Kayt's Blog

Under Construction

2020-07-08T10:05:00.000-07:00

This site is undergoing a major overhaul from tip to tail. Many posts have already been deleted from the archive, which went back to 2006(?!?!), and a few more may go soon. However, there is a plan for this blog beyond deleting old posts. I intend to revive it in the coming months to talk about things I love doing:
DIY
Baking
Gardening
Crafts
Thrifting

My Word for 2018

2018-01-16T15:07:00.000-07:00

I don't know what rock I've been living under, but this concept of having a guiding word for the year is brand new to me. I only know about it because of a vlogger I watch regularly: She's in Her Apron. But the idea is SO up my alley.

I've never been a resolution-maker, but a word? I love words, obviously. I live for them, by them, and though them. To use one to define all my many intentions and goals for the year is one of those ideas where I'm mystified that I never thought of it!

My word for 2018 is: RELEASE

December - the month for impersonating a tree?

2018-01-02T17:38:00.000-07:00

When December started I was riding a wave of perceived accomplishment. And I imagined / assumed it would continue to flow. I had huge plans for the month. I was going to put the 40,000 words I managed for NaNoWriMo on the back burner for the month and write the first draft of a second, unrelated, novel.

But something drowned my plans (ok, done with the water metaphor, I swear).

It's happened the last few years, and it has been getting worse, but somehow the pattern escaped me. It's not the depression I'm familiar with - the one that arrives for no reason, at no particular time, and leaves only when the drugs drag it out the door kicking and screaming. It's not a weather-related case of SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder). First of all, I live in Arizona, our weather is only slightly more existent than my native California. We have only: lightweight sweater weather, 3 days of pleasant perfection, hot, hotter, and 'the armpit of hell' hot. Those of us who aren't native get our Starbuck's pumpkin spice in the icey frappuccino variety because we're still running our air conditioning in November. Second of all, I'm the pasty-skinned beach-hating girl whose favorite seasons (in locales which have them) have always been Autumn and Winter. I love grey, overcast, rainy weather. I love snow, unless I have to go out in it. But the bottom line is, if I were to suffer from SAD, it'd be in summer when all I want is a cool cave in which to hibernate.

But over the course of the recent past, I've been doing what I lovingly refer to as 'collapsing in a heap' every December. It seems to start around Thanksgiving, and starts to fade almost immediately after Christmas. At first I blamed it on perpetual holiday poverty. Then I thought it must be coming down from the adrenaline which governs FINALS season. And I think those probably are factors. As are the compulsory reevaluation funks we all tend to feel around our birthdays and the end of the year (which are 10 days apart for me). And this year, I had the added excuse of running myself extra ragged by doing NaNoWriMo. But I'm not convinced what part, if any, of that contributes to the collapse.

All I do know is that I do see the pattern finally, and I will try to plan to withdraw and regroup next year at this time. After all, what exactly is wrong with taking a month where you sleep more, watch tv too much, eat too much, watch movies and read FOR FUN Instead of assignments, ponder your past/present/future, and come out of it feeling more in tune with yourself, and interested in going forward? What's wrong with taking a month to act like a tree? Letting go of all your outside trappings and pulling inside to do the quiet persevering hustle of survival at your core?

Now to go kick ass in 2018 :-)

What I Learned from NaNoWriMo 2017

2017-12-18T20:46:00.000-07:00

I had signed up for NaNoWriMo eons ago, and by eons I mean over a decade. And yet, despite the initial, and recurrent, desire to take part, I never did. First and foremost, it's taken me years to come to terms with the idea of sharing the odd goings on which call my head their home. Secondly, there has always seemed to be some perfectly convenient excuse, as there always is, for why it's not convenient to do it now.

But despite the eternal headaches of holidays, schoolwork - and this year, actual final exams - coinciding with NaNoWriMo, I decided to shut up and just try it this year. Something about feeling that I had such lovely, and valid, excuses built in for any possible failures, made it seem somehow less frightening to think of doing so. So what if I only hit 20,000 words, I thought, that's way more than I had, and I can always blame it on school.

In the interest of honesty, I must admit, I started with about 4,000 words I'd previously written. But since I am a dyed in the wool 'pantser' and didn't pre-plot a thing, I feel like that's an advantage that probably just sets me on level ground with those who knew exactly what they were about to write. See, I used NaNoWriMo to work on one of the two novels I had started which are destined (or doomed) to become a couple of series I want to write. Both of which I had taken to about 4-5,000 words, and left to languish earlier this year. I like the ideas, and believed I was excited to work on them, but also was convinced I lacked the time.

