Reflecting on the A to Z experience

English: Hurdle Suomi: Estejuoksija ja este (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Blogging in a vacuum isn't very much fun. The wave of activity I signed up for by participating in these posts is a like running a marathon, I suppose. {I've never run a marathon, but after running a mile once when I was kid, I bent over and threw up.} I'm not feeling nauseous, I'm feeling a little bit accomplished. This year I did complete the challenge. I did browse the other participants' posts and started new conversations with new people and stirred up new conversations with old friends.

The blogs I follow and link to on the far right column of this blog are a mix of blogs I'm interested in, but also blogs of people I have started to really admire as writers.

These bursts of content, whether relevant or not, are the hurdles in the race. This year we had 1000+ people sign up to publish one post per day having something to do with a letter of the alphabet. A little trite, but as a club activity, it's a lot like a team building activity. At work, I was once asked to teach someone to juggle three balls. I didn't have any juggling experience, but I had to do it anyway. I learned to communicate and give directions even though I wasn't sure of the subject matter. I had been given all the details and tricks I needed. With practice my partner started to get the hang of it.

This exercise is very much like that situation. As we all scrambled to come up with ideas, some people dropped balls, fell over the hurdles, or out right threw up all over the track. {What-ever, you get the picture.}

We were also asked to visit the people who commented on our posts and look around at the other runners while we ran. I did try to CONTROL CLICK on the names and blog links to open their posts in new tabs. My strategy was to open several tabs and hunt for new interesting blogs as I prepared my posts and responded to comments. I started focusing on the Educational blogs first. I follow a lot of homeschooling people on Google Plus, but found so many new exciting people running alongside of me.

If you participated with me on this journey, I hope you didn't trip up over any of the flying balls or falling runners.

Zymurgy on the shelf or ZZzzz And Scene. Goodnight! Exploring storytelling through dreams.

From fruit to 'punch'.

ZZZ, are we cheating by using a string of ZZZ's for the last post of the A to Z Challenge? Okay, let's talk about Zymurgy instead. Zymurgy is the study or practice of fermentation in brewing, winemaking, or distilling. It's the last entry in my little computer dictionary. How fitting is that? Let's look back through some posts to explore some choice posts on fermentations:

SF Daddy | Science Fiction Daddy: F Ferments and Krauts
SF Daddy | Science Fiction Daddy: B Boozy Botanists


On to the ZZZ's conversation anyway...

We've established that we're storytellers and we're going to let stories create the structure for the learning environments we create around us. Some of us are writers, published or not, writers of novels, poetry, and whatnot. We all have ways of conjuring up a story to tell. Hopefully, if you find yourself employed to write you have plenty of inspiration and no shortage of ideas.

My kids need to be reminded sometimes how to come up with an idea to write about. We'll prattle off lists of topics and ideas, hoping to be so mundane that they come up with something that will interest them on their own. "Dryer lint, speed bumps, how many shades of blue does paint come in?"


Let's look back at a few older posts and talk some more about dreaming.

SF Daddy | Science Fiction Daddy: D is for Dreaming
A Dream from March. Star Wars Episode III - SF Daddy


Journaling and especially dream journals are great ways to collect bits of stories that can be pulled from later. A twelve-year-old won't believe you if you tell her this. She'll have to figure that out on her own first.  She won't believe that she'll dream MORE if she merely pays attention to the dreams she's already having. Then, after she has tuned in, she'll find that the dreams flow whether she's paying attention or not. If she's right there in the morning ready with a pen to collection them in her journal, she'll have an endless supply of ideas to cull.

I wonder if many of the writers we follow have used inspiration from their dreams to work out their stories.

Yodeling Storytellers in the Woods

Remember This. Tennessee 2013.

The music and stories the girls come home with are usually pretty colorful. Campfire songs I've never heard of, 2-day adventures in the woods gathering forrest food for a stew, more plants discovered that contain strong enough fibers to fashion semipermanent necklaces, and days of journal entries that need to be written out before they lose the details.

A few trips ago, they call came back from camping howling the songs of Doug Elliot. Sharing now.

