A unique perspective on photography... X-Rays

I believe our Indian summer has departed... kinda sad about that. Although, it is hard to celebrate the holidays when it is in the upper 60's/low 70's.

In my perfect world, It would be in 50's - 60's in November, December would have snow and be in the 30's and 40's, and then in January, it would jump up in to the 50's again. I only really need 2-3 months to be cold (i.e. colder than 60) and then it can start getting warm again - with max temperatures being in the 80s with low humidity. Where do I need to move to get this weather??

A climate controlled arena with fake weather and sunlight might be my only option...

Anywho, I digress.

If you haven't guessed already... I love science, medicine (being a nurse and all), as well as photography.

When creating my unit's weekly clinical communication a few weeks ago, I came across a super - neat article about a gentleman using X-rays (definitely not great for his health) to create works of art.

Whether it is in his lead lined room or utilizing x-rays out in public, Nick Veasey, is quite talented. Featured in Time Photos: Examining X-Ray, Nick creates interesting images of the inside, of well, almost everything.

I think what makes his images intriguing, is that they are not of a person (or animal) that has done (or eaten) something weird to earn themselves an X-Ray and a spot on a Discovery Channel show. Nor are these pictures common place x-rays that health care teams routinely see.

They are of us, nature, buildings... normal every day things outside of a hospital.

I encourage you to check out his blog or the Time site (links are above). I have included some of my favorite pictures below.

Love this picture of a parent and little one holding a bear!

No wonder my feet hurt every time I wear heels!!

I wonder if this is a man or woman...

Love all of the scenes in the office building... kind of reminds me of a doll house.

According to Time Photos - he utilized the border control X-ray to capture this picture.

Guess who's number 1!! ... and why Louisville didn't lose to UNC.... Ooops.

Source: scenicreflections.com via Jenny on Pinterest

So it is early in the season, but guess who is number ONE in in NCAA basketball??

KENTUCKY (my alma mater)

I am not a big sports fan by any means - but I do bleed blue. After our dismal football season - what, you didn't know the University of Kentucky had a football team? We finally beat Tennessee after 26 years of losses..... yeah, UK had not beaten UT during my lifetime... until this past Saturday.  (YAY!)

... and if my weekend couldn't get any better...

We win our basketball game AND UNC (University of North Carolina - former #1) loses to UNLV.

P.S. I told my hubbie that University of Louisville  ( UNLV looks like it could stand for Louisville) had beaten UNC... and he went crazy... so excited that Kentucky teams were doing so well... until he got on ESPN and found out that I had really meant University of Las Vegas.

Huh? Las Vegas has a basketball team capable of beating UNC? Apparently UNLV makes it to the NCAA tournament... really? Totally spaced on that one... Probably because I thought it was the fancy abbreviation for  Louisville when I was creating my brackets.



Anywho, 

We play UNC this Saturday... so lets see if we truly belong at number one.

If you don't have a team to root for - wear your blue this Saturday!! (Or atleast cross your fingers for us!)

Me last year during basketball season... 

C-A-T-S Cats, CaTs, CATS!!!

(I definitely was enjoying the font color option today... probably due to my coffee drink.)

Guilty Confessions... I can't park...

No, I didn't get this note... but I wouldn't be surprised if I did. Especially after yesterday's fiasco.


Guilty Confession - I can't park.

And no, I am not  referring to parallel parking. Although, I can't do that very well either. I can only parallel park if I have someone talking me through it... and that is also if I have deemed there will be enough comfortable space for my car. (My fear is to get stuck between two close people and never get out.)

"How did you pass the driving exam?" You ask.

Welp, most of the test is driving... and one can still pass when parking two feet away from the curb.


Usually my parking causes a daily internal struggle with my conscience. I vacillate between whether I should spend additional minutes trying to fix my line hugging parking in fear that a two door car will become very frustrated with my *special* parking skills and give me a nice scratch OR just give up.

My problem with parking? I drive a big car.

"Rrrrriiiiiiggggggghhhhhhttttt ... " The hubs would respond if he read this passage.

Okay, I don't drive a big car, unless you compare my Focus to a Smart Car or a child's battery run jeep. I tell myself that the next vehicle I would like would be an SUV-esque hybrid - enviro friendly, but the idea of parking that sucker unnerves me.

I don't know if its my depth perception or my mere hesitancy in cutting my wheel too sharply. My first *ding* on my car was because I couldn't get my car into a one car parking spot between two cement pillars in a parking garage. Is might be just me, but I did feel better when I got that ding... I could drive with less stress about messing my new car up. Weird? Probably.

