Balloonenstein

So I'm not entirely sure how this started but I've spent the past two days making balloon animals. Justin wants me to do it for the crazy circus thing him and his juggling buddies are putting on at the Picador so I've been practicing. Me and Justin decided to take a bunch of crazy pictures with my newly created menagerie.


Swans.


This is an early version of a helicopter I designed myself. It's now slightly better.


This lion was hard as hell to make. I'm super proud of it.


Oliphants.


Rabbits.


Wiener. Hehehe.


Snail.


<3


Sssss!


Turtle. Poor turtle is slowly deflating as we speak. Balloon animals lead short but rich lives.


Poodle.


Friday totally popped this in the middle of the night. I found its corpse in the hallway.



Those are all from last night. Things I've learned to make since then include a cat, mouse, monkey, brontosaurus, a better helicopter, and a really kick-ass scorpion. I can also make a squirrel, bird, and two types of frogs but they're all kind of questionable.

I have the weirdest hobbies ever.

Indian Baby Dropping Ritual

Random Photo Update

So I've been toying around with my macro some more. Here are the results. Mind you, there's nothing spectacular, but interesting enough to post.


Friday's crazy golden cat eye


Slugs found in the backyard around midnight, lit by flashlight.







That was three different slugs. My sister (flashlight-pointer extraordinaire) and I actually found about five.


Also, we found this thing. I don't know what it is.

Lastly, I dyed my hair a night or two before I left for Arkansas. The results:


So yeah, predictably, the difference is pretty nonexistent except in very strong light. Then it has a reddish tinge to it. Anti-climactic much?

I-80 Detour

So I've been kept informed about the flooding vicariously through Justin and a few other IC people. The best thing I've heard is the closure of I-80 in various places. Justin was driving (on I-80) to his parents' house when he heard on the radio that the stretch of road he was on was being closed. He was literally one of the last people to cross I-80 before the detour was instated. If you haven't heard, due to all the flooding around I-80, the detour is insanely massive.

This is now how you get from Iowa City to the Quad Cities:



It went from a 1 hr trip to 6 hr 20 min. Oh my god.

This Post Brought To You By: INSOMNIA! Get it now!

So since I can't sleep I figured I might as well post cute pictures of little kids and babble inanely.

Here's a small preface about my family. When I say m family, I am generally referring to all the people on my mom's side of the family. We have all lived within 30 minutes of each other (umm...except me since I've moved to college and my great-grandmother who only recently moved away from San Francisco a few years ago) for almost as far as my memory goes back. I've made a diagram to explain the rest. Length from the top roughly approximates age as in the lower on the diagram, the later they were born.



Also, since we've got quite a few generations here, I'll clarify that when I refer to the grandkids, I am referring collectively to my generation.


This is the only photo I took at my great-grandmother's party. It's of my eldest cousin, Alina. She was really into her cashew chicken.


This is Levi. He is my cousin Tesha's son and lacking more precise terminology, I usually refer to him as my cousin nephew thingy.


Levi cooking what appears to be another pan for me. I'm sure it was delicious.


Levi with his guitar. He has more toys than than all of us grandkids combined. Seriously.




Levi is taking my picture. This time he even has the part with the lens facing outwards.




Levi likes to throw things though I think that's pretty common amongst kids his age.


Tesha hates it when I take pictures of her acting goofy for Levi. She says it makes her look like an idiot. I think it makes her look like a good mother.


Levi has a train.


LEVI SMASH!


Tickles!

So for a totally non sequitur, I'm going to end this by talking about my sister's cat, Friday. She's so weird. She is as close to a completely black cat as you can probably get. She has a couple white hairs in her ears and on her belly but it's not even enough to be considered spots. She doesn't bury her poo, she just leaves it sitting right there on top of the litter. She hardly ever meows. If you try to pet her, she grabs your hand and will lick you for five minutes. She's friendly but she doesn't seek people out (as opposed to Justin's cats who are total attention whores). She loves to hide under the sofa bed and attack your feet when you walk by. She's always careful to keep her claws in though. On the other hand, sometimes when you try to pet her, she will grab your hand with her claws and bite you so hard she breaks skin. But I get the distinct feeling it's still playful. Last time I was here, she hadn't been spayed yet and was in serious heat. She actually tried to hump my arm. It was pretty gross. So anyway, she's a weird cat.

