Yesterday, I was uploading and tagging some photos on Flickr when all of a sudden the site reloaded, and POOF!

There was a message on the top telling me to smile, which I always find a little creepy, and the site looked so unfamiliar that I thought it was a virus of some kind. Cue general sense of confusion over the next number of hours.

I guess I should have seen it coming. I’ve been using (and really liking!) the new Flickr mobile app for a while, and the look of the site redesign mimics the app. I attended a Flickr session at SXSW, where they hinted at changes to come. And I’m actually OK with change, as a concept. Flickr has looked almost the same for the almost seven years I’ve been a member. It was probably time for a refresh.

For most people, a free terabyte of space is plenty, and Flickr’s commitment to full-res images should be commended. I thought it was a little disingenuous, though, that they kept throwing around stats about being able to take a photo an hour every day for 61 years – without consistently making clear that they were talking about 6.5 megapixel photos. Real cameras haven’t shot at resolutions that low in years. Soon, most smartphones will shoot photos larger than that, too. One terabyte is a lot, but it’s not the unlimited, ad-free experience current Pros enjoy.

So, the question becomes: is Flickr supposed to become another dumping ground for your crappy camera phone photos, but without the Instagram filters?

Is Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer right that there’s “really no such thing as professional photographers anymore”?

Are people willing to pay 50 bucks a year for an ad-free experience?

I know, I know. Yahoo! killed Flickr and lost the Internet, years ago. But there were still many of us there, paying $24.95 a year for a Pro membership, using Flickr as amazing off site storage, adding metadata way beyond what other sites allow, using Flickr as an archiving platform. But also publicly liking, commenting, being social in a way companies kill for. The thousands of angry comments posted yesterday on the Flickr message board were perhaps expected – people generally dislike and distrust change – but they also identify a core of very committed, very loyal users. Flickr is by far my favorite social media. And I would love it if others felt the same way, if this redesign can be successful in recruiting a new group of loyal users.

Facebook is about faces, people, building on already-established relationships. Tumblr’s reputation as a micro-blogging platform makes perfect sense to me. Instagram is a personal diary, the filters awash with nostalgia for bygone days and their expired film. And Twitter…well, I don’t really get Twitter. But then what is Flickr about?

If, like Yahoo! claims, the new Flickr is all about the photo…is it also about the photographer? Rather than dumbing down the amazing API and the incredible metadata options (tagging, geotagging, EXIF data, sets, collections, and still the easiest and clearest privacy settings in social media), why not make those as accessible as possible for photographers – in addition to highlighting the photos themselves? I know, metadata isn’t sexy – but it forms a framework for Flickr as a viable, long-term photo storage space.

In the future, we’ll look back at the photos of so many childhoods – all uploaded to Facebook and Instagram (and compressed to a totally unacceptable level of quality for reproduction) – and we’ll shake our heads. We had all of the advanced technology in the world, but we just didn’t know how to make any sense of it.

Flickr has long offered an alternative for people who know enough to care about quality. And yes, yesterday’s redesign sacrificed the quality of the user experience for those of us who have remained loyal, but all is not lost. With some tweaks, Flickr could regain its reputation as the world’s best photo sharing site. It’s not just about recruiting new members, it’s about making them use Flickr consistently, for years to come.

Quantity, even a terabyte of it, just isn’t enough.

(photo by Sarah Korf on Flickr)

Six years later, that blog has become this space.

This blog has taken me from Montana to Spain, back to Montana and then to Texas.

From teaching to being unemployed to working to being back in school (while teaching and working).

It has been here through two new cameras, and actually starting to learn photography. Discovering that I really love it, too.

Through births and deaths. Birthdays and breakups. Travel and quiet evenings at home. The ends of things and the starts of things and that weird in-between.

Over the past six years, I’ve posted, on average, about once a week. That’s nothing compared to many bloggers, but much more than others. But if there’s anything I’m slowly learning, it’s that it doesn’t matter. So please humor me while I lay on the cheese for a moment. I’m happy to have this space. I’m happy to get the chance to write here, or post some pictures, to have the chance to share with some old friends and to make some new ones, too. It’s been a small thing, this blog, but I have approached it with a lot of love.

So I thought it would be fun to highlight some of my favorite posts, the ones that have stuck with me. Maybe you’ll remember one, too?

2013

+ Reminiscing, Holiday in Spain (parts 1, 2, 3)

2012

+ Lifelist check: Counting Crows live

+ Writers are people who write

+ The up and onward and not the over and out

+ Thoughts on writing (and finding the time)

+ Backtracking for beauty

+ Making my move

+ On super clean showers and having beautiful days

+ Fairfield (not far from Freezeout Lake)

2011

+ Keep in touch

+ Whatever happened to romantic comedies?

+ On being brave

+ The road home

+ 30 Days of Creativity: Day 17 (Friday morning ritual)

+ 30 Days of Creativity: Day 3

+ Memory keeping

+ Waking up

+ Mimi, and writing about grief

2010

+ The year (of food) in photos

+ Seattle Public Library

+ Working and happiness and other Sunday night thoughts

+ View from my kitchen window

+ Last farmers market

+ Feels like fall

+ My handwriting is a font!

+ Update: cleaning things up

+ Bye bye winter

2009

+ Inspiration

+ Demolition

+ No more Bull

2008

+ An autumn weekend in Glacier

+ Noah

+ Whatever happened to Thanksgiving?

+ Home coming

+ (O)Porto!

+ Lovely Lisbon

+ Lots of cheers (ok, and a fair amount of tears, too)

+ Wanderlust

+ Eurovision!

+ Semana Santa/Holy Week

+ Paris in the (almost) springtime

+ An unthemed update

+ On being extranjera (foreign)

2007

+ Puttin’ me in my place

+ Colegio/elementary school

I expect no one to read them all, or to come close, but it was fun to go back. Perhaps there are some discoveries here for someone.

Who knows how long I’ll keep doing this. But I just renewed my domain for another year. I’m approaching this summer with excitement on many fronts, one of them related to posting here more often. This little space has become my little space, and I’m happy to continue to call it home.

