Author: iampotassium

Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit eating gluten…

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(Oven) Mitt Nomney did his job of helping me get the hot pan out of the oven and now he wants some breakfast bars as payment!

So some of you may know this but I love eating. I would eat even if we didn’t have to to survive. I also eat pretty much everything, even if it’s something I claim I don’t like. If I am hungry enough, I will probably eat it. Really, the only surefire way to keep me from eating something (if you are Cobalt trying to protect your food from the hungry Potassium for example), is to eat something that could kill me or makes my stomach hurt a lot. Basically, that leaves the nuts that I am allergic to (pistachios and cashews) as the only foods I will definitely not eat. Pork makes my stomach hurt but sometimes ham and bacon are just so delicious that I will even steal a bite of those things.

Okay, we are getting majorly off topic here – the point is that I love eating but I also am realizing how important it is to be aware of what I am eating. I’ve been noticing that I kind of just shove food in my mouth all the time without thinking about how many other bagels I’ve already eaten today or how I should probably not eat this entire block of cheese (or I do the “T-rex” when Cobalt and I make pot roast for dinner – eating waaaaay more than I should because it’s so freakin’ good, I can’t stop). So I was thinking about diets like the paleo diet and gluten free diets where people just totally abolish certain food groups from their life (though sometimes the gluten free diet is necessary for those friends with celiac disease). I am not sure I could force myself to stop eating such tastiness like cheese and bread and rice completely but I think I like the idea of thinking about how MUCH tastiness like cheese and bread go into my body every day. So as I was pondering all these diets and what my life would be like if I stopped eating all that tastiness, I had a horrible thought cross my mind. WHAT WOULD I EAT FOR BREAKFAST?!?!?!

So breakfast is really important to me, partially because I get hangry (hungry/angry) if I don’t eat regularly. If I fail to eat breakfast though, I get hangry and super out of it and it’s just bad. In general though, most of the breakfast foods I eat would not be allowed for someone on the paleo diet. So I went on a mission to learn about what people on the paleo diet eat for breakfast and I found this delicious recipe for Blackberry Breakfast Bars which are: gluten free, dairy free, and paleo appropriate. Then I went to the store and got all the ingredients and made them. Here are some pictures from my adventures:

Yay! I found all the ingredients (either after digging through our cabinets in the kitchen to find them or running through the store to find them)!

I decided to make my own coconut flour out of coconut chunks – mostly because all of this was really spontaneous and it was actually kind of late on a weeknight and I didn’t feel like driving to the health food store to get coconut flour. However, it turned out to be really easy to do once I figured out how to work the food processor.

The final product cooling on the stove! It was delicious. Tasted like banana bread with blackberries and coconut in it. If you had fed them to me, I never would have guessed that they weren’t your typical flour and milk type banana bread bars. Yum.

All in all I think it was a good adventure for me because 1) it really did make me think about all the food groups and what I eat every day and 2) it was actually really good even though it was slightly more of a pain to track ingredients down for. In conclusion, I’m probably never going to switch to a diet like the paleo diet but I appreciate the recipes for forcing me to think about the amount of carbs, milk, etc I put in my body.

What do you think? Are you on a diet like the paleo diet or other diet? How did you give up cheese (and bread?! Think of the bagels!!!!)? Would you ever consider going on a diet like that? What is your favorite kind of food?

It’s crazy out there!

