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Exercising a Different Kind of Creativity

Posted on May 11, 2016 by funnygurl2

On Saturday, I went with my family to a National Train Day event at the Amtrak Station in Toledo. Who knew that there was a National Train Day? There definitely exists no website for it.

I was afraid it would just be like one table giving away Operation Lifesaver stickers and keychains with, like, homeless guys peeing in the corner or something. But we got to ride on a railroad work car, tour an Amtrak train, see several locomotives up close, and saw two and a half rooms of train-related booths. Some were of places we have been, like the Steam Railroading Institute in Owosso, and others we have on our to-do list, like the Fostoria Iron Triangle. We also found some destinations we might add to our list, such as the Mad River & NKP Railroad Museum in Bellevue, Ohio.

The Pere Marquette 1225 A.K.A. The Polar Express

The Pere Marquette 1225 A.K.A. The Polar Express from last year’s visit to The Steam Railroading Institute

 

After several hours, we agreed we had all had fun, but we were tired and hungry. We headed to Chick-fil-A for a rest and some lunch. We would eat, I would make my husband stop at Five Below for a hat I believed I had to have, and then we would head home. I would probably be lazy the rest of the day, if possible.

Me in my new cool hat. Sorry I didn't take a better pic.

Me in my new cool hat. Sorry I didn’t take a better pic.

Our intentions were almost thwarted when a carnival was being held nearby and parking was heinous. But we persevered, and upon entering the restaurant, it was busy but not over-crowded. My husband spotted his sister there with her daughter. Soon my sister-in-law’s sister-in-law showed up to too. We ditched the boys and through a crazy, unpredictable set of circumstances, I ended up awake past my bedtime an hour and a half from home on a girl’s night out with a completed painting inspired by my family. I had felt like the universe had given me an opportunity and I had no choice but to take it.

I used to list art as my favorite subject in school. Now I am sort of a non-practicing artist, like how someone could be a non-practicing Catholic. Those skills don’t disappear, they just lay dormant and get a lil’ rusty. But it felt good to use the colors and shapes part of my brain rather than the letters and grammar part I have been running marathons with for the past few years. I kept telling my sister-in-law that it felt like we were in art class back in school. Because, well, we indeed did go to school together and here is the proof, a picture taken in art class almost 22 years ago.

ART-OG JS1

My S-I-L: The OG JS

So, here is my finished painting. I am kinda proud of it. Sure, it isn’t up to professional standards, but it is nice enough to hang on my wall. I stole the saying from Hallmark. And I’m not sure if you can tell, but the hearts have glitter on them. Because, well, when you carve into this tree, there is glitter inside. It is a magic tree.

My Masterpiece. I really love it.

My Masterpiece. I really love it.

Yes, even my painting has to have a story attached. But then, a picture is worth a thousand words, right? Sorry to disappoint, but this post is only 500…

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Be Careful What You Wish For – AVAILABLE NOW!
When You Least Expect It – THE CONTINUING ROMANCE!
The Wind Could Blow a Bug – WHERE IT ALL BEGAN!

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Real-World Chemistry

Posted on April 9, 2015 by funnygurl2
Just the sight of this textbook scares the crap out of me...

Just the sight of this textbook scares the crap out of me…

To me, when I was in school, we spent a whole lot of time on really boring stuff that had absolutely no application to the real world in which we would some day need to survive in on our own. It might also be why so many people ended up just living in their parent’s basements, working part time jobs to try to pay back student loan debt.

Case in point: The metric system.

We don’t have a meter stick at home, we have a yard stick. My husband goes to the lumber yard for a piece of 6 foot drywall or a 2″x 4″, not 6 meters of drywall. Yet in school, they spent all this time [trying to] teach us the metric system and didn’t teach us the U.S. measurement system that is actually in use in regular lives daily. I still don’t know how many feet or yards are in a mile. I was never taught that in school. Good thing I have it on a ruler from a McDonald’s Happy Meal.

Next point: Balancing a checkbook.

In high school, I took math classes up through Trigonometry. Pretty advanced math. I got mostly A’s and B’s. I didn’t understand any of it. When I went to college, I had to take a test to see if if I would test out of all the math classes. Nope. I ended up taking Algebra a second time. I still don’t understand it.

You know what I also have trouble with? Balancing my checkbook. It has to rank up there are one of THE most important tasks you have to do regularly as an adult. When did they teach that to us in school? Formally, never. Informally, during a Junior Achievement exercise in 7th grade. And my mom taught me.

I never took Chemistry in high school. It was taught by a man who had already failed to teach me Algebra and Drivers Ed, and he made my skin crawl. So why would I waste more time in a class with him with subject matter I was not remotely interested in?

When I got to college, I evaded Chemistry class as well. I took lots of Psychology and English classes instead.

But lately, I can’t get this idea out of my head. It keeps popping up in my day-to-day life.

What if they taught a high school class on Chemistry that kids could relate to? That would interest them? Chemistry is all around us in our daily lives. What if we could understand our normal lives better, and not learn about super-colliders, or whatever?

I had this brainstorm while coloring my hair. How many high school girls (and guys nowadays, I suppose) color their hair? Total chemistry. You have to take the one magic bottle and place it into the other magic bottle. What is in those bottles, exactly? Why do they react to change your hair color? Make your scalp burn? Why will it possibly explode if you recap it after mixing? I would love to know these answers!

