Day 350 12-16-12

I wanted to send a pic while I had the church wifi still so this is a Christmas tree that was in the lobby of the science center on Thursday.

Day 349 12-15-12

Today we went to Levi Dean's double bass recital. This is the ceiling in the building where his recital was held.

Day 348 12-14-12

Today after institute we decorated cookies. I liked the flavor of the gingerbread cookies better than the sugar cookies. They just weren't sweet enough.

Day 347 12-13-12

I went with Barbara to see a free movie at the science center's Omnimax theater. I ran into my first college English professor afterward then Barbara and I went to Market Square and got some Mexican food at Las Velas. Here's a picture of my veggie enchiladas. There was a woman vomiting in the bathroom but otherwise a nice experience.

Day 346 12-12-12

Today I did nothing but worked since Tracy took off so today's picture is the new washing machine.

Day 345 12-11-12

Book club tonight at the library and Institute after. Today's picture is the stack of things that were waiting for me on the hold shelf.

Day 344 12-10-12

Today was the first meeting of a new singles FHE. We met for a lesson at the Wayments and then went to Phipps for the holiday lights show. There weren't tons of decorations, it was very understated with just poinsettias around. This is the English garden room. It's very popular for wedding pictures.

Day 343 12-9-12

Christmas overload. We had our ward Christmas musical program at church today. I skipped Relief Society to see Oakland ward's Christmas program. I would have stayed for 1st ward's but no one was practicing before church so I don't think they were having one. Then later tonight there was a stake musical program I got to sing three different songs in. Our Choir was first, then the last two numbers were the stake choir then combined choirs (ie anyone from a unit choir was welcome to join). I didn't take any pictures since it was church and I was singing so today's picture is some of my neighbor's decorations.

Day 342 12-8-12

I baked some cookies today to take to church for holiday hugs. There are florentines, peach jam thumbprints, and chocolate chip cookies.

Day 341 12-7-12

Ward Christmas party followed by Phase 10 at the Institute.

Day 340

Matthew got a deer yesterday. This is what she looked like before they butchered her. I'll spare you pictures of her being skinned and dismembered. :p

Day 339 12-5

Baklava!

Day 338

Today I tried once again to give Andy money for the washer (maybe that'll be tomorrow's picture) and the half dozen packages he's gotten in the mail but he once again left work before I got there. :( So I was in Oakland four hours too early for institute and decided I deserved some pizza to sooth my pain. I made a bad choice though, and I should have realized it when I almost immediately flipped it over off the counter at Pizza Hut. It was my own fault so I didn't let them make me a new one. It didn't look THAT bad, right? I'd already eaten the cheese off the lid before I took this picture.

The second evidence of what a bad choice it was is how absolutely terrible I felt all evening from eating too much pizza. I couldn't even stand to try Sister Neal's giant peanut butter chocolate chip cookies! I did eat a little salad hoping the lettuce would push the pizza along and end the pain. Now at 10 I'm not feelin too bad, which just means I'm stupid enough to try eating something else when I get home. :p It was very delicious though. :)

Day 337 12-3

This is one of the wreaths I made at the Souper Saturday on November 17th. It was pretty easy, not as time consuming as the other one I made, but I was a bit unsure of the hot glue and the burlap. I also wasn't sure how to go about embellishing it. Some people were making amazing arrangements of ornaments and evergreen and flowers. I wasn't really willing to commit to a season, I mean red could be Thanksgiving, right? Eh, whatever, it was a fun day of crafts, I could've done many more.

Day 336 12-2-12

Here's the new car Dad got to replace the 2003 Chevy Cavalier. I should have taken a picture of it before it got traded in for this on Friday. This is a dark gray 2012 Chevy Sonic. I haven't been in it yet, but someday...

Day 335

Okay, so I totally flaked on this for the last three months. I've taken enough pictures I'm sure I could fill in the days, but they wouldn't truly be pictures of the day they'd be assigned so we'll just have to accept my failure and hope to do better in the future. Maybe I'll get a camera for Christmas and then I'll have the cord and everything right there and I can take better pictures every day. We will see. I'll likely have to get it for myself.

Tonight I went to a free concert at St Stanislaus church in the Strip. It was a lovely chapel with many paintings on the ceiling and walls and lots of statues. I'd have enjoyed poking around more. Some of the statues were creepily life-like. If I go back again some day maybe someone can tell me what Bible verses or whatever the different scenes are based on. At the front of the chapel there was a crown and Jesus on the cross with angels on top of a building that I don't know the significance of but it was interesting to look at during the performance. Here is a blurry look at it. I cropped it to get rid of the audience heads and tried to get some more details to stand out. I should just confidently walk into churches to explore them. Most of them have full-time employees, right? I mean if the door is unlocked probably someone is there to answer questions. I don't want to intrude, but I bet people like talking about the history of their churches.

