Thursday, February 10, 2011

Kashi!

It's about time I wrote about a topic for which I have a lot of passion: Kashi cereal. Cereal has always been one of my major food groups, and I am not picky about it. I love sweet cereals like Fruit Loops, Cap'n Crunch Peanut Butter, Apple Jax, Fruity Pebbles, and Golden Grahams. I also love the "healthier" Corn Chex, Wheaties, Cheerios, Rice Crispies, and Corn Flakes.

However my body needs a lot of protein and a little sugar, so unless I am eating cereal as a dessert I need to eat Kashi. And you know what? I LOVE it! Jim has even started eating it every morning, realizing that the drive-thru bagel is not the healthiest way to start his day.

My favorite variety because of its high protein-to-sugar ratio is Go Lean, but admittedly it is a little bland. Jim has been chowing down the Go Lean Crunch, but that has a bit too much sugar for my needs. We have discovered that a BLEND of the two is fabulous, and now I have even started doing a 2:1 with the Berry Granola version. I just had my first bowl of that and I am in love. The granola has real little berries, including whole black berries, and the milk turned pink and delicious when I was done, too. Just like it does with Franken Berry.


  • 13g Protein
  • 10g fiber
  • Low in Fat—1g
  • 8g of whole grains
  • 6g of sugar

  • 9g Protein
  • 8g fiber
  • 18g of whole grains
  • 10g of sugar


  • 9g Protein
  • 8g fiber
  • 17g of whole grains
  • 13g of sugar


  • 6g Protein
  • 7g fiber
  • 9 grams sugar

 I love these, too! (6g of protein and 6g of sugar)


Wednesday, February 9, 2011

TICA

Came across my video from TICA ... SAIC rocks! (even if this video doesn't - I was just experimenting)


Photo memories from an incredible week with great people in the Windy City ... 

the view from my room

rooftop martinis

cultural center

"the savage landscape"

my lovely Rose

final night's gathering

our leaders

more leaders

the night gets blurry

couldn't resist

she watched over us until the wee hours of the morning

Monday, February 7, 2011

Sam Samore

'Stumbled upon another interesting contemporary artist this morning: Sam Samore. The marriage of photography and cinema attracts me, and Sam's work has some of both. "Long considered one of the pioneers of large-scale conceptual photography in the 1980’s, Samore is well known for his earlier series of photographic work such as Allegories of Beauty (Incomplete) and Situations."

Explore and decide for yourself. Remember that it took you many tries before you found your adult taste in food, and it's the same with contemporary art.

Contemporary Art Daily
... Cinema and sculptural tableau underscore the photographic and filmic works of Sam Samore. Narratives with enigmatic plot linesbheighten the psychological pull of the actors’ performances. Often framed in classical compositions the new work’s saturated color has a fauvist intensity while capturing a painterly effect: Caravaggio’s intense chiaroscuro contrasts combined with Godard’s filmic use of the digital in his later work allows Samore to create rich “analog” contrasts. ...

Journal of Contemporary Art
Jerome Sans: Many writers have projected the discourse of surveillance into your photographs.

Sam Samore: I continue the photographs as one of my projects into the 1990s, but for me these pictures encourage the idiosyncratic, unpredictability of the viewing subject. They open up a space for the imaginary to roam, sans frontières. The large photographs, about the same size as our bodies, have a physical presence, but are the big and empty, like the dark cinema and absorb the projection of our desires, our fears. There is pleasure of the body — so I can linger on eyes, lips, ears, noses in all their infinite variety of sensual, fetishist, fantastic worlds. These photographs display a mixture of the surreal and the real. The small photographs measuring only a few centimeters are lost in the actual space of a wall, attached directly, with no distancing of the frame. I must put my face into it, my nose pressing against the piece of paper. Does it have a smell? Does it have a taste? To be devoured, these delectable crumbs are at the limits of visibility. I see people, but I cannot make out if there is a drama. Perhaps if I stare long enough, something will happen. There is hardly anything there in front of me, but obsessively I keep looking. ...

