Category Archives: fun

Another glorious day in the big easy

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We had so much fun today. First was another tour of the Tulane campus, pictures by daylight today! We stopped in at the campus bookstore and I picked some Tulane swag.

Oldest Tulane Building

Oldest Tulane Building

Mardi Gras Bead Tree

Mardi Gras Bead Tree

Tulane Student Union

Tulane Student Union

Then we went to lunch at the Commanders Palace, which was really fabulous. Great food and highly attentive service. Their speciality is this bread pudding souffle, which I got to sample. However I was correctly stared to the strawberry shortcake, which was heavenly. The salad to start was suberb, and the crawfish stew was excellent. It came with a whole steamed crawfish on top which was cute and tasty.

 

Next we went down to the French Quarter and wandered about, and I took tons of pictures. We ended up at Cafe du Mode for cafe au la it and beignets. The beignets had tons of powdered sugar on them, which tended to go everywhere. So much fun! :-)

After a walk along the Mississippi, we headed of for a bit of a rest.

Finally, we walked over to the Voodoo BBQ for a real tasty meal. Well stuffed and talked out we came back to the hotel and said goodbyes to various family and friends.

Heading back home tomorrow morning. I can see why ppl fall in love with New Orleans!

This should appeal to my feline-identified human friends

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This is pretty cute — motorized ears that respond to changes in the wearer’s brain waves (not actually sure if this is so — the article doesn’t describe how this works). But it is funny, and if someone can actually make it change in a predictable way, they could be very fun.

Not yet for sale in the US, unfortunately.

 

Necomimi: brainwave-controlled cat ears – Boing Boing.

Cartoon in need of a caption

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From this week’s New Yorker, caption contest:

cartoon in need of a caption -- man floating on ceiling above woman in bed

Captions we’ve come up with so far:

  • “I knew you’d get a lift out of that.”
  • “I knew you’d get a rise out of that.”
  • “I didn’t know you were so up in the air about having children.”
  • “I’m not sure you’re aware of the gravity of this situation.”

Supply yours!

Watercolour Class

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Link to post on deviantart

My parents and I have started a beginning watercolour class. I have a little experience with watercolours, but have never had any instruction. This class is proving to be quite fun and informative. We’ve been having a great time.

We do lots of little exercises, which I’m not going to bother posting, because visually they’re rather boring (just swatches of colour, basically). I did post a couple of examples of painting over a corn starch base, even though the pictures are simple abstracts, to show what it looks like. I’ve never done that technique before and it was rather fun!

Today, we did the ski scene. It was rather interesting. We first wet the top half of the paper, above the slanted horizon line. Then we dropped pure blue paint into the water and let it run around, tilting the pad this way and that, and just letting it spread out. Then came the trees, which was just paint applied to the wet blue wash and kind of smudged around to make vague tree-like blobs. I added a bit of red to the green to darken it a bit. Then when it was somewhat drier, we took a palette knife and cut the branch formations into the paint. I’d never ever used a palette knife on a watercolour painting before, so I had no idea what to expect. What came out was really quite interesting!! I think I did a better job with the knife on the second version, but both are pretty acceptable.

The only real problem I ran into was the backwashes. It looked fine when it was wet, but it dried into that horrible blob that’s so visible in the painting. I need to figure out how to get moisture off the paper without taking pigment off. On one exercise I did previously, I tried to blot up the moisture with a paper towel, but it ended up taking all the pigment off as well, so that was a flop. The instructor recommends we use a dry brush to pick it up, but I’ve had no luck with that as well. Somehow I have to figure out how to keep the paper from getting so wet. Ah well, that’s why i’m in a class!

Ski Scene 2 - Watercolour

Ski Scene 2

See rest of gallery on deviantart.