Last Post

Ok, changed my mind.

This blog is moving over to:

brynashley.com

And for anyone interested in my newest endeavor, 1000 Useful Things, you can find me here:

1000usefulthings.com

It'll still be cool and funny. Just a new url.

Horn Tooting

In case you don't read Nick's blog. I'm famous.....on my husband's blog. But whatever.

http://www.nickloper.com/2011/01/how-fiverr-com-works/

And then go check out my new one.

BTW - I'll plan on posting random musings here on the weekends. So don't get rid of Live from the 925 for good.

http://www.brynashley.com/

Big Pimpin'

Check out the new blog. :-)

www.brynashley.com

Science Center

While at the Pacific Science Center (for the Harry Potter Exhibit), we visited the Mindbender Mansion. It was basically an area where there were tons of logic puzzles. I love logic puzzles. I'm also a little neurotic and can't leave one until I've solved it.

Stace and I decided to try a 2 person puzzle. Each person puts on a pair of "handcuffs" that are linked together. Does that make sense? See the picture below. There are a total of 2 sets of handcuffs, we each have on our own set, but they are looped in the middle.

The object of the game is to get un-hooked from each other.

Hilarity ensued.

First, Stace tried climbing inside the loop.

But we were right back where we started.

We continued to try a ton of other methods - including a number of semi-acrobatic moves that would not have been possible had we not been flexible and or small.

Hmmmm....maybe this will work?

"Do you know how to do it?" (no)

"Let me just think about this. Maybe I can visualize it."

Around the foot, through the loop......

Cat's cradle anyone?

Around the tummy?

At this point we've decided that there must be an easier way.....how would a full grown adult and a 6 year old be able to do what we're doing.

We are pretty much dying of laughter at this point because we feel pretty darn stupid.

To our dismay....and 15-20 minutes later....nothing seemed to work. Nick finally asked one of the staff members for a hint. We got the hint but still couldn't get out of the darn handcuffs.

We were literally about to give up when all of a sudden they came apart. We had no idea how it happened.

(But don't worry, we went back later and proved to ourselves that we could do it again).

And the new blog has been launched.....I'll try and keep up with this one as best I can. But I'm going to be attempting a 5-day/week blog about more useful things. Perhaps this blog will fill the other 2 days and will be filled with complete absurdity. Visit the new blog!

http://www.brynashley.com

Holiday Bowl Recap!

Nick and I went to San Diego last Thursday for the Holiday Bowl! The huskies were going bowling and we weren't going to miss it!

We met up with our friends Paul, Theresia, (Sue (Paul's mom) and grandpa) at the stadium for some tailgating action.

Shanthi brought tattoos so we took a picture with all our husky pride!

The alumni association provided us with some of the worst possible seats available at Qualcomm. Thanks, UW alumni associate. We were in the LAST row near the endzone. There were 3 crappier sections. So I guess it could have been worse....but seriously? They put us with a ton of people that didn't really want to stand up and kept calling Locker - Laker. Ugh.

The UW band was way better than the Nebraska band. Our "W" kicked their "N" in the butt.

Some armed forces guys jumped out of a plane with fireworks attached to their shoes and landed on the field. It was cool.

At half time it became quite awkward for a few reasons.

1. Nebraska performed and replayed a song with the same field marching formations (the bands also performed during the pre-show). The UW band not only performed more songs, but DIFFERENT songs AND they did this awesome lady gaga piece where half the band and cheer squad performed the dance from Bad Romance. Awkward for Nebraska.

2. They made a big todo (to do....not sure how that works grammatically) about this magical halftime show with a ton of little girl dancers and a big band. The girls started to dance, the band played.....and then they started lighting of fireworks and playing music over the loudspeakers. So.....the band was fighting against the music coming from the loud speakers and no one watched the kids dance. Everyone watched the fireworks....except maybe the parents of the kids dancing. Maybe.

Then we got to move to better seats!

Then we won. And it was awesome.

That's my buddy, Mike. Biggest UW fan I know. We ended up sitting right in front of him after we moved.

As we left the stadium a round of "Whose House? DAWGS House!" was started. I love winning.

Happy New Year!

It's been an exciting year! I had to cut down the number of photos because it was going to make this post WAY too long.

So here goes!

I baked. A lot.

The Issaquah High School Class of 2001 got married. Congrats to Charlie, Karen and Michael!

We did too. Officially. At San Francisco City Hall.

We ran a lot. 2 half marathons between us and a 5k with our newly engaged friends, Caresse and Tyler.

Visited London with Stace. Didn't really act mature at all.

Got another year older. Celebrating at the Toby Keith concert.

Celebrated getting married with a bachelorette party - Livermore style!

We did lots of other cool stuff. Went to a Raider's game and lived to tell about it. Learned how to trapeze. Went to Disneyland a few times. Raised money to fight cancer.

Had way more fun getting married (for fake) in Cabo.

Gorged ourselves at Thanksgiving.

Watched an awesome husky victory at Cal!

And an even better win in San Diego for the Holiday Bowl!

New Year's Eve

Happy New Year's eve.

1 year ago I decided to see if I could blog everyday for a year.

Well, it worked! I stuck with it. It's a far cry from the diaries I'd start and stop while growing up.

I have some ambitions for another blog.....still in the works. Until then, I'll probably continue to update this one.

Check back tomorrow for a year in review. I'd have posted it today....but I've been WAY too busy.

Holiday Bowl!

We're off to the holiday bowl.