Doug's stories derive from his unique lifestyle as well as his deep interest in plants, animals and people. Since humanity's beginnings our connections with the natural world have defined us and made us who we are. Elliott's stories explore and celebrate the rich diversity of that special human connection to nature. His programs are textured by his use of traditional lore, regional dialects and accents, and enhanced by his soulful harmonica playing.

Storytelling and education go hand-in-hand. For millennia, storytelling has been an invaluable tool for passing information, values and wisdom from one generation to the next. 

Watch Dandelions,Groundhogs and Poison Ivy in Lifestyle  |  View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

Xylem in us all.

Example of a cross section of a (woody) stem. Used with permission from Hydroponics - Indoor Horticulture by Jeffrey Winterborne. http://www.hydroponicist.com (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Xylem is one of the two types of transport tissue in vascular plants (phloem is the other). Its basic function is to transport water, but it also transports some nutrients through the plant.

If the xylem is the conduit for passing water and nutrients within plants,  this and any blog are also xlyem. We are the roots drawing nutrients from the soil and our thoughts to transport them to you, the flower.

I had the good fortune to take a class with a video professor in the early nineties that influenced me deeply.

Paul Ryan taught an upper level Field Production class that went beyond the traditional scope of using video cameras and microphones properly. He introduced us to the use of Ta'i Chi to control our bodies while shooting 'hand-held' cameras. Professional cameras you see news photographers lugging on their shoulders are pretty heavy. This approach, lowering your center of gravity and shifting your weight consciously from leg to leg, allows one to walk with a smooth glide producing less camera shake. You get a freedom of movement that a tripod cannot emulate. Your shots gain a fluidity that you can only draw on a storyboard as a curve. 

The other major focus of Ryan's class was to bring in the concept of Earthscore to video production. He has several video examples at his site, earthscore.org.

While at the Sequatchie Vally Institute a few weeks ago, I thought of Paul while shooting this video. The camera was much smaller than the one we used back then. This video doesn't have a lot of camera movement in it, but is full of movement. What I'm doing here is describing the water.

This is a bit of a stretch, but conceptually, the stream bed, this medium and this conversation with each other is a fluid transfer of nutrients, ideas, stories, experiences. 

Why Not? Google+ Comments...

Google 貼牌冰箱（Google Refrigerator） (Photo credit: Aray Chen)

In the past week, Google+ has blazed its way into the Blogger comment world. Initially I was really happy to see it. Your comments here appear on your G+ stream, giving them an audience to your followers. The promise there is an easier way to spread your work across the social space.

Why Not?!

Notice that all the Google Kool-Aid in the fridge is gone.

I started seeing discussions and interactions on my G+ stream instead of just the one-liners and direct links to everyone's posts. Leading into the posts from the comments gives me an even more targeted or curated selection of links to explore.

I said I was "initially"happy, because my jury is still out. I'm still looking at it. When you have an occasional party that people aren't showing up for anyway, you have lots of time for experimentations like this. The real tests will be by those who have a huge audience to lose if it the commenters don't follow you into the Google space. (But who doesn't have a Google account these days? Who doesn't have a couple by now for work, personal, research, etc.)

Do you use Google+?

Did you notice the change on peoples' blogs?

Did you notice that you could change your whole commenting scheme at all? Care?

Did you switch it on just to see what would happen?

(If you usually have 50+ comments on your blog, did you see more or less after switching?)

Did you go back?

If you have a link a poll. I'd love to see it.

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I'm your Venus--of Willendorf

Deutsch: Venus von Willendorf (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

One of the most iconic sculptures from our art education, the Venus of Willendorf, is also one of our favorites. She's so happy for someone who was born roughly between 24,000 and 22,000 BCE.

The wiki page says, she's now referred to as the Woman of Willendorf. I don't like alliteration much and she'll always be my Venus.


Mrs. SFDaddy makes soap with her image and we wanted to share. (You can purchase her soap, too.)


Then there's the Bananarama bit, that I'm referring to in the post. I have found that I need to explain a lot of my references to the kids. Here's the song. Kids, don't be too influenced by this video. Do you notice how they mostly just wave their arms in the air like muppets?

