To the Museum!

Guess what?  I went to the Krannert Art Museum yesterday and it was awesome!

I got to see all kinds of art-ifacts (get it?), and I got to take pictures with my new cell phone.

A pretty piece of glass:

A vase from Japan

More pieces of pottery

Zeus/Jupiter from ancient Rome

Painting

more painting

stained glass

stone capital from a Roman column

This is a 3-D model of an H1N1 virus.  We had to wear special glasses to look at it.  They had a Playstation2 controller that you could use to look inside by zooming in.

You could see the inner proteins and the inner cell walls.

How cool!

Gotta go, time for my nap!

PS - did I mention that I have a toy frog?

Lego Storm

Hi,

I was just playing with Legos, and I started assembling a whole bunch of Lego people and cars. And do you know what? I decided to make a movie with them. It's called "The Attack of the Evil Lego Bricks." Great name, huh?

The thing is, giant Lego bricks are falling from the sky and they need to get into a storm shelter. But the driver can't start the car. And once they get it started up they need to start looking for someone who was late to get to the car place. Once they find her they don't have room in the seats. They eventually get to the storm shelter, but then a whole new adventure starts. Anyway, just watch!

Pfeffer

Hello,

This is Nicole’s invisible cat, Pfeffer, writing again.  LOL!  I’m writing about the awesome cat toy she made me.  First she cut the rim off a paper plate, then cut a spiral in the center circle.  Then she made a hole in the very center of the spiral and attached a ribbon.  Now I have the very best cat toy ever!

(Pfeffer has the ability to become visible when he wants to!)

Pfeffer loves tomatoes!

and apples

and peaches

and bananas

and Mom & Nicole

and pepper & green tea

and Mallow

Trouble with Science Experiments

Hi! Hi! Hi!  Guess what.  I've done some science experiments.  Unfortunately, some of them got a bit out of control.  One of them I did yesterday.  That was the one where I made homemade bubble bath.  I used some unscented liquid soap, a teaspoon of water, and 15 drops of scented oil.  Since I didn't have any scented oils, I used rose water.  It worked pretty well, but it didn't make very much.  In fact, I used it all up in one bath.  Of course, I had at least a foot of bubbles in that bath.

Another one I did is floating a paperclip on some water.  We put a paperclip on a piece of paper and carefully got the paper wet so it sank the paper clip floated on its own. In the end, the paper clip floated because of the water's surface tension.  It sunk once we added a drop of soap because the soap got between the water molecules and caused the surface tension to collapse.  It was pretty fun, but it only worked once.

The last one we did was a classic.  We took plastic glove filled with baking soda put over a cup that had some vinegar in it.  But you see, out of curiosity I decided to stop holding down the glove.  The glove had been holding the reaction in.  Instead of flying away, the glove just moved part way out of the way and the contents of the cup came up out of it.  The reason the vinegar and baking soda worked is that vinegar is acidic and baking soda is a base.  It was fun except for when we were cleaning up and I got vinegar in a cut on my hand.

Too much nip!

Hi, this is Nicole's invisible cat, Pfeffer, here and I have a bit of a problem.  You see, you know your owner's had too much nip when she signs up to be contractually obligated to read to a bunch of noisy preschoolers once a week!  And man, were they noisy!  I could hardly stand it...and she had to read to them which was an even harder thing because she had to talk very loudly and it made her throat hurt.  Not only that, whenever she started up on a book that she actually enjoyed, one of the kids held up a book and said, "Read this!"  How annoying!  (If you're Becca, the UPS teacher, reading this, don't get annoyed at Nicole because this is her cat speaking.)

But still, Nicole will read to them the whole year because she understands that they're really young and they'll learn.  I may just be a cat but I know that for sure.

Beanbag Puppies and Trouble with Cameras

Ohai,

Due to recent neck problems caused by looking up at the TV screen while sitting right in front of it, I brought a beanbag up from the basement.  Not only did it solve my neck problems, but the dogs love it!  I tried to get some pictures.

Unfortunately, I'm still not very good with the camera!

But at least I managed to get a few pictures of the dogs.

I also managed to take the dogs on a mile long "walk" by holding on to their leashes with one hand and my bike handlebars with the other.  It's amazingly easy to do.  Note:  professional biker on a closed course, do not try this at home.

Buddhism in Japan

Guess what? After I studied up on some Buddhism for Japanese religion study my mom asked me what I learned about it. I started telling her in pantomime. That was funny! The first one I did was better but this one is pretty funny too. Man, we'll never get that moment back! Anyway, enjoy the show!