January 2009 Archives
Last weekend we went to the Supercross. I got tickets for the MO as a Christmas present. They were good seats:
The whole thing is much more of a spectacle than I remember seeing in Atlanta many years ago. The top ten or so riders had WWF-style introductions with videos, theme songs and laps around the outside of the track to collect all the screaming encouragement from their fans.
The one thing we really couldn’t see much of was the starting gate, so our whole section stood up for the first lap of each race, trying to make sense of the muddle in the first corner, but it was not much use. Being right in front of the big jumps was easily worth the tradeoff of missing the holeshot.
This video is of the first lap of the first qualifying heat for the Lites:
One of the most surprising things was that we could feel the heat wash over us each time those Monster fireballs went off. This video shows the fireballs when James Stewart crosses the finish line to win the main event:
Finally, I cannot resist the opportunity for a great panorama shot, so here is the whole track as we saw it:
(More pix in the Supercross pool on flickr.)
Nan’s gift certificates + super-cool 3d edition of Settlers for Christmas + awesome friends = potential for January to be a banner month!
So many games, so little time….
That said, that was some horrible sports coverage. Did Fox forget there was a football game going on? Why no replays of the bazillion penalties? Why all the stupid camera angles on the few plays they did deign to show us again? What do they have against showing us a play clock? Weird (and very long) broadcast. Good result, though :-)
Check out this post at Cute Overload! Okay, here’s a preview:
Baby chicks (redundancy alert) really are cute. When I was a kid we had chickens for a while. (Rabbits, too, but that doesn’t have anything to do with this story. I just tossed it in there because bunnies are cute, too.) I built (well, prob’ly my dad built) an incubator for a sixth-grade science project and hatched a couple of eggs. I got a yellow chick and a brown stripey chick. I named the brown one Parsley (nope, no explanation for that) and I don’t remember what I called the yellow one. Buttercup, maybe? They were very cute but not really exactly fun pets—messy and not very affectionate. Which is just as well because neither chick lived to chickenhood. The yellow one got et by a weasel or some other predator-du-jour and the brown one drowned in a water dish. Not too bright, chickens.
In my fit of creativity last week I also finished up a bracelet that I started quite some time ago.
The larger links are sterling that Mom and I made and the tiny ones are niobium (the “air” mix) from Spiderchain. It’s a Japanese 6-in-1 weave and I finished it off with two foldover clasps right next to each other.
This is super-comfortable and I’ve been wearing it almost every day since I finished it. The only sad news is I’m almost out of those luscious little niobium rings, so it’s time for a reorder! (Okay, I guess that’s not so sad after all, is it? The big question is whether I’ll be able to talk myself into a different color mix. I love love love these colors but all the others look so pretty too….)
Try, try again! It took three tries to get these links and things to work together, but I’m really happy with the end result.
I originally wanted to make a “chain” with the twisted brass jump rings joining alternating Swarovski rings and gold-filled stampings, but the jump rings weren’t quiiiiite big enough. So I fiddled around some and came up with the first effort:
This looked pretty good on the board, but had a tendency to flip around when I actually wore it. The backs of the Swarovski rings are shiny silver—they look chromed—and the proportions weren’t quite right, either.
The MO and I discussed it over lunch (hey, gotta take advantage of a captive audience! plus he has good taste) and that led to the second attempt:
This was very much the look I wanted, but the sizes just didn’t play well together. The crystal rings kept hopping up too high (as you see in the center one) and as much I wished this would work, it just didn’t.
I went back to the best part of the first attempt, the dangle, and tried again. This is the end result and I love it.
I was worried that the rings would flip, but they stay put for the most part. Turns out the earrings are particularly fab. They’re just approaching too heavy for me, so they’re not all-day-wearable, but they move well and of course they’re SHINY….
After looking at the pictures again, I think I want to try my original chain idea but just with the crystal rings and the big jump rings. Looks like I’m going to have to buy some more beads!