My novel was originally conceived as a caper series. My MC is a woman who just turned 40 and is deeply dissatisfied with her mundane job and boring life. She decides, half as a joke, half as a dare to herself, to see if she could ever pull off a heist of her own, like the ones in the books and tv shows she loves. She ends up completely changing her life, and the character ended up going off in some directions I wasn't expecting - as I said, I'm incapable of outlining - not that that's a bad thing. She's wound up becoming less of a thief and slightly more of a crusading Robin Hood. I like her, perhaps even more for the fact that she went places I wasn't expecting. I want to keep coming back to her and seeing where she goes. And, really, what more can you ask from a character you birthed with the goal of writing a series?

So NaNoWriMo 2017 ended with my novel hitting 40,004 words. Not the 50,000 we were all aiming for during the 'competition'. Not the 60,000 - 80,000 of many typical novels. Not the stated goal, admittedly. But a number of which I am quite proud. I know as I revise it things will be added, while others might be cut. I will try to take it up to 50-60,000, but I also feel like I hit a genuinely good breaking point for the series. I think most of the word growth will have to come by fleshing things out throughout the story, rather than adding on to the end. And fleshing out is not my strongsuit. I'm a cutter and a gutter, more than a fluffer and padder. I like short sentences. But I also know I'll get it where it belongs.

And all of this leads me to what valuable epiphanies I've had in the wake of NaNoWriMo 2017.

I can write 35,000 words in a month.
I can pull off 6,922 words in one day if I try hard.
I can write most of a novel, I'm mostly happy with, without outlining it the way people say you must - meaning, I can do it my way (even though it might be harder or slower).
I can write 2,000 words, most days.
My writing flows best between midnight and 2 am.
I can write a novel at the same time I'm finishing, and taking finals, in a 7.5 week long class where I pulled off 95%
I HAVE NO MORE EXCUSES (aside from mental hang ups or general laziness) to not write more. I can certainly never again use lack of time as my scapegoat.

Wild Tales / Relatos Salvajes Film Commentary - beware possible spoilers

2017-09-27T12:00:00.000-07:00

Visceral reactions or existential angst?

All the interviews and articles paint "Wild Tales" as being six separate short stories having a running theme of revenge. Ok, that’s true. Revenge does come up in every tale. And they are completely separate stories. They don’t have a single character weaving within them to tie them together, as in Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction. Nor is there the bird flying above, or the narrating writer, that Szifron mentioned having considered adding to weave them into one. But I do see much more than just vengeance as a common theme. The most glaring component I noticed was the theme of power, or lack thereof, and the shifting of it.

The rich are uniformly rude and entitled in every story, while the poor get used and pushed around until they usually reach a breaking point. In every story the powerless try to fight back, and the powerful try to stop them, but who really wins in the end is unresolved. There is a delicious vicarious pleasure from watching these over the top reactions, where people do things we might wish we could. But in the end, the violence never seems to be without a price for everyone, and often doesn’t even accomplish the goal. I cannot say in any definite way that anyone ends up better off in any of these stories. In fact, I think it's mostly the opposite.

Pasternak gathers everyone who ever wronged him onto a single plane which he crashes, presumably, into his parents. Fine, he punishes everyone by killing them, but he kills himself too. So who won? In the restaurant the villain of the piece is killed, but the cook is clearly going to prison for it. And the girl whose life he had ruined never even got to tell him off, which was all she originally wanted to do. Who came out ahead in that one? The drivers both burn to death in the car, the engineer may become a folk hero for blowing up a car in the tow yard, but he’s also in jail. In the hit and run story they try to buy their son’s freedom by putting a poor man in his stead, but the scapegoat is attacked (and I think killed). Who walks away feeling good in that situation? And the wedding deserves its own separate paragraph.

I also see commentary on those who take action and those who don’t. The cook takes action and kills the loan shark, and goes to jail. However, the waitress passively complained about what was wrong, but did nothing and there was no penalty for her. So, if you stay a whiny victim nothing bad will happen to you? Is that the message? In the story about the Bombita he’s viewed with animosity by the people in the line behind him at the tow yard for wasting their time by fighting the inevitable payment. However, when we goes outside social norms and puts explosives in his car, he’s suddenly a hero. Somehow a criminal grand gesture, which didn’t hold up the line, was what was needed to effect change and make people happy. Go ahead and blow something up, for us. And go to jail, for us. But don’t make me late for dinner. That’s an interesting statement!

