After much thought, I decided to begin writing my autobiography. After eight years of memory trigger exercises to create my lifetime supply of scrapbooks, I thought it would be a shame to let such a list of memories live on without elaboration. I’m hardly able to remember everything now at just 32. I just can’t imagine waiting until I’m 64 to write all this stuff down!
I’ve got an Excel spreadsheet with bullet points of memories and topics from my entire life. There are more than 1,000 rows. I started writing last Saturday and wrote through the weekend, completing the first 50 pages (26,000 words) and up to the 8th grade. Since that time, I’ve been using my Blackberry to take notes on things I forgot to write about. So far, I’ve got 30 more topics to add to what I’ve already written.
For those who are interested, the name of my autobiography is Memoirs of a Black Rose. And no, it won’t be posted online. I may someday have it printed and bound though.
Blue Moon - New Year's Eve 2009
Using the red thread’s tutorial on paper wreaths and Arona Khan’s tutorial on decorative ribbon bows, I was able to successfully create my very own paper wreath! This is a gift to my mother-in-law, Karen, so if you’re reading this – SURPRISE! =)
Paper Snowflake Wreath
The cardboard base is 8″ in diameter with a 4″ circle in the center. The leaves are made from double sided wrapping paper with the blue and snowflakes on the inside, and the silver with snowmen on the outside. The leaves curl very nicely when they are the inside of the wrapping paper, so they are naturally curled. For the snowmen, I used a rubber band to curl them around some rolled paper overnight so they would flatten out a bit. They started out severely curled in the wrong direction.
I used a total of 31 blue and 6 accent snowmen leaves in this wreath. They were cut out using my Cricut Expression and the Accent Essentials cartridge (shift/shadow/Accent41S, 3.0″). I just ripped off the leaf stems as I was going along. I cut the wrapping paper into approximately 12×12 pieces and used the Cricut tacky mat to cut them out, 9 per sheet. For the snowmen, I used the Center Cut feature and a little experimentation to get them cut out centered.
This project was a lot easier than I thought it would be. It took me longer to create the cardboard base and cut out all the leaves than it did to staple it all together. I’d say all together it took me 2-2 1/2 hours, which isn’t too bad for my first attempt.
See more pictures of my paper wreath on Flickr.
Gallagher Smashing Away
Gallagher – the half-naked Energizer bunny! That’s the best way I can describe this show. I saw him back in 1991 in Saginaw, but he was nothing today like he was back then.
The first two hours of the show were spent completing his comedy routine. He has quite an agenda, and a lot to say about alternative lifestyles, American culture and divorce. It was a bit much to take at times, but overall pretty funny.
Then, he started smashing.
Pumpkin in a can, Silk chocolate soy milk, Hershey’s strawberry syrup, mustard, lettuce, flour, ketchup, birthday cake… Watermelons (of course) and much, much more. The smashing and crashing went on for a half hour before he concluded the show by bringing half the audience on stage to smash away. It was nuts!
Andrew was the brave man with the camera during the show. I was hiding behind plastic bags!
See more pictures from Gallagher on Flickr.
UofP Stadium, Glendale, AZ
On Saturday, November 14th, Andrew and I took a tour of University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale, Arizona. This is the home of the Arizona Cardinals football franchise. It’s another one of those things we had been saying, “We should do that” for a long time now. Well, we finally did.
Having already completed the Chase Field tour (Diamondbacks baseball) we figured it would be more of the same. We were right – but this tour wasn’t as much fun as Chase Field. Unfortunately for us, the Seattle Seahawks had already arrived for Sunday’s game so we were unable to tour the locker rooms.
Inside UofP Cardinal Stadium
We spent a whole lot of time listening to the tour guide as we stopped at various spots around the main concourse. After a long while, we went down to the service corrider for a whopping two seconds and then he said we had to leave. We then went upstairs to the Loft level and saw the Arizona Sports and Tourism Authority Loft. Lofts are a fancy way of saying Suites.
