100 Candles!

This is my 100th post. I didn't have any cake with which to celebrate, so I just stuck some candles in a half-eaten loaf of zucchini bread, which is like cake. I was going to write out 1-0-0 with the candles, but I only had room for 1-0. Then I got to blow them out! It was like my birthday, except now I've gotten to blow out candles twice this year! I felt like I was doing something naughty, like when I was a kid and would sneak out of my room after bedtime and eat Fudge Rounds from the "School Snacks" basket on my parents' kitchen counter. (I eventually tattled on myself about the Fudge Rounds. I remember I was crying really hard, hugging my mom and probably coating her with snot.)

If you haven't subscribed to Bucketful of Happy, you're missing out on the great satisfaction it would bring me to not see a single-digit number next to "Members." Over there, to your right, there are three ways to subscribe. Pick one and do it! Let's see if we can get that number to...ELEVEN!

There's a publicity stunt I've seen on other blogs that I've always wanted to try. So, in honor of my 100th post: Leave a comment telling me which post has been your favorite, and you'll be entered into a drawing for me to mail you something! It's going to be a random and inexpensive something. A surpriiiiiiiiiiise. One day you'll open your mailbox and a package will be in there! WHAT COULD IT BE?

I'll choose the winner this Sunday. I'm only going to get three comments. One of them is going to be penis enlargement spam. This is going to be awkward.

You Are My Sparklers

HI GUYS!

It's the 4th of July here in South Korea. We usually spend Independence Day with Joe's family (mine gets Easter,) but this year we are 93487534 miles away from our families, and that is sad. So here are some pictures to make our families less sad.

What we're doing today:

Does anyone else think I look a little like Aunt Saundra in this picture?

SURPRISE! It's video games. In the background is the crockpot where the BBQ pork to shred is cooking. The stuffed animal is Raffles from Singapore. The banner on the wall says "HAPPY TURBOFIRE WIN" because Joe made it for me when I finished my workout program before we went on the vacation. My hands are like that because I'm showing you that I painted 8 of my fingernails yellow, and 2 of them pink, because I am so hip and cool and snazzy and impressed with myself. We aren't going to any festivities. I did want to climb out of the window in the elevator engine room onto the roof of our apartment building to look for fireworks later, but I think we might just skip that.

This is fruit salad:

This is the puppy we're babysitting - whose mom will be happy to see her in this picture - sitting next to the sock she's been dragging around, and the puzzle we started last night which would have been on the floor normally but is instead taking up our table so the puppy doesn't eat it:

This is inside our freezer:

That's a bag of vegetable waste to be recycled, which is in there to keep fruit flies away. As for the ice cream, I took a picture of it so I could show you which ice cream to never buy. It's got Chips Ahoy cookies in it. That sounds great in theory but doesn't work in ice cream. They've turned powdery and disgusting. We'll have eaten all of it by tomorrow evening.

I hope you noticed I'm wearing red white & blue. I miss you, Joe's mom and dad, and I also miss my mom and dad, and Robby and Katie, and my grandparents, and my cousins, and my aunts and uncles. So: I love you all, I'll see you in like ten months, and don't buy Breyers BLASTS! Chips Ahoy! ice cream!

Zoom Zoom

I spent $40 to triple my nail polish collection. But the really cool thing is, my camera. This picture was taken with the lens that came with the camera, an all-purpose 18-55mm:

The lens:


hi

It's a pretty bad picture, the one of the nail polish. It obviously involved little effort, except for stacking the bottles on top of each other. I wasn't really trying to "make art," but I thought I could probably do better without putting much time into it, so I switched lenses.

This is the 75-300mm lens I got for my birthday. When I opened this gift, I was kinda disappointed, because I didn't know what to do with it. All I knew was that it could zoom a lot farther than my 18-55mm could. I thought it was only good for use as a one-eyed binocular, or for trying to see into other people's apartment windows. But I've slowly been learning that it can do more than that.

