Motherhood by Mother Nature

What a wonderful animal observation moment we had while returning home from yesterdays adventure. We had headed up to the Uinta mountains to check out the wildflowers and take a little hike, and while the wildflowers were beautiful, a mountain rainstorm and reluctant old dog derailed our hiking plan. So we decided to head out the Mirror Lake highway through the Wyoming route and after a bit of exploring the vast and beautiful expansive range lands in the middle of nowhere Utah/Wyoming we looped back to Utah through Chalk Creek Canyon. It was that 'deer time" time of the evening and the light was so pretty so when we spied our first two deer grazing in a farmers field we pulled over to take a look.

As we stopped the car I noticed movement next to the road. "Babies! There were babies" Two fawns were hanging out next to the road unable cross the fence to join mom. As I hung my head out of the car window to snap a few pictures the fawns were clearly nervous about the big green monster (Subaru) who had stopped right near them. They paced along the fence, bobbing their heads, looking for an opening for escape. I could not hear them but I'm sure there was a panicked mule deer language call for help, because mom, who was about a hundred yards away headed back up the hill to help.

"Momma! I'm scared! How do I get under this fence?"

"This way! Follow me! Maybe if we go this way we can find a way!"

As we watched, mom effortlessly (it was almost as if she levitated) leaped over the fence and crossed the road. She paused on the hillside for a moment to wait for her kids. They skittishly crossed the pavement but rather than just running away as we thought they would, the fawns excitedly started suckling! How cool! Were they seeking comfort and security because they were scared or were just hungry since they had been left along the side of the road while mom had dinner in the pasture? Mom kept a wary eye on us as they nursed. Of course I wanted a picture but was sitting on the wrong side of the car so I handed Shin my camera so he he could snap a few shots from the drivers side.

After a moment mom seemed to say "Hey kids, that's enough, we need to get out of here" and lifted her hind leg to swat her baby off of her teat. After dislodging the fawns she again leaped over the fence, and head up the hill, while her poor babies scurried around once again trying to find a way through the fence.

"Enough! Let's gets going"

It was quite interesting to watch, and to anthropomorphize about maternal care in the world of deer.

"What kind of mom just leaves her babies along the side of the road while she goes to dinner?"

"Well, she did come back when she realized they were distressed, she must not be a bad mom."

"What kind of mom kicks her kid in the head while it's eating? That seems a little rough"

"There she goes again, leaving her kids stuck on the road side of the fence... some mom"

"Crap, we're stuck again! Thanks mom"

I guess the ways of mother nature are a little different for deer than humans. Maybe nature is cruel, or perhaps its just a little tough love that leads to survival of the fittest.

For us biologist types getting to observing their behavior was a real treat. Another nice perk of life on road less traveled.

Bead bouquets!!!

No, I never gave it up, but between taking up pottery last year, and finding a social life, my bead making time has been more limited and sporadic. And I swear, every time I want to make beads I don't have any mandrels prepped and I have a hard time rounding up any, straight ones at least, to prep. Time to sing my least favorite song... "Where have all the Mandrels Gone?" For I have no idea where they all disappear to. Some where, out there, I am SURE there is a black hole filled with my mandrels.

Knowing I had a long weekend coming up I decided to round up and prep mandrels. A bunch were in use holding beads I'd made about a week or two ago that had yet to be annealed. Other than that I could find just a few. So Friday I booted out of work a few minutes early so I could make it the welding store by 5pm (or in my case 5:01) to purchase some new rod for mandrels. On Sunday I got out my bolt cutters and am now the proud owner of 40 new, shiny, STRAIGHT mandrels, with plenty of rod to spare for future mandrel shortages.

Now that I'm beyond the mandrel crisis, I can work on my creativity crisis. I'm feeling a little technically rusty, and creatively stymied. A week or so ago I was feeling the same way so I asked a friend for color inspiration... he said "turquoise" and so I did a bunch of turquoise themed beads. I had no one to ask yesterday, so I decided to just to play, and work on things I can't do well, like raised florals. It was not a terribly productive day, but I did get some good practice in.