Cardinal's Player Entrance onto the Field
We were allowed into the Press Room which was pretty neat. We got to sit where all of the press sits during the game, and check out the amazing views through the glass of the entire stadium. And… that was about it. 90-minute tour over.
See more pictures of the University of Phoenix Stadium Tour on Flickr.
With the advent of Flickr, Facebook and Twitter, blogging has become a thing of the past. Other than me and Andrew, I can’t say as I know anybody who has a blog anymore. This one has suffered too, since most of my postings are done on social networking sites that are popular today.
I joined Flickr on July 20, 2008 as a pro user. Since then, I’ve posted 1,656 photos. No videos though – those go up on YouTube instead. Flickr is incredible for sharing and organizing photos. I love the groups feature, and finding neat photographers is easy. I’ve gathered a lot of inspiration from people I’ve met on Flickr. DaD is on there as well, and posts pictures of his model builds. Andrew has a complete catalog is his Transformers collection and has quite a following of fans.
Facebook, I just can’t say enough cool things about. I joined during graduate school in Fall 2007 as a means to collaborate with my classmate at ASU. Now, nearly my entire family is on Facebook, and many of my friends. My Dad, Ashley, Joe, Aunt Colleen, Grandma Cole, Uncle Keith, Aunt Cathy, Uncle Bret, Aunt Patte, Sara and Courtney, and so many others.
Even my MOM is now on Facebook, as of last week! That’s something I never thought I would see. In fact, we got Mom a cell phone on our plan, and she even sends me text messages a few times per week.
Facebook is easy to use, easy to update, and allows you to keep in contact with tons of people at once. It has become the primary means of communicating and socializing these days. Andrew’s family stays away from it, as does my sister.
Twitter is another way to keep up with everyone, in short bursts of tweets. Since joining on January 12, 2009 I have posted “tweeted” 467 times. With just a line or two of text, you can broadcast to the world what you are doing at that moment. Whether you’re getting ready for work, standing in line at a concert, or driving to California, it doesn’t seem to matter as long as you tweet it. I follow a few dozen celebrities and some friends, as well as informational tweets like from the Town of Gilbert, or AZCentral. We’ve found some neat things to do through tweets, such as free sliders or events at a local park.
Another feature I have recently come to love is Google’s Reader. It allows you to subscribe to and organize RSS feeds, which bring you news and updates from any website that posts with RSS. My feeds are organized into folders, which provides a good insight into my current interests:
Baking and Food Business Friends Fun Genealogy Google Picks Movies News Photography Sites Scrapbooking Technology Travel
Is social networking the end of blogging? Only time will tell. Ironically, I have started scrapbooking again after a 5-year hiatus. Kathleen and I went to the Creating Keepsakes Scrapbooking Convention in Glendale, AZ the first weekend in October, 2009. It inspired me to work on recent vacations and event tickets. At least the art of recording information isn’t dead – it’s just evolving to use technologies of today!
My DaD has inspired me to do something I never though I would do in my lifetime. I have actually built two model cars! One of them was a simple snap-together, but the second actually used real paint and glue.
My first model: ‘69 Camaro Z/28 SS. Sure, it snapped together and only had about 50 pre-painted parts, but it was still an accomplishment for me. I am not very good at following instructions when they are not elaborate. Diagrams confuse me, and I get frustrated if things do not turn out perfectly. When I finished this model, I was quite literally shocked at my own perseverance. Little did I know, this one was the easy one!
My second model: 2009 Dodge Challenger SRT8 Special Edition. 104 parts, each had to be painted separately and glued together. This model required a tremendous amount of patience, which is something that I don’t typically have. It took me a whopping 6 days of committed work to build this model.
I don’t know how my DaD does it! He must have a lot more patience than I do. I think I may be done with modeling – we’ll see!
Andrew, Amy, Mason and Jessica
Jessica as Mario
