Kristen Being Kristen

over the moon

2011-06-26T22:37:00.001-04:00

Earlier this month I got a great view of the moon in my front yard.

please come to boston for the spring time

2011-06-03T22:17:00.000-04:00

In May of 2011, I walked around Boston Common and the Public Garden on a Sunday afternoon. It was a cool, overcast day, but the swans didn't seem to mind.

spring fever

2011-01-30T14:30:00.002-04:00

This is the time of year that has me asking:

the story of bert's blanket

2010-04-18T00:22:00.004-04:00

let's take it outside

2010-03-20T22:13:00.001-04:00

The weather was unseasonably warm this afternoon, so I took the chance to go for a walk. (I think every man, woman, child, and dog in town had the same idea.) As the shadows started to get longer, I liked the play of light and dark with the sun coming through the trees. It looks even better in black and white:

a winning streak

2010-02-05T23:11:00.001-04:00

How could I have possibly forgotten this commercial? It's apparently from 2006, but still... it's a streaking sheep!

Watch other top Super Bowl commercials of the past decade here. (Though I have to say, in 4 of the last 10 Super Bowls, commercials were the farthest thing from my mind.)

a picture is worth a thousand wordles

2010-01-26T01:55:00.002-04:00

The following image is a "wordle" which was created based on the frequency of words in the posts below this one:

Go ahead, try one with your own text at wordle.net. It's addictive!

fun and games

2010-01-02T12:30:00.003-04:00

I recently discovered Indigo Puzzles, a great site to play Sudoku as well as other logic puzzles: Hashi, Hitori, and Kakuro. A free account gets you 12 new puzzles a day, in varying levels of difficulty, which can be printed or solved online. You can save partially-completed puzzles and return to play them at a later date, or play puzzles from previous days out of the vault. But the best part about the site is its interactive assistant for solving each type of puzzle. If you get stuck, you can click the Advice button, and get not only a hint for your next move, but an explanation of why the move is possible. This means you can attempt puzzles at a higher difficulty than you're used to, or learn a new puzzle type. I came there enjoying Sudoku but new to Hashi and just learning about Hitori. The assistant helped with understanding techniques of solving Hitori, a sort of checkerboard game of black and white squares, and gave me tips on Hashi, the addictive puzzle of islands and bridges, so now I can solve harder versions of both on my own.

It seems like the site's motto, "Proudly destroying productivity since 2005," is accurate!

Two other good sites with thousands of free logic puzzle games to print or play online are Web Sudoku and Vegard Hanssen's site for Hashi, Hitori, and more.

making a good impression

2009-12-29T00:49:00.001-04:00

In 2006, I watched Boston's Fourth of July fireworks from a friend's boat. As dusk fell, I fiddled with the settings on my camera, and wound up with this shot that looks like something Claude Monet might have come up with if he had been gazing at the Boston skyline in the 21st century:

a most sensational, inspirational, celebrational, bohemianational rhapsody

2009-11-27T21:44:00.005-04:00

I fell in love with The Muppet Show as a kid. Then in college, one of my roommates and I used to watch it on Nick Jr. between classes every morning. She just sent me this link, and it cracked me up!

Glad to see the Muppets are alive and well!

a light subject

2009-11-06T14:57:00.000-04:00

Visited the coast of Maine this week. Here's Portland Head Light in early November:

fifth anniversary of the greatest day ever

2009-10-27T20:44:00.002-04:00

'Nuf Ced.

milling about

2009-09-27T10:49:00.000-04:00

In October of 2003, I drove by the Bambino's old house in Sudbury, MA. I parked in front for a minute or two, stared at the house, and said simply, "OK, Babe, you've made your point. Enough already!"

A week later... well, I guess he had one last hurrah. But he must have taken my advice and gotten over it, because the following year order was restored to the universe.

Right down the street from Babe Ruth's old residence is the Sudbury Grist Mill. Here's a picture from that day:

think pink

2009-04-25T17:41:00.003-04:00

It feels like summer outside this weekend, so how about a nice, summery picture o' the day? This is from Ardastra Gardens and Zoo in Nassau, Bahamas:

what would you give?