Later that evening I opened the kiln to start a new game of kiln-jenga with the few sessions worth of beads to be annealed. (Kiln-jenga is arranging all the mandrels full of beads in such a manner that the beads don't touch each other,or anything else.) Imagine my surprise when I found a kiln full of beads... I had completely forgotten about a whole kiln load of beads I'd made a month or so ago.... I think I must be losing my mind... or at least my memory. But now I know where all my mandrels were!!!

Looks like I have some serious bead cleaning to do... and that's a chore I don't look forward to... I guess thats my penalty for being sporadic with my glass melting fun.

But meanwhile....some bead bouquets!!!

The forgotten bouquet... I can't believe I had forgotten all about these!


The recents... happy to finally be annealed


Yesterday's, nothing notable, except my need to practice and get my mojo back!


A single long stemmed hollow... a product of my "turquoise" day. I decided to practice hollows as they are alway hard, especially when I am feeling rusty. After the first one I decided to get tricky and make a bead inside a hollow... it took a few trys, but woot, woot.... I have success!!!

Belated Holiday Greetings!

I meant to post Thanksgiving Day greetings on Thanksgiving, but somehow it didn't happen... probably because I was too busy cooking. I thought it was going to be a low key dinner, just me and my kids and friend of mine. Then the day before the holiday Matt mentioned that 3 of his friends from college decided to road trip up for the weekend. They have friends here and apparently think Salt Lake is a hip place to come party. So of course I told Matt he could invite them to dinner if they had no other plans, which they didn't, so we ended up with a full house for dinner. After pouring the wine and sitting down I looked at Matts friend who was sitting at the end of the table and said "I guess you have to say grace". The look on his face was positively priceless, he thought I was serious and totally didn't know what to do... until Matt, Sarah and I burst out laughting because we all knew I was kidding. Being the non-religious types we skipped grace and had a nice toast to thankfulness instead. I really enjoyed having all the "boys" over for dinner. It nice to get a glimpse into Matt's college life.

I had a great Black Friday as well. Did I go shopping? Hell no!!! A few friends and I headed up to Crystal Hot Springs for an afternoom of soaking and sunning, followed by a nice dinner at Jeremiahs on the way home. That's my idea of a perfect Black Friday!

The Birds and the Bees

One of the weirder things in my life is that I have a profile on freebie on-line dating site. It doesn't say much and is more a joke than a real attempt at dating, but sometimes it's amusing. Last week, out of the blue, I had nine different guys contact me. Not that they say much, usually just something like "Hey, whatcha doing?", which I tend to ignore, although occasionally someone will try to start a real conversation and I will chat back. Nine contacts may be more contacts than I've had in the entire time I've had a profile there. I also got a bunch of those weird scam myspace messages from guys across the country who are sure I am their soulmate (yeah, right, ha ha, no, I'm not a sucker for a scammer!!!!)

I was talking to my daughter about this, pondering what was in the air that suddenly caused all these guys to contact me. She gave me that "aren't you dumb?" look and said "Duhhhh... it's mating season, birds do it, bees do it, guys want to do it."

Ahhhh life lessons from a 17 year old... perhaps she's right?

Watch Me Create!

Today, you'll find me over on Watch Me Create singing about my mandrels.... and bead cleaning, and organization (or lack there of- LOL), and there's even a picture of my cat!

Learn Something New Everyday...

Monday has become bagel day here in the lab. One of our students who left the lab(and science all together) works at Einsteins bagels. If she closes on the Sundays she saves the end of the day bagels and brings them to the lab on Monday.

Whenever she can, she tries to remember to bring me a pumpernickel bagel, as she knows it's one of my favorites. (Must be that German ancestry of mine!) Today when she walked into the lab with her big bag of bagels and announced: "I brought you a pumpernickel!", and a question crossed my mind. What does pumpernickel mean anyway? All these years of enjoying pumpernickel and I had never once wondered where the name came from. Through the wonders of Google the answer was quickly at hand.

I won't recap the entire history and etymology of pumpernickel here, as all that information is available on Wikipedia where I found it, but apparently pumpernickel comes from the High German word "Pumpen" which means flatulent and "Nickel", which was a form of the name Nicholas, and the name Nicholas was once associated with demons. So the meaning of pumpernickel is, well, "devil's fart". Who'd have thought? So how about some "devils fart" for breakfast? My bagel maker friend promises to have a laugh every time some one orders a pumpernickel, er "devil's fart" bagel!

