Vacation, Part III

Boulder, Day 3: "The Late Start", or "Thrift Stores are Alike Everywhere"

Yes, we got a late start on Day 3, because we were awake till 4am the night before, post-Batman. But Day 3 was still glorious, as you will soon see.


First things first -- lunch at Paradise Bakery. There used to be a Paradise in Promenade Mall in Tulsa, but it closed before I moved. Eating their club croissant and chocolate chip cookie made me feel 14 again (in a good way).


And here we have what must be the tastiest soda in the whole world. Izze. Mmmm... And completely guilt-free (every now and then): it's just fruit juices and fizzy water. "Soooo good!"

Then we went to two thrift stores, which I don't have photos of (too busy shopping). We found several fabulous items, including a book I'd been looking for, an unfinished scrap hippie quilt, a four-CD set of the music of Woodstock, and Norman's perfect jacket, which he had been wanting for more than a year. You'll have to wait for Day 4 to see the photo of it, though. So, all in all, a good run. Also, thrift stores in Boulder seem to have an excess of 1.) Sporting gear, 2.) books on health and diet, and 3.) great music.


Then we decided to hit up the Mountain Sun Pub and Brewery for an afternoon snack (and by "snack" I mean potatoes, grease, and beer). Fun place. It was full of people and hoppin'. The beer was okay (I'm not a big fan anyway), but the fries were very tasty.



Steve had to get in on the action. (We left the menu there.)



And then, walking along, what should we happen to see but an ARGYLE BIKE! Seriously, could Boulder get any cooler?


Street breakdancers. These are in addition to the street jugglers, street harpists, street bagpipers, street bongo players, street pianists, and street opera singers. Oh, and the street crazy old drugged out hippie men on bikes affectionately called "Grandpa" by the local unwashed young people.


The view from our bench where we waited for a table at Pasta Jay's.


This was the scene that made us stop to see what was going on. Turns out the yellow chain is the outline of the United States.


And this is the Zipcode Man. He was asking for members of the crowd to tell him their zipcodes. He would then direct them to stand in their state on the map.


Then, once he had about 15 people on the map, he would go back through and tell each person their zipcode and what town they live in (and perhaps a local eatery). He even told the guy from NYC what street he lived on. There was a guy from Alva. I didn't even know where Alva was (Northern OK). So, Zipcode Man = very impressive.

Only one part left! Day 4, coming soon.

Vacation, Part II

So, turns out Day 2 isn't all that interesting. We went to the Celestial Seasonings tea factory, hung around Boulder, and went to the midnight premiere of The Dark Knight. There are no photos of that last one because 1.) I was extremely tired and just didn't care, and 2.) what was there to take photos of, anyway? There were very few people in costume. Maybe I should have taken an action shot of the beach balls people were throwing around.


Mountains on the way from eastern Denver to Boulder



Somehow I managed to leave the two most important high altitude travel necessities at home. I had to buy gum and chapstick at ridiculous hotel gift shop prices.



Dress made out of tea bag wrappers. This is on the way into the Celestial Seasonings factory tour.


Pretty sweet.



The Celestial Seasonings tour is swell. I would suggest making time for it if you ever go to Boulder (or even Denver). You can sample any of the over 100 teas they make for free, you get to see a working production line, and the gift shop is completely awesome (yes, I'm a sucker). However, everyone who goes on the tour must wear the dreaded hairnet. And a lucky few must wear... a beardnet. ("But I don't want t--" "Yes but you must.") You can see why I insisted on a photo of this.



This didn't look like the tastiest thing on the Ben & Jerry's menu (which, by the way, I'd never experienced before, either in one of their shops or from the grocery store), but it was the hippiest, and that's why we were in Boulder, after all. It's called "Visualize Whirled Peace". It had vanilla and caramel ice cream, toffee cookie bits, and -- wait for it -- fudge peace signs. Quite tasty.



It rained briefly that afternoon. At first we didn't mind -- it was light and pleasant and I had my hat. But then it got more insistent. So we ducked into a little alcove, off of which were doors to an upstairs office of some sort and a Tibetan-themed shop. We chose to stand in the alcove watching the rain rather than browse the shop. And I'm okay with that.


Stay tuned for Day 3, which will include various street performers, my new favorite beverage, and the continued adventures of Steve. Get excited, people.

Vacation, Part I

Norman and I went to Colorado a week and a half ago for vacation. I'd never seen Boulder, and since the drive to San Francisco is too long, we compromised with Hippie Town the Lesser. It was fun, and I like Boulder quite a bit.

I've decided to post about our exploits in four parts -- one for each day of our journey.

Day One: "Oklahoma, Kansas, and Colorado", or "Where is Everyone?"


Here's Norman trying to look normal for a picture.


And here's Norman trying to look weird. Hmm...


I'm all for alternate energy and such, but the miles and miles of these newfangled windmills was a little creepy.


Eventually Norman got tired of driving. "Oh no!!! A car!!! What do I do???"


OK, not really. I mostly looked like this for the hour or so I spent driving through western Kansas.


Steve's a great navigator. (For more of Steve's adventures, see here.)


We kept passing this bus, pretty much from OKC to Denver. It was a little ridiculous. We still can't figure out where they were going. Maybe they bought it on eBay?


An iPod and some kombucha -- two things you should never road trip without.


