My favoritest things

For Christmas last year, my mom had gotten me this shadow box. Since I had to fly back to the city, I didn't take it with me because anything glass I take on a plane always ends up broken. This year, since we drove up to Rochester, I was able to bring it back to the city with me. Tonight, I filled it with all of my favorite things from childhood. It made me really miss my mom.

My two favorite books, There's a Monster at the End of This Book and The Velveteen Rabbit. A picture of my mom holding me when I was an infant, a little ceramic mermaid that was hers and she gave to me when I was a kid, and a little wooden elephant, ditto. The centerpiece, however, is a stuffed animal named Pixie. Probably the only thing I have left over from my father (it was his when he was a boy, I'm told), with whom I rarely, if ever, speak, Pixie sat on my shelf until one day, I looked at him, picked him up, and didn't put him down again. He's gone everywhere with me: high school sleepovers, college, the Bronx, and now Manhattan. You can see all the stitching where his fabric wore through and my mom had to sew him back up, and you can see how squashed his nose is from me holding him against me. His bow tie is moments away from disintegrating. He used to be a color, but I cannot for the life of me remember which one. Now, he's in this box with my other favorite things, hanging on my bedroom wall, across from my bed so I can look up at him whenever I want. I might not be able to cuddle him anymore, but I think for his own health, that's not necessarily a bad thing.

After spending so many months making things for other people, it was nice to put something together for myself. It's a nice craft for women to do with their mothers after they've grown and moved away. because even though you're all growed up, you're still your mother's baby.

The deep dark hole into which I've disappeared

Where, oh, where have I been? Well, the holidays (the gift-giving ones, at least) have come and gone, and being the broke lady that I am, decided to make the vast majority of my gifts. This year, that meant embroidering seed beads onto fabric. Hundreds. Thousands. My fingers hurt. I think I have carpel tunnel. But it's done. I thought I might share some of the finished products with you.

(This isn't one of them; it's our tree)

This is a tree of life I embroidered onto some microfibre ultrasuade. I did this for one of my coworkers.

This is a sock monkey ornament I did for my sister. Because I call her Monkey.

This is a monkey I made out of polymer clay for my sister. Also because I call her Monkey. It's about 1.5 inches tall.

This is a Mario ornament. I didn't do it for anyone in particular. I was just testing my embroidery skills out. It was the first time I'd done anything in beads, and didn't want to waste time and energy attempting it if I wasn't any good.

This is an evil eye ornament I did for my step father. Unfortunately, you can't really see how vivid the colors of the beads actually are in this photo.

This is an art deco lady I did for another of my coworkers. It took about 25 hours. After I took this picture, I restretched the fabric so it's not so wrinkly. (you can click on the pic for a closer view)

This is a bird I did for my mom. It was supposed to be an ornament, but turned out too large, so I mounted it in a shadow box. It came out nice.

And finally, this is a bacon ornament. Because I lurve bacon.

So, that's it. Nothing special. Just wanted to share it with you.

Happy Holidays!!!

Oh, bacon...

What do you even say about bacon that's been woven together like a basket, schmeared with cheese and then rolled?

I'm frightened, and horribly intrigued.

This made me smile on my cranky day

23 Flavors of Crazy, #5

Vanessa's Rules for Bosses

Dude, if it's the holidays, and clients or patients send a gift basket to the office labeled "To Boss and STAFF", that does NOT mean to Boss and Boss's Girlfriend, and then to the staff if the boss's girlfriend doesn't find anything in the basket she wants.

That is NOT holiday spirit.

Literature Review

What can I say other than I love this book? I loved it so much. It's about a genius who's got some insight into this massive math problem, who decides to run away from school back to his home in a little hick village to work at his family's morgue/funeral home/furniture store. Although the way the book is written is a bit confusing (going forwards and back in time over and over again), the characters are so frickin' well written, the main character's got flaws, and is real. You think that for someone so smart, he's a fricking idiot, but then you think, yeah, well, he's still a kid.

Anyways, if you're looking for a good read, something not entirely challenging, but definitely satisfying (although the ending left a bit to be desired)...

Yeah, good book, man.

This tickled my disillusioned funny bone

For those of you who have recently become somewhat disenchanted by the whole Twilight drama, what with the books and the movies and Stephanie Meyer's adolescent whining, Cracked posted this awesome abridged version of the Twilight script.

I laughed.

Hilarious

This is a cartoon about a dude and his cat. I have a feeling that if you don't have cats, you won't get it. I laughed; I've got 4 of the.