You are welcome here, my blog friends, and I am thankful to share this space with you. Six years! Pretty hard to believe.

(image from Parker Fitzgerald, via flickr. The phrase always reminds me of my grandma, Mimi.)

This week, I finally got my fingerprints taken, filled out the rest of (start of?) the paperwork required for any work with the federal government, and signed a lease on a shared apartment in D.C., just a fifteen minute metro ride to my summer gig.

I’m really, really excited.

I’m excited for the opportunity to work at one of America’s foremost cultural institutions. I’m excited to get more hands-on experience in my field. I’m excited for a change of scenery. I’m excited to be a tourist in D.C., especially all of the amazing museums. I’m excited not to have a car for a while and to be in a transport-friendly city. I’m excited to take more pictures and post more in this space. I’m excited!

Have you spent much time in D.C.? Other than Scandal, which I’ve been binge watching this week, and a free high school trip for being one of Montana’s top high school journalists (ha!), I know next to nothing. Any places that aren’t to be missed? Favorite bars? Restaurants? Walks? Tips, in general?

Do you have a favorite Smithsonian?

(photo from my Instagram feed)

First on that list: heading to Houston for the night! A friend and I are celebrating the end of grad school year one, with plans to visit some of Houston’s world class museums (ah, oil money…), maybe hit a baseball game, and wander around the city. Oh, and eat. And drink. Should be fun.

Checking out all of the amazing art options got me thinking again about this video, shot during Ann Hamilton’s Event of a Thread installation at the Park Avenue Armory this winter. I’ve been a fan of Paul Octavious’ photography work on Flickr for a long time, but didn’t realize he also shot videos as beautiful as this one.

I’ll be back this week with more to say and hopefully some Houston stories to share. Hope it’s sunny where you are!

(**for some reason, embedded videos don’t seem to be showing up in some RSS readers. If you’re reading this in a reader or via email subscription, you might have to click through to see the video. It’s lovely and worth it!)

It was a big decision for me, a huge step up from the rest of my lens arsenal. But I love the little things. I’m a detail person. I am well suited to macro photography in a lot of ways.

If I’m being honest, I’m still learning how to use it. That amazingly shallow depth of field that I’ve so wanted also presents some challenges (only intensified by my hesitancy to carry around a tripod, even when I *know* that I should). But I’ve been having some fun experimenting with it. So I thought I’d show the first few months of macro attempts, looking forward to coming back to this in a year or so and laughing at how little I knew.

Around the house

Outside on a sunny day at Home Depot.

Hook ‘em. Haha.

Macro self-portraiture (see, I told you my glasses were “marbled lilac”)

A morning at the Zilker Botanical Garden

And, because my photography posts are rarely complete without food, lemon poppyseed muffins with a lemon glaze. Last Sunday morning.

I have one week of class left and then my first year of grad school will be over. I’m excited to get back to this space. I have so many posts I’ve been wanting to write!

How are things, friends? How do your gardens grow? Anything new in the oven or around the house?

+ Pete Goldlust’s Carved Crayons series.

+ My Brita water bottle. I own about twenty water bottles. This one is not especially attractive. I sort of wish it wasn’t a squeeze bottle. But I’m drinking way more water than normal (why is that the hardest resolution?) and it’s because water from every tap tastes great. Two thumbs up.

+ The Fault in Our Stars. Recently requested it through Interlibrary Loan. Picked it up as I left my shift at 10 pm…and read it straight through. There were lots of tears, but good ones. Fair warning: it’s about kids with cancer.

+ The new Craigslist gridview. Finally, a more efficient way to waste my time looking at things I don’t need.

+ There are so many Buzzfeed lists, but this My So-Called Life one made me pretty happy. Many, many great animated gifs.

+ Mihaly Czikszentmihalyi’s TED talk on flow. I’ve read a little about this concept before – where high skill levels and high challenge levels move people into a state of being when external needs (hunger, pain, mindless wandering) fall away. Flow is being in the zone, and Czikszentmihalyi claims it’s one of the ways life stays exciting.

When was the last time you had a flow experience?

Spring is like a perhaps hand
(which comes carefully
out of Nowhere)arranging
a window,into which people look(while
people stare
arranging and changing placing
carefully there a strange
thing and a known thing here)and

changing everything carefully

spring is like a perhaps
Hand in a window
(carefully to
and fro moving New and
Old things,while
people stare carefully
moving a perhaps
fraction of flower here placing
an inch of air there)and

without breaking anything.

—e.e. cummings

Detective Sarah Linden is a total (redheaded) badass.

If you haven’t seen it, do.

(photo from here. warning: Season 1 spoilers.)

But in the meantime, it got me thinking about music…and red hair. For a pretty legit list of the top 5 songs about redheads, check out this Hairpin article. Jolene, yes!

And to contribute my little addition: I can’t tell you how many times this little Garth Brooks ditty has come on and people have gone out of their way to point at me during the line “Pick him up at seven and they’re headin’ to the rodeo/Momma’s on the front porch screamin’ out her warning/Girl you better get your red head/Back in bed before the morning.”

So, an ode to the last few days of spring break. And wild redheads.

Ain’t Goin’ Down (‘Til the Sun Comes Up)
Garth Brooks – Ain’t Goin’ Down (‘Til the Sun Comes Up)

(if you’re reading this in an RSS reader or on mobile, it’s possible you need to click through to hear Garth. He’s worth it.)

“The reason we studied redheads in the beginning, it was essentially an urban legend in the anesthesia community saying redheads were difficult to anesthetize,” Dr. Sessler said. “This was so intriguing we went ahead and studied it. Redheads really do require more anesthesia, and by a clinically important amount.”

Yeah, like 20% more! And there’s an understanding that the same thing goes for pain medication. Beam me up, Scotty.

—from this New York Times article

I so want to rock this look.

(Photo from here)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gMq3hRLDD0

Cosmic Love (live on KEXP)

Such a beautiful video, such a beautiful voice. And I can’t help but notice her super intense red hair, either…

I try not to post videos alone, but this one is worth your time.

