Biscuit of the Day - City Methodist Church, Gary Indiana

Today's Biscuit of the Day is a picture gallery of an old church. I thought it was sad the city of Gary was letting the building fall into ruins.

The beautiful arches and remnants of stained glass must have been impressive during the church's heyday.

City Methodist Church Gallery

-- Aeryth

Biscuit of the Day - Mutant African Violets from Outer Space

Today's Biscuit of the Day is a cool African violet with mutations from exposure to outer space. One of my hobbies is raising plants. My room is pretty tiny and doesn't get much light (just north sun), so these little ones take off fairly well in the indirect light. Today, a woman in my office gave me an unhappy Optimara Everfloris Violet. This one, the EverLove, appears to be the species I have. They are special in that they are descendants of violets whose seeds were exposed to radiation and gamma rays in outer space and who developed unusual mutations due to this bombardment.

Fortunately for me, the alien violet was pest and illness free, so the biggest issue was pick out and prune the dead growth. Another problem I found as I pruned back further, was that whoever had potted the plant potted it WAY too deep in the soil. So, time to get out the shovel and elevate the crown (the center of the plant) higher up. The last thing to do was to set up the watering system.

The best (and easiest) system I have found so far to take care of plants is the wick watering system. Basically, this equips the plant with a "straw" that it uses to slurp up water as it needs it from a saucer it hovers over. At Lowe's, I found a nice plastic saucer and a fiberglass lantern wick (this will be the straw). I needed a way to prop the violet above the saucer (don't want it to sit in the saucer and get wet feet). After scrounging around, I found caps for furniture feet that were about an inch tall. When I got home, I threaded the wick into the root ball of the violet so it stuck out the hole in the bottom of the pot.

Finally, I put the caps in the saucer, and put the plant on top of the caps. Slowly, I put water in the pot (avoiding leaves), and watched as the water filtered down and wet the wick while flowing into the saucer, starting the wicking process. Already, the little plant is perking up and happily slurping water through its straw in the saucer, as shown by the dropping water level in the saucer. Voila! A happy violet.

Aeryth

Biscuits of the Day - Gallimaufry and Jazz Shoes

Today's Biscuit of the Day is the word 'Gallimaufry'. According to dictionary.com, the word means a jumble or a hodgepodge. Which means I'm gonna write about a few different topics. :)

As with all women, I'm on an ever constant quest to keep weight off (insert monty python coconut clapping here). In my quest, I have become quite addicted to a game called DDR (Dance Dance Revolution). Yeah, it's pretty geeky, but the game is surprisingly fun and for a white girl, I have rhythm! One of the biggest problems with DDR is that I have extremely small feet (women's size 5) and toes that tend to become dislocated pretty easily. Tennis shoes are not an option, as the DDR home controllers are delicate and tennis shoes tend to rip them. (Not to mention the fact I have to shop in the kids section for shoes and it's near impossible to find shoes w/o glitter or excessive pinkness on them).

Some time and several out of joint toes later, I thought about it and decided I needed to find soft soled dancing shoes. I went to a local dance shop, and after some discussion of my plight, the proprietress hooked me up with some soft leather jazz shoes. Let me tell you, for DDR, those shoes are wonderful! They are light, and the support keeps toes in line. Another plus about jazz shoes is that they are good for yoga and pilates as well as they are extremely flexible (better than the sneakers you see in magazines) and keep you in place for matwork. I figured I would document my experiment on here in case anyone ran into problems similar to mine, or wanted recommendations.

This weekend, I plan to do more blog updates as school and work have slowed down, so there is actually time again to read. I have some subjects queued up that I plan to research this weekend and write articles about.

Namaste,

Aeryth

Biscuit of the Day - Eames Furniture

Today's Biscuit of the Day is furniture by Charles and Ray Eames. They made some incredibly beautiful modern furniture, a lot of which is carried on in spirit by the modern day Apple products. I can picture someone using an iBook in one of these ball chairs.

Eames galleries:
Big list of Eames galleries.
Eames chaise longue
Modern store where you can buy replicas of Eames furniture (including the ball chair)

I've had a pretty busy time in my personal life. One of the cool things I've been doing is learning Korean. The alphabet is one of the less complex Asian scripts, and there are a lot of neat sites written in Korean (especially dealing with fashion).

As an example, check this site out:
Korean clothes store

Regards,

Aeryth