{crazyjen}

A rainbow

Here's a picture I took a couple of days ago. It rained right near dusk and then a rainbow popped out. the sky really did look this orange.

For a change I could see the start and end of the rainbow. It looked like it was from one end of our yard to the other. So I took a couple images and stitched them together. This picture isn't the best but you'll get the idea.

Star Wars at the MN Science Museum

Me, Mom, Tristan, Chris and his guest went to the Star Wars Exhibit at the Science Museum. We also went to the IMAX "Special Effects" movie.

The movie was friggin' sweet! It talked about how Industrial Light and Magic does some of it's coolest stuff, like making models appear real using moving motion picture cameras, how they made and blew up the White House in Independence Day and how they basically blow stuff up. At the end they had the Milenium Falcon jump into hyperspace and it felt like you actually did. It was cool.

So then we went through the exhibit. There was a ton of cool actual costumes and models to see. There was also some exhibits where you could build a car that floated on air and moved using magnetic fields. It was fun. I enjoyed that a lot, like a little kid you might say. I had a little Peter Pan complex goin' on. The minute I don't enjoy stuff like that should be the minute I die. :)

So here's Christles, Tristy and Me putting together our pod with magnetic legos on the bottom and a magnet on top for propulsion. We got into it. We didn't stop until we figured it out.

Here's me happy that I got my pod to travel along this route using magnetic propulsion. Sweet eh? oh yeah.

Princess Leia Costume from New Hope along with R2D2 and C3P0, um do I really need to describe what this stuff is? Should be obvious if you like Star Wars or have been living as long as I have. (New Hope came out one year before I was born).

Tarful, the real Wookie costume. It was like 7 feet tall. I had forgotten how tall those Wookies were. Pretty friggin' sweet. I believe that each of these actually has an air conditioner pack attached because the suits got so hot.

This is one of the Darth Vader suits from Revenge of the Sith. I drooled, seriously...well, not really but close. I may be a bit nerdy but I'm not an uber nerd. Chris might have drooled though or something worse which I won't utter on this blog but if you know me and think naughty thoughts you'll know what I'm not saying without me saying it. Get that, okay, good.

Too friggin' cool. Did I mention that they had a guy in a real Vader costume walking around. You could get your picture taken with him.

This shot is the money shot for the day. Looking into the Darth Vader helmet if you had it on. I might have actually drooled here. Well, maybe not but in my head I was drooling. It was like watching the part in Revenge of the Sith where they show the helmet going on Vader. Ooohh aaahhhh...

Just a cool print they had on the wall with some interesting info. It says "Sound designer Ben Burtt manipulated a recording of a malfunctioning hotel room air conditioner as the pulsating engine sound of the Star Destroyer."

Here some Vader trivia for you nerds out there. "Darth Vader's breathing is a recording of sound designer Ben Burtt breathing from a scuba respirator. The lightsaber sound is a combination of the hum of an idling 33mm movie projector and the feedback generated by passing a stripped microphone cable by a television.

Blizzard

This is what a MN blizzard looks like.

Leaving Montgomery, MN

Driving into Owatonna.

Very windy, blowing snow causing white-out conditions. Basically I couldn't see more than 1 telephone pole in front of my car. Lovely. Very lovely considering I had my 4 month-old niece and two sisters in the car.

Oh, you'll like this. We were just leaving Montgomery after our Daughter's of the Union Veterans meeting (that's Civil War) and had just realized how bad it was outside. So here's a para-phrased conversation that we had.

Michelle: We don't even have any blankets in the car.

Jen: I'm sorry. That's my fault.

M: Well, do we have any food?

Kim: I've got a brownie.

J: Me too and this crystal container full of M&M's. They say you can survive up to 30 days on chocolate. So we should be good there.

M: I've got breast milk but none of us but Gracie can have that. Do we have any water?

J: I've got a bottle right here and some frozen ones we could defrost in the trunk.

M: You know the real problem would be keeping Gracie warm. One of us would have to take her out of the car-seat and stuff her under our shirt and coat to keep her warm. Direct body-heat.

J: Yup.

K: You know if we called Guy he'd come and save us.

J: Unless he went into a ditch or got into an accident.

this is what I was thinking but didn't say.

He'd come and save you guys then murder me for getting into trouble in this cold blizzard weather and endangering the lives of his wife and child.

conversation ensues

J: Michelle, am I driving okay?

M: You drive like an old lady.

J: Well, I can't see and I don't worry so much about me but I do worry about that car whose 200 yards in front of us or any nut-bag hot-shot punk-a$$ driver behind me who could at any time hit me because they are stupid.

M: Well, it's your car.

J: Yeah, holding my niece and two sisters.

Anyways, I liked this conversation because a. it was funny and b. because we are funny in that we immediately start thinking of what we would have to do if we got into trouble. When in reality I should have thought of this before-hand. Like putting a blanket in the car, having some extra food and water, some candles or heat source. Stupid. You'd think I just moved to MN or something.

Monster Snow-Drift

Hey Dad! Check out this monster snowdrift in the yard!

The drift. Starting from the house to the pasture fence getting only bigger as it reaches the fence. I know, not really good perspective but check this out.

Here's a close-up of my snowman measuring stick next to the fence. So the first rung is about 2 feet tall. Now look at the above picture again. The top of the snowdrift reaches the second rung. So let's just say, on an estimate that the drift is about 2.5' tall.

