Rollo Snuggling

Rollo likes to snuggle under the covers with us before bed. Here he's stretched out between blankets on my legs.

The pre-flash made him lift his little head and he didn't like that I'd lifted up the comforter

But then he settled back down between my ankles

Rick keeps making fun of Rollo's "big pink butt" 

He doesn't like the comforter raised, so he tries to go deeper

And resettles with a foot stretched out. We know he's comfy when he a) rolls onto his side and stretches out, or b) his little legs stick straight out in front or behind him. It's so funny!

Happy hog. He's such a bum!

Rollo's New Bed

Rick decided that there was something spartan and cruel about letting Rollo sleep on bare plastic under his igloo, EVEN THOUGH when I tried putting fleece in there he just burrowed underneath it and slept on the bare plastic anyway.

So he got him a bed.

But not just any bed. This is a fuzzy fleece ZEBRA PRINT bed. Because nothing but the best for our little diva.

At first, Rollo kept trying to run underneath it and we had to keep pulling him back out of the igloo and trying again. After several attempts we finally convinced Rollo that he wanted to sleep IN the bed and not UNDER the bed. Now he cuddles up in his beautiful zebra bed under his little fleece blanket all tucked away inside his igloo.

In the following pictures we moved the igloo and took off the blanket so you get to see his grumpy "how dare you wake me" face.

Poor sleepy pig.

Rollo Waking Stage 1:Huffing at us for moving his blanket and exposing him to the light
Rick and I have fallen into a bizarre ritual where we tend to give Rollo dialogue when he makes this face - it usually goes something along the lines of "NOOOO! I live in darkness! I am the night!"

Rollo Waking Stage 2: He thinks if he curls up in a spikey ball maybe we'll go away and he can go back to sleep 

Rollo Waking Stage 3: He wakes fully and relaxes and lets us take him out for snuggle time

Campus CLOSED

The weather in Ames is terrible enough today that campus closed early.
Which NEVER happens.
It can, (and has been) -20F wind chills and they STILL make us tromp around in it.

But today we're getting that awesome mixture of rain and snow and slush and sleet that makes Cyride buses slide around like gargantuan red hockey pucks and they decided it was better to send us all home early.

The official closing announcement via the Iowa State website

The current radar as of 1:48pm CST courtesy of Theweatherchannel.com

The rain as it transitions to snow. And thunder-stormed.
THUNDERSNOW - a phenomenon where Iowa is shitty in two seasons simultaneously. 

sleet on the porch

the snow continues to get snowier

and snowier

neighbors car right around 12:30

neighbors car around 1

and snowier
Winter just won't go away...

Bottle Washing

For his first five gallon batch of beer Rick needed 50 bottles. 

We didn't have a drying rack, so I improvised one with wire shelf organizers laid sideways between stools. 

I also got some fun shots of the bottles. 

Rick's beer should be ready to drink on the 25th.

Hedgehog Hat

This is what a hedgehog hat looks like.

I was lying down to start with -so he was on my shoulder before he moved up to my head. 

He made a super grumpy face when I sat up to take this picture!

MLK Quote revised

After I ranted about how this particular assignment lacked meaning because it lacked context, I went back and revamped it!

Original "We must use time creatively" doodle

Finished "We must use time creatively" doodle - I added parts of the letter to the watch gears and a chained purple martin - I'd originally thought to add a bird cage because the letter was written from a cell in Birmingham jail, but then that went to bird, where I immediately went to Purple Martin and decided I liked that better. 

Art Ed

I'm taking an Art Education course this semester. My professor is oddly reminiscent of Madam Mim... she hasn't broken into song yet, but she does have frizzy hair (not purple, though I have a DIFFERENT teacher with purple hair) and wore pink and purple on the first day of class. 

Madam Mim and Merlin from Disney's "Sword in the Stone"

Anyway, I'm not 100% sure what I'm doing in Art Ed yet, but I love the class. Mostly because it's a chance to doodle and play with colored pencils!

This is a "zentangle" I did to decorate the cover of my sketch book, I actually started it before the semester began in my notebook, Rick estimates I have about 20 hours into it. It's oddly therapeutic and the more detail you add, the harder it is to find where you mess up.

We were instructed to save the first couple pages of our sketch books for our "contents" pages. I jazzed mine up a bit because content pages are boring. 

We had to find an "inspiring quote" about art or creativity. I picked "There are no rules of architecture for a castle in the clouds" by G.K.Chesterton because it reminded me of one of my favorite movies "Howl's Moving Castle" - So I did a doodle inspired by that to accompany my quote. 

The "castle" from Howl's Moving Castle

We also were assigned to find a quote from Martin Luther King Jr. so I found "We must use time creatively" and drew the insides of a pocket watch. I gave it the "serial number" 1151929MLKJR441968 which can also be read as
1-15-1929 MLK Jr. 4-4-1968 his birth and death dates,
and the pocket watch in the middle is stopped at 6:01 - the time he was shot.

My biggest problem with all these "find a quote" assignments, is that I do exactly what everyone else in my class does, I hop onto brainy quotes, or the quotations page, or pinterest, type in a topic or person and just pull one that catches my attention.
With the art quote I wasn't as frustrated, find a quote that inspires your creativity, okay fine, not a lot of context needed, but Martin Luther King Jr.?
Without the context of his background or the civil rights movement and the part he played in it, it's meaningless. You can't look at the quote "We must use time creatively" and know that he wrote that in a letter to his fellow clergymen from a jail cell in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963 after said "fellows" criticized his methods in his crusade for civil rights.
The quote caught my eye because his time was cut short and I instantly decided I wanted to draw a pocket watch, most probably because I find circles aesthetically pleasing,  but I only read the actual letter AFTER I'd done the doodle and now I'm considering revamping my sketch to play more into the situation in which it was written.
It's not due till next monday. I have time to play.