*

tab explosion (list 18 of 52)

2011-05-08T22:15:00.000-06:00

Tabs I always keep open, a list of bad internet management.

It's true, I browse the intertubes by opening a million different tabs and taking a week to get to them if at all. These are the ones I'm always looking at:

Bloglovin' - the main catalyst for the tab frenzy
CorePower or some other MBO-fueled yoga schedule to stay on top of
Matt or Ryan's blogs. It's like how normal people read Facebook, constant refresh. I have no idea why
Instapaper - the real reason I can ever close tabs, by adding them to endless "to read" lists
Hulu, for catching up on Desperate Housewives and The Office
The Huffington Post used to be a big one but now it's wherever news pops up and encourages the vicious tab cycle

in your fridge

2011-05-05T14:36:00.000-06:00

J'aime cette idée. Trouvé à Fubiz.net.

things I didn't do (list 17 of 52)

2011-05-01T10:15:00.001-06:00

Things I didn't get done this month but should have. Or, why am I so busy? A list.

Go see a nutritionist
Write a letter back to my grandma
Clean up and organize my workspace
Clean the kitchen
Make 2 malas
Make some toy samples to send to my cousin for his new shop
Any of my homework
Write my yoga bio
Take photos for my yoga bio
Yoga studies (anatomy, reading, marketing)
Have gifts ready ahead of time for all of the birthdays
Plan Easter (no sweet treats or creative festivities this year!)
Be ready for Mother's Day (again, nothing. Fail.)
Respond to most of my emails
Celebrate Earth Day
Get my life in order

I swear I did do some things, I need a better to-do list system. Any ideas of pure productive genius?

faves (list 16 of 52)

2011-04-24T21:16:00.001-06:00

Things I love, a list

languages
baking
reading
yoga
learning
doing
paper tape
making things
home-made anything
bikes
bailey's
pedicures
the smell of fresh orange peels
cloves
ice cream
haircuts
scruff and shaved heads
beard and mustaches
dancing
exploring
lists and data
trees and cool plants
obstacle courses
kitties
things with stories

...on and on

something mighty

2011-04-20T11:42:00.000-06:00

travel? design? office supplies? I'm in love. Not only is this an awesome concept but the name, it's perfect. I'm jealous, and I want it. RAD AND HUNGRY's Something Mighty Collection. Limited edition, locally sourced office supply kits that aim to infuse lo-fi design with travel.

ick (list 15 of 52)

2011-04-17T23:00:00.000-06:00

things I dislike, a list:

(image from http://mirdinara.blogspot.com/)

folding laundry
unloading dishes from the dishwasher
cilantro (ick)
licorice/anise/fennel (double ick)
when people move your drinking cup by grabbing it from the top (thanks, stop pussyfootin around and just put your hands in my mouth instead)
using your/you're, its/it's, their/they're/there improperly
watching football (snooooze)
putting words in other languages on menus and then not knowing how to pronounce them (it won't make a grilled cheese more sophisticated, really)
chicken (gross, just gross)
children that are loud and annoying (I am a bad person, there's not really an excuse)
when people drive with their dogs in their laps (you should text and drink while you're at it)
driving in the snow (terror)
parallel parking
budgeting
blood/needles/doctors/hospitals (kryptonite)
turtlenecks
dry-clean/hand wash clothes
bad oral hygiene
coffee, unless it's loaded with sugar and artificial deliciousness
the smell of gasoline
my knees

this is probably not a good one to continue expanding...

is it vacation time yet?

2011-04-17T16:21:00.001-06:00

An innovative vacation home in Kawakami Village, Japan:

Designed by Shin Ohori of General Design Co., the structure—Setsumasa bristles at the word “house,” since his desire was for something that “was not a residence”—and its wooded surroundings serve as a testing ground for the Kobayashis, who design outdoor clothing and gear (as well as many other products) for their company, .......Research. The shelter is constructed from locally harvested larch wood and removable fiberplastic walls and is crowned with two yellow dome tents used as year-round bedrooms.

