Where's @weswie

I have a fun game for you to play if you happen to be at the US Open. I played it in March at Indian Wells so this is also an appropriate #tbt (throwback Thursday) post. It's kinda like Where's Waldo but substitute Waldo with @weswie.

So how do you play? Easy, you find @weswie, come on now you could have figured that out on your own! Silly question. Now let's see where I found her on the tennis grounds at Indian Wells. 

I found her at the East side entrance/box office

 Oh look it's @weswie and Nobu at Stadium 2

I caught her trying to get into Stadium 2 before it opened (Roger might be practicing there, she had to try to get in )

In the shadows of the trees.

Peek-a-boo I see you @weswie and lovely new shade structure.

Sitting with the recyclables...who took this picture, what an awful angle. 

With zombie Rafa, seriously though WTF?!

Sitting outside the main stadium in the comfy chairs.

Going to her seat.

Inside the main stadium almost all alone.

Waving to friends across the court.

Taking pictures, how she can most often be found.

 And if Roger should lose please spare a kind thought for a sad @weswie you may see. Buy her a drink or an italian ice to help soothe her pain.

Water Conservation

I've recently become aware that more people are concerned about the drought than I thought so I figured why not visit some easy water conservation techniques pretty much everyone can do. 

Let's start with the easiest, turning off running water. How much simpler than that can get it get, right. Now let's talk about running water and when you should be turning it off. In the bathroom, while you brush your teeth and even soap up your hands or face. In the kitchen, when rinsing fruit and veggies, they don't need running water, a small bowl of water will clean them just as well. If you feel you need running water to do these things do them over a bowl and collect that water to be used elsewhere. 

Using this collected water is also a lot easier than you think. My bathroom sink often has a small bowl in it and I wash my hands into it and use this water to water a potted tree on my patio. If you don't have any plants to water but need a way to use dirty water, flush your toilet with it. This is a lot simpler than you think, you don't need to open up the tank and do anything complicated, just pour water into the bowl. You might have to figure out the best amount of water to use for your toilet, a small bowl that fits in my bathroom sink isn't quite enough to get a good flush in my bowl so I use a bigger container I add to and can then use to flush. While we are on the subject of toilets, there is the old if it's yellow let it mellow, if it is brown flush it down. If you think this is gross please take a minute to remember that we purposefully take perfectly clean water and piss and shit in it, that's gross and wasteful, letting a little bit of watered down pee sit for a bit isn't that gross, toilets have lids and they are in a room that is dedicated to them. 

Other simple way to save a lot of water is catching your shower warm up water, I don't know about your shower but mine takes a bit to get to a temperature I am willing to stand under. Put a bucket under the faucet or shower head and collect the water while it gets up to the perfect temperature for you to shower in. This water is clean and can be used for pretty much anything you want. You can use it for soaking dishes, bring it to your kitchen sink and pour it in. While you are showering, be quick. I am awful at this one, but I shower once maybe twice a week so I guess if I take a 15 minute shower it isn't as bad as a daily 15 minute shower. Also think about turning the water off while soaping and shampooing, there are shower heads (you should be using a low flow shower head for optimal water saving) out there with shutoff valves on them. I have one that doesn't shut off the water completely but takes it down to a trickle, which can be collected as well, so the temperature of the water doesn't drop when you turn it back on, no one likes a sudden shot of cold water. 

When it comes to washing clothes and dishes, always ALWAYS run full loads in a washing machine, it's just a waste to do otherwise. If you are a homeowner, don't have a real grass lawn, just don't, it's not worth it. If you really want one or you must then water it at night and don't water it too often and find a kind of grass that works best for your area. Make sure your sprinklers aren't watering sidewalks and driveways. If you live in a complex, voice any concerns about the way they water, if you notice a lot of runoff or sprinklers watering sidewalks or driving/parking areas, let management know. Same goes for any shopping or public area you frequent and notice these things, let management companies know about any leaks or water wasting you see from their property, they pay for all this water, they don't want to just waste money. 