The beginning of the drift. As you can see it is 15" tall in the middle. Notice my footprint on the bottom? I only sunk in about 3-4 inches which means the snow is hard-packed. The wind blowing the snow was so friggin' cold. It's below zero again. The bridge of my classes froze which made my nose hurt. I felt like a boxer sitting down after a round all hot and sweaty only to have some doctor take a hunk of metal that's been in the deep freeze and stick it to my face. Almost gave me a headache.

Here's a close-up of the snowman. I love how the snowdrift has layers. Reminds me a bit of how the grand canyon looks. A little.

Butt cold in MN

It is absolutely without a doubt butt f'in cold in MN. The temp is below zero with 20-30 mph winds making it absolutely frigid. The cold blows in hard, goes up your coat and freezes you out. You could cut glass if you catch my drift. My hat almost blew off my head too. Lovely. They closed down I35 from Owatonna to Iowa. I35 is basically the main corridor out of MN into Iowa. So the wal-mart parking lot, gas station lots, and cabela's were overloaded with semi trucks. There was a state trooper blocking off I35 making everyone exit. Crazy!

Friday Night Deep Freeze

Here's a temperature reading from Friday night.

butt cold that's what that is. and you know what the kicker is? this is the temperature without the wind chill factor. yeah, add that small detail and you drop this temperature by 20 degrees. you know what that means? if you're out in that weather for more than 15 minutes without adequate protection, you freeze to death.

Frosty foggyness

Here is my favorite picture (of a landscape) lately.

It's in black and white but you can't really tell if you look at it in color. The only difference is that the tree looks like a dark brown.

Braving the Blizzard

So Ryan and I tried to make it back from Hixton WI (South of Eau Claire about 15 minutes off of the Northfield exit on I-94) today. We woke up at 5:30 a.m. and started digging out the snow drifts around the house. Yeah, let me tell you how much fun that was (note the dripping sarcasm). Ryan plowed the driveway with his 4-wheeler with attached snow-blade and I shoveled around the cars. It was blowing icey cold stinging snow, we're talking 30-40 mph blowing snow. Fun right. Oh yeah, it gets even better.

So we shovel ourselves out and get out onto County Trunc G (gravel road) which has been plowed on one side of the road. That's all fine and dandy. We end up getting behind the plow.

We get on I-94 without incident but the fun happens after we get near Eau Claire. The roads aren't too bad but the snow is blowing so much that we can't see 1/8 of a mile in front of us. We get behind a semi truck and trailer which was fine until he decided to pass this old lady who immediately slammed on her brakes. Probably because the semi kicks up so much snow that you have a white out and panic and then hit the brakes. Well since Ryan and I couldn't see either we start gradually slowing down too except the lady almost ran into us. So Ryan puts us into a controlled skid and passes her on the right nearly missing her back-right bumper with our left front bumper by oh maybe less than a foot. Once we get past her she does a 180 and almost smokes a truck who had been following us a bit too close. She goes in the ditch and the truck misses her by a foot. Lovely. eh?

All in all we saw 11 cars in the ditch and two major accidents involving several cars. One accident we just came upon because the cops weren't there yet and the people were just calling the cops. That one involved a semi, a u-haul and a couple cars. The semi was squirting out gasoline. Lovely.

So after that we we're fine.

Wearing Hats in Winter

The following is an approximate account of a conversation my brother and I had last night about the reasons for wearing hats in winter. What do you think?

Jen: Chris, why do you wear that hat so stupid? (A visual: He has a woolen/woven stocking hat that he wears but he has it perched on his head, not covering his ears. So the top part of the hat has a resevoir off of his head instead of the whole hat covering his head.)

Chris: Because I'm in the house and I get hot.

J: Well, why don't you take it off then and put it in your coat pocket instead of wearing it so stupid on your head.

C: Because it won't fit.

J: It's made out of cloth, dork.

C: Jen the only reason for hats is to keep the heat from escaping not to cover my ears. That's it. (seemed a bit of jump to say that part, didn't it? he's changing the subject slightly because he just lost a small argument.)

J: Chris, hats are meant for two reasons, a, to keep the heat from your body from escaping and b, to keep your ears warm.

C: Jen, I saw a picture of elves and they have hats on that are covering their heads but their ears stick out. So there.

J: So what. Elves live at the north pole where it's cold all the time. Their ears are probably used to the cold and plus they are elves.

C: Well, we live in Minnesota, aren't you used to the cold?

J: Chris, we have seasons the north pole doesn't. Well, not like ours anyway.

C: I win. You lose

J: Win what? We aren't done arguing. You think you won because you brought up the fact that you saw a picture where elves aren't covering their ears with a hat? I don't think so. We're just getting started.

C: NO, I win.

J: NO, you don't. Just because you are done arguing doesn't mean you've won, it means you are giving up because you don't want to continue because you know you won't win. Plus, you aren't listening to me. That's not arguing.

(mom is laughing at us in the background as he is walking toward the kitchen and out of the house)

J: You're such a dork Chris. Fine leave.

So that was a session of bickering between siblings. Me and the middle boy, Chris. Who always thinks he's right {kind of like our father :)} and won't listen to reason or anyone else's opinions even though they are right. It's sort of fun to fight sometimes. Keeps things interesting and the argument direction was funny. :)

It's Snowing!!!

Here's some pictures of our snow storm/ice storm.