And here we have the worst and most monumental failure of "the Code". That would be the Vacation Code. It told us that we were not allowed to do anything on vacation that we could do at home (this mostly applied to chain stores and restaurants). The Code worked out well, on the whole. We ventured outside our comfort zones. We drank beer at random pubs (more on that later), visited the used bookstore instead of the Barnes and Noble, and ate at places we'd never heard of. And usually, that worked out just fine. But in this case...

The name of this eating establishment is apparently "Restaurant". Very original. It was attached to a gas station. The food consisted of a buffet of half Chinese food, half all-American (read MSG-laden) fare. Yeah. Oh well. Steve didn't seem to mind it.


Oh, right... Another perk of Restaurant -- Copies of "The Outhouse Book" at every table. Not my first choice, personally. But again, Steve was content.

Will Norman and Jessie ever reach Boulder? Will they keep to the Code? Is there anything Steve doesn't like?
Find out next time in Day Two: "Hello, Boulder!", or "One Very Long Day"

I'm back, and I brought produce!

Yes, I've been rather neglecting this blog. My apologies. But you can't be that mad at me, because I have pictures of food! Yay!

(This post is mostly for Jenny, since she gave/sold me the following plants when they were just wee little things.)

Here is my bay tree (yes, as in bay leaves). It is apparently very happy to be outside.


On the right is my basil plant. Dang. It's like a full-blown shrub now. To its left is my strawberry plant. I have two red strawberries! They're tiny, but they are definitely strawberries.


The firstfruits of the strawberry plant. Once again, a dilemma is raised -- am I not supposed to give my firstfruits to God? What's the best way to do that? Putting the strawberry in the offering plate seems a little silly. Giving one or two pieces of produce to one of my ministers also seems odd, considering they both have large families. A new idea that just occurred to me today -- mash the strawberry up and put it in the communion bread when it's my turn to bake it. But then, what if someone at church is highly allergic to strawberries? They would have no reason to suspect that there might be strawberry in the communion bread (after all, it would only be there because I'm crazy). Hmm....

I am an audio-visual genius.

OK, not really. But I am pretty proud of myself. A friend of ours was so kind as to offer us his old TV (and by "old" I actually mean "slightly used"). So, not only did I hook up the TV, VCR, and DVD player by myself (which is really old hat for the obsessively-video-taping daughter of a former broadcast monitor), but I figured out how to hook the husband's laptop up to the TV. Oh yeah.


Behold the splendor.

I looked up how to do it on the internet, found the right cords, bought the right cords (for a mere 11-odd dollars, mind you), and hooked it up. Now we can watch videos from the internet on our TV. All except for stuff from Netflix, because the peons over there decided to block that from working so you'll have to buy a special box from them. Arg. But other than that, it's all good. Yay!

(Also, I will preempt you from pointing out the irony of the giant rabbit ears on top of the nice, new flat screen TV. As Norman said when we first turned it on, "The static is so clear!")

My Super Self, Part II (or III?)

Remember back here where I mentioned that a friend had included me in her crazy Superhero-themed blog serial and showed you a mock-up of what I would look like as SeamsJess, my superpowered alterego? Well, she's written more.

It's really long, but you would be remiss if you passed up the witty, sexually-charged repartee between SeamsJess and the Economist of Evil. Yep.

Thank You cards

I made these thank you notes for a friend's bridal shower.

I'm rather proud of the design, mostly because they turned out better than I thought they would. The flowers are from an old calendar, and the "Thank You" is stamped onto vellum left over from my own wedding two years ago. :-)

What do we think? Should I make more for selling?

I'm on another blog!

Quick shout-out to LilBrigid of Grey Eye Designs -- she has a great list of Mother's Day gift suggestions on her blog, featuring yours truly and a slew of other great Oklahoma Etsy sellers! Thanks, Brigid!

Quick Update...

OK, things have been busy around here, so means a lack of blogging. But here's a quick update on some projects I've worked on lately that I'm pretty proud of.

House cane:

My friend has been using a cane for the past... quite a while, and it looks like she will continue to use a cane for a while longer. Well, seeing as she also watches House and is completely awesome, we decided she needed flames on her cane. So I pulled out the fingernail polish and went to work. I think I did a pretty good job, considering I'm not really an artist at all.


Birthday guestbook/journal:

This is the book journal I made to be used as a guestbook at my grandma's 80th birthday party last weekend. People didn't use up very many pages, so I'm hoping someone gathers a bunch of the pictures that people took at the party and pastes them in there.


Also, craft show this weekend -- well, as I said before, it's actually a car show. But it'll be great fun. I mean, the Army's bringing a rock climbing wall. How can you say no to that?

Andrews Park in Norman. North of the public library. This Saturday. 10am-5pm. Be there.

Local Craft Fair Smashing Success

This is what the headline in the Norman Transcript would have said... if a reporter from the Transcript had come out to see us. Oh well.


Here I am at my booth, lookin' hip and crafty thanks to my new glasses. (Those are RaggedyPageant's dolls on the wall to the right.)


Claudia, lookin' sweet


JD also has a photo of me with a camera in front of my face. Fun times!


Katie showed up to be supportive and to model my Record Bowls/Hats.

A good time was had by all. There were about 12 Etsy sellers present. We gave out nearly 100 Etsy goodie bags. We met some other Etsy sellers who didn't know about the OK Street Team, and some other awesome people who didn't know about Etsy, but who certainly do now!

We're already looking forward to our next fair -- the 89er Day Car Show at Andrews Park in Norman. Don't let the name fool you -- besides cars there will be crafts, food, music, and games! At least 6 Oklahoma Etsy sellers will be there hawking their wares. More info to come...