Favorite Things III

XKCD is a stick figure comic. It's own warning is : "This comic sometimes contains strong language (which may be unsuitable for children), unusual humor (which may be unsuitable for adults), and advanced mathematics (which may be unsuitable for liberal-arts majors)." And I'm not gonna lie, sometimes I don't get it and sometimes it is inappropriate. But it is funny most of the time and if you scroll over the comic an extra little message or explanation appears.  Well, the message won't pop up here, but if you go to the xkcd site it will.

(from here)

(from here)

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Weddingbee is a community of brides to be. I found it somehow (I really don't remember how) when I was engaged. There are "Miss" bloggers who post about everything they do leading up to the wedding. There are brides of every kind and budget on weddingbee. It is a gold mine for ideas and discussion boards and DIY (do it yourself) instructions. And after the Misses get married they post as "Mrs" bloggers and recap the actual day and give advice and tell things they learned. I love this site. I still check it constantly and I'm already married!

This bench is a guest book!  See it here.

And they are so honest  about what works and what doesn't. This is what Mrs. Lovebug was going for:

Mrs. Lovebug says, "Ridiculously sweet, right? You can almost hear the little *click!* of her heels neatly hitting the pavement. But the best part is the groom's “and down you go, little lady!” expression.

With this shot in mind, I hopped onto the fountain next to where we stood. I instructed Mr. LB to “lift me down, cute-like” (well, I don’t know for sure what I said - but I can totally see myself saying that), and Chris snapped the picture.

People, what possessed me to think that my fountain hop would be anywhere NEAR as cute as that of a woman who has fingers the size of hors d’oeuvres, I really don’t know. But at least I have these lovely shots of Mr. LB struggling not to get flattened by me instead:"

A close up

All three photos from here.

Iowa! Part 2

These are pictures I took from J's facebook! 

J and L driving to Iowa

T and I went with J and L to the Iowa State Fair.  The Iowa State Fair is the best state fair.  It's just a fact.  T and I were going to go to the Los Angeles County Fair but it's $17 per person and $10 to park.  But one of these years we are going to go.  I'm so interested to see LA's fair because there  probably won't be much livestock or vegetation.  I'm thinking there will probably be loads of photography...and shopping... Anyway back to Iowa's state fair!

J at the Iowa State Fair.

L and a baby cow born the day before

Me and some cows!

An elk shedding velvet from his antlers.

T and S - Pork is the other white meat!

J and L - pigs are good for Iowa!

Corn is good for Iowa, too!

T isn't as in love with the Iowa corn as I am.

Yum!

We saw this ice motorcycle while we were in line to see the buttercow.  "What is the buttercow?" you might ask.  Only the best thing at the fair!  Every  year there is a cow carved out of butter and two other butter carvings that fit in with a theme.  A few years ago they had a life size butter Tiger Woods holding a life size butter tiger on a leash.

The theme for the butter carvings this year was the moon landing.  Originally they were going to have a butter Michael Jackson doing the moonwalk in addition to the astronaut.  But the good people of Iowa would not stand for that - they voted it down (before Jackson's death).  Oh, how I love Iowa! 

Yes, this astronaut and the moon background is made completely out of butter!

The buttercow!!!  It is life size and I love it.  The glare is because the butter scultures are behind glass in a temperature controlled  room.  Otherwise, they would surely melt in the Iowa heat and humidity.

We got some stranger to take this sweet blurry picture of us and the buttercow.

The other butter sculpture instead of Michael Jackson was an old school living room complete with TV and rug and popcorn watching the moon landing on TV.

While waiting in line to see the buttercow it started to pour outside.  The rain stopped, but it became incredibly muggy.  We were looking for the giant pumpkins and each guessed how much the largest one would weigh.  I guessed closest with 600 lbs but I was way wrong.

You probably can't read the sign, but the first place pumpkin was 1099 pounds!  Don't worry, I'm not actually touching the pumpkin.

I've always wondered how you transport those pumpkins and what happens to them after fair time.  That would be one big jack-o-lantern or pumpkin pie!

There was this huge wooden train for the kids to play on, but I don't think kids should have all the fun!

Our deep fried goodness!  I had a deep fried twinkie, T had a deep fried Snickers, J and L had deep fried  ding-dongs (they were out of deep fried oreos).  It's just the snack dipped in cake batter and deep fried with powdered sugar on top.  Basically, it is heaven on a stick.  If you ever have the chance you should eat one.  I love the Iowa State Fair!

