When I moved up to Oregon for grad school a few years ago, I decided to leave my car behind with my parents. I can't remember the justification for it - maybe to save money on gas? - but I do remember that I was excited to try public transportation and get my own bike to ride around town. This was a big time in my life; I was trying all kinds of new things like grad school, living in Oregon, not having anyone I knew within 400 miles of me... that sort of thing. So I added "bike hippie" onto that list in case it didn't seem overwhelming enough. And it was ultimately a good choice - I avoided the usual weight gain that comes with big life transitions, I got to know my new adopted town on a street level, and I gained a wonderful sense of freedom. When things did get to feel like too much pressure or too crazy, I would go for a quick little ride around town, maybe explore places I hadn't been before and just relax.
There are a couple of ways I am like an elf - not the archery or magical spells kind, I mean elf as in little guy in pointy shoes works in the North Pole variety. I like to do things that make kids happy, and I love to make toys (I'm also adorably short at 5'0", tiny, just like a real elf)! My favorite toys to make are the kind I can dig through my crafts and recycling drawers to find the materials for, and the kind that teach something amazing in a simple way. I'm slowly but steadily building up my personal collection of homemade science toys that demonstrate all sorts of things like molecular polarity, cyclone formations, air pressure... the list goes on! About a year ago, I made up one of my first ever science toys, the Cartesian Devil. This is a nifty little thing that demonstrates Archimedes' Principle about how pressure relates to the buoyancy of an object. It's also super simple to whip up at home with 4 common materials. I had to make myself another one after my original one made its permanent home at the museum.
Maybe you've gotten into some of the recent awesome Superhero franchise movies like The Avengers and the Batman series. Maybe you can't possibly wait one more moment for new season of The Walking Dead or the next video game episode release (I feel you, brother). Or maybe you're a hip mom or dad who wants to fit some visual and language literacy in to your kid's everyday and in a cool way (which I recommend as an educator, BTW). Maybe your reasons are something else entirely, but the basic thing is you want to see what the fuss is about comics and you want a way to get into comics without feeling weird about it. Unfortunately, comics, like video games, suffers a sometimes characterization of being exclusive cultures; if you don't know about the really obscure stuff and use the special jargon, you're not cool enough to hang out at the shops and try new things. That's baloney. I honestly don't know a single comic nerd soul who would try to alienate anyone who was interested in getting into comics for the first time. And as a side note - if you are also interested in getting into video games for the first time, communities like streamers on TwitchTV are a good resource to turn to (Gamersnorthwest are a bunch of high quality chaps always ready to talk games with everyone).
Like I tell my art students, always be willing to try a little something new. If you're not big into comic books and you think you might want to try giving them a shot, there are some simple ways to get in and not get overwhelmed. Along with my How to Get Started Reading Comics post, I want to put some basic vocab terms out there to help you navigate the shop shelves and know just what people are talking about. Be sure to also check out Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics for some background and tips on how to read comics and why they are so special to some people.
While I was off exploring Southern California with the youth group, I hunkered down during the 18+ hour bus rides with my crochet hook and a couple of skeins of some soft bamboo mix yarns. I had it in mind to make a prayer shawl to send to my grandmother. See, the trip was centered on a Catholic youth retreat in San Diego, and I was going as a chaperone. This whole past year and a half has been pretty Catholic for me: I finished RCIA and took my first Communion and had my Confirmation last Easter, I became an art teacher at a local Catholic school, AND I was one of my own students' sponsor for her Confirmation this year. Then there was this trip with the youth group last week for a huge retreat called Steubenville. It was really cool, and the whole time I kept going over my Catholic journey in the back of my mind. My grandmother is inseparable in my mind from my religion. Well, my whole family is part of my religion. But my grandmother is most closely linked with my conversion in my adolescence because of her great and gentle influence.
These days, my eating choices have been pretty good and I'm proud of how much whole and fresh foods I've been working into my everyday meals. Almost every single meal I've had in the past couple of weeks have been homemade (I made an acceptable exception for a veggie burger and fries the other night before the midnight premier of The Dark Knight Rises). But with the big road trip coming up, I'm going to have to be even more diligent to keep up my healthy eating habits.
It is definitely summer up here in the Pacific Northwest! Today is supposed to reach the 90's, which is downright shocking when you consider we were trudging through the 50's just a couple of weeks ago. I'm not complaining, of course; as a native Californian, sometimes the rainy Oregon winters can seem like they go on forever and I sure do miss the sun those days. But now it's here, and it's HOT! So, naturally I have stocked up on cold beers, cold pickles, and cold popsicles ;D I've also been looking around for some homemade treats to keep cool. When I was little, we had a popsicle making set and my parents used to fill them with Gatorade for us (that's pretty much the only way I like my Gatorade). Out of an urge of nostalgia, I got some funky popsicle molds from Bed Bath and Beyond the other day, and I set out to find some yummy cold treats to make (Gatorade pops are so 1990's, psh). I found a really simple fudgesicle recipe on Pinterest that uses Nutella and I was like YES (because what every dieter needs is a jar of Nutella in her house). The original recipe is from 52 Kitchen Adventures, which has lots of really great om noms. I adapted the recipe a little bit: I don't really like milk and I never have it on hand, so I substituted almond milk, which is my favorite non-dairy alternative. I added come cut up strawberries because I noticed I had some that were pretty ripe, and then I could make the pops kind of like chocolate-dipped berries. Also, I used Jiff Chocolate spread instead of Nutella because it was 70¢ cheaper and I'm cheap, and chocolate spread is chocolate spread as much as I can tell.