Dancing With Coincidence

I had a little e-chat with an on-line friend last week. I can't remember why exactly, but we were talking about dancing. I told him that I'm lousy dancer, that I swear that I'm rhythmically impaired and that admitedly, I'm kind of dance phobic, but that the one kind of dancing I do really like is square dancing, because someone else tells me what to do. I hope my new friend didn't think it was too weird that I like square dancing. I'll be the first to admit that there's not too much "cool, hip factor" in that. Also, not much opportunity either, I don't think I'd square danced in about 20 years.

Fast forward a few days. One of the guys in the lab invites me to ... guess what?... a square dance! His wife plays the banjo and started playing with a band started by the husband of another biology person. The Bueno Avenue String Band. This guy is a woodworker and has his shop in a warehousey sort of place across town. Once a month he's been clearing a space in the middle of the studio and hosting a dance, square dance caller and all. So, last night was my first ho-down in a long, long long time. It was a great fun! I felt a little silly, because, as often seems to happen in my life, agewise, I was probably a little out of place, but the 20 somethings let me join right in. I feel really lucky that my student friends let me come play with them. I'm looking forward to next months dance. Yee-ha!!!

Dog days

I took my dog Daisy down to the gully for a nice walk and swim last night. I figure I should make the best of the nice weather and the quickly waning evening sunlight. She absolutely loves to swim and play ball in the water. Her problem is that she doesn't really understand playing ball. She stands there, eagle eyed, watching the person tossing the ball, chases and grabs it (this is the part she gets!), but she does not understand the part about bringing it out of the water to me so that it can be thrown again. She often drops the ball in the water, lets the current take it down stream a little ways, then pounces on it again, then eventually she looses interest and the ball floats down stream. This is why I bother to bring never bring a ball to the creek.

So unless we happen to find stray ball (not uncommon actually) Daisy horns in on the other dogs ball games. Last night she joined a golden that had new sort of game. It had a broken tennis ball, that sank, instead of floated. This dog was so fun to watch. Huge, dynamic, splashy leaps in the water to retrieve it's ball. Daisy tried to join, but was beat the ball every time. The other dog was a hoot to watch; she felt around the bottom of the creek with her two front paws, and once she got the ball under control she stuck her head in and grabbed it. In spots the water deep enough that I can't imagine it could see the ball, yet it still found it every time. What a hoot! Poor Daisy tried to play the game, the few times she beat the other dog to the ball you could see her feel around with her paws, and stick her head under, but she never came up with anything. Didn't stop her from trying though, she LOVES the game. We left the creek before the other dog, and every time we'd get about 25 feet away Daisy would look back, see the man tossing the ball, and run back to play some more. As big of a "momma's dog" as she is I was surprised at her choosing a ball game over me!

Happy May Day!

A snowy May Day here in Salt Lake City. I awoke to an inch or so of white fluff covering my yard this morning. Had to actually scrape ice from my windshield and use my wipers on the way to work this morning as it is still snowing like crazy. Big fluffy flakes meandering down from the sky! I did take some pictures of my lovely tulips blanketed in white; hopefully some will be post worthy when I get a chance to down load them. Speaking of tulips, I planted quite a few new ones last fall. Interesting new colors and varieties compared to the rather standard red and yellow onwe that make up most of my current blooms. I've been *patiently* waiting for my new ones to raise their heads, but todays snow has reminded me that I *think* I may have chosen later blooming varieties. More years than not I've awoken on a spring day to find my blooms buried in the snow, hopefully my late bloomers will prove to be good choices.

Computers! Argh!

So what kind of computer geek are you? PC or Mac? I'm a PC geek for a couple of reasons. When I started my current job my lab bought 4 computers, 2 PC's and 2 Mac's. The Macs, which cost more, were always slower and more problematic than the PC's. Those over 10 year old PC's are still chugging along and being used from time to time, while their two Mac contemporaries where retired years ago. So I've just never quite believed it when all the Mac aficionados go on and on about how superior macs are, about how they don't crash and how stable they are.