Fire Breathers

Larger.

From left to right: Ian, Will, Justin, Luther. They, the Univ. of Iowa Juggalos as their club is called, were invited to perform at the
Exodus Music Festival (which unfortunately coincided with my trip home). They're pretty much a circus. There was juggling of balls, clubs, and torches. Luther balanced stuff on his chin, and they ended with a pretty impressive fire breathing routine (while Matt emceed and played Aerosmith covers). These photos are from one of many rehearsals.


Luther


Justin


Luther and Will


Fireballs!

So, I know it looks like they're drinking beer out of those party cups but they're not. It's actually lamp oil. I told that to my mom and she asked, "Doesn't that taste bad?" Answer:



Anyway, though I didn't get to see the actual performance, I heard it went really well and that they had more people watching them than the band that was playing. They've got another performance at the Picador scheduled for some time later this summer that I will get to attend so I'm looking forward to that.

In other news, I'm in Arkansas for the next two weeks visiting family and whatnot. Last night was my great-grandmother's 105th birthday party. It was insane. I'm pretty sure that every Chinese person in Arkansas was in attendance. It was held at Chi's, a Chinese restaurant. The staff was so overwhelmed. It took us at least a half hour just to get everyone seated, no exaggeration required. On the other hand, it actually went a lot better than I had expected. All my third cousins and people I haven't seen since I was in elementary school were largely too busy talking to each other to come over, pinch my cheeks, and exclaim, "Do you remember me? The last time I saw you, you were only this tall!" I feel like a dodged a bullet. Also, as I heard from Tabitha whom I don't recall meeting previously but suspect I am vaguely related to, I am at the University of Colorado studying journalism.

That's it for now. Prepare yourselves for dumb family pictures next post.

I would feel more legitimate calling these nature shots if I hadn't shot them in various yards

My backyard is positively crawling with "city wildlife" (i.e. chipmunks, squirrels, sparrows, and sometimes even ducks). There's a lady who sets out water bowls, popcorn, and bird seed for them every day so you can imagine why they'd be drawn here. In my backyard, there are anywhere between three and a half dozen chipmunks who hang out regularly (though I think only one of them beds down here). There's one that lives in the crack between the porch and the wall right in front of the front door. I refer to him as Merriwether (though unless their identities can be proven otherwise, I refer to all chipmunks on my property as "Merriwether"). Yesterday, I spent way too much time getting too know these little critters.


This is Merriwether proper. He seems to be one of the smaller and more timid of the local chipmunks. He also appears to have some sort of battle scar on his nose.


This one I'm calling Bernice. She's eating a helicopter. Bernice is pretty big by chipmunk standards and not really afraid of people. For those reasons, I assume that she lives at the house of Bird Seed Lady who lives two houses down.

These are the only ones I got good pictures of (as Justin said, "it's hard to take pictures of little things with high metabolisms"). The other chipmunks that I see have a tendency to get chased off too, usually by Merriwether. Though small, I imagine he's scrappy. My goal for the summer is to get Merriwether to eat out of my hand.

I bet that after all that chipmunk talk, you guys probably think I'm crazy.

Today me and Justin went to Davenport and hung out with his grandparents. Here are a couple of photos from their front yard.




It's hard to tell, but there are actually two of those waspy things on that flower. I bet they're doing it.


Speaking of bugs, Iowa swarms with gnats in the summer. With all the rain we've had, it's been especially horrible. It's almost unbearable to go outside when there's no wind. I come from Arkansas which is really only less buggy than the Amazon but even there we don't have swarms of gnats roving the sidewalks. Gross.

