Vote for Evan!

State "O" the Union Brickfish

My brother Evan is working his way through school and doing his best to make ends meet. He's entered a piece of his art in a Brickfish contest, which will help him pay tuition for next semester if he wins. Please take a look at his entry, make a comment, whether you agree with the message or not, and VOTE! The site lets a computer's IP address vote every 8 hours, so if you really want to help him, vote multiple times over the next several weeks!

Broccoli = Musical instrument. Go figure...

This should brighten your day. I know it did mine :)

Merry Christmas!

Guess What?!

I just finished watching "Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World", a movie about a guy who is sent by the U.S. gov't to find out what makes Muslim people laugh...I wouldn't recommend the movie. It wasn't very funny, was pretty ethnocentric, and had a sloppy ending. Basically, the guy (Albert Brooks) goes and tries to convince people in India that his American humor (which wasn't even funny to this American) is funny. It didn't show any kind of Islamic culture humor, which was very disappointing to me. And didn't depict any muslims as having any kind of sense of humor, which, from my very limited experience, is far from accurate. One of the things that helped me enjoy my arabic class last semester is Dr. B's enthusiasm and sense of humor. Granted, he's been in the States for 30 years, but it's not that fact that he understands or caters to american humor, rather, he enjoys being happy and finding humor out of things. So anyway, I was pretty disappointed in the movie.

BUT what I AM excited about is this: There was a fair amount of Arabic dialogue, and I Understood some of it!! There was an interchange of greeting and talking about someone being expected for a meeting, almost all of which I understood, and then I picked out several pronoun suffixes (talking about "Those men" versus "this woman", etc), and a few nouns. I was pretty excited about that :)

Also, "Holly" from The Office played the guy's wife. :D

Wedding pics

With the semester over and no more homework hanging over my head, I've returned to coveting photography equipment and experience, doing research, and finding some great photo blogs. I never posted the photos from my first wedding, mostly because I was somewhat disappointed with the outcome. I've been playing with the images and doctoring them as well as possible with my little Picasa 3 program...tried downloading the Photoshop trial version, but alas, it seems my poor computer is neither sufficiently healthy nor strong to handle such a beast; it keeps kaputzing on my in the download process. And so, here is a look at my first attempt at wedding photography!

There's an album on my picasa page, also, with what I've edited so far - http://picasaweb.google.com/whirlygirl/BeersWedding

my current favorite song

I've been doing a lot of babysitting lately.

Four Months Later...

I've finally uploaded more Costa Rica photos! My albums of on-and-around the university campus and of my beach trips have waay too many pictures, so I'll have to edit them down some more before uploading, but there are 10 or 12 new albums, so the majority of the pics are online now!

Here's the link!
http://picasaweb.google.com/whirlygirl

26 things you never knew you always wanted to know about me

A- Attached or single: Attached - I've been dating Mike for about 9 months now

B- Best Friend: my momma :)

C-Cake or Pie: Brownies! with walnuts in them! or cake with cool-whip frosting

D-Day: Wednesday.

E-Essential Item: my lovesac

F- Favorite Color: Blue

G-Gummy Bears or Worms: I haven't had either in a looong time. probably worms.

H-Home town: Wilburton, Oklahoma,

I- Indulgences: A crackling fire with a good book or someone to snuggle up with

J- January or July: July...i'm thinking of making it a tradition to spend this month in foreign countries :)

K-Kids: I may have some one day

L-Life is incomplete without: My blender and fruit smoothies in the morning

M-Marriage Date: I keep asking my magic 8 ball, but it hasn't come up yet

N- Number of Siblings: 5 brothers + 2 sisters = 7

O-Obsession: Lately I have a somewhat disturbing obsession with radio dj personalities...

Phobias or Fears: I think i'm fairly phobia-free at the moment!...except maybe this one

Q- Quote: There is nothing noble in being superior to some other man. The true nobility is in being superior to one's previous self. ~hindu proverb

R- Reason to Smile: The semester is almost over!!

S- Season: I like each one when it's happening, except maybe winter

T- Tag: I don't know who reads this besides my brother occasionally... so if you read it, do this on your blog and leave me a comment!

U- Unknown fact about me: one of my 'canine' teeth never came in by itself, so I had to have it surgically uncovered and pulled down into my mouth while I wore braces.

V- Vegetarian or Oppressor of Animal: Meat-eater for sure

W- Worst Habit: I spend way too much time online when I should be doing productive things.

X- X-rays or Ultrasounds: Ultrasounds are much more interesting than x-rays.

Y- Your Favorite Food: I love mexican, but mostly for the salsa, sour cream, guacamole, queso, pico de gallo...just give me the condiments & some tortillas or tortilla chips & i'm SOO satisfied :)

Z- Zodiac Sign: Aries