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My apologies for not posting more recently. I’ve been ridiculously busy both with work (exciting things happening, though not on the graduation front sadly – turns out that science is hard ;) – but I might have some exciting trips later this year!) and with life. Cobalt and I have a new years resolution called “Operation Go For It!” which has definitely taken some planning to put into effect (and we’re still not done yet) but it’s going to be epic. A hint – I just signed up for a French class through a community continuing education program here in Boulder… I am excited. My French is ridiculously rusty (and it’s more like ‘Franish’ because I can’t say a sentence in Spanish or French without putting a word from the other language in there… actually some people might say that my English is like that too, littered with random French and Spanish words… I’m weird). Maybe I will write a full post about Operation Go For It later. Unfortunately, this is just a post to tell you that I’m not dead and now I have to get back to work… :p

Picture: This picture is from my first year of grad school. On a randomly warm day in the middle of a pretty cold winter, my friend P and I went to the park near my apartment to try to fly a kite. I brought my camera because I was documenting everything then (more so than now… I know… it’s hard to believe) and somehow the settings got messed up for this picture P took of me and the kite. I actually like it this way… it totally sums up how I’m feeling right now (excited but also so busy that I am all blurry).

What are you up to? Any crazy schemes for new years resolutions? How are those going by the way? Did you make some earlier this month and stick to them or are they already falling apart? It’s hard…

Three to go…

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Cobalt and I have a tradition where we like to see all of the movies nominated for best picture before the Oscars. In general, seeing all of the movies up for best picture ensures you’ve seen the majority of movies in many of the other categories. It makes watching the Oscars really fun when you feel like you have an idea about the movies that are up (and it’s also hilarious because they always play THE WORST clip from all the movies so we can always shake our heads sadly at that too). I really like it too because it exposes me to movies I wouldn’t have otherwise seen that I ended up really liking (take The Descendants from last year’s Oscars). Anyway, this year we did a pretty good job guessing which movies would be up for best picture and ended up having seen 5 out of the 9 nominated before the list got announced last Thursday morning. The 4 remaining were: Argo (which we just saw this weekend, as you can see in the picture), Les Miz, Zero Dark Thirty, and Amour. Amour is going to prove to be the hardest to see because, as of Sunday night when I checked out my Fandango app, it is not playing anywhere in a 250 mile radius from us… Woooooo… This year we also miraculously saw all 5 movies up for best animated feature before the announcement came out too…. that never happens…

Anyway, do you have any fun traditions like this? Do you watch the Oscars? Have you seen any of the movies up for best picture? Which ones do you like? Do you want any recommendations? Cobalt and I really liked Beasts of the Southern Wild (it’s already on DVD/Blu Ray so you should check it out) and Silver Linings Playbook. Lincoln and Argo weren’t too bad either (though I found Argo REALLY stressful…). Actually all of the movies we’ve seen so far are good. It’s a tough race this year…. Leave me a comment if you want to know if you should see one of the 6 movies we’ve seen and I’ll give you a little summary/tell you my thoughts on it. :)

Look at this cat

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Yesterday I was going through my recent pictures when I came across all these adorable pictures I took of my family’s cat when Cobalt and I were in California for the holidays. This one is by far my favorite of the 50 or so I took of her… She just looks so regal. I had originally wanted to photograph her because she’s all fluffed up for winter and she looks adorable. I think you can see some of her puffiness in this pic.
In case you are unconvinced about how soft and cute this cat is or if up close cat pictures scare you, here’s another picture of her being similarly adorable/puffy/soft:

Thoughts? I love being a crazy photographer with the cats when I’m home because 1) they are interesting subjects to photograph and 2) then I can look at them when I’m feeling homesick throughout the year (this happens a lot). One day Cobalt and I are going to get ourselves a cute kitty but until then, I guess we’ll be okay with our stuffed shark friends… :-/

Cobalt, Potassium, and Finn, Christmas 2012… This was shot using my infrared remote for my DSLR… You can even see it in this picture. Look how tiny… Don’t you want one for your DSLR?

