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unexpected slot machines: two cases

So I was at the Post Office the other day trying to buy a packet of postcard stamps, which turned into quite a challenging task. The line inside was too long to even consider so I had to battle with the post office vending machine. After a series of frustrating events and many tries to get the machine to accept my change, I was forced to use a twenty dollar bill, and the second I hit the button for my stamps I could hear the clanging of 19 gold coins spilling out into the metal change dispenser. Although it was annoying to get the pile of gold dollars that I didn't know what to do with, it was kind of fun to hear the money fall. It was like I had just won at the slot machine.

Ironically, a couple days after the post office slot machine experience we went to Cedar City for a basketball tournament. It ended earlier than we expected, so we went to Vegas. I had never been before, so it was fun to see what Vegas is like. We had a lot of fun, and as we walked around I was surrounded by slot machines, which kept making me think about buying stamps at the post office.

Art Exhibit: Bodies

While we were in Vegas we got to see a really great exhibit at the Tropicana. The exhibit was about the human body and it was so informational. They had bodies that were preserved and cut open so you could see how the body functions, and as you went room to room it would focus on different aspects of anatomy, like the digestive system, a developing baby, or the circulatory system.
For the circulatory system they somehow had an arm and various organs that were made of only blood vessels, they took out the skin, bones, muscle, everything else, just tons and tons of little tiny veins and arteries that formed the shape. 60,000 miles of blood vessels in each person!
They had a lot of smaller cases with different parts of the body, like lungs and smoker lungs. Next to that display was a big glass container for people to drop in their cartons of cigarettes. There was also an aorta cut open, one that was healthy and one that was full of fat deposits- disgusting.
Overall I was really impressed and reminded of the complicated, amazing bodies we have. So if you get the chance to see it, it's a little pricey, but well worth it.

The Pet Issue

Brandon really wants to have a dog someday. I say, absolutely not. I'm not really a pet fan in general, and I hesitate to say it because sometimes I think people are offended by this, but I think dogs are one of the most annoying pets there are. I think the only way I would ever allow a dog is if my kids were training it to be a seeing eye dog. And it stayed outside. And I didn't take care of it in any way. And we didn't buy it presents, Christmas or not. And someone bathed it at least every other day. Only in that situation would I consider, the slight possibility, that we might get a dog. And I'll take a dog over a TV.

Painting classes

I have a friend from high school that I ran into who became a photographer. Sometimes she teaches classes at Sundance. I think they are typically one on one classes, sometimes a small group. She said they could use another watercolor teacher and asked if I would be interested. I said, sure. Doing anything artsy at Sundance sounds fun. Then I started thinking about the kind of people that want to learn how to watercolor at Sundance. I pictured people like this:
And then I realized I don't usually watercolor like this:
This could be a problem. I better go practice painting roses and study up on Thomas Kinkade's watercolor pals.

Shipping

Isn't it ridiculous how the items you buy online cost just as much to get to you as they do to actually purchase? Or twice as much? I love that Amazon has some of my favorite illustrator's books for $2 or $3 instead of the typical $16 at a store. So it still makes spending $7 on shipping worthwhile, it just seems odd.
Has anyone ever ordered paint brushes before? I ordered some that came in a box that would fit 2 toasters, and all it had in it were 2 tiny little watercolor brushes and a couple of bags filled with air. Thanks for the air, what is that? The free gift with my order?

5k

I go running quite often. Almost daily, well, until the last week or two I've slacked a bit. So I dragged Brandon to come run BYU's 5k with me, which was an anti-pornography and abuse run. (Instead of wearing numbers we all had quotes about abuse, etc. and standing up for what is right, I thought it was pretty creative.)
Anyway, I know I am not a very fast runner, but I run 5 miles all the time, and it's not a big deal. 3 is even easier. Somehow, Brandon who goes running about as often as we have general conference, finished 7 minutes before me. And that's counting the 2 times he just stood in the shade waiting for me until I told him he should just run and I would meet him at the end. He said it was so much easier running a race than running by himself because it was really fun to keep passing all those people. I think passing people is fun too, but for some reason I just let everyone pass me instead. I guess I'm generous like that. Or just plain slow.

Nutritious, Delicious

This morning for breakfast we ate whole wheat crepes (we're all out of regular flour) with strawberry yogurt, frozen banana chunks and microwaved frozen strawberries. It was great.

America's Cure

There are two large problems that face the US. (well, lots, but I'm just going to talk about 2) There are too many overweight people and we rely too much on gasoline for energy.
So a few weeks ago I decided these problems should work together. Lots of the weight comes from eating too many calories (a.k.a. energy), so the solution: take energy from people when we eat too much and use it to fuel the country. Healthier people, with transportation- yeah! I have no idea how you transfer that energy, but it's got to be possible.
The funniest thing about it, I was just watching the news and they were talking about some cattle place that uses excess fat they cut off the meat they produce to fuel the factory. They're more than half way there! Now they just have to figure out how to use that excess fat without cutting someone open. I don't know about you, but I'm willing to eat more ice cream to fuel my car.

Top o the mountain

For Memorial Day we went mountain biking with some friends in Bountiful. It was so pretty, and really challenging. I wasn't very good at the uphill part. Or the downhill part. I only fell once though and it wasn't too bad. I fell into some large bushes and then hit a tree stump that kept me from continuing my roll down the mountain.
And check out my hair, I guess that's what a helmet does for you. I think that's the best whispy hair fro picture I've ever taken.

No bears...

