Observe Interesting Rafter Ties

We'd been out walking, as usual, and had been noticing many decorative rafter ties on the homes in our area. It was getting dark, but we thought a fun project for the evening would be to "collect" a photoset of some of the more interesting ones we encountered. We could easily see doing this during the day sometime, and with a better camera (one with a zoom lens). But for now, here are five interesting ones:

The first is rather plain for this area, yet still decorative:



Next up is a similar one on a different home...



Here's a larger, squared-off one:



Here's a sort-of bayonettish one:



And, here's an absolutely vampirical variety!



Again, this is only a *small* sampling of a few that we were able to gather in just 10 or 15 minutes before sunset. Imagine how many thousands of varieties our city must have! But, no matter where you live, "collecting" photosets of architectural details seems like a good way to spend an hour or more.

What else fun can we do for an hour? Leave a suggestion as a comment! We would like to pick things on a regular basis. If a suggestion if inspiring to you and you complete one of the activities, be sure to send us a pic!

Make a Dessert!

We don't normally eat a lot of sweets other than fruits. But, sometimes we feel like eating something a little decadent. So, today for our fun, we made an impromptu dessert, and ate it (well, some of it) as a family.

What made this dessert extra fun is that we followed no recipes -- just threw ingredients into the food processor, pulsed it up, and served it. It turned out great! Here's what we included:

• 1 small handful of raw walnuts
• 1 small handful raw almonds
• 1+ cup shredded raw, dried, unsweetened coconut
• 1-2 Tbsp. carob powder
• few dashes salt
• a drizzle of agave nectar (dates might have been a healthier option)
• ~1/4 cup raw coconut oil

Tasty stuff! This mixture makes a consistency that can easily be formed into balls, if you would want to serve it at a party or some other semi-formal setting. Have you ever just thrown something together and come up with a great recipe? If so, feel free to share it.

What else fun can we do for an hour? Leave a suggestion as a comment! We would like to pick things on a regular basis. If a suggestion if inspiring to you and you complete one of the activities, be sure to send us a pic!

(p.s. Thanks to the reader who suggested that we attend a book reading tonight here in Portland. Had we not been busy this evening, we definitely would have attended, as that sounds like a fun outing!)

xxx

Walk In the Sun -- *Only* In the Sun!

We'll tell you about today's hour of fun as a photographic narrative.

As you can see ...



... it was a nice day today. (That's not our home, btw. It's just a nice home nearby and we liked the blooms.) In any case, Portland can be quite rainy in the winter, so it's nice when you begin to get more clear days in the Spring. We decided to go for a walk in the sun today and, to add a level of fun to it, we decided that we would stay *only* in the sun while we walked. For example, if we came upon a patch of sidewalk that looked like this ...



... then we would walk only on the sunny parts and not in the shadow. It was quite a lot of fun. From time to time, we found that we *had* to walk through some shady area. When that happened, we ran through it, and held our breath while doing so. Or, in a situation like this...



... we were often able to just walk on the street, thus avoiding the shade completely.

So, let's take a walk and see what we happened across!

Well, as you saw above, there are many interesting trees in Portland. Some even have their own plaques. For example, here's one we saw today:



(We did take a photo of that tree, but it appears not to have turned out well.)

Occasionally, Portland's famous "weirdness" would call us into some unforeseen direction. In this instance...



... it was to take a look at the odd statues on the porch. While walking there, we happened across this electrical box covered with rubber ducks:



Upon closer inspection, we saw that it had one of those magnetic word games on it. So, we stopped to make our own sentences. Mine appears atop the photo, Wendi's two sentences appear near the bottom:



At one point, we came across this horse statue that's chained to a ring in the sidewalk. We suspect that those rings (which are everywhere) were historically there to tie up (real) horses (as the neighborhood dates back to the late 1800s. So, we thought it was a humorous commentary by some local artist.



