"You know, the red pumpernickle..."

I was explaining my first experience with "The Importance of Being Earnest" to Dana and that is what he said to me. At first I thought he was being ridiculous, as he is wont to be... but then he explained further and I figured out he meant the Scarlet Pimpernel. One of his old roommates had downloaded it and we had watched it with him. It is now one of my favorite things to watch and I'm considering getting it on Amazon...

You reap what you sow

This is a boring post: just thought I'd warn you now. And the title has to do with the fact that Dana and I have been insanely busy with nothing very interesting (school, work).

Things are winding down in classes which means all the huge assignments you have been dreading all semester are coming due. I have two 8-10 page papers and one 6-8 page paper due from now till the end of the semester. Plus all the regular reading assignments. I finished one of the 8-10 page papers last night and I am pretty excited. I was so excited to be done I did the dishes. Woo. The paper is for my English Major Capstone class: Tolkien and Friends in Literature and Film. I wrote it on The Princess Bride and The Neverending Story. No joke. The culmination of almost five years of work is The Princess Bride and The Neverending Story. Originally I was just going to write on Princess Bride because I couldn't come up with anything else. Then after I had turned in the outline for my paper, I remembered The Neverending Story and how much I loved the book. So, after some discussion in class I melded the two papers together and passed it with my professor. It's about the frame characters in the book and how they interact with the interior text and what we as readers can learn from them as readers.

The bad news is that this is the easiest of all the papers I have to write this semester :-P.

Dana went to his Bug Conference in Reno, NV. He usually brings me back a little something for my birthday when he goes. So this time he asked me what I wanted and I jokingly requested a shot glass. When he came home he had a cool beetle necklace (picture to come?) and a shotglass that said RENO! on it. I guess I asked for it...

We are both REALLY excited to get out of town for Thanksgiving. We are going to visit Dana's folks in Vancouver, WA. I can't wait to get away. Just the change is a big deal for me.

So that's our boring "what we've been up to recently." The next posts will have pictures. I Promsie.

And if you need a good book to read, read The Princess Bride by William Goldman or The Neverending Story by Michael Ende.

More Ceramics

Here are some more pieces from my ceramics class. Most of these glazes are the high firing glazes meaning they are food safe. I knew the black and pink one would turn out the way they did, but the honey pot shaped one was an experiment. So was the pencil cup: I layered two different glazes and ended up with a much deeper blue. Enjoy.




This is the detailing I put on the side (that you never see...good going, genius)


Notice how this glaze (this is a low fire glaze) kind of melted? I coated it evenly on the inside and the outside, but (especially the glossy outside glaze) tends to drip a lot.



And this is the honey pot. I named it that. Just now.

Ceramics

So, on Monday nights I have a pottery class. The first five weeks I was in the half of the class that threw pots on the wheel. Here is what I've finished so far... (Glazes have a funny way of not turning out how you expect them). Like this one that kind of looks like ground up brick... I thought it would be bright red...The rest of them turned out basically how I expected them, I'm just messy with my glaze.

PNG Creatures

Here is just a taste of some of the creatures I was able to see in Papua New Guinea. Everything from giant bugs to fish, from lizards to sea snakes and land snakes. And don't forget the giant spiders and fresh water eels. The mammal is a cuscus (marsupial). One of the spiders spins golden web.





































































a salt water croc

New Pets

Dana has convinced me that it would be a good idea to get some new pets... Here is one of them.


That's right. Madagascar Hissing Cockroaches. Apparently there is a small colony of them in the Widstoe, and one of Dana's classmates took some home to raise. He started with 12, he now has over 100.

Pros: They are slow, clean, low maintenance, quiet (yes, unless you poke them with a stick), and you can sell them for 5$ a pop on the interwebs.

Cons: theyre cockroaches, one more thing that will make Dana sad when they die, they repopulate pretty quickly and we dont have room for that.

We have four, three women and one man. We'll see how this goes...

My advice on late-night cookies:

Don't do it!

Last night at 7:30 Dana and I went grocery shopping. I left some frozen bananas on the counter to thaw to make cookies when we got back. We got back around 9. I was pretty tired, still hadn't started my homework (or at least, I hadn't made it very far). So I mixed up some banana spice cookies. The only problem was that I put in 8 times (yes, 8) as much baking soda as I should have and then I completly forgot to put the eggs in.

We ended up with a gooey spilly mess.

I have decided I should just stay out of the kitchen when I'm tired....