The first time I saw the wedding story I was just so stunned they ended up together, that I couldn’t understand how it happened. It was not the ending I expected. But when I watched it again through the lens of it being another story about power dynamics, I think I get it. It starts out like a typical wedding bash. But once she finds out he cheated it all changes. By cheating he has assumed the ability to hurt her emotionally and embarrass her socially. He then wants her to not make a big deal of it, especially in front of everyone, and actually tries to tell her to just enjoy the wedding. As if he has the right to direct her feelings and behavior in reaction to his own.

He has claimed a certain level of power in the relationship, maybe without even realizing it. And it is only after she runs off to the roof, where the cook tells her not to care so much what other people think, that she moves from shock and hurt to anger. Only then does she find the power and independence anger can provide. When he finds her having sex with the cook and unleashing a tirade of how he doesn’t know who he’s messed with, and how she will ruin him financially, suddenly the power is all hers.

When she returns to the party, she’s like a gale force wind, and he’s just along for the ride. Everything she does at the party hurts or embarrasses him tremendously. So much so, that at one point he actually wails that what he did wasn’t as bad as what she is doing. But at the end, after they both kind of breakdown into crumpled heaps on the floor, there’s a restoration of equality between them. They had caused each other pain. They had embarrassed each other. They each broke the rules. They both went too far. They both cried and fell apart. They both got angry and outraged. And all that had somehow leveled them back out. I think the final imagery of the story encapsulates the entire tale. The bride and groom of the cake topper are somehow, after all the other things that were shattered that night, intact on the floor amidst all the broken glass, debris, and chunks of cake. That’s the only one of the stories, where I think they mightend up happy. But that’s a very heavily italicized ‘might’.

In the Quintin review, I found a lot of fascinating insight into the context of the political culture of Argentina, and how the film fits within it. I have to agree with his assessment that the fast pace of the individual short stories does not provide any time for reflection. But, I think the flip side of that is that the stories linger with you after the film is over. Missing the opportunity to really assimilate things during the initial, viewing made me actually think more about the film later than I normally would have. Hours after watching the movie for the first time, questions would pop into my head. Why did the loan shark in the restaurant not die from the rat poison even though it made his son sick after only a few stolen fries? Did Jose’s family ever get the money Mauricio promised Jose for taking the blame in the hit and run? I assume Jose was killed when he was attacked at the end, and considering how cheap Mauricio got after he felt taken advantage of by the lawyer, I’m not sure he would have paid up. And after the initial viewing my feelings about the wedding story simply configured themselves into a giant question mark. What was that? How did it end like that? Did I like it? Did I hate it? What was it saying? But, I think because it was so fast-paced and in pieces, it stuck in my mind longer than something more cohesively narrative and slower-paced would have done.

Quintin’s observations about the film being about political silence and in some ways absolving the current government, where enlightening to me. And knowing nothing in particular about the current situation in Argentina, I have nothing to use to argue against his assertions in this vein. But, I do think it’s possible that Zsifron somehow managed to make a film with more layers than Quintin may be mentioning. Quintin says of the road rage story that, “the episode ends with a ferocious fight to the death that we are evidently supposed to take nasty pleasure from.” And in the interviews, Zsifron frequently says things about it being a film about “the pleasure of losing control.” Alright, that layer is there, but is that the only one? Am I really meant to feel satisfied and pleased by a story where two men die for the simple fact that neither could take a deep breath and just let it go? Is that story about the audience finding pleasure in the over the top vengeance they display, or is it also about the stupidity of reactionary escalation? And what about the irony of the fact that these two macho idiots who battled to their pointless deaths, are found burnt to a crisp in what looks equally like lovers embracing? How is that just a story about the “nasty pleasure” of watching them fight? So I don’t think I can accept that assertion by Quintin either.

Yes, “Wild Tales” is about simplistic vengeance and visceral reactions. But I think it’s also about power dynamics, the nature of freedom, what prices we will pay, and whether we will be active or passive in our own lives. And how are those questions not as inherently political as they are philosophical or existential?

The Great Beauty Film Commentary - beware possible spoilers!

2017-09-21T09:34:00.000-07:00

Trains that don’t go anywhere ...