Still, this is no primitive lean-to. There’s electricity, hot water, and a kitchen—not to mention iPads, Internet, and a clawfoot tub. By day, the couple trims trees and chops firewood. At night, they sit around a campfire and eat Japanese curry, listen to Phish, and balance their laptops on their knees. This is what a modern back-to-the-land effort looks like.

Read more: http://www.dwell.com/articles/A-Platform-for-Living.html#ixzz1Joz8Uf9v

Now that's my kind of camping!

why I'm not in advertising (list 14 of 52)

2011-04-10T20:15:00.000-06:00

possible names for my cooking blog/shop/brand?

happystitch
taste craft
sparkle & sass
golden brown
mise en place
salted
bake

this is where I ask for suggestions and hope something miraculous and perfect appears...

anyone?

dinners of note

2011-04-10T20:04:00.000-06:00

Roasted asparagus with miso butter and a poached egg from the genius that is the Momofuku cookbook. I was lucky enough to find this lovely book on sale at one of the Borders that is closing. It's beautifully put together, different from a traditional cookbook. There's plenty of amusing narrative, great photos and the recipes are more of a challenge, which I love, until they call for molds and space I don't have. Note to self, get a commercial kitchen and lots of money...

things I deserve a gold star for (list 13 of 52)

2011-04-02T15:54:00.001-06:00

Things I do and do well, a list:

picking up languages
icing cakes
getting lost (just saying, if you want to go somewhere new and confusing, follow me)
the shaving and mohawking of heads that are not my own (I'm practically a seasoned professional)
dyeing hair
dreaming
cartwheels (my form is superb)
scratching heads (of animals and humans alike)
deviating from a to-do list by finding something more entertaining to do (so, not being productive)
making healthy things taste delicious

they draw and cook

2011-03-29T15:52:00.000-06:00

A lovely new find: They Draw & Cook, a collection of artist-submitted illustrated recipes. All so different and beautiful and not to mention delicious sounding!

things I will probably never get an award for (list 12 of 52)

2011-03-26T12:59:00.001-06:00

Things I could improve on but probably won't, a list:

Source: maryruffle.tumblr.com via nole on Pinterest

Organizing my email inbox
For that matter, remembering to respond to emails
Making caramel (working on it)
Parallel parking
Driving a manual car (sad, I know)
Doing/listening to one thing at a time
Braiding my own hair
Putting on eyeliner
Talking to 6 year olds
Sitting still/quieting my monkey mind (an endless process)

those shoes

2011-03-23T10:13:00.001-06:00

Charlie Winston "I love your smile" from HK Corp on Vimeo.

Love it. Everything about this.

everything is amazing

2011-03-21T12:55:00.000-06:00

Louis CK on Conan.

This is old but I love it so.

guiltiest pleasures (list 11 of 52)

2011-03-18T12:16:00.000-06:00

+Dairy Queen vanilla softserve with that hard cherry coating..I know it's not real food

+An abundance of accessories, tops and skirts that don't match with anything I own

+Cheese fries, with real cheese, and then covered in parmesan

+Good olive oil

+Sub-par horror movies, old and new

+Embarrassing nail polish colors

+Wedding blogs

+Sample sales

+Old-school rap

+Coke floats

+Friends

+Bacon, on anything

vivre la langue

2011-03-14T15:22:00.001-06:00

EF - Live The Language - Paris from Albin Holmqvist on Vimeo.

I love these videos, they're ads for a language immersion program and they have them for other cities too. Fantastic. It makes me want to go back to France so badly. Reading Julia Child's books and shopping at Anthropologie will have to suffice for now. Paris, tu me manques.

reasons why I probably won't go back to school (list 10 of 52)

2011-03-11T11:40:00.001-07:00

truth

finals
midterms
money
commitment issues
I want to do too many things
I don't think I'm cut out for normal school
math
because I want to teach yoga and cook more than I want to do chemistry problems
planning is hard

dinners of note

2011-03-08T15:37:00.001-07:00

Reasons why I just want to go to culinary school...

Potage parmentier avec artichauts à la sauce hollandaise

just kidding...

or not.

