One of us has got to have some relief!" Yeah, that Jerry Clower. What a delightful man he was. My kids absolutely collapse in fits of laughter in the back seat of the van when we play his CD.

Oh... and by the way... BOOMER SOONER!! Elite Eight, here we come!!

Photo goodness

When I do portrait photography, I generally upload the finished products to Wal-Mart's photo center web site and have them print me up a set. I can print my own, and I can share each album with the subject of the album's photos so they can print however many they want of each pose. It makes my life easier; I don't really have a way to professionally print the photos, and I honestly have been delighted with the photos my local Wal-Mart has printed for me.

Yesterday I uploaded all the retouched and tweaked photos of the girls that I took while in Des Moines and had Wal-Mart print a copy of each for my own collection of samples.

When I went in yesterday afternoon to pick up the photos I ordered, the lady behind the counter looked at me sternly.

"Who took these photos?" she demanded.

I looked at her blankly. "I did," I said... and then I realized what was going on. She thought I was stealing someone's professional portrait photography! Ha!

She then smiled and said, "Oh, good. We have to be sure. And we are going to need you to sign this waiver saying the photos are yours. They're beautiful, by the way," she gushed.

[grin]

I'm compiling all the photos into basic scrapbooks (not the tarted-up kind, just the photos mounted plainly on 12x12 pages and bound into a book with no journaling or identifying information) so that when someone wants to have me do their senior pictures, I will have something to show them.

I'm getting quicker at operating the GIMP features that I like best, such as achieving a sepia-tone and bumping up the subjects' eyes.

Today I contacted a local auto salvage yard for permission to do photography from the old cars. Keep your fingers crossed that they allow us to photograph; this place has some nifty jalopies that will make some spiffy backgrounds and surrounds for cool photos.

Beans, beans, wonderful fruit...

I love beans. Specifically, I love pinto beans that have been simmering in the crockpot all day with bits of pork fat. They smell maddeningly wonderful.

I love that pinto beans are cheap and nutritious, too.

Cheap is good. Nutritious is good.

Yes, they produce a few, er, after-effects. But I'll keep it real here and tell you that the results of having had a biliopancreatic diversion with duodenal switch are already fraught with unpleasant after-effects. I have become a gas-and-poop machine. So a few beans aren't going to make that much difference.

I realize this may be waaaay too much information for many of you, so if it is I suggest you skip the rest of the post. But traveling to other people's homes has become a delicate affair for me. I have to plan ahead and think of ways to find a bathroom with very good ventilation that is away from where everyone else is. So far it has been do-able. At the very worst I can actually get in the car and go find a public restroom somewhere nearby. I even carry air freshener with me.

My guts are very, very noisy and gurgly, too. But if gurgly, stinky guts are the only thing I have to contend with, I'd still have chosen this course. It's way more tolerable than yacking up everything I eat, and it's certainly nicer to be the petite size I have shrunk to since having the BPD/DS procedure. I'm guessing that some of the copious amounts of after-effects will begin to slow down when I'm no longer dropping a pound or two each week.

Even if it doesn't, it's not the end of the world. For Christmas, Rick bought me a ventilation fan for the bathroom. He hasn't installed it yet, but it's on the to-do list. He's always been so romantic and thoughtful when it comes to gifts.

I can't remember... is this the ninth or tenth time?

Twilight's on again. Of course I bought it... what kind of silly question is that? Anyhoo... On the way home from school, Martha said, "Mom, can I watch Twilight again when we get home?"

"Sure," I sez.

Heck, don't tell her this, but we could watch it every day after school for the rest of the school year and I wouldn't have a problem with it.

Just keepin' it real. I'm pathetic like that.

Fig leaves

Fiddle-leaf Fig, originally uploaded by gradualdazzle.

When you get a look at some actual leaves from a fiddle-leaf fig, you can see how they might be useful for, er, covering oneself. I could practically wear one of these leaves as a dress. I took this photo at the Botanical Center in Des Moines.

Wisteri-Amok!

Wisteria, originally uploaded by gradualdazzle.

This isn't in MY yard, but it is around the corner from me. It's simply covered in the drape-y purple blooms right now.

Quick tutorial

It isn't hard to get some basic improvements in your photos, even if you aren't using a whoop-de-doo DSLR camera. In GIMP, you can do a couple of things that can help your photos look nice and you don't really have to know anything about "Levels" or "Saturation".

Case in point:

This photo is SOOC (Straight Out Of Camera).



Now in GIMP, I go to the "Colors" menu, scroll down to the "Auto" function and choose "White Balance."



Next, I go to the "Colors" menu, scroll down to the "Auto" function and choose "Color Enhance."


Sometimes the Auto functions like White Balance and Color Enhance don't have nice effects; try them and see if you like it, but you don't have to feel locked in to the results. Here they weren't so bad, so I kept them.