I covet this

This is someone's personal library. This dude has so much cool stuff, I sniffle just thinking about the fact that I will never have anything near its magnificence. Link

Mmm...Peanut Butter

Various sites around the internet are taking as evidence the use of peanut butter as an ingrediant at gourmet restaurants as proof of recession. I wholey disagree. Who doesn't love peanut butter? (Aside from those people with that irrational phobia of getting peanut butter stuck to the roof of their mouths...or people with peanut allergies...or people who don't really like nuts...)

Bon Appetit came up with some fabulous desserts AND THEIR RECIPES made with peanut butter.

And Cheastypants, since I know you won't be having confections like this for a few weeks more, and because I know how much you lurve when I post about food you can't have, I thought maybe you could try making these down there. Barring that, you could just look at the yummy, yummy pictures.


These are peanut butter and chocolate cheesecake swirl brownies. The recipe is here.

This Peanut Butter Honey Tart with Ganache Glaze (drool) combines three of my all-time favorite ingrediants: peanut butter, chocolate (ganache, no less) and honey. Sweet mother, I want to eat this.

I'm sorry

To those few people who read my blog, I apologize for having been absent recently. I don't plan on disappearing compeltely.


In my absence, I've been working out some of my issues artistically; beading and drawing mainly. I'm working on a series of doodles on borderline personality disorder called 23 Flavors of Crazy. This piece is #2.
I will at some point be posting some of my beadwork. It's much more cheerful, I promise. To those of you who haven't abandoned me, thank you. I promise I've been thinking about you, but just haven't been able to bring myself to visit. I'm hoping to change that very soon.

Miss you.

I HAVE to have this

I know I haven't been posting very often lately, and I do apologize. I've been ill, and when I haven't been ill, I've been busy making presents for Christmas. I'll be back to my regularly scheduled slacking soon enough, I promise.

In the meantime, I thought I'd share with you a fantanbulous t-shirt I found over at the xkcd online store. I must have it. I don't think anyone quite grasps the necessitude of my owning this shirt.

Just a little hint for my loved ones for the upcoming holidays. (ahem)

Like you're sticking your head up a dude's ass

The latest in the medical illustration series on which I am working. I think I'm done. I hope I'm done. I'm so sick of looking at male reproductive organs.

Size Matters

I did much better than I thought I would, especially considering that I've never been to nor heard of many of these places.

A Venti Quiz on Quirky Sizes



Score: 80% (8 out of 10)

Holy crap on a cracker

Nicely done, CGUnit. A unique artist that actually made me stop and say "holy shit". This here is Candice Tripp, and she's frickin' amazing.

Thursday Afternon Cravings

You know, I don't ALWAYS crave bacon. Ok, yes I do, but I don't ONLY crave bacon. Here are four more foods that I really, really, really love.

Proscuitto and buffalo mozzarella. With the meat wrapped around the cheese. SOOOO good.

Pillsbury toaster strudels. The strawberry kind. With the icing on top. My favorite holiday breakfast.

Sloppy Joes. Mmm...I love me some sloppy joes.

And finally, waffles with butter and maple syrup. And I mean real maple syrup, not that ridiculous fake crap.

My stomach is growling so loud right now.

A is for acalculus colocystitis

I've been doing some DBT (dialectic-behavioral therapy) for my borderline personality disorder, and in particular trying a distracting technique very much like A is for apple, B is for banana, but something that actually takes some brain power.


It's the ABC's of hypochondria:

A is for Acalculus Colocystitis
B is for Balanitis
C is for Crypto-orchadism
D is for Diabetes
E is for Elephantiasis
F is for Fibroids
G is for gastroesophageal reflux disease
H is for hemophilia
I is for ischemia
J is for jaundice
K is for kidney stones
L is for lyme disease
M is for menopause
N is for necrotizing fasciitis
O is for orchalgia
P is for Peyronie's Disease
Q is for Quinquaud's decalvans folliculitis
R is for Rigormortis
S is for shingles
T is for Tardive Dyskenesia
U is for Urinary retention
V is for varicocele
W is for Wandering spleen
X is for Xeroderma pigmentosum
Y is for Yellow fever
Z is for zonular cataract

See, now wasn't that fun? The thing that was bothering me before no longer is. Yay!

Now you try.

AHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!

We're now one step closer to my nightmare being reality: a GINORMOUS, single-celled organism, that's right, a protozoa, Gromia sphaerica , has been discovered. Homeboy's the size of a grape. Soon enough. area rug-sized amoebas will be slithering over me in the nighttime to suck out my brains through my nostrils.