...just bugs. Our beehive camp out on Friday did not include any bear sightings, however we did have piles of little silk worms falling from the trees everywhere. On us, on the food, the tents, just covered with them. A few managed to make their way home with us because, like I said, they were everywhere. And the black bugs and huge beetles were a little gross too. I guess they were spraying for bugs right after we left. Lucky us, we made it just in time to have a bug covered camp out. The campsite was really pretty though, so was the hike. And overall it was still fun, and it will definitely be memorable for the girls.

Cheers

Today I went to my mother-in-law's 2nd grade class in Salt Lake to talk to them about being an illustrator. I brought some of the books I've done and a few other little visual aids, like a pile of sketches and a grasshopper. But the best visual aid was the large drawing paper I pulled out and asked for requests of what to draw. I didn't do any masterpieces, but I'm not going to lie, I can draw fast. The kids were so excited and cheering and frantically trying to get me to pick them to decide what I would draw next. It was really fun. When I'm not doing very well on my art I should just invite some 2nd graders over so I can be motivated by their cheering.

Hazel & the toaster

I help take care of Hazel, a sweet 90 year old that my friend April used to work with. For mother's day her granddaughter sent her a new toaster oven. It was really nice and looked like it would work great. However it was digital and the most complicated toaster oven I've ever seen. Too much for a 90 year old, so we're going to exchange it for a normal old school one.
She has a great sense of humor and sometimes she says funny things. Like when she can't get the lid off jars because her hands don't function very well, she'll ask me to do it for her. And as I quickly twist it off, she says, make it look hard.

Mmmmm Dinner

Crock pots are the best dinners ever. You dump a bunch of stuff into a pot, and then it sits there and becomes nutritious and delicious and you only have to wash one pot. It's perfect.

Too close for comfort

So it was a beautiful Friday in Provo and Brandon was kind enough to not worry about watching the Jazz game, so we grabbed all kinds of supplies to go to a nice secluded area in a park to play chess and watch a movie on our laptop. It was dusk and getting pretty dark in the shadows of the trees as we were walking through the park. We got a camping lantern for Christmas that we had just rummaged to find batteries for. Even though we didn't really need it yet, I had turned it on and was carrying it out of excitement for having the new toy.
We were staring to the left while we walked so we could look at a large burrow in the bushes, when we heard a rattling noise and a hiss. We glanced forward and stopped suddenly as we looked down at the ground in front of us and the lantern lit up a large rattle snake coiled up ready to strike, right in our path. We were just a few steps from walking right onto it.
We were spooked. We froze, then I slowly backed away while Brandon tried to find something to throw at it until it slithered away into the bushes. Even though the snake left, we couldn't manage to lay our stuff down. If we hadn't had the lantern, I don't know if we would have paid much attention to the noise, we were in the woods after all, and the snake would have been hard to see because of the shadows and the long grass around it.We usually enjoy camping, but yesterday we couldn't even handle relaxing on a blanket in the woods. We had to go home to watch the movie.

Audible Commercial

As I have mentioned before, I love audible.com. I used to never read books. I enjoy reading, but I usually feel like I'm not being productive just sitting there moving my eyeballs- almost like TV but not nearly as bad. When I discovered that for $15 (or $7.50 if they're having a deal) I could get any book I want on my ipod, I thought it was a perfect solution. Hopefully now I won't be an idiot my whole life. I listen to books while I drive, paint, run, do the dishes, clean or whatever. I've gone from reading maybe one book since high school to having read 13 books in the past year including:
Freakonomics, A Short History of Nearly Everything, Mere Christianity, The World is Flat, Guns Germs and Steel, Collapse, Blink, Angels and Demons, 1776, A Walk in the Woods, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Screwtape letters, and I'm in the middle of 60 hours of Les Miserable, and I have Wicked waiting for me when I finish that.
I am a big fan of C.S. Lewis and Bill Bryson. So if anyone has some good book recommendations, I'm always looking for new books to check out.

Joy of Camping

I'm helping plan a Beehive campout that's coming up. It made me think about my beehive campout in the mountains in California. When it was really late there was a tent of girls still laughing and being crazy when they heard bears walking around our campsite. They heard the bears scratching on the big metal food boxes that each campsite has to prevent bears from getting into it. One of the girls in the tent felt like she was going to vomit, but there was no way she wanted to go outside with the bears. So she threw up ... in the tent. Then they all huddled close together away from the vomit and eventually went to sleep. D i i i s g u s t i n g. Glad I wasn't in that tent.

the solution is...

I usually keep a pretty good reign on my email inbox and archive daily to keep a nice organized 15-20 emails in my inbox. However, it has gotten out of control lately and I am thinking the best solution is to get a new email address. Wouldn't that be easier? Kind of like when your house is such a mess it would be easier to move. Or so many clothes are dirty you just want to buy new ones instead of washing the old ones? It's like that.

Boise is fun, believe it or not

We went up to Boise for the weekend for our friends' wedding. On Friday we had time to do whatever, so we went to the lake. It hasn't been warm that long, so even though it was pretty nice outside, the lake was still 54 degrees. I sat on the boat for hours watching my friends brave the cold (we at least had wet suits) so they could ski & wakeboard. Finally, after much indecisiveness, I too accepted the physical challenge and jumped in. Besides my fingers going numb, it really wasn't too bad. I couldn't do any great tricks or anything, I was happy just to stay above the water. Overall, it was a blast.

Pringles perfect match up

Brandon has such long arms he can reach a can of Pringles from sitting in the drivers seat, that are all the way in the back window of our Honda. And I can slide my hands all the way to the bottom of the can to get out the last hard-to-reach chips. What better way is there to compliment each other?