Halloween

Many of you have heard about my many problems with my halloween costume, so I shall show you how it turned out. This is what happens when you take a "Victorian Vampire" costume, add glue, fabric, posterboard, hot glue, other glues, foam, puffy paint, velcro, and lots and lots of hairspray...

The Queen of Hearts

Under my interpretation it was kindof a 1980s queen of hearts, but it worked. (Oh, and sadly you can't see the super shiny shoes with the puffy paint hearts on them in this picture...but they existed. Reid says they didn't go with my jeans and t-shirt at school during the day though...)

In matching the theme, Adam was the Mad Hatter (since Max, the original Mad Hatter, was sick)

Abby was Alice. She had just crossed me. If you cross the queen of hearts, you get your head chopped off with a heart scepter. It is very scary. (Side note: Abby was very domestic last week and made her apron from a bed sheet. She made the pattern from newspaper and owns a sewing machine.)

I am going to stab the camera person with my scepter because she probably crossed me! Also, Ben makes an appearance as the 5 of hearts. Sadly there are no pictures of the other side of the card. Yes, Ben actually made sure to replicate both sides of the card. Maybe I can get him to reenact his role later this week.

In this picture, the person who has crossed me is obviously Ben, because he painted the flowers the wrong color. So I am cutting out his brains, as is appropriate on Halloween. I have also replaced my smile with an intense stare meant to scare off any future offenders.

I doubt I'll be make a villainess costume anytime in the near future. I like being a heroine SO much better and the costumes seem much easier.

State Fair Art

(Written between 10/2/09 and 11/1/09) Fear not, loyal readers, I have returned from paper mode intact with more tales of the State Fair.

Since we spent about 12 hours at the fair, we got to see many varied aspects of the fair. In the first part of the series, you got to see the goofy looking animals, which is how our day began. In this installment, you'll see some of the unqiue art. Then the final part will be about food. I should also mention that this post was specially requested by Simon, who, with her blog partner Ivan just celebrated her fifth blogoversary. Congratulations!

For some, unexplained reason, some counties get space to make diorama displays. One county made a "Pork is Safe" display with lots of glitter.

From Tricia

They wanted you to know that Swine Flu doesn't mean that you shouldn't eat pork. Noted. Apparently pigs also play baseball...

Another county taught people how to make cheese. They did this by showing them the "Home Cheesemaking" book on an easel. That is sure to inspire home cheesemaking. Other dioramas explained that wolves were endangered, that cannabis was an invasive weed, and that geocaching is fun.


After admiring the amazingly artistic dioramas, we went to look at the seed art. The concept of seed art is very simple. Think elementary school crafts. Glue seeds on a piece of paper to make it look like a picture. First, however, you must admire the corn cobs, as this is where seeds come from. (Scott admires corn well. Ben doesn't do as good a job, especially for growing up on a corn farm.) You can win ribbons if you have good corn. It was unclear as to what made good corn and Ben would not enlighten us.

From Tricia

Then we got to the art. Notice Michele Bachmann, saint of wingnuts, next to Farah Fawcett. Also notice that these are not elementary school art (for the most part).

From Tricia

Then there was the inevitable portrait of Obama. In seeds, of course. (I must keep reminding you that this is seed art...)

From Tricia

And the crowning glory. Self Portrait with First Ladies. Mrs. R.W. Regan and Mrs. G.W. Bush. We don't know who the self-portrait is of or why he has a halo or why the first ladies have animals on their shoulders. There are really so many unanswered questions about this picture. But apparently seeds were the proper medium, so there you have it. Self portrait with first ladies in seeds.

From Tricia

After all the seed art (more on seed art here), we were feeling like we needed a little more dairy, so we headed to the dairy building. In the dairy building, there is a rotating refrigerated platform. This is so that viewers can watch as the butter sculpter sculpts the head of the Princess Kay of the Milky Way and the Princess Kay of the Milky Way finalists. Please, please, please read more about this fascinating Minnesota tradition on the Wikipedia link above. You will not be disappointed. Reid has remarked dismay in the past, that our lab does not qualify as being involved in the production of dairy products, because he thought that I would make an excellent contestant. (I am now too old, sadly.)
One of the benefits to being a finalist in the Princess Kay of the Milky Way competition, is that you get your head carved in a 90 pound block of butter AND then you get to keep the head.
The girl above was interviewed by two of the other finalists (while in the refrigerated platform). One of the questions was "What are you planning to do with your butter head?" You will be pleased to know that her parents had just bought her a freezer for her butter head and she was planning to use it for a corn roast or wedding.

So there you go folks...art at the state fair.

November Challenges

My November challenge is to post once a day (challenge issued by me)! But in order to do that, I must first exercise for thirty minutes (challenge issued by Ben). So there are two ways for me to fail my blogging challenge...by not blogging or by not exercising...and you'll never know which one I'm failing on. We'll see how it goes.

Let me know if you're tuning in.

Migraines

I've been meaning to write something about my headaches & migraines on here for a while, then last night, when reading an old New Yorker, I came across this article in Talk of the Town. It's a brief (1 page) story about Cindy McCain's struggle with migraines and rings quite true for me. So true that I figured it covers almost everything I was going to write about, so we'll start from there. READ ME.