In the kitchen, if you are a coffee or tea drinker, only make enough hot water or coffee as you are actually going to drink. If you make a lot of pasta or steam a lot of foods use this water for plants or even in soups or other food you're making, it can add a bit of extra flavor. If you are really serious about trying to reduce you water footprint I suggest you do a little research of your own on how much water goes into the production of your food. Yes you need to eat but do you need to eat that much red meat or that much chocolate (YES, YES I DO!), both have very high water footprints. 

There is one thing I don't think you need to worry about, doing the ice bucket challenge for ALS. If you want to do the challenge but feel guilty about the water, use shower warm up water, it's more than enough to make some ice with and then dump on yourself. Or just DONATE, but that isn't as fun and isn't spreading the word as much because let's be honest seeing someone freak out when they get soaked with ice water is a lot more fun than seeing a picture of a donation receipt and there is no way that is ever going to go viral the way this challenge has. I think the benefit of something like this way out weighs the waste of water and I am pretty sure anyone who has or knows someone who has ALS greatly appreciates the viralness of this phenomenon. (Did I just trick you into reading a post about something when it was really about something else, yes, yes I did)

GoT talk with my brother

We added Starz to our cable in January so we could watch their pirate show Black Sails, I also used it to watch The White Queen on demand. After Black Sails was over we decided we would get rid of Starz and pick up HBO for their new show Silicon Valley, which has a few of our favorite funny people in it (Kumail Nanjiani, Martin Starr, T.J. Miller, and Zach Woods) AND is created by Mike Judge.

Late Friday early Saturday morning I was looking for something to watch and was checking out what was available on HBO on demand and what did I see, Game of Thrones. Did I want to jump into this now? Not particularly but all of it was available on demand so.....why not?! Everyone tells me there are plenty of reasons for not doing it, and they are the same for doing it. That night I watched four episodes. On Sunday I watched the rest of season one. While I was watching the second half of the season I texted with my brother about GoT, I choose my brother because we have similar levels of nerdiness and he is used to my ridiculous questions and way of thinking and he HATES spoilers so I know he wouldn't spoil anything, something I do not trust some of my friends with. Also as you will see he has the best responses to my ridiculous questions and has a few of his own. So here are my thoughts on GoT so far and my conversations with my brother about it.

There will be spoilers so DO NOT READ if you don't want SPOILERS.

Speaking of spoilers, I don't know the fate of many characters, been pretty spoiler free but of course I knew the king wasn't going to be around beyond this season and the fate that awaited Ned Stark. I also know Robb Stark dies at some point, season 3 I think, because I listened to Richard Madden on the Nerdist podcast and they mentioned Robb being dead, no specific spoilers with that death. And I knew Drogo died, or something happened because Momoa was no longer on the show, which honestly was one reason I didn't pick up watching after the first season because I like Jason Momoa and why would I watch a show he was no longer part of?! These are the important reasons to decide on watching something. I also already knew about the Lannister twins and Catelyn's sister and her son so I didn't have a reaction to that previous known information.

A few thoughts on the first episode: Pressing play and seeing it start with the creepy white walkers would have been nice to know, I probably wouldn't have started watching at midnight by myself in the dark. I don't like scary movies, I am not too affected by them now but as a kid it was pretty bad. That being said I do still have a problem with dark creepy things in a creepy dark forest, don't know why but I always have, I am afraid of the dark and dark evil things in the dark scares me still to this day. Luckily that scene wasn't too elaborate or long. Keep away the dark creepy evil forest when I'm watching late at night.

Since I stayed up until 4 am watching the first four episodes I was not texting with my brother about those episodes as specifically as I did the later six but we did cover some of that stuff in my texts. My text are in blue with the speech bubble coming from the right side and his are pink with the speech bubble coming from the left side.

Seriously, if during season one someone would have told me Mark Addy was the king I would have given a lot more thought to watching it. As I've heard recently GoT didn't really take off to where it is today until late in the second early in the third season so I guess that's why no one told me about him. If you are a fan of Mark Addy like I am and like fantasy watch the BBC's current show, Atlantis, he plays Hercules, yes THAT Hercules, no he did not lose a lot of weight for the role.

