Author: iampotassium

Soaring back to photography

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Last weekend was full of fun and friends! We got to see a bunch of friends we haven't seen in a while and there was much catching up. Speaking of catching up, I also got to the chance to catch up with my DSLR (and my photography friends here in Boulder too). My poor Nikon D80 hasn't been on a shooting adventure in ages so this weekend, we headed up a trail by our houses and took our cameras for a spin.
It was interesting trying to get the creative juices flowing after not doing shooting adventures in a while. I definitely have gotten better at using my camera (I was shooting in manual mode the whole time and was decent at figuring out good settings for the lighting conditions around) but I was thinking waaaaay too much instead of just taking pictures! Part of it is that I really want my pictures to have a signature or a particular style. I feel like right now my pictures are just pictures. I want people to look at my pictures and go "yeah… Potassium took these pictures…" but I don't know how to do that. I guess just keep taking pictures… No more months between photo outings for me!

So yeah… this picture. I was creeping up to these birds in a bush (they were totally aware of me so I wouldn't actually call it "creeping" I guess…) and they kept hopping farther away from me. Eventually, they got tired of my seemingly endless interest in them and this one took off, conveniently flying past my friend G on the way. I like that G is not totally in focus, but enough in focus that you can get his facial expression…

What do you guys think? How do you get a "signature" for your art? How do you keep working at your hobby when you aren't feeling super creative? :)

A Presidents’ Day Urban Legend!

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Hello! In honor of Presidents’ Day, I thought I would share a President Urban Legend with you… see what you think…
George Washington was really a vampire. Look at this picture! See how he holds his mouth… Some say that his mouth was uncomfortable because he had wooden teeth but that’s actually not true! Actually, he is attempting to hide his fangs from view. But if you look carefully, you can see his left fang peeking out from under his lip in this picture… No it was not photoshopped. Check your dollar bills, people!
Anyway, it makes sense, right? Think about it some more… The picture of him standing so stoically on that icy crossing of the Delaware river… What mere human could withstand the cold like that?! Clearly he was a vampire…
Fun, yeah?

Okay now it’s your turn. What crazy urban legends do you know* about our presidents?

*In case you were unaware, I totally made that one about George Washington up so you can do the same with your urban legends. Let’s celebrate our presidents by coming up with silly stories about them! :)

Things I love

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In honor of Valentine’s Day being this week, I decided to make a list of things that I love. This is probably going to be part one in a series of posts because I love a lot of things but I just can’t think about them all right now. So part one goes like this:

  1. The obvious ones
    a) My family

    Every year we take a bunch of family portraits in front of the Christmas tree after Christmas eve mass. It used to be my dad’s job to take the pictures but since I got my happy DSLR with its fancy infrared remote (perfect for self portraits), now it’s my job. Yay! Anyway, love ma family. :)

    b) Cobalt

    This is one of our engagement pictures taken by Holly Carlyle. Love it. Love you too Cobalt. :)

    c) Cobalt’s family

    Yay I get double family now by marrying Cobalt! It is super exciting and happy. :) Now I get a niece, a nephew, a big sister, and another mom. Happy. Anyway, this pic is a pic of Cobalt and the previously mentioned niece and nephew with the crazy snowman we built. That’s right. He has 3 faces, two arms, 8 tentacle legs, and a pet penguin. We’re odd.

  2. Brushing my teeth
    I know this sounds weird but I really like it. I can feel my little teethys getting all clean and my mouth always feels so fresh afterwards.

  3. Going on adventures

    I love going on adventures – big and small. Sometimes Cobalt and I just roam around Boulder county with cameras to photograph anything interesting. We also like to explore the state of Colorado. I’d say we’re doing pretty good so far but I think the southwestern corner needs more adventures. Really, it doesn’t matter what state (or country hopefully someday) the adventure is in; as long as I am adventuring, everything is good. This picture is from when we went to an alligator farm in southern Colorado! Awwww… look at that little guy.

