I'm published!

Online...but more than on my own blog.

Just in time for my computer to be up and published, my favorite cooking site asked for comments or emails about what is personally inspiring in the kitchen this week. I wrote a short email and sent in a picture of Grandma Nina.

I got an email back, saying it was cool and that they were posting it!

Look! Susan's Kitchen Computer - my name is even in the title. 

Pretty cool. Now I wish I had cleaned up the cables. 

Grant is a sexy sexy man

I have been wanting a computer in my kitchen since I've gotten married, to keep recipes on and to watch movies, or look up other recipes. I fear for my laptops life every time she enters the kitchen. I've covered Quinn with plastic, dish towels, set her on my stool to keep her away from food, but I'm still always worried.

Enter Grant: the sexy one.

Grant took my dream and made it reality. He bought an old Gateway all-in-one computer from his work for $100, built a mount for it, downloaded new software, and even painted the front red.  

Meet Grandma Nina.

Isn't she great! I named her that because she is advanced in years, shares her recipes and teaches me things in the kitchen.  Obviously the cords will hide, but there she is.

Grant is the best one.

Rocks and Rothko

The show that gave me all the crazy hours last week is finally over. 

Got to carve some stones to look like the theatre's wall. I only did the top part - someone else finished the bottom. Wish I'd had more time, or it could have looked even better. 

I also got to paint a copy of one of Rothko's paintings. Very pretty colors.  The hole in the middle is there because that chunk of the wall hangs on a different wall. I'm sure I'll have pictures eventually so you can see the whole thing.

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the walls are also textured, so that under certain lights it looks flat, but in other lights it looks all textured.

Feel Good Movie of the Year

The Shining - a heartwarming trailer, edited anew to bring laugher and delight to millions.

can you imagine what you'd think if you saw the movie after you saw this trailer?

Blueberry Girl

Blueberry Girl is a poem Neil Gaiman wrote for his god-daughter. Artist Charles Vess illustrated it and it is now a book. 

This is a video (put together Harper Collins I think) where the illustrations have been slightly animated, and best of all, Neil reads it himself.

This will make Aunt Sandy cry - in a good way.

My first tutorial

It's only for the recipe site, but I did it all by myself. For some reason the timing gets off when it is uploaded, which the original file doesn't do, but you get the idea.

High School Musical 4

What happens when High School Musical characters go to college?

SNL has the answer:

Poor Troy.

Tweenbots are sweeping NY

But not the way you think. 

Kacie Kinzer, a student at NYU's ITP, made a little robot-looking motorized vehicle, that can only go forward, put a little flag on it that listed it's destination and let it go.

The tweenbots rely on the kindness of strangers

This mission, getting from the NE corner of Washington Square Park to the SW corner, took 42 minutes and required the assistance of 29 passing New Yorkers!

"Given their extreme vulnerability, the vastness of city space, the dangers posed by traffic, suspicion of terrorism, and the possibility that no one would be interested in helping a lost little robot, I initially conceived the Tweenbots as disposable creatures which were more likely to struggle and die in the city than to reach their destination. Because I built them with minimal technology, I had no way of tracking the Tweenbot’s progress, and so I set out on the first test with a video camera hidden in my purse. I placed the Tweenbot down on the sidewalk, and walked far enough away that I would not be observed as the Tweenbot––a smiling 10-inch tall cardboard missionary––bumped along towards his inevitable fate.

The results were unexpected. Over the course of the following months, throughout numerous missions, the Tweenbots were successful in rolling from their start point to their far-away destination assisted only by strangers. Every time the robot got caught under a park bench, ground futilely against a curb, or became trapped in a pothole, some passerby would always rescue it and send it toward its goal. Never once was a Tweenbot lost or damaged. Often, people would ignore the instructions to aim the Tweenbot in the “right” direction, if that direction meant sending the robot into a perilous situation. One man turned the robot back in the direction from which it had just come, saying out loud to the Tweenbot, "You can’t go that way, it’s toward the road.”

The journey the Tweenbots take each time they are released in the city becomes a story of people's willingness to engage with a creature that mirrors human characteristics of vulnerability, of being lost, and of having intention without the means of achieving its goal alone. As each encounter with a helpful pedestrian takes the robot one step closer to attaining it's destination, the significance of our random discoveries and individual actions accumulates into a story about a vast space made small by an even smaller robot.

Via Tweenbots by Kacie Kinzer

PS - if you go to the website there is a map of the route that our little tweenbot took!

Dirty Windows

Here are windows I helped make dirty:

Those started out nice and clean - and this picture isn't even the dirtiest that they get!

You know that table that Grant's been working on? Well - it's finally done! And it is HUGE! This is it before it gets all rusty: And here is that handsome man doing manly welding stuff.

The Future is here.....

Have you noticed anything odd about Sue recently?

Has she been acting oddly?

Cold? Distant?

Uninterested in things she once was?

Have her emotions suddenly gone dormant?

Do you suspect that she has been replaced by a machine?

Possibly made of molten metal?

Hope she doesn't go on a seemingly random murder spree, all the while muttering something about Cyberdyne and the future.......

Indiana Jones Theme Party?

Today I helped Uncle Bri paint the Ark for Bethel's spring production.  Looks pretty nice!

I'm thinking an Indiana Jones theme party must happen at some point!

Sheet Metal and Baby Gates

Grant's boss has been teasing him about how young he is. One morning we showed up to find this:  

A baby gate set across his shop door. He retaliated by putting a cane on her desk.

If there are days you should wish your job was like mine, these are the days.  Sheet metal is so much fun to paint - and it turns out so nice:

 

yep - those babies started out as brown masonite.

Classical Music and Sheet Metal

This morning I was alone in the shop painting "metal" and listening to classical music.

It was very peaceful...