Much to our surprise, we spotted another one several blocks away:



Of course, not everything in our neighborhood is old. New homes are popping up in the rare vacant lots (or, in places where dilapidated homes have been torn down). Here's one such new home:



We've noticed that many new homes seem to be marketed with fancy signs such as the one shown in the picture. Whether this is a long-standing practice or a new trend in home marketing is unknown to us (as new city-dwellers). What IS known to us, though, is the price: $469,000. That seems borderline outrageous, although we certainly recall similar home prices from our days living in Washington, D.C. In any case, we're very thankful to have found a fixer-upper home in this trendy, yet quirky neighborhood!

As for the quirks, well, how about a second-hand store that has no employees?! As the sign says...



... if you see something you like, just call them and they'll open the store.

Finally, no Portland walk (in the sunshine or otherwise) is complete without noting the many felines encountered along the way. Some stand sentry to their homes ...



... some walk down the steps to greet you, perhaps in hopes of a friendly pat ...



... and others walk away, which in cat language translates roughly to, "Talk to the tail."



What else fun can we do for an hour? Leave a suggestion as a comment! We would like to pick things on a regular basis. If a suggestion if inspiring to you and you complete one of the activities, be sure to send us a pic!

Create an LOLcat

For tonight's fun, we decided to create our own LOLcat. If you're not familiar with LOLcats, it's basically a web phenomenon by which people take pictures of cats and then add humorous captions. Generally, the captions are from the perspective of cats, which presumably would make various spelling and grammatical errors if they could type. The leading site for this (of which Jim and Bailey are enthusiastic fans) is called icanhascheezburger.com.

To create our LOLcat, we flipped through some photos of our own kitties, Sotheby and Trillian. As it turned out, Bailey had taken a perfect photo of Sotheby. So, we put that up on the screen and spent a few minutes coming up with various captions. In the end, we selected Wendi's contribution, and then we all took a few minutes to ensure that it was appropriately grammatically incorrect. In the end, our LOLcat was as follows:

We were all quite pleased with it, and we submitted it to icanhascheezburger.com, in hopes that they'll post it for all to enjoy. If they do, we'll link to it here. :-)

What else fun can we do for an hour? Leave a suggestion as a comment! We would like to pick things on a regular basis. If a suggestion if inspiring to you and you complete one of the activities, be sure to send us a pic!

Create a Mind Map!

Today we learned a fun and creative way to organize thoughts. We've heard the term "mind-map" before, but never really looked into understanding what it is about. Well, our friend @Jaymes Peluso-Hoffman posted a link on his Facebook page about mind-maps making people smarter. Who doesn't want to be smarter, right?! So, we checked it out and ended up spending some time creating some personal mind-maps, ourselves!

Here's the video Jaymes shared:



In the video, Tony Buzan talks about mind-mapping a bit (he created the concept), and explains that no one's brain works in the list-making way like we are taught to organize our thoughts in a school setting. He brings color and curves to thinking, which is then organized in a fluid, colorful, beautiful way on blank paper. We liked the idea, but wanted to find out more. So, we did some searching on YouTube and found a lot of helpful videos to understand the process for creating a mind-map for ourselves.

Here's one of the videos we watched to get a bit more understanding about the process of mind-mapping:



So, armed with colored pencils and pens, we went to work on mind-mapping some projects we've been working on. For Jim and Wendi, this involved mind-mapping some projects we are currently tackling for our Pure Jeevan site. For our child, Bailey, this involved mind-mapping for an essay assignment for a writing class. You'd be surprised, as Bailey was, how incredibly fun and useful this can be for creating an outline for an essay!

Here's an image we found on GoogleImages of a mind-map about mind-mapping!.



This was a fun, educational, and very productive way to tackle some larger tasks. It's a creative tool we'll continue using, also! Try it and let us know what you think (and if you've already been mind-mapping, share some of your experiences and maps with us)!