Do you have pets? Tell me about them! Show me pictures! I love animals. When I was a kid, I wanted to be a vet or a marine biologist (not sure how I ended up in grad school studying biochemistry now, looking back…). Even though I grew up with pet cats, I worked at a vet in high school and had college roommates (one of them is the reason why I met Cobalt) with multiple pet reptiles (a story for another day). These events have not only continued my love of pretty much all pets (cats, dogs, snakes, hamsters, bunnies, etc) but also taught me how to take care of them. Cobalt, you better watch out or you might come home one day to a house full of creatures! ;)

Dragons and Whales

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With some of my Christmas money, I bought myself some Japanese ink wash painting brushes to allow myself to continue acquiring fun arts and crafts tools and learn how to use them. I got this sweet set of two brushes, an ink stone (a suzuri), and an ink stick from Amazon – perfect for a beginning artist. It arrived on Friday so I stayed up waaaaaaaaay too late painting on newsprint. In a high school art class, we learned how to paint dragons using this technique so I used my 10 year old memories and had fun. It turned out that painting with these brushes and then using my pen and ink set to add in small details worked out pretty well. Above and below and some fun pictures of my art. I like it. Can’t wait to spend more time improving my skills!

Do you like doing arts and crafts? What projects are you currently working on? Are you like me and you are too ADD to just have one project going at once? What is your favorite medium to work with? Apparently my answer to that question is all of them because I am currently jumping around between drawing, photography, using my Wacom drawing tablet, painting, sewing (I got this awesome book for Christmas with all these cute patterns…), crocheting (still have my top secret crocheting project…), etc. That’s the life of a grad student – you are so busy every day that you have to find something to help you relax. I am finding that doing random creative projects like these really help me! :)

Fun with Air Swimmers!

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Whew! Back from vacation! Cobalt and I had an epic time visiting both our families and having double Christmases (note: double Christmas was really awesome – it was great to see both of our families and share Christmas traditions with both of them – minus all the traveling involved to make it happen)! We also had a little party at our house in Colorado for New Years. It was so good to see some of our friends that we don’t usually see for that too. Yay holidays!

Anyway, Cobalt and I brought an Air Swimmer shark for our niece and nephew when we went to visit his family. We had a lot of fun setting it up for them, especially as the Air Swimmer shark also turned out to be HUGE, probably about the size of our niece. In fact, she had trouble holding onto him by herself. Also, the instructions warned us that the Air Swimmer had not been tested to fly above 4000 ft above sea level and we were higher than 7000 feet! But in the end, we got him properly set up and he actually flew pretty well. The kids and I took him down to the basement of Cobalt’s mom’s house so we could play with him. Here are some pictures from the fun!

A and Finn watching Cobalt blow up the Air Swimmer…

A and the Air Swimmer downstairs…

C and the Air Swimmer. He was really great at maneuvering the Air Swimmer. We decided that all those video games make for good practice for making Air Swimmers swim!

The kids stole my camera when I was playing with the Air Swimmer so there’s me!

We loved this… When you are done playing with the Air Swimmer, you can dock him to the remote control so he doesn’t fly away (by the way, in the FAQ on the Air Swimmers website, it says to not play with your Air Swimmer outside because it will fly away and you will be sad… we liked that part too!).

Anyway, this guy was REALLY fun to play with! I highly recommend getting one for you or for a kid in your life. :):)

How were the holidays for you? Any awesome presents? Talk to me! I’ve missed you guys!

The IceMan14 Cometh…

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Yesterday, the day that Cobalt and I already had to get up at 4:30 am to catch a plane to leave for the holidays, was the day when Colorado finally decided to give us some snow. Needless to say getting to the airport on time and then actually leaving the airport was a bit of an adventure. First of all, we had to walk to the bus stop with all our luggage in the snow. Then we had to ride the crazy crowded bus on the crazy slippery roads to the airport. Once there, the jetway to get to our plane was not heated so we had to bundle back up to get on the plane. We boarded the plane on time but then we had to wait for people from connecting flights to land and get on our plane. Then we had to wait for their luggage to get on the plane… I watched it all happen sleepily from my window seat at the front of the plane while Cobalt grumpily tried to sleep. By the time we FINALLY had all the passengers and their luggage aboard, we had to take the plane to get deiced. I am from California so plane deicing is not something I see very often. I thought it was crazy to watch and sneakily snapped a few photos of the plane next to us and our plane getting deiced. Craziness. The title comes from the fact that the truck that was involved in the deicing of our side of the plane was IceMan14. I think the truck on the other side was IceMan4…