"McCain has decided to become an advocate for the disorder, which, in her view, is a disability. “I’ve missed part of my life. I’ve missed my children in many ways,” she said. “I’ve made every important event, but there’re times I’ve been throwing up out the car window.”"

I haven't thrown up in a while, thanks in great part to the wonder drug ondansetron (zofran), an anti nausea medication that makes my nausea manageable. I used to be skeptical of choir members who were frequently submitting excuses for absenses because they had migraines, but that was before I got them. Now, I understand. If they come early in the day, they usually start mildly. Today I took some excedrin (I was too late to start with sumatriptan) and am working from home. By working from home, I ensure that if I need to sleep it off later in the day, or need an extended break from a computer or words, I can take one. I also don't have to worry about nausea as much as in the office. In contrast, though, if I decide I need to go to urgent care, it will take me 45 minutes to get there instead of 5. Recently though, I've been much better able to manage my headaches, a fact I am quite proud of. If a headache/migraine strikes later in the day, it's usually too late to take anything that will help. Usually I just have to try my best to sleep it off.

I, too, have triggers, some of which I understand better than others. Caffeine, alcohol, and aspartame are some of my strong dietary triggers. I also think that I have some triggers outside my control, including hormonal triggers and changes in barometric pressure. Like McCain, I have some olfactory triggers that I don't understand as well. Strobe lights and loud sounds (including driving for extended periods of time with rolled down windows) seem to be triggers as well.

To keep it in check I take 10 pills a day, mostly supplements (lots of riboflavin and magnesium gluconate) and an anti-seizure medication that has been FDA approved to reduce migraines. I also try to minimize triggers from my environment. Right now I'm also lucky in that, for the most part, I can work from home when I need to. So while I feel that I occasionally miss days of my life, at least I can miss them. Now I just need to work to get them even more under control so that by the time I'm out of grad school my days missed goes from 5% to .5%, so that I don't have to miss days teaching.

So that's a snippet of my life with headaches. There are some more aspects of this as well, but I won't go into that now. Please feel free to ask questions or share comments. I realize that this is an issue that isn't well understood and I'm obviously in a unique position to talk about it. (Reminder that I'm not a medical person, so I'm just sharing my personal experience, not any advice for others.)

State Fair Art is coming up next (should be within a day or so...have to finish writing about butter heads.)

Paper Mode

Crazy Katie - Similar to Paper Mode Katie, but with weirder hair

I'm working on a CHI paper at the moment. Hence my late (2am) nights, crazy days, and lack of response on IM if you aren't Reid, Loren, or Ben. In the past five weeks I've written over 2000 lines of SQL, which isn't bad given I had written almost none prior to five weeks ago. (For those of you who aren't Reid, SQL is a a language for talking to databases and getting information out.)

The bad part is that when I'm this immersed in a project I really am THIS IMMERSED in a project. Example: Last night, when I finally went to bed around 2, I was muttering all night. About what? you may ask. Pie crust. I had to work out a sql query to find the best pie crust at the state fair and then make it. So that I could make awesome pie crust cookies. All while helping with a national election. (The election has to do with the fact that when I'm coding and don't need to think much I turn on West Wing in the background.) So yes. I'm now going certifiably nuts. It didn't help that I was also incredibly hungry all night cause I was dreaming about formulas for pie crust. I think my queries may have worked too...if only I had remembered them, but alas, no. Perhaps tonight?

State Fair: Animals and Pictures of Food

How can you not love the State Fair? In Alaska, the State Fair always meant giant cabbages and rides and winning blue ribbons. In Minnesota, if I've learned anything, it's that the State Fair means Deep-Fried-Things (preferably On-A-Stick).

Tricia is demonstrating the proper excitement to show about "Cheese on a Stick." And who can ignore the draw of "Fresh Fried Fruit On A Stick"?

But the mandatory pictures of every single thing we ate were not on my camera, so I cannot share that with you today.
The Star Tribune gave out Bacon Balm Mmmm tasty!

Sadly this was instead of the map of the fair on a stick with the best food (and newest food-on-a-stick) identified. The lack of such a map made food finding much more difficult than prior years. But the bacon chapstick eased the pain.

I've been to the MN State Fair three times before, but I've never really looked at the animals before. This time I was looking through the eyes of Simon. Alpacas!

Sheep are stupid! They eat their cages.

The lamb lead, it turns out, is a lamb showing competition crossed with a fashion show. The lamb in the foreground is wearing several necklaces. The girl made her own wool dress. She's 13.

This is some breed of chicken called a silkie. I found online where the breed is described as "An oddity of oddities of the poultry and pet world."

And this breed of chicken looks like a teenager who's refusing to cut his hair.

This rabbit looks like my old Himalayan cat.

Join us next time for art and butter at the Fair! Or food. Which ever comes first.

Edit: I'm trying out new blogging software, so for the moment, you can't click on the photos and see larger versions. They can be found in this picasa album. I'm still not sure what I think of the software. I'm looking for a better WYSIWYG editor than blogger provides. Ideas? Anyone?

