Henna

Last weekend was my first festival of the year! I have been doing henna body art at festivals for about 6 years now. It is very profitable and was a nice break from my day job. I missed Shea, who was at the AOS MiniCon, but I didn't really have a whole lot of time to think about that.

I started doing henna when I was 14 after getting some at a girl scouting event. My dad bought me a kit, and I played around with it and decided I really liked it. I bought more and did henna for my family at a reunion. Then my parents sugguested I set up a booth at a small local festival. I ended up making a ton of money, so I got a DBA and a tax ID at the age of 15, and have been doing henna ever since at several festivals a summer.

My first booth was outfitted with a small paper sign and some designs glued to a wooden board. I had camp chairs and a table. I have redecorated considerably since that first summer:

The chairs are actually storage crates with wooden reinforcements and cushions attached (made by my grandmother).

Here is my booth at the Batavia Picnic in the Park from last weekend:

I have a new tent this year. My other one was five years old and pretty mangled. 

This festival listed their hours as noon to five. I was working straight from 11:30-5:30! I wish I'd had time to take more pictures, because I'm really proud of the work I did. Here is a small sample mostly taken to show the customers what their henna looked like if it was in a hard-to-see place, with a few practice designs I did on myself.

One of my photographer friends stopped by and took a photo too: http://www.flickr.com/photos/48741272@N03/4762135955/

I have some more photos from previous years on my website: www.phoenixhenna.com

It's back-breaking, thumb-numbing work, but I enjoy it and I make about the same in 5 hours that I get for a week at my other job. 

Kittens

I usually save kitten pictures for sageandginger.blogspot.com, but today I wanted to add a little post here. They are getting so huge. I forgot how fast kittens grow. 

Artichokes French

Shea took me to a really nice restaurant last Thursday, and I had artichokes French, something I'd never tried before. I decided to make my own.

Instead of using a flour coating I am substituting parmesan cheese. I mixed in some pepper, salt, and garlic granules.

Then I prepared an egg bath.

I dipped the artichokes into the egg, and then thoroghally coated them with the cheese mix.

Then I put them in a preheated frying pan on medium with some coconut oil, butter, and vinegar.

 

I fried them until brown, and served.

Stuffed Portabella Mushrooms

I got inspired the other night and bought some portabella mushrooms to stuff:

They turned out really yummy.

Recipe:

Some portabella mushrooms

Ground beef

A tomato

A few garlic cloves

Spices

Mozzarella cheese

• First I put the ground beef in a pan to brown. I cut up the garlic and let it simmer with the ground beef, along with season salt and pepper, and preheated the oven to 350˚
• Next I cleaned the mushrooms and cut off the stems. I spooned out a hollow in each for the stuffing
• I cut up a tomato and diced the excess mushroom 
• I removed the beef from the pan and spooned it into the mushroom caps
• Then I put the tomato and mushroom into the pan on low heat until they got a little mushy
• I spooned this mixture on top of the ground beef and sprinkled on some grated fresh mozzarella.
• I put the mushrooms on a baking pan and put them in the oven for about ten minutes. 

Ta-da! 

Reconsideration

I've been only marginally happy for a long time now. I chalked it up to stress and work, but that wasn't the true cause. I started thinking about what was dragging me down, and I realized I have a big issue to contend with.

When I entered college, I wanted to be a wildlife biologist and work out in the field working with animals. I really had no idea what that actually entailed. I also had no idea that Environmental Science wasn't the same thing. I sat in on an environmental science class before registration, and realized it was not for me at all. I read through course descriptions and talked with friends and decided I wanted to try Brain and Cognitive Science (BCS). I had done a project on music and the brain in my senior year of high school, and it was the most excited I was about anything in that school. My first semester when quite well, but it wasn't great. I had some big conversations with Shea, and I decided that BCS didn't go as in depth into the workings of the brain as I'd have liked, so I switched to Neuroscience. The following two semesters were a struggle. I decided  that I was going to go on to Graduate school and get a Ph.d so I could head my own music and brain research projects. Last semester, I had my best GPA so far, and enjoyed most of my classes. When summer started, I realized I still wasn't happy, and didn't understand why. A few days ago I realized something. I was positively dreading grad school. I didn't want to write papers and do statistics and deal with politics and still feel like I was just waiting for my life to start. I wanted to have a hands-on job. Nothing I had read about the life of a graduate student was appealing to me in the slightest. Shea and I had another talk. I realized that I had mentally set my path in stone. I really felt (and still do to a certain extent) that I had already committed to my decision. The worse part was that this notion had sucked all the excitement for my major away. I felt like I had no passion, and nothing would make me happy. With Shea's help I am starting to see that I can get this degree and not have a plan at all for what I'm going to do with it. Certain ideas interest me, but I don't know yet if they are what I'll end up doing. The idea of teaching high school science appeals to me more than doing my own research. I have a lot of interests and passions. I love clothes and decorating our home. I love cooking meals and playing with our kittens, painting, drawing, music, and singing. And I really do love science. I'm just not sure how to go about incorporating that into my life.

My plan for now is to forget about grad school. If I someday decide that it's what I want, I can go. I'm going to finish up my degree, living my life more fully than I have been before. I'm not going to put it off anymore, with the excuse that I'm still in college and can't really start life yet. All of my other values get to be a part of it again, not just science. Once I graduate, I can decide what to try next, but until then, I'm going to (gasp) work without a future plan set out.

I feel a little uneasy without that plan, but a whole lot happier.

Cornish Rock Hens

I made up a recipe the other night which turned out delicious.

I coated two cornish hens with salt, pepper, and garlic granuals. Then I melted a half stick of butter and mixed in about two tablespoons of hickory smoke flavor. I coated the hens with about half of this and then put them in the oven, preheated to 350˚, for and hour and thirty minutes. Half way through I coated them with the rest of the butter and smoke flavor mixture. 

Etsy Treasury

This is what I would buy on Etsy if I could afford it all.

It's here: http://www.etsy.com/treasury/4c11126419246d910cfa91cd/sanguinity