Easy Homemade Donuts

rachael95
chocolate covered donut
Chocolate frosted

My mother used to make us donuts at home. They were delicious. She’d mix the dough and spend the time to deep fry them. Then, we’d all choose our toppings from an array that she’d mix up from a base powdered sugar mixture. It’s one of my favorite memories from childhood. I decided this would be one of the memories The Boy would have of his childhood. But I don’t have the time or inclination to mix up donut dough from scratch. Thankfully, cans of Pillsbury Grands Homestyle Biscuits exist.

To make easy homemade (and delicious) donuts at home, you’ll need

  • The biscuit dough
  • Frying oil (I usually use the leftover peanut oil after I’ve made eggrolls)
  • Flavorings (like: maple, almond, vanilla)
  • Other toppings (like: cake frosting, cocoa powder, crushed nuts, sprinkles, etc.)
  • Milk (if you don’t have milk, you can use water, but the glaze tastes like it’s missing a little something)
  • Powdered Sugar

Making the Donuts

maple frosted donut
Maple frosted
  1. Open the can of Pillsbury Homestyle Biscuits
  2. Use a cap from a bottle, or a 1/4 cup measuring cup to pop a hole out of the center
  3. In a pan of hot oil, drop the donuts and donut holes a few at a time. Flip after they are golden brown on the bottom.
  4. After frying on both sides, remove from the oil and drain.
  5. While the donuts are still warm, dip them in your favorite toppings.

Making the Donut Toppings

array of donut toppings
From top to bottom: maple, powdered sugar, plain glaze, melted chocolate frosting

 

  1. Get a large bag of powdered sugar
  2. Split off a small bowl for just plain powdered sugar
  3. Mix the rest of the powdered sugar with milk to make a plain glaze. (This is what your Krispy Kreme donut is covered in)
  4. Split the plain glaze into several bowls,  depending on what flavors you like.
  5. Here is what we usually do:
  • Leave one bowl plane
  • On the second bowl, add a small amount of maple flavoring (or syrup if that’s all you have)
  • On the third, add cocoa powder (if you’re out of cocoa powder, a chocolate can of cake frosting microwaved for a few seconds until it’s melted makes an AMAZING chocolate frosting for donuts. That is what the chocolate donut above is covered in).
  • Line the bowls up into an assembly line and let everyone choose their own toppings.

Impressions of Ant-Man casting

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We got to go see Ant-Man recently, thanks to getting a baby sitter after work one night. Here, I’m going to talk about the casting choices more than anything. I’m also going to give Marvel a pat on the back to go with the slap I gave them from the sexist issues they had with the last Avengers movie.

I liked that they did not have Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) as Ant-Man but did show him as the original. I also thought it was good that they did address his anger issues at least partially. Pym is not a hero for today. Paul Rudd as Scott Lang was the perfect actor for the type of character Marvel is going for here after the success of Guardians of the Galaxy. They are treating Ant-Man almost as a B-squad character, though really, he could easily be a greater hero than Iron Man. Because of that, he could get away with humor and bumbling sidekicks who still manage to beat the bad guy. Rudd definitely doesn’t take himself too seriously and that’s a good thing for the movie. And the suit was great. Loved the retro styling on it, though I hope for the next movie he gets an update to make it his.

I liked the little hints that they could possibly bring back Pym’s wife. Mike disagreed with me on that and said they were only going to have Hope (Evangeline Lilly) as Wasp, but I think they made too much of an effort to talk about what happened to the original Wasp, to point out that time and space don’t matter where she is, and to not show her face in photos, leaving open the possibility of choosing an actress to portray her in a future film. We’ll see.

Speaking of Evangeline Lilly as Hope, her character made me happy. Here was a self-assured woman, played by an actress who is not 20 years old. She is a full-grown, fully developed, fully aware of who she is, but still capable of growing emotionally and kicking-ass WOMAN, not a girl. I loved that they had an actress in her 30s play a character who was also about 35 years old. It was a breath of fresh air and I have to give Marvel a pat on the back for that. Especially after the stumbles they had in the latest Avengers. It was a great thing to see an older Hollywood actor have a more-than 20-something year-0ld-actress play his DAUGHTER and not his ridiculously too young wife. This casting was great.

The story was a bit campy. But it also fit with more of the worried about the world through the eyes of our family, rather than world-destroying super bad guys. That being said, Thomas the Train is scary enough when he’s little, let alone those creepy eyes the size of a real train. But I did like the growing little things big idea to lay the groundwork for a possible Giant-Man. Something Mike and I have discussed in the last two movies we’ve seen (the new Jurassic World and this) it is really bothering us both when kids are put into danger in these movies in ways that it would not have before The Boy came along. Guess we are starting to grow up too.

For me, I rate movies on whether or not they are worth full-price. Most movies are not. On this occasion, we even had to pay extra for the RPX (Regal’s version of IMAX) showing of the movie.

Most movies we see, are matinee that we catch before dinner on days when we’ve brought The Boy to stay with his grandparents for the night. Speaking as a parent to a young kid, I love date days like that since it covers much of his nap time and it guarantees we’ll be back before bedtime.

This was a good movie. I would rather have paid less to see it, but I did not feel like paying full price was asking too much, though I did think the price difference in the rudely sounding squeaky seats we got for RPX was definitely not worth it.