August (err. July?) Part II

When we left off, we were in Montreal with really tall people, much taller than myself. Following Montreal, Mom and I headed to rural Eastern Ontario to visit my aunt and uncle.

I thought I'd already blogged about this, but apparently the internet ate my blog post. So this is their house. I would like to state for the record that screened porches ARE AWESOME. Particularly in buggy parts of the world. Even more particularly when the bugs like to eat you. (When you is, in fact, an unveiled reference to me.) Yes. I love screened porches. They are not screened in this picture, but were in real life.

We had a lovely 22 hours or so in the pictured house with my aunt and uncle eating lovely food and catching up. Then we were off on the road again.

My grandparents have two homes. A winter home, a condo in the city, and a summer home, a hobby farm or cottage in the country. Seeing as how it was summer, we headed to the farm, which is in the middle of no where. We drove up there and were greeted by my grandparents and a lovely warm dinner.

The next day we did more crazy road tripping as my grandparents needed to go to a funeral and an anniversary party, so we drove about five hours round trip to their condo and then another town. No pictures of that, sorry.

My grandfather loves the farm and maintains two hiking trails on the property. The first is a section of the Bruce Trail, Ontario's version of the Appalachian Trail. The second is a trail that's just on the property called "On Yonder Hill." On day two at the farm, mom and I hiked most of it. Here we are in mosquito protective gear.

Off for a family history tour in the evening. In which Grandma decides to wear the Obama/Biden button I gave her,

we see the house she grew up in,

I decide to buy a house overlooking Georgian Bay

and we see a rainbow during our picnic.

The next day was basically taken up by mom doing yard work, then falling off a ladder, and then dealing with the after effects of her falling off a ladder. (And I got to ride an electric commuter bike.) Then we drove home over the next few days.

But that's boring, so I'll end here with delicious wild black raspberries.

August

Well, it's the middle of August. I've gotten a handful of cherry tomatoes and harvested three full size tomatoes this morning, some of which went on my breakfast tomato sandwich, the first of the season. (Er...this was a week ago.) (Also, I was proud that my morning breakfast was 98% local food. All local except for about 1/4 teaspoon of sugar...) The beans are apparently not dead, but they're starting to grow and I have some zucchinis coming soon.

Where, you might ask, have I been? Well, dear readers (all five of you - Mom, Reid, Erin, Simon, & Ivan- If there are more, please let yourself be known!), I have been on vacation and then sequestered in my office or in a corn field in Iowa. So I give you pictorial & literary proof of my travels.

I flew to visit my parents and brother in early July and embarked on a five state, two province, 2400 mile road trip with my mom to visit relatives & Simon.

Exhibit A: In which my mom and I crash (not literally) at Simon's house and I get to meet Ivan and spread bacony joy. If you are confused, I am in fact Simon P. In most situations, I do not come prepared with bacon. Although I just discovered bacon chapstick exists, so that may change. Here, Simon and Ivan, of simonandivan.blogspot.com fame, attempt to chip off pieces of bacon caramel. (The image is blurred to protect Simon's bacon-hating privacy)

Exhibit B: In which my mom and I go to Parliament Hill in Ottawa and at the Changing of the Guards, they play La Marseillaise (among other tunes) and not O Canada!

Exhibit C: In which mom and I go to Montreal,

Obviously this is me in Montreal. Can't you see that everyone around me is speaking French?

eat bagels (with and without cheese),

and see the native Montreal people, who are apparently quite tall during the Just For Laughs Festival.

Part Two coming soon...

Garden Update

4 big tomatoes + lots of flowers

16 cherry tomatoes + lots of flowers

6 zucchini blooms

I think today will be a 180oz of water day. The plants weren't droopy when I got home and I set up the bean trellis, tied up some of the tomatoes, and spread some fertilizer. I can just about taste those tomatoes...

Picture Post

I've been busy lately. Here are some pictures.

My first (cherry) tomatoes! I currently have 14 tomatoes growing, with lots more buds on the way. In addition, between last night and this morning, my zucchini plant has flowered as well. So now I am conflicted as to whether I should stuff and fry the squash blossoms or wait for the zucchinis. My poor plants have had their water dosage upped as well. They have been getting 120 oz of water a day. Yesterday we had a high of 94. They looked very droopy and sad when I got home, so they ended up with 240 oz of water yesterday. Today they've already had 120 oz, so hopefully they won't be too droopy by the time I get home. (High is currently 94 and rising)
This weekend I was invited to go to the performance of the Ramsey's Braggarts Morris Men. There's a very complicated story as to why I was invited, but I'll save that. Watching made me miss dancing, and I think I'm going to go check out the dance scene later this summer.

After the dance performances, all the dancers and watchers got on the trolley that goes between Lake Harriet and Lake Calhoun. It was made especially fun by the fact that all the dancers were singing songs, some of which had multiple parts. There was even a round.

Yesterday they began digging up our street. Or the end of our street really. We were notified about this last week and the construction will go until October. They've closed the standard entrance to the street and made the street two way instead of one way as it usually is. Apparently they have to dig down 20 feet and move some pipes around.