Apr 22

Trying to Make Art Take 1: Nerdy Love Poem

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Here’s the thing. I’m the kind of person who is completely enamored with anything artistic or creative, but doesn’t exactly have the talent or natural inclination to actually do something artistic or creative. I’ve always loved making things and arts and crafts, but have never been particularly good at it. This, of course, then became a vicious cycle of not doing it because I feel bad about not being good at it, and never getting good at it because I never try to practice.

I’ve found myself surrounded by some awesomely creative people recently, who have helped inspire me to work on getting over the ever-looming fear of failure and just try. I also found myself on a whirlwind trip home right before Valentine’s Day (yes I’m just posting this now – procrastination much?), and thus didn’t have time to work on the present I had thought of making for the fiancé. What with the crazy trip, we didn’t actually exchange gifts anyway, and the lack of pressure of the Valentine’s Day deadline I think gave me the will to attempt my idea.

My friend showed me a cute Valentine’s card on Etsy that essentially had a little “love poem” on it in computer code. Being the future wife of a PhD candidate in Computer Science, I thought it was a great idea and really wanted to make something like it of my own. But, being the future wife of a PhD candidate in Computer Science, I also figured I’d better double-check the accuracy of the code to cover my butt. Sure enough, our good friend (another CS PhD candidate) confirmed for me that there were some nit-picky syntax errors, and even went so far as to fix the “poem” for me and provide its “translation” into plain English.

Code:

while(you->heart==me){
me->love++;
}
me=NULL;

Poem:

while your heart is set on me
my love will continue to grow
but without it I am nothing

A little melodramatic, but whatever! Nerd love will not be denied :)

(NERD NOTE: The code syntax above is not totally correct – but never fear, it is correct on the painting. The second line should be indented but I can’t figure out how to get WordPress to let me do it! Boo.)

I printed these out in a font I liked and cut them into small strips. I scribbled on the backs of these with pencil and used the graphite like carbon paper to trace the words onto small pages of watercolor paper. I’m definitely not a painter and watercolors are SUPER hard, so I attempted just a little gradient of blue and green for the background of my letters. Once that was dry, I traced over my pencilled-in words with a teeeeeeeny tiny brush and some acrylic paint (see pics below). Let me tell you, the acrylics were a BAD choice! I have no idea why I wasted so much time trying to control that itty-bitty brush painting over my skinny little letters when I probably could have just used a Sharpie and had lovely straight lines. Oh well, live and learn.

Tracing words, painting over with itty-bitty brush(bottom right), and final product. (Excuse the wonky pictures, I am way bad at white balance and proper lighting)

I had the frame lying around, but for the rest of it I just got 2 little pieces of foam core cut to the right size and glued my watercolor papers onto them. Then I glued those onto some plain white posterboard and shoved the whole shebang in the frame.

It’s not the prettiest thing I’ve ever seen, but he thought it was cute so I’m happy! Hooray for art, and hooray for nerd love!

Ta da!

Feb 23

Wedding Planning Woes

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**I actually wrote this before we had even found a time to go home, but most of it is still applicable**

Ready to hear me whine about how difficult/stressful it is to plan a wedding? You are? Oh, good, here I go then:

DISTANCE!

We live on one side of a very large country and our parents, who are footing almost all of the bill for this madness (bless their hearts), are on the other side. Guess who gets to pick where the wedding is? If you guessed “Liz’s mom”, you are correct! (Take notes, this will be the answer for many other rhetorical questions down the road. Because she has been amazing and doing EVERYTHING for me) Living essentially 3 hours in the past from everyone that I need to talk to in order to figure all of this mess out is really putting a damper on things. The whole having-a-full-time-job thing also puts a damper on when and for how long I can go home to try and meet with people. Or make sure my boobs fit in my dress. Or remind myself what the places we’re using look like so I can try to think how I want them to be decorated, since at this point the only “decoration”-related thoughts I have are, “Dear god please, no, not the tulle nightmare!”

LOCATION!

