Inside Animals - more from Philly

One last carryover Lego picture - because one of those people looks surprisingly familiar...






We also checked out the brain exhibit- that was a lot of fun - I really likes the "steampunkish signs"


This was a weird thing that took a picture of you and then morphed it based on how much of your brain was connected to individual parts.. (that's Angie - of course her brain is probably not normal...)


They had a whole case of books aimed at female scientist/engineers and interested girls..


cold enough for a really cool ice sculpture copy of the Love sign.
 

I'm adding a page break here because some people may not want to see some of the animal pictures.  (7 pictures after the break) We saw the Human exhibit some years ago at the Franklin - and it was much larger, there were more different types of displays, and the animals were a tad bit disappointing.  They take animals that have died (no animals were actually killed for this) and plasticize systems, dissolve the rest and it gives an interesting look at the anatomy of the various animals.  I was somewhat a moron when I first saw this I thought "3 headed camel?" Then the Angie pointed out - it was cut in thirds so you could see different features...

Trip to Philly

We drove down to Philly last Friday to spend the day with the Angie, she wanted to celebrate out anniversary with us.  She wanted to go to the Animals exhibit at the Franklin Museum, and since there was a Lego art exhibit there at the same time she knew she could lure me in.  The Lego art was amazing, although part of me feels that since most of his work is all one color lego, he kind of cheated - you know?  Also a lot of his stuff is copies of famous art pieces, also kind of cheating no?  Sorry if this post is too picture heavy, I put a page break in so you don't have to look if you don't want to... 14 shots in all


Loved Starry Night.


The Great Wave


The Stained Glass Window of Chatres used translucent blocks and left a pattern on the floor as well!

Made recipes from Mario Batali & Michael Symon

Wow!  Totally get why they are both super star chefs!  Above is a picture of the chicken and dumplings I made from Mario Batali's new cookbook Farm to Table.  As a good southern girl, I have made a lot of different versions of this.  Usually it involves baked chicken, poached chicken, or picking the meat off of a rotisserie chicken.  When this recipe starts with a whole chicken cut into 10 pieces (bone in skin on) discard the backbone, I was kind of intrigued, but still unsure.  ( I did end up making excellent stock with the back, neck, heart, wings, extra leeks carrots and celery ) The dumplings are made with whole wheat flour, which is perfect for me - I didn't have to figure out how to adapt it to use the ww. There is fresh tarragon in the dumplings - more like drop biscuits and some sprinkled on top as garnish. Leeks are used instead of onions and I really love thyme.  Another touch that you  know I would LOVE, the addition of bacon with the veggies into the roux!!  This is now my go to chicken and dumplings recipe!!!



I made Michael Symon's venison sloppy joes also. (from his book Carnivore - I've had it awhile, haven't had a recipe not be a win yet!) I ended up using the Guinness instead of the red wine- the only reason I even have wine is to cook with, but I made the last minute decision to swap in the Guinness instead ( you can see I had both ready) Not all the Guinness went in the pot, some when in the chef!  Came out really, really, really yummy! Served it with fried pickle chips because I like some vinegar action when I have venison! 

swaps are fun!!

One of the fun activities I occasionally take part in on Ravelry is the swaps some of the groups have.  Recently I was in the Chinese New Year's swap in the Tiny Owls Knit group.  The guidelines were - there needed to be something with a sheep (it's the year of the sheep/goat) something for the person's Asian zodiac sign (I'm the year of the horse) a handmade yarn fortune cookie (you may remember mine from last week - what a disaster!).  Asian New Year traditions were to be considered. For example - Red is a lucky color.

I received my package yesterday!! 

There's a (red) Tony Stewart backpack (race tracks here I come!) a yummy smelling olive oil/honey soap, dark chocolate ( I can eat the dark dark chocolates!!) a fortune cookie that is even more amazing with the troubles I had with mine, promising a yarny year!  There is the funniest sheep mug I've ever seen - the Irish sheep is on the inside rim and the bottom of the mug as well as on the outside - perfect for when I'm drinking my coffee, dreaming of winning a lottery and spending a summer knitting in thatch roof cottages in Ireland!!

