favorite posts of 2011

Stewed Chicken, Rice and Beans.   Yum, you should make this.

Petting a jaguar.  Best birthday present ever.

Goats are hysterical.  I still laugh every time I see this picture.

I survived 3 months without electricity.   Well THAT got checked off the bucket list... yeah, not really.

baby bunnies.  The end.

well, I married a farmer....

so what did I expect?

When I got my new car,  two rules were immediately instituted:

1. no borrowing by (crazy driver) brother-in-laws

2. NO ANIMALS in the car.

Yeah, that didn't last long.  The list to date:  3 rabbits, a rooster, and a goat.  Who screamed bloody murder the whole way home.  We put all the windows up when we were driving through town because we were afraid we would get stopped for kidnapping.

"winter"

Ok, so I live in the tropics, and it doesn't really get cold here.  At the most, it can be a bit chilly in the mornings and nights.  I love this weather though.  I can put on a (light) sweater, curl up on my couch with a blanket, and drink hot chocolate without a sauna-like experience.  These temperatures only last a few months out of the year, so I appreciate every moment.

Also, chilly nights plus sunshine = mysterious foggy mornings....

Christmas baking casualty

I have this great set of measuring spoons with magnets in them-- they stay stuck to eachother and to my magnetic knife strip, so I'm never searching for a missing spoon.

Unfortunately, I have recently discovered this also means they stick to other metal things.  Like the bottom of a cookie pan.

Daniel:  What is that smell? Like... burning plastic?
Me: I'm just baking cookies, they don't smell like that... oh wait... crud.

RIP 1/4tsp.

book review: Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer

This is the story of a journalist, Joshua Foer, who spends a year making himself into a memorizing master.  He learns how to memorize long strings of random numbers, names for unknown faces in yearbooks, and the order of a whole deck of cards… in under 2 minutes.  And he uses methods of memorization that have been around since the Greeks, not some crazy system.  This is something anyone can learn, as he proves.

My first thoughts after reading this book:  If these methods have been around forever, why wasn’t I taught them in school? Why couldn’t this book have appeared  before 2 years of trying to memorize the cranial nerves in PA school?  Or better yet, when I was in high school and the first question on every history test for 3 years was a list of important dates in American history… the same list…which I consistently got wrong for three years??? Aargh.

Anyways, this book is a good introduction to some basic, accessible tricks for memorizing things (not like the clunky mnemonics that were harder for me to remember then whatever they should have helped me remember).   This is not a guide to memorization, but a window into the methods, a catalyst to learn more about the art of memorization.   I do wish he had gone a bit deeper into the methods he used in his year of training, but hopefully I will be able to find other books on the subject, because it is really fascinating!

snapshots

A few weeks ago we helped out at a fund raiser for a Belizean man who suffered a brain aneurysm.  He is being treated in Mexico, since Belize's system does not have the capability to help, and his medical bills are mounting quickly.

Friends of ours put together a town fair.....

There was barbecue (of course) staffed by about 30 men at one point.

We spent 6 hours supervising a bouncy house (200 children came through. I...don't even have words to describe the chaos.  By the end of the day, even a kid bouncing on another child's head didn't bother me.)

And the highlight of the day-- Daniel judged a dog show.  A chihauhua dog show. A costumed chihauhua show.

I think a little part of him died of shame.  Ranchers do not even acknowledge chihauhuas as part of the canine species.

The fair raised $10,000 US .  Amazing.

Henry

Dear Henry,

We love you, but we also love sleeping past 5:30 am on a Saturday morning.  Please keep in mind that several of your cousins have been... well... barbecued and eaten.  Just saying.

With love,
the provider of your bottles.