La Grande Belleza was hard for me. It’s the first film we’ve been assigned in my contemporary film class that I didn’t fall in love with on some level. My gut reaction to the film the first time around was that there was some profound stuff in it, but that is was achingly long and headache-inducingly convoluted. I just didn't 'get' it. I appreciate it more now, after considering the questions which were posed to us, and reading the articles, interviews, and reviews. There are now things I find interesting about it, and questions it left me, but I’m still not in love with it.

The initial party scene instantly made my mind flashback to Baz Luhrmann’s Gatsby party scenes. Though I admit the excess and debauchery were grittier and more palpable in this film. But the break-neck montages almost made me nauseous at times. And after a certain point the cinematography felt like just another layer of distraction in a film so much about exactly that, distraction. But then, that was probably the point. Life is spinning past Jep from all directions, sometimes even, like the camera, upside down.

I can appreciate the political and social commentary on modern Italy that is explored by the film. The upper classes, intelligentsia, and hypocrites who call themselves artists, are all vapid and useless in the movie. I adored Atkinson’s description of them as the “chattering leisure class.” And Sorrentino himself links the political to his film by calling Italy “a country where we all fell asleep” and saying “Berlusconi contributed greatly to this culture of distraction from important issues.” Being asleep within one’s life and being distracted by the external are definitely major themes to Jep’s story.

However, I found Jep fundamentally unsympathetic. I couldn’t manage to care much about him, mostly, I think, because he seemed to care so little for anyone around him. He clearly had some kind of haunted attachment to Elisa, the love of his youth. But, he seemed to leave her memory in his youth, until she died. And after learning of her death, he seemed more like he was plagued by questions about why she left him, and the foreshadowing of his own mortality, than he was feeling any actual grief at her loss. His friend’s mentally ill son didn’t seem to engender any connection or sympathy from him either, until the funeral.

Jep just seemed to be floating through party after party never feeling attachments to anything or anyone for most of the film. And what bothers me most, is that he knew it. He knew all along that he was leading a meaningless life and it never bothered him, until we meet him at 65. And even as he ‘grew’ emotionally within the film, and became aware that his life of endless partying, pointless pondering, and empty commenting were not making him happy - it still seemed like he was focused on only himself.

Several of the online articles call Jep a “blocked” writer. I find him less blocked and more empty. It’s not so much that he wants to write and can’t figure out what to say. It’s more that he literally has nothing to say, and doesn’t even care for 90% of the movie. He is empty in his soul. The fact that, when plunging back into his hedonistic norms after a nano-second of introspection, he could say the line about the dancing at the party, “We have the best trains – they don’t go anywhere” kind of defines him for me, unfortunately.

But I do still have space for trying to like, or at least understand, Jep. I continue to be mystified by his behavior at the funeral. The fact that, after expressly calling it “immoral” to upstage the family’s grief in his little monologue treatise on funeral etiquette to Ramona; he cried, is just fascinating. I can’t figure out why he did it! But it had to be a genuine feeling. After laying out those rules in his typically cynical ‘been there done that’ style; only actual emotion could have caused that. But what emotion? And for whom?

And I felt genuinely bad for Jep when he briefly sought spiritual advice from the Cardinal and was ignored and rebuffed. It was as though he finally wanted to understand something deep in his shallow world, and he tried to ask for help from someone who seemingly should have known, but he got nowhere. I also managed sympathy for him when he said to Stefania that “You’re fifty-three with a life in tatters, like the rest of us.” It’s clear in that moment that he knew he was, and they were all, a mess, as people. But he either couldn’t, or still didn’t want to change it.

I also find the commentary in this film on religion, spirituality, and the Catholic church interesting as well. The portrayal of the church proper, through the behavior of the Cardinal, is almost the same as the society as a whole. The rendering is of the church as being vapid and useless, distracted and empty. And yet when The Saint visits, she is completely different. When I first saw her on the screen I wondered where this was going. Just a strangely silent little raisin of a woman, whom everyone spoke about rather than with. I wondered if she was to simply be more odd window-dressing for the film. She seemed like just a prop for quite a while. Then she spoke, and I realized she was the contrast for everyone else in the film who says so much which means so little.

