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Crossword Challenge 2012.

Tuesday, August 7, 2012

This year’s Crossword Challenge occurred on Saturday, the fourth of August and had five contestants: Andrew, Ashleigh, Joshua, Emily and Bonnie. Lutes, Lutes, Lutes, Robertson and Lutes, respectively.

Bonnie Wonnie was the most reluctant to participate and spent most of the week preceding the Challenge insisting that she wouldn’t participate because it made her too nervous and she wasn’t any good at crosswords and it was too windy/dark/cold and anyhow she didn’t have a pen handy so it would simply be impossible.

She changed her tune when she found out that the crossword was from the Monday closest to her birthday. “Mondays are easy,” she definitely said. “And being so close to my birfday can’t hoit either,” she probably thought.

Everyone grabbed a lantern and a pen and a copy of the puzzle and we began with Mallory as timekeeper. Mallory definitely almost cheated (SCANDAL) by telling me an answer but I shushed her and fortunately ignored her because it turned out her answer was Incorrect. She probably got overexcited and didn’t REALLY mean to almost cheat. Given that she fed me a bum answer maybe she was playing for somebody else.

The following message is just for Mallory: MALJAN IF YOU REALLY FED ME A BUM ANSWER ON PURPOSE THEN YOU GOT SOME SPLAININ TO DO.

Mother finished first, of course, and after she handily spanked everybody she changed her tune again to a new and entirely more GLOATY melody. “You really aren’t done yet?” and “Well, at least you guys don’t suck as much as you did last year” are two real life quotes from Trash Talking Mammy.

I finished second with Andrew close behind. He has been doing a lot of crosswords on his phone as practice and had a perfect grid (mom made one mistake and I made two). Ashleigh finished fourth and Emily came in fifth. Of course the rankings don’t REALLY matter and it is all about the spirit of unity that the game brings. Who wants to be a know-it-all smarty pants and get first place, anyway?

Folks, Crossword Challenge 2013 is just around the corner and you can never start practicing too late! If you want daily crosswords to practice on let me know and I will direct you to a website I made that can get you any New York Times crossword since like 1991 or so. Then we can all work together real hard and finally BRING DOWN MOTHER ONCE AND FOR ALL.

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Dinosaur Day 2012.

Saturday, June 16, 2012

Don’t worry! You haven’t missed it! This year Dinosaur Day falls on the twenty-first of July. I wanted to let you all know so that you can plan your awesome Dinosaur Day activities. Activities like:

  1. Sewing dinosaur pajama shorts.
  2. Eating dino nuggets.
  3. Watching a great dinosaur movie (2010 was Jurassic Park and 2011 was We’re Back!).
  4. Hiding dinosaur tattoos on your person.
  5. Learning great things about dinosaurs, perhaps at a dinosaur museum.
  6. Making a full scale t-rex skull out of concrete to hide in your backyard for your kids to find someday.
  7. Putting together a dinosaur puzzle.
  8. Finding dinosaur tattoos on somebody else’s person.
  9. Exchanging sweet dinosaur gifts with your loved ones.

Whatever you do on the twenty-first make it dinosaur themed. And if you don’t I don’t wanna hear about it because it will just make me sad.

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This girl I love.

Thursday, April 12, 2012

On the tenth of March I had a very nice day with my best friend, Mallory Jan.

On a tip from her brother-in-law we drove up Provo Canyon to try and hike the Stewart Falls Trail. That did not work out. There was too much snow. It was packed hard on the ground and Mallory’s car kept slipping. So we cut our losses and backtracked to Vivian park to hike up where she camped with her family one time two summers ago.

We tried to hike to a beaver dam but it was also pretty snowy and icy so we stopped part of the way up and found some logs in the sun to have a nice sit. I put my arm around Mallory and told her nice things. Just some of the things that I love about her. I told her how much I love her cute face, and her freckles, what a great nurse she is, how much I love talking to her, all the funny and crazy things that she does, how great her body is, how nice she is to me and how just generally how much I love her. She let me give her a few kisses. FLATTERY SUCCESSFUL!