MoMA
... Playing the role of both actor and director, Samore stages his own death in various ways—strangled with a telephone cord, asphyxiated, overdosed—and examines a macabre psychology in works that are both cinematic and documentary. These black and white pictures evoke both contemporary film noir and a crime scene investigation, and also offer an eerie take on the self-portrait. A sense of absurdist humor and the tragicomic is evident in a number of works in the exhibition. In one picture from the 1973 series, a poster in the background offers an image of a hand holding a flower, and the encouraging words: "Hang onto life for all it's worth." In another, the victim has had the air sucked out of his lungs with a vacuum cleaner. Samore's work suggests a narrative beyond that which is immediately evident. The viewers, questioning what appears before them, are themselves investigators at the scene of a drama. ...

Le Meridien
... Writer and photographer Sam Samore developed an interest in fairy tales when he was small. “My mom and dad told me lots of stories,” Samore says. His work as a photographer and as a writer requires him to mine both conscious and subconscious experience, experiences as Samore puts it, that “might relate to love, or death, or beauty.” Using a technique called “cinemascope,” Samore tells fractured, poetic narratives that often defy and change one’s expectations of a fairy tale.

Thinking of fairy tales as a shared experience, Samore feels that a reader or viewer becomes connected creatively to the narrator. “My interest is a kind of alienation that we experience from each other so that we don’t always say what we really think to each other so we experience the world as something separate from each other,” Samore says. This connection happens on a conceptual level, but it’s a connection that’s reinforced through Samore’s technique. “I use the grain in the pictures as a texture, a kind of layering and abstraction. In this way, you not only see an image but you also feel something,” Samore says ...







Saturday, February 5, 2011

Barn Boot Morning

I had the pleasure of spending the morning outside with my animals while I did a mid-winter cleaning in the shed. In the beginning I let Mari out with me, and she happily trudged through the snow to sniff around all the various animal tracks. Of course the goats are afraid of her and they were out, too, so it was comical to watch the interaction between the prey animals and the very scary predator. The 3 boys run terrified, but not Miss Elly - she turns and chases Mari, and will head-butt her if Mari isn't fast enough. I was in the process of letting ol' Mar into the house and Elly ran right up to the door and almost followed her inside just so she could give her one final bam. Meanwhile the 3 boys are falling all over each other trying to get away from the frightening elderly lab. 'Never a dull moment with those three stooges and their lady friend.

In the summer the shed gets swept out completely everyday, and fresh shavings are sprinkled down. In the winter they need to have a bedding "mattress" to help keep them warm and cozy, so I only remove the bedding once every few weeks. On top of the shavings the rejected hay falls and builds up, providing a soft warm-ish place to sleep (of course I run the heater when it goes much below 20). It has been abnormally cold these past weeks so today's cleaning was a little overdue. Making matters more difficult was that I had to first shovel a wheel barrow path through the heavy crusty snow so I could get to the pile for dumping the old bedding. It really was an excellent work out, but a little annoying at times because the goats follow me around and get in the way. They are so nosey and they have to nibble on everything, rubbing their heads on things, and blocking my path when I'm trying to dump. I can't get mad at them, though, because they are so darn cute and furry. So I just take my time, and I stop for many little breaks. Sal loves to have his face scratched, Elly loves to have her ears rubbed, Jasper loves to have his tummy rubbed, and Vincent is simply in love with me. They are such funny goofballs.

Bun also had all of his bedding removed and replaced with fresh. Although he uses his corner litterbox which I empty every day, the hay gets dusty and matted down, so I pull it all out and fill up his cage with sweet smelling hay. While I am doing this he is hopping around outside in the pen that I set up, happy in the sunshine. He actually makes a little humming noise when he is happy, and this morning he was humming away while kicking around. He also had his nails trimmed so he felt pretty darn handsome.

I had a perfect morning. I can think of no other place on the planet I would rather have been than outside with my animals, enjoying the sunshine while it lasted (more snow is on the way) and taking advantage of my good health and many blessings.
~ my fuzzies, a couple of winters ago ~


Cooool Technology

Friday, February 4, 2011

TGIF

Friday

Friday (pronounced /ˈfraɪdeɪ, ˈfraɪdi/ ( listen)) is the day between Thursday and Saturday, and is the last day of the school or work week in many countries. In countries adopting Monday-first conventions as recommended by the international standard ISO 8601, it is the fifth day of the week. It is the sixth day in countries that adopt aSunday-first convention as in Abrahamic tradition (except in Israel).