I have never seen anything Terminator related, I do know Sarah Connor is a characters name in that 'verse but I didn't know what connection there was to the GoT 'verse or if he meant the actor to another actor IRL, psh who talks about real life people.

Getting the Chunk reference is one of the reasons I like talking about stuff like this with my brother. 

Yes, yes we did go from Goonies to how a molten gold death would not be bloody to Doctor Who characters. This is EXACTLY why I choose to talk about this with my brother. 

Please excuse the nerding out about Emma Frost writing The White Queen, it's fucking ridiculous! RIDICULOUS!! 

These people get it: A real life Emma Frost writes The White Queen

Oh also, The White Queen isn't about Elizabeth 1 it's about Elizabeth Woodville, so many Elizabeths so little remembering of who is who.

More nerdiness, The Tick reference and WoW playing.

Prepared because of Whedon and Moffat and most importantly, 

YESTERDAY WAS REX MANNING DAY!!!!

So those are pretty much my thoughts on GoT. I clearly think about the important things. 

White carrots

Parsnips look like white carrots.

Calling something a white carrot is HILARIOUS!

This obviously is a story that needs to be told.

Let's rewind about 12 years, Rich and are on a date at one of my favorite Chinese restaurants. While enjoying our food he says how much he likes the food especially all the white carrots in the beef with broccoli (he might have said how there weren't a lot of white carrots in his beef with broccoli, it was a long time ago and small details have escaped me, he commented somehow about the amount of white carrots).
Of course I respond with, "Excuse me what?!"
"The white carrots." I continue to stare at him blankly as he picks up one of the said white carrots to show me.
This begins my almost unstoppable laughter and I attempt to explain that those aren't white carrots they are bamboo shoots. We do not agree on this point, they ARE white carrots, his mom told him so.
After dinner we go back to his place and he asks him mom about white carrots, she says, "Oh yeah, I just told you they were white carrots when you were a kid so you would eat them. I guess I never told you the truth."
Again I start laughing A LOT.

That is the story of how I told my adorable 19 year old boyfriend that he has not been eating white carrots but bamboo shoots.

Now let's go back to this past Saturday (it might have been Sunday, I am bad with details even when they are less than a week old). We are at the grocery store and I need a parsnip for a recipe I'll be making later in the week. We are at the veggies and ask him to get broccoli and a large parsnip for me while I go get mushrooms and garlic. He says he doesn't know what a parsnip is, I respond with it looks like a white carrot and naturally start laughing a lot. He gives me a bit of a death glare and walks away as the people around us are looking at me because I am laughing in a very amused and slightly evil way. I guess most people don't find things to laugh about when shopping for veggies.

And that is the story of white carrots and why it is funny to us. So funny in fact when I told this story to my mom she took a sip of her water right when I got to the part that Rich didn't know what a parsnip was and she knew exactly where this was going and the water almost came out her nose. She had to rush over to the sink and spit her water out.

You do not offend me by being different than me

Listening to CM Punk on WTF with Marc Maron today and he said something along the lines that being straight edge people often take the offensive and assume that because they choose to do the opposite of him he must be offended by them and that they think he thinks he is better than them. Neither of these are true of course because he is not offended by someone being different than he chooses to be. Sure that happens, a lot of people are actually offended by someone being different than them but to assume that is the default way someone will react well I think that may reflect on the true nature of that person making the assumption.

I am tattooed and pierced. I am not offended if you are neither.

I have long hair I grew all by myself. I am not offended if you choose to cut your hair short.

I am not a fan of football. I am not offended if you are.

I am not religious. I am not offended if you are.

I am vegan. You do not offend me if you are not. Eat the food you want to eat, wear the clothing materials you want to wear.

I do not know why being vegan people assume I will be offended by opposite choices. I live my life, you live your life. Why would your personal choices affect me directly? I am not in your face with my veganism because I know it is my choice and not everyone can or wants to make that choice and they shouldn't have to.

I am not offended by someone being different than me, are you?

