October 31, 2009 by kim.

For your scary Halloween entertainment, a video featuring yours truly (video created by the husband of yours truly):

Photography by Ann Brown – www.annbrownphotography.com

Boo!

Posted in Entertainment, Holiday, Art | No Comments »

July 14, 2009 by kim.

Chris purchased a green screen the other day for the multimedia freelance work that he does. This enables him to shoot a subject on the green background, take out the green background in editing, and put whatever he wants to in the background. For instance, he could shoot me in front of the green screen wearing a parka, pretending that I’m shivering. During editing, he could put a frozen tundra background in place of the green screen, thus making me appear that I am freezing my butt off somewhere in Siberia. Can you imagine the possibilities??

He needed to do some test shots to get used to lighting it before taking it to a client for the first time. Naturally, we were the guinea pigs.

Here is what the 10′ x 20′ green screen looked like in our dining room:

Here are four of the five lights he had set up:

We videotaped ourselves doing a goofy little dance, and then Chris went to work editing the footage:

It took him all of 20 minutes to create this little video:

Aren’t we just the silliest?

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July 2, 2009 by kim.

For TEN YEARS I have wanted to go to the Museum of Surgical Science (https://www.imss.org/) and never did. A few weeks ago we finally went, and unfortunately, it wasn’t all I thought it would be.

I find medicine fascinating, which is why I wanted to go here. Whenever I would go by it in a car or on a bus, I would always say, “I want to go to that museum!” I’m not saying that I wanted to see reenactments of actual surgeries (although that would have been interesting … ), but to me it seemed like things were thrown together all pell-mell. I didn’t see any rhyme or reason to the displays. Writing this I feel like I should have taken more pictures to show you what I’m talking about, but I didn’t because, sadly, I just wasn’t that interested.

There were some paintings on the walls depicting surgeries, some replicas of surgical instruments, an iron lung, etc. (which were all neat), but I couldn’t get a good history of things. I think I expected some chronological order regarding the progression of surgery through the years, but for some reason I didn’t really see that.

I did take a couple of pictures, though.

Here we have the apothecary with the stodgy mannequin and the drab voice over:

I can’t even tell you what “he” said.

Then, we went into a room of statues (these were both interesting and informative) where Chris practiced his oration skills to the captive audience:

Well done!

Posted in Art, Observation | No Comments »

March 12, 2009 by kim.

Last but not least, the final installment of “Series with iPhone”:

Crown Fountain - Millennium Park (in reverse):

Massive!

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March 3, 2009 by kim.

Here is installment 2 of 3 in “Series with iPhone”:

Cloud Gate - Millennium Park

Neat!

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February 23, 2009 by kim.

I’m going to be a little artsy here, and entertain you over the next couple of weeks with a series of photographs I took in Millennium Park. The pieces are called “Series with iPhone”, simply named because I took all of the pictures with my iPhone.

Brilliant, no?

Piece number 1 is of the Jay Pritzker Pavillion:

Huge!

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February 13, 2009 by kim.

Since the Art Institute is free this month, I’ve been wandering its halls during my lunch hours:

Okay - so these pictures are of the outside, but you know what I mean.

I like the lion.

Anyway, walking there yesterday I saw this:

A big walking cookie? Does that mean what I THINK it means?

Girl Scout Cookies!! Yay!

Living in an apartment, no girl scouts come by to take cookie orders. I only knew it was cookie season by hearsay. Luckily, I didn’t have to miss out. I was able to get my cookie fix on the street!

Hmmm…that sounds bad…

No matter - I scored Thin Mints!

Mmmmm…I’m a happy girl…

Posted in Art, Food | No Comments »

January 29, 2009 by kim.

This sculpture is located in Millennium Park and is entitled Cloud Gate:

In warm weather, it is wonderfully smooth and shiny. I thought it looked rather interesting with the snow on it in patches. Chris thought it was almost like looking at the earth from space.

Pretty!

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January 6, 2009 by kim.

Chris and I went for a walk Sunday in the wintry weather of Chicago. It was about 35 degrees which wasn’t too bad, but it was gray and cloudy which was depressing. We did see some interesting things along the way, though.

First, the landscape and Chris:

Next, the ice on Lake Michigan:

Remnants of a pier covered in ice

Then, a post with random pieces of art on it:

Finally, we were walking back home when these church bells began to ring:

They were so loud that we couldn’t hear ourselves talk, but I was glad that they were ACTUAL BELLS and not a recording!

This concludes our winter walk. Hope you’ve enjoyed it!

Posted in Art, Nature | No Comments »

October 5, 2008 by kim.

This bike is around the city a lot:

The puppet shows are so cute and lots of fun! There isn’t usually a schedule of where the bike will be, so if you’re lucky - you’ll catch it! This weekend, it happened to be in our neighborhood, otherwise, I sometimes see it downtown. Puppet Bike always brings a smile to my face!

You can check out the bike’s website at www.puppetbike.com. As of this writing, there is even a link to a short video where the bike was featured on our local PBS station, WTTW.

Go Puppet Bike!

Posted in Art, Happy | No Comments »