I have been slowly making my way through Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking but with considerably less drama than Julie Powell. I don't know if it's because I'm having some kind of quarter life crisis too but I think I'm doing it more as just a fun cooking project and because I love all things French. Contrary to the book's ample criticisms, I've enjoyed cooking from it quite a bit so far. What makes this book so not-user-friendly is why I like it. I like the precision and detail that makes a recipe 4 pages long. I relish in the process of making a meal and have never much been drawn to the ready-made age of Rachel Ray. Granted, I don't really intend to cook kidneys, and I have witheld a tablespoon or so of butter here and there, but I'd rather spend hours with Julia Child than 30 minutes with Rachel Ray any day.

reasons I might go back to school (list 9 of 52)

2011-03-05T15:11:00.001-07:00

rationalizations, listed

to learn (really?)
to be qualified for work I actually want to do
for a more stable career
vacations
schedules
study dates
new pens
packed lunches

...not very convincing

your tea time

2011-03-02T16:53:00.001-07:00

Sanctuary T, a New York City (of course) based tea-restaurant, is showcasing a gallery of tea-times from around the world. Contribute your own image of what Your Tea Time looks like. There are some gorgeous submissions. What a great wintertime idea, doesn't it just make you want to sit at a favorite cafe with a book and a delicious cup of tea?

how to find your true calling (list 8 of 52)

2011-02-26T12:53:00.001-07:00

My mom regularly sends me a box of old magazines that have piled up around her house. I guess it's her way of recycling? One of the magazines I get too many copies of to keep up with is O. One of this issues is all about "finding your true calling". In it, frequent contributor and life coach Martha Beck provides a 4-Step Plan to Get Your Life on Track and figure out what it is you're meant to do with yourself.

Steps to figuring your life out. A list. (This counts right?)

Step 1. Stop making excuses. I'm too busy, there's too many choices, what if I miss something? Man up.

Step 2. Stop thinking logically. What? Go do what you love and keep track of what those instincts mean to you but don't let your rational mind guide what you're naturally drawn to. Beck quotes Jonathan Haidt, author of The Happiness Hypothesis in explaining that "it is only because our emotional brains work so well that our reasoning can work at all."

Step 3. Discover your bliss. Beck equates your instincts to your "inner animal" and she advises following its tracks to get a lead on something. "Make a list of every time you remember being utterly, happily absorbed in an activity, no matter how odd."

Step 4. Develop it. Experiment. With respect to tracking your instincts, try and predict them. Try an activity that may be a little different from what you're used to, but you think will still foster the same bliss. This will help you determine what it is about those activities specifically that you're drawn to like a lion to a herd of antelope. Or something like that.

Step 5. Rinse, Repeat until ou find a track that leads you somewhere. Just keep returning to your list and following new paths until you get somewhere where the track stays hot! Beck suggests finding a common theme and gives examples of clients who followed the obvious paths but it turned out that it wasn't that they wanted to be in politics, but rather that they were drawn more to teamwork and facilitating groups which lead them to event planning. Voilà.

Step 6. Answer the call of your bliss and follow your instincts through the wildness of your fear wherever they lead.

gifts I've loved (list 7 of 52)

2011-02-18T16:46:00.001-07:00

Memorable gifts I've received: a miscellany

Bear with me here as most of my childhood had been blocked out due to traumatic photos like this one. No, I did not used to be a boy, I just thought I was apparently.

"Flexible Flyer" hobby horse. Christmas, 1990. It was like being in a supermarket parking lot, all the time!
Plastic dollar store alligator. 1990. This was probably my favorite of anything I've ever owned, and the cheapest. I carried it around EVERYWHERE until our dog got a hold of it and it met its sad fate.
Lite-Brite. 1992. I could sit in front of that thing for hours. That fact is probably still true.
Girl Talk: a Game of Truth or Dare. 1997? The video is just as exciting as when I tried to make my older boy cousins play with me. Reason #24 why being an only child is awkward.
A box of inside jokes. 2001. I've known my BFF since we were 2. You can imagine the amount of weird inside jokes that rack up in that amount of time. She filled a box with orange soda, boat flags, trash, you know, standard stuff. It was the most original, hilarious, and personal gift ever.
One of Justin's first poetry notebooks. 2006. Filled with scratched out versions and first drafts. Fabulous.
Watercolored sign/decoration thing. 2007. My friend took a painting class, the result, a crazy awesome sign with my nickname and tree bits. I know it sounds weird, but it was sweet, he spent the whole time working on this to surprise me with it.
Giant OCR3w road bike. 2008. A gift to myself for saving money from crappy college jobs. That counts right? I love this beast.
Chanel pearls. 2010. A dream come true. Shallow, I'm aware.
Any gift from my mister. The wrapping is so exciting most of the time it doesn't even matter what's inside.