I think Saint Maria was the only honest person in the film. And I think she was the only person, himself included, with whom Jep was honest. I think when he told her that he hadn’t written another book because he couldn’t find 'the great beauty', it was the only time he gave the honest answer to that question. And in contrast to the whole rest of the ‘chattering’ cast of characters, The Saint only spoke to say substantive, if slightly enigmatic things. With two words, “roots matter,” she pulled the scales from Jep’s jaded eyes and he got on a boat. True, Jep is going home to some time and place which exists only in his mind now, but nonetheless he goes. He leaves Rome. He does something, and I think he feels something, for a change. And I suspect, and hope, that Jep can now see 'the great beauty' was, and is, always around, wherever one is.

Son of Saul Commentary - beware possible spoilers

2017-09-12T12:00:00.000-07:00

If you haven't seen the film, it's on YouTube:

What is Survival? What is Failure?

Those are the questions this film makes me ask myself.

I had seen a film called “The Grey Zone” several years ago – which is also about the Sonderkkommando. So the concept and the basic story were familiar to me, in that respect. That movie had been disturbing and haunting enough. However, this film, while upsetting on most of the same levels, seemed somehow more jarring. In trying to figure out why I felt even more affected by “Son of Saul” I came to think it’s mainly due to the cinematography. I feel like the cinematography actually forms its own language in the gaps lefts by the lack of dialog and emotional display by the actors.

In watching “Son of Saul” the thing that hit me immediately was the point of view of the camera. So much of the time the camera is held closely on the one character, and mostly from behind him. It gave me this feeling of standing beside him rather than watching a person performing for me. The choice of camera angle and framing gives me the sense of close quarters and intensity. It also produces a low level of anxiety, in that, as in real life, you’re never quite sure what is behind you. And there’s also this constant sense of not being able to look anyone in the eye.

The fact that so much of the background is left out of focus in the frame had a huge impact on me as well. There’s an anxiety and a chaos I felt by not being able to see what’s going on beyond. There are all these sounds of yelling, crying, violence, etc., etc., for which I’m not being given an image. I am left to imagine it myself, and that might actually make it worse. The lack of focus in the rest of the frame also gives me the sense that he’s just ‘keeping his head down’ and doing his tasks. There’s a narrowness to Saul’s point of view that is communicated by that out of focus space. And that it is perhaps meant to signify a combination of him trying not to draw attention to himself, and also that he has probably reached the limit of detail he is capable of registering. You feel, through these choices of framing and focus, that he is just deeply in survival mode.

There is a vagueness to certain aspects of the story that I loved. For example, we are given no real back stories for anyone. We’re just meeting them in the moment, and the moment is all they have. Saul’s attachment to the boy isn’t really explained. He tells people he’s his son, but they immediately assert he has no son. Does he? We’re not expressly told in the film. Personally, I think the boy is not actually his son. I think his attachment is based on the fact that in this numbed survival mode Saul has existed within, this one “piece” as the Germans call the people they’re murdering, this “it”, as the doctor refers to the boy, has returned to seeming like a person to Saul.

I think, he feels awaken to the humanity of the boy amidst the blur of factory killing and disposal going on around him, and it touches him. I think he is so desperate to find a Rabbi to say the Kaddish for the boy for the sake of everyone else, including himself soon, for whom it will not be said. I think the need to do right by the boy, is a kind of attempt to set right all the wrongs he has no control over. And, in a way, it is also a form of rebellion. Yes, his obsession with boy thwarts the overall plan to blow things up - but I feel like even in this tiny way Saul is raging against the machine as the clock runs out on his own life. Like giving this one boy a proper burial will mean that the Nazi’s can kill him, and he knows they will, but that cannot fully kill his sense of decency and self-identity.

And while it’s extremely depressing that no one physically survives in the end, I appreciate the honesty of it. I’m not saying I don’t enjoy a ‘feel good’ movie with a happy ending, though that’s not really what I expect from a Holocaust movie. But, while, survival stories are uplifting, they couldn’t be called common when it comes to this topic. I think the Director said it best, and beautifully, in one of the interviews we were asked to read when he said, “My film is not about survival; it is about the reality of death. Survival is a lie, it was the exception.” And the stories of those who do not survive are no less important to share. Plus, I feel that in not giving up on his doomed mission to bury the boy, Saul has survived as a human being in some small way. Regardless of his death, he recovered his own humanity in an environment devoid of it.

