Desktop Wallpaper

Yesterday my co-workers were looking at my photographs. Previously I'd given some of them a few photos to use as desktop backgrounds. Due to popular demand, I put my name and website on several of them and formatted them to fit our widescreen laptops. So now Jamie has the sleeping pills, Autum has the cookie and milk, Jessie has the Falls in Black and White, and I have my travel books.

If you'd like one for your desktop, please email me which one you'd like and what resolution your display is set at. I won't post full-size images here because they are too easy to steal, but I'd be happy to send one to you!

Here is another one. These made me realize I need to do more stock photography. When I was still doing the Photo-A-Day project, it made me look at everything more creatively to try to get in a good photo every day.

Yet more recipes....

Mom and I are having so much fun with this project. I can't wait to see how the whole thing prints out. Anyone interested in a book, email me! Kristal, a friend at work, said she is going to do the same thing with her daughter (who is just 1 now.) Jon leaves for China again Friday at 6 AM, so I will probably work on it a lot this weekend. Plans seem to be moving forward much more quickly now, which we are happy about!

1566 Visitors since I put my counter up. Stop lurking and make a comment!! :-)

Link from my brother

My brother Jared sent me this link today - he said it was very appropriate if we are moving to China. It's pretty funny. Make sure your speakers aren't muted.

More recipes...

Tonight mom reminded me that I had photos in my 4-H book. It took about an hour but I managed to dig it out of the boxes in our basement. Oh, the great Special Foods photos.... I look so hot in permed hair and Coke-bottle sized glasses. Those will be coming....

Jared's first Special Foods recipe.

I made these last night - yummy!!

Washington Pavilion Weekend

This weekend the Washington Pavilion had a movie marathon at its Cinedome. The Cinedome is like an IMAX, only more curved. It was only $5 a movie (usually $8) and they were playing 13 different ones (usually only have 2 playing for several months.) So Jon and I took advantage of this. Saturday we saw the Coral Reef, and today we saw Africa: The Serengeti, Amazon, and Shackleton's Antarctic Adventure. They were all really good. At the last movie, we saw our friends Lura and Shon so went to have coffee with them.

We also purchased our tickets to The Producers. We already have tickets to the Blue Man Group in April. It is really nice to have somewhere to get some culture!

More photos from China...

I downloaded more photos from my CF card and found a few from our last days in China that I like.

This is the pearl market entrance.

Jon got to go to Tiananmen Square while he was in Beijing. It was actually for business though - they may be interested in some displays.

Stupid cars!

Today wasn't a good day.

Last night we picked up Bill Nuttall with FuelCast at the airport and went to supper. That was great, the food was awesome and we love chatting with Bill. This morning we were going to pick up Bill and take him to Daktronics with us.

The car didn't start. (This is our "good" car.) Yesterday it had died too, so obviously there was something wrong. I called another guy from Keyframe that commutes and they picked up Bill. Jon and I tried to figure out what to do. The dead car blocked in the Oldsmobile (car I've been driving since I was 14). This car is not winter-worthy. It has a CV boot out, all struts are shot and it doesn't start after a couple hours outside in the cold. The Taurus (car Jon's had since high school) also blocked in the Oldsmobile. The Taurus is buried under a huge pile of snow in the driveway. It has an electrical leak and no insurance, so it never moves.

We decided we'd have to work from home, and have the Taurus towed. Jon thought he should try to start it one more time before calling the tow truck, and miraciously it started. We drove it to the shop. Later they called us and said we'll just tell you everything we found wrong and you can tell us which things to fix now.

The main thing we fixed was the intake gasket. Apparently it leaked and coolant was leaking into our transmission. This and new spark plugs cost $767.

Things that really need to be fixed - loose wheel bearing (apparently your wheel will fall off if it's not fixed), axle seal, transmission solinoid (which has something to do with pressure in the transmission and they said it needs to be fixed ASAP.) The battery doesn't handle a load test well either, and they have a list of 8 other maintenance things we should do. (2 of them we get done free at the place we bought our tires.) The total for all of these additional needed repairs and maintanence (minus the tire stuff) is $1396.

OUCH.

Donations can be made in the form of checks, cash, or directly to my PayPal account. :-)
Anyway, we have never had to do repairs on this car before so actually are pretty lucky. Just had to get the complaining out of my system.

A good thing about today - since we worked from home I took a few cute photos of Boots lying in the sun. Our living room picture window faces south, so it is really sunny and warm in the morning and afternoon.

(Jon took this one.)

How can cats curl up in such tight balls? I would love to be able to lounge around all day, napping in the sun. Sounds like a very leisurely life.

My graphic designer friend...

My friend Crystal is a graphic designer and has a blog too. She has a piece she created in Illustrator that is super-cool -she calls it China Morning. Click here to see it. She let me use it for a wallpaper on my laptop. I have a rule that only photos I've taken can go on my desktop.... but I made an exception cause I really like this. She makes me want to learn Illustrator. So far, I've opened the program and found where their tutorials are. Baby steps, I guess.

Snopes.com

One of my pet peeves is people who forward emails that are obviously NOT true (if you bothered to read it carefully, or take a second to Google it.) I usually find a link stating what BS it is, hit reply-all, and tell everyone to think a minute before passing this on. Forwards that are untrue, not pertinent to anything I do or agree with, and not funny drive me nuts.

Tonight I discovered this email is mostly made up.
If we could shrink the earth's population to a village of precisely 100 people, with all the existing human ratios remaining the same, it would look something like the following. There would be:
57 Asians
21 Europeans
14 from the Western Hemisphere, both north and south
8 Africans
52 would be female
48 would be male
70 would be non-white
30 would be white
70 would be non-Christian
30 would be Christian
89 would be heterosexual
11 would be homosexual
6 people would possess 59% of the entire world's wealth and all 6 would be from the United States.
80 would live in substandard housing
70 would be unable to read
50 would suffer from malnutrition
1 would be near death; 1 would be near birth
1 (yes, only 1) would have a college education
1 would own a computer

Check it out. http://www.snopes.com/science/stats/populate.htm

This disappointed me a bit, because last week at the ESL class where I teach keyboarding, one of the instructors handed the article to me. She'd highlighted the "70 % couldn't read" part. According to Snopes.com, A 1998 UNICEF study put the world illiteracy rate at 16%, well short of the 70% claimed here. It's good to know the illiteracy rate is much lower than 70%!

Snopes did the math, and actually 5 people would be from the US and would have 23% of the world's wealth. 50% of American's own a computer, so the last statement is false too. I am sure the stats from other developed countries are the same. There isn't quite as much difference between people as these stats want us to believe.

Rose's Maternity

I love maternity photos. Rose had a baby boy! I can't wait to see him. Here is their full shoot.

3 more recipe pages

Cherry bars are one of Jared's favorites.

I love this photo of Jared licking the beaters - the look on his face is pricesless!

The background is a bit boring, but I don't want them all to have fruit backgrounds. Maybe I'll add a bit of texture.

You have new Picture Mail!

Teresa and Boots snuggling.