What ever happened to that voice that seems to be in every 90s commercial? Seriously.

practice

2011-02-16T17:02:00.003-07:00

You know those people that can get up every day at the same time, somehow squeeze in a run and a full breakfast before heading off to work and then have some down time to macramé or what have you before making dinner? Well I'm not one of those people.

But for some reason I'd like to be. The idea of a routine is attractive to me. I don't know if it's the efficiency of it or what, but I'd like to be able to have something consistent and stable. The problem I think is that I'd also like to still feel awake after 8 and have time for spontaneity too, I am still in the young and irresponsible age bracket right?

My resolutions and goals often revolve around some kind of attempt at a routine, which would explain why they're so short lived. When I was in school I tried to meditate every morning for 30 minutes. That all went smoothly until about a week in when I woke up late for class after a late night. And unless you've been doing something for long enough to make it automatic, it's hard to get back into a rhythm once you've messed it up.

In another attempt at this, maybe to make myself focus and calm for at least 15 minutes every day, I stared Yoga Journal's 21-Day Challenge. It's 21 days of different sequences to help you create a daily home practice. Each video has a recipe and daily challenge to go with it. I'm also reading the book Meditations from the Mat by Rolf Gates as I go along, and hopefully that will keep me going past the 21 videos. Today is day 9 and everything - the practice, the passage in the book, and the challenge tip - all seemed to fit so perfectly with this goal of mine to use this as a small step toward some kind of routine.

The practice was a gentle morning practice meant to energize you (Which, on a side note, is something else I like about this, it makes me do things I don't normally do often, like a gentle practice). It was introduced with respect to Ayurveda, the sister science of yoga, which is something else I'm always trying to learn more about. The description offered that developing morning self-care rituals is one of the best things to do to ensure good health:

"In fact, the actions you take upon rising will set the tone for the rest of your day. Try adopting one or more of the following Ayurvedic exercises into your waking routine:

Wake an hour before sunrise to benefit from the special vata energy that permeates the atmosphere.

Upon waking, drink a tall glass of lukewarm water with fresh lemon, to gently rouse your digestion.

Splash your face and eyes with cool water to disperse heat, or pitta energy, that builds at night.

Use a tongue scraper to remove toxins and to awaken the digestive fire.

Give yourself a gentle ear massage to awaken meridian points all along the ear."

The challenge also suggested that once you got moving, it was much more difficult to skip out on your daily practice, which I've found to be very true. And finally, day 9 in Gates' book is about Abhyasa, practice. The author says it "refers not only to yogic practice but also to the attitude with which a practice is approached...It is the dedicated, unswerving application of what you believe in..It is an energy that builds in our lives as we use it. And it will be there for us in hard times if we cultivate it in good times." For that reason I hope to be able to keep finding time for either a daily morning or evening practice no matter what is happening, to take advantage of the in-between times to cultivate my practice and my awareness, and maybe someday I'll be able to fit a run in.

Do you have any routines?

things to do next week (list 6 of 52)

2011-02-11T16:36:00.002-07:00

A to do list, how creative:

Make headbands - special orders and then some
Finish crocheted pillow cover
Turn in yoga resume
Quit my stinkin job
Make homemade pop-tarts
Eat at a new restaurant

I'm going to leave it at that. Another exercise. I have a tendency to create over-ambitious goals and to-do lists that never get met. So here's a stab at learning to have a concept of time, and at actually feeling like I'm getting something done!

wall space

2011-02-10T10:55:00.003-07:00

SUPAKITCH & KORALIE - VÄRLDSKULTUR MUSEET GÖTEBORG from elr°y on Vimeo.

Watching this creative process is so incredible. The scale and precision of everything. Inspiring. Of course they're French. Oh and then the music is pretty great too.