It's not mine I swear

As I was reading in the bedroom I could hear Rich flipping between Chopped and Cops on the tv in the living room. A cop was asking a guy he pulled over for rolling through a stop sign why his car smells like pot and why he was acting really nervous. He told the guy he should tell him now if there was anything he was hiding because a dope dog was on the way and it would find anything the guy was trying to hide. The guy said he had no idea why his car smelled of pot and wasn't hiding anything. Of course the dog gets there and finds a large bag of pot. They guy says it wasn't his, a friend must have left it in his car.

This reminds me of the time my car smelled like pot and the reason sounds like the WORST EXCUSE EVER, except it is 100% true. It should surprise no one that on occasion I pick up litter and throw it away. One day walking out of the grocery store I see an empty plastic sandwich bag and pick it up and put it in the center cup holder of my car. As I pull out of the parking lot I smell pot, as I drive down the street a bit I realize it's coming from inside my car, from the bag I picked up. Rich was NOT amused by this, I am no longer aloud to pick up trash and hold on to it.

"No officer I am not high. See what happened was I picked up this empty bag in a parking lot to throw away when I get home and I guess at some point it was used for holding pot."

Yup sounds legit. I am really glad I live less than a 5 minute drive from the store.

It's alive

I couldn't let a whole year past without a blog post....actually I could have, I just found something I felt was too wordy for social media.

In honor of throwback Thursday I managed to give myself flashbacks, maybe I should save this for flashback Friday.

I tripped over an extension cord in my apartment today, an extension cord that goes from the outlet behind the tv across the floor to under the coffee table. I use it to plug in my chargers while I watch tv so I can keep my devices within reach. It has been here for months upon months, if not years. It gets tripped on occasionally, never anything major, no one goes down. I didn't even go down this time, I stayed upright so I am calling this a win, but I did draw blood, a minor amount of blood but it's there.

I know toe/foot pictures aren't appreciated by many but I am in serious awe of my ability to injure myself in this way and it has a tie in to a GREAT childhood story.

This takes me back to when I was 10 at the oldest, I know I was still in elementary school. My brother and I used to watch Swiss Family Robinson A LOT. Whatever you think a lot means, go ahead and add to that, not as much as we used to watch Bedknobs and Broomsticks though, we used to rent that tape from Blockbuster CONSTANTLY! That movie has no connection to this story. What do kids who watch Swiss Family Robinson do in their back yard? They set up traps of course. We never set up a good pit trap because the yard had rock hard dirt, it might have actually been rock and not dirt. There were small "pit" traps but nothing beyond half a foot at the deepest I'd guess. What could we do well? TRIP WIRES!! We tied a rope, a thick, strong, well used rope, not string, legitimate rope, near the base of an orange tree on one end and across the sidewalk to the fence on the other end. I'd guess it was a few inches off the ground, we wanted to make sure intruders didn't see it and tripped over it. That was the plan anyway.

What really happened you ask. Well we had a big strong lovable yet easily excitable dalmatian at the time. My brother is 3 and a half years younger than me and literally my little brother at this time, probably close to the last time he was my "little" brother. Brother wanted out of the backyard but overly excitable dog that outweighed him was making this difficult so big sister to the rescue. I go out the side gate run all the way around the front of the house down the other side of the yard to the back with the plan to get the dogs attention so brother could slip out of the backyard without the dog pestering him and making it difficult.

I got the dogs attention but not the way I planned. The dog came running over to me when I started wailing, at least I assume I started wailing, I don't actually remember this happening but I do know trip wires work on people running full out that have no idea, or recollection, that they are there. I do remember having to wear the same sandals for quite a while because I had a fairly thick, and painful, rope burn across the top of each foot and couldn't put any other shoes on. I told you we used legitimate rope not string and I hit this thing at full speed, full speed of a ten year old. I don't remember having any other injuries but I imagine I had scuffed up knees, hands, and perhaps elbows because I was running and subsequently fell on concrete.

So here I sit 24 years later reminded of that incident. Apparently I still can't remember things I string across the ground and if tripping over that rope when I was ten years old and having a very memorable injury from it didn't make me learn I guess I never will.

