Category Archives: Pictures

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Photoshop Contest

A picture of a bathroom was circulating around the dreaded email circuit (you know the circuit, where friends you hardly talk to still insist on forwarding you jokes). The bathroom claimed to have a painted floor where it looks like sky with a man falling. Thanks to Snopes, the Urban Legend Website, this was proved obviously fake. But the cool thing is, it was part of a Photoshop contest where everyone was supposed to take the picture of the bathroom and make it look different, just using photoshop. Check it out. Kind of cool

The Contest

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Waxing Nostalgic

I was playing around with Picasa as Kris recommended because my pictures were huge when I sent them to Flickr. Then because they used up 48% of my allotment I retracted them without realized the allotment was referring to bandwidth, not space. So I removed the pics without realizing that putting them back there was going to take more bandwidth. I’m an idiot. I told Kris and he tried not to laugh. His exact instant message response was “Jesus.” I concurred.

So, back to my point. He recommended I get better acquainted with Picasa (which I had installed on my laptop months ago and never done much with). When I browsed through my pics to see if there was anything I felt like shrinking, I found my trip to Hawaii with my family. Strange. The trip was sort of a disaster. Family fights, hard rain, lots of visits to the military base which caused more fights. But let’s get something straight here; I was not one of the people fighting. I just drank my beer, or my strawberry volcano, or my mailbu bay breeze and read my book.

My point is that I rather enjoyed the trip since I blocked out the inane fights and was pleasantly surprised that the island which initially I had no desire to ever visit turned out to be breathtaking. Not to mention that I love crazy weather. I get sick of Seattle drizzle and yearn for sudden drowning rain storms.

So I stumbled upon this picture and got all choked up. It was a miserable day. One sister had already left for the mainland. We had eaten McDonald’s for lunch (ick)! But I felt like it was old days when my parents would take us to some historical site and my dad would tell me stories about the past and paint a vivid picture of what happened. He really should have been a history teacher. I would have fared much better in school.

The other thing this picture reminded me of was a student of mine with the last name Gaylard. She always referred to herself as “HappyFat” instead. I liked that. And looking at my dad and me in this picture the first thing that popped in my head was HappyFat. And I giggled.

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Julia Child’s got nothing on me…now that she’s dead

Lately I’ve been cooking at home a lot. My sister loves this because when she gets home from work around 8pm, I have dinner waiting for her. First night, I made Lemon Chicken Linguini with a Tomato Basil mixture tossed in. Second night, I made a New York Roast Beef with sides of rice and broccoli that I cooked in a parsley/garlic/shallot butter. Yummy.

Something you have to know about me is that without a recipe I really don’t know much about spices, portions, and timing. I have been watching Jay cook for the last six months and have been picking up a lot of great tips. First thing I learned is that I don’t know how to cut vegetables in an efficient way. Second thing is that I should become better acquainted with cumin, tamaric, and sage. Three spices I had never touched before. (Sidenote: Being around Jay always made me giddy and I think it’s because he smells like these spices all the time. A true cook.)

Tonight I made Tofu fajitas for Dave. I plan on making this again this weekend, but figured I could always use the practice. I had purchased this fajita powder pack, but when I opened it the smell was horrible. I tossed it in the garbage and headed for the spice rack. I picked up the cumin, opened it, smelled it, and realized it smelled exactly like Mexican food. Ta-da! Anyone who has cooked is probably laughing at me, but remember that this is all new to me.

I decided to have a little fun so I made spanish rice. First I cooked the rice. Then I saut�ed chopped onions and carrots with some olive oil and cumin. Then I tossed in some canned diced tomatoes, salt, and pepper. Finally I tossed the rice in and let it sizzle up a bit. I also added some Tabasco for good measure. The tofu fajita part was amazing as well with onions, red pepper, tomatoes, broccoli, and carrots. Yummy! Dave was impressed.

Here’s my rice. Isn’t it pretty?

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The Abduction of Liz Bear

How many of you have met my Teddy Bear? You may remember her from stories such as “Liz Bear Hangs in London” which was immediately followed by the sequel, “Liz Bear Takes on Those Blasted French.” There was once an expose on her travels through Europe by rail and she’s even been featured in a Midwest local news article while there on research titled “Liz Bear and the Lake Okoboji Monster” (picture to come, waiting for copyright release).

After 28 years of love and travel, Liz Bear has gone through many an Extreme Makeover. It was hard to get her to lose the neck bandage as seen in the previous clippings, but she braved it and had a stuffing implant done with some fur grafting in the form of fabric stickons. Needless to say, when you go cheap (I told her not to get it done in East LA), you get bad results. When she arrived in Olympia for yet another work trip, she confided in me that beyond the vanity, she was merely concerned her insides were trailing behind her and it was not just humiliating, but possibly detrimental to her health.

Seeing as I love her dearly and would do anything for her, I marched right out to the best doctor (JoAnn Fabrics) and bought more fur grafting bits. Since I had left my operating instruments at home I decided to bring her into the clinic with me and borrow the scissors there. She said she would sit tight on my laptop and hang for the day in the Blue Cave where all the other Blue shirts come and go, while I went to work.