What else fun can we do for an hour? Leave a suggestion as a comment! We would like to pick things on a regular basis. If a suggestion if inspiring to you and you complete one of the activities, be sure to send us a pic!

Find the Lighter Side of a Darker Situation

We didn't quite have a pre-planned hour of fun today, but we wanted to post here, anyway, for two reasons: (1) We really want to make a habit out of posting here at least every week day (because having fun is something we're interested in making habit of), and (2) Sometimes "life" happens to you, making it necessary to change your original plans.

Today we wound up in the Emergency Room for nine hours! Nothing too serious... everyone is fine. But, nine hours is quite a span of time to spend in a place like that. We thought it might be fun, if also somewhat mischievous, to editorialize a bit while we had the opportunity. So, we snapped two photos during the visit. Ever wonder what's for sale in hospital vending machines? Well, here's the answer:

Well, we suppose some credit is due for at least putting the bottled fruit juices in a prime visual spot, and for listing the more heart-healthy snack items. However, to tell you the truth, most people seemed to be opting for Cokes and Snickers bars.

Another "fun"-ish thing Jim did was to engage a stranger in a weird conversation -- which probably could be its own post someday. Jim says he was regaled with one old man's wild tales of inventive car destruction stories (cars swinging from ropes, cars being drawn and quartered, and other bizarre uses of cranes and automotive machinery) and one intriguingly grim memory from the man's childhood, in which the (then) young lad rolled down a hill into a cemetery and landed in a grave!

In any case, there was no "fun" fun (i.e., planned fun) carried out today, but we'll be back Monday with something else! And speaking of that...

What else fun can we do for an hour? Leave a suggestion as a comment! We would like to pick things on a regular basis. If a suggestion if inspiring to you and you complete one of the activities, be sure to send us a pic!

Find Organic Vegetable Seeds

It's nearly April, so we decided that our fun for the day would be an outing to find some organic, heirloom vegetable seeds. We asked around in Portland, and our friend Ann Chatterton recommended that we visit the Urban Farm Store. If we'd had more time, we could easily have walked to this place, as it's probably only a mile or so from our home!

We pulled up and saw the sign outside:



Inside, it was pretty neat. They had a nice book & magazine section (part of it shown below in the picture). ...

... and, there were the seeds!



(Actually, they had many more than what's shown above! Most were organic, heirloom, and/or other desirable kinds (such as one heirloom brand that depends on people who save their seeds).

The store is actually deceptively large inside. Here are a few more pictures:

A small area for seed starts:

A peek inside one of their chicken areas: (They had several -- with chickens, ducks, and other small urban farm animals.)



Here's a funky chicken that came to say hello.



In the end, here's what we purchased:

We bought organic, heirloom seeds for:romaine lettuce, spinach, zucchini, swiss chard, beets, onions, cukes, carrots, peas, cilantro, and basil. At the suggestion of an employe there, we also bought the booklet shown above, which goes into great detail about the specifics of our particular climate / planting zone. As Portland newbees, we figured this was a good investment.

We look forward to getting outside and getting a lot of this into the ground *very* soon! We also plan to return to this store to purchase some blueberry bushes and other edibles. Did you know, for example, that you can grow kiwi fruit in Portland?! We had no idea.

What else fun can we do for an hour? Leave a suggestion as a comment! We would like to pick things on a regular basis. If a suggestion if inspiring to you and you complete one of the activities, be sure to send us a pic!

Watch Something on Hulu

Today's fun activity is something we're cramming in at the last minute, as we've had a busy day! We currently do not own a television set and, during periods when we have owned one, we would rarely watch any television programs (and especially not the news!). Mainly, we have historically used televisions only for watching rented videos and DVDs.

Once we finish restoring our new home, we'll likely purchase a television set again -- but, as before, only for watching DVDs. One thing we've learned since giving our last television away is that there is a world of entertainment available online. Most people know about YouTube, of course. But, many forget about sites like Hulu.com, where thousands of movies and television shows can be watched for free.