Just one block away from Grandma's house is a HUGE cornfield.  So of course we had to take pictures!  In real life most corn is planted too close together to run down the rows.  I tried to run down the rows and got a corn cut on my forhead (like a grass cut).  The corn was about 9 feet tall, which is tall, but my cousin A grew some corn for 4H that was 16 feet tall!  The corn looked so good and it was ready to pick, but it was corn for animal feed, not sweet corn that's good to eat so we didn't pick any (plus that would be stealing!)

L and J in the corn

S and J in the corn.  T didn't want to get in.

Grandma E and Aunt P at the reunion

The lake on our hike at the family reunion.

More from the hike.

The nature preserve where we have the reunion is just SO beautiful!

Atop the observatory on the hike.

J had to do some mad running (twice!) to get this picture! 

The bridge at the end of the hike.

Back at the reunion pavillion, we found a fuzzy caterpiller.

The beautiful fields of corn on our way to visit the cemetary where Grandpa is buried and the lake house.

The Westfield church that is next to the cemetary.  This is also where the merry-go-round is.

J and L at the lake by the lake house.

The lake house is where Grandma and Grandpa used to live.  It was a beautiful blue house with a cornfield behind it (they didn't own the field) that was a five minute walk to the lake.  I love that house and all the memories I have from it.  We would walk to the lake the back way over the little bridge and grandpa would meet us there and we would go fishing, collect shells, catch fireflies, and good stuff like that.  The lake house is my dream house.  I love Iowa!

IOWA!!! I love this place!!!

Just a few pictures my mom sent me from our Iowa reunion trip:

On a bench at the Nature Preserve.  Iowa is  SO green!  I love it!

S, T, L, J, cousin A at the dock on the lake by the lake house.  Someday I want to own the lake house...

J, T, S, cousin A on the tilted merry-go-round by the cemetery.

Shortly after this I started to feel sick.  It happens every time and I never learn!

Pretending to be students at the old school house in Kellogg.  This  is where my grandpa went to school.  Also note my wavy hair.  Thanks, humidity! (Really, I'm not joking, I like what it does to my hair.)

I love these guys!

By the windmill in Pella.

Riding a tractor from the 40's at the Kellogg museum

The Fires

I'm pretty sure you have heard about the fires in California.  They are kind of close to us.  Not evacuate close, but horrible air close.  You can see a map of the Station fire here at the LA Times.  We are in Panorama City on the left toward the bottom - about 13 miles away from the fire.  To help you get your bearings downtown LA is straight south of Glendale but off this map (unless you zoom out and such). 

Driving to church on the 101, this is what we saw looking out to the west (the opposite direction of the fire): 

 

That's not fog or the window making the trees just a mile away look wacky.  That's smoke. It was thick.  We could smell it in the car and from the freeway the off ramps looked like a path to obivlion. It was so bad.

 Oh, what?  Those are  some pretty clouds?  No.  That's smoke.

This next one is approaching downtown LA.  Again, this is not the windows or fog.  Just smoke.

Even when we are driving through actual downtown everything still looks funny from the smoke.

Driving home from church this is what we saw looking out to the east:

Oh, what a pretty sunset with pretty clouds.  No.  It's smoke again.  Much more obvious in the next picture after we round the corner.

Yeah, that's where it started and you can see the blanket of smoke. Yum.

The other night the moon looked really red from the smoke but we couldn't get a good picture of it. 

It has been really hot here in the valley and the fire is not helping.  The valley is always the hottest part of the greater LA area anyway without the help of the fire.  In the summer it works this way: The beach temp is 75.  That means downtown LA is  85 and the valley is 95.  We are pretty much always 20 degrees hotter than the beach.  I'm SO glad we have air conditioning!

I woke up three days in a row and looked outside and was excited because it looked cloudy.  Except it was smoke.  Again. Just covering  the entire sky and valley.  Our air quality was in the "red zone" or "unhealthy" for about 5 days.  Now we're back to moderate (two spots down) which is where most of LA is most of  the time.  Except Long Beach.  Theirs always seems to be good. Even in the middle of the fire the air quality was "good" in Long Beach.

And it's Labor Day Weekend!  We're off to the beach tomorrow and Monday!  I guess living in LA does  have some perks.