University game break.

The Sims 3 Collection (Photo credit: origami_potato)

Not everything is entirely educational and good for you. Sometimes a game is just a game. I haven't figured out how to properly spoil the fun of the University expansion for the The Sims3, so the girls are still enjoying it. Perhaps they're goal-setting in a way. Thinking about life after high school.
{Perhaps I could just tell myself that.}

Hope real life isn't much like this game for them. I didn't have the traditional university/Greek experience, so that's literally all Greek to me.

We did try to do some experiments with the Sims3 game play. Red2 tried to make juice with ingredients of different quality ratings. They score the produce you grow with a simple system: good, great, excellent, etc. She found clearly that you could sell the sqeezings that were made with finer ingredients for more money. The extra sim work was worth the extra 'simoleons.'

Indiana Jones movies map (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I thought the traveling expansion would be a tad bit useful. We had some conversations about China, Egypt, and France, but in the end, they were just game play. Brushing up against geography a bit.

Maybe some good geography lessons would be to do an Indiana Jones-style map of all the locations in James Bond movies or all the places on the globe that Jennifer Garner went in Alias. They're a bit young for Alias still, but I bet there are some good 'sight-seeing' value to these movies. Did they actually film in all the locations or was it just movie magic? That would be a good research project.

Have any subversively devious and fun ways to talk about geography?

Tinctures. Yeah, that's what I said.

What other concoctions do we have brewing? Tinctures of all sorts. They just sit in the dark doing their thing. What's a tincture?

A tincture is typically an alcoholic extract of plant or animal material or solution of such or of a low volatility substance (such as iodine and mercurochrome). - wikipedia

A good example of a tincture is vanilla extract. That's in one of the jars.

If you read the label on a McCormick for example, you might just find that it also contains corn syrup. We won't be putting that in ours. Usually you sweeten your baked goods with their own ingredients, guys. We're not eating the extract straight up, so it doesn't need to taste good by itself. (Who's running these companies?) Here's a post about it if you want to see more label voodoo.

What's really nice about making tinctures, is 1) it's fun to say and 2) you need Vodka on hand. If you notice in the picture, the bottles and jars are pretty small, so there's leftover vodka.

What would you do with the leftover vodka?

Shh.... go back to sleep

Red1 tossing leaves.

This is a quiet little shorty post today.

When you're a parent you get to experience some strange and sweet things your kids do. They will deny it because they're doing it in their sleep.

Late, or only a couple of hours after bedtime, I occasionally hear crying. Red2 appears to be awake, sits up and dries her tears. We adjust the sheet and find the pillow again.

Goodnight.

Reptiles and Pets I Didn't have as a Kid

Feed This

Have I mentioned that the ladies in the house travel a bit? That wouldn't tend to be much of a problem, but when they are starting seeds, fermenting elaborate beverages, or bringing home pets to take care of, suddenly I become the caretaker of all of their 'delights.'

The turtle is one that's truly simple to care for. He's got quite a little personality, so much more interesting to watch than the fish. He perks up as I approach the tank because he knows it's time to eat.

He belongs to Red2, our nine-year-old. She's taking great care of him.

I'm happy to say that this is the only reptile we have, but we have 2 fish tanks (one each for Red1 and Red2), 2 cats (you've met before, Lucy and Ethel), occasionally a bug in a container to inspect and eventually bees.

Growing up I only had gerbils and then hamsters. If we look at my situation today a little differently, this is my chance to have all the pets I wanted as a kid, but wasn't allowed to have. The bonus is that the girls usually have to do all the work to keep the cages clean and fresh. {Score!} They also have figure out how to feed them and keep them happy. With one of the fish tanks, that meant having to evict a goldfish who just wouldn't stop eating everyone else.

Kid's, I think I just let out a treasured parental secret. Do you think your parents are letting you have a dog because they never had one? You might be right.

Quilty by Association

Sew, you have a fiber arts minor, did you think you'll escape your love affair with textiles?