While I can accept and appreciate the criticisms in the LaBuza article, I don’t agree with them. Yes, the Holocaust is a sensitive place to mine for movie material. It should not be an area we visit lightly, shallowly, or for attention. But it is also something we must keep alive in our cultural memory. And while I can see how the nebulous and peripheral references to the actual atrocities can be viewed as trivializing them, I feel that it speaks directly to Saul’s detachment from his unbearable reality. And that detachment is not being lauded in the film, as much as it is simply being acknowledged as a necessary part of the survival process. I agree, with the statement in one of the articles that no film can, or will, ever express the complete truth of the horror, but that doesn’t mean attempting to do so is disrespectful. We bear a responsibility, as the people who have come after this event, to remember the people who did not make it through. And I think any honest attempt to keep the story alive is inherently meritorious.

So I can't say that I have clear answers to those questions of survival and failure. I think the things we do to survive can often feel or look like failures. And despite what looks like a failure, something of ourselves can still survive. I think it's too complicated to actually answer. But hopefully, the important thing is to ask the questions. And to see that the questions apply to everyone, in any situation. And therefore, we're all the same and shouldn't judge others for how they survive, or how they seem to fail.

New blog content coming ... really ;-)

2017-09-10T16:27:00.000-07:00

Ok, since I've been kind of neglecting my blog lately (Bad blogger!), I've decided to try something new here. Last semester I included book reviews and commentary for what I was reading in some of my classes. Since I'm taking a film class this semester, I've decided to share the commentary I'm writing for that class on here as well. Why not? They're all stories I'm experiencing in some fashion. They're all reactions and thoughts I'm having as a result. Who says I can review or comment on a book, but not a film? Not me ;-)

The best laid plans ...

2017-07-31T15:25:00.000-07:00

So this summer has gone to hell in a handbasket.

I had planned to get my "novella" (in quotes because of its awkward length), Fall On Landing out in June, but tomorrow starts Aug and it's not up yet. Part of the reason is because I tried to hire someone off Fiverr to do the cover, and it didn't work out. I had an idea, expressed in both writing and a sketch, but didn't trust my skills to do it myself. After that fail, I decided, despite not having done much painting since I was a teenager, to give it a go. What I created isn't quite the Old Masters epically nuanced version I had in my head, but I like it enough to use it. So, a couple weeks ago I finished it and ran it through the Canva site to make a cover. Now, I'm just trying to decide between two covers I made.

Anyone up for a poll? I feel one coming on 😉

I've decided to start two different series, and I had planned to get book one in each series at least written this summer. Now, I'm hoping just to finish writing one of them.

My parent's air conditioning broke for 6 wks, which translated to me having to cook and deliver dinner for them almost every night. Special thanks to their home warranty company for the ridiculous repair time (which ought to be criminal here in Phoenix!). And when added to my temporary poor health (raging kidney infection), this summer has spun past in an imperceptible blur of heat, misery, and exhaustion.

But hopefully I'll get Fall On Landing up in the next week or so. And hopefully, I can finish the first draft of the first book in the new series in the next couple weeks. I'd cross my fingers, but that'd just make typing harder 😉

Amazing TED Talk on work/life balance

2016-08-13T13:50:00.001-07:00

I especially loved the line: If you don't design your life someone else will.

Perception

2016-04-26T16:27:00.000-07:00

Fun video from my Psychology class:

Cool TED Talk on Stress!

2016-04-21T16:42:00.000-07:00

Had to watch this for my Psych class. Found it fascinating:

New Organizer

2015-09-25T00:48:00.001-07:00

Apparently, my previous mini binder couldn't stand up to what I put it through. Or more precisely, my DIY glued-on fabric cover couldn't. I'm gonna blame the glue. Yeah, that's what it was, faulty glue ;-)

So I went on Amazon to find a replacement and found something even better!

It's already pretty:

.....

It has a pen holder:

And with my bookmark with the attached elastic band, it stays shut nicely:

So, I was going to wait ...

2015-07-01T02:21:00.000-07:00

I was going to just do a before/after sort of post; worthy of any of the copious flipping shows on TV. But I've decided to blog about my condo renovation experience so far.

I bought a condo just up the road in Glendale. It's 984 sq. ft. 2 bed, and 1 (upstairs) bath. It was a fixer-upper foreclosure that had been vacant for about 5 years. The bank was dying to get it off their books so I got it for a song ($28,500 - no, that is not missing a zero!). It was one of the few condos in the under $35,000 price range that seemed like a place I could actually live without getting mugged on the way to/fro my car. I jumped on it.