In most countries with a five-day work week, Friday is the last workday before the weekend and is, therefore, viewed as a cause for celebration or relief (leading to the phrase "TGIF", for "Thank God It's Friday"). In recent years, in some offices, employees are allowed to wear less formal attire on Fridays, known as Casual Friday or Dress-Down Friday.

In Saudi Arabia and Iran, however, Friday is the last day of the weekend and Saturday is the first workday. In Iran, it is the only weekend day. Moreover, in some countries, Friday is the first day of the weekend, and Sunday is the first workday. In Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates (U.A.E.) and Kuwait, Friday was formerly the last day of the weekend while Saturday was the first workday. However, this was changed in Bahrain and the U.A.E. on 1 September 2006 to Friday as the first day of the weekend and Sunday as the beginning of the workday, with Kuwait following on 1 September 2007.

The name Friday comes from the Old English frīgedæg, meaning the "day of Frige". The same holds for Frīatag in Old High German, Freitag in Modern German and Vrijdag in Dutch.

The expected cognate name in Old Norse would be *friggjar-dagr. However, the name of Friday in Old Norse is frjá-dagrinstead, indicating a loan of the weekday names from Low German. The modern Scandinavian form is Fredag in Swedish,Norwegian and Danish.

The word for Friday in most Romance languages is derived from Latin dies Veneris, "day of Venus" (a translation of GreekAphrodites hemera) such as vendredi in French, venerdì in Italian, viernes in Spanish, divendres in Catalan, vennari inCorsican, and vineri in Romanian. This is also reflected in the p-Celtic Welsh language as dydd Gwener. An exception isPortuguese, also a Romance language, which uses the word sexta-feira, meaning "sixth day of liturgical celebration", derived from the Latin "feria sexta" used in religious texts where it was not allowed to consecrate days to pagan gods.

Most Slavic languages call Friday the "fifth (day)": Belarusian Пятніца, Bulgarian Петък, Czech pátek, Polish Piątek, RussianПятница, Serbian петак, Croatian Petak, Slovene Petek, Slovak piatok, and Ukrainian П'ятниця. The Hungarian word péntek is a Slavic loanword.

In most of the varieties of Arabic, Friday is Jumma-tul-Mubarak (or a derived variation of Jumma), named for Jumma.

In most of the Indian languages, Friday is Shukravar (or a derived variation of Sukravar), named for Shukra, the Sanskrit name of the planet Venus.

In Japanese, 金曜日 (きんようび, kinyoubi) is formed from the words 金星 (きんせい, "kinsei") meaning Venus (lit. Metal + Planet) and 曜日 (ようび, "youbi") meaning day (of the week).

Folklore

In some cultures, Friday is considered unlucky. This is particularly so in maritime circles; perhaps the most enduring sailing superstition is that it is unlucky to begin a voyage on a Friday. In the 19th century Admiral William Henry Smyth, writing in his nautical lexicon The Sailor's Word-Book, described Friday as “ The Dies Infaustus, on which old seamen were desirous of not getting under weigh, as ill-omened. ” (Dies Infaustus means "unlucky day".) This superstition is the root of the well-known urban legend of HMS Friday.

However, this superstition is not universal, notably in Scottish Gaelic culture:"Though Friday has always been held an unlucky day in many Christian countries, still in the Hebrides it is supposed that it is a lucky day for sowing the seed. Good Friday in particular is a favourite day for potato planting—even strict Roman Catholics make a point of planting a bucketful on that day. Probably the idea is that as the Resurrection followed the Crucifixion, and Burial so too in the case of the seed, and after death will come life."

In modern times, Friday the 13th is considered to be especially unlucky, due to the conjunction of Friday with the unlucky number thirteen. Such a Friday may be called a "Black Friday".

In astrology, Friday is connected with the planet Venus. It is also connected with the Astrological signs Libra and Taurus.



(From Wikipedia)

~ mmmmm ~

Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Islamorada

It is a cold and blustery day with a large snowstorm on the horizon, so I decided to dream a bit about our upcoming vacation to the Keys. We will be renting a condo for a week, and enjoying a little well-deserved r and r.

Here is a little info about Islamorada ...

Islamorada Chamber of Commerce Site

Florida Keys Site

Another Site

Wiki Info

TripAdvisor

I can't wait!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!