Finally, I go to the "Filters" menu, scroll down to "Enhance" and then scroll all the way down to "Unsharp Mask." This one's one of my very favorite features. It will pop up with a little box and you can slide the sharpen right or left. For the purposes of this little tutorial, I just used the Default amount of unsharp-masking:


The difference is subtle, but it tends to bring things into very sharp focus. It won't focus a picture that's actually out of focus to start with, so don't try to retroactively do that. But an already-focused picture can still be sharpened a little, sometimes, and this feature is a good one.

There, now, that didn't hurt, did it? Here's a side by side of the first and last images:

Yard work has begun

Isaac has discovered that he LOVES yard work! Yay! Wonder how long that'll last...


Miss Alice can't do the pruning work, but she can pick up limbs and pile them up.


Grape hyacinths are popping up everywhere.


The irises are going simply mad right now. The yard seems to have an abundance of white and purple ones, but no other colors, and the ones here are just the plain-edged kind with no ruffles. I'm going to have to see if my Collinsville pal with all the irises will let me dig and divide some of hers.

There is now an enormous pile of limbs and sticks in the backyard that must be dealt with... not to mention the defunct pool that needs to be filled in with dirt. Much to do, much to do...

Lilacs!

Lilacs!, originally uploaded by gradualdazzle.

It is a bit unusual to see a lilac bush thriving down this far south. This one is in my neighbor's yard. Can't you just smell this through your monitor screen?

A morning jaunt

Okay, it was a three-mile jaunt.

And I didn't do it.

Somebody had to document it, right?

I found out this week that my UncleBeeb was running in a Denton 5K race today, so I scooted outta bed on a Saturday morning to cheer him on his way.





He brought along his pal, who sports some spiffy artwork:





Gotta stretch out before ya run, right?





And you should acknowledge your fan base as well. UncleBeeb and my own JoeMama are siblings, yanno. Pop showed up, too, to ask Beeb why he still had so much hair, that it would certainly slow him down.





AND THEY'RE OFF!!





About twenty minutes later:





And not too far behind:





After the race, you should consume water and eat healthy stuff like oranges and bananas and pose for pictures:





Congratulations, guys!

UPDATE: I've been informed that UncleBeeb won the third-place medal for his age bracket, while his pal won the second-place one for his!! WOW!! Y'all RAWK!!

Orchids at the Des Moines Botanical Center

Phalaenopsis orchid, originally uploaded by gradualdazzle.

Baptism

pix 123, originally uploaded by gradualdazzle.

Another special event took place this past weekend... Isaac's best friend Nathaniel was baptized! Pastor Eugene Guthrie at Crestwood Baptist Church performed the ordinance. Eugene and his wife Sandy are some of my very favoritest people ever... you just won't meet more decent, levelheaded, good-hearted people anywhere. I miss them very much.

Buddies

Buddies, originally uploaded by gradualdazzle.

Isaac was hugely glad to spend time with his best friend Nathaniel during our trip to Des Moines.

Lil' D

D, originally uploaded by gradualdazzle.

Gotta love that primary color scheme!

H, originally uploaded by gradualdazzle.

The Divine Miss H

H, originally uploaded by gradualdazzle.

My crazy former life was returned to me for an all-too-brief evening of mayhem and merriment

BlueFish is a master of grill and stovetop. He marinated some chicken and some flank steak for a whole day in a miraculous concoction containing Worcestershire and brown ale and a few other choice ingredients, then grilled said meat products to perfection:


RedFish made some yummy fresh limeade and served it up for all of us:


Whenever RedFish has even a speck of time on her hands, she knits:


After supper, RedFish kept the kiddos at home and sent Blue & me off to play:

BlueFish, along with SK

J the bass player and Animal the drummer

I have to say here that I had never really met a drummer I could truly compare with Animal until now. The dude really IS Animal. I do not kid.

After a couple of hours, we packed up the gear and headed downtown to Big Tomato, the hip hangout for whoever happens to be stumbling around down on Ingersoll around midnight:




Big Tomato is a small room with a plywood backdrop, which has a window through which patrons may order from the hastily-scrawled menu of the day's offerings. Generally said offerings include the usual suspects (pepperoni, cheese, sausage) as well as a few oddities here and there.

In line at Big Tomato, one might just as easily find oneself standing next to a crackwhore, a middle-aged lesbian couple, six cube-rats in their mid-twenties fresh from the local bar scene, or a church youth minister. In fact, I'm certain that's who actually was in line with me there on Tuesday night. You're all on equal footing in Big Tomato.

Since it was already shaping up to be a night to remember (the jam session was EXTRAORDINAIRE, I have to say -- maybe not for the guys, but for a chick who's been starved of real live blues for THREE YEARS, let me tell you that it was like being seated before a feast), I decided to live dangerously and order a slice of the Beef & Sauerkraut with Alfredo. It was St. Patrick's Day, you see, and why not celebrate it by consuming something odd? I didn't really want to go into the bar next door and get loaded, anyway. So I got my slice of pizza. Heck, if it was awful, I could just toss it, no harm done.