Mrs SFDaddy is a rock star in the quilting and fabrics game. This is a link to one of her sample quilts  that uses the fabrics from wonderful designs of Eric Carle who does the Very Hungry Caterpillar series. The girls are quickly becoming "Rockettes" in their own rights. Red1 is altering tshirts into skirts and tank tops, looking cute. Red2 can weave up a friendship bracelet like its a military exercise.

I am a little quilty by association. What am I doing? I helped with two quilts and have a third one in the UFO pile. In quilt-speak that's an UN-FINISED-OBJECT. The first was a quilt for Red1. we took our old shirts and cut them up into squares, layered them together, sewed then up, snipped the edges and we had a great scrappy quilt.

The second project was a quilted pillow, not pictured here. Red1 picked the fabrics and we figured out how to make a giant pillow.

The UFO is my pirate quilt. We all used to play an online pirate game and I had a character I grew pretty fond of. This is the sketch and fabrics selected to pull it off. The fabrics run from tropical to treasure. We're looking for the original sketch of the quilt. The drawing here is on Red1 drew up.

You don't have to be sewing to have a UFO. But you also don't have to be haunted by them. I'm granting you all amnesty from being chased down by your UFO's. Just try not to be abducted by them.

What's your UFO?

Pizza, Pizza.

Growing up in the seventies suburbia (of nothing) an hour away from Mickey Mouse, we saw the pizza industry blow up. Pizza used to be an agonizing wait in the deep red vinyl booths at an actual Pizza Hut restaurant or a Chef Boyar dee pizza in a box kit.

We saw the dawn and sunset of Little Sleaser's, I mean, Caesar's--and now its new sunrise. In their infancy, you ordered a pizza from Little Caeser's and go two. The little cartoon guy chanted, "Pizza! Pizza!"

Pizza was always a treat we didn't think too much about, except, "When will we have it again?"

Top, Bake, and Eat This.

Now we're not only a little bit concerned by all the bread for health reasons, but it turns out Red2 is terribly sensitive to wheat and dairy. We diagnosed her food allergies when she was still nursing. She was way cranky and would break out when Mrs SFDaddy ate anything with wheat or dairy. Long story short, we are now mostly gluten and dairy-free.

There goes the pizza, or that's what we started to think. Over the last few years as going gluten free has become more popular, our lives avoiding for allergy-reasons have become easier.

Mixing up our own dough to make a pizza was a good adventure and very doable. There are a lot of great recipes and alternate flours that taste great, but how about a good quicker alternative? Udi's to the rescue. Udi's bakery has a gluten free frozen pizza crust you can get in the freezer section of the grocery store. Yeah! Thank you Udi's.

Our first great experience 'out' getting pizza was from Blue Moon Cafe. They make a great gluten free pizza. We brought our own dairy-free cheese and they were happy to serve us.

Four people at a pizza joint can be pretty pricey though and add the premium price for getting the special dough.

Look for specials! Recently, Uncle Maddio's opened up and on Sunday nights they offer a 2 for 1. It's Pizza! Pizza! all over again.

But wait there's more. We've recently joined a group of families with kids about the same ages who regularly share a weekly pot-luck together. In addition to that, some of us have started frequenting another pizza place, Your Pie. Both Uncle Maddio's and Your Pie offer gluten free crusts and vegan sauce and dairy free (or vegan) cheese. Both of these places have great products.  Your Pie actually mixes their own dough which bumps their review up a few notches for us. Both locations make a serious effort to change gloves, use different surfaces and even move out of the normal prep areas to assemble your order.

Thank you, to all the restaurants who recognize legitimate food sensitivities, even if it's becoming just fashionable to go gluten free right now. Hear that Dominoe's? (They just announced their new gluten free crust (but use the same utensils and workspaces to prepare their pies. If you are deathly allergic, you'll want to read the fine print.)

Related articles

• Pizza Hut to Test Market a 7 Calorie Pizza in Maine!
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• Uncle Maddios Gluten Free Pizza

Oh, these orchids!

Red2 has a green thumb. Grandma gave us these orchids 2 years ago. Red2 kept them alive and they even bloomed again. How awesome is that? 

She has a little spritzy water bottle and everything. 

{Clue from yesterday's post: The flowers were not in the box.}

NO! Not a shameless blog contest!

