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By Amber, on January 30, 2011, at 10:35 pm I’m not one of those Christmas People who have twelve boxes of decorations in their attic and start pulling them out the second the last bite of Thanksgiving turkey has been eaten, but lately I have been missing the Christmas decorations. We took them down a little earlier than I would have liked — it just worked out that way. So I decided I would make some Valentine’s Day decorations! Usually I would have ideas like this three days before the holiday, but this year I had plenty of time. Maybe. I’m still working on the second project and we’ll see if I finish that one before the 14th, but I can share the first one tonight!
I made enough for all of the shutters on the main floor. If you don’t have plantation shutters or another way to hang them in your windows, they would be cute hanging from doorknobs.
Follow the jump if you want to see how to make them! Continue reading Hearts on a string: how-to
By Amber, on January 27, 2011, at 10:11 pm What a day today was. I discovered that I’d forgotten to pack a fairly important part of my outfit in my gym bag, forgot some of the makeup tools I wanted to use, and walked right on past my car in the parking garage. And all of that was before 7:30 AM! Fortunately the rest of the day was pretty routine, but I’m so ready for the weekend. I need to get some sleep and get my head back on straight.
This is the last installment of my zoo trip: lizards and frogs. The reptile & amphibian house is always one of my favorite parts of the zoo. I had a couple pet snakes when I was younger and briefly considered becoming a herpetologist. I still love looking, and as it turns out the reptile house is an excellent place to practice photography skills. Most of the animals are content to bask, but the combination of low light conditions and the occasional restless critter will really put you through the paces. And test your spouse’s patience (Mark passed!).
Anyway, ten photos tonight to wrap it up. Half up front; click through the jump to see the rest.
Continue reading Leapin’ lizards
By Amber, on January 25, 2011, at 10:00 pm Zoo picture time! I’ll put the birds out front, and the snakes behind a cut for the ophidiophobes.
I think kookaburras are ridiculous little cartoony birds that look like they should topple over. I don’t know who is sillier, kookaburras or this bird that looks like Little Richard:
I know you’re wondering what kind of person goes to the zoo and takes a photo of a grackle, but isn’t he pretty? He really was that blue in the sunlight. Okay, one more non-indigenous bird to make up for the grackle:
Snake time! Snakes get a bad rap, but they are much more cooperative for portraits than most of the zoo’s other animals. Continue reading Feathers and scales
By Amber, on January 23, 2011, at 10:54 pm We needed to get up early for an errand on Friday, so afterward we went out to breakfast and arrived at the zoo right at opening time. We ended up staying almost all day, and as usual I took way too many photos. If you look at how many photos I took versus how many minutes we were there, it averages out to a photo every minute. Whoops. It is going to take me until 2012 to sort through these completely, but I’ve already tossed a quarter of them. Progress!
It was nice to have most of the zoo to ourselves — I think the staff to visitor ratio was at least 2:1 for the first half of the day. However, it was incredibly cold until about noon. It was so cold we saw the steam from an elephant fart. I was glad I’d worn layers and gloves.
We tried to see the tiger feeding, but they changed the schedule so we went to see the cheetah feeding instead. We learned some interesting things about cheetahs, like how African farmers whose livestock are threatened by cheetahs have learned to keep Anatolian Shepherds. The dogs bond with whatever they’re raised with and are excellent at scaring off the cheetahs, who prefer to run rather than fight. The cheetahs at the Houston Zoo are kept with one of these dogs. They had to be separated when the cheetahs were going through their ‘terrible twos’ and played too rough — the dog wouldn’t defend itself. They play nice now.
Shortly after the cheetah feeding, we saw the chimp feeding. The zoo hasn’t had chimps in decades, but they’re back now with a nice new exhibit. They even have blankets for cold days like Friday.
One of the most exciting things we saw was a pair of leopards play-fighting two feet away from us. They reminded me of my sister’s cats!
After it warmed up we also got to see two baby elephants playing. They were chasing each other around and falling on top of each other. It was a lot cuter than the display we had gotten earlier in the morning from one of the adults.
Later this week I’ll post some of my favorite feathery and scaly critters!
By Amber, on January 20, 2011, at 10:00 pm Is it me, or was this the sloooooowest week ever? It was so unbearable that I’m taking tomorrow off and we’re going to the zoo!
I took that picture when we visited before, almost exactly two years ago. I didn’t really know what I was doing with my camera yet, so hopefully this time I can come back with something interesting. Oh, who am I kidding — I see animals and my shutter finger takes on a life of its own. This photo-bingeing is just that: delightful at the time, but utterly regretful when it comes time to sit down and choose which ones to edit and keep. Will that stop me? No.
Anyway, I’m really excited to see the new African Forest exhibit. I don’t have a bucket list, but if I did, an African safari would be at the very top of the list. Once a quarter or so, I take a few days to remind/bother Mark incessantly that I am dying to go to Africa and that it’s the only thing I’ve always, always wanted ever since I was a little girl. He is on board and we will do it sometime, though his idea of the ideal safari involves ending the day with some very fresh meat. I’ll try to keep him out of the kudu enclosure tomorrow, or we might not be allowed back to the zoo.
By Amber, on January 18, 2011, at 10:09 pm I gave my first Toastmasters speech shortly after I joined in October. I haven’t given another since. I’m not exactly setting the world on fire. I’m willing, it’s just that the thing about giving speeches is that you need topics. I have been having terrible speechwriter’s block.
I never anticipated how tough it would be to come up with topics. We’re there to practice skills, and as such not every speech has to be inspirational or hilarious or gripping. But I also don’t want to bore myself to death while giving a speech!