Day 238 8-25

Here's another look at the status of our garage that died back on the 4th of July. They've torn off the roof and made stacks of wood and had some people offer estimates on building a new one. I think that the weekend after Labor Day (so 2 weeks from today) some people will come from church to help load it all into a dumpster we'll rent for 3 weeks I think.

Technically this picture is from yesterday and I really should take a new one for today because after I took this the boys likely did some more work and they definitely cut the pine trees in back. They cut all the branches to about six or seven feet off the ground so it'll be easier to drag things down to the dumpster. It really opened things up back there, makes it seem like there's actually a place to be back there. Maybe I'll take a picture of it for later. I wanted that place to be a secret hideaway in the trees but it was not a comfortably place to get into and who knows what bugs were hiding in the trees. Seems like we're rehabilitating the yard now with the new garage and the pruning. We'll see what happens. :)

Day 237 8-24

So you know how back on day 232 I said I was searching for yeast in the freezer? I never found it and decided I'd just make my own yeast. I started this on Sunday night I think. Maybe it was Monday morning. Regardless, I want to make some bread already but I can't tell if this is really ready! I tried to "proof the sponge" but it didn't look particularly white and frothy. I will try to make bread tomorrow anyway. If it never rises I'll know I failed to grow wild yeast. It was a fun experiment anyway.

Day 236 8-23

This is some of the mess I made making jam. It may also be why things didn't set well. I maybe had 10 cups of berries instead of 8, I had pectin for 8 lbs of berries but I didn't boil for a full minute after adding it because things were bubbling over and I didn't want to lose jam. It was really just foam so I should've ignored it, except it did start a small fire at one point. :) All in good fun, right?

Day 235 8-22

Happy 64th Birthday to my Dad! I should've cleaned the house for him or something but instead I made strawberry jam with the 8 lbs of strawberries I got cheap in the strip a few weeks ago.

I don't think it set properly and the bit I tried from the pan tasted rather too sweet to me anyway, but it could always be an ice cream topping like I did with Susan's blueberry "syrup" jam she sent for my birthday. I don't know that we'd ever need 9 jars of strawberry topping though. :p It was fun to do anyway, even if I made a big mess knocking over the cup of skimmed foam.

Day 234 8-21

There were some nice flowers outside the visitors center in Kirtland. I took lots of pictures of things there and at the farm and camp that I'll probably never share. Maybe in a blog post on my main blog. I should just upload them all to Facebook at least!

Shade and lomographic (I don't know what that word means but I use the filter sometimes when vibrant makes things hurt your eyes to look at. Tha seems to be a problem with pinks and reds. It may only be on my phone that it's an issue though)

Day 233 8-20

There was a gate we had to keep closed across the gravel/dirt road that led from the Johnson farmhouse to our camp. I wasn't even sure I had the right place when I first came to it.

This picture was from Wednesday, walking back to camp after touring the farm. The clouds look really cool, too. We had such good weather at camp!

Clarity and 80% vibrant

Day 232 8-19

Barbara has tons of tomatoes in her garden, unlike me. She brought some over after church to make spaghetti sauce. It turned out pretty good and we had a very nice Sunday dinner which included vegetables I'd thrown out of the freezer in a frenzied search for yeast so I could make some quick rolls to be garlic bread to go with our dinner. It was all rather upsetting at the time but now I know what's in part of the freezer at least. I still need to clean out the rest of it and make an inventory so they'll stop buying things we already have hidden in the freezer. I found so many things!

But enough on cleaning, here's dinner with filters: food and 50% vibrant.

Day 231 8-18

Instead of driving straight home from camp I went about an hour north to Kirtland, OH. It was a nice drive through some Amish-type country. I saw a number of buggies and when I stopped for gas there were some parked for the people to go to the convenience store. I saw a pony looking a little bunny with three kids in it. It was really beautiful country around Hiram and Kirtland, not very developed still. It's funny how places with important church history, where people drove the Mormons out for fear of what they'd do to the community or whatever, didn't seem to prosper so much after we left. I don't think I've been to any church history site that had anything beyond church history to draw a person there.

I had an interesting visit to Kirtland, ended up talking an hour or more to an investigator, Kenneth, who was visiting the sites to see what he was reading about in the D&C. If you want to read more about that check out my main blog for an account.

I took this picture of the Johnson Inn with the Whitney home to the right in the background just before Kenneth started a conversation with me.

Clarity HDR