No!
What's in the box?

I found this box in the basement. What's inside? The first commenter who guesses correctly will get a personal reply from me on this blog. The best guess will also get a reply from me on this blog. Just about any guess may get a reply. I'll be really shocked if anyone guesses correctly. You've heard about my kids. There's the clue. One of them left behind: The Mystery Box.

Mine Minecraft Miracle Mire

The Minecraft Periodic Table of Elements
& the Anatomy of a Creeper.

It's a game.
It's genius.
It's a game!
They're learning!
They're fighting.
Just zombies.
How is it learning?
Well...

If you've not heard about Minecraft, {really? is that even possible?} it's a tiny little indie game about digging in the dirt and building with the materials you gather. I found it a while ago and thought the kids would love. They did. They loved it so much we had to figure out how to turn it into school to somewhat justify the attention they're giving the game.

It turns out it wasn't hard. Red2 enjoys mining for diamonds. In her travels in the real world that sparked an interest in geology. She's picked up a knack for identifying rocks. She's always been the one who lingers the longest in the museum store looking at the crystals and filling her $1 bag.

As an assignment, she needed to build a working electrical circuit with redstone. Redstone is the power source in the game. She made a sculpture of a car with red wool that she dyed in the game. Then she outfitted it with working windshield wipers, doors that opened and closed and seat-belts.

Red1 build her own Mayan temple complete with lava traps. I'm not sure Indiana Jones would be able to escape that one.

There are a lot of schools that are putting Minecraft to use to teach basic computer skills. The girls have ventured into the server space and with just a little nudge, they took a ruined village and built up a great city on a server, organized a team of other players to move in and build a huge wall around it, expand the buildings. They raise crops and livestock in the game and sell crafted items in little stores they build.

It is a game. But there's a lot in there and they've found a lot of ways to make learning fun.

Their next goal is to master the art of installing the many game mods and to perhaps start programming their own. Nudge, nudge.

Lovely Little Chicken...

Posting with out comment.

Kefir Me, You Fool. Another round for the grown ups, this time.

While we're talking about beverages, shakes, healthy food, blah, blah, there's one more. {Just one?} Water kefir.

 “I’m so excited about yeasty bacteria!”

I can't possibly do this better than Crunchy Betty did with her post, but I do have a cool video that shows the grains dancing around in the jar.

What do we do with the water kefir grains? We make the juice kefir with 100% juice. After the first day, you get a soda. {That's fun, but what if you keep those yeasty things in the juice longer?} 

After 2 days, you get something {hic!} a little more fun. {hic!} Friends insist we bring the juice kefir to the weekly potlucks. There was almost a riot of concern and wild speculation about what had happened to me the night I missed. {Were they concerned about my absence or just sore about not getting the juicy juice?} 

It's becomes an adult beverage, if you needed me to spell it out a bit more. Pour the juice through a sieve to collect the grains to use on the next batch. You'll be able to share with your friends and they'll be able to be able to make some for themselves. 

Here's an FAQ about kafir grains. This about sums it up.

Did you have any idea these things existed? I didn't a few months ago.

Juicy Juicy People

Several posts back (not long ago) I posted about juicing a bit. The family got intrigued by a series of documentaries on food and health. We started juicing fruits and vegetables and and WAY regular.


Today's juice was made with red swiss chard, carrot, red apple, 1/4 avocado several almonds, some honey, and a few frozen raspberries. You add some spring water (or filtered) then put the lid on and start mixing it up.

This one was a little sweet and really thick. The glass straw, which is pretty heavy, stood up by itself for the photo. Mrs. SFDaddy can't drink this stuff because it's too 'pulpy' but the Nutri-bullet is so much easier to clean up than the other super juicer. I'm juiced and cleaned up in just a couple of minutes. The best fast-food you can get.

Do you make smoothies? Are you getting all your veggies in?

Indie Crafters' Experiences

(Water balloon +  a cold night =  Priceless.)

