how geeks spend the weekend

One Sunday in mid-April I really, really, really wanted to go running, but the weather absolutely would not cooperate. It just kept raining, and while I actually love running in the rain, rain accompanied by thunder and lightning is an entirely different story.

So I pouted a bit and then decided to head on over to the gym and put in an hour on the elliptical trainer instead of hitting the road. And when I came out? The rain had stopped (timing!), and as I was walking to my car a lady popped her head out of her van and said I should look at the rainbow.

So I looked up and saw this!

I shot the photo above with my trusty iPhone5 (love the camera on that thing), but I really wanted to try to catch a shot or two on my DSLR, too, and since it was just half a mile to the house I jumped in the car to run home and get it.

I also collected Darren while at the house, and a few minutes later we were up on the top level of the university parking garage. Unfortunately the rainbow had faded quite a bit, but I still managed to get a shot of the tail ends. :)

Part of the convenience of where we live is that the university where D is working on his master's degree is pretty much right in our back yard, and my gym and the parking garage we were standing on top of to take that photo are all right on campus.

And guess who had an experiment running and decided to take me along to the lab while I was there? :)

I got to see all the nifty lab equipment and scope out the -80 freezer, and then...

...we went to the dark room to develop some films that Darren had left to develop from a radioactive gel. Yes, I just said radioactive...Geiger counters were in fact in use!

I took just a couple of photos of the darkroom (oh, what an awesome craft space this kind of setup would make!!) before the main lights had to be shut off and the red darkroom lights used instead.

From a rainy substitute-workout to developing photos of radioactive experiments in a university darkroom...just another weekend in Geekville!

sophie's christmas pageant

This post goes all the way back to the end of November of last year, but I'm finally taking the time to get caught up on photos (Christmas and a vacation caused them to really back up!) and am so happy to get these stories told!

On November 30th I took off from work just a touch early to drive up to Nashville for my adorable little niece's Christmas pageant and to hang with the family for a few hours. The program was short, but oh-so-adorable as the teachers at Sophie's school brought out the classes one by one to perform a short song, starting with the youngest group.

The next class was soooo cute with the little tiny drums!

And then it was time for Sophie's class full of energetic two-year-olds to take the stage!

Ohmygoodness, the gingerbread tutu!!!

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter, everyone!

After church we had a nice, quiet day at home. I meant to color eggs, but somehow never got around to it. But since D likes hardboiled eggs, anyway, there's nothing that says that I can't make them any time, right? :) To be fair, I only hatched (pardon the bad pun) the idea that I might like to color eggs last night after seeing Allison Kreft's post and pinboard.

Lucy at Craftberry Bush posted an image this morning that so beautifully captures the meaning of Easter.

And as for the awe and wonder of it all...well, this time-lapse video of Earth as seen from the ISS is at least a start at capturing that (thanks to Darren for passing it along!).


How great is our God.

i just geeked straight out

Two of my favorite YouTube channels are not, in fact, related to scrapbooking. They're actually music channels, one belonging to fab violinist Lindsey Stirling and the other featuring the cello-and-piano stylings of The Piano Guys.

I've been a bit behind on both lately, so when I discovered that last month the two collaborated on a video...yeah, I was giddy!

little culinary adventures

Lately both Darren and I have had wacky schedules that have made cooking and eating at home a bit of a...challenge. D is in the last semester of a graduate program in molecular microbiology (I know, right?!?) and is working lots and lots of hours in the lab to finish his thesis, and I've been, as I mentioned in my last post, traveling a lot for work.

We try not to eat out much, both because of the expense and because we can cook healthier meals at home, so our slow cooker has really been getting a workout lately. Our favorite recipe at the moment is Crock Pot Chicken Tacos because it's soooo easy, tasty, and good for you! The only problem is that I'm always forgetting to pick up a packet of taco seasoning when I'm at the grocery store, and I was kind of getting tired of needing those packets all the time, anyway!

Enter this recipe for homemade taco seasoning, along with a whole host of basic spices that I'm very happy to have on hand in bulk now, thanks to a trip to Sam's Club over the weekend. I already had several of the spices needed for the recipe, but some were in small quantities, and I knew that this was one recipe I needed to make en masse!

The original recipe stated that it was for 10 servings, but I'm not sure what they were calling a serving since it only really made a small amount of seasoning. I bumped that number up to 100 servings, which sounds insane but was really only 10x the original and made enough for a small bowl full.

It's all mixed up now, and whenever I make a slow cooker full of chicken tacos I just add three tablespoons of this lovely concoction. It's soooo yummy!

Another of our favorite slow cooker recipes is Crock Pot Red Beans and Rice, and over the weekend we chopped up enough veggies, garlic, and sausage to make four batches of it. We dumped those ingredients, along with some creole seasoning, into four gallon-size freezer bags, and now all we have to do to cook one up is pull it out of the freezer and add the contents + water + a bag of dried beans to the slow cooker and turn it on low. Easy, easy, easy! And easy is just what we need these days.

a trip to the aquarium

Last Saturday we took a trip to the Tennessee Aquarium in Chattanooga, and last Sunday I sat down and went through all the photos because I was tired of this blog being empty! I've been so caught up in work travel that getting my personal photos edited and blogged has kind of fallen by the wayside, but now that I'm home for a while I'm enjoying both getting out to do some fun stuff and the chance to enjoy those photos later. Though the doing stuff always comes first- I'd rather live life and be behind on photos rather than be caught up on photos and have nothing new to experience! Which explains why my Christmas photos are still unblogged. :) They're coming, though!

So, the aquarium. We've had a membership here on and off since we were in college and try to go several times a year when we do. This particular time our trip was spurred by a Groupon I purchased a few months ago to one of our favorite places to eat- Cheeburger Cheeburger- that's just a short walk from the aquarium's entrance. We took a leisurely morning at home working on a few projects and then left in time to arrive in Chattanooga just in time for lunch.

Mmmm, lunch! This was Darren's burger, with Caribbean Jerk seasoning and banana peppers.

And a basket of mixed fries/onion rings to share. So yummy!

For some reason the aquarium was packed on this particular Saturday. We're used to Saturdays being a little busy there, but with this being a non-holiday and non-event weekend, even the aquarium's staff was puzzled by the sheer volume of people! It made it a little hard to take photos with so many others around, but we got our cameras in where we could (yes, D brought his along this time, too!).