2009-04-18T18:42:00.005-04:00

This spoof of a MasterCard commercial featuring Dennis Leary is as poignant and funny now as it was then...

Some things truly are priceless!

let the games begin

2009-04-02T20:19:00.003-04:00

With the Red Sox' Opening Day just four days away, it's time for a picture from last year's home opener:

i'd rather be rich than stupid

2009-03-31T19:37:00.009-04:00

Here are my top 11 favorite "Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey," as seen on SNL. (Why 11? Well, it's kind of like 10, but better.)

11. To me, boxing is like a ballet, except there's no music, no choreography and the dancers hit each other.

10. Somebody told me it was frightening how much topsoil we are losing each year, but I told that story around the campfire and nobody got scared.

9. I believe in making the world safe for our children, but not our children's children, because I don't think children should be having sex.

8. Laurie got offended that I used the word "puke." But to me, that's what her dinner tasted like.

7. How come the dove gets to be the peace symbol? How about the pillow? It has more feathers than the dove, and it doesn't have that dangerous beak.

6. The face of a child can say it all, especially the mouth part of the face.

5. If trees could scream, would we be so cavalier about cutting them down? We might, if they screamed all the time, for no good reason.

4. The crows seemed to be calling his name, thought Caw.

3. As the light changed from red to green to yellow and back to red again, I sat there thinking about life. Was it nothing more than a bunch of honking and yelling? Sometimes it seemed that way.

2. It's easy to sit there and say you'd like to have more money. And I guess that's what I like about it. It's easy. Just sitting there, rocking back and forth, wanting that money.

1. Maybe in order to understand mankind we have to look at that word itself. MANKIND. Basically, it's made up of two separate words "mank" and "ind." What do these words mean? It's a mystery and that's why so is mankind.

Here are a couple of other "Deep Thoughts" lists.
And the official site.

plane and simple

2009-03-26T21:16:00.010-04:00

Math buffs beware! Planarity is a simple but addictive puzzle game where you attempt to arrange the vertices of a graph so that no edges intersect. In graph theory, this is called a planar graph. I've gone up through level 24.

mo' video

2009-03-21T19:38:00.004-04:00

Say hello to my cat, Mo:

She was born in 1995, and was named after that year's American League MVP. Her full name is Maurice Victoria Penelope J. Cat. (Note the first 3 initials. And yes, the "J." stands for Jay.)

a shell of my former self

2009-03-19T20:21:00.001-04:00

Continuing with my travel photos, the following was taken on Sanibel Island, Florida, in 2005:

i hope i'll be safe at home

2009-03-17T18:48:00.007-04:00

One of my favorite monologues is George Carlin's "Baseball and Football".

You know the one:

Football is concerned with downs - what down is it?
Baseball is concerned with ups - who's up? Are you up? I'm not up.

A transcript is at Baseball Almanac. Video is below.

The only part that makes no sense to me is this:

In baseball, during the game, in the stands, there's kind of a picnic feeling; emotions may run high or low, but there's not too much unpleasantness.
In football, during the game, in the stands, you can be sure that at least twenty-seven times you're capable of taking the life of a fellow human being.

Apparently he's never been to a Red Sox/yankees game...

But apart from that, it's one of my all-time favorite bits.

"i have a mind like an elephant...

2009-03-16T20:23:00.005-04:00

...In fact, elephants often consult me."

- Noel Coward

Here's a photo of a mama and baby elephant I took at the St. Louis Zoo in 2005. Click it to enlarge.

ministry of silly flash animation

2009-03-15T14:30:00.013-04:00

Click the image below to see this silly walk in action, or generate your own at the Silly Walks Generator. (Click the image, click "Click to Begin", then click "Play this walk".)

Important advisory: This silly walk was performed by a professional cartoon lumberjack. Do not attempt.

love that dirty water

2009-03-14T00:55:00.005-04:00

I'll be sharing in this blog, among other things, photos I've taken over the years. I took the following from the Esplanade in Boston in 2004. Click it to enlarge.

this will always make me laugh

2009-03-13T20:42:00.005-04:00

Always.

I love the dead serious "closer face", even while dancing the jig in his underpants!

Yoooooouuuuuuk!