As we discovered above, the Powers That Be in this scenario are all my mom. She is fabulous, by the way, she is just having her very own nervous breakdown about this wedding which by far rivals my own. Being the fabulous Powers That Be that she is, and thus the Head Planner, the wedding is taking place in my hometown. Also known as Bumf**k, Pennsylvania. We have grapes. And a Great Lake. That’s all she wrote. While it was a lovely, almost idyllic place to grow up, its middle-of-nowhere-ness does not bode well for anything in the realm of wedding vendors. Or at least vendors who could be described as “extremely professional” or “very trendy and up-to-date” or “realizing it is no longer the 90s” or even “knowing how to use the internet and thus having a website to make things easier for Liz”. Nooo, of course not. Ok, ok. No real offense meant, Vendors, as all of you have been very nice so far. But I hate to break it to you, that in-person meeting you all want is probably not gonna happen, at least for another few months. On that note:

TALKING TO PEOPLE!

Weirdly, for being a sometimes-overly-friendly person I really don’t like doing this. I’m pretty good at it when I have to, but I would rather clean the cat’s litter box than have to be the one to call and order pizza. The thought of having to call some stranger and ask them if they will officiate my wedding, or DJ and for the love of all that is holy not play the Chicken Dance, or learn to play the song I want to walk down the aisle to, or decorate the reception place in a theme other than the afore-mentioned “1987 Tulle Nightmare” basically gives me hives. Which is why I have none of those things yet and am making the acquisition of those things even harder for myself by procrastinating. Speaking of procrastinating…

GUEST LIST!

For SERIOUS , figuring out who to invite is actually the hardest part. All of the “wedding planning tips” sort of lists that I’ve seen seem to agree, and also to say that the #1 way to save money is to cut the guest list. To which I say: HA. That’s cute. I have a huge Irish-Catholic family- just  on one side, the other side is moderately-large Irish-Protestant. Also, I am from a teeny tiny close-knit community of people who have been there for my entire life. No, really, my ENTIRE life. My high school graduation party had at least 400 people. And, oh yes, weddings are about TWO people with TWO whole families and TWO sets of family friends. And of course B and I have our own friends, too. Our guest list is currently at about 230, I think. Woof.

DETAILS!

Holy hell, kids. Maybe I’m not your typical girl in that I did not by the time I was 7 already have planned out in my head what I want my perfect wedding to be like. And I still don’t. (Ok, I’m almost definitely not your typical girl, I find most “girly” things which seem to be second-nature to others like blow-drying your hair or having shoes that don’t reek beyond me) My mom keeps asking me all of these little questions that I had no idea I would have to answer. What accent flowers should be in my bouquet? What order do I want people to walk down the aisle? What do I want the bottom of the photo booth strips to say? (Yes, I went there, that is the one thing Mom and the fiancé and I all agreed was a must-have expense) The answer to each of these questions is, “What? I don’t know! I was supposed to think of that? Why would I have thought of that?!?” Apparently, being The Bride, I am supposed to have thought of all of these things. And it is all of those little things that make eloping to Vegas sound reaaaaal good. Will someone else please decide for me what the table number cards should look like? Ugh.

Alright, enough whining. Let’s count our blessings, as my mother would tell me to do:

  • First and foremost, the guy I get to marry at the end of all of this stress mess is hands-down THE BEST. Win!
  • We’re finally getting our Save the Dates sent out, which are SO GREAT. My cousin is a graphic illustrator and made us an amazing postcard design with adorable cartoon-ish versions of us.
  • Aforementioned cousin is also one of my bridesmaids and she is already, besides making the killer Save the Dates, being so amazing helping me. Especially considering she lives in NYC and has a full-time job, husband and dog to take up her time already. Best cousin ever!
  • Getting to see my mom in person last weekend was actually a godsend, as it’s so much easier to talk things through face to face rather than overly-emotional phone calls where it is always a bad time for one of us. *grumbledarntimedifferenceagaingrumble*
  • Things actually are starting to come together, I just need to calm the eff down and do things.
  • OMG SO ADDICTED TO PINTEREST
Feb 21

Things I Have Done Recently

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Or, “Things I Will Consider Accomplishments So I Don’t Feel Quite As Bad About All Of The Other Things I Still Have To Do Which I Have Not Yet Done”

Ready?

  • Epic 4-day Weekend Trip Home to PA from CA, which included:
    • Visiting Fiancé’s family
    • Visiting my family
    • Meeting with wedding photographer
    • Meeting with wedding florist
    • Meeting with absolutely crazy old lady who does cakes out of her house who will NOT be doing ours
    • Meeting with wedding DJ
    • Meeting with wedding officiant
    • Going for a dress fitting
    • Taste-testing the amazing beers my brother is making for us to have at the wedding, since he is now the Head Brewer at his brewery and in the works to start his own brewpub sometime in the near future
    • Freezing our butts off in SNOW for the first time in at least a year. (My mom insists it had been in the 60s the weekend before…)
    • Both of us getting major colds just in time to fly home
  • Worked book-ending weekend days so as not to use any of my actual time off hours for above-mentioned trip
  • Learned 3 new ukulele chord progressions during a sweet ukulele jam session break at work with my awesome coworkers
  • Actually unpacked!
  • Cleaned/organized disgustingly messy room including clothes, papers, electronics, toiletries, arts and crafts supplies
  • Utilized crafts supplies to make silly nerd love craft for Fiancé for very belated Valentine’s Day since we spent that day jet-lagged as all get out, having just returned from the east coast
  • SO MUCH LAUNDRY ugh I hate laundry
  • Vacuumed, including disgusting litter mess the cat loves to leave for us in the bathroom (from his freshly cleaned litter box, thankyouverymuch) See: this comic.
  • Got a PRETTY PRETTY new phone which is ginormous and awesome and I’m a teensy bit obsessed.

Things I Still Have To Do Which I Usually Avoid Thinking About Because PANIC:

  • Finish figuring out wedding music
  • Figure out when/if we can go home again for some kind of bridal shower/engagement party
  • Figure out a million other little wedding things that I had no idea one needed to figure out. Man, I hate making decisions.
  • Pretend that I actually use this blog-o-blog, since I feel like I might actually be doing some sort of cool-ish things now? I made a friend a sweet geek apron, made Fiancé somewhat-wonky little paintings, learned some ukulele, and have been doing some fun work-out stuff. I’ve been considering that I would use it more if I worked on re-vamping it a little. We’re obviously in need of a layout overhaul here, but I think it needs a purpose other than me being sort of weird and whiny. I’m thinking along the lines of me trying to learn how to do things like arts and crafts, music, picture-taking and being somewhat fit. “Watch Me Attempt (And Probably Fail But Perhaps Halfway Succeed at) Things!” What say ye, Nebulous Imaginary Judgment Panel of the Internet? (It’s really fear of you that keeps me away from here anyway.. :) )
Nov 13

Once More, With Feeling

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There’s been a decent amount of Stuff Going On since my most recent abandonment of putting things here.

Such as:

1. GOT ENGAGED!

B's grandma's ring. I am nauseatingly giddy. (And I do actually have a thumb)

WOO! Not to be too schmoopy about it, but I am the happiest girl ever knowing that I get to be part of a lifetime superteam with my favorite person in the world. He is the best, and I am the luckiest. [All together now: Awww]

ANYWHO, as outrageously happy as I am to get to marry my man, I’ve discovered that the actual planning of this whole crazy shindig after which we get to be married is a whole other kettle of fish. And by fish I mean stress, frustration, stress, tears, screaming matches with my mother, more stress, more tears and stress. Have I mentioned this is stressful? THIS IS STRESSFUL. It’s gotten to the point where I sometimes have to avoid looking at wedding blogs that feature actual weddings because it ends up just making me angry and wanting to punch all of those smug, beautiful, DIY brides with their perfect weddings in their smug, beautiful, DIY faces. Sigh. Also, HELP.

2. STARTED WEIGHTLIFTING

Me, basically. (Click for The Daily Squee source)

Yeah, you heard me right. Weightlifting. Not Pilates or yoga or Zumba but honest-to-blog pumping iron. With weights that usually weigh quite a bit more than 5 lbs. If that isn’t the most outrageous thing you’ve heard in quite a while, you probably don’t know how tall I am. (Hint: Not Tall. Above photo is a somewhat-accurate representation of how I look at the gym.)

Basically, the Future Husband (eee! still gets me every time) talked me into it a while ago when I started accompanying him and our roommate to the gym to use the treadmill or what-have-you. Turns out? I EFFING HATE RUNNING. Really, it’s the worst. (Sorry, Former Cross-Country and Track Star big brother) So they convinced me to start doing what they were doing with the weights. And…it was actually pretty fun.

Verdict: I feel kind of awesome, and have been going relatively consistently a few times a week for the past 9 months or so. I still can’t bench all *that* much (I think my PR is 85 lbs), but I can squat MORE than my bodyweight. BOOYAH.

Ok ok, so it’s only a few lbs over my bodyweight but still! I feel like a winner.

3. SEWING TAKE 2

 

Sewing can be hazardous

Or, trying to sew at least! I’m still not very good at all, but I now have a friend here in CA who actually knows what she is doing with a sewing machine so I’m hoping she can teach me.

I’ve been starting to mess with clothes I already have to give them a little upgrade and wrote about it on that other blog I abandoned (the one with my favorite long-distance friend, Nicola). Check ‘er out: ImpandArn

4. STILL READING

Surprise! I  love books. Most recently I’ve discovered how much of an author-crush (and probably real-life crush, too) I have on Neil Gaiman. “Just now?” you ask? YES. I know! Where has he been all my life? I’m obsessed.

I got to see him when he came to Berkeley touring for the 10th Anniversary of his (fantastic) novel American Gods and then again just a few weeks ago in San Francisco during the tour he did with his (fantastic) wife, Amanda Palmer (of the Dresden Dolls).

Blurry cell phone pic of Neil reading "American Gods"

They’re both incredibly awesome and brilliant, and amazingly good at using Twitter for good instead of evil. Amanda has really awesome ideas about art and media and expression and creativity and Twitter and writes really awesome blog posts about it, in between being an incredible musician. Neil blogs, too and it is obviously lovely, what with him being a writer and all. And he posts photos of his dogs! So cute.

Equally blurry cell phone pic of Neil and Amanda before their amazing show

Basically, I’ve turned into a huge fangirl of both of them and should probably shut up about it now.

I can’t really think of anything else at the moment, but I’m sure in the future I’ll be whining about wedding planning mayhem and trying really hard not to brag about my iron-pumping prowess. In the meantime, want to see a nauseatingly cute gif?

make an avatar[Photos by the lovely and talented Nancy]

Awwwwwwww.

Jan 26

Just Call Me Crafty McCrafterson

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I know it’s been over a month, but… know what I got for Christmas?

THIS:

SEWING MACHINE!

Yes! Bask in the sweet sweet 1980′s tan clunky glory that is this Kenmore sewing machine! (I’m pretty sure that sewing book that I got with it starts out “Dear Homemaker…”)

Ok, so maybe your average 25-year-old wouldn’t find an old sewing machine to be the “coolest” or most “exciting” present. But I am wannabe crafty! I HAVE DREAMS. OF MAKING STUFF.

I always see all of these cute tutorials for fun/awesome stuff you can sew or upcycle from old clothes and in my head I say, “I could so do that if I had a sewing machine! …and if I knew how to sew.”

At any rate, I am really short and every pair of pants I have ever owned has been in desperate need of hemming. I always wanted to be able to at least do that, so I can quit walking around looking like a hobo from the ankles down – what with the ragged edges and holes from where I just walk on the parts of my pants that don’t stay rolled up (really fashionably). What I’m trying to say is, clothes and I don’t get along and I’ve always wished I knew how to fix that.

And, lo, when my good friend from Back East was home for Christmas, his mom mentioned that she was trying to get rid of her old sewing machine. He, being the awesome friend that he is, remembered that I wanted one, packed it up and sent it to me. And I promptly squeed all over the place.

However. Problem: I haven’t used a sewing machine since, oh, 7th Grade Home Ec. Even then, I’m pretty sure I was only able to eke out a serviceable pillow, some really wonky boxer shorts, and a little stuffed alligator that I only managed to finish by making the boy next to me help.

As I sat there with my shiny new toy on the hastily cleared kitchen table, I was starting to remember why I had never bought a sewing machine for myself. I have NO idea what I’m doing. It took me a good half hour just to try and decipher the ridiculous 80′s manual that went with it – just to get the thread on. Oof.