Lately I've been working on a project that has required me to use a Mac. Today the program (on one of those "perfect" Macs) glitched and gave an error message:

Could not complete the "For Preliminary Report" command because.

Because??? Because why?? Because what???

What a ridiculously silly message!

In all fairness, I imagine the silly message came from the software maker, and not from Mac. But I'm kind of convinced everyone in the computer industry has conspired to make us crazy!

Spring Fever!

Ah... spring is here... or at least for the last two days it has been. After weeks of back to back snowstorms the last three days of sunshine, blue skys and warm (40') weather have seemed positively spring like. The six foot tall icicle no longer adorns my house, and I can even see a one foot wide swatch of green along one side of my driveway. I actually had friends call me up and invite me to a barbeque last night. Of course it wasn't quite balmy enough for outdoor eating, but the nice weather was certainly a great excuse to grill some sausages, sip some wine and enjoy the ducks swimming in their backyard duckpond. The taste of spring will be short lived; another snow storm is scheduled to arrive this afternoon. At least the enormous snow piles beside my driveway have a shrunk a bit so it will be easier for me to find a place to chuck the snow when I shovel tonight, and the skiing should be good again this weekend!

Another good weekend

Gotta love mountain country weather. Yesterday was a lovely, sunny day, but today we where supposed to have another storm. A smart person would have picked Saturday of this weekend for a ski day, as blue skis and fresh powder are hard to beat. Of course I'm not always a smart person, so I made plans to ski with my girlfriend on Sunday even though a storm was suspected. The wind was howling at my house this morning, and I actually considered bagging my ski day. My girlfriend invited me down to her house for homemade waffles for breakfast, and her husband, the ski patroller, checked the weather. It didn't storm in the valley at all Saturday night, but as it turned out that Brighton received 24 inches of fresh snow. So we decided to hit the slopes after all, and it was a glorious, albeit snowy day.

I'm a decent skier, but not a great powder skier, so a good powder day is always a challenge for me. As a working person who just gets to ski weekends, I simply don't get enough powder practice. Today was one of those days where the snow was almost too deep to ski. At one point we headed out on a trail that hadn't been skied much, and I decided to try out some untracked powder. Next thing I know I'm in powder up to my thighs, but the slope wasn't terribly steep, so my skis stopped and were totally mired under the snow. Getting those skis out of the snow and back on the skiable trail was not easy. After that I tried to stick to spots that had been skied on and packed down a little. A little later I missed a turn and found myself in the same predicament. Talk about a work out! One of these days I'd like to become a good powder skier like my ski patroller friend. He makes it look so flippin' easy as he skis throught the trees in search of the powder shots. Of course one nice thing about skiing is that folks of different abilities can have fun together. We can all ride the same chair, but when we reach the top my patroller friend can do the extreme stuff, while his wife and I ski slightly tamer places. I'm faster than she is, so I just stop and wait now and then. We then all meet at the lift to do it again. What a great ski day!

What are friends for?!

Distracting me of course! I had "important" plans last night. I was going to finish cleaning my house, which still isn't quite put back together again after putting away Christmas. I was going to take pictures and list a few beads on ebay. I was going to actually make some beads, something I have not been doing enough of lately. I got home from work and the house was quiet. I picked up the two remaining Christmas decorations, the ones I "missed" while putting the rest away, carried them upstairs and put them away. I peered at the vacuum standing in the middle of bedroom. I left it there as a reminder that by god I was go get the house clean before the 3 day weekend. Then I took a misstep - I walked into my studio and lit the torch. What the heck, I'll make a few beads before I do my cleaning. That is always easy to rationalize because I can view it as a safety issue. I can always vacuum later when I'm tired, but perhaps lighting a torch and playing with molten glass is best done when I'm not exhausted. So what the heck, melt first, clean later.

While working on my second bead the phone rings (don't ask my why there is a phone with caller ID on the shelf above my torch). It's my friend Tori, and her question is "Have you had dinner yet?" She was "throwing together" a Torta Rustica, and invited me to come eat with them. Besides being a wonderful friend she is a great cook, so that was an offer I couldn't refuse. Extinguish the torch, grab a bottle of wine from the rack, and off I went. So much for my best laid plans for the evening.