Rating: Worth full price, not RPX/IMAX

Dollywood and an unfair comparison to Disney World

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Recently, we visited Dollywood with our family. We are new season pass holders. We had gotten passes at Christmas last year and thought we’d go a few times this year to make it worth it. We were extremely disappointed with Dollywood when we took family in May. We had Mike, Me, The Boy (3), Brother-in-Law, his 5-year-old son, and the two boys’ grandmother. I’m going to now, unfairly, compare Dollywood to Disney World.

Just a note: I use some patently unfair math below, but it’s to make a point about value for the dollar.

Reasons why it’s (possibly) unfair to compare the two:

  1. They are suppose to not really be in the same league and shouldn’t be compared.But why should they not be compared? USA Today even had one article that ranked Dollywood above Magic Kingdom and Disneyland. Dollywood is obviously trying to compete with the big boys. So shouldn’t it be fair to compare it to the bigger parks?
  2. Dollywood is cheaper on the surface, for a pass, it certainly is. Once you get in the park, not so much. And check out the value for the dollar math below.
  3. Disney World is the destination, Dollywood is a day’s distraction. Agreed. People go to Pigeon Forge for the shopping, Gatlinburg for the kitch and mountains and Dollywood is often a place to wear the kids out in between. Though locals, like us, do just plan on spending the day at Dollywood periodically as our only reason for braving the tourist traffic in Pigeon Forge.

So let me tell you about our recent experience and why we spent the day comparing Dollywood to Disney.

Rides

When we visited Dollywood, the park was open from 10a.m to 7p.m. Considering we were only interested in doing rides that small children could do, that limited us to about 1/2 of the park. That’s totally fine with us. Meant less walking. But here’s the problem. Many of these rides were either not working or had broken parts. We went on May 17, long after the website says the rides are to be open. Here’s a sampling.

The Carousel – broken. With no sign. It was spinning around and looked like it was working fine. People would walk up to the line only to be told by a half-hearted attendant that it was being maintenanced. There was nothing to indicate that the ride, which was spinning and playing music tempting little children to come to it was anything but functioning properly – until you walk through the line to discover it’s broken. The answer to the question of when would it be finished was a shrug. It was broken from before we took the train until after we left the elephants (a couple hours later).

Rockin’ Roadway – closed. At least the lady in front of it was nice about letting us know it was closed and should be working later in the day. But there was still no sign. And that didn’t help us when we were not going to be back in that part of the park.

Amazing Flying Elephants – several of the elephants were broken. Considering how long this stupid line was and the fact that some people seemed to decide they had to put their kids in one elephant and them ride separately, my brother-in-law and I spent most of our time at the park waiting in line for this low rent version of Dumbo with multiple elephants broken. If all of the elephants had been working, the line would have moved at a crawl rather than a snail’s pace.

This was the ride that really ticked me off. Why? Because Dollywood can’t do one simple thing that Disney does: Put up a sign that says how long your wait is going to be. How hard is it to do that? They could do it with a chalkboard.

So Dollywood has multiple popular rides either being fixed with no notice or in poor repair and broken and doesn’t post signs either about the fact they are broken or the times you’ll wait for poorly maintained rides. At least when Disney refurbishes a ride, they work on themeing the closure and their wait times and (free) Fast Pass + system are head and shoulders above Dollywood’s TimeSaver pass that costs $25 PER PERSON and just lets you put yourself in the line so you don’t have to stand there while you wait.

Winner: Disney

Food and Drink Prices

Drinks: We purchased the season pass beverage containers. They were running a special where the normally $20/each cups were on sale for additional ones. I think we ended up paying $20, and then $5 for three others. Something like that. Here’s the funny thing. The equivalent of these from Disney (which granted can not be used in the parks, only at your home resort) are $18 for your length of stay and then free refills. For Dollywood, each refill is $1, but the cup is good all season long. This kind of balances out for me. I might even give the winner here to Dollywood since the rapid refill mugs at Disney are only good at your hotel.

Drinks Winner: Dollywood

Since I went with a Gold Pass at Dollywood, we did get a 10% discount on our meal. I will say the food we got was pretty good for a theme park, though not as good as food at Disney sitdown restaurants. For this, I’m comparing Backstage Restaurant at Dollywood to Liberty Tree Tavern at Disney.

Positives for Backstage Restaurant – everyone can choose their own meal.

Positives for Liberty Tree – unlimited food, so many choices people can find something they like. YUMMY food. Awesome service

For me, Liberty Tree at Disney was much better for the taste. The food at Backstage was a bit uneven. Some was good, some not so good. Everything at Liberty Tree was great. Price wise, I’d say we came out slightly ahead per person at Backstage, but that included a 10% discount that we didn’t get at Liberty Tree (since we no longer have annual passes).

Split decision:

Taste Winner: Disney’s Liberty Tree Tavern

Price (with season pass discount): Dollywood’s Backstage Restaurant

Photos

We purchased the season photo pass for Dollywood. We purchased the Memory Maker for our Disney World trip. Mike and I both agreed that the $160 we spent on Memory Maker was the best thing we bought the entire time. Why? Unlimited photos from all the photographers around the parks. It was so easy to just scan our Magic Band and have the photos appear in our account. We got magic shots, we got posed shots, we even had photographers just come up to us during rainstorms to entertain The Boy and get great pictures. It was wonderful. And no, it is not expensive when you consider that for daycare school photos, we pay $150 to get 3 poses plus the digital image. We don’t care about the printed photos. We want the digital images. We got more than 100 photos on our trip and had so many good ones, I made a rather large photo book of the Memory Maker photos.

At Dollywood, the photo pass costs $50 annually and then you get to pay $2 per photo to get them to put it on your account. Considering that we have averaged exactly 1.5 photos per trip, that’s fairly expensive per picture, though granted, not daycare prices. We have both agreed it has not been worth the hassles for the quality of photos we’ve gotten.

Dollywood has very few places for people to get photos, so you are rushed constantly. On this trip, we got a photo before riding the train. Mike went to pay the $2 to get it added to our account while my BIL and I took the two boys to ride Elephants. Note: we were still in line for a 1/2 hour AFTER Mike got back from the ordeal of trying to GIVE THEM MONEY for our photo.

Mike was the first person in line for the photos since he didn’t need to stop and look at the photo to know he wanted to pay the $2. The attendant waved him back and said he had to wait until ALL the other people who wanted photos and who had NOT paid for the photo pass paid for their photo. So he was literally sent to the back of the line because he paid $50 extra for convenience. After he waited for an entire train’s worth of passengers to buy photos, he paid the $2 and was told it would appear soon. It was not there when we left. He had to stop at the window on the way out to ask about it. They said to give it 24 hours. He did. Called again. Give it another 24 hours. Called again, we finally had to go through the process of describing what we were wearing so they could manually go through the photos to find us. Surprisingly, they DID find our photo. So good on Dollywood for that. But this was a nightmare compared to the ease and customer friendly attitude you get with Disney.

Winner: Disney Memory Maker

Admission Price

For ease of comparison, I’m going to choose an annual/season pass for each park. I’m choosing the 2 park option for Dollywood since Disney’s pass gets you all 4 parks.

  • Disney Annual Pass: $654
  • Dollywood (2 park): $146

Looking at this, Dollywood wins. However, Disney is open 365 days a year. Dollywood is closed for nearly 3 months in January, February and March and an additional 45 days periodically throughout the year, when it has entire days in the middle of the week where it is closed. Be sure you check the calendar and not trust it’s open! So that means instead of getting 12 months as you do at Disney, you’re in effect getting 7.5 months where you can use the pass.

Let’s re-work our math:

  • Disney’s annual pass (per month): $54.50
  • Dollywood’s season pass (per month, this is assuming 7.5 months of usable time): $19.47

Wow, Disney is still nearly 3 times as expensive. But what do you get for the price?

  • Customer Service. No one can deny that Disney has the best customer service in the world.
  • Quality. Their stuff works. If it doesn’t work, they advertise it, they make it easy to know when it will be fixed, they handle it with style when things go wrong.
  • Choices: 4 parks to choose from compared to 2 for Dollywood.

Hey, let’s look at the per park math, shall we?

  • Disney Price per park per month: $54.50/4 = $13.63
  • Dollywood Price per park per month: $19.57/2 = $9.74

Prices aren’t looking too different now, are they? I’d say Quality, Customer Service and Choices are worth the extra money. That being said, it still is easier to go for a day to Dollywood than to run down to Orlando.

So there you go, for a difference of a few dollars per park, you get Disney. Is this math really fair when comparing the two? No, not really. But it sure does make me feel like I’m not getting the bang for the buck from Dollywood as I do from Disney. And that’s the important thing. My value for the dollar.

Value for the dollar: Disney wins.

Sexism and Disney

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Truly, this is not just about Disney. But this post is related to the Sexism and Marvel post from a few weeks back and since most of the toys The Boy has are Disney related, they are going to get picked on here. This could really be a rant on most toy companies and attitudes in general towards what should be boy and girl toys.

The Boy absolutely loves the following three movie franchises in this order: Toy Story, Cars, Planes. These are Pixar/Disney films but it is Disney that handles the merchandising. I must say, I was pleasantly surprised when we looked for the 20″ Toy Story dolls for him that we were able to find a Jessie doll. At least those were something we could find. Maybe because both boys and girls are allowed to love those movies. But let’s look at Cars and Planes.

When The Boy let us know he wanted the characters from Cars (he is unaware Cars 2 exists except as a short-story that I edit as a read to him) we started looking for them – they made great potty training rewards and Christmas was coming up. It took awhile, but eventually, we found all of the Radiator Springs members. This was an old movie. We expected it would be difficult to find the cars. It was not impossible. Though, the only set we could find Miss Sally in was with her having dinner with Lightning.

But when it comes to the Planes movies, we noticed something odd. We could not find any of the female characters easily. These are PLANES, they are not gendered in real life. But it was very difficult to find Dottie. It was nearly impossible to find Lil’ Dipper – we finally had to settle for a larger, expensive version of her from the Disney store rather than finding the smaller version (like the other characters have) available at other stores. Pinecone (one of the Smoke Jumpers) is easier to find – but I think that might be because unless you pay close attention to the one line she has in the movie, you might not realize she’s female. But Dynamite? The leader of the Smoke Jumpers? The obviously strong female character? Impossible to find in any store. Oh yes, she’s available if you want to pay an arm and a leg from a collector on Amazon, but she is NEVER hanging on the shelf at Walmart or Target, or Kroger, or Toys R Us, or any of the other stores we diligently check to try to find female Planes and Cars characters.

I was even willing to buy the $100 set (later reduced and then discontinued) from the Disney Store that included all the characters in Planes Fire and Rescue in an attempt to get Dynamite. But, since many of the toys sold by the Disney Store are terrible quality, we had to return it after I dropped one of the cars on our rug while carrying it to the Christmas tree and it broke.

Note to Disney: I love most of  your merchandise. I love the quality of the t-shirts, kitchen items, beach towels, etc. But your toys are often pieces of junk. It’s depressing thinking I can find a better made toy at Walmart than I can at the Disney Store.

 

I was very glad I’d over-bought for his Christmas since this happened on Christmas Eve and we decided to not give him that set.

Not being able to find female characters in “boy” toys is common to all toy manufacturers, but it is really obvious in Disney and Marvel toys. Years ago, you could buy adorable prince outfits at the Disney Store that were similar to the princess costumes you see today. What do you see at the stores now? The Avengers. Hot, bulky costumes that a boy would never be able to wear to Disney World and would get uncomfortable wearing for the length of time it takes to Trick or Treat. If they have one of the other male characters, like Jake from The Neverland Pirates, the quality of the costume is so bad that it makes a not-very-creative mom like me decide to learn to sew it myself. (That Jake vest I made out of felt is still in use two years later and one of his favorite dress-up items. Thanks for the pattern!)

What about at the actual parks? There are plenty of dress up opportunities for girls. They can go to Bibbity Bobbity Boutique and get multiple versions of being a princess. Boys can choose a knight – that only includes the sword and not the outfit. At the Pirates League, boys can be a pirate (that usually includes scary face make-up) while girls can choose pirate princess or mermaid look. Why are girls always required to be a beautiful princess and boys are always required to be a protector with a weapon or a villain with a weapon? Yes, I know, boys can make swords and guns out of sticks. One of The Boy’s and my favorite games is to fight dragons in our front yard with special sticks we’ve collected. But boys and girls want to be able to do other things too.

This indoctrination happens young. We brought The Boy to the local Disney outlet a few weeks ago. He was picking up one of those cheap fans they have near the checkout counter. It had Anna, Kristoff, and Olaf, but was obviously geared more towards a feminine aesthetic. A little girl of about 5 years old explained to me that he shouldn’t play with that since it was a girl toy. She then picked up an Iron Man fan and said he could play with that one. How sad. There were other toys at the store that were so frustrating. Boys had bowling ball sets that were Mickey Mouse and blue. Girls could have the garden set that was Minnie Mouse and pink. What if a girl wants to bowl or a boy wants to garden? I think Disney actually does make opposite sex versions of these – but they are hard to find. This store certainly had none. Why not make them neutral?

Are we so afraid that by letting a boy play with a doll or letting a girl pretend she’s a firefighter that we are going to cause society to crumble? Sadly, many people in charge of toy companies either believe this or believe society feels this way to such an extent that they have to constantly categorize everything as feminine or masculine. Even things that shouldn’t be. I think things are changing. Slowly, but it’s beginning. Many parents are tired of the stereotypes.

I think our toy companies need to realize this. Wouldn’t it cost less to make gender neutral toys in some cases than specific boy and girl versions? Why alienate half your population who might buy a toy by making them feel like they shouldn’t get it for their child? Why are superhero toys or cars and planes considered to be boy only toys? Why is it such a terrible thing to think that a boy might want to play with a female car or superhero <or gasp!-> plant a garden or cook? Or a girl might enjoy race cars or want to pretend she’s a superhero, or play sports? The sexism goes both ways.

 

Stop offering only toys that have weapons to boys. Stop telling boys they can’t have feelings or take care of children. Stop suggesting that girls need to be either sexy or maternal but can’t be a hero and that they must ALWAYS be beautiful and smile. Just Stop It.

Black and White Brownie Pops

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image

I needed something easy to make but interesting for our Memorial Day picnic at church recently. I had eaten some brownie pops that my best friend sent me from  Shari’s Berries for Valentine’s Day and was craving them again. The brownie pops they created were adorably cute (and extremely delicious) lady bugs where the head was a dipped cherry. browniebitesMy brownie pops were very simple since I didn’t have a lot of time to make anything complicated, but it would be fairly easy to do more with these. If you are looking for a place to order from though, I can tell you the quality from these and the chocolate covered strawberries she sent me were great.

Ingredients:

  • Brownies (I just made a box mix) – make sure you bake them for the bare minimum time so they are still gooey.
  • Powdered sugar
  • Dipping chocolate – there are many brands, follow the instructions for melting the pieces. I used Marzetti’s chocolate fruit dipping pieces because that was what I had at home.
  • Cookie sheet covered in wax paper

Instructions:

Cut off the edges and scrape the brownie out of the pan immediately after removing it from the oven. Put it in the refrigerator for a few minutes to cool it off, enough so you can handle it, but take it out while still warm.

imagePull off pieces of the brownie and roll them in your hands to make large gumball sized balls. (about 1 inch in diameter)

Refrigerate or freeze the balls when done to firm them up.

 

Take 1/2 of the balls for dipping in chocolate and the other 1/2 for dipping in powdered sugar.

image imageUsing tooth picks, roll the balls in your chocolate dipping sauce.
Put them on the waxed paper covered cookie sheet to drip. After you are finished dipping all the chocolate balls, put this pan in the refrigerator to firm up the chocolate completely.

Take the rest of the balls and roll them in the powdered sugar.

imageimage

 

 

 

After the chocolate balls are firmed up, place all of them on the plate and enjoy!image

Tip: The chocolate covered balls did eventually start to get a bit sticky in our summer heat, though the powdered sugar ones did fine. But this would probably be better for an indoor party.

Doctor Who – Capaldi as the Doctor

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Note: If you haven’t seen the series 8  – this will have spoilers. Be aware.

Full disclosure. My Doctor is David Tennant. I tell my husband this, and he has no idea what I’m talking about. For those of us who love the series, we know that we all have the one Doctor we really enjoyed watching more than the others. And then…we have our significant others in our lives who may not be Whovians and don’t want to watch the show. Yes, we sit through their shows. But they won’t watch with us. I was told recently that Doctor Who is “too hard to get into unless you’ve watched it from the beginning.” That may be, but most of us who like to watch it would be more than willing to invest the time to re-watch it with our loved ones to get them caught up to speed. Ah well. This post is not about that. It’s about Capaldi’s first season as the new Doctor. To look at that, we have to back to Matt Smith’s last couple of series.

It took me a while to get used to Matt Smith. I thought by the end of his first series, he had begun to really own the role and I finally forgave him for replacing David Tennant. I thought his relationship with River was great and the actors had a real chemistry. I liked that they expanded his companions so that it wasn’t just two series regulars each episode. I loved Rory and liked Amy. The entire arc with Clara was written well. But yes, it was time to try out a new Doctor.

I firmly believe a lot of the reason Capaldi has not grown on me is the writing for this series. Too much time was spent developing an un-needed arc for Clara Oswald rather than developing the personality of the new Doctor.

Capaldi was at a bit of a disadvantage, I felt, because Clara, had a huge and important story arc that was really finished under Matt Smith’s tenure. Her character was created because of the chemistry she and Smith shared. That chemistry is mostly lacking between her and Capaldi.

The writers will either complete a companion’s story arc under one Doctor (a la the best companion ever in Donna Noble), or they’ll extend the companion across a Doctor to give some connection with the previous incarnations. When they did this with Rose, her arc expanded into new stories that allowed her to become her own person. She matured and developed.

I felt that Clara’s story arc really should have finished with Matt Smith’s Doctor. Extending her story through this series felt forced. Her character didn’t really change and mature in any significant way. The way her love interest Mr. Pink died felt unnecessary to me, especially since we’d had an episode where she met their many-times great grandson. Who, unless we discover she’s pregnant in the typical TV melodramatic save-the-story way, will now no longer exist. After seeing the Christmas special, I’m thinking they are not going with that and are going to just accept that all of her descendants now don’t exist; that is rather depressing. Perhaps, they’ll come up with a way to bring Pink back. Who knows.

But, Capaldi still has not grown on me the way Tennant and Smith did by this point in time. He seems too stiff at times and too unpredictable. Tennant’s Doctor seemed like a man beginning to understand just how long and lonely his life had been and would be while still trying to connect with others. Smith’s Doctor developed a great feeling of weary age in a young man’s body; but Capaldi’s Doctor strikes more as a self-important grump that isn’t very trustworthy and not as wise as his younger self. Perhaps, I’m being too harsh. I do hope his version grows on me as much as Tennant’s and Smith’s. But when you have an episode with all the previous Doctors and your reaction is – “I wonder if they could just bring back either of those two?” It let’s you know that this version needs a bit more work before he becomes the real Doctor.

Sexism and Marvel

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Note: Originally, I was planning on making this one post covering both Disney and Marvel and the issues they have with sexist attitudes. But I decided to split it up into two. Consider this part 1

 

I’m a fan of both Disney and Marvel. I love them. So this is coming from someone who wants to see something I really enjoy improve.

Sexism and Marvel

I do not believe that the folks at Marvel are all misogynistic pigs as some people truly do. But there are problems in Marvel movies and merchandising. I will address the merchandising issue in the second post since that is also a Disney issue.

Yes, Age of Ultron had some glaring problems. Many people probably missed the Prima Nocta joke. I missed it at first because I couldn’t hear what Stark said clearly. When I leaned over and asked Mike what he said, I was a bit surprised. Rape jokes are never funny. The only thing I can think is the folks at Marvel were thinking this is Tony Stark’s character. You expect him to make a stupid and ill-conceived joke like that. I would also like to think that if he tried something like that with Lady Sif, he’d discover how stupid it really was. I truly hope that is the take away that the folks writing and directing this movie had in mind.  But what it came off as was a crude and stupid joke about something that 20% of their female audience has probably experienced.  Yes. 1 in 5 women have been raped. Think about that.

The second big issue that I had with Age of Ultron was with Black Widow, the only strong female in the group. Yes, she makes a silly joke about having to always clean up after the boys, putting her in the mother role. That can be considered cute and funny. But, contrasted with her comparing her inability to have children to making her a monster like The Hulk, that joke takes on another meaning. Comparing herself to a monster because she can’t have children offended me. Here is a woman, who as part of a spy indoctrination is forcibly sterilized as a child. She is no longer able to produce a baby. That makes her a monster. Boil this down to the base thought: A woman who can’t become pregnant is no woman. I truly hope that was not what the folks at Marvel were thinking. But when the company has had so many issues with how they portray and treat women, one has to think there is a tone deafness that needs to be fixed at the company.

Final thoughts:

Here are two free suggestions for Marvel:

  1. Understand that women are your fans as well. Stop offending us.
  2. Take some of that giant profit you have and spend it to hire a consultant to read your scripts rather than the pre-pubescent boy you currently have. You might be surprised that they can still be great movies while not encouraging rape jokes or comments about what makes a woman a human being or a monster.

Avengers: Age of Ultron

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Required Warning: This is going to have spoilers for this and possibly future movies.

These are my thoughts of the 2D version of the film. Mike and I got to see this movie last week. We saw this in 2D, mainly because we didn’t have a lot of choices in times since we had to get back to daycare to get The Boy, but also because it’s a bit annoying for me to watch 3D movies. When you wear glasses, having to wear a second pair over your eyes is a pain. Literally. The beginning of the film with the introductory fight scene was obviously designed with 3D in mind and probably would have looked awesome. The same holds true for the scene where Ultron is fighting his way around the ring of Avengers to get to the button. However, to me, it wasn’t worth the additional cost or hassle for two scenes to warrant 3D.

My creds:

To give an idea of where I’m coming from in looking at this movie, I’ve read some of the comics, but not a ton in recent years. I grew up watching all the Saturday morning cartoons, and have seen all the movies. We also watch Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D and Agent Carter. I’ve read a lot of the back-stories online to try to catch up with what I’ve missed in the comics and I’ve talked about the stories with Mike, who has read all the comics and gives me the low-down on the story-lines. So I’m familiar with the universe, but not so much that seeing a photo in the background on someone’s desk would immediately give me a hint of a future character. I do miss things, for example, I had to poke Mike to find out why Wakanda was important after I heard him chuckle.

Overall thoughts:

This is definitely a film directed by Joss Whedon. The characters have a quick wit and humor that most people wish they had when replaying conversations in their heads. Like all of Whedon’s projects, we get to see actors that he’s worked with before. He seems to be a pretty loyal director when it comes to working with talent. He also gives a good amount of screen time not only to the big names, but to the entire ensemble and that is pretty hard to do for most directors.

I liked the movie. It had everything an Avengers movie should have: lots of explosions, lots of action, great banter between characters and hints of future tie-ins. Best line in the entire movie: Hawkeye giving a pep talk to Scarlet Witch. He’s the normal dude who goes to war with superheros armed with a bow.

Speaking of Hawkeye, I both loved and hated that they brought Barton’s family in as characters. I loved that they put the effort to develop his character and family –  since it seems he’s not going to get his own movie. I hated that this brings in the possibility for their deaths. I seriously don’t think Marvel could do that on the big screen. It’s one thing to have that happen in the comics, but when it’s splashed on a big budget action movie, that could really tear it apart. Please, please Marvel, don’t kill them off, especially the way it was done in the comics!

Nit picks:

Talk about over the top melodrama imagined death scene. Cap grabs Tony, saying “you could have saved us!” In this terrible interjection that is surprisingly loud and hale-sounding only to immediately fall back dead. On one hand, it could have been handled with a bit more understatement, but then again, this was in Tony Stark’s head. So maybe, the over-the-topness fits. Still, I don’t think  I was supposed to giggle at Cap dying. It was like watching the “I’m not dead yet!” scene from Monty Python’s Holy Grail.

Ultron:

I can accept the god complex since he’s Tony’s creation in this instance. But he also seemed to be a bit half-hearted about some things. This was a supervillain, who could split himself into hundreds of versions of himself, and decided to put all his eggs in one basket rather than splitting it amongst several world-destroying flying city plans (which seems a bit complicated when typed out). Who knows, maybe that’s also a by-product of being Tony’s “son.”  But when Raina makes her prediction in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D, she specifically indicates multiple cities. So I had to think it was more a side-effect of movie budget and wanting to have all the heroes in one place than anything else. I also thought it was rather cute how they tried to make it look like not a single civilian was going to die as the city dropped to the ground below, or that the mass of the city was still falling and that blowing it into smaller chunks didn’t change that or affect all the people in the rest of the city that was still on the ground.

Marvel and women:

Marvel has taken some black eyes over their portrayal of women and the utter lack of female toys. I was going to write something here, but that’s a whole ‘nother post. Coming soon.

The Ending:

I was quite happy with the last scene. I loved how Whedon cut off Cap’s sentence at the perfect spot. Great way to lay the groundwork for future movies -which is exactly what a good Marvel movie should do. After watching this movie and all the others, it makes me so happy that Marvel created their own studio for these films rather than entrust their characters to another studio as they and DC had done in the past. These are the folks who know how to make a good story and that is what makes a great movie.

My recommendation:  Worth the price of full admission, once. (Though we paid matinee prices and preferred that)

Thoughts On Higher Education Conferences

rachael95

Recently, I got to attend a higher education conference for our state. I was one of the presenters and had a really great time listening to what others are doing in colleges and universities around us. I’ve been to several conferences, usually as a presenter, and here are some thoughts I’ve had over the years. Let me say first, that the conference we attended this past week was really done well. For a small budget conference, we got a lot of high budget value in the talks and vendors and I would much rather attend another conference like this than some of the bigger ones I’ve been to. It was great being able to drive to the conference and have it only a couple hours from home and have the quality that we did.

Talks

This is the meat and potatoes of any conference. For those of us in higher ed, we often have two types of conferences we get. The first is the one I prefer, a conference that has others who work in higher ed talking about projects they’ve been working on. Sometimes, these are success stories, other times failures with lessons learned, but they are always informative and helpful. This is how the conference I just went to was. It was great!

The second is like a conference I went to last year. It was mostly vendors speaking. Those of us who were speaking from higher ed institutions were actually put up for speaking at the same times in the three competing tracks. That meant, they only had about 6 speakers from higher ed in two sessions and the rest of the sessions were vendors. (I’m sure I’m exaggerating slightly here, but that is how it felt at the time). Since I was one of the speakers, I only got to see one other talk from a peer and the rest were vendors.