For those who believe the question “do you prefer blondes or brunettes?” is sorely lacking.

For those of us who require more anesthesia.

For those of us who think sunscreen is a human right (and should be cheaper!)

For those of us who have been asked by strangers if the carpet matches the drapes.

For those of us who loved Angela Chase’s “Crimson Glow” dye job, even if it was fake.

For those of us with higher than normal pain tolerances.

For those of us who looked up to Anne of Green Gables. (the real one. not this one.)

For us, and those who appreciate us, a week of devotion ending on the most redheaded of all holidays, St. Patrick’s Day.

Let’s do this.

If you live in Austin, you hear a whole lot about “South by,” even though most people don’t actually attend the conference(s) themselves. Plenty of free parties and concerts and beer, I’m told?

If you listen to NPR, you hear a lot about SXSW. NPR is obsessed with SXSW.

If you’re into obscure indie rock, SXSW is your jam.

If you work for a startup, this is Mecca.

Me? Yep, yep, nope, nope. I only sorta fit.

The ten days of SXSW coincide with UT’s spring break (possibly so students and faculty can attend events, and possibly because, judging by my trek to work today, getting around ANYWHERE in this town appears to be a nightmare) and so I’m trying to make the most of it. I’ve RSVPed to probably 200 free events. (not an exaggeration, for once in my life!) I’m headed to a happy hour this afternoon, with tentative plans for further wandering.

I’m a little overwhelmed. But also excited. Trying to just keep an open mind and maybe get a little dose of energy from all of the goings on.

I’ll be carting around my camera a bit and also posting photos to Instagram. If you’re here in Austin, give me a shout out! If you’ve navigated SXSW, I want to know your insider tips. And if you’re still trying to figure out what exactly this whole ess ex ess dubya thing is all about, I’ll keep you posted.

But for now….SPRING BREAK, BAYBAY!

(photo by flickr user Michael Brown)

I was lucky enough to have a couple of friends offer to let me stay with them and ended up deciding to stay with my friend Rosa, both for the opportunity to spend time with her and to finally get to meet her partner and their daughter, María. On my first morning in town, we drove to a pueblo blanco outside of town where some friends were performing circus tricks (yep) and had rented a huge house for the weekend. It was a beautiful sunny day in a town straight out of an Almodóvar movie.

The good thing about hanging with hippies with communist leanings is that they don’t jack up the drink prices. Take what you want, mark a line on the fridge, pay before you leave. I like this system.

And one of the most exciting aspects of going to Córdoba — meeting María!

One of the best and worst parts of visiting a place frozen in your memory is seeing how it’s changed. Going on an epic trek to get the best sandwich in town, only to find El Torpedo closed? Tragic. But seeing the always too busy streets around Plaza de las Tendillas converted to a bustling, cosmopolitan pedestrian zone made me pretty happy. Even at night, it’s so much more pleasant without the sound of traffic.

And the new sunshields at the mercadillo are such a charming (and essential!) addition to Europe’s hottest city.

I almost lived in this plaza with the statue of Manolete, Córdoba’s most famous bullfighter. Like so many famous bullfighters, he died in the ring. The square faces a 13th century church, and sometimes I still dream about living here, listening to the church bells, feeling the breeze through the bamboo blinds. In my fantasy, I get a lot of writing done here, in this place where I never lived. Some places stick with us like that.

My friend and I took a trip out to Medina Azahara, a fascinating site just outside of the city. It’s an active archaeological site, and the updates over the last four years were really impressive. I have been to a lot of the Moorish palaces and important sites in Andalucía over the years — the Mezquita of course, the Alhambra,  the Giralda, and the Alcázar — but the sense of history is different at each of them. Seeing the colors that remain on the interior walls of the Alcázar helps to envision an Alhambra where the colors survived. And being at Medina Azahara, where so little remains but is slowly being uncovered, opens up a new view to the expansiveness of this period in Spanish history.

My favorite breakfast: pan con tomate, café con leche. They have these special toasters that allow for toasting thicker pieces of bread, and then you get this tomato pulp stuff and olive oil…add a little salt, and you have this simple, filling, but super tasty meal. I haven’t been able to replicate it.

Córdoba’s old town is a neighborhood of narrow passageways, confusing streets with changing names that reflect the thousands of years of history. The streets are often so narrow that the sidewalks are less than a foot wide, and only small cars, mirrors folded in, can even pass — people have to step into doorways and hold their breath so as not to get swiped by passing traffic. Plenty of streets are closed to cars in general — one learns to listen very closely for the sound of a motorcycle’s approach. There was a certain smugness in remembering the shortcuts, in not quite yet feeling like a stranger in this city.

An evening wandering the Judería, with the promise of returning in the morning to see the Mezquita.

No matter how many times I’ve visited the Mezquita, and I’ve gone back again and again, something new catches my eye. There is a complexity inherent in a mosque-cathedral, yes. But there’s also this endless grace to those famous arches.

And I really love the outer doors.

The middle, where the mosque recedes and the cathedral begins.

And yet the mosque is always present, and the cathedral, impressive in its own right, feels so generic as compared to this massive, detailed, beautiful wonder.

Most people think the best view of the tower can be found through this tiny passageway, Calleja de las Flores. This is the quintessential Córdoba postcard shot.

And then it was over. One final favorite breakfast at the train station, sad to be leaving once again, but also ready to be home.

I still write Christmas cards to my colleagues in Córdoba, though I wonder how long I can keep that up. I was too busy this year to send more than a couple of cards, but I have saved a few that aren’t too seasonal, hoping to get them in the mail over spring break next week. I assume I’ll be back, one of these days, the pull too strong to resist. And yet I do wonder when I’ll no longer remember the tricks to navigating those narrow streets. When will Barajas airport in Madrid get a full renovation, no longer filling me with a sense of deja vu when I land there? As my Spanish trickles out of my brain, month by month, I recognize that it presents an insurmountable challenge to communicating with some of my monolingual friends. Somehow, almost five years have passed since I last lived there. And yet so many things remind me of Spain, so many parts of myself are informed by my time there. Always, it will shape my memories.

Always, it will feel at least a little like home.