So I apologize to all of you out there who silently or not so silently curse a driver's parking ways. The car you are cursing at is probably me. But I do want to go ahead and say that I have yet to hit a car... because usually I am picking parking spots that are not next to someone else at the time or I am a strong enough person to say, "hey, this spot just wasn't for me."

Any helpful hints with hitting the middle of the parking spot? I know, I know, after driving and parking for almost ten years, I might be a lost cause... but I am always open for suggestions... 

... And now its time for Christmas

Nordstroms is a little high end for me... but I like their thought process.

"Happiness is celebrating one holiday at a time. That's why you won't find any holiday trim in our stores until after Thanksgiving. So relax. Reminisce. Enjoy the day as we will - with family and friends. Then when Friday, November 25th rolls around feel free to stop by for a bit of good cheer, it's then we'll be decked in our holiday finery - and eager to welcome the season with you."

Yes friends, I love celebrating Christmas too, but holidays have their appropriate spots on the calendar. I.E. Fourth of July, Labor Day, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas...

Not Hobby Lobby's mentality... Fourth of July, Christmas, Labor Day, Christmas, Christmas, Halloween, Christmas, Thanksgiving, Christmas.

Now that it is post Thanksgiving... it is TIME for Christmas! Bring on the music, hot chocolate, ginger bread houses, time with family, and most importantly.... celebrating the birth of Jesus.

So what did we do one day post Thanksgiving? Visit the Fantasy of Trees at the Knoxville Convention Center with my in-laws.

The Fantasy of Trees is an event to raise money for the local children's hospital. In addition to the entry fee, people can also buy the decorations off the trees.

I told the hubby for our future 10 bedroom house, I would like multiple Christmas trees with decorative themes. He just shook his head and laughed. A girl can dream, right?

The "50's Tree"... there were a few of these. Must have been a popular decade.

The "50s - Barbie Tree." All the barbie outfits were made by hand!

The "Circus Tree"

The "Nature Tree"

The tree that the hubs liked... it was decorated in green and brown

A tree with a nautical theme

Sleepy nephew!!

Origami tree... one of my favorites!

Weather tree

Diary of a Wimpy Kid tree... after I saw this one, I was hoping for a Harry Potter one... was not in luck :(

We have not set up our Christmas tree yet, and only have a "red" theme. haha! Maybe we should go a little bolder and decorate with one of these awesome ideas!

Will your tree have a theme?

Breaking Dawn made me feel old.

Some days I think I am still pretty young. 25 years old, quarter of a century, still got five years until I'm 30. I'm good.

Yeah, well a few nights ago I felt old. Real old.

Perhaps I was asking for it. It was a Twilight movie after all. What did I expect?

First reason I felt super old?  I sat next to a girl that brought a baby with her. Not a real one thank goodness, as I was sitting in the very middle of a row and she would have to climb over seven people to exit, but one that comes with a key and you get when you are a freshman in home ec or something like that.

When she made her entrance, I looked around. I am pretty sure that every girl from the local middle school and high school were at this movie. Again, what did I expect, Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner are their "it guys" when mine was Leonardo Di Caprio. Which by the way, they had a preview for the new 3D version of the Titanic. 


Second reason I felt super old that night... My friend leaned over during the trailer and asked, "I wonder how many people here were alive when this movie was first in theaters?"

Yeah, Titanic came out about 14 years ago... Awesome.

Laughable. That is all I have to say. I decided I would deal with my insecurities and enjoy the real reason I came at midnight to see this movie, Taylor Lautner (Jacob). Guess who is going to be twenty this year? That guy! I'm only six years older than him... not too creepy right? The age difference between Demi and Ashton was 15 years... okay... probably not that great of an example...  anyway. (PS as I was typing "Age difference of..." Demi and Ashton came up as the first choice. Haha, guess I am not the only one wondering.)


During the movie I remembered why Breaking Dawn was not my favorite book. Besides the fact that it is decided with a wedding that there is no chance Bella will be with Jacob, some of the events are just.plain.weird. Bella and Edward have their honeymoon... tons of procreation... she gets pregnant with a vampire baby... this baby takes all of her nutrition leaving her two steps from death... baby decides it needs to come out, Bella's bones break and Edward must chew the baby out. Oh and she pretty much dies while Edward is doting on the baby - PS your wife has big gaping hole in her abdomen with teeth marks! AND - Jacob, who we think is out of the picture, imprints on the baby, thus falling in love with her (the baby).

It was a weird read... can you imagine trying to watch it with all of these teens/preteens??



