Pre-Bar Hiatus

Before I forget, I actually did have some fun before this bleh summer began.

First of all, I went to the DC Temple, which was great.

The clouds were SO COOL:

And it was a beautiful enough day to take a walk at the nearby park, where I met a new friend:

I'm a sucker for trails these days, I think I inherited that from my mom :)


I also got to get my tan on at Fuller Lake, which is like literally 2 exits down the freeway in the Michaux State Forest.  It is GORGEOUS!  Trees literally all the way down to the water's edge, nearby streams, and little Cub Scouts always wandering around with their leaders -so cute!

They imported some sand to make a "beach," and I don't even care that its totally fake.  Sometimes a California girl just needs to sit in some sand, imported or not.

Yeah, I went here two days in a row last week :)


And there was a riveting game of tennis with K.

I was modelling my new tennis skort as I worked on my serve.  As you can see, my purple streak is now blue.  At least its a nice shade of blue.

You know its a legit action shot when I'm pursing my lips like this.  K's theory is that I developed this habit during rugby trying to keep my mouth guard in :)  Not a bad theory.

The End.

Party Like a Barack Star

This is not necessarily an indication of how I plan to vote this year, but it just made me laugh...A LOT! :D

When I'm President, I hope people make funny things like this of me.  I would totally buy them from them and hang their art in my bathroom or somewhere.

And that's why we have the First Amendment :)

I could use a good joke right about now...

Day 3 of preparation for the Bar Exam and I'm already bored out of my mind.

So here's a cute joke/illustration to lighten the mood:

Bear?!

Where the heck do I live?!?  I was taking my customary Sunday afternoon walk and came across a very unusual sight:

A BEAR TRAP!

It was just right there at the end of a normal residential street, uncomfortably close to where I go jogging on a regular basis!

A lady who lives on that street was walking her dog and I asked her about it.  She said that it just got put up this morning after some people a few streets away spotted a bear!

HOLY COW!  I've never even seen one of these contraptions before!

And the poor little bear :(  He's just looking for some honey, after all!

More Art! But a very different kind

Speaking of art, I had the chance to see the Philadelphia Museum of Art (of Rockie Fame) and I had a blast!  I always love a solo stroll through a good museum in a finely-architectured building.  And I didn't even cry this time like I did in the National Portrait Gallery several months ago!

There were several...interesting...pieces.  So leave it to me to bring out the worst of one of the finest art museums in the country, all in good fun of course. 

First the good stuff.

I really like this one, you can see Westminster Abbey in the back illuminated by the blaze.  It's called "The Burning of the House of Parliament" by Turner.

 If you're in Philadelphia, I guess you have to pay respect to Ben Franklin.  However, Cokie Roberts did not have nice things to say about him and now I really don't like him at all.

I know, I'm good.  Medieval coat of arms stained glass panels, the museum front, and downtown.

If you think these two little birdies aren't adorable, there's something wrong with you.  Painted in 1638 (!) in Japan.

 I literally said "Oh, wow!" out loud when I saw this.  It is so cool because the paint is used as much for texture as it is for color.  It's basically a 3D painting; very cool.  Sunflowers by Van Gogh.

I saw this and was impressed right away.  It's like you're looking out your peephole at the end of the world.

 Here's a close up; you can see the raiding planes.  Inspired by the Spanish Civil War, its called "Bombardment" by Philip Guston.

 This one is by Jackson Pollock and its called "Male and Female" and I love it.  I went back and had to look at it again before I left :)

 

 And this is Ganesha.  He is dancing!  And he is from India c. 750- cool.  Ganesa is the "remover of obstacles and lord of auspicious beginnings."  Given that I am beginning to study for the Bar Exam, I have decided to incorporate Ganesha worship into my regular routine.  More on my blasphemies to follow...

And now, the fun stuff.


Speaking of heresy and blasphemy, I am SO glad this hairdo is no longer stylish.  Honestly, I can't believe that it ever actually was stylish... It's like a soul patch...on your forehead.

A far cry from the cutesie fat little cherubs normally seen in paintings, this is, well, awful.  I can imagine that the painter must have had a bratty, teething infant at the time he painted this.

No, you're not seeing things.  That's really a knife slicing into his head.  I audibly said "What the..?!? Bleh!" when I saw this odd painting.  And, lucky me, it was part of a set of 2.  Trickles of blood included.  For some reason it conjures the phrase, "Why so serious?"

These are pretty great too:

One of us doesn't belong...  Yeah, I believe in aliens now.  haha

These are called "pickle stands" and were totally worth preserving across the ages.

Going through her mind: "I don't want to be sitting here and so I'm going to look as utterly bored and annoyed as possible!"  Honestly, this probably cost a lot of money to have painted, so it wouldn't hurt to smile, or at least to not smirk.

I would definitely put this in my home.  Its like candlestick meets cuckoo clock meets Suess.

The Japanese Jackson Pollock.

And there's definitely more!  Wasn't that fun?

Urban Art

I have done a lot of work with juvenile delinquents.  My best friend in college studied illustration.  I love traveling and bike riding.  Somehow this all bundles together to lead to a great appreciation for when I stumble upon what I call Urban Art, and what others may simply call "graffiti."