I headed to Barcelona to meet up with two of my dearest friends: one who works for a tech company in Barça, and the other who flew in from Berlin. I was excited but also sort of nervous about the meeting of these two people, people who I love but who are also pretty different from one another, in some ways reflecting poles of my own personality. But we all three share a love of wandering, H&M, food, and making fun of me, so I think it was a good couple of days. As I’ve mentioned before, my time in Barcelona was a mix of highs and lows — seeing friends, wandering, shopping, touring Casa Gaudí, going out and remembering the awesome intensity of the Spanish nightlife scene, but also feeling a lot of my uncertainties at that time bubble to the surface. Not knowing where I was headed next, feeling at times out of place in situations that used to be my jam, wanting something more but not knowing how to get there…recognizing that I was in-between, and being scared and overwhelmed by that feeling. It’s calming to look back and realize the importance of some of those discoveries, a few of them made in late night Barcelona bars, to see that many of those uncertainties have momentarily subsided. It’s also something I come back to often, feeling on the edge of something and figuring out how to leap. It’s a cliché but it’s the best metaphor I’ve been able to figure out for that particular feeling.

Very importantly: jamón and I were reunited.

On my first day, I spent the day alone and decided to wander Montjuïc, site of the 1992 Olympics, one of Franco’s most infamous prisons (if you haven’t read The Shadow of the Wind, I would recommend it), and a series of parks linked by escalators. The day was humid and the greenery was surprisingly lush.

Olympic Stadium (isn’t it amazing how much Beijing reshaped our ideas about what an Olympic stadium should look like?)

At the Jardí Botànic de Barcelona:

Spaniards love escalators, even in their outdoor gardens. But I was also glad to see some of the original staircases survived:

Important pan catalan lesson:

At the Pre-Columbian Art Museum:

My friend and I decided to pony up the eighteen euros to tour Casa Battló, possibly the most famous Gaudí-designed house. Although I totally can’t imagine living there, I did really love all of the strange and wonderful attention to detail.

The whole house was so undulating, even the woodwork:

The tiles in the central patio (stairwell) are a gradient, really dark blue towards the top floor, lighter as you get closer to the ground floor – five colors in all. It really does give the impression that the ground floor gets more light than it really does.

The tiles also cast cool, aquatic reflections:

The top floor is its own alien land.

And the rooftop looks like a lizard and a bunch of uniformed soldiers.

Later that night, we went all went out to this fun Mexican place called La Rosa Negra (which, coincidentally, will always remind me of Dirty Dancing 2: Havana Nights). The food was good, but mostly it was a good night because it reminded me what it was like to be in a place crawling with young (but not 18 year old) people. It was another night when I got to thinking about what direction my life was heading…margaritas have that effect on me. (also, Happy National Margarita Day today! February 22, of all of the days of the year!)

My friend lives not far from La Sagrada Familia. After Casa Battló, we decided we had had our fill of waiting in line and paying high entrance prices for Gaudí, and since I have been before, we just wandered the perimeter for a bit. Still pretty awe-inspiring.

La Boquería really is one of the world’s great markets:

And finally, it was time for a little break from Spanish saltiness. Perfect antidote? Noodles and Fun.

(is this fun for anyone but me? No, not noodles and fun, these travel/photography write-ups. I’m honestly not sure…let me know in the comments, will you?)

One of the really fun parts about going through old photos is reminiscing about fun times, creative moments, a certain kind of light, a really amazing meal. I thought I’d share a few more photos from my trip to Spain…in October/November 2011. Because it’s Friday and I’m feeling nostalgic.

Since I flew into and out of Madrid, those are the bookends on my trip. I took so many photos in 10 days (which is a big reason why I got so behind on Flickr) that I thought I’d split this into three posts: Madrid coming and going, Barcelona, and Córdoba, my old stomping grounds. Thank you for humoring me.

A few from Madrid’s newly renovated Mercado de San Antón:

Chueca, the shoe district (or the gay district, with shoe stores. see it as you will):

The one that got away:

Street used booksellers. I love coming across them.

I love how Madrid can be at once so modern and so traditional:

I’ve spent a fair amount of time in Atocha train station, but I still really love sitting in this space.

(also, the little old man with his hands behind his back is SO SPANISH.)

More soon. Fun weekend plans? I think I might be taking a trek out of town to find…barbecue.

(all photos by me)

+ This bloopers video from The Office:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDNYLhr4o7w

+ Harry & David Moose Munch. Also brunch with friends. Outside in January. With complementary mimosas.

+ The new(ish) Flickr mobile app, and people remembering lately that Flickr is actually great.

+ This kid’s all over Facebook, and for good reason. “The world needs you to stop being boring!”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-gQLqv9f4o

+ My first Austin visitors! Friends here three weekends out of four!

After all of the drama and exhaustion of my move in August, I hit a wall about three days after move-in. Too much stuff, too little space for it, one couch too many…and I was just really, really tired of making decisions. What had been accomplished up to that point, housewise, lay mostly untouched for the rest of 2012, as school, work, settling in in other areas, and generally getting on with living took over.

I hung a couple of shelves. A few evenings I was in the mood and put up some art or tinkered in some capacity. I ditched a couch. But there have been large boxes in my living room for months. I have all kinds of framed art stacked under the windowsill, waiting to be hung.

And perhaps most importantly, I haven’t had anyone over because I’m too embarrassed by the general disarray. And that’s a shame, since I love making dinner for friends, and my space could totally work for get togethers. And I like having a house of which I can be proud, all of the little pieces of me on display, all of the magazine and design blog reading put to good use.

So, I’m back in Austin. It’s a new year. I have a week until classes start and another week until I welcome my first visitor. (hooray!) I’m excited to start Nesting 2.0.

Because I’m always inspired by Anna Dorfman’s weekend lists (it’s amazing how much she accomplishes in a weekend!), I thought I would post my to do list here and try to be held accountable. I’ll update it as I complete tasks, and I’ll plan to upload some photos once I’m all done (or school starts, whichever comes first).

Nesting 2.0 list

+ Unpack entirely from Christmas and put suitcases away
+ Vacuum, sweep and mop floors
+ Dust, clean windows, clean kitchen and bathroom counters
+ General bathroom clean
+ Hang black floating shelf in bedroom
+ Hang green mirror
+ Hang whiteboard in kitchen (find store to buy hardware to hang vertically)
+ Hang art wall behind couch
+ Hang map above bed?
+ Clear off desk so it’s actually useful again
+ Unroll and flatten rug that’s been rolled for too long
+ Figure out IKEA spotlights and mount them
+ Buy down insert for new pillow cover
+ Make mantel look presentable (I refuse to use the term “mantelscaping”)
+ Water plants
+ Laundry (load #1, load #2)
+ Make bed, including down comforter
+ Groceries
+ Make toasted quinoa salad with snow peas and shrimp (two thumbs up)
+ Update filing system so I have a place to put paid bills
+ Set up incoming mail drop spot
+ Buy candles that don’t smell like baked goods or diapers (might want another…)
+ Figure out a plan for one stupidly tall shelf on bedroom bookshelf

Kind of a daunting list. And that’s just the house-specific one. But a lot can be accomplished in a week, and I’m excited to get started.

Do you have plans for your abode for the new year? Do you get overly ambitious in January and make extremely long to do lists, as I am prone to do?

So I’m just here for a day and a half – arrived yesterday and squeezed in a visit with my cousin and her fiance before they caught a plane, catching a bus back home tomorrow morning. Went out with friends last night, met up with some others.

It’s weird to be here.

My hometown changes very little, has always been basically the same, and a couple of times a year I come home, and it feels pretty much like the last time. It’s not a place about which I feel too conflicted.

I’ve only been gone from this city for five months, not long, and so of course most things look the same. As I wandered up and down the main street today in my coat, gloves, boots, snow falling softly, a few storefronts had changed, the Mexican restaurant on the corner has a new happy hour special, but otherwise, it is what I remember. I know this place. I’ve turned down that road, have waited at that crosswalk hundreds, maybe thousands of times.

But for some reason, I feel different here. It’s a strange mix of nostalgia and familiarity and anxiety I can’t quite figure out. There are so many things I miss, and yet I also have memories of being here during some of my saddest moments. I remember feeling a little trapped for a while. Too comfortable. It’s kind of nice being an outsider, but it makes me think a lot more about how things are going for me where I live now, a place where I still rely on GPS to get me around about half the time, where I miss exits and take wrong turns all of the time. I have a few friends, but I don’t run into people on the street unexpectedly. Granted, Austin is not a small town. But in some ways, I’m still an outsider there.

And I’m kind of an outsider here.

And it’s all part of this transition that’s been happening this year, leaving behind the sense of sleepwalking that comes from getting too comfortable in exchange for frequently making mistakes, feeling a little unrooted.

I’m so curious to see how Austin feels upon my return. Will I feel a sense of relief walking into my apartment, that “ok, now I’m home and I can breathe again in my space” feeling? I’m not sure. Will I look out the window of the plane, see the Frost tower and the Capitol and the UT Tower lit up and feel like I’m landing at my home airport? I’m not sure. For the first time in a long time, I didn’t get that sense of returning home when we pulled into town last night. It felt like a memory, rather than my reality. I’m not sure why, I’m not sure about it all.

Everything looked mostly the same, but I felt different.

I’ve still got the lingering smoker’s cough. I have so much I’ve been wanting to write about, so I’m hoping to take advantage of this break, the longest I’ve had in years, to do some writing here. And I’m catching up on my Flickr uploads, after getting a full year behind. (wha?) In the interim, a quote that didn’t make it into one of my papers, but that I liked anyway:

“When ‘conversation’ as a curatorial and creative process seeks to transform the distance between art and its audience, it does so by changing our sense of the ‘space’ of the artwork itself, by making us rethink fundamental questions concerned with the category of the aesthetic. These questions are somehow prior to the critic’s concern with genres and periods as the historical measure of art’s social vision. The conversational approach poses these questions: What kind of ‘knowledge’ do we expect from the practice and the presentation of art? How does conversation change our relation, as artists and audiences, to cultural experience and the social transformation of our times?”
—Homi K. Bhabha, “Conversational Art”

I’ve also been watching a lot of Gossip Girl, so…yeah. It’s kind of a high/low mix.

I have never compiled a bucket list, or a 30 before 30 list (though I’m thinking about it, with thirty a little more than a year away!) But, even without formal list making, our little life lists start to develop. I want to see Machu Picchu before I die. And the Taj Mahal. And the Grand Canyon at sunset.

Some items on this not-quite-list are more likely to happen than others, sure. But, over time, you can slowly cross things off.

And so it is that, at some point over the last 15 or so years since my very first concert (Ben Harper at a greyhound racetrack), I’ve seen almost all of the artists I’ve always loved, ever since I got that CD player for Christmas in about the sixth or seventh grade.

I quickly figured out that attempts to record songs off the radio weren’t especially successful. Once I started babysitting, I could afford more than tape singles from Musicland.

And so I bought CDs.

A lot of these CDs I actually acquired via one of those Buy 1, Get 13 free BMG promotions in every Sunday’s newspaper supplement. A handful came from Target or were presents. Many I saved for and bought in the mall on long afternoons consisting of wandering with friends while wearing our coolest clothes, eating bobby cheese bread at Bob’s Pizza, and buying knock off perfume and nickel jewelery at Claire’s. We had to make sure to save a quarter so we could call one of our moms from the payphone to arrange a ride. Those were the (late 90s) days.

For a long time, my silver CD case was my most prized possession, by far the most valuable thing I owned. Over time, it sprawled to five or six cases, many of them binder-sized, almost exclusively filled with actual purchased CDs.

When about 60% of your (paltry) money goes to buying music, discovering those artists live is the next logical step. I’ve seen most of the bands represented on those early CDs: Dave Matthews Band (eight times?), Ben Folds, Ani DiFranco, John Mayer. Also quite a few from my parents’ generation, music I grew up listening to: James Taylor. Crosby, Stills and Nash. Bonnie Raitt.

But always absent from that list? Counting Crows.

Until they came to Austin.

I haven’t bought their last handful of records, I must admit. This item was almost removed from the life list by virtue of an expiration date.  But I love August and Everything After. I like Recovering the Satellites. Hard Candy is underrated. I like Adam Duritz’s elaborate metaphors – all birds and kings and blankets of stars keeping you warm. The lyrics really meant something to me when I first heard them, and I remember that when I listen to them now.

I still think that the line “Every time she sneezes, I believe it’s love” is one of my very favorites, ever.

It was a pretty wonderful concert. They played for almost three hours. Opened with “Round Here” and played “Holiday in Spain” as an encore. Adam Duritz was strange and mesmerizing, the songs wandering and leaving and coming back again just as I expected they might. And there was something so comforting about hearing those lines, in that voice, in a place that is not yet familiar but that I’d like, eventually, to feel like home.

Counting Crows, Round Here
Counting Crows, Holiday in Spain
Counting Crows, Anna Begins
Counting Crows, Colorblind

(all photos by me, posted to Instagram)
(oh, and did I mention the elaborate music video friends made in high school to the CC song “Goodnight Elisabeth”? I so wish I could show it here…there’s a particular scene when a dress, found in a laundry basket, is held up and swirled around and morphs into a flashback of a girl wearing it and dancing on a roof in the snow….epic)

Hard to believe I’ve been in Austin over three months. Things have been pretty quiet around here, largely because being back in school turns out to be pretty time consuming. I’m so busy printing (and, ahem, reading) endless PDFs, teaching classes, writing papers, and generally doing the student thing that I haven’t been much of a tourist yet in my own town. Which is kind of silly, since I’ve been experiencing a lot of the downs of big(ger) city living – discovering the real meaning of traffic at the top of the list – without really enjoying the perks. Living in Montana, I was always so envious of the cities with things actually going on – book tours and daily concerts and Hairpin meetups and, yes, Flickr groups. And so I was pretty excited when I got the message that Flickr would be hosting a photowalk in downtown Austin.

A few photos from the morning:

We wandered through a farmer’s market for a while – the first one I’ve visited this year, sadly.

Still getting used to the many versions of cacti (always makes me think of that bad 90s Nickelodeon show, Hey Dude…yippie kay yay what?)

And finally, did I mention that Ryan Gosling is reportedly in town filming?

Two of my dear friends, going back to high school and beyond, had a baby girl a few weeks ago. They named her Matilda Mary, and she joined her adorable big brother Parker. Even though my friends have moved a lot in recent years, to Australia and back, and now to New York, I’ve followed their little family through their blog and feel like I’ve gotten to kind of know the silliness of their son through photos and Kelly’s frequent updates. I read her pregnancy posts with anticipation, looking forward to another cute kid being added to the clan.

And there’s no doubt that Matilda is beautiful. But she’s also sick, suffering from acute liver failure and the doctors aren’t sure what else, and she needs all the love she can get.

She’s lucky in that she’s the daughter of two fiercely loving, bright parents, and they’ve been battling for her over the last few weeks at Mt. Sinai in New York City. She’s at the top of the transplant list, if it comes to that. She’s had a double exchange blood transfusion, and they’re waiting to see if that might cure her symptoms. They’ve been worried about sugar levels, and ammonia levels, brain damage and a world of other concerns, day in and day out.

But they’ve also been so thoughtful, my friends, in caring for her. Upset they couldn’t always hold her when she’d cry, they took the nurse Gina’s advice and got her something to hold: Gina the Giraffe.

After one particularly harrowing night, Kelly wrote on her facebook wall, “Tyler and I have rallied our spirits and have come up with a plan to hold Matilda more, snuggle more, sing more, read more, and enjoy every moment with Matilda more. She is a gift and we plan on keeping her forever.”

It’s been an emotional couple of weeks, and I find myself thinking of them all day and checking in over and over again. I tear up a lot on the bus. I know people go through terrible things, but I don’t feel old enough to have friends going through this with their kid.

But luckily, Kelly and Tyler are handling all of this with a grace beyond their years.

So, what can you do? Well, there’s a website to donate to Matilda’s cause. And I won’t try to pretend that money doesn’t matter.

There’s also an option to have a meal delivered to them in the hospital, which is pretty easy to do, and feels like something tangible.

But also important, really really important, is knowing that more people are thinking about her and praying for her. Being so far from family right now, Kelly and Tyler have said that the thoughts and prayers bring them comfort. And I believe in the power of collective thought, or prayer, or however it is you might see it.

So in those quiet in-between moments, please keep my friends and their baby in your thoughts. It would mean a lot to me, and to them.

There’s something so special for a kid about seeing his or her name in writing. This invitation to participate in a new world of narratives. For a long time, my parents told me that the neighborhood park was named Emily’s Park. You can imagine my disappointment when I learned how to read and saw the small sign in the far corner – Memorial Park. What a stupid name. Some might say this is exactly what’s wrong with America: making our children feel like the world revolves around them. But I think it’s OK to feel special (as long as you’re not a brat). And even when I knew the “real” name, I continued to call it by the childhood moniker, warming my heart a little to the (honestly somewhat bleak) block of land.

And so, getting back to the big red dog, I was so pleased to hear the author of the Clifford series and his wife on NPR this morning. It’s a short but really charming interview, in which he clarifies that Clifford was not born big. He was the runt, and Emily Elizabeth was encouraged not to adopt him. He grew bigger than a house because that’s how much she loved him.

Listen to it here: http://www.npr.org/2012/09/22/161541838/clifford-the-big-red-dog-turns-50-in-human-years.

(image from npr.org)

oh yeah, finally trying to jump on the Instagram wagon. Find me @emily05mle.

There were futuristic cocktails, complete with gelatinous spheres. There were appetizers and homemade ice cream sandwiches. Complimentary valet parking! And the things he designed were incredible. His stuff from the 20s looked Eames-esque. The predictions he made about everything from GPS to the dishwasher were eerily accurate. There was one article in particular, predicting all sorts of changes to come in the future – things he couldn’t have known, and yet so many have happened. I might stop by again just to take a picture. A creative, fascinating man.

I also got the added bonus of feeling educated since the only way I knew anything about Bel Geddes prior to a few weeks ago was through the USPS industrial design stamps (which, for the record, I really love). He’s the radio designer:

Anyway, later in the evening, while my event buddy and I were trying to surreptitiously position ourselves in the sight line of waiters leaving the kitchen with full trays of appetizers, a dude walked up to us and gave us both high fives. Maybe that should have been a tipoff that this was about to get weird.

He’s studying to be a writer, he says. Well, first he tells us we should talk about something fascinating, or something daft like that. Then he said he was studying writing, “but not to get a degree.” I asked him what he wrote, and he said “I’m not a writer. I don’t write.” Which, perhaps not so surprisingly, struck me as odd for someone studying to be a writer.

My response, something I’ve been told more than once myself, was, “Writers are people who write.”

It became pretty apparent that he was drunk, kind of stinky, and purposefully obstinate. Go with God, dude.

But that exchange has kind of stuck in my head in the past week. Writers are people who write. It seems so straightforward.

And yet so many people who have studied writing, myself included, don’t do much writing. Writers are not people who read. Or people who grade others’ attempts at writing. Or people who talk about writing.

Writers are people who write.

It’s so simple, and yet so daunting.

But thinking about it encouraged me to sit down here tonight and bang out some thoughts on the screen…so maybe there’s hope for me yet.

(stamp image from usps.com)

I’ve been sick for the last week, a weird mix of symptoms that seems to change everyday. Every morning there’s a new surprise – mostly fairly unpleasant, really. Is it an ear infection? Strep? Common, lingering cold? I don’t know.

And I’m getting a little behind on the school stuff. The reading. The oncoming assignments. Grading. Lots and lots of grading.

I’m still not really settled into my house, but because I’ve made some progress, it looks worse than it has since moving day. This is normal, I know that. But it’s still a little overwhelming when I walk in the door at the end of the day.

And so there’s only two answers: laundry and the crockpot.

I figured out that I love using these two appliances because they make me feel extremely productive. Look, here I am just lying out the couch watching Parenthood….and yet, I’m also making dinner! I might be slogging through more pseudo-Foucauldian  reading on the gaze, but…..ta da! I’m also making my stinky clothes smell good again! And then I’m going to fold them, when they’re still kinda warm and, most importantly, good smelling, and restore a little order to this small corner of my life. Or, in the case of the crockpot, I can smell this real meal, not just pasta or a salad or whatever, awaiting me at the end of this current article. (is there an end? I can’t help but wonder.)

This week, I went with an old standby. I’ve made this Slow Cooker Chicken Tortilla soup quite a few times, and it’s always a crowd pleaser. (or, in this case, a me pleaser…) But since I make some tweaks to the original recipe, and I always forget what they are when I am wandering the grocery aisles, I thought I’d list my little spin here.

Word to the wise: don’t let the long list of ingredients freak you out. They are cheap (especially at Target for the canned goods) and readily available. If you have a can opener and a 4+ quart slow cooker, you can make this.

Slow Cooker Chicken Tortilla soup (slightly adapted from this recipe)
Supposedly makes 8 servings, but I think it’s more like 4-6.

Same old, same old: too many thoughts, too little time (or maybe just focus?) so I thought I’d take a tip from Dani at Sometimes Sweet and attempt a Currently post. Reply in comments and tell me what you’re currently up to!

Reading: It’s been a somewhat bookish couple of weeks. In addition to reading all kinds of pamphlets/booklets/flyers/whatever about my new school and city, I’ve gotten through a handful of books: Riding with Rilke, I Feel Bad About My Neck, Bossypants as audiobook read by Tina Fey, and The Believers.  They were all good for their own reasons: much of the narrative in Riding with Rilke takes place in Austin, and specifically at the Harry Ransom Center on campus, so it was fun to get acquainted with this amazing resource through non-fiction. I also learned a lot about Ducatis, which was, admittedly, extremely random and not really in my normal purview. I’m still mourning Nora Ephron, somewhat belatedly. Tina Fey was the perfect narrator for her own memoir (not always true!) and I appreciated the feminist aspects of Bossypants. And I read The Believers in about 4 days, almost entirely on the bus. The mother character was over-the-top abrasive, and most of the other characters weren’t especially likeable either, but somehow it mostly worked for me, and that was a study in fiction all by itself. I’m going to try, really try, to carve out that time on the bus everyday for pleasure reading, at least one way each day. I started Lisa See’s On Gold Mountain this morning on my way to class.

Watching: I finally got the internet hooked up at my house, so I’ve been watching light TV on my laptop (Parenthood, the hippy Berkeley counterpart to Pasadena’s Brothers and Sisters, without the one really hot character or Sally Field but with Craig T. Nelson so it’s all kinda even), and some heavy movies (Incendies, El secreto de sus ojos). All worth a watch.

I’m also going to list the Tumblr The Thinking Tank here, as I’ve been watching (and loving) the curated images there. When I don’t have time to really read anything, this is where I turn for a little escape from the banal.

Thinking about:

Finding a coffee shop to make my own. After only one class last week, I had over a hundred pages of reading to plow through. I need a non-home, non-Starbucks where I can linger and get some reading done.

Surprised by: Many things, but we’ll go with the fact that the cold faucet water runs warm here. Like warmer than lukewarm. I have yet to use the H knob in my shower.

Making me happy: I got a teaching assistantship! This is a huge weight off my shoulders, financially, and I’m looking forward to some of the work I’ll be doing. I’m no longer unemployed!

Listening to: Lots of really bad hip hop. Too embarrassing(ly awesome) to really go through step by step. Let’s just say I’ve had Titanium in my head for about a week.  Also, Mike from Charlotte who danced like (and kinda looked like) JT – we had a whole lot of fun getting down with you to all the Top 40 hits last weekend. What a blast.

Working on: Getting back into school mode AND getting my apartment in shape. Did a little late-night painting last night, so I’m looking forward to showing off my creations soon.