It’s supposed to snow on the day we head back to Colorado too so you might get to read about more snow/ice traveling adventures sooner than later…

Anyway, Cobalt and I are officially on holiday break for a while so if my posts aren’t regular it’s probably because I am reading/eating/sleeping/doing crafts/spending time with Cobalt and family/etc. I hope you all have wonderful holidays! Stay warm and dry! :)

A Beautiful Sight

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I’ve been working a lot recently in preparation for taking time off for the holidays. Yesterday morning, I got the pleasure of watching the sun rise and hit the flatirons over Boulder just right. It was breathtaking…

Thanks Instagram for helping me capture the moment (PS – I’m doing a photo a day challenge this month on Instagram. Want to follow my pictures? It’s easy! I’m Iampotassium of course…) :)

I hope you all have lovely weekends! Anyone getting snow?

Stars!

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Today’s fun with lights post involves stars! So now basically, I turned all my out of focus light into star shapes (instead of those pointy starbursts from Tuesday’s post). This is also done by messing with the aperture on a prime (non zoom) lens. Basically, I cut out a star shape on cardstock and taped it in front of my lens. Then I used a really wide aperture (refer to this lovely picture from Wikipedia if you need to refresh your memory from Tuesday – the top is a wide aperture and the bottom is a narrow aperture) to take all these pictures. This wide aperture + the star in front means that all of the out of focus light turned into the shape of stars instead of circles.

Anyway, below are some other fun examples of stars. The top is my Christmas lights again.

So I’m not sure how many of you know that I play trombone but I do (I used to play it a lot more in high school and college… boo grad school eating up all my time)! Here is my trombone covered in stars:

Fun with tealights and mirrors, part 1:

Fun with tealights and mirrors, part 2:

Yay! Shapes! What shape should I try next? My friend Jem has done this with music notes! Super cool idea! Do you guys have any fun plans for this weekend? This is my last full week in lab before Cobalt and I escape for the holidays so I will probably be working… :p

Fun with Christmas Lights!

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I’ve decided that today’s and Thursday’s posts will be full of fun with lights! Today we focus on Christmas lights! I bought some purple Christmas lights (though they look red in these pictures…) this weekend and put them up around mine and Cobalt’s office. So immediately, the camera came out and I had to play with various settings. Today we are exploring starbursts! I briefly talked about them last week in my post about A but here’s how it works. If you have a prime lens (so it doesn’t zoom) and you set your aperture really narrow (= a small hole in the lens), any out of focus light will be the shape of the petals of the aperture (Click here for a picture of a large (top) and small (bottom) aperture from Wikipedia). So the smaller the aperture, the more starbursty the out of focus light becomes. It’s kind of fun to play with…

Anyway, here are a few more pictures of me playing with my Christmas lights…

Those of you who are my friends on Facebook have probably seen this one by now (It’s a self portrait taken with my awwwwesome remote control for my camera… TOTALLY worth the extra cash btw for those of you who are thinking of purchasing DSLRs… makes family pictures during the holidays SUPER fun/easy):

More starbursts:

Getting these Christmas lights was actually one of the highlights of my weekend. Life has been fairly ridiculous for us lately so anything that I can do to make our office/house more relaxing/comforting/etc is a huuuuge plus.

Tell me how you feel about Christmas lights! Do you like them? Hate them? How much is too much? I’ve seen a lot of people wrapping Christmas lights around just the tree trunks in their front yards this year… I’ve gotta tell you that I’m not so sure I’m a fan. It looks like a lit up post in the middle of a dark yard… :-/

Speaking of Christmas lights, here is my favorite picture I took with Instagram in downtown Denver this weekend: