New Song Obsession

I just heard this on "So You Think You Can Dance" (don't hate--I'm not ashamed to admit it's one of my faves) and oh, the lyrics. Whenever you think someone couldn't possibly create a more beautiful combination of words, you get hit over the head with ever more gorgeousness.

Visitors

Remember this post from back in April? Well that little baby is now 2.5 months old and came to my parents' house for a visit this weekend (along with his parents, my cousin Ryan and his wife Ryan). Graham is adorable and full of gummy smiles and baby coos. And while Ryan (my cousin) thinks he smells like salt n' vinegar potato chips (which, if it were true, would make me want to eat him in one bite because come on, smily baby AND salt n' vinegars?!), I think he smells exactly like cute baby. Which is fitting.

Animals. They'll get ya every time.

Ok, so those of you who know me at all know that I am a die-hard animal lover. I'm guessing most of you remember the Christian the Lion video (the one that makes all but the most stone-hearted teary every time you see it)? Well, here's another one in the same vein. This one is about Kwibi the gorilla, and what he does when the man who raised him for five years goes back to find him in the African jungle five years later. Again, break out the Kleenex.

"Blame it on the Twain, yeah, yeah..."

My dad drove me up to Champaign last weekend for an all-day on-campus web design class to kick off the online version of said class for this summer. It's a fairly boring and uneventful eight-hour drive each way, so we decided to add an adventure on the way back to Kansas by stopping in Hannibal, Missouri, childhood home of the beloved Mark Twain. Hannibal is a cute little town, but it's clear that its main source of income comes from capitalizing on its heritage as the Twains' former town of residence. Everything there was Twain-ed out from the Mark Twain caves, Mark Twain Lake, and Mark Twain Dinette to the Mark Twain bookstore and TwainTown (I'm not even sure what that is, considering it was the sign on a storefront, but I'm guessing it was one of the many Twain gift shops). It was Twainapalooza! Twainpochalypse! A town of epic Twainportions!

Not only did Dad and I get to tour Twain's boyhood home (and let me tell you, I literally crawled up and back down fifteen wooden stairs on hands and knees because I wasn't going to let a little thing like a broken foot rob me of the chance to see the second floor of Mark Twain's house), but we also toured a replica of Huck Finn's house, as well as the Mark Twain museum, which was really interactive and pretty impressive. I could have stayed there all day long, checking out all of the other little shops in town (it was like stepping back in time), but we had to get home. So after a refreshing root beer float in the Mark Twain Ice Cream Parlor (where we sat next to two little boys, one schooling the other that the only way to play Tic Tac Toe is "fair and square"), I beat back my longing to take a horse-drawn carriage tour of the town and we got back in the car to finish our trip, visions of literary wonder dancing in our heads.

The Mississippi River, which never ceases to remind me of Huck and Jim

We stopped for lunch on the way in at the Mark Twain Dinette. They had the most delicious homemade root beer I've ever tasted.

A sculpture of Twain and all of his literary characters. This was supposed to have been made into a life-size sculpture to honor Twain's 100th birthday in 1935, but no one could raise enough money during the Depression to make it happen.

The Huckleberry Finn House

Room One in the Huck Finn House. The ceilings were super low, even for the vertically challenged like myself.

Room Two in the Huck Finn House

Twain's boyhood home is on the right.

Inside Twain's boyhood home

Strangely, even though he only lived there as a boy there are adult statues of Twain in every room in his house.

This quotation hits me right in the happy spot...

A really cool (and really old) drug store in downtown Hannibal

Twain's father's law office

Tom Sawyer's Fence, which has been signed by many tourists (I had no pen so sadly, I wasn't one of them)

Downtown shops--you can see TwainTown on the right

The Becky Thatcher House

The Mark Twain bookstore

A horse and trolley contraption will take you on a tour of downtown Hannibal. The ice cream parlor my dad and I went to is to the left of the horse and trolley.

Tom and Huck

New Song Obsession

Do you ever have one of those songs that you hear very rarely on the radio, but you LOVE it and can't for the life of you figure out what it is or who sings it? That was the case with my newest song obsession "Little Secrets" by Passion Pit. The thing that eventually cracked the mystery was that the song is used in the RadioShack commercial that's currently playing so I was able to look up "RadioShack song" on the Internet and track it down. It was a sweet sweet victory.

The Aunt and the Niece

Shebam! I'm a Scientist!

I'm completely geeking out over a new website I just discovered called Zooniverse (www.zooniverse.org). The website has all of these scientific projects that are currently in the works and that YOU CAN TAKE PART IN. Like, you're helping the real scientists do their work by your participation in these projects. It's things like helping scientists figure out how galaxies form by classifying their shapes, helping to spot explosions on the sun, and helping to spot exploding stars. It's not anything that you have to have a background in science to do, but it's still helping scientists working in astronomy reach their end goals. How cool is that? Jessie, this one's for you.

Bookstores That Make You Go "Ooooo..."

This article from spotcoolstuff.com is kind of like every bibliophile's wet dream. I drooled over the children's bookstore in Bejing, as well as the bookstore in a cathedral in the Netherlands. Now my keyboard is all wet and not working very well. I actually have a photograph from an art fair I went to of the outside of Shakespeare and Co. Antiquarian Books that I desperately need to get framed. In the photograph there is insanely poetic and beautiful personal ad written on a chalkboard right outside the door. I also now desperately need to get the book they mention in the article about said bookstore. I LONG to go to this bookstore. In the meantime, I'll have to settle for this article. But if you happen to have a spare plane ticket going around the world and you really need a travel companion, I know someone who might begrudgingly go with you.

Paper Art

I discovered the art of Su Blackwell through one of the many librarian blogs I subscribe to, The Centered Librarian. I was instantly captivated by it. I love how she takes literary themes and turns them into something beautiful with a touch of the macabre. Of course anyone who finds something this awesome and doesn't share it with their friends is doing them a great disservice. And so I present to you three of my favorite book-cut sculptures by Su Blackwell. Enjoy!

Margaret and Marjorie, 2008

Curcus Days and Circus Nights, 2008

Pandora Opens Box, 2009