While Hulu *is* advertising-supported, the ads are usually much more brief than they would be on television, which translates into less time wasted. So, we've returned to following a few select programs. For example, we like Outsourced, The Office, and Parks & Recreation (recommended by our friends Melissa & Dave Sokulski). We also used to love a program called Dead Like Me (recommended by our friends Danny & Kathy Living), but we watched them all. We've also been known to watch Glee.

Tonight, we're just going to check out some random show for an hour -- if only to relax and unwind from a long day. We'll be watching "Three Moons Over Milford," which looks to be "okay" (perhaps not great, but a mindless, quirky drama that probably fits our needs this evening).

What else fun can we do for an hour? Leave a suggestion as a comment! We would like to pick things on a regular basis. If a suggestion if inspiring to you and you complete one of the activities, be sure to send us a pic!

Take a Stained Glass Class

Tonight's fun activity was to attend a class that we've been taking on making stained glass. We've studied two methods so far: (1) copper foil, and (2) leaded glass. Below is a leaded glass window that we finished up tonight. Wendi designed this as a window insert for a built-in cabinet in our dining room. (Not the best picture in the world, as it's resting on a piece of foam we have lying about for another project, but at least you can see it.) Below, we'll write some more about the process!

Leaded glass, as sown, uses lead channels (called cames) to hold your glass pieces in place. You then solder the lead pieces together to create your window. It's actually fairly simple and easy to learn. It does require various tools but, if you're lucky (like we were), you'll find a local workshop that makes most of these things available. Aside from the tools, you also of course need to purchase your glass. (And, yes, that can get pricey -- or, "spendy" as they say here in Portland.)

One of the neat things about working with glass is learning just how easy it is to cut it -- just score it and ... snap! In fact, it's so easy that, when we replaced some of the 100-year-old windows in our kitchen recently, we thought, "Hey, let's take that old glass from those rotted windows and reuse it somehow." So, all of the clear glass in the window shown above is actually original glass from our home, which adds to the character and meaning of that new decorative element.

Below is an example of the copper foil technique (Jim's crow, completed a few weeks ago in class). Note that, in general, copper foil allows more detail (smaller pieces) than lead. With this technique, you cut your pieces out and then wrap them with a copper foil (which is like a very thin, metallic ribbon with a copper side and a sticky side). It's fairly simple -- just wrap the pieces by sticking the sticky side to the glass, and then solder it all together.

Anyway, sure, there's a little more to it all, but we'll leave it to you to learn in a class if you're drawn to it (or, feel free to ask us).

What else fun can we do for an hour? Leave a suggestion as a comment! We would like to pick things on a regular basis. If a suggestion if inspiring to you and you complete one of the activities, be sure to send us a pic!

Visit an Herb Shop

Today's fun activity was to seek out an herb shop. We were surprised to learn that there are many of them near our home. One of the neater ones nearby is called Limbo, and they offer many hundreds of herbs, spices, and teas, all housed in large, gallon-sized jars and mostly priced by the ounce. Everything's arranged alphabetically. To give an idea of the size of the place, here's a shot of the A section and part of the B section:



We spent 20-30 minutes browsing the aisles. I got a kick out of this one, which advised caution in opening the jar. This particular habanero pepper powder was the hottest one they had:



In the end, we spent about $13. We don't normally intend to spend money on these fun projects, but we decided that we needed/wanted a few things. We bought some fennel seeds, some cardamom pods (and a bit of powder), a little vanilla powder, some patchouli powder (not sure what we'll do with that), and a small bag of catnip for the cat.



There was one other really great herb shop we found, but we wanted to save discussion of that one for our other blog that deals with health and nutrition, as that shop sold quite a lot of rare medicinal herbs.

What else fun can we do for an hour? Leave a suggestion as a comment! We would like to pick things on a regular basis. If a suggestion if inspiring to you and you complete one of the activities, be sure to send us a pic!