The windows were boarded up when I bought it. My assumption was that the previous owners had shattered the windows before leaving, but that's only an assumption. $2,400 later I got three new top of the line windows from Affordable Windows. I highly recommend them, and no, I'm not getting anything for saying that. I just genuinely had a great experience and think my new windows are great!

Next thing my dad and I finished was the bathroom. I strongly suspect nothing had ever been updated since the condo was built in the late 1970s. It started like this:

We gutted most of it, including changing out all the rotting plumbing under the sink, and replaced some rotten bits of wood in the subfloor.

Then I decided I needed a medicine cabinet in the wall adjacent the sink

In the end it came out alright. New medicine cabinet, light ...

and a new vanity, faucet, toilet, and laminate flooring (12mm. Brazilian Cherry on sale at Lumber Liquidators)

But I'm still trying to settle on a cool mirror for over the sink. And I just got an idea off Pinterest to add some stone veneer to the front of the tub - I will post pics when I do it

We also ripped out the carpet, painted, installed laminate floor, and changed al the electrical sockets and switches in the smaller bedroom so that it went from this scariness ...

to this modern but inviting office and/or guest room:

So we're almost finished with the kitchen and dining room, and have just stripped the popcorn ceiling off the living room ceiling. I will do a better job of posting pics and updates from here on out. I will also try to be more descriptive about the individual projects and less focussed on a simple before/after format :-)

so I needed a new planner

2015-01-02T13:48:00.000-07:00

So, last academic year I lived and died by the free paper planner produced by my school. I took this summer off, for a change. When school started up again I went looking for a new planner - only to be told they weren't offering them anymore.

Catastrophe!

I tried buying a similarly styled one at the store ... I liked that it was smaller so it fit in my purse (not just my school bag), but there wasn't any room for anything extra. My life seems to be overflowing with extra, LOL, so I knew I needed something else.

I consulted the wisdom of the interweb to create my own.

Bullet journaling caught my attention. But when it came down to it, I just couldn't find the time to do all that cool stuff by hand.

Past experience taught me that I wanted something that would fit in my purse, so I bought:

I knew it would require some organizing dividers, so I bought:

And I knew I'd need some lined filler paper, so I bought:

I didn't like the plain white binder. While I could have easily slid something decorative into the clear sleave on the front of the binder, I wanted fabric. So I bought some felt from Jo-Ann. I used some duct tape to "round" the edges a bit:

And then used some spray glue to affix the fabric to the binder:

Because I'd lost the inside pockets doing this (though my dividers each have two pockets), I glued on a strip of ribbon to act as a pocket (and hide a rough edge):

I wouldn't actually do this again (and I don't recommend it). In use, pages get caught in it when you close the cover.

It took me quite a bit of thought to figure out what I needed for the calendar pages. I settled on these (which I made on the computer using Word in about a half hour):

PDF's of the pages I made can be downloaded here:
Mini Agenda Page with Month Calendar
Mini Agenda Page: Appointments and Extras

I just printed them out (landscape) on both sides of the page, cut them, and punched holes using a mini 3-hole punch from Staples. I also applied ScotchGard to the fabric cover.

The last thing I bought was a bookmark/elastic band to hold the book shut:

Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum Field Trip

2013-11-25T17:30:00.000-07:00

A lovely rainy day for our Saturday BIO class field trip to ASDM

Wasn't expecting an aquarium section (all these animals exist in the Sea of Cortez). These eels are fascinating - they pop up and down from the sand.

Seahorses

Can barely even find the fish it's so well camouflaged.

LOTS of snakes in the reptile room - this one is a Mexican Pit Viper. I liked that he/she is kind of posing for their pic - the others were mostly less cooperative.

I thought these little lizards showed a lot of personality :-)

Add caption

Bobcats, keeping out of the rain.

An ocelot staying dry.

I've never seen a snake do this open-mouthed thing before. He/she was just sitting there like that!

The Mountain Lion was beautiful!!!

The Mountain Lion is in the tree in the background - shortly after I took these pics, the branch snapped. The Mountain Lion fell, in stages, but was totally fine!

A deer taking a siesta.

The Black Bear was not bothered by the drizzle/rain at all - he/she just laid there napping (probably enjoying the coolness of the weather, for a change).

