From farmhouse to FABULOUS: I finally report on the chair makeover

In September (I know, it was FOREVER ago), I got fed up with the dark blue farmhouse style chairs that I grew up with, and that now grace our living room.  Also I was bored because Chris was out of town.  So I bought a can of spray paint.  Then my friend Jacob came over and laughed at my optimism (apparently he has some experience with the stuff...), so I bought six more cans of spray paint.  And then I did this.

The old chair, chillin' out, being drab.

Taking off the seat.  I must admit, using Chris's cordless drill instead of my wired one...WAY easier.

It took several coats, and some help from Jacob to cover all four chairs.  Seriously, every time I thought I was done, I realized that half of the chairs were still blue, and I just didn't notice.  That happened at least five times.  Also when the spray paint wasn't thick enough there was this kind of bluey-orange-brown color that can only be described as vomit-colored, so I ended up doing about four or five thin coats, just to make sure there was no vomit on the finished product.

Why did I go with orange?  Because orange is awesome.  Orange is for Fall, and Halloween, and also my Alma Mater.  NO ITS NOT FOR THE GIANTS SHUT UP.  Also, for a while we kept the cornhole boards (which are made out of a bright orange Gilroy Garlic Festival sign from 1980 that my cousin found on the road) behind the couch, and when we moved them to storage outside I missed the color they added to the room.  So I wanted to bring back the same color.  Takes away from the beige colored walls (shudder).

Drying in the kitchen.  Of course when I spray painted it was raining on and off in Santa Cruz.  Of course.  And don't worry about the fumes, I had a fan in the window and the door was open.

Apologies for my Blackberry camera, it does not capture the awesome bright new orange color at ALL.  Here are some taken with the iPad.  BAM color in your FACE.

I'm pretty excited with how they turned out.  I'm not a good enough photographer to really capture the new look, but now instead of a farmhouse style table and chairs, we have a sleek set of shiny, bright orange lovelies to sit on.  (Those cushions are from IKEA and they make the straw seat a little easier on the buttocks.)

I know what you Googled to get here...

So for the past year, the number or visitors to my blog have climbed steadily.  Using Google Analytics, I can tell what people are Googling in order to get to my site, and I wanted to share that on the blog, because I think its pretty telling.  These are, in order of frequency, the top 24 search terms people have used to get to my site in the past month:

1.	sexy scientist
2.	sexy scientist costume
3.	sexy mad scientist
4.	sexy mad scientist costume
5.	mad scientist costume
6.	sexy scientists
7.	scientist
8.	sexy lab coat
9.	sexy scientist halloween costume
10.	mad scientist
11.	sexy scientist halloween
12.	firefighter halloween costumes for women
13.	sexy scientist costumes
14.	female mad scientist costume
15.	cop costume women
16.	scientist costume
17.	scientist fancy dress
18.	scientist halloween costume
19.	scientist sexy
20.	sexy lab
21.	sexy labcoat
22.	sexy scientist halloween costumes
23.	firefighter costume for women homemade
24.	macgyver

After this, there are a few people interested in making their own iPad 2 cases, some who even Google my name (those are my favorites, its usually like 3 people a month, sigh).  But the pattern doesn't stop at 24, almost every search term up to the 167th has something to do with "sexy scientists."  One person googled "sex+astrophysics," kind of curious about that one.

Note that people don't get there by Googling "disrupting stereotypes about women in science," they get here by Googling "sexy scientist" or "female mad scientist costume."  And only a few people per month get here by way of ants, or astronomy, or gardens.  I guess the fate of my blog has been sealed as another place people can go to for inspiration on how to perpetuate stereotypes through dress-up.  Ack!  I can only hope that once they get there, they read the post, not just look at the pictures, and maybe decide to wear pants this year.  I'm sorry, that sounded mean; I have no problem with people who don't wear pants on Halloween, I just want people to be metacognitive about the system in which they are complicit.  Is that too much to ask?