Third reason I felt super old...  After each questionable scene (the lengthy sex scene, the quite gory birth, and the imprinting), I again asked myself, "Do these parents know what their children are watching??" Yikes. There might need to be a lot of explaining to do.

PG or R?

Once the credits began rolling, I told my friends that I needed to hurry home - to get some sleep and then go to work,  further cementing the fact that 25 might just really be old. I am kinda sad, however, as the part I did think was interesting, the second half of the book, had a preview after the credits.

Boo! So I looked online... and I believe I have found the clip for Part II. Thanks Ellen. If you too were  wondering what will happen next November, take a look...

Have you seen the movie yet? What did you think about it?

Things I am loving right now...

The Maze Runner… 

Okay, I thoroughly enjoyed the Maze Runner… now I am listening to the Scorch Trials (book two in the trilogy). If you enjoyed the action (and weirdness) of the Hunger Games – and I have only heard of one person that didn’t enjoy that series – I think you will like The Maze Runner.

Maze Runner is my book club’s selection for November, and honestly I only learned about it after it was selected to read. I would like to preface that it is science fiction (my cup of tea). The book opens with a teenage boy, Thomas, who wakes up in a dark box without memories. A short while later, the top of the box opens and he finds himself in the middle of a maze also known as “the Glade” with about 50 other teenage boys. All of the boys have no memories of their lives before the maze and some of them had been there for almost two years. The community in the Glade surprises Thomas, but unfortunately the safety and comfort is short lived. Boys had been arriving via the box once a month for the past two years, but the day after Thomas arrives, an unconscious girl is found in the box with an ominous message, “She is the last one ever.” 

Always on the edge of my seat, the short chapters gave me several places to stop if I needed… or giving me the option of “one more.” I am listening to the second book on my iPhone via Audible. Short plug for Audible and I promise they are not paying me… it is a monthly service run by Amazon, in which in pay a low fee of 7.95 for one audio book a month (it goes up a few dollars more after three months). If you choose to buy another one, it is half price from the full price and there are free books for members as well. If you are like me and are finding less time to read a book… or have extremely long commutes to and from work (where reading is frowned upon) audio books are the way to go and audible has over 100,000 books in audio form. Also – the people reading to you have gotten a lot better from what I remember, and each of the readers I have listened to use distinct voices for different characters. (Or in the instance of Bossy Pants by Tina Fey – she read her own book – AWESOME and SO FUNNY!)

Fringe…

As a former Lostie…. I really, really enjoy watching Fringe. If you are looking to start watching this show, you MUST start from the beginning (like Lost) or you won’t understand anything. It has been on for four seasons now, or maybe five – I forget… but these writers think of everything. With an X-files-ish format of being sci-fi investigators, there is an umbrella plot that always keeps you guessing, Always.  (Umbrella plot? Pretty sure I made that up.)




Starbucks Hot Chocolate

Yay! It is finally hot chocolate weather. Now don't misunderstand me, I drink hot chocolate in any weather, its my "coffee." But now I don't get funny looks since it isn't 90 degrees outside.

Kentucky Basketball

It's that time of year again!! After a sad season of what appeared to be high school football, (What? The season isn't over yet? We still have to lose to Tennessee for the 27th year? Dang it.)

Number 2 ... It feels really good to be number 2. C-A-T-S, Cats, Cats, Cats!!!







Bring on the cold, snuggly blanket weather...

Jack Jack

We have a new friend next door.

His name is Jack and he is almost 10 weeks old.

Ginger and Cyrus aren't quite sure what they think about this furry ball of energy... but I am sure they will be the bestest of friends soon enough!

Truths for Mature Humans

The boys are having poker night upstairs... so like a good student I studied in our room. Then, after I was done, I played on "Pinterest" my NEW FAVORITE WEBSITE!!

Studied = 1 hour
Pinterest = 2 hours

Pinterest is a website filled with pictures that people have "tagged." I added a little icon to my blog of the things I like on Pinterest (the "P" on the right hand side of the site). These images are prodimantly crafts, quotes, inside of houses, etc. And for some reason, I can never call this site "Pinterest" but instead "Pininterest." (I like the sound of that better.)

So after looking at crafts I wish I had the talent and the time to do, houses that I wish I could afford, and pictures I wish I could take, I found this funny list of "Truths for Mature Humans."

One of my favorites?


"I'm always slightly terrified when I exit out of Word and it asks me if I want to save any changes to my 10 page technical report that I swear I didn't make any changes to." --> So true. Mind games Word, Mind games.



Enjoy - happy Tuesday!

Source: stumbleupon.com via Brooke on Pinterest