The other day my husband and I were at a craft show. We had a long conversation with a lady who had a booth full of homemade soap. My husband expressed that it smelled great, but he was afraid that it would dry out his skin.

She went into a long explanation about how the longer the soap sits after it is made, the pH has more time to change. This causes the soap to be less drying. She sounded super-knowledgeable. I had never heard that stuff before. She could have been making it all up just to make a sale.

But, if there was a Real-World Chemistry class, that would be a GREAT experiment! And all the students could have yummy smelling soap that they made to take home.

My husband loves to make homemade silly putty with a mixture of glue and cornstarch. I don’t understand it myself, but he always has lots of fun. EXPERIMENT for Real-World Chemistry!

Yummm.

Yummm. Cinnamon rolls.

The other day I made cinnamon rolls, the kind my mom used to spend 5 hours making me for my birthday when I was a child (I always loved them more than cake.) The kind that you have to put yeast in, let them rise, beat them down, then let them rise some more. It was frustrating to find just the right amount of heat in my kitchen to make it rise. Then I noticed the recipe at one point said the dough should be “elastic and smooth”. Low and behold, over the past several hours and kneading, it had changed to just that. But how?

I find this topic very frustrating. Kids should at least know the basics of the world around them. Isn’t there always a big drive to get girls more interested in science?

HERE IS YOUR ANSWER!

And boys would take the class, thinking it would be an easy A, then accidentally learn something.

I don’t want other kids to avoid the subject altogether as I did. Now I can’t answer clues on Jeopardy. And I don’t understand joke T-shirts and throw pillows with periodic elements on them 😦

Periodic Table T-shirt

Periodic Table T-shirt. Is it funny? I can’t tell!

Periodic table throw pillow

Periodic table throw pillow. Is it a statement about science or texting? Or both!

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What I Learned This Week – 1/6/2013

Posted on January 6, 2013 by funnygurl2

This week I learned that taxes are all about rules (I LOVE rules!)…except for the exceptions (I HATE exceptions!).

For the last five days (including this morning) I took a 20 hour free tax class (i.e. unpaid training) for a potential tax preparation job (that I have to test high enough to get).

The media has banged the drum this week that employment is up. I think the 15 strangers sitting in a room for four hours a day on their own time for a 50/50 chance at a job shows that there is no improvement in my area of the country.

I also learned that in cases of divorced parents, if the child is treated as the qualifying child of the noncustodial parent, the noncustodial parent can claim an exemption and the child tax credit for the child, and the custodial parent can claim the child as a qualifying child for head of household filing status, the credit for child and dependent care expenses, and the earned income credit.

Did your head explode yet?

I am thankful for this potential job opportunity. But it totally drives me nuts to be learning this huge wealth of knowledge and not know whether I will actually be able to put it to use or not.

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Why I Don’t Wear Make-Up

Posted on June 26, 2012 by funnygurl2

When I was younger, I experimented with make-up like every other girl. I started with the blue eye shadow and the red lipstick and the pink blush. I am sure it was horrible. At some point I had enough zits that I started using foundation and concealer (are those the right terms?) to cover them. At one point, I had a great orange palette going on–orange eye shadow, blush, and lipstick. It was 90210 brand lipstick:) It sounds bad now, but it was 1989 and I was in middle school. It was acceptable then, I swear. Well, to me anyway.

I really wanted to find a picture of 90210 make-up products. You will have to settle for this orange-faced chick instead. Pretend this is what I looked like in middle school.


And the reason I don’t wear make-up: a snotty girl in my class at school. I would love to post her name here, but it is so silly, no one would believe that is really her name. And I won’t give her the satisfaction of putting her name in print. Let’s just call her Tori Crapshooter. (Except her real name is even sillier.)

In Gym class one day (the inner circle of the hell that is middle school), Tori came up to me and asked me who did my make-up. How the hell is one supposed to reply to that? So, of course, I said, “me.” She was like “oh”, and that was the end of it. I don’t really think I have worn much make-up since, except maybe some eyeliner and lipstick when going to a concert or for Halloween or to a concert on Halloween (I did that once. I saw Good Charlotte in Toledo and I stood behind Wayne and Garth from Wayne’s World).

I wish I would have said “None of your business.” or “Who does yours?” or “Yo Mama.” But I didn’t. I was meek. Much meeker then than I am now. Standing in my “cool guys are the coolest” T-shirt and shorts in the gym. My legs so white that all my veins hung out for the world to see under the harsh, buzzing lights. Tori was a bitch, and I knew it. But for some reason I took her question to heart. And committed it memory. She probably doesn’t remember me or that question or that day in gym class.

Maybe she did me a favor that day. Think of all the money I have saved over the years by not wearing make-up. All the extra time I get to sleep-in in the mornings. All the time I am not spending at the store trying to find the right shade of something. What I really should have done was use my words to make her feel as small as she made me. I could have made fun of her white girl afro. Or I could have pointed out how dumb her name was.

I’m not stalking you. is NOW ON FACEBOOK! “Like” that I’m not stalking you and get an update when there is a new post to read. (It is sort of like YOU are stalking ME.)

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