  4. Soft, fuzzy things

    So I like things that are soft. A lot. It helps if they’re fuzzy and warm too but really, give me something soft like a blanket, Cobalt’s hair, stuffed animals, clean sheets, and I’m happy. Basically if I’m sad, give me something soft to cheer me up. This picture on top is a pic of my oviraptor (I got him from the airport – definitely an impulse purchase) in this giant sweatshirt that I stole from Cobalt that I sleep in almost every night. The pic on the bottom is me cuddling with giant stuffed (and fuzzy) sharks – Gustav and Fernando (Fernando belongs to my friend A but I needed a double shark cuddle).

  5. Sports – soccer especially
    So I’ve played soccer since the youngest age I could possibly play (I think 4?). There is something about the feeling of my cleats digging into the grass that is incredibly satisfying to me (reason #1 why I hate indoor soccer – no cleats and no grass… booo). I also love the feeling of charging after the ball and how focused I get when I am trying to work out a play in my head. Yay soccer…

  6. Water
    I loooooove water. Swimming pools, showers, baths, hot springs, waterfalls, snowmelted freezing water, etc. Most of the time, I feel like I was born to be in the water. Funny story about that though, I don’t like being wet. So as soon as I get out of the water, I wish I was instantly dry.

  7. Food
    I love food. I could eat food all day. I more or less DO eat food all day. Your guess is as good as mine why I am not the size of an elephant by now… :-/

  8. Taking macro pictures of tiny things

    As you have probably figured out, I kind of love taking pictures of everything but taking pictures of tiny things (especially if they are fuzzy) is a particular habit of mine. The macro mode on my point and shoot is pretty much my favorite mode on that camera. Eventually I will buy a macro lens for my DSLR too. Watch out world… Macro everything!

This pretty much concludes the first “Things I love” list. Obviously there will be more later because I can already see some glaring holes in this list! What are some of the things you love?

Registry excitement and woes

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This weekend, Cobalt and I got some more wedding stuff done. One of the main things we did was head to Bed Bath and Beyond (from now on this = B3) so we could scan in stuff for our registry. Now I can tell you we have had some good times and some bad times with this registry business, which is the topic of today’s post. Registries… Why are they so complicated? There are so many things that we want but then there are so many different brands and so many different stores that sell them for so many different prices! How do you narrow down what you want? Seriously. That is Question number one. I mean for ordinary things like cutting boards or spaghetti scoops – why are there so many brands? They all do the same thing, right? Also, there are so many brands for more complicated things like rice cookers or knife sets but we have been mostly using our friends (especially our friend the internet) to give us good suggestions (or reviews in the case of the internet) for those things. So there you have it, for question one – let us know your favorite brand for kitchen stuff (fancy stuff like rice cookers and non fancy stuff like spatulas), flatware sets (why are there so many different kinds?!), etc. Now it’s time for

Question number two
So originally, Cobalt and I were thinking B3 and Target would be nice stores for our registries – Target could be a cheaper option for guests who love us but don’t have the funds to pay for anything crazy. But now that we are into the fray we have noticed two things:

  1. Target’s website has caused us nothing but trouble. When we first tried to register, it wouldn’t let us enter our e-mail address and then once we went to the store to register, the website didn’t make it easy for us to see our registry and edit it online, which makes our life hard. Plus, half the stuff we scanned at Target ended up being on Clearance so it won’t be available for our guests to purchase and the other half was only available to purchase in stores, which makes it hard for those people who like doing their shopping online (Potassium, for example).
  2. B3 has a nice variety of prices. We have things on the registry now that range from like $5 to $250 so it seems that anyone wanting to get us something could find something in their price range from B3. Also, we have been able to find almost everything we want at B3…

So now what do you guys think? Should we just say SCREW YOU TARGET and have one registry at B3 (even though it doesn’t have everything on our list?) Should we just hang in there with Target? ORRRRR should we bring Amazon into the picture for the previously Target-listed items? Do you have a favorite store for registries? Discuss (along with question one up there)…

FINALLY…
Question number three
Cobalt and I are hard pressed to find an awesome comforter anywhere we’ve looked. Target, B3, etc. Nothing really caught our eyes as the most amazing and soft and warm comforter ever, which of course is the one we want. Who loves their comforter and wants to tell us where to register for ours?

Okay. So. To sum these these questions up for you guys
Topic: registries

  1. What brands do you like (kitchen stuff, kitchen machines, flatware sets)?
  2. Target and B3? Only B3? B3 and Amazon? or B3 and ………???
  3. Where do they sell awesome comforters?