Mexican wolves

Desert Bighorns apparently prefer to be dry :-)

Otters DO NOT prefer to be dry ;-)

World's smallest bathroom improvements

2013-08-11T16:34:00.000-07:00

Because I can't fit Instagram on my phone, I lack that fantastic ability to cobble multiple pics together for tweeting, etc. Therefore, when I have multiple pics to post - I have to either do it one at a time, or make a blog post. It's tough living in the dark ages, LOL ;-)

For those who don't know - and why should you? - my bathroom is the size of a postage stamp. But, it is attached to my bedroom and MINE all MINE, so I don't complain. Anyway, it was seriously lacking in storage. Despite the over the toilet storage cabinet I put together when we first moved in, and despite all my best Dollar Store attempts - a girl needs STORAGE!

So, to that end ... I give you my (bathroom) improvement projects of the day.

An Earring Merry Go Round - and yes, I like gold hoops.

This handy little dude came pre-assembled. I just slid it outta the box and filled it :-)

This one I had to put together - no biggie using power tools :-) But I do need to sort something out to cover the top.

The previously promised pics of my meditation corner

2012-12-23T18:04:00.000-07:00

Awhile ago, probably a year or so, I bought one of these to use as a media cabinet / TV stand:

It sat in it's box for a long time, and then I found a more suitable set of folding shelves for about $10 at the Goodwill:

Eventually, I decided to start meditating for both mental and physical health reasons.That probably sounds really crunchy and Eastern, but really I just light some candles and listen to soothing music for 10-20 minutes. I decided to devote a little corner of my bedroom to this purpose. I was initially going to use something else, but then remembered I had this pantry thingy sitting in a box. I decided that without it's top doors it was perfect (I am now considering adding the top doors to cut down on dust accumulation). Anyway, I put it together (using the power tools all by myself, thank you very much), and covered the back with some Dollar Store contact paper to avoid looking at the backing and screws:

I shoved it up against one side of my bed (it's only about two feet wide so it doesn't impede access from that side of the bed) to form a little alcove in the corner of my room. I hung some Tibetan Prayer flags between my new meditation cabinet and my curtain rod to create a kind of threshold for my meditation corner:

A couple months ago I bought my "meditation cushion" on sale at Amazon:

I liked that it could be used as something to sit on, or unfolded for something to recline upon. I used a metal tieback hook from Walmart (the matching hook to the one I use for my curtain) to keep it off the floor and out of the way:

Pretty much everything in my meditation cabinet is from either the Dollar Store or Walmart. Every shelf has a little battery operated water fountain (Walmart for $10-$20 each), candles (on each shelf there is a larger vessel (usually glass, from the Dollar Store) filled with rocks (Dollar Store) and a votive candle (Dollar Store), and inspirational words:

I do have some religious items, like my favorite picture of Jesus and a statue of a meditating Buddha:

But my meditation isn't really meant as any sort of religious practice or statement. It's mostly about relaxing and a little bit about positive thinking and self motivation.

What kind of Writer I should be LOL:)

2006-04-06T10:44:00.000-07:00

You Should Be A Poet

You craft words well, in creative and unexpected ways.
And you have a great talent for evoking beautiful imagery...
Or describing the most intense heartbreak ever.
You're already naturally a poet, even if you've never written a poem.

What Type of Writer Should You Be?

RECIPE: MAC N CHEESE (Revised)

2006-04-04T20:51:00.001-07:00

The Best (and quickest) "Homemade" Mac N Cheese Ingredients: Big bag/box of any kind of pasta you have (we're talking aprox. a pound of noodles) Gobbs and Gobbs of shredded cheese (the more the better) Enough Instant Non-Fat milk and water to make 1 cup (works better if it's hot, but it's not crucial). a few pats of butter, for flavor and lubrication. Boil the noodles. Drain the noodles when they're done, put the butter, cheese, and milk on them, and clamp a lid on it to start the cheese melting. Then, when it's slightly melted, add salt and pepper to taste, and stir it up; mixing it all really well. You have to stir a little, then let it sit and melt some more, then stir some more -- until it hits the right consistency. If it starts going too claggy, you can add a bit more butter -- if the cheese is too gloppy and the milk is too runny, it needs to sit and be stirred some more. If you're really ambitious (which I'm not) and you have a set of pans that can go from the stovetop to the oven (which I do), then you can put a bit more shredded cheese on top and stick it under the broiler just long enough to give it a sort of crust. Notes: It's really yummy to use nacho blend shredded cheese. If you're out of instant milk you can (obviously) use regular milk, or you can use 2 cups of hot Country style gravy (made from packets), but after experimenting the instant non-fat milk gives the best flavor (believe it or not!).