(“‘Make sure that thread is as shown in Fig. 5.’ Ok, Fig. 5, Fig.5…oh here it is. What the…what is that? Is that even a drawing of a sewing machine? It looks more like a horse head. A horse with a nose hair problem. Yep, I’m pretty sure it’s a horse.”)

ohGodwhathaveIdoneHOLDME

I ended up spending a lot of time messing with it, and Googling things like “what is a bobbin and how do I thread it” or “why is the bottom thread all loose now” or “what do I do if the needle gets stuck down in the bottom thingy with both of the thread thingies in there and the fabric too oh God did I break it I think I broke it”.

Good news! I didn’t break it. But almost.

Anywho, through multiple trials and errors I have (sort of) successfully made 2 things!

Thing 1: A bag! (Beginnings of which pictured above)

Specifically, a bag made using this lovely and very beginner-friendly tutorial from here: http://www.simplymodernmom.com/2010/09/hobo-dance-bag-tutorial/ (Thanks!)

I was so excited to get the sewing machine that I didn’t want to wait to find a real fabric store, so I just got some essentials and cheap plain t-shirts from Michael’s. So, one of the many reasons that my bag does not look as nice as the tutorial one is that – it’s made out of t-shirts.

TADAAAAAAAAA!

[Please disregard the awful blurriness of my cell phone pictures. I was a) too lazy to go get my real camera and b) didn't want the picture to be good enough that you can see how I can't sew in a straight line yet.]

I really liked the little scrunchie-on-the-handle idea. It looks cute, let me use the contrasting fabric, and, most importantly, covers up the outrageous knotted mess of where I tried to hand-sew the handle ends into the bag itself. Other than that, this was actually really easy and helped me boost my ego start to understand how patterns come together.

Thing 2: Kindle case/sleeve/pocket/thingy!

I couldn’t really find a singular tutorial for a Kindle case that was easy/dummied down enough for me so I sort of put together a couple. It is essentially this case (but mine is obviously not as nice): http://www.polkadotchair.com/2010/09/kindle-keeper-tutorial.html. I also consulted this more general tutorial for extra beginner-friendly information: http://thecottagehome.blogspot.com/2010/10/laptop-kindle-i-pad-sleeve-tutorial.html (Thanks also!)

B wanted to have something to protect his Kindle for his trip to France (grumblejealousygrumble) so I thought it would be a good opportunity to keep practicing. I also found that there is an AWESOME local fabric store in town where I picked up some real fabric, so I didn’t have to mutilate more t-shirts. (If anyone thinks the fabric is not manly enough, blame me – he wasn’t there to help me pick it out so he had to live with what I got.)

At any rate, I felt pretty fancy with my real fabric and my real sewing machine. And my laptop that I am pretending was just for musical entertainment purposes but was really for me to frantically look at the tutorials every 5 seconds to make sure I wasn’t totally effing it up. (I didn’t. Well, not totally.)

The beginnings of my valiant, if imperfect, effort

My main problem I think is the spacial reasoning involved. Because DAMN. My brain is really not used to having to visualize how to put things together so that I can sew the right parts to each other, while making sure that those parts will physically fit in the sewing machine, and then how I can flip it or whatever so that it actually looks like what it is supposed to be in the end. Oh yeah, and to do it all in the right order. Yeesh. Also? Sewing fleece is kind of hard.

But I did it! I sort of jury-rigged a loop out of hemp cord I had lying around and hand-sewed a little toggle to the middle so the flap would stay closed. (I am purposefully not showing the inside of the flap because, like I say, I CANNOT hand-sew. The part where the loop is attached looks like…I don’t even know what. An abomination. It’s bad, trust me.)

kindle case

Slightly ghetto Kindle case and B's sweet flame-y Kindle

Woo!

Even though the stuff I have made so far has been rather shoddy, I am still super proud of myself. I am the kind of person who loves to give up the moment something isn’t easy right away, so I’m kind of impressed that I actually had enough patience to do each little step required. Ok, so I mostly did all of the steps (I hate ironing!) and both of these projects could be done in a night. Still! Pride! Onward to glory*!

*Hemmed pants, hopefully.

Jan 16

Omigod Books

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Books are probably my favorite thing ever. This isn’t a secret at all, so gift-giving occasions tend to turn out really well for me since people who would give me gifts know that I will always want a book of some sort.

So, since my birthday is in December, as well as Hanukkah usually (with the boyfriend) and Christmas (with the family) December is my favorite month EVER.

See?

HOORAY BOOKS

Those are the actual physical books I got this year. SO HAPPY. Our roommate got me “Two Gentlemen of Lebowski” for my birthday, which is The Big Lebowski written as if it were a Shakespeare play. HILARIOUS. I haven’t read all of it yet, but even just reading Walter’s “I don’t roll on shabbos” speech was so funny. The cool little movie theater downtown here just did a midnight showing of the movie last night, so I’m going to try to read it while it’s fresh in my head and I can recognize all of the scenes.

My family got me the new-ish David Sedaris book “Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk” which is basically cute little allegories about how we are all a-holes. He’s still amazingly funny, dry and sarcastic and if I actually had a writing style I think I would want to write like him.

At one time in my life (ok, like a year or two ago) I sort of spoke Spanish, but the most I use it nowadays is to ask the ladies who run the taco truck that stops by where I work for a quesadilla. My family also got me a trilogy of “young adult” books by one of my favorite Spanish authors, Carlos Ruiz Zafón. (If you haven’t read “The Shadow of the Wind” yet, do it NOW. So good.) I’ve read the first one so far, and am starting on the second. The stories are cool and mysterious and his young characters seem to be smart, believable and as multi-dimensional as his adult characters. At least, as far as I can tell, assuming I am understanding the majority of the Spanish.

Boyfriend got me “Just a Couple of Days”, one of his favorite books that he actually lent me years ago when we were first dating but he wanted to get me my own copy. I’m definitely going to re-read it. It’s a really cool story about society and language and communication – what would happen if we lost language? Really cool, and not as pretentious or boring as it sounds.

Aaaaaand then there was this:

This is the end of my life and wallet as I know them.

This is how I know my boyfriend loves me.

The silly story that goes with that glorious piece of pretentiousness up there is this: B just left for Paris on Friday to hang out and work on some things with his PhD advisor who is there for the quarter on sabbatical. (Sidenote: boooo I am lonely and jealous about that) Much before he left, he was talking about how nice it would be to have a Kindle for the very very long trip from California to France, and also just to have one place for all of his academic paper PDFs. Thinking I was clever, I ordered him one for Christmas. The problem however was this: my birthday is before Christmas, and he had already been bragging to me that he had gotten me something really cool for my birthday to tease me because he wouldn’t tell me what it was. And then the package for the Kindle I ordered him came, and he was the one who was home to get it. By the time I got home, he was standing there with the package next to him and a huge sort-of-guilty grin on his face.

I give him a suspicious look and he hugs me. “You know!” He nodded and said, “Only because of this!” and pulls out an identical package from behind his back. Stupid Amazon sends the Kindle in a distinct box that looks exactly the same, so he knew that I had gotten him a Kindle because it looked just like the box that the Kindle he had gotten me came in.

He thought it was hilarious and adorable that we got each other the same present, but I was like “YOU RUINED CHRISTMAS”. I mean, it was really funny and kind of sickly cute, but I was bummed that his big present surprise was ruined so far before Christmas. Oh, well.  :)

I will always stand by my opinion that physical books are the best: the smell, the feel, the pages, the covers; I definitely am in love with the sensory experience of reading. However, I am also now totally in love with my Kindle and the ease with which you can get new books and take ALL of them with you. SWOON.

So, what I’m trying to say is – will anyone out there in the interwebs help fuel my addiction and tell me what books I should be getting on the Kindle? I have a challenge to deal with… :)

Jan 11

Fire is Pretty

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Ok, yes, I know I am in California so this counts as being super whiny, but it has been COLD here. Comparatively. After a year and a half here (holycrap) I’m pretty sure my Pennsylvania tolerance for cold is totally bye-bye now.

Our furnace has not been exactly “working” lately so we have been using the cute fireplace in our little apartment. It’s pretty cozy, if a tad smoky at times in our rather small space, and makes me happy because fire is both pretty and produces heat. Warm Liz = Happy Liz.

See? Pretty :)

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[My photos, made with Gickr.com]