Hug in a mug

Something about the spiciness of warm chai comforts me. I frequently buy myself chai lattes, usually from Starbucks. I also make myself chai lattes at home.

In mid October I bought a few pie pumpkins and made my own pumpkin puree. I made a loaf of pumpkin bread, a pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving dessert, and the other day I made some pumpkin spice syrup from a recipe over at A Teaspoon and A Pinch.

Now I am armed to make myself a real hug in a mug.

Steep two bags of chai in a mug, leave room for milk. 

Add in a few tablespoons of pumpkin spice syrup.

Mix in some warm milk of choice, I used canned coconut milk for extra creaminess.

Enjoy a warm and comforting mug of tea. 

Craft, crafty, crating

I haven't been blogging with much, uh, frequency but I haven't stopped doing blog worthy crafty things. Here are some pictures of things I have made/done.

My fairly successful attempt at ring making. I should probably buy myself some jewelry making pliers because using my old rusty needle nose pliers resulted in my scraping off the black on the wire and revealing the copper color, which doesn't look awful but isn't what I was going for. I also need a ring thing.....you know the cone thing that you can wrap the wire around to get the right size, because I used chapstick tubes for this and the sizing is pretty awful. 

Simple chain earrings. Wore these all day when my mom got married but they are slightly heavy, after this day I took off 2 of the chains (went from 5 strands to 3) and they look just as good and pull less on my ears.  

I love Halloween time and the fabrics that show up. Bought myself this lovely black and silver spider print and made myself a new small purse. Lined it with a lovely purple and gold print and put a decorative skull button on the front. All it took for this bag was 2 fat quarters and it was rather simple to sew together. 

Bag pattern/instructions here. 

 Another simple funky looking necklace. I added a few more safety pins to the lowest chain (had to buy more). Saw this over at Trinkets in Bloom, she has some great things on her blog.

Don't think I posted this already but I may have. This was a lunch bag I made for my mom for her birthday I think. She had asked me to make her one. 

With the extra material I made a headband. 

Skirts! Making skirts is fun and pretty easy!  

I wore the red one to my moms wedding and the day walking around Balboa Park.

This one is sheer and I used an old tshirt of my husbands as a lining. 

(Me and my mom!)

Snake skin print is channeling my inner 80's personality!

From skirt making I moved onto dress making. This one took a few days and I love the way it turned out. These are some pretty crappy pictures of it, the flow and pattern are much nicer in person. 

 A few bracelets I made. 

 I took an old pair of heels that had stretched  a bit and I couldn't really wear anymore, painted the heels silver and added sliver laces too. 

Look at what I finally did, chalkboard paint and storage jars! My cabinet is still full of re-purposed jars but now they have chalkboard paint labels! Woohoo! It only took me years to accomplish this!

That's pretty much how I have been occupying my time this year. I am currently working on ideas for Halloween or Christmas cards, thinking I might skip Halloween cards this year but not sure. I enjoy Halloween much more than Christmas but I think people want/expect Christmas cards from me more than Halloween. Don't have any great ideas for either at this point. Need some inspiration. 

Anyone have any cool/fun things they have done or are planning on doing?

Nail Polish

I think I am done with nail polish again.
When I was young I was an avid nail polish fan like a lot of girls are. I ALWAYS had my nails painted all sorts of colors. They were constantly painted from probably a pre teen age until I was 19. At 19 I had a job at a place that only allowed natural colors, there was no point for me to paint my nails a natural color. I did still paint them on occasion and then forget to take it off, mostly because I ended up sleeping not at home and not having nail polish remover. I would get written up and so I just stopped painting them. Then I got a job with animals and used my hands A LOT and if I did wear nail polish it just got worn off very quickly. At this point I pretty much gave up painting them regularly. On occasion I would but then I got all concerned about the chemicals in nail polish and completely stopped for quite a few years. In the last few years I found some less chemically nail polish and now I am back to using whatever. I like doing designs and things and using funky colors, like always. I took off my bright blue nail polish a few days ago and my nails are stained bluish, only in the center because the bottoms and tips had worn off, I still have that job with animals. They are also quite yellow from being stained from other dark colors I have used.