I asked her if she wanted to see what I had made her. I had been hinting to her all week that I was making something but I wouldn’t tell her what. I sat on a log facing her and pulled out the paper mache heart I made her. I was sneaky about bringing it along so she didn’t even think I could have anything! Earlier she asked me why I was bringing my backpack and I told her to carry my water and granola bars. I didn’t tell her that these were merely ULTERIOR motives. I warned her against laughing when I pulled it out because she is a nurse that knows what hearts look like and although I made the best heart a computer scientist could make it wasn’t 100% accurate. She looked at it in my hands and seemed pretty impressed. She told me it was good!

I asked her if I could ask her a question.

She said sure, and I got a little nervous. Mallory later told me I had a sheepish look on my face. I opened the heart, showed her the ring hidden inside, and asked, “Will you marry me?”

She was completely surprised and didn’t know what to say but finally she said yes! I slipped the ring on her finger while she kept asking if it was for real for real or if she was gonna wake up.

I promised it was real and we kissed and I told her all the great things I couldn’t tell her this week because they were all about the ring or the heart. It was so hard keeping it a secret but totes worth it because surprising Mallory was the best!

I am so excited to spend the rest of forever with my best friend!

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How to: make a heart to give to yo sweetie.

Sunday, April 8, 2012

Paper mache! Or, if you are feeling fancy, papier-mâché! I’ve only made a couple of things out of paper mache: a kangaroo rat, and Andrew’s head. Apparently you can use it to make anything though so recently thought I might try making an anatomically correct (OR THEREABOUTS) heart.

I crumpled up newspaper into an ovoid shape (I tricked Mallory into finding me some good models of hearts to look at online) and held it together with tape and then I covered it with strips soaked in flour and water. That, by the way, is the most basic recipe for paper mache. You can throw in white Elmer’s glue, I guess, and maybe it does something to make the end result harder? I doubt it though since the flour and water is pretty darn sturdy by itself.

Right, anyway, I covered the ovoid with paper mache and let it dry overnight three times. It felt pretty sturdy. So I cut it in TWO.

I was just sort of making things up as I went along. I used a few little pieces of duct tape to make hinges for the back of the heart and then rolled up tubes of newspaper and affixed them with masking tape to make the aorta and superior vena cava. I definitely just looked up those names on Wikipedia.

Several more layers of paper mache affixed the aorta and hid the duct tape. Then I had the great idea to put in magnets so that the heart would clasp closed.

I built little places for the magnets to sit out of paper and tape and then covered them with more paper mache. I also put a pair of magnets at the top of the heart to make sure that once it was closed it would STAY closed. I very carefully only put ONE layer of paper mache directly on the magnets themselves since I wanted their connection to be as strong as possible. I figured that more paper mache would equal more distance which would equal less magnetic force and I think physics probably agrees with me.

Some white spray paint served to hide most of the newsprint (note that I did not say ALL of the newsprint) and then I gave it a few layers of red spray paint and speckled blue spray paint as well. This started out as “let’s just see what it looks like red before I put on the non-spray paint that I purchased for coloring the heart” but it came out looking good enough that I decided to forego the unpleasant task of daubing paint on manually. Also, you may not know this about me, but I sure do love speckles.

Hooray! It looks enough like a real heart that people will know what it is but not enough that they will be seriously sicked out from looking at it. Pretty much the exact happy medium I was shooting for!

I also bought some velveteen to make a little pillow to stick in the heart. A pillow really classes things up and serves as a nice place to stick things like rings or teeth. Making the pillow was pretty tricky since I decided to continue my strategy of “winging it”. I don’t think I got the shape exactly right inasmuch as I just made it square when I probably should have made it more triangular. Regardless, I was able to wedge it in pretty firmly and sort of position a ring where I thought one might look nice.

I really doubted the pillows ability to hold onto a ring so I used a single loop of thread to affix it to the pillow. Be careful that you don’t drop paper mache in water. I didn’t do that to my heart but it would probably be ruinous.

Altogether it took about a week and a half to make the heart. I think you’ll agree that regardless of how mediocre you think the end product that it came out WAY better than it had any right to.

Next: give the heart to yo sweetie!

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A piece of rice cake.

Thursday, March 15, 2012

Holy cow guys rice cakes are delicious! Don’t let the name fool you. They don’t taste anything like cake and they don’t have any saccharine icing that will set your teeth on edge. Instead they are packed full of puffed grain taste and a little dash of salt. I’m going to write a love song to the inventor while I eat a billion.

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