When we were at Justin's parents' house, his mom told me that the gnats are actually killing chickens, especially chicks. They bite at the chicks' faces so they all crowd up together and chicks not being terribly bright, they sometimes suffocate each other. Also, the gnats can block up their nasal passages and they'll suffocate that way. Or, as if you really need to hear another reason how gnats are bad, they can also drain enough blood from the chickens to make them anemic. One of Justin's mom's friends lost 18 chicks overnight. Even grosser.

Since I'm on this bug kick, I appear to have gotten stung by some sort of buggin getting into the car to come home from Justin's. When I got home, I had broken out into a slight rash. It's red, bumpy, itchy, and just downright unpleasant. I think I might spend the next couple of days enjoying the good ol' indoors.

Also, blog.

I wish I had more photomos but the weather has been a little poopy and I don't ever seem to make my way outside until the light is just about gone. Instead, I will attempt to entertain you with words, a daunting task indeed.

It looks like Saturday I'm going to be heading out to Davenport to visit with Justin's grandfather. I'm trading him photoshop lessons for photography lessons and embarrassing photos from Justin's youth. Score, right? In the mean time, I'm trying to organize some sort of portfolio-ish thing that I could show him (or, you know, other people). Right now, it looks like this. Feel free to peruse my flickr account and leave me suggestions. I think it's still sort of a toss up between photos that are good and photos I just like.

I've gotten to the point that I really want to do something with photography but I don't know what or how to get started. So far, my only real idea has been to put together some of themed series over the summer and see if I can get it hung up in one of the local coffee shops that do that kind of thing. It's a fairly half-assed idea and I'll probably never go through with it because it would require me to talk to people. Argh!

I've come to realize that if there's anyone subscribed to my RSS feed, they probably get an update every time I change a photo which happens super often and must be excruciatingly annoying. If you exist, I apologize. I'm just really finicky about post-processing. I am constantly uploading new version and deleting the old ones and the idea of having missing photos in my blog I ind bizarrely upsetting.

PS. Photos vs. pictures: does anybody care but me?

Toads and Farmy Things

We went to Justin's parents' house again yesterday for Memorial Day. It was fun. Food was eaten. Pictures were taken. At least one person (me) got a very mild sunburn. Anyway, I brought all my camera stuff so I could run around and take pictures only to find that my battery was dead. Both batteries. Also, the only camera related thing I didn't bring was my charger. So, yeah, way to go me. Luckily, Justin's mom has a Nikon D40 (I've got a D50) and was nice enough to let me use her camera body (I still had all my own lenses). For really not being that different from mine, it was really sort of awkward to use her camera. I kept pushing the same buttons but different things happened. I got it mostly figured out though.


Toad's are pretty inanimate for being living things.


I did actually see this one eat an ant which was cute. Also, I need to get used to depth of field being a thing I can manipulate. Note to self: pay attention to the things which are not in focus as well as those that are.

Toads have really reflective eyes. In the large version, you can very clearly see Justin's parents' house. Kind of bizarre.


You can see me laying down in the dirt, holding the camera in his eye. Once again, check the large version.


He was under the bushes, hanging out in the shade. This toad is both practical and whimsical-looking.


This photo is really not that great. I'm not entirely sure why I'm posting it except that I really want a nice picture of dandelion fluff (which I've obviously yet to achieve).


The obligatory picture of sheep. Also, Justin's aunt.

So a funny thing happened. Zach, the son of Justin's cousin, decided he really wanted to shovel some llama poo. He would not let anyone else help. Also, he was making sure to warn Ande, the llama and creator of said poo, not to step in it. These are definitely ones for the photo album. The really embarrassing photo album your parents pull out when you start dating.






He is clearly a determined little fella.

In other news, I'll be going back to Arkansas June 7th through the 21st. Also, I'll be going back to work for Prof. Kletzing tomorrow.