Hipstamatic

If there one feature I love, love, love about the iPhone, it would be the amazing apps available for it. I have a ton of free ones and they're mostly photography apps with a few games, like Words with Friends, as I mentioned in this post.

But I recently bought my first app: Hipstamatic. It has a collection of lenses, films, and flashes that mimic the titular original toy camera:

The resulting pictures have a retro look with an appealing sloppy randomness of color processing, graininess, and/or lighting, depending on the lens, film, and/or flash combination. Unlike other photographic apps, which applies the look post-process, Hipstamatic only allows the pictures to be produced organically by taking the picture. The major downside is that in mimicking the real-time camera experience, it gets annoying waiting for the "wiping of the lens", the "transistors" to warm up, or the picture "to develop".

But here's a collection of pictures of various combos of lenses and films that the Hipstamatic can take:

Thai Iced Tea with Boba

Linda's Oli

The girl and me

A trip to the KogiBBQ truck

A cat named Oskar

I love Hipstamatic.

Drink your milk

For the longest time, I've been telling the girl that she needs to eat well (drink her milk, finish her vegetables, eat enough protein, etc.) because she's still growing. And often, she'd sigh, but I'm already one of the taller girls in my class.

To which I'd reply, Don't be so sure--remember my cousin? She was the tallest girl in 3rd grade at 5'2"...

The girl would roll her eyes. I know, Mom, and she'd finish my sentence with a wide-eyed, ghost story flourish, ...and she never grew taller than that...

Anyway, the girl recently had a growth spurt and went from 5'1" to 5'5" in a matter of 8 months. Technically speaking, at age 10, she is only 3 inches shorter than me. The other day, she was standing next to me and nearly looked in my eyes and said, hey I'm almost as tall as you--maybe I'll be taller than you someday. And then I'll say:

Who's the cousin now?

oh, snap.

Hello Monday

Kickin' off the week with one of my favorite breakfast sandwiches: avocado, hard-cooked egg, topped with garlic salt, tapatio hot sauce, olives and a little ketchup to hold it all together.

Happy Monday all!

Fundraiser For Linda - ends TOMORROW!

For those who know me through this blog, you know that my amazing friend Linda has had a crazy year, having survived a coma and becoming a quad amputee.

Besides being a beautiful, hilarious, generous, and crafty genius, I find her determination and independent drive so inspiring as well. Oddly enough, I don't think she realizes how kick-a$$ she is--remember this? She crafted that word "joy" with her fingertip-amputated fingers. Incredible.

What has been eye-opening to me has been the little challenges that one takes for granted: being able to scratch an itch, pick up a tiny piece of paper, or turn a page with fingernails and fingertips, being able to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night without having to put on a pair of prosthetic legs, being able to pick up a toddler with full hands and steady legs, and not being immobilized when a swelling prevents putting on prosthetic legs.

But before all this, Linda was a published and still is a well-regarded scrapbooker. She was on the design team for Cocoa Daisy and now they are having an amazing fundraiser raffle for her.

The prizes are AMAZING. Besides the top prize of the Greece event, major scrapbook celebrities and manufactures have donated fanatastic prizes for this fundraiser. The prizes alone are worth the $10 raffle ticket. The last day to have your donation count as a raffle ticket is tomorrow, May 22.

Because as amazing and determined as Linda, she could still use a helping hand. She lives in a second floor (you can imagine how demanding that is on a person with a pair of prosthetic legs) two bedroom condo with her husband, mother-in-law, and two young sons and they aim to move to a one-story home in the hopefully near future. Her insurance coverage is somewhat limited and doesn't cover test leg prosthetics, which are so key to a good fit for her permanent set of legs. Apparently there are a variety of prosthetic legs and fit and feel is different for each variation.

I hope you'll join me in helping out Linda and participate in this fundraiser.

Happy Birthday Annabelle!

To the best sister I could dare dream to have.

I love you, Annabelle!

The Sermon

I wasn't raised going to church but I married into a family that has a Christian tradition on both sides. I've gone to church more than a few times and at some points, quite regularly. There is one particular tale told in a sermon that I always remember and come back to:

An old man lived in a town where there was a major flood warning. As folks were preparing to leave town, they asked him if he wanted to come along. He said, "no thank you, I've been a faithful man to God and I have faith that he will take care of me."

