Wednesday, May 05, 2004
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Someone's got a Birthday...
I spent the better part of my day at work today wrapping the last of Jimmy's presents and making his card. I made it out of half a poster board folded in half. I'm not much of an artist, but I think it looks alright.
Last night I sat on the couch after I got home at about 6pm. I blinked once and it was 9. Absolutely brutal when you lose a night just like that. Jim said that I looked tired, so he let me sleep. Would've been great if my mind/body KNEW that I was sleeping and registered the rest.
I'm so psyched about giving Jim his birthday presents. There are four in all and that giant oversized card. It's black written in with silver and gold pens. Black was the best colour poster board that I could find. The other colours were too lurid. The only problem with a card that big is that there's pressure to fill up all that space. So I daresay I wrote 1000 words in that card. Three sections. First one explaining the presents and the card, second telling him how I felt about him and third about my well-wishes for his future. On the other side I just wrote happy birthday in both English and Chinese. I'm slowly teaching Jimmy Chinese, so it's a nice touch I think.
The funny thing about birthday cards. I don't know if I'm the only one with this experience because it seems like the birthday card industry is thriving, but I must have looked at upwards of 500 cards (maybe that's an exaggeration, but I don't think so) and none of them even came close to being appropriate. I saw one that would have been appropriate if Jimmy was buying it for me, just because I have this thing about
fish, but really nothing that suited him or defined our relationship. In fact, all the ones that were made for "sweetheart" were just so sugary I cannot imgaine anyone buying it for anyone else. Not to mention that sugar is an absolute no-no on Atkins.
I was perusing eBay's
Weird Stuff listings when I came across a CD that had all sorts of stuff on it (1000 drink mixes, party screensavers...) but what really caught my eye was the "make your own lava lamp" and the pictures that they provided for said lamps were so cool. The lava lamps were made out of
Absolut and
Smirnoff twist bottles. It was beyond cool. Conventional wisdom has taught me that anything you can buy "on a CD" on eBay, you can already find online. Sure enough I stumbled upon
Oozing Goo where there are several methods to make your own lava lamp.
The concept is easy enough. You need immiscible two liquids with really close densities such that one will sink in the other, but when heated will become less-dense so it will float to the top and then sink back down when it is cooled this starting the flow-y motions. The base is made out of tin cans and 25-40w bulbs and apparently the tricky part is getting the fluids right. Reading the instructions many things occurred to me. Like is it wise to heat flammable liquids in a sealed container? Or should ordinary people be handling these chemicals? I'm still curious though and once we get our Internet set up at home I'm going to try and convince Jimmy to undertake the project of making one of these lamps.
I read the forum section and am well aware that this is not something that one gets right on the first try. I'm also well aware of the fact that not only do we have a giant rug to finish, we are also designing our own wall hangings. Still, who do you know that has made their own lava lamp? I'm just going to have to find someone who will drink Smirnoff twist. I'm not a big fan. Go look at
Oozing Goo and if you try to make one, I want to hear all about it.
I'm going home to a devastatingly messy house. I hope to have it all cleaned up tonight. I don't want to wait till the weekend. I have better things to do with my weekends I find.
posted by Joie! at
3:37 p.m.
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