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Planet Cornucopia

mammal — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 17:25:48 +0000

Planet Cornucopia

You now will have a link to visit my two new works in progress; PlanetCornucopia.com and YesterdayTodayPhoto.com.
To that end, I have been scratching up verbiage and page ideas. For Planet Cornucopia I think I want a chat room, or at least a page that encourages input from readers. I was thinking of a poetry page, with the focus on disaster relief, community development, co-op opportunities, third-world poverty relief.
On that note, I made a haiku:
With rain, the planet
makes possible changes:
Cornucopia.
On another subject, my sweetie and I have not got our TV box coupon yet. You know, the one to use on your old TV so you can get the new signal? Our home theater consists of an ancient TV, at least it’s color, and a bunch of recorded media devices so we don’t HAVE to watch the channels.
If we don’t get the coupon for the box, I can’t see us running out to buy one at full price.
I just don’t see it. We’d rather watch the seasons we bought of Arrested Development, Simpson’s, Futurama … you know, the important shows.

Holidays are over

mammal — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 19:58:57 +0000

It was a real joy to have such a large number of my small family gathered around me this holiday. We all had a real good time. And ate too much. Now we all need to get ahold of some Fentraphen and lose some of the weight. We had lots of huge and fun dinners.
One night we had a giant amount of pork roast that I found on sale at Food City. I got to use a big roasting pan that I haven’t used in years.
And for Christmas Day, we had a twelve-pound ham. I am surprised that it’s all gone now, except the juice and bone. We’re saving that for New Year’s black-eyed peas and cornbread. Dear Heart’s specialty.
The house is all quiet now, everybody went on their way. My niece and DH, J and D and family are on their way to Heart of The Old West.
I got a new camera. It’s a Canon Power Shot. WOW !

Joleen’s quilt

mammal — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 23:37:23 +0000

Hey, I just thought of another project. I can finish Joleen’s quilt. That will give me a decompression from applying for grants and writing essays, and rest my eyes on all that fabulous green. Now I am really looking forward.

I need to finish the Christmas projects I have going on the work table, and I’m a few days out on that. I have been experimenting with zipper pulls. I don’t know about you, but these days I need all the help I can get. The days of nimble fingers and muscular tugs are over for my knobby fingers, and I like a good grip. So of course I assume everybody else does, too. Even top rated diet supplements won’t help. Yoga helped my neck, though. More even than the PT.

So of course everybody gets one in their stocking. I have to find some of those keyring spirals. Some that are somehow special. I found a bead store, down on 6th Street and Roosevelt in Phoenix that has the greatest beads for $2.00 a string. I got big flattened cylinders of malachite-colored stone. The hole is big enough for wire. Even for silver or gold wire, if you want to get fancy. I found a bunch of other beads, too.

zipper pulls

I like the glass leaf beads, only $2.00 each string. wow.

So I am making zipper-pulls.

Beautiful Weather at last

mammal — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 16:34:39 +0000

Finally, it is cool enough to put the top down on the Miata. I sure love winters in Arizona, summers I could do without, but now we have a good six months of wonderful weather here. I took the dogs for a long walk today up the mountain preserve, didn’t even have to get out before dawn. Didn’t even have to carry a gallon of water. We had a really good time.
It’s funny that all the winter clothes in Walmart and Target are now on the shelves. I take advantage of this by buying up the discounted summer threads. You know we wear shorts and flipflops all winter here, so this is the time of year to shop. I stock up for me and Mom every Fall. I love the 70% off racks, but I will even shop the 30% off racks, and sometimes a real bargain will be stuck up in there. I think I’ll go out again today, still need some more clam diggers for school. Shorts to walk the dogs, but longer pants for formal events like school.
The sports equipment is changing, too, try to find a baseball bat in the stores. You’ll have to wait until spring for that. I bet you could find ice skates and mittens aplenty, though. Haven’t looked for that.

Enrique’s Journey

mammal — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 17:20:55 +0000

I’m doing a report for Humanities class on a sonia nazario book, Enrique’s Journey, It’s all marked up now, for speech pauses, etc, so I won’t copy it into this post, but the gist is, a honduran boy of 15 years old makes his perilous way to the United States to find his mother who deserted the family ten years before to seek a ‘better life’ in america.
This subject really pisses me off. and of course I express this in my presentation. The class is full of idealistic young folk, so I guess we’ll see what kind of reception I get after my delivery Monday.
I did some research into ways to help central and southern american citizens to make them more prosperous so maybe they will stay in their own countries.
Kiva.org does micro-loans which seem to work pretty well, they’ve been doing it all over the world for awhile, now. They started in Africa, and have had great success. Nobody’s buying Manolo Blahnik shoes, but they’re feeding their families.
There is also a couple of groups that teach Hondurans and Central Americans to grow their own veggies in their back yards. Any of this helps raise the quality of life down there and keeps the desperation to a minimum. It takes a pretty desperate person to travel 1800 miles basically on foot with no money in their pockets and only the clothes on their backs.
It must be pretty desperate down in there, because they are streaming across our borders by the thousands every year.

Enrique's Journey

sourdough bread

mammal — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 00:08:22 +0000

I am making another batch of sourdough bread, this time I think bolillos, or little hoagies. They rise faster and bake faster, it’s still too hot to bake, but I’m tired of waiting for cooler temps and am doing it anyway. The bread rises really good in this heat.
I got a new recipe book the other day and can’t wait to make some of the cookie recipes in it.
It can’t stay this hot for much longer, soon I will be baking again.
School is hard!
Totally off subject, but really not, since baking relieves some of my stress. Spanish is especially tough right now, my teacher is senile, keeps repeating his stories and drifts off mid-sentence. His tests are like a children’s where’s waldo book, full of nasty tricks that have nothing to do with the knowledge of spanish, and he takes such glee in the fact that everyone in the class is fooled by it. He must think we are playing a game, but I am SO serious! Some of my money depends on getting A’s. I need at least 3.75 GPA to get some of the grants and scholarships that allow me to continue school. I have been looking into my options, seems like I can petition to the head of the department and slide over into a different class, and if things don’t change this week, that’s what I will have to do. I am studying like crazy, so I can fit into whatever level I find myself into if I switch. I don’t want to complain and then look dumb.

photography light box

mammal — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 19:04:21 +0000

A friend of mine sent me this link

http://digital-photography-school.com/blog/how-to-make-a-inexpensive-light-tent

She made one basically like this one and one out of PVC pipe. Said the cardboard box is better. I guess both could be folded flat for storing.

Before I forget, the author of Breadwinners is Mel London. A very good read, as mentioned in the last entry.

Today I finally stirred and churned the papier mache mix. I added some color and set on a design for a first project with this batch. I think I will try some picture frames, or framed picture boxes.

egg cartons