And then disaster struck. I returned to the Blue Cave at lunch, excited to begin surgery, and she was gone. Vanished! All that was left was an email with the following picture: Ransom Demands to follow.

Needless to say, I was distraught. Liz Bear’s life was in danger and worse yet, she wasn’t in her healthiest state! I sent out an email to all blue shirts, begging for her return and pleading with the kidnappers to treat her well.

Then bad turned to worse. The kidnapper (a Ms. Talbot) confessed, but only to inform me Liz Bear had been stolen from her! The next day Ms. Talbot received this in an interoffice mail envelope with the note: Who’s Katie going to blame now?

Ms. Talbot sent an email out informing all blue shirts of the terrible news that Liz Bear’s remains had been discovered and that a service would be held in her honor. I was appropriately devastated for a week and was even brought in to identify her remains.

Then on Sunday everyone received the following email from Liz Bear:

Hello all! During my traumatic kidnapping I managed to escape my evil captor by MacGyvering my way out of the Blue Cave. I stacked up a pile of to-do lists and some discarded classroom summaries, then jimmied the door open using nothing but a log-in card. To throw the evil Ms. Talbot off course I interoffice mailed the remains of some other poor sap of a Teddy Bear to her, then seeing an opportunity for much needed R&R, I joined a band of renegade Barbie dolls and headed to Hawaii. Boy can those ladies party.

Don’t worry, Mom, I’ll bring you back some souvenirs and maybe I’ll only get one body part pierced while I’m here. Disregard the “cigarette” in my mouth, it was all for show. I swear it.

And just so you all can quiver with jealousy, here’s a picture of me with my new lady.

Alive and kickin’,
Liz Bear Toft

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It’s my neurosis and I’m keeping it.

First off, Happy Birthday to Debbie and Charity today and Happy Birthday to Ruth yesterday! (thanks Kris, I stole Debbie’s picture from you.)

I shared a drink with Debbie last night and then moved on to share a few with Ruth, but let me just say that eating only a salad during the day, having a few vodka tonics, and getting home at 1am does not make for a fun 7am XGym workout. Argh.

Onward. I discovered something about myself this week. Whenever I use a public restroom, I do the usual checking out of each stall to find the cleanest one WITH toilet paper. Okay, nothing strange there. What I realized though is that from there on out, if I return to the bathroom multiple times that day, I always return to the same stall. First I thought, well maybe I like the idea of minimizing the number of new germs I expose myself to, but we all know that this is not just an unavoidable bathroom conundrum, but most women also know that we run by the rule of “Hover, Cover, or Go Home.”

I have a lot of friends who fret when there aren’t any toilet seat covers (someone’s genius idea of a top notch paper protection plan). I also have a few friends who simply won’t use the restroom in public at all (you know who you are). But I follow the Hover plan. The way I see it, the only exercise I get sometimes is hovering over a toilet seat. It’s my very own version of squats. With this in mind, the only thing I touch is the door to the stall and the toilet paper. I use my foot to flush and I always wash my hands after (Kris likes to shatter my crushes on people by telling me who does and does not wash their hands, so beware).

You’re probably wondering what this gripping tale has to do with my neurosis. Well, I just find it peculiar that I pick a stall or a single person restroom and stick with it. Not just on that day, but any time I return in the future. At work, I always seek out the same restroom and stall. When in a new section of the building, I find a new designated spot. I won’t go so far as to walk all the way back to my original bathroom if I’m far away. I’ll just stake claim on another one in the new area.

When I was at Western I remember someone telling me they wanted to use every stall in every bathroom on campus before graduating and I thought that sounded kind of cool. But on further reflection I realized that I form a special bond with my stalls, as if to say, “Hey, missed ya, thanks for being there for me.” As if we share a special secret, my commode and me.

So here’s to all the toilets who have been there for me.
�The second stall at “The Garage” on Broadway
�The first stall on the first floor of Miller Hall
�The Team 2 handicapped single bathroom on the fourth floor of the South building at Central Group Health
�The second stall in my high school humanities hallway where I once cleaned up all the stray paper by setting it on fire
�The foyer bathroom of my parent’s house when I was in 6th grade where I would soak my short hair in the sink and slick it back so it would feather just right by the end of the day
�The yellow bathroom at home as a kid where I was potty trained.
�And numerous other toilets that I’ve cradled in sickness and in…well, unnecessary drinking induced sickness.

My sister just told me she has chosen a stall at work that nobody uses because the door was damaged a bit from the last earthquake. This makes her feel as if she has her very own clean untainted stall.

So be honest folks, how about the rest of you?

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The Land of Port

KB was kind enough to take me in this weekend, seeing as I was in desperate need to get out of town. In amongst the beer and Charles Shaw, the fire escape cigars, the computer zombie moments, and noon vodka tonics, we managed to make bread.

Or should I say, Kris made bread….

…while I watched like a peeping tom from the dark living room.

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JP is the Shiznit

Happy Birthday Johnny! Here are a few choice pictures that remind me why I love our Johnny so much. Note the creative way he combines the chips with the cheese dip! And we may want to start considering teflon clothing for our dear beer drinking Johnny. 🙂 Happy Birthday, you horizontal stripe lovin’, Old Navy wearin’, ball of crazy!