Today’s picture – colorful sake from one of our favorite restaurants around here. We have not registered for these but maybe some people do (I just don’t think we drink enough sake to need our own).

Also, for those of you interested in actually getting stuff on our registry, we will post the finished versions on our wedding website when we are ready. :)

I am what a scientist looks like

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You should check out this Tumblr blog called This is what a Scientist Looks Like because it is my new favorite blog. The goal of the blog is to show that anyone can be a scientist, regardless of gender, race, etc. It shows that scientists can have a variety of hobbies (like photography for example) and obsessions (like my love of sharks :-/) even though they also love science. Yay! I find this so empowering… Let’s get away from the stereotype that all scientists are white men with frizzy hair in lab coats and glasses, people! :)

Shark girl says: Have a good weekend!

Biscuit Success!

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Last weekend, I decided to attempt to make buttermilk biscuits. These are pretty much my favorite biscuit of all times but every time I have tried to make them in the past they don’t turn out as fluffy and delicious as the buttermilk biscuits you find in restaurants. Luckily, I have this crazy sense of hope that keeps me from giving up in these situations. You should see me in lab – I am always excited and hopeful when I repeat experiments that have failed multiple times in the past. I just think maybe this time everything will be different and I will get cool results. Note: usually it’s not different and I don’t get cool results but oh well… that’s grad school for you. Anyway, the point here is that I am excited and hopeful every time I redo a previously failed activity and I don’t know if that is a good skill to have or not but it worked here. Look at these puffy biscuits. And since you can only see a picture of the biscuits (and not taste them), I will tell you about them. They are perfect – so light and fluffy. I would have eaten the whole batch in one sitting but I had to share some with Cobalt too… Yumminess.
Thanks to our friends Chocolate Pudding and Millionaire Space Accountant for giving us the cookbook with the winning buttermilk biscuits recipe! :)

Ooo thanks! My FAVORite!

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Hello friends and welcome to Wedding Wednesday! Today’s post (if you didn’t guess) is about wedding favors! Cobalt and I have been searching for the perfect favor for our guests and we want to know your thoughts!
We have been thinking about making crochet fortune cookies as our favors – with the fortune listing our names and the date. I realize this would be adding to my plate of things to do but I actually quite like crocheting and I actually also quite like the idea of giving my hands something constructive to do when I get stressed out (with work or wedding planning or both… you know how it goes). Also, I am thinking about calling out the cavalry and giving the pattern to anyone who knows how to crochet (if this is you, let me know!) and we can have a crochet fortune cookie making party (and Cobalt has already suggested that he be in charge of making the fortune part)! :D
Anyway, what I really want to know from you guys is what is your opinion on wedding favors? I know it has gotten really popular to have edible wedding favors, like candy or something the guests can munch on as they head back to the airport/drive home from the wedding but I guess for some reason that just seems impersonal in my opinion (for our wedding at least. No judging going on, people…). But then I also worry that we put all the effort into making a bunch of cute personalized crocheted fortune cookies and then I just give people more “stuff” to deal with… :-/

Conflicted…

What do you think? Are the fortune cookies just going to stress us out and then just give guests something else to shove into their bags to take home? Or are they awesome? Or should we come up with an alternative idea (perhaps personalized but REAL fortune cookies bought from Oriental Trading Company?)…

If nothing else, we could always fall back on giving out miniature dinosaurs and frogs like those posing on top of my family’s old (1980s?) Macintosh computer in the picture (or you could decorate your old Macintosh with one of our crocheted fortune cookies… I think one would look nice there surrounded by all the dinosaurs…)

Thoughts?

Snow acceptance

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It’s around this time of year that I learn to just accept the snow and the cold which I guess is good because it doesn’t seem like they’re going away soon. I start to notice my acceptance because now, every time I see an untouched snow drift I just want to play in it (which I won’t unless I am all bundled up in my awesome snow pants, etc but still!) and I wonder why it is still untouched… Am I the only one who has these urges?

What do you do to survive winter (or whatever your least favorite season is)?

Picture: Sometimes I do something really crazy, like go skiing at night!