on sunday, before making the long drive back to minneapolis, we made one more three-year old birthday pitstop at the great plains zoo.

when you first enter you get to see all of the animals standing completely still. how nice of them. better for photographing.

i liked this wall. who wants to help me paint a wall in my crafting room with this sort of scene?

hannie is a silly monkey.

they’re just playing.

monkey pile!

such a fashionable little fish.

karyn was eaten by a hippo before we even got to see any moving animals. tragic!

ok, enough of this. real animals, please!

the first animal we saw outside was a peacock and this is about all that i remembered from the zoo when i first visited a million years ago.

the alpaca was the most apprehensive.

after hannie rode the carousel (the first time), i had to go look at most of the african animals alone. because she wanted to keep riding the carousel.

lazy cheetahs! very boring.

this is the baby rhino that, at one point, hannie was excited about. before the carousel happened.

hannie’s last ride on the carousel was with me. honestly? i got kinda dizzy.

i like lemurs because they look like cats with even crazier eyes.

we ended our visit with the asian kitties. and there was one i’ve never seen before: pallas’ cat! adorable.

he was a little bigger than a house cat and he was all chatter-y and chirp-y. wanted to bring him home!

and i thought about him the whole way home to minneapolis. (not really) (maybe)

Before we started the birthday party with family in Sioux Falls, we stopped for lunch. Where Hannie got a new hat and a mega dessert!

She shared a little bit. But not much.

And almost as soon as everyone had gathered and there was a pile of presents, Hannie ripped into ‘em. How did she know they were for her?

The theme of the day was “Dora.”

Heidi made Hannie’s lovely (delicious) cake. I lit the three candles and before everyone could gather to sing the birthday song, Hannie started blowing them out. “Wait!” we all cried, which accidentally made Hannie cry. Aw! But round two went much better.

Then we chilled out.

last weekend, i joined my sister, brother-in-law and niece for a roadtrip to sioux falls, south dakota. we were celebrating hannie’s third birthday!

the hotel we were staying at was very nice and comfortable, but the pool was made for the kids. it’s deepest point was only 3′! so on friday night i spent some time playing in the 1′ deep end with hannie (and bryan). we went down the slide together a few times — we couldn’t quite convince her to go down the slide on her own! maybe next time.

bright and early on saturday morning, we went to the sertoma butterfly house.

“May the wings of the butterfly kiss the sun,
And find your shoulders to light on.”

before going to see the butterflies, i spent some time chatting with the fish.

puffer fish are adorable.

i also pet a manta ray and a horseshoe crab. then the crab flipped itself over and we all went “ewwww!”

from left: dad (trying to find every fish listed on the guide), gramma d, karyn, hannie and bryan.

have you noticed how every clown fish ever will now be know as nemo? i first experienced this phenomenon at an aquarium in salzburg, austria, many years ago (geez, over 8 years ago, actually).

on to the butterflies!

the butterfly room is kept at a certain temperature and humidity level so when we walked in, my camera immediately fogged up. oops! i might not have noticed if it weren’t for all of the owl butterflies near the doorway that greeted us.

this flower is very pretty and quite tall, though i don’t remember what its name is.

there were special fruit-feeding stations every few feet. fun to see the butterflies with their “tongues” out!

“pop-pop” gives hannie a lift to see the butterflies.

then a butterfly landed on dad’s shoulder and it was the coolest thing ever.

and THEN a butterfly landed on ME and it was WOW THE COOLEST THING EVER. i am so easily excited, y’all.

he was a very nice little butterfly, posing with his wings open and everything.

that guy was up on a wall out of reach (and almost out of sight) but i think it might be the moth that had an 11″ wingspan — the atlas moth. he was huge.

and as bryan and i were about to leave the butterfly room (it felt like it was getting gradually warmer in there), another guy landed on me — a blue morpho! he was not as cooperative about opening his pretty little wings, though.

i look stern because i was telling him to just open his dang wings.

bryan readied his camera as i (gently) poked the butterfly’s legs (he poked back at me). he quickly fluttered his wings a few times and bryan managed to get a shot. then it was bryan’s turn!

so pretty. then we finally scared it off and it went and landed in the next’s lady’s hair.

and then it was time for lunch! can you believe all of this fun happened before noon? more about the weekend later.

i got to attend minnewebcon again this year because i’m a lucky girl!

whitney hess was this year’s morning keynote speaker. she spoke about user research, but some of the thoughts i jotted down can apply to any job:

• Empathy builds empires.
• In order to solve a problem, get away from your desk. Get out into the world: explore, learn, understand.
• Talk to people about something you’re trying to understand until you stop hearing new things — then analyze and process.
• See the problems that other people don’t see (and be part of the solution).

when whitney flipped up a slide about soft skills a ux researcher needs to have, i found myself wondering if i have these skills and bring them to my professional (and personal!) life. i would like to think i do, but i could get better in some situations.

He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.
- Nietzsche

after lunch, i attended a session hosted by tonya oaks smith in which she prompted us to think about our own communication networks. we are agents of change, but who do we know as opinion leaders? who can help us get our message out into the world?

this was right around the time that i started to realize that i needed to stop being my usual quiet self and get chatting with folks — networking, man. i often let my antisocial homebody-ness take over my brain and i forget that talking to strangers can be a good thing. then tonya pointed me towards a recent blog post she wrote — networking doesn’t have to have a defined expectation! networking is just getting to know people, finding people who have similar interests as you. maybe someday you can help each other, but at the beginning it is just for fun.

have more fun!

and then i went to abbey tosic’s session about standing out and moving up.

• don’t be afraid to brag — no one will be a better advocate for yourself than you will be.
  (related: always have an answer for that dreaded small-talk question, “what have you been up to?”)
• figure out what’s holding you back — then conquer it! one success brings confidence to create more success.
• don’t forget to include the things that bring you joy on your “to do” list.
• get out of your comfort zone more often.

“If you’re not feeling a little uncomfortable, you’re probably not pushing hard enough.”

at the happy hour that night, my friend, bertine, and i were talking about sessions we could present. what topics are we confident enough about to share with everyone else? because being an active part of a local (maybe someday global?!) team of web professionals makes me feel excited. (even just writing about this little personal journey i had on monday is making me feel excited.)

and then i asked the geek girls for their autographs on their new book and they remembered me* despite brief meetings in the past and i didn’t want to go home because then i was over-the-moon excited. (i can easily get starry-eyed about people i think are amazing, but hopefully i can also maintain composure in their presence.)

* i should note that meghan remembered me because of my twitter name, @pork_chop, which actually pleases me even more after all of this inspiration. it just reinforces that my personal brand is working! i’m doing something right so far, antisocial or not.

if i hadn’t spent an hour wrestling with my sewing machine tonight (convinced i had broken something having to do with the bobbin) (though it turned out i had mis-threaded my top spool of thread), i might be finished with my first quilt block now. but… since it’s 11pm and i am starting to feel the tiredness (and a need for a glass of wine), i decided to finish it up tomorrow. i made good progress though!

i am working on cosmo cricket’s “circa 1934″ pattern. it is a bit more advanced than i should have probably picked for my very first quilt, but it’s too late now!

i just need to trim my corner blocks (my first half-square triangles! so exciting!), then i think getting all of the pieces together will be easy.

i need to appliqué the “stick” that cuts across the block, but… this quilt has 42 blocks and i figure i’ll have time to figure out appliqué later. for now: just get the blocks sewn.

my crafting room is actually a pretty nice space to work in, considering i don’t have tables or decent storage yet. i had the radio streaming through my ipad and the kitties were trying to help… not a terrible way to spend an evening. (especially since my sewing machine isn’t broken!)