Artists!
Michelle and I went to a Pinot’s Palette Class! It was fascinating to see how different everyone’s version of the sun turned out. They also post pictures of all their classes, which is pretty cool. Thanks Michelle!
Tag Archives: fun
Cooking Class
This year for Christmas, JMO got us cooking classes. Both of us could stand to learn a thing or two about making our own food. I’ve really enjoyed taking time out in the middle of the week (Wednesday nights) to spend time together and acquire a skill.
JMO coated a steak in peppercorn and I made him show it off before he was allowed to cook it.
My steak was not so pretty, but pretty tasty.
We also stuffed a chicken, roasted it, and then someone else cut it up and it arranged it on this plate.
I made Calvin (our teacher) take a cheesy picture with us. Calvin shared lots of neat tips, all kinds of things that had never occurred to me. I only took pictures the last night, but we made stew, steaks, sauces, homemade spaghetti sauce, and several other things that have slipped my mind. I am pretty much an amazing cook now. We took our classes at the Sur La Table at the City Centre, Calvin was our teacher, and it was overall a great experience that I would highly recommend!
Although this was not on my Life List, or a part of my Happiness To Do list, learning new things is a key element to happiness. I learned something new with the boy I love, there is definite happiness value there!
Visiting Lois
On Saturday, I got to meet the famous Lois. Lois is the corpse flower that bloomed at Houston Museum of Natural Science. The museum is one of my favorite places in Houston, my favorite part of all is the butterfly center. If you come to visit me in Houston, it is the sight I choose to show you. Lois has been a Houston sensation for the past few weeks, her twitter updates have been HILARIOUS. She has been on the news, she has a live webcam (which now shows her fallen state), has had updates on the museum’s blog, Flickr updates, and featured on the blogs of Houstonites (I enjoyed Chookooloonks love affair with Lois). Lois was fascinating, she was a great distraction for the past few weeks and she was truly a public relations sucess for the museum.
After stalking this flower like everyone else in Houston, I was ready to see it. I was apprehensive about going because of the crowds and the intense stench of the flower. JMO works for Schipul, they are a web marketing company, and Kinetic Energy is a client of theirs. Kinetic Energy was volunteering at the museum and JMO said we would help. I have heard JMO speak fondly of the Kinetic folks before and I was excited when he said that we could see this flower without standing in a line. We met up with Tim and he gave us hats and shirts, and then a museum coordinator walked us around and showed us what volunteering entailed.
This is my shirt.
This is my sweet spot. My job was to stand by the waterfall at the end of the butterfly exhibit. At the beginning they give you a chart of all the types of butterflies that are in the exhibit and people deposit these in a bin at the end. My job was to stand there and then take these sheets back up when the bin got full. People liked to take pictures in my spot, so I would take pictures of couples and whole families in front of the waterfall.
In my spot, butterflies land on me. It was clearly an awesome spot.
At the end, my spot moved. I held the door open for people leaving the room Lois was in. All of the setup above provided this great web feed of Lois. The new spot allowed me to hear the presentation about Lois a few times. Visitors handed their cameras off so the presenter could take a picture of the inside of Lois.
It was a wonderful treat to get to see the behind the scenes at the museum. Thank you so much Tim for including us in Kinetic‘s volunteer endeavor!
*I included lots of links in this post, since I inserted them, you should probably click them. Gracias.
Discovery Park
At Emily’s volleyball tournament (now a few weeks back), JMO and I hung out in Discovery park for a bit. We tried laying in the grass and then encountered ants; we moved on to these half circles. We each sit in one and your voice just carries to the other end. On my end, some girls asked if I could step aside so they could take pictures. I don’t think they knew how it worked. I went down to JMO’s side and we listened as they talked about taking photos for their myspace page. Every time I began to giggle, I was told to shhhhh. If they heard me giggle, they would realize we could hear their discussions of their photography sessions.
Point is- go to Discovery Park. It is awesome. If you sit in the half circles, your voice carries.
Life is Sweet.
No words needed. Life is good and I am a lucky duck. I’ll feel this way until Monday morning.