As I said, Tori is a marvellous cook. Everything she makes tastes a like a gourmet meal. Torta Rustica is sort of pie-like, a pizza type dough draped in to a deep springform pan, layered with a myriad of marvelous meats, cheeses and vegetables, topped with another layer of dough, and baked. My first comment was, "Geez, I can't believe you're making this on Thursday night"as it is not a trivial dish to throw together. Her response was that they "needed to use up the prosciutto before it went bad". At $15/lb I guess that makes sense. These are the kind of friends to have, the ones where a bit of aging deli meat spawns an impromptu dinner party. Friends, great food, good wine and laughter, there's no better way to spend the evening!

Cookies

It's holiday baking season and a forum thread today got my thinking about cookies. Favorite cookies. The rum ball cookies I mentioned a while back are among my favorites, so I think I'll share the recipe.


Rum Balls

12 oz package of semi-sweet chocolate chips
6 Tbsp light corn syrup
1/4 Rum
1 cup sugar
2 1/2 cups Vanilla wafer crumbs (one box of smashed cookies)
2 cups finally chopped walnuts
Confectioners sugar

Melt chocolate. Stir in corn syrup, bourbon, sugar, vanilla wafer crumbs ans walnuts. Using a heaping teaspoon of mixture for each piece, form into balls. Roll in confectioners sugar. Cover and refrigerate several hours. Makes about 72 ball.

This recipe came out of one of my favorite cookbooks: "What's Cooking in Our Kitchens" complied by Elda Elementary PTO.... back in 1981. My mom in law, who worked there, gave me the book, and I have gleaned a number of favorite recipes from it over the years. I like those fundraiser cookbooks... people always submit their family favorites, and they are usually recipes that can be easily prepared my culinary mortals such as myself. This particular recipe was actually for Bourbon Balls but at the holidays I prefer rum, although they are great with either liquor. I bet they'd be tasty with some orange liquor or Kahlua. Maybe I should try something different this year.

Pimping My Friends!

The picture is one of my beads, but today I really need to blog a about the work of a fellow lampworker, Rosemarie Hanus. She's one of my beadmaking friends, one that I met through the internet but then was lucky enough to meet in real life. Her beads are really incredible, her specialty being huge incredible, encased twisty donut beads. She has a great knack for putting together interesting twisty combinations, and she is a stellar encaser (insert jealous moment here!) She is positively the queen of the donut bead! If you think her beads are pretty on your computer, believe me, they are even more stunning in real life.

Rose recently opened an Etsy store, and she has some incredible beads listed. One of her featured beads is my newest favorite Rose donut bead. This bead really appeals to my winter loving side! I sure hope she makes more in this style, it's a winner! If you like bead porn, check out her new store.

Tuesday Tidbits....

Something I heard on NPR while driving to work this morning....
Apparently there is a company out there that sells fake ATM receipts. Receipts for high dollar amount designed to make you look like you have money. I guess men buy these and use them to write their contact info on when they meet women in bars in order to impress them with their "wealth". In case this is the sort of thing you need to get ahead in the world check them out here!
It seems pretty obsurd to me, but then again I don't play the barfly game. So which is more pathetic, the women who are only impressed by a guys money, or the guys who think their only desirable attribute is their wallet? Yikes...

Do I need more hobbys?

A couple of weeks ago I was at a baby shower for a friend who happens to be an excellent potter. She was trying to entice me to come take a class at her studio. I told her that "I had a fear of pottery". She looked at my like I was demented, until I explained that my "fear" is that I would like it too well then want to have my own kiln, and wheel and pottery studio.

Imagine my surprise when that evening I received a call from another good friend. This friend is another artist type, and one of the many things she does is china painting. She wants to know if I'd like to use a big kiln for my glass work. It turns out that one of her elderly china painting friends had to go move to assisted living, and my friend got one of her kilns. She can't use it right now, but thought I might be able to. How could I say no?

To use it for glass I think I would have to spend quite a bit of money on a digital controller, which I can't do right now, so I'm thinking I'll play with clay after all. It's funny how life works sometimes, one minute I'm saying I fear pottery because I'd want my own kiln, a few hours later I have one sitting in my garage. Cosmic huh?

