Sunday, May 25, 2008

BUG


The other day my niece sent me a text message with the picture above and this message: “Downside to working in a plant nursery. I don’t know what I’m going to do with this thing!” This was the conversation that ensued:

Me: Ew!!! What is it? It looks like a scorpion. I would call the army.

Her: Haha. I don’t know what it is. It’s got wings and it keeps shakin that little tail on his butt. It LOOKS like something out of a steven king movie.

Me: Agreed. I think this might be the apocalypse.

Her: That would explain the weather. I’m waiting for the locusts.

Me: Maybe that’s what that thing is! Run!

Her: Hahaha. I’m keeping my eye on him. One quick movement and I quit.

Me: Sounds completely reasonable to me.

Her: I just went and got backup. Problem solved.

Her: BTW I had to physically remove a butterfly the other day.

Me: Butterflies are harmless, why not let it be?

Her: In my office? No way. Anyway I think they’re poisonous.

Me: No way butterflies aren’t poisonous.

Her: Have you ever been bitten by one? Then you don’t know!

Me: You’ve been bitten by a butterfly?!

Her: No. I probably wouldn’t be alive right now if I had.

Me: “No butterflies are so poisonous that they kill people or large animals.”

Her: You can’t make stuff like that up, Miss Animal Planet…this isn’t Wikipedia.

Me: Ha! I went to Children’s Butterfly Site!

Her: Yeah yeah. My mom seems to think that bug had rights and that he should’ve been named and gotten a desk and a computer. Psh.

Me: Not sure about all that but I’ve been known to cry while smashing spiders.

Her: Out of fear or pity?

Me: 80% pity. 20% fear. They only thing they really do to justify their dying is scare the shit out of me.

Her: For which they MUST die. You should get a gmail account. Then we could talk all the time!

Me: Your gmail account is too good to talk to my yahoo account?

It went on for about another 20 minutes from there on whose account is better.

Saturday, May 24, 2008

Vegas is Calling

OMG! The universe wants me to go to on vacation! I know we had pledged no vacations this year so that I can quit my job, but we are both starting to get the itch since summer is just around the corner. Earlier this week, just out of curiosity, we started looking at New York New York. We have never stayed there before but it looks cute. So the very next morning I received an email from New York New York offering me a special!



I was like it’s a sign, we must go now! But we didn’t go or make plans to go. THEN! I got an email from Cirque Du Soleil offering a 35% discount on some of their Vegas shows! I’ve never seen CDS offer discounts because they are so bomb and they don’t have to, but they did! And everyone knows the only reason I like Vegas is for the shows. Now, I just keep getting emails like everyday telling me that I should go. It’s either a higher power or very effective marketing. I’m not sure which.




Friday, May 23, 2008

Oprah is Vegan!

YES! It’s true! Vegans are taking over the world, one world leader at a time! Okay, so the true story is that Oprah has committed to a 21-day “cleanse” that prohibits the consumption of caffeine, sugar, alcohol, gluten and animal products. This is pretty much my daily diet with the exception of an occasional alcoholic beverage (like once a month) and I don’t have a problem with gluten so I eat it but not in truckloads. I have a friend who is gluten intolerant, aka Celiac disease, and she will tell you for days how amazing she feels being off gluten.

Back to the O. She had guest Kathy Freston, author of Quantum Wellness on her show and they discussed conscious eating. And the O decided that she would commit to being a conscious eater. This is what O says about what conscious eating is: “How can you say you're trying to spiritually evolve, without even a thought about what happens to the animals whose lives are sacrificed in the name of gluttony?” My thought on this is why is it cool to eat a pig or a cow but you wouldn’t dream of eating your cat or dog? Animals are animals, they all have eyes, brains, blood, bones, lungs, etc. And come to think of it humans all have those things too which is why we are ALL in the category of mammal. Animal rights is not the reason I made the switch 5 years ago; I did it because I had a horrible diet that consisted mostly of donuts, candy, and pizza. Restricting my diet considerably allowed my taste buds to start enjoying REAL food like beans, avocados, and all other plant based foods that I used to hate and actually found revolting. Now I LOVE them! So most people ask “what do you eat?” Here are two versions of the vegan food pyramid:



Way to go O! You can follow her blog on her website to hear her progress. I can’t wait to hear how she feels after 21 days!