Ooh, does ooh need a hug?

Go on. Click the picture. Go ahead. I'll wait. Read the laundry list of whining and bitching by one Michael Minelli, who was referred to as "Douche Nine" in the book "Hot Chicks with Douchebags". His feelings were SO hurt, that he's suing the author and the publisher of the book. The picture is an excerpt from the lawsuit.

Poor baby. Someone called him a douchebag. And instead of handling the situation with grace, laughing it off, playing off it, and probably making himself into the biggest player of all time (everyone knows chicks LOVE assholes), he's whining about it. Publically.

I cannot wait to see how this one plays out.

Snorg bork bork, borkety snork bork

Debork Obama: Says the Swedish Chef, "Yom-yom-yommm, mit de chocolad. Bork, bork, bork!" By Sleeper Cell.

Sinks to fit two aspects of my life

WebUrbanist did a great montage of interesting sinks today. Here are two that fit PERFECTLY into different aspects of my own life.
This sink is breath-taking in its Fibonacci-ishness. Although I think it would be kinda gross to have to scrape out the toothpaste globs every morning. But how MATHY is this, eh?

Then there's this one, that's supposed to imitate a river. Uh, sure it is. I've worked in Reproductive Medicine long enough to know that if it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then, dude, it's a sperm. Look at this thing. How is this a river? It's a frickin' sperm. Tell me it's not a sperm.

I want to talk my boss into installing the sperm sink in our bathroom. I think, next to our viagra light switch plate, we'll be the most awesome ball and dick doctors in the whole of NYC.

Yay, Penguin!

Found this on Neatorama. A penguin outwits a pod of hungry orkas.




Update: Link should be working now.

Alternate: http://www.milinkito.com/1343/listo/

Monday morning bacon

Browsing Etsy this morning. Found me some bacon products. Thought I'd share, because what says lovin' more than bacon?

This looks like chocolate, but it hides within its sweet interior bacony goodness. It contains:
Chocolate Covered Bacon: 8 pieces of super crispy, super bacony bacon, covered in your choice of milk or dark chocolate and very lightly sprinkled with sea salt

Bacon Caramels: 4 of our signature caramels, topped with a crisp piece of bacon and covered in your choice of milk or dark chocolate and a sprinkle of sea salt

Bourbon and Black Pepper Truffles: 2 dark chocolate truffles, spiked with Woodford Reserve(TM) bourbon and freshly ground black pepper, covered in dark chocolate


This is a painting of bacon. Who doesn't want a painting of bacon? That you can gaze upon while eating bacon?
And finally, a felted scarf that looks creepily like bacon. Imagine it. It's a freezing cold day outside, and your belly is stuffed full of pan-fried, salty, porky goodness. You wrap a faux piece of that salty, porky goodness around your neck, and lo! the scent of your breakfast lingers, to tantalize you throughout the day.


See...a bacon a day keeps gloominess at bay.

Or something like that.

Mental_Floss is AWESOME

Look at this shirt from Mental_Floss!!!!!!! It's so AWESOME!!!


!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Math joke that sent my eye a-twitchin'

I love Neatorama. They went and visited the website where I'd gotten those math jokes the other day, and posted their favorite. Now, I heart math jokes, but this one was painful even to me.

There were three medieval kingdoms on the shores of a lake. There was an island in the middle of the lake, over which the kingdoms had been fighting for years. Finally, the three kings decided that they would send their knights out to do battle, and the winner would take the island.

The night before the battle, the knights and their squires pitched camp and readied themselves for the fight. The first kingdom had 12 knights, and each knight had five squires, all of whom were busily polishing armor, brushing horses, and cooking food. The second kingdom had twenty knights, and each knight had 10 squires. Everyone at that camp was also busy preparing for battle. At the camp of the third kingdom, there was only one knight, with his squire. This squire took a large pot and hung it from a looped rope in a tall tree. He busied himself preparing the meal, while the knight polished his own armor.

When the hour of the battle came, the three kingdoms sent their squires out to fight (this was too trivial a matter for the knights to join in).

The battle raged, and when the dust had cleared, the only person left was the lone squire from the third kingdom, having defeated the squires from the other two kingdoms, thus proving that the squire of the high pot and noose is equal to the sum of the squires of the other two sides.

A New Toy (er...tool) for Hypochondriacs

Google has a flu tracker. There you go, hypochondriacs! Now you have more evidenciary backing for self-diagnostics! Yay!