So Saturday I went to the ceramics store and bought two huge bricks of clay. I'm going to pick a night and have a bunch of girlfriends over for a "Pot Party" where we can all get creative with clay. It will be a perpetual party, because after we create we'll have to have a glazing party, and a firing party, and kiln emptying party, right? I think I'll now discard my pottery fear and look forward to clay play!

Firey Reading

Weird coincidence... I try to go to the gym several times a week, where I work out on weight machines and aerobic machined like stationary bikes and stair steppers. I find the the bikes and stairsteppers a bit boring (a good outdoor jog is so much more interesting!) so I like to keep a book in my gym bag to read while working out. A week a go I started the book "The Smoke Jumper", by the same author who wrote ("The Horse Whisperer"). It's sort of weird that I started a book about forest fire fighters, and week later poor California is blazing. The gym has some big screen TV's, the one where I work out is always on CNN. So this week, while I'm reading a book about fire the TV screen is image after image of burning houses and wild lands. It definitely added to my reading imagination.

I feel so horrible for the people affected by the fires, it is a situation that on one hand is hard to imagine, and on the other hand is worrisome as we live near windy canyons and mountains that occasionally catch fire. I've often wondered what would happen if a fire ever got out of control up Parleys Canyon and the winds picked up. Mother nature can sure be scary at times.

Party Time!

It was pretty good weekend for me! Party, Party, Party!!! A house warming party for a friend on Friday night, a baby shower for a good friend on Saturday, and our annual neighborhood block party on Sunday. That means 3 days in a row with yummy food that I DIDN'T HAVE TO COOK! Well, I guess that's not true as I did make food for both Friday's and Sunday's parties. When I asked Jimmy, the host of Friday's party what I should bring he said "Rum, bring something with rum!" ... so I made my favorite rum ball cookies... always a hit at a party. Crab quiche was my pot luck contribution for Sundays affair.

Saturday's party was a treat for me too. My pregnant friend was student who, many years ago, earned her PhD in the lab I work in . The sad part about working with students is that they finish school and move on so. A number of the shower guests were people I worked with years ago and haven't seen in few years, one had even flown in from New York City. It was like "old home week" and I had a delightful time with all my old friends.

Sunday's block party was great too. I know so many people who don't even know their neighbors, or feud with their neighbors, or chose to ignore their neighbors so I feel very blessed to live on a street with many, many really nice people. Should I ever have problem, and need something, day or night, I have many people to whom I could turn. It's is nice to live somewhere I know everyone is watching out for each other. I live in a 1950's era neighborhood which I've heard described as "newlywed and half dead", so the group includes young people with toddler, original homeowners that are in their 90's, and people like me right in the middle. And we all get along fabulously. The teenagers even played with the toddlers. It was a really lovely party...

I feel like such a social butterfly... It was nice to come out of my normally shyish, antisocial cocoon for the weekend!

Road trippin' again...

This time I'm in Moab, Utah. It's Matt's "Parents Weekend" at college and rather than driving the 8 hours to Durango we agreed to meet in Moab for the weekend and tour Arches National Park. I had a nice treat (for a nerd!) on the drive down. I took the afternoon off so I got to drive during the time Science Friday was airing on NPR. I enjoy that show but rarely hear it because I'm at work. They did story today about the TV show Numb3rs, and how it has helped popularize math. I'm hardly a math geek, but part of me kind of wishes I was. As a science major in college I had to take math, but it didn't exactly interest me. Then in grad school we learned about mathematical modeling of plant development; that was the first time I really had appreciation for calculus. Of course by then I'd forgotten my calculus so it was difficult, but interesting. I wish I remembered all that math I was taught all those years ago, at work it would be helpful to understand the mathematical models in scientific papers, and at times I toy with going back to school, but all the things I'd like to study require that long forgotten math. I have an algebra study guide at home, maybe one of these days I will have to indulge my analytical side and relearn my mathematics. I wish it didn't seem so darn hard!

Interestingly, while sitting in the hotel hot tub talking about school, Matt told me that he actually has been enjoying his college algebra class. Maybe math really is the new cool thing!