And a red horse block ( I'm really not sure how Liz knew I was considering a red/black/white afghan with gold trim - has to match my Devils & 9ers gear!

At the bottom of the hand drawn note is the fact that there is one more thing.. can't imagine what else she could send... but the bit of a NASCAR flag intrigues me...

Thanks again LIZ!!!

doing yoga again

 I've decided that I NEED to start doing yoga again.  I used to do yoga when the Angie was little, 2 or 3 times a week.  Then life got busier, I'd miss one day here and there, then one week, then 15 years....  I wasn't hugely good at it, and I was significantly younger then, so I really don't have high expectations for now.  I stretch pretty thoroughly after jogging or working out - but it's more a stretch the muscles I just used kind of thing.  I have been seriously tight and creaky in an overall way, and stressed in my upper back and shoulders.  I keep all my stress, anger, hostility, aggression bottled up in my upper, back, shoulders and neck - not good for someone with headache issues.

I started this morning.  Three sets of sun salutations (no offense to my catphew - but downward dog can be amazing) I'm going to set a goal of sun salutations 3 mornings a week to ease into things.  I'm not a social workout person, but may at some point take classes again but that is a far of some point right now.





photo credit: mantra1 via photopin (license)

Doodling! I can get behind this idea!

Since I gave up my Creativity class, I found this book:

I like to doodle.  I don't really draw - most of my doodles aren't pictures of things they are usually geometric shapes that kind of grow outward.  I'm only on page 7, but Ms Brown makes some really good points in the first 6 pages.  Little kids don't draw well, but they enjoy doodling.  We're born knowing how to doodle.  We start to give up doodling as we get better at words and numbers.  Her thought is we gave up visual literacy when we acquired verbal and numerical literacy.  Her point is also with the data revolution and the sheer amount of data raw and analyzed, and needing to be analyzed, we can't afford to continue to be visually illiterate.  

I was drawn to this book, after taking the learning to learn course.  Doodling, abstractness and art help take your mental processes from focused thinking to diffuse thinking.  I have the perfect example from earlier today:  I saw a tweet which stated : There are 4 and only 4 countries on the planet whose name is only 1 syllable long.  It took about 5 seconds to come up with Spain. maybe another minute of mentally scanning the globe to come up with France.  both of these answers came through focused thinking.  I then had my attention drawn to the NASCAR race on tv, it took about one lap of the race for me to come up with Chad being a country in Africa. More laps went by, no idea of the 4th country.  I even tweeted that I was stuck on 3 countries.  I then made the bottom doodle, as the first exercise in the book.  As I started coloring Greece popped into my head.  Chad and Greece as answers ere both achieved through diffuse thinking.

Here is a TED talk - it's only about 5 minutes - that the author did a few years ago:



The bottom two figures are the doodles I did for the first exercise on page 7.  There were only 2 directives.  First, draw a continuous line without lifting your pen, that crosses itself occasionally for 10 seconds.  Second - shade sections that were enclosed shapes by these lines.   I chose to color them with highlighters, part of me is still 8, I like coloring.  The bottom doodle was done during the race, where Tony was running poorly (although before he got caught up in the big wreck) I was kind of stressed.  Drawing the weird shape did relax me - especially when Greece popped in my head.  Coloring it in really did lower my stress levels.  I did the top figure a couple hours after the race.  I had gone outside to clear the snow off my car for tomorrow morning (it is still snowing, but I figure this will be less snow tomorrow morning, I need to be at work at 530am)  So I was less stressed when I drew it. None the less, I could physically feel calmer, and less stressed  while I drew it.  By the time I got to color it, I was actually feeling happier.

There will be more updates on my doodling in the future.