Write a Haiku

Today's fun activity idea, thanks to Bailey, was to write haiku. We went with the basic definition: three lines of verse, using five, then seven, then five syllables. (If you want to know more about this poetic form, check out this Wikipedia article.) To make the activity even more fun, Bailey suggested that we all pick some images from the Internet, and then all write about the ones we chose. So, we each picked three images, and then spent about five minutes writing about them. Here are the results:

Bailey's images:



Bailey's Haiku response:

This was quite a dare.

Your friends watch and cheer as you

Rush to your demise.

Wendi's Haiku response:

"Escape"
Pedal to metal.

Fleeing the concrete jungle,

If only in mind.

Jim's Haiku response:

Watch airborne rednecks

Risk death and dismemberment
On television.

Jim's Haiku response:

The natural world

Can be made twice as fetching
Using Photoshop.

Wendi's images:

[photo from the Facebook page of Wendi's friend Hinton Harrison]

Bailey's Haiku response:

That image is odd.

I am quite disturbed by it.

I hate politics.

Wendi's Haiku response:

"Politics"

Taking and preaching.

A messy cacophony,

Killing of nature.

Jim's Haiku response:

Politicians bore,
Both as people, as well as
Artistic subjects.

[photo from the Facebook page of Wendi's friend Crystal Soulfire Evolution]

Bailey's Haiku response:

How dare they do that!

One should not shine a light here.

Vampires live here!

Jim's Haiku response:

What turns Martians on?
Aliens love anal probes.
Stay out of the woods.

[photo from the Facebook page of Wendi's friend Oliver Foli]

Bailey's Haiku response:

I can't see your skirt.
Is that why you hung yourself?

Because you lost it.

The chair was here to

Stop you from hitting the ground.

What was the board for?

Wendi's Haiku response:

"Swinging from a Rope"

As the platform falls,

I admire my sense of style:

I give good dangle.

Jim's Haiku response:

The camera still
Recording captures one girl's
Final, tragic, gaffe.

Jim's images:

Wendi's Haiku response:

"Jimi"

Soulful connection.

I can make your spirit soar;

Feel my vibration.

Jim's Haiku response:

South-pawed pinoeer,
Sixties' leading shepherd of
Psychedelia.

[photo by E.J. Bellocq, 1873-1949, who photographed many women in the red light district of New Orleans in the early 1900s]

Wendi's Haiku response:

"Drink to Another John"

Working it early,

I'm waiting as you arrive,

Then it's bottoms up.

Jim's Haiku response:

You must be thirsty...
One can only imagine,
Toasting vertigo.

Bailey's Haiku response:

That's it, Sir Outlet!

My sharp knife will kill you now!

You've shocked me enough!

My papa told me

Not to stick things in outlets.

Will I prove him wring?

Jim's Haiku response:

This boy will soon learn
What killed the household tabby:
Curiosity!

Thanks, Bailey, for your "What Should I Do?" suggestion! If anyone else would like to add a fun suggestion for something that can be done in under an hour, with minimal to no expense, please share your idea with us! (Just remember to please keep suggestions no more than PG-13 level or so!) If you find yourself having fun doing one of the suggestions posted here on "What Should I Do," we'd love to see a photo of, and hear about, your fun time!

Finger Paint

Our friend Kristen Piatkowski Shovlin suggested that we finger paint. We decided to also participate in "Earth Hour," an activity meant to draw attention to power consumption awareness in the world. So, we powered down everything in the house, lit up some tea candles, and commenced finger painting.

Here's the table...



Here's some pics of Wendi startng out, in progress, and her final creation:

Here's a similar set for Jim:

What else fun can we do for an hour? Leave a suggestion as a comment! We would like to pick things on a regular basis. If a suggestion if inspiring to you and you complete one of the activities, be sure to send us a pic!