Ohhhhh, no, honey. You could not have expressed to me fully the extent of tastiness of this slice of heaven in downtown Des Moines, Iowa. DAYUM, people. I'm not sure I've ever tasted a piece of pizza that I liked more, and that's saying something. The kraut was very gentle and unobtrusive, not at all acidic and bite-y, and the beef was meltingly tender. The Alfredo was exactly right to blend the mozzarella with the other flavors.

Afterwards we hopped back into Blue's vehicle, and Blue looked over his right shoulder to begin the backing-out process... at which point, the very large and gender-nonspecific person on the sidewalk right in front of us who was obviously over-celebrating St. Patrick's Day decided to prove to us once and for all that she was, indeed, a SHE. Or at least a dude with ta-tas. Because she stood in front of the vehicle, hiked up her bright green sweatshirt, and flashed them for us.

Blue had his head turned the entire time and saw absolutely nothing. I was speechless for a couple of moments. We pulled out onto Ingersoll and I said, "Um, it was a chick. And she just flashed us. How funny that it was only me who ended up seeing her. Unless perhaps that was what she wanted..." then I shivered involuntarily.

Surrealism seems to follow me like a lost puppy, y'all.

This 'n that

Why, look! It's my elementary school in Norman, Oklahoma... we stopped in Norman on the way north so that Isaac could see the OU campus, and I decided to hunt down my old school and see if it's still in operation.

It is! Look!



And here I am with Joy, who I've known since sometime in 1995:

Joy and I have MUCH history together... MUCH. She has always had the knack of bringing out the best in me -- in unexpected ways. It's nice to be around people like her.

And then today I stopped in at the Clive (Iowa) Fire Department, where my friend Joni has been working the desk for lo! these many years:

Now I'm hangin' with BlueFish and the girlz, so expect a few more pictures to come. Blue is sitting on his couch playing these awesome jazz chords on his gee-tar. Holy smokes, this guy's got it goin' on.

A little shoppery

The original, desaturated (except for eyes):



After I looked at it, I loved it except for the post in the background, so I edited it out and darkened the background a little:



Did it help at all, in your opinion?

My photography project

Group, originally uploaded by gradualdazzle.

For the past couple of days I have been photographing and processing photographs of D, J and H -- three amazing young ladies from the far north who happen to be in their senior year of homeschooling. I have known the tallest one, H, since she was a precocious five-year-old... which, come to think of it, was probably the last time I was ever taller than she was. Her mom and I have been close friends for lo! these many years, and she thought of me when it came time to do H's senior pictures. She arranged to meet me in the Land Between the Rivers (Iowa), where we descended upon the Des Moines Botanical Center for an afternoon photo shoot. Then she said she'd like to bring a couple of friends along... and what delightful friends! They're all very serious students, but my zany schtick brought out several giggles and snippets of goofiness amid the seriousness of The Senior Pictures.

I am tickled and honored to have been able to be a part of their senior experience... and humbled, too -- I'm no professional photographer, just a hack with a great camera and an eye for loveliness. And there was much loveliness on display in Des Moines this past weekend.

Honk shoo!

Rainy, cold days -- such as we've been experiencing for the past three days here in Texas -- put me in a very snoozy frame of mind. Apparently I'm not alone in this.

The joys of motherhood: part "I Lost Count"

Irises, originally uploaded by gradualdazzle.

The eldest will NOT be accompanying us on our trip to Iowa this weekend. She gets to stay at home with her Dad.

Why?

Well, let's just say that she's been caught making inappropriate plans with a boy from Iowa (who she knew at her old school). Not that she could've brought any of those plans to fruition, mind you. Nonetheless, she won't even get to be tempted by the possibility.

Anyone who figures out how to safely stop this merry-go-round, let me know. I want OFF.

Hey, there's a bright side... the other two kids and I won't have to endure her hygiene issues for hours on end cooped-up in the van.

I'm horrible. I know. You don't have to tell me I'm horrible. I'm keenly aware of it. But between this and the financial debacle, I'm going to crack up if I don't talk about it, sort through it, even completely remove myself from it for a brief respite. This weekend just might be a teeny bit of the respite I so desperately need.

A dear friend from Minnesota has arranged to meet me in Des Moines and I'm going to photograph her daughter and a couple of her daughter's friends for their senior pictures. This daughter happens to be the one who was a delightfully precocious five-year-old when I first met her. I've been practicing for a while now, using my own students as photography guinea-pigs, and while I'm not even close to professional-level, I think I can produce photographs which will make them happy and make them feel as though they've gotten good senior pictures. Hopefully they'll let me blog about the experience, too.

And some of my musician pals have arranged to get together one evening while I'm there for a jam session. YESSS!! I *so* need this, I really do.

Redbud

Redbud, originally uploaded by gradualdazzle.