But that's neither here nor there.

I learned something interesting from my sis this past week. I have this horrible tendency to overeat. To the point of nausea. It's a problem. I did this on Christmas. But my sister told me to do Child's Pose - from yoga. I did it for about 30 seconds and I was a new person! I had room for dessert! Try it.

And here are a few pictures of Mochi :-)

No pictures

But it was still awesome! We got to see all the original costumes and props from the movies. There was even a "sorting hat" at the beginning. All the little kids wanted to be in Gryffindor (duh) - so we heard that sorting song quite a few times. Thankfully we had a hufflepuff and ravenclaw wanabe so we eventually heard all of them. But no takers for Slytherin....but let's be real. Who wants to be in Slytherin?

There was a little kid there - probably 10ish - dressed to the nines. And by nines, I mean Harry Potter. Adorable. He even paid up for the listening device.

At the end you can buy all sorts of cool HP gear. I really want a scarf....but I'm not going to pay $40 for a scarf. I'm gonna ebay that ish.

The best part was the wands. Stace and I walk over to the wands and she picks one up and goes, "B, that's the elder wand. The most powerful wand in the world!"

All yours for a low price of $55. But really, can you put a price on that kind of power? I think not.

Harry Potter!

Today we are off to the Pacific Science Center - the greatest place to take kids in Seattle (kids both young and old).

They have a Harry Potter exhibit going on right now. I anticipate awesomeness. I hope I'm not disappointed.

Pics to follow.

Oops!

I'm not sure if yesterday was the first day I missed this past year...but hey, what can you do?

I spent the evening of the 26th doing something WAY more important than blogging. I spent about 2 hours playing Just Dance 2 on the Wii. This has got to be the most hilarious game. At the very least, it's hilarious to watch whoever is playing.

Maybe Nick will take a video of the antics so I can post an embarassing clip of myself trying to dance with a wii remote in my right hand.

I recommend it.

The Art of Racing in the.....

Wind and rain.

That's what happens in Seattle.

I had to try out my new heart rate monitor, so I headed outside for a little post-Christmas jog.

What's funny, is that were at least a dozen other walkers/runners out this morning. Sure, it's raining. But that's par for the course here.

I enjoy it and I MELT in the CA heat. So it was good times for me.

I took a "test" at work that helps you estimate your max heart rate. You can adjust your training to be at different percentages of your max heart rate - thus optimizing your total workout. It seems like a good idea. I'll give it a try in 2011. BTW - the test you have to take to determine your maximum heart rate is super sucky for about 20 minutes. You basically exert yourself as hard as possible and hope you don't die of a heart attack.

Merry Christmas!

Hopefully no one is reading this today :-) You should be hanging out with your family.

But just in case you do, here's a little something something.

Mochi, "helping" us change the sheets.

Christmas Giving

Last Sunday Nick and I volunteered at the Family Giving Tree. I'm not trying to toot my own horn AT ALL - we should have volunteered longer and/or brought more toys, but maybe net year - and maybe we'll bring more people.

In any case. It's a pretty impressive operation. Less fortunate kids write down what they'd like for Christmas - clothes and toys typically. This information gets put on a tag and those tags get distributed throughout the bay area (with a large number in Silicon Valley - good call, those guys are loaded).

When all of the clothes and toys are purchased, they are delivered to a large warehouse in San Jose. And that's where we helped out. For one minute, you have to pretend like you are a 10 year old child and you just walked into the world's largest toy store. Literally. there are toys all over the place. It's incredible. This is the tail end of the operation and I still had to stack 20 identical Tonka Trucks - Nick had the remote control cars (and 1 remote control dinosaurs). There were barbies everywhere and enough pillow pets to make any 6 year old scream.

I ended up working in the clothing section - they wanted someone who could fold clothes well, and apparently I looked like I could.

It was a great way to spend Sunday, helping fulfill kids' Christmas wishes.

Merry Christmas Eve!

Salted Caramels

Remember those caramels I made a few days ago?

I decided to make salted caramels with the extra caramel.

I wanted to make them extra tasty, so I melted some dark chocolate frangos. I added a little wax to help it harden and add some shine.

I cut the caramels into bite sized pieces and put them in the freezer. Then I dipped them in the chocolate and put them on wax paper. I put a little sprinkle of sea salt on half. You only need 1 or 2 granules of sea salt to get the salty flavor.

All in all - they were pretty tasty!

Patty Cake

If you haven't seen this, it will make you laugh. Nick sent it to me. I laughed out loud.

Crab Cakes

I made crab cakes for a Christmas party.

My dad tried out almost every recipe in the Tom Douglas crab cake cookbook, and landed on his favorite. I changed it slightly.

1lb lump crab meat (costco)

1/2 c thinly slice scallions (green onions)

1/4 c finely chopped red pepper

1 c mayo

2 tsp grated and peeled fresh ginger

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp black pepper

Mix

Then fold in 1/2 cup coconut (I use sweetened even thought the recipe calls for unsweetened...rebel) and 1/2 cup panko (asian bread crumbs)

I was making these for a party, so I wanted them to be bite sized. I used a cookie scoop so that they were all the same size. Make little patties and then put them on a cooling rack (allows for good air circulation).

Refrigerate for 30 minuts +

Remove, dip in a combo of panko and UNSWEETENED coconut (if you use sweetened you have to be careful that the coconut doesn't burn. I found that the unsweetened on the outside was fine.

Pan fry. Serve with lime and sweet chili sauce.