This photo of ice was taken on a quiet morning after an event of lunar celebrations and other indie, crafty-like experiences called "Dreamtide" in Ashville, NC. We met up with travelling puppeteers and acrobats who flew Red1 and Red2 into the air with their feet and taught them how to soar  with aerial silks. The girls love making functional items that they can trade with. Red2 walked around I.C.E. (see below) and traded out quite a bit of loot with the other vendors. The vendors prefer actual money, but Mrs. SF Daddy had some really cute "Sneaters" to trade that year.

I love this video showing us, I.C.E. There's a lot of plaid in it, but don't hold that against us.

I-C-E, the Indie Craft Experience, based in Atlanta is a lot of things. Our friend Shannon is part of the team that created and curates this experience for us the crafty consumer AND us as the crafty creators. I couldn't explain it better than they do, so here's a quote from their own site:

With a vision to provide indie crafters an opportunity to sell and promote their creations in Atlanta, ICE quickly caught on as a favorite event for participants and attendees alike. ICE is a grass-roots effort, organized by two Atlanta crafters – Christy Petterson of a bardis and Shannon Mulkey of Patina. Inspired by indie craft markets in Chicago and Austin, the Indie Craft Experience was founded in order to provide Atlanta with a major indie craft event. In addition to craft markets, ICE also organizes Wedding Day Hooray, Salvage and an annual Pop-Up Shop during the holiday season.

This is a long video, but at the ICE site, there's a long list of events they do all year round. I have quite a few friends who needed ICE to "pop-up" for them. I hope my crafty-pals finally take the hint and leap in, sign up, and get a table to sell their neat items.

Mrs. SF Daddy is totally a maker. She's a frequent participant of I.C.E., currently has some items at Naked Art in Birmingham, AL, and talks about her stuff, which for some reason we named SlothCraft, on her blog.

Lot's of links today, but, hey, you wanted to know all this stuff, right?

What do you do with your glue gun?

H Honey, honey... Buzz Kill

It's not just all about the honey, but wait for it, honey, honey.

The bees have been hit hard in last few years. This CBS News story covers it well. The 'skeptical' interview is amusing, but judge for yourself, that's not what this post is really about.

Building a Hive. Just add bees.

Since we shouldn't have chickens or goats, we're planning on raising bees. Red1 and Mrs. SF Daddy have spent months working with the main bee dude in Georgia learning how to be proper beekeepers. We got a sad email that instead of being able to pick up their bees this month they'll need to find another source if they want to start this year.

The cute beekeeper suites and hives are all ready to go into production, but the health of our bee colony was compromised and now we'll hive to wait a little longer. Ouch. Poor little fellers.

While we wait, remember the Archie's?  Sure, but what's with the weird dog with the crush on the girl in the kissing booth? And why do the guys look so angry just before they get kissed?

Sugar, honey, honey.

G Gingerly Germinating Ideas for Growth - The Seed Swap 2.0

Grow! Part of the effort to create a wildlife garden full of bird feeding, seeding producing, flower-popping, goodness, is to grow some seedlings from scratch. From seeds.

Label This

Red3. Red4. Red5, Standing by.

Mrs. SF Daddy wrangled a large collection of seeds this year. Almost every year for a few years now, she'd started trays of seedlings, popped them into the ground and bam, we have tomatoes, daisies, bachelor buttons, echinacea, peppers, cucumbers, blah, blah, munch, munch, munch.

Plant this.

This year, she decided to start, not just a seed swap, but a seedling swap. She conned--I mean--enlisted her friends to start their own trays of seeds. They'd return to their own homes with trays of seeds ready to sprout. In a few weeks, they all return to the scene of the crime and trade little baby plants. Then instead of 20 or 30 of the same plants, they all leave again with a wide variety.

The plan was fool proof. Almost. The first batch of seeds was shipped to the wrong address and the seed starting party had to be postponed. (And all the way to the next full moon, if you're following along with the posts.) 

While the first batch sprouted, we had a few intrusions! Ants in the trays!

Now that things have calmed down and we're in April, we have lots of little babies almost ready to share and pop into the ground around the tulips. Surprise! Red2 and I planted tulip bulbs and they're almost ready to pop!

This video will walk you through the seed starting process. Join us as we prepare to plant some seeds.

What's growing in your garden?