Anticipating: Going to Idaho tomorrow! Our closest family friends will be celebrating the wedding of their oldest son. It’s going to be a blast. And I bought a new dress. And it’s going to get below 80 degrees at night. All of these things are making me happy.

What’s up in your life, currently?

(image one and two both from The Thinking Tank)

Moving is a bitch. There’s very little way around that. But I couldn’t help but be surprised, again and again, by how bumpy the road was, nonetheless. Here’s a little semi-chronological smattering of events:

• + Change my address to the apartment I had pre-leased in May or early June.
• + While I am at the UHaul place picking up the truck, I get a call that the apartment I had reserved and put a deposit down for months ago was “no longer available.” A new apartment in the complex will be available, but not immediately. Move-in date changed from Aug. 3 to 10.
• + Woman at UHaul feels badly for me as I stand there hyperventilating and gives me 7 extra days and 200 extra miles for free. Also takes $100 off as an added bonus. Then card won’t run again so have to leave checkbook as collateral and drive the UHaul to the bank to take out the cost of the truck and trailer in cash.
• + Cancel all hotels. Make plans for new places to stay. Book new hotels.
• + Mom changes her flight from the 8th to the 15th. Will now miss a class, an Alison Krauss concert, and a week in her garden before school starts again. And has to pay a change fee.
• + Cancel change of address. Fill out new change of address form.
• + Pack the truck. Barbecue a lot. Float the river a handful of times, cold beers in hand. Clean and Rug Doctor and all the rest. Say a little goodbye to the house.
• + Time to start up the truck and pull away. Truck won’t start.
• + Call UHaul service number and a tow company comes to jump the truck. A light in the cargo area turned on automatically but surprise! didn’t turn itself off after 30 minutes like it’s supposed to.
• + Take the loaded truck and my car to UHaul to get the car trailer loaded.
• + Once on the trailer, the driver’s door won’t open all of the way.
• + Mom, driving the car onto the ramp, climbs out of window.
• + Now we realize that we can’t get the keys out of the ignition unless we keep the window rolled down. Door won’t open wide enough to do both. And not just rolled down a little. Rolled down most of the way.
• + End up pushing the car back a foot or so to put blocks under the tires, thus raising level of the door.
• + Push the car onto the blocks.
• + Can successfully open car door!
• + Now car won’t start. No idea why. Luckily window is up and we can close the door and lock the damn car and get out of town.
• + First day drive to Billings: smooth. Stay in Billings for four or five days. Get to hang out with my 91-year-old grandpa. I finally get around to painting this mirror. Pictures to come.
• + Day 2: driving into Casper, Wyoming. Receive call from apartment complex. Apartment will no longer be available on the 10th. It will be available on the 15th.
• + A few minutes later, the truck starts rumbling. Flat tire? Trailer loose?
• + Mom and I sit and stare at one another at an Arby’s for a while.
• + Drive the truck around town. It appears that the rumbling was just from the rougher-than-normal highway. Back on the road.
• + Decide moving into this place isn’t an option. What if they changed the date yet again? Not to mention their total lack of empathy, that they offered me absolutely nothing for my troubles, having to pay for more UHaul days, the question of where to stay in the interim, etc.
• + Call an apartment locator. Hardly anything available. Most places have been pre-leased for months. If only I could raise my (already decent?) monthly budget $200. On and on. Get an appointment to view an apartment the morning after we arrive. There are 3 to choose from in the (new) complex.
• + Denver: we had some good burgers here.
• + Wichita: bad Chinese. Also most of the corn on the side of the highway is scorched and dead-looking.
• + At a truck stop in Oklahoma, everyone around me is drinking sweet tea and there’s Nascar on the TVs. I think the guy at the next table says “peon” and try to figure out the context. Oh. Pen.
• + These are not my people.
• + View apartment. Locator guy is sleazy. Now there’s apparently one apartment left in complex, not three. Have a feeling they may tell this to everyone.
• + Apartment, though, is nice. Patio. Washer and dryer. Humongous closet. Dishwasher. Further from school than I’d like but on a bus line and close to lots of other things. And available immediately. Decide I’ll take it.
• + Disconnect car from UHaul. Drive them both the 30 minutes back to where we’re staying. Grab my checkbook to pay the deposit by 5 pm and head out to the car, relieved to be driving a normal-sized vehicle for the first time in a while.
• + Car won’t start.
• + Have a breakdown. Not the car, me.
• + Borrow another car to get deposit paid by 5 pm. Get car towed.
• + Mom hires a couple of college students to help us move. Thank goodness. It’s hot. Really damn hot. Get everything unloaded in just about 2 hours. I lie on the floor for a while, where the A/C bounces off the sliding glass doors. Feel lightheaded and nauseous. Google “heat exhaustion symptoms” on my phone.
• + Change my address. Again.
• + Car battery had a bad cell, hence working on and off. Heat killed it for good. New battery=pretty good news.
• + Return the UHaul. So very glad to see it go. And I was hardly ever the one driving it.
• + Spend the next few days unpacking, organizing, sorting, drinking lots of Arnold Palmers with my mom.
• + Take inaugural trip to nearby IKEA.
• + Take inaugural trip to nearby SuperTarget.
• + Sad to see the Olympics end.
• + More unpacking. The feeling of being unsettled and in between starts to get to me. I’m cranky and worn out.
• + Mom comes out of the shower and says, “There’s a very large bug on the wall in there.” Cockroach.
• + Goodbye, cockroach.
• + They’re coming to spray the next day.
• + The next morning, Mom lifts something up and a lizard runs across the living room floor. Seriously? A LIZARD? We deal with that issue and start plugging up every hole in the house, including that rear bathroom sink hole that prevents overflow.
• + They come and spray. Some of my sanity returns.
• + Mom flies home. Looking forward to sleeping in and doing very little for a few days, but sad to see her go.
• + The next night, talking on the phone and sitting on the floor near the charger, I feel something on my leg that I think is a loose hair. Cockroach.
• + Proceed to drop the phone and screech for a while, causing person on the other end of the line to wonder whether I am being