An encouraging word

My helper just paid me the highest compliment I've had in awhile. She asked me what I studied in university. My degree is hard to explain in English, let alone Chinese, so I explained that I studied "office communication" which I suppose could convey a wide variety of things to her, most of them not what I studied (organizational communication for the inquiring mind - basically anything that makes an organization run well in terms of its people).

She told me she thought I must have studied interior decorating, or what I assume means interior decorating. She said that the things I buy and the way I arrange them in my house is beautiful so I must have studied how to do it.

Why, thank you!

Day 22 - Hands

Day 21 - Faceless Self-Portrait

So this is what people see when I'm taking their pictures!

Day 20 - Bokeh

 Confession: I had to look this one up. If I'm understanding correctly, it's when you have light in the picture somewhere that is blurred. So here's my best effort:

Sometimes I take too many pictures for their liking

We Gave Her an Inch . . .

We don't yet trust Scout to be out on her own and today she proved why.

I had to take Megan to soccer which meant we'd be gone for over 2 1/2 hours. That's tough for someone only 3 months old. Normally we put her in her crate, but today I thought I'd give her a little more freedom by leaving her crate open inside a large dog pen. We have friends whose dog happily stays in this kind of situation even when they are present in the house (we have co-op classes there).

For extra insurance, I put it all the "man cave" (our inside, tiled, not particularly warm patio) and shut the door - thank God. I threw in a few of her toys and a pee pad and thought she'd be ok.

On the way home, I stopped to get some noodles and Megan continued home to let Scout out. She found her not only outside of her pen (along with a couple of her toys) but with a noticeably larger belly. I guess I forgot about the bag of dog treats on a high shelf. They were gone, save 2.

This means that she not only managed to get out of the pen (under? over?) but she also climbed up a chair and onto the shelf where the treats were. How she got her toys out, I do not know.

I guess the only question now is - when will we see these treats again, and from which end of our dog?

Don't Believe Everything on Pinterest

 What is this man doing? It may look like he is taking a blood sample from a lemon, but that is not the case. We were trying to debunk something that has been pinned and repinned on Pinterest in the past few weeks. It's a picture of lemons cut in half, each lemon a different, perfect color other than yellow. It says you can achieve this by injecting food coloring into lemons.

When I first saw this pin I thought, "Cool!" for about three seconds, and then my logic kicked in. How could the skins be uniformly another color? And how does each individual piece of pulp get colored, but nothing happens to the white parts?

We had to try it.

So we got out some dark red food coloring and injected as much as we could. As you can see below, most of the ink settled to the bottom of the lemon, making it look sadly bruised. We tried at least three different places to make sure we got as much as possible in, but it also kept leaking out the other holes.

We let the lemon sit for awhile to make sure we gave it a change to spread and soak in. Then we cut it open, and below is the result. As I suspected, you shouldn't believe everything you see on Pinterest.

Gridlock

I stood at this corner just south of our complex tonight for a good five minutes and these cars stayed in this exact position the whole time. Traffic was backed up for at least a block in each direction, all because people didn't think past "I want to cross the intersection" to consider what might happen if they tried to cut across at the same time that others were attempting the same thing.

It was amusing to watch, but being in this kind of thing is a crazy maker. I was a little tempted to direct traffic, but instead I just stood and watched because that seemed a more pleasant choice. Eventually it cleared when the van sticking its nose in on the right side, the silver sedan, and white van all realized they had to back up.

It reminds me of a great link a friend of ours sent us the other day detailing what it looks like to make a left turn in China. Trust me, this is no exaggeration. We can only hope this intersection gets a stoplight soon or this will continue to be a daily occurrence. Note to self: never drive this way in the evening.

Sun Puppy

 Scout has taken to asking to go outside just so she can go sit in the sun. We'd like to say we're on to her schemes, but we're just so happy whenever she indicates that she would like to go outside that we always take her.

 She realized this time that sun doesn't not equal comfort if there are massive winds blowing your ears back.

 So she found a cozy spot on the stairs where she could enjoy the warmth of the sun. She knows that there are sun spots in the off limits unless someone's in there bedrooms too and she will sometimes try to race in there to enjoy them before we catch her. Today I gave her a bone and let her sit in the sunny office while I exercised. She couldn't have been happier.

Day 19 - Something Orange

 So there's the really obvious oranges for sale . . .

And then I noticed this woman was wearing an orange jacket (I was trying to get a silhouette of her but she moved out of the sun!).

Day 18 - My Shoes

Not all that exciting, but here are my shoes. I LOVE these shoes!

Day 17 - Technology

I'm going to post day 16 later because I have a plan for it tonight. Here's some of the technology I saw today:

 I couldn't decide so I'm posting them both. This first one is the "cash register" and scale used by the man with a truck full of cabbage.

And while I was taking the first picture, these people walked by as if to say, "Here you go, Gina, here's technology for you."

Day 15 - Silhouette

 I finally had a decent day to go out and try to get some of my photo challenge pictures. Erik insists that this is NOT a silhouette picture, but I like it anyway. I went out too late in the day to get many shots before the sun was gone. And, since I'm on a roll I thought I'd throw in a picture I took at Chinese New Year last January that does fit the bill. Pretty much.

You know it's been a long week when . . .

Last night I had a new friend and her ADORABLE children over for dinner because our husbands were wrapping up a long week of training. When the guys came back we talked and laughed with them for awhile before we decided that yeah, the kids really should be in bed. After they left (and completely unrelated to the enjoyable hours spent with our friends) Erik walked into the kitchen and said, "Let's see, Kahlua . . . "

Yeah, it's been one of those weeks.

Day 14 - Eyes

Day 13 - 13 Things

I skipped day 12 because it was "Sunset" and it was one of those "I think that's the sun, or maybe it's a street lamp" days. And Day 13 was supposed to be Me with 13 Things but it's just 13 Things. I tried getting my reflection in the computer screen, but it just looked creepy. So here are the 13 things that are most commonly found on my coffee table these days - coaching materials for LEAF, along with my trusty highlighter and pen, Sacred Rhythms, my journal, my book notes journal, phone, knitting (I've just been practicing on this ball of yarn over and over - probably not good for the yarn) my computer, and of course a Coke Zero.