Creat your own Flat Catan Board

1.     Get a piece of foam core from your local art or office supply store.

2.     Paint it ocean blue with acrylic paint. Wisp in white to suggest waves.

3.     VERY IMPORTANT. Not only do you need to put the border pieces together on the board before gluing – you need to arrange the hexagonal pieces inside it to make sure the borders are at the proper angles and shape.  Otherwise it may end up being too tight to fit the pieces in. Pencil around the outside and/or inside of the border pieces so you know exactly where to put them once they are glued.

4.     Lay the border pieces on a disposable work surface face down. They need to be perfectly flat so that the spraying glue does not creep under them to the front.

5.     Spray with spray adhesive. (or use white glue) Immediately arrange on your prepared foam core.

6.     You now have a lovely lightweight permanent Catan playing surface!

Hint for cutting foam core. If you do not have a paper cutter and want to use an exacto knife, make several light scores along a straight edge before making any heavy cuts.

Open Drop Ether

Mom's story about the old days of anesthesia.
Apparently "open drop ether" was an anesthetic technique that she used for years. Ether was dropped onto a gauze mask worn by the patient. Keeping track of vital signs was the only monitoring system. This was back in the low tech days when they could bring a baby into the dining room to monitor recovery while they ate. One reason that ether is no longer used is that it is highly flammable. "That is the reason that electrical outlets in operating rooms are up high, right? Because ether sinks?" (A bit of trivia I knew.) This reminded her of a demonstration one of the professors did. From a container of ether up high, he lit a match to some papers down low. Unfortunately other things on the desk started to catch fire and he had to staunch flames for a while before continuing. He often had things go wrong. Another time, he gave some morphine to a cat to demonstrate how it sped it up. He probably gave it too much because the cat sped around the room so fast no one could catch it. And in one of his examples comparing the effectiveness of a medicine, the wrong rat died.

Funny things

Two funny things Dan said last week:
1. "Oh yeah...that oven mitt has a hole in it"
2. "Now if I was going to work with glitter, I'd put on an apron first!"

New Year's Day

Every New Year's Day there are articles about people who did something mildly interesting every day for a year. Like, date a different guy, send a thank you note to someone new, not buy anything new (except food and basic toiletries.) Then they write a book about it, because it becomes somehow life changing, or at least meaningful in some way. So I feel pressure to start a year of doing something... It really needs to start out sounding boring. Take a picture of everything I eat. Done that. Take a picture of my dog every day. Already do that.
Maybe it should be something I want to do, but don't make time for. Keep a journal. Do a sketch every day.
Maybe instead of trying to improve myself every day, I should tell other people how to improve themselves. "you should get more exercize", "talk less and listen more", "make eye contact please". This might end up being good book writing material.

Tiramisu Test Day 2

Today's tiramisu is from Camillo Trattori, our favorite restaurant in Florence. This tiramisu is better than last nights with more separation in flavors and the persimmon coulee was a unique and tasty addition.

Tiramisu testing, Day 1

smooth, custardy consistent flavor throughout.

Queen Nefertiti

Bunny Hunting

"These medical students sure know a lot," Mom said.

Isla Vista

Me 'n Jameson

The Happy Hunter

Needing crunches

Jameson hurt her foot running into the tv case. It was so traumatic that "crunches" were needed.

We salvaged wood from the back 40 and made some.

Sunset in Santa Barbara

Apple Pie

Jameson makes apple pie. First we had to pick apples from the trees in the yard. Her sword came in handy for reaching the apples up high. She rolled out the crust and poked fork holes into the top in the shape of the first letter of each of our names.

Field Trip

Who should I run into on my walk, but Harley! He was with his class on a field trip to watch the train go by. An added bonus was to watch the sky writing airplane.

Special Dog Service

Tito has gotten used to first class service at Hotel Solamar.

Repitition of shapes

Italian Postcard

1968 photo