Oftentimes, vendors have helpful things to say. They have solutions to problems we’re experiencing. But those solutions always come with a price tag attached. The difference between a vendor or a peer from another institution speaking is that they both might offer a solution, but the peer will often tell you about the solution they found that requires little to no budget. For those of us who work in higher education, we know how important it is finding a solution that is budget neutral or maybe even positive! Peers will also give talks on how to do things better, or new ideas they’re trying with training their students, or other neat ideas that just require a different way of looking at things we’re already doing than fixing a problem. Peers are the ones who challenge us to try things in new ways.

Vendors

These are the companies who often pay for the conference. These folks are invariably friendly and are a great resource for finding solutions. Yes, their solutions will cost money. But it’s often better to find a good, workable solution to a problem we’re having than to try to re-invent the wheel by doing the work ourselves. One other benefit to having the vendors attend conferences is also having a good way to talk to someone involved in a company you already do business with. These folks have heard concerns and problems we might be having with their product and they will contact the company to help us find solutions to what is going on. I’ve seen vendors who hear an issue and later, their product comes out with a feature to do exactly what attendees at conferences have been asking for. Depending on the company, sometimes the vendor attendees are the ones who actually design the solution and if you meet with them at your institution, you end up just re-kindling a previous relationship at the conference. It’s a great two-way communication that is often overlooked. Plus, they usually give away cute little toys that The Boy loves. Thank you to the vendors, we really do appreciate you.

Conference Locations

Conferences often shoot for the big cities. Vegas, Orlando, Anaheim, all come to mind as prime conference locations. But those conferences I’ve been to that were in smaller cities, such as Chattanooga or Ithaca,  have often been just as interesting. It’s the content of the conference that most people are really interested in. Yes, we’d all like to have an evening to visit and site see. But if the conference doesn’t have good quality material, it can feel like a waste of time. That being said, I do love an Orlando conference since it is fairly easy to tack on a later flight and visit Disney….. Yes, I have decided. All conferences should be in Orlando or Anaheim.

Hotels

It is always great when the conference can find a pleasant hotel where we won’t have to travel to the conference building from a separate hotel. Bonus, if the hotel is fairly large, you can still get most of your 10,000 step walking goal if you attend all the sessions. Sitting all day can be tiring and walking from one end of a large hotel to the other can help wake you up.

Food

As a general rule, conference food usually stinks. It doesn’t matter if they use the hotel or if a vendor gets a good restaurant to cater one evening, the food is not going to be great. This is nothing new. It’s almost impossible to have good, hot food for hundreds of people that is kept perfectly cooked over Sterno.

The worst conference meal I ever had was where the organizers tried going high-end. I’d been to this conference a couple years before. The meal at the first one was a boxed lunch: sub sandwich, chips, cookie, drink.  Everyone was fine with this because it let us take the lunch and find quiet corners to chat with small groups. At the second conference, we had a sit down meal. Hotel staff brought us our meals. The only entree available was cubed tofu in a brown sauce with some type of vegetable I didn’t recognize. The entire meal would have fit on the palm of my hand. The presentation of the plate was great and very fancy, but even the lone vegetarian at our table thought the food was not good. Needless to say, most of us decided to not eat our expensive, conference provided meal and went out and spent our own money to get a restaurant meal afterwards. Those of us who had been at the previous conference said we would have preferred the boxed lunch. This meal did have one positive: it brought all the conference attendees together in a common joke the rest of the time, so it was a relationship builder, but maybe not in the way it was originally intended.

Lesson for conference organizers: Don’t try to impress us. If you must feed us, feed us something simple and easy. People who are attending a conference are usually on either a per diem rate or no rate depending on if the conference provides meals or not. Personally, I would much prefer to have a conference not provide me a meal so I could get a per diem rate and go out in a small group with other attendees, or even by myself, to eat at a restaurant and get something I know I’ll like.

Free Time

Every minute of the day does not need to be scheduled. I know there are some of those really out-going folks who enjoy meeting new people and talking to them for hours. My husband is one of those. Drives me insane. Birds-of-a-feather sessions are great to attend, but for those of us who are more on the introverted end of the spectrum, we are TIRED at the end of a day meeting people. We need some downtime. Don’t make me feel guilty by ducking out of a planned social gathering because I’m to the point where I don’t want to talk to another human being for a few hours. It is exhausting being outgoing for some people. Many people who meet me are surprised when I tell them I’m an introvert because I am pretty outgoing when it comes to meeting and talking to people. That is because I’m forcing myself to be outgoing. But after doing that all day, I’m pooped. Give me some time to re-charge, guilt-free please!

Final Thoughts

Higher ed conferences have different purposes to different folks. Some, I know, see them as excuses to get out of work and do something fun. Those are the folks that you never see at the sessions. Gladly, these people are pretty rare. For the vast majority of us, the higher ed conference is one of the best ways we can connect with our peers in person, get good ideas to take back to help our students, and get a bit of a handle on some of the new things that are out there. They are professional opportunities that we see as ways to improve our schools. We really appreciate when our departments are able to send us to a conference. We see it as a great way to research improvements and find solutions to problems we’ve been having. These are huge amounts of work for the folks who organize them and all of the people who volunteer to do this have my respect. The conference might not always be perfect, but the folks who plan them have put a lot of effort into them and these are people who are doing that on top of their regular jobs at colleges and universities. Thank you to everyone who has done this!

Keeping kids safe at Disney

rachael95

walkingMK

Keeping your kids safe is one of those things you have to think about, but don’t want to when going to Disney. It’s the Happiest Place on Earth, after all. But it is extremely crowded and easy to get separated from your child. Depending on the age of your child, there are several things you can try to keep the kids safe. For older kids, who are going to be allowed to go off on their own for a bit, sometimes just giving them a cell phone, a place and time to meet up, and then a particular spot to go to in case of emergency is all you need. For younger kids, who might not be able to communicate everything they need to, you’ll want to take other measures.

Identification

How do you identify a child who is too young or too upset to tell a CM what your name and phone number is? What you should NOT do is write on the child with a Sharpie or other permanent marker. These are not designed to be used on skin. They contain chemicals that can cause problems.

If you would like a tattoo or something on your child you don’t need to worry about going away any time soon, check out www.safetytat.com. They have a great reputation for creating long-lasting and safe security tattoos for children.

If you’re looking for something that is less expensive, or something that won’t be on the child’s skin, you can go with an ID bracelet, necklace, or tag. You can buy ID bracelets and necklaces online, or you can make your own tags very easily. That’s what we did. Check out any local store that has one of the dog tag vending machines where you can enter your name/address on a dog tag. They have lots of different styles. We picked out a Mike Wazowski eyeball for The Boy’s tag. You can see it attached to the loop on the back of his left shoe in the picture above. We put both our cell phone numbers and our names. Then, I just attached that tag to The Boy’s shoe. We didn’t have to worry about him removing a bracelet or necklace and it was in an easy to spot place. Note: CMs will not search a child’s clothing for their names to be written inside the shirt. IDs for kids need to be in a spot that is easily seen.

Tip: buy one tag for each pair of shoes so you don’t have to swap them back and forth in the morning when your toddler decides at the last minute he wants to wear a different pair.

The Leash/Tether Question

So many people think that parents who use kid tethers are just doing it so they can let their child run around like a maniac. Yes. There are some lazy horrible parents out there. But the majority of parents who use tethers are doing it to keep better track of their kids. Some of us have runners. Some of us are paranoid about being separated from our child in a large crowd. Most kid leash/tethers are only a couple feet long. As you can see from the picture above, we used the tether as a safety net. I still held The Boy’s hand as we were walking, the tether was there just in case he wriggled free and tried to run off through a crowd.

The nice thing about the tether was that if we were in a fairly calm spot and The Boy was tired of me holding his hand, I could let him stand next to me and know he wouldn’t be able to suddenly dart away. It gave both of us a break from sweaty hands and gave him the chance to get a some blood flowing back into his arm. We didn’t do it often, but it was an option that if I didn’t have the tether, I would not have tried at all.

There are different styles you can use. The most popular seems to be the stuffed animal backpack where the parent holds onto the tail. I’d originally bought one of these for The Boy to use and then realized before the trip that was a bad idea. Instead, I bought a Baby Buddy Toddler Tether (cost about $5.60).

Why not go with the stuffed animal backpack?

  1. The backpacks make the child feel like they’re carrying a thick blanket. They are HOT. Too hot for Disney in any month other than dead of winter.
  2. You can’t easily transfer the child to and from the stroller with one of these on. You would have to remove it every time.
  3. Being bulky, it might not be a good idea to keep these on the child during some rides.

With the wrist tether, we could leave it on while hopping in and out of the stroller. If he was going to be in the stroller a while, we could easily slip it off after he was settled and slip it on again later. The backpack takes a bit of time to slide over shoulders and clip around the chest.

Drilling Information

Our son was only 2.5 years old when we went. But we were sure to drill the following information into him, just by repeating it over the course of weeks and asking him to repeat it back.

  • His name, First and Last.
  • Our names, First and Last.

We also made sure to introduce him to a CM as the very first thing we did on entering Magic Kingdom. We showed him that they could be in different outfits. We explained that the CMs were like his teachers at daycare and could help him if he needed them. The CMs were great. They are used to being introduced to children and will be sure to tell the child to always look for someone who has that style name tag above their heart. We made sure to introduce him to a CM who was dressed in the facilities uniform as well as a general CM. That way, he would be familiar with the outfits they wore as well. In a stressful emergency situation, I’m not sure how a 2.5 year old would handle this. But it would be helpful for an older child. And, at least with us introducing him to the CMs, he would be more willing to stay with them as someone who could take care of him than a general stranger.

Dressing alike

I do consider dressing alike to be a way to help keep your kids safe. Not only does it make for coordinated pictures, but it is a quick easy way for people to identify your child as yours. The very first night we got to Orlando, we had planned to have dinner at Ragland Road in Downtown Disney with my sister and her husband, who are locals. Unfortunately, between them getting off work late and all the construction at Downtown Disney, we ended up having to wait for them to arrive a fairly long time.  The Boy was getting pretty antsy. His toddler attention span rapidly degenerated and since we had figured we’d only be going to the restaurant and nothing else, I had left his stroller and tether in the car. At one point, he made a break for it through the large crowd outside the restaurant. Luckily, we were both in matching shirts and within seconds of him running off, a lovely mother up ahead grabbed him and immediately identified me as his mom, commenting on how she saw me with the matching shirt.  It made reuniting with him much faster.

Just keep in mind, it is possible to go overboard with safety plans and concerns at Disney, but taking a few precautions can also help settle some of our worries.