I remember driving through Los Angeles as a child, no doubt en route to a Dodger's game, and looking at the graffiti covering the freeway overpasses and sound walls.  Even at a young age, I remember thinking that if some of these vandals put their obvious talent to good use, they could probably land a successful art or design career.

To me, much of this type of vandalism, although arguably illegal, is harmless.  It's not a true victimless crime the way that running a stop sign at 2:00am in the middle of nowhere when you know that there is no one around for miles is.  But at least no one is getting punched.  So, for the kids, I give it a legal pass :)

(above: "Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend.  Inside of a dog, its too dark to read. -Obama"  Although I think Groucho Marx is actually credited with this statement.)

And sometimes they can be SO STINKING CLEVER!

Often, youth are rebels without a cause.  But that's just a part of the adolescent condition.  Juvenile brains are often physically limited to seeing issues as black and white ONLY.  Its not that they roll their eyes because they hate you, but because they honestly CANNOT put themselves in your shoes and understand that what is clear-cut and "right" to them, may not be right to someone else.  And since juveniles have little or no voice in our society, sometimes they've just gotta shout from the rooftops, proclaiming the wrongs they perceive, which seem so obvious to them.  And sometimes this rooftop-shouting is expressed in art.

[Above: "The people consent: Mitt Romney for Emperor / FASCISM NOW (in the USA)".]

And at the age of adolescence, they've been armed with just enough political knowledge to be dangerous :)

These photos were taken, of all places, under an overpass next to a small Amish dairy farm in Central Pennsylvania that I encountered on a bike ride.

And I took this last one in D.C.  I've shared it elsewhere before; it bears Benjamin Franklin's quote, "Those who sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither."

Impressive.

Chelsie's B-day in Pennsylvania!

Conveniently enough, my one and only (for about 3 more weeks) sister had a birthday on my law school graduation day, not to mention the next day was Mother's Day, and a few day's before was my parents' 30th anniversary...basically NON-STOP party week! 

To me and mine, celebration coincides with food and I decided to make Chels a fancy pants birthday cake.

I was inspired by a photo from another Pinner, but her directions were in metric units and therefore not particularly helpful to me.  So I fudged it and made it my own.

Here's what I came up with, I call it the Alice in Wonderland Cake:

(at 6 layers, its so tall it hardly fits on a plate!)

INGREDIENTS:
-3 boxes of white cake mix + whatever they call for (eggs, oil, water, etc.)
-2 jars of lemon curd (at room temperature for easy spreading)
-1 small bottle of Bolthouse Berry Smoothie (blackberry & blueberry juice)
-blue food coloring
-fresh blueberries


DIRECTIONS:
-Prepare the cakes as directed, each box makes 2 cakes
-I used a smaller 8-inch cake pan instead of the standard 9 incher to make the cakes a little taller so I had more room to spare for cutting the tops off of the cakes so they'd be flat and stack better
-For the first cake, I added only about 1tsp of berry juice + a teensy bit of food coloring, keeping the cake mix pretty much white
-For each progressive cake, I would add more juice and more food coloring, with the final and bluest cake having about 1/2 c of juice added to it + a generous amount of food coloring
-Cool cakes completely before trying to stack
-Use a sharp serrated knife to trim the cake, making the tops flat and exposing the colors by cutting off the browned outside of the cakes
-I stacked them in 2 stacks of 3 with lemon curd between each layer and then froze the 2 stacks (it probably won't fit in your freezer if you try to put all 6 cakes on top of each other from the get-go)
-20-30 minutes before serving time, remove cakes from freezer and rinse the blueberries, then pat them dry with a paper towel.  Use another layer of lemon curd to put to 2 stacks on top of each other and use 4 skewers, inserted from the top to the bottom, to hold the cakes stable.
-Add the rest of the lemon curd to the top in a generous layer, layer the blueberries on top in concentric circles
-Trim around the edges to make the cake even, I even added visual interest (perhaps on purpose or perhaps not...) by trimming the cake so it got thinner at the bottom, giving it a whimsical, Alice in Wonderland look ala the Mad Hatter
-A work of art!  Delicious with coconut gelatto and lemon sorbetto :)

Drive In Movies- they still exist!

So I had a very interesting "first" last month, a DRIVE-IN MOVIE!  And a double feature, no less!  What a bargain!!

Some of my friends from school wanted to see The Hunger Games on the BIIIG screen and since I still live in a state where people refuse to use cars and and things like that, it only makes sense that they would also still have a drive-in theater.  It was SO FUN!

Okay, so a bare truck bed is not meant for sitting in for long periods of time...ouch...and it did get a little chilly...but all in all, it was a great adventure :)

Oh, and lotsa ghosts wanted to see the Hunger Games too as evidenced by all the Orbs in this photo, lol:

And what's this photo?  A picture of the set from the Hunger Games?  Nope, just my neighbor down the street- I took this on my Sunday Walk :)

Mario Cart- fo realz

In case you don't know, sometimes I'm a little...well...nerdy.

Case in point, for K's b-day he wanted to go go-carting, but not just any old regular go-carting, he wanted to go MARIO CARTING!

So we did.  Princess Peach and Mario :D

Oh, and I totally kicked his butt, which is very unrealistic to the game, Peach always loses, especially Baby Peach.

And yes, that's a Chewbacca hoodie.  Okay, I'm gonna stop embarrassing myself now.

The End.