Yes, my dorkiness continues apace

As a raging geek, it may be my responsibility to be enamored with Star Wars. Unfortunately, that is a subject in which I am severely lacking. To compensate, I love Star Trek. While I don't know the episodes by numbers, nor do I have the engineering schematics of the USS Starship Enterprise, I have seen every single episode of TNG.

To satisfy the Trekies out there, Thinkgeek is offering these badass Star Trek switchplates. I want them. I want them bad.

Etsy, gathering place for crafty geeks worldwide.

So, I've spent some time on Etsy today, since I've been thinking about starting an Etsy shop. Here are some awesome handmade products I came across that I would absolutely love.








Here's a crocheted labrat. This artist also has frogs. We do a lot of rat dissection here, and I thought this was awesome.

In college, I did my final paper on Pi, and consequently became obsessed. I just thought this pi necklace was adorable.

As the Princess of Reproductive Medicine, who has, as of late, done a TON of pencil studies of the human testis for an upcoming anatomy book, I've become extremely well versed on the anatomy of the testicle. This gentleman's Etsy offering is a polymer clay ball in a jar. While it's really cool looking, it doesn't look all that accurate to me. I still want it, though. It would look badass on my desk, and also would kinda freak my patients out.

Besides being the Princess of Reproductive Medicine, I'm also the Princess of Math (yes I can be princess of more than one thing, thank you very much). This is a Fibonacci spiral (or golden ratio) bracelet. It's pretty. Also expensive. If I really decide I want it, I'll probably just end up making my own.

And finally, if and when I finally pop out a kid, she'll of course need to be a math geek as well. One of my favorite numbers (besides 52) is i, which is the square root of negative 1. Here's an i bib. Cute, no?

And there you have my favorite things on Etsy today.

Cool footage

I never realized until I saw this video clip that I've never actually seen live footage of the thirties. I've seen stills, and I've seen movies, but never recordings of real people going about their business.

Two brothers were cleaning out their grandparent's house in Colorado when they came across some old 16mm film. They took it to the local tv station, but they couldn't do anything with it because of decay, so it was sent to the library of congress, who transferred it to video. And wouldn't you know, it's got actual film of DDay, a wedding, in color, from the 1930's, and mid-air dogfights, amongst other things.

Here's the video of the wedding, which for some reason, absolutely fascinates me. It's silent, but in color, and I just find it weird to think that my grandparents were this age during this time.

Anyways, I just thought it was cool.

More brilliance compliments of CGUnit

CGUnit has done it again...thricely this time. Here are three more awesome artists, discovered via CGUnit.

This is a piece by artist Shawn Yu. It seems kind of Klimtesque to me...all right, it seems really Klimtesque to me, but I still like it.

This is art by a woman named Heidi Taillefer. Her work reminds me of Hindu goddesses, which I think may be the point.

This is art from Audrey Kawasaki. And yes, it looks like a lot of the other stuff on CGUnit, but something about this one is quiet, reserved, and not lewd like the others.

Anyways, I just really liked these three, and wanted to share.

Math Humor

I love math jokes. I'm certain I'm alone here, but I came across a website with a bunch of them. Here are my favorites.

This one is a cute little play on proof by induction...

Theorem. A cat has nine tails.

Proof. No cat has eight tails. Since one cat has one more tail than no cat, it must have nine tails.

Q: What is non-orientable and lives in the ocean?
A: Möbius Dick...

HA! Get it?

Statistics Canada is hiring mathematicians. Three recent graduates are invited for an interview: one has a degree in pure mathematics, another one in applied math, and the third one obtained his B.Sc. in statistics.
All three are asked the same question: "What is one third plus two thirds?"
The pure mathematician: "It's one."
The applied mathematician takes out his pocket calculator, punches in the numbers, and replies: "It's 0.999999999."
The statistician: "What do you want it to be?"

Yeah, well, maybe you don't think it's funny, but I do.

Mmm...pretty

Today, BF and I went to the gem and mineral show on the upper west side. Lots of assholes here. I was kinda surprised. When I went to the show in Museum Village, everyone was really laid back and friendly, but the people at this show were nasty. Not the kinda birthday I was looking for.

Anyhoo, I ended up purchasing this here Adamite specimen from the Ojuela Mine in Durango, Mexico. Isn't it pretty? You can't really see it in this photo, but it's crazy sparkly. Happy birthday to me.

I want one...

And in the long list of inappropriate pets I want...

Best birthday ever

Amongst other things, I got flowers. I love flowers.