As the flood waters rose to his porch, a man in a canoe paddled by and said, "hey, the flood waters are rising, why don't you get in my canoe and I'll paddle us to dry land."

The old man replied, "no thank you, I've been a faithful man to God and I have faith that he will take care of me."

As the flood waters rose to his second floor, a couple in a row boat paddle by and said, "hey, the flood waters are still rising, why don't you get in our boat and we'll row to dry land."

The old man replied, "no thank you, I've been a faithful man to God and I have faith that he will take care of me."

The flood waters rose to the roof and a helicopter circled above him, and the pilot shouted, "hey, the flood waters are still rising, grab the rope ladder and I can fly you to dry land."

The old man replied, "no thank you, I've been a faithful man to God and I have faith that he will take care of me."

Unfortunately the flood waters continued to rise and the old man perished.

As he reaches Heaven, he asks God, "I've been a faithful man to you all my life--how come you didn't take care of me?"

And God answered, "Who do you think sent the canoe, the rowboat, and the helicopter?"

The takeaways I got was that God helps you in various ways, and often not in a deus ex machina sort of way and that there are signs all around to guide and clue you in life but they're so easy to dismiss, even when they seem fairly obvious.

Obviously, I can't help but relate this to my previous 3 experiences--Zed being my canoe, En my rowboat, and Shue my helicopter.

I guess I can't ask for a bigger sign than that to get my eating/exercise in better balance.

3 experiences/reflections

Recently I had 3 separate experiences with friends at work that made me reflect on my eating habits/weight gain.

The first was a long car ride (4-5 hours each way) with "Zed" to a workshop for work. I didn't realize the ride would be so long and didn't eat anything that morning as I thought I'd have time to eat something before we left. Unfortunately, we pretty much had to go at 9am. Of course within an hour on the road I'm ravenous. I'll spare the undignified details but eventually I'm snacking on a bag of trail mix that Zed prepared for himself for the long car ride. As I'm munching on some of the cashews, Zed starts talking about a marshmallow experiment done with 5 year-olds. He said that each child was given a marshmallow and told that they could eat that marshmallow or if they waited 15 minutes without eating it, they would get another marshmallow and end up with 2 marshmallows. The adult would then leave the room and return in 15 minutes and would either dole out another marshmallow or see a kid with no marshmallow. They followed up with these kids 20 years later and it turns out that majority of those kids of those kids who waited for the second marshmallow were college-educated, in well-paying jobs, etc. while the marshmallow eaters tended towards lower-paying jobs.

"So...I guess I'm a marshmallow eater?"

"Oh no, I wasn't saying anything about you. Just that it was an interesting experiment on putting off instant gratification for a bigger reward."

hmmpf.

On the way back while grabbing dinner in Bakersfield on the way back, he pondered aloud, "What are you going to do with the leftovers?"

"Leftovers?" What was he talking about? "I don't understand."

"Well, we still have a couple hours to go. Would the food survive the ride in the car for that long?"

Then I realized that he fully expected me to have leftovers because my portion was seemingly too huge for one person to eat in one sitting. For better or worse, my inner marshmallow eater was totally shamed into asking for the rest to be boxed up. "I'm sure it'll be fine for the car ride," I sighed.

Reflection on experience #1: I'm a marshmallow eater. Perhaps I should pause and reflect before instantly gratifying my desire to eat.

Experience #2--I was eating with some friends at a catered lunch of Chinese food at work. "En" was apparently known to be a slow eater. He corrected, "I savor and enjoy my food". As this was my first time eating with him, I couldn't help but watch him eat. As I shoveled spoonfuls of food in my face, I watched as En would scoop about 6 grains on the tines of his fork and chew it. Then he'd slice a green bean into 2 pieces and eat one of them. I was incredulous. I stared with the same jealous regard of an adult watching a baby's pure and simple enjoyment of being totally engrossed with a set of car keys.

Reflection on experience #2: Perhaps I could savor my food more.

Experience #3--"Shue" remarked that he saw my post about eating through my birthday and snorted, "no wonder you're struggling to run a mile." Oh snap. It was like asking him "does this shirt made me look fat?" and he replying, "oh no, your three chins make you look fat." hmmph.

Reflection on experience #3: My food intake is exceeding what I burn with any sort of exercise. And it is apparently very, very obvious.