Vegan Food Pyramid

Thursday, May 22, 2008

Yoga

You may or may not already know that I have subjected myself to the incredibly torturous event of taking a 12-week yoga teacher training program. You may ask yourself “why, why would you do that?” My answer originally would have been “because I love yoga and I want to share it with everyone I meet.” Now my answer looks a little bit more like this “because I hate myself, I hate free time, and I love physical, mental, and emotional anguish.” I’m currently working on one-third of the final. Yes, one-third, because it’s a three part final. For Yoga. The first part is a take home exam. The second part is an in class exam. And the third part is teaching one pose to the entire class. In preparation for part three, we are having practice poses that we are teaching to the entire class, then the TA criticizes, I mean critiques, us. Well, I’m not a very good yoga teacher and after 10 weeks of the program I had pretty much already figured it out but after the practice session I just know it for sure now. Which is awesome, because I know that I am not deluded, but rather, that which I think of myself, others also think! Bonus. It really wasn’t as bad as I’m making it out to be. I just got pissed off because I did a fairly good job, and I was the first to go, and I got my entire script out of the manual that they provided for us. The pose I had to instruct was “Cat/Cow” or “Cat’s Breath” Where you go back and forth between these two actions and you move along with your breath:
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I started the class on an inhale, that’s how I usually start breathing and that’s also how the manual explained the pose “inhale this, exhale that, inhale do this, exhale to that” so that’s how I taught it. Then I said “curl your chin to your chest.” But obviously that’s wrong even though THAT’S EXACTLY WHAT THE MANUAL SAID! And lastly, when they were done Cat/Cowing I had them rest on the floor. She thought I said “lift your forehead from the floor” I didn’t say LIFT I said REST. REST! Finally my friends in the front stood up for me and were like “she said rest, this I know.”

Monday, May 19, 2008

Oh, I'm getting GOOD!

Here is my first full layout from my Photoshop class. Yes, I'm awesome. Get on this bandwagon. And my cats are so cute!

Friday, May 16, 2008

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

I'm Learning

It's been a lifelong dream of mine to learn Photoshop. Okay, so maybe a two-year dream, but a dream nonetheless. So I finally decided to do something about it and signed up for an online learning class for the month of May. This course is geared towards digital scrapbooking which is one of the reasons why I wanted to learn Photoshop. Digital scrapbooking is pretty much exactly what it sounds like: scrapbooking digitally. It’s a step-by-step program that gets you familiar with Photoshop and the little tips and tricks for getting it to do what you want it to! The layout above is one of the projects I just completed. I love the picture of Dathan’s rubber ducky at bath time, so cute! I can’t wait for all the learning that’s about to come. BTW, I’m getting this fancy knowledge from the very knowledgeable Jessica Sprague.

Tuesday, May 13, 2008

My Sigg!


I'm constantly getting complements on my super cool purple water bottle. Last night I was watching How I Met Your Mother (if you aren't watching this show, START!) and sitting right there in the middle of this scene was my water bottle! Here is a better pic:



It's a Sigg water bottle. Mike and I were going through hundreds and hundreds of bottles of water and hated the impact we were making on the environment as a result. We recycled them like maniacs but still we were just using way too many. We considering getting a water cooler and refilling water bottles, but any reusable water bottle I've ever tried had made the water taste like plastic. EW! So I finally found this little gem. It's made from aluminum, not plastic! And rumor has it that plastic may leach harmful chemicals. So now I have great tasting, good for me water! I also love Sigg because they donate to ThirstyForChange.com and StopGlobalWarming.org.
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Now I want this one:


Mike has a solid black one...couldn't get him to go for a pretty design.
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Visit: My Sigg