Due to aperture or something technical like that, I don't know, this lens puts a lot of blur (aka "bokeh") into the background when you're taking a picture of someone or something close-up. The blur in the background draws attention to the in-focus subject of the photo. That's why this lens is fantastic for portraiture.

Blur.



Now, look at this one again. One of the main reasons this photo looks so point-and-shooty is the weird fisheye effect my 18-55mm gave it, and how everything on the right side of the picture is tilted away from you because I wasn't paying enough attention when I took the picture. This next one is what I got when I switched lenses (and moved back about 10 feet):

The background is the arm of my couch with some pants draped over it, yes, but ignore that part and see how much flatter and better the whole picture looks! Wow! There's a lot of science stuffed into those camera lenses!

Best Spot in the House

Modern Korean culture surrounds us here. Our carpetless, dishwasher-less, central-AC-less Korean apartment has a floorplan like no apartment I've seen back home. At lunchtime, when our windows are open, the scents of cooking fish and foods I can't recognize drift in from other people's open windows. When we go out, I stare at the clothes the Korean women wear, because I've never seen so many people get so dressed up for just another average day; in the States, at least 80% of the people you see are wearing jeans, and here, 80% of the people you see aren't.

So, despite my actually very small experiences of Korea, I feel like I have some idea of their modern culture. I have no concept, however, of their more traditional culture. I guess it's available, in the temples and the museums and stuff, but I've only been to a few temples and only one museum. That's why the Korean culture show at our Army post was so interesting.

A couple of friends and I were sitting maybe 15 rows back from the stage 'cause the front rows were reserved. I couldn't get good pictures from there, so during the pause between a drum show and the first dance, I ran up to the front row and asked a lady who was 3 feet from the stage if I could sit on the floor in front of her. She said I could. I think I almost sat on her feet a couple of times, and I had to hold on to the stage to stabilize myself, which means I had THE BEST SPOT IN THE HOUSE.

We saw traditional instruments being played, traditional dances, and traditional clothing. We also saw Tae Kwon Do guys kicking boards in half, but I don't have any pictures of that because I went back to my seat so I wouldn't get splinters in my forehead.

After the show, we had the opportunity to try special sweet rice cakes filled with bean paste which originally were only served to royalty. Mine had a faint grape flavor. It was disgusting.

I don't know how hot pink became an anciently classic color here. I think they do that in India, too. I learned that my camera takes really grainy pictures when set to a high ISO. It's time for me to leave now, and I don't have time to figure out how to nicely wrap up this post.

THE END

New Diet!

You might have read my post about the new exercise plan and diet me and Joe started. We began eating a healthy, balanced diet, and exercising pretty much every day. Joe had to eat veggies. It was pretty cool.

Well, we've stuck to the eating plan for two months now, except for the cheat days on my birthday and on our 2/3rds-of-the-way-done day and a couple of fast food days. We're still trudging along in our exercise programs, too. I just started exercising again today after the two-week break I took to rest my knees before my last month of the program. Honestly, working out today was terrible. But I'm not giving up now that I've come so far!

Yesterday when I was supposed to be doing the dishes, I read about a new cleansing eating plan that I think will really help us both with our last month of workouts. I was so excited that we actually started it last night. On this plan, you're only allowed to eat one food...for three weeks straight. They give you a list of foods you can choose from to get the results you want: Shrimp to build extra muscle, broccoli to lose weight extra quickly, oranges for much healthier skin, and plain yogurt for overall cleansing and health. I don't really like oranges that much, and I really don't like plain yogurt, so I'm trying the three weeks with broccoli. Of course I'll be buying tons of shrimp for Joe.

The diet is supposed to make you feel rejuvenated because your body doesn't have to do as much work to digest a bunch of different types of food. I'd imagine it also makes you feel VERY grateful for that variety, too, once the three weeks is up!

It'll be hard to only have the same thing every day for three weeks. Especially at breakfast. I sure missed my turkey bacon this morning. Joe's going to have to eat soooo much shrimp. I think I'd actually like the broccoli, but I'd get so tired of shrimp.

Wish us luck!

...and watch out for April Fool's Day...