It only took me two and a half months, but I finally have a topic for my second speech. I’m going to relate some of the funny sayings and stories about my grandmother into life lessons. I think it’s going to be fun and relatable — I just have to hope I’m not on the same night as somebody’s icebreaker speech if I want any hope of taking home Best Speaker. ;)
That was when my grandmother took me to Las Vegas and taught me to gamble, right after I turned 21. I had the best time! Wish I still had those pants.
Any ideas for future speeches, or ways to keep speechwriter’s block at bay? Sometimes it’s hard enough just coming up with blog posts, sheesh.
By Amber, on January 16, 2011, at 10:06 pm Our usual Sunday routine when Mark isn’t working is to go to brunch, do our grocery shopping for the week, and then come home and relax together. Today we were excited to find gumbo as the daily special. We’ve had it Beaver’s once before, and it had ENORMOUS chunks of pork from Revival Meats (they are opening a market near us soon and we seriously cannot wait). The pit guy made the gumbo, but sadly, the head chef hated it, so we figured we’d never see it again. Not so!
Last time we each had a cup, but today we each got the bowl — a bowl of gumbo as big around as a dinner plate, piled high with rice and two eggs (I had mine scrambled), for $10. It’s a steal. Because we are gluttons, we also had breakfast tacos with egg, cheese, and chorizo. And dessert. It was glorious, and it was a perfect meal for such a cold, grey, rainy day (Mark’s favorite kind of day, Seattleite that he is).
We actually couldn’t finish, so we brought home the remains, about two cups’ worth. I told Mark he could have it all. That was until he heated half of it up tonight and I smelled it. I was helpless to resist. Mark graciously forgave my reversal of generosity.
And it was just as good as it was at brunch!
By Amber, on January 13, 2011, at 10:09 pm Yesterday while I was at work I was surprised to receive a call from our security company about a motion detector in our house being set off. Getting the alarm system set up was one of the first things we did when we bought the house in the summer of 2008, and we have never had a false alarm. The motion detector gets set whenever we are out or sleeping, and supposedly it takes an animal of at least 40 lbs to set off the kind we have. I was 80% sure that Sweet Pea had finally figured out a way to trigger it, but I had the dispatcher send the police to drive by anyway.
 Does this look like the face of shenanigans? The dispatcher was supposed to call me back and let me know whether the police had seen anything. One hour, two hours — we have had slow police responses in the past, and I was sure that our burglar alarm had been lost at the bottom of the priority list. I thought of the off chance that someone had broken in and I imagined Sweet Pea wandering the neighborhood, and not being able to find her as the sun set and the temperature plummeted. I couldn’t take it anymore; I had to go home.
I crept the car past the house a couple times, looking for anything out of place, and saw nothing but a tag from the police, who had indeed responded within 10-15 minutes of the alarm. Opened the garage, everything appeared to be there. I relaxed a little and I was dying to know what that cat had knocked over to set off the alarm. I came inside, stood and looked around carefully, and saw…nothing. Nothing out of place, nothing smashed to pieces.
So it looks like it was just a malfunction. At least, I hope it was — we only get so many free false alarms per year, and Sweet Pea is only two, so she has plenty of mayhem-causing years ahead of her. The security company will be out very soon to swap out our sensor and batteries, and hopefully I won’t get any more calls like I got yesterday.
On the other hand, if she did somehow trigger the alarm, the odds are good that she will do it again, because she does not learn:
Sometimes I get the impression that maybe she’s not very smart.
Either way, only she knows what really happened yesterday!
By Amber, on January 11, 2011, at 10:00 pm I won’t live in Houston forever. I may not live in Texas forever. Wherever Mark and I go next is likely to have more clearly defined seasons. While I’ll embrace some of what that entails, like maybe not sweating in April, I will probably look fondly back at the coldest week of the year in Houston. That week is now. I was so cold when I came home from Toastmasters tonight that I stuck my feet in Mark’s bath. My fingers still hurt for several minutes after I came into the warm house.
My winter pajamas are useful most of the year because in our house Mark is always sweating and I’m always shivering, but for a week or two each year I feel justified because, finally, everyone else is cold, too. Overnight temperatures plunge into the 20s and people put frost blankets over their tropical plants in hopes that they’ll survive. Finally I look normal wearing a sweater in the office (where it is ALWAYS winter), and sometimes the building manager even turns the heat on!
My favorite part of cold weather in Houston is its brevity (and that it allows me to have SOME cozy clothes and coats, which I love). The temperature should be back into the 70s in the blink of an eye. Of course, I’ll still be wearing my winter clothes, because when else am I going to wear them? (Also, because I’ll still be cold.)
Completely unrelated to any of the rest of this post, I saw one of the buildings downtown doing this on my way home tonight (click for video):
I don’t know what that’s about, but I think it may have been inspired by some of the psychedelic holiday lights in my neighborhood that are still up.
By Amber, on January 9, 2011, at 10:00 pm My surgery went well. I had two gingival grafts. My periodontist was awesome with the anesthesia, and I didn’t feel anything. I will say, however, that it was REALLY creepy hearing the donor tissue being cut away.
Mark took me home and got me set up with pajama pants and my first dose of medicine. He kept my cold compresses cycling as prescribed the first day and has taken care of all of my dosing. There’s a pain pill, an antibiotic, and steroids. As a critical care nurse he is used to keeping track of multiple drugs at once, and thank goodness because I would need a chart for the timing of this stuff.
So now I have stitches in front of the two teeth that got grafts and in my palate. Surprisingly, I haven’t had any severe pain at all, but the stitched area in my palate is starting to bother me a little. I’m going back to work tomorrow with my soup and pudding. I told Mark that the hardest thing will be sticking to a soft diet for the next two weeks while I feel almost completely normal!
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