I think I am going to stop with the nail polish for a while, at least stop with it constantly and only put it on for special occasions, or holidays, I am thinking candy corn looking nails for Halloween and I will probably do the Christmas lights polish again in December. Also nail polish is expensive and I can't find cheap (even overly chemical laden) crazy colors as easy as I used to and me and online shopping is a bad idea so I don't like to go there. I will miss having painted nails for sure but I have always been bad with up keep and am often walking around with barely painted nails, this will probably be a good look for me anyway. Now to resist, I think I will go put my box of nail polish in the back corner under the sink in the bathroom now.

Standards

Saw this post Workplace Image Standards about should men be held to the same image standards as women?

I don't work in a standard industry, I work by myself, I control pretty much everything with my work. So are you telling me men are not held to the same standards? The posts slant is on getting a job and on makeup making you look your best, personally I do not see makeup as a necessity in that, for men or women. Do places, conventional non model type jobs, actually require women to wear makeup? That is what I am reading into this post because I have no idea how those jobs work. If I had one of these jobs I would assume I would have to dress appropriately and that would be laid out for me. Would I be required to wear makeup? I don't have one of these types of jobs for very very many reasons and I am wondering if I have one more reason to never look into one.

I just don't know how things like this, if true, are the norm. It just seems so wrong to me. Why do people go along with these things? Yes I get that they need the job, money, etc etc but people stop caving! Stand up for yourself! I'm not saying do anything dramatic but if everyone keeps going along with every little thing we'll become nothing more than drones doing what we are told. Yes I am being dramatic and WAY over doing it but this is how I feel. I've always been like this but recently things have really really really been bothering me. I cannot wrap my head around it all.

Don't waste your lotion.

No one likes knowingly waste things but what are you unknowingly wasting or even knowingly wasting? You've heard it before, there is still lotion left in the container when you have squeezed/pumped all you can out. Do you cut open your containers to get that last little bit out? Most likely no, even though you've probably know there is more in there. Just how much is left in there? Is it really worth the trouble? There is probably more than you think in there and depending on the kind of container your lotion (or whatever really) is in it's pretty easy. Yes you can't just squeeze the tube or push the pump but are you always so busy and need this stuff instantly that you can't grab a pair of scissors or blade of some sort and do a little cutting and scooping? If you run out of your lotion during the week or a time when you are busy like needing to use it right after your morning shower quickly before work (I'm told this showering thing is daily and a morning routine even for some, I have no experience with this though) then just set it aside and grab a new one. When you have time cut into your old one and use it or if you don't have a need for it when you have the time put it into a large mouth container for later use. Here are some visuals from my latest lotion tube opening. I was quite shocked at how much was left in, enough for my whole body minus my back.

I probably could have squeezed out a tad bit more but then it would get all crumpled and since this is a metal tube the crevices are harder to get the lotion out of so I cut into it at this point.

I unfolded the empty part and used a pair of scissors to cut all the way across. Opened up the bottom part that would have lotion left in it and carefully reached in and took lotion out with a finger and put it on my leg for later use (so I could take a photo and show you how much I got out).

At this point I got a q-tip and used it to get the smaller quantities in all the nook and crannies. 

I even opened up top portion and found enough in there to use on one arm.

So how much does this actually get you? As I said above, enough for my whole body minus my back and I was suffering from quite dry skin this day and this is a thick and very rich moisturizer that doesn't go a long way like a thinner one might. 

This is what I got out. (please ignore my insanely pale leg).

So quit being lazy and open up those empties and really get your moneys worth. I have heard people say that companies know consumers can't get every last drop out so you aren't actually wasting money. 1 I do not believe that and will not even if I hear it from the CEO, it's is always about the money. 2 If that is true guess what FREE LOTION!!! 3 Again even if that is true why toss out perfectly good product? Really why? What good reason could there be for tossing it out?