New releases for Indie Deluxe, Dec. 12th.
Monday, November 30, 2009
Sunday, November 29, 2009
How Did I Forget To Post This One?
Oklahoma City is growing is so many "interesting" ways....there was also a Ghostbusters club.
Friday, November 27, 2009
Great On Many Levels
1. Love the car.
2. 5 was my soccer number since first grade.
3. I want to be in this picture.
That Tiger Can Play
Few things are as cool as seeing a tiger playing the drums. Animal costumes are the best.
Ghouls Gone Wild Halloween Parade
I'm finally done with engagement photo editing, so now I can catch up on posting from the Halloween Parade we watched in Midtown. It's so different seeing people in Oklahoma getting into such a weird event like this...very refreshing.
Thursday, November 26, 2009
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Monday, November 23, 2009
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Monday, November 16, 2009
Going Home To Los Angeles This Week
It's been way too long...Rose Bowl trails, thai food and donuts here I come...
Merchandise Updates!
We are pleased to announce that we've expanded our line at The Felt Bird to include cards and signed poster prints (check out the wall display in the photo)! Also, new cards are available as always at Shades of Brown.
Gearing up now for Deluxe Indie Craft Bazaar on December 12th in Oklahoma City, we should have a wide selection for holidays. Subscribe to the site or follow us on Facebook for more announcements!
Photo courtesy of The Felt Bird.
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Flying Makes You Think Of Everything
My best thinking is done while running. My second best thinking is done while flying in airplanes. I always choose the window seat (the aisle is for people with overactive bladders and/or no imagination), and my favorite things to see out a plane are the smooth shapes from farms/fields, the jagged edges from mountains and lakes, the awkward shapes from neighborhood developments, and the slick, unnatural and awe-inspiring speed of another airplane jetting in the opposite direction (I gasped the first time I saw one, it was profound).
Clouds are always fun and I will forever wish that I could sit on them or eat them like cotton candy. I also like the slow motion of the landscape passing underneath; it's like a really long slow motion scene in your own movie and leaves much time for reflection. Recently I flew into NYC on a cloudy night, and it was thrilling to see an area of the cloud cover which was clearly glowing with possibilities. There was a massive city brewing underneath, waiting for me...full of people to be met and adventures to be had, only hidden by a thick layer of mist.
With all of these thoughts, you quickly realize there is nobody to share them with, thus flying also makes me acutely aware of the fact that I am profoundly alone. I tend to spend time imagining all the people in the planes, the airports, the cars, the homes, and I like to think there is a traveling companion out there who I will one day keep busy with all of my thoughts. Maybe someone else also waits to drink their ginger ale while they eat their salty snack, because they clearly go better together. Maybe there will be someone who remembers that I tend to drop my pen when I fall asleep doing the crossword and reminds me to pick it up before landing. Maybe someone can watch our bags when I go grab us a coffee. Maybe someone else likes to roll their eyes at Skymall magazine but then reads every page anyway.
Maybe someone else enjoys flying as I do.
Sludge Boiler Room
These boilers heat the sludge extracted from waste water to clear the solids of bacteria. The process partially uses the methane gas produced by the bacteria in the waste...points for recycling. I asked the engineer what the sludge looked like (I needed something tangible) and he said it's like flowing chocolate pudding. I love that visual.
The Final Product: Treated Waste Water
The water was really clear, and in theory could be used to make drinking water. Instead the water flows into a creek and cleans the normal creek water.
Supplemental Oxygen
Oxygen is bubbled through huge green pipes into the waste water to feed the bacteria so they have robust growth and digest the organic matter in the water. It was like watching a big bottle of soda fizzing....effervescence everywhere! The oxygen is pushed through pipes with thousands of tiny holes to spread it diffusely through the tank, pretty awesome,
Exactly What It Looks Like
Somehow the prophylactics band together and float like a buoy in the wastewater ocean. Click to enlarge if you still haven't figured out what is going on here...
Storage Tanks
When large amounts of waste water come to the facility and threatens to overwhelms their treatment capacity, these old tanks are used to store water and temporarily divert it away from the machinery. The bottom photo shows the rakes which rotate in a circular motion to remove solids.
The Rakes
These rakes filter out the large pieces of garbage which get stuck in the waste water drainage systems (branches/wood, boots, bottles). These make sure big solid things don't get into the treatment facility and break their equipment.
This Is What Raw Sewage Looks Like
So waste water that comes into a treatment facility is a mix of all kinds of waste water, so it really just looks like dirty dishwater. It smelled, but nothing worse than anything I have smelled in the streets of India, so I wasn't completely blown away. Pretty interesting to see it even if it wasn't too exciting.
Monday, November 09, 2009
Waste Water Treatment Facility
Comedic highlight of the tour was hearing our tour guide say "Yeah people just think we're a big poop plant, but actually there's a lot of high-tech equipment here." Amen to that.
If It's On TV, It Must Be True
The room in the background is where insanely powerful pumps keep the water delivery system pressureized. This reminded me of an episode of Garfield and Friends where they had a show called "If It's On TV It Must Be True". Garfield, the host, explained that fire hydrants are actually made in factories where compressed water is pushed into hydrants so that water comes out pressureized. Hydrants were depicted as freestanding, sort of like trashcans that happened to be bolted down. At the end of the segment Garfield scoffs at the idea that hydrants are hooked to underground water mains and leads the audience in saying "If It's On TV...IT MUST BE TRUE!". It was dripping with sarcasm, and that's why I loved that show. Anyhow I learned how water systems are pressureized and that you need ear plugs to enter that room...OSHA regulation. I'm pretty sure Dr. Stewart does not subscribe to the "if it's on TV it must be true" theory...
Water Experiments
Experimental water filtration occurs in the site designated smoking room. The phrase "less than ideal" comes to mind.
Where Water Happens
Dr. Stewart made an interesting point: You are probably never the first person to ever drink a sip of water. If you tracked a drop water from the center of the continent to one of the coasts, it has probably been drunk, excreted, trickled through the water table, reclaimed, filtered, drunk again, used in a car wash, in a toilet, drunk by an animal, excreted, evaporated, rained down, purified, drunk again etc. etc. etc. many times over before you drink it. Kind of crazy...
Still Water
Publicly treated water is actually cleaner than bottled water because they are held against government set standards and tested regularly. Also, because reverse osmosis removes ions, natural minerals get disrupted and bottled water taste gets off. Tulsa water from two different locations went first and second in a blind taste test because it retains its natural flavor through the treatment process. Maybe that's why water fountains are so refreshing? Maybe you're just that thirsty? Who knows...I bet garden hose water tastes nasty only because of the garden hose. Some of the best tasting water I have ever had is the horse trough on the trails behind the jet propulsion lab at Cal Tech in Pasadena. This is for my college teammates, but remember how good that water tastes coming out of that thick tap? Flavor is situational, and 12 mile runs definitely help it taste better, but man was it amazing. I felt like I was drinking from the magic well in Tuck Everlasting (BOOM middle school reading reference made). You could not drink that water fast enough...
Flock
The solutes are called flock and they make the water look like bubble filled Jell-O. It shimmers and plays tricks on your eye...our shadows looked saintly.
Magic Public Health School Bus Goes To The Water And Waste Treatment Facilities
Dr. Stewart leads future doctors on a magical adventure to see how drinking water is made.
Water comes into the clarifiers to let solutes settle out. Algae grows in here so there are tilapia which live and feed on the algae to keep the machinery from breaking down.
Seen On A Walk
The ease with which jade plants grow in California is criminal. If people only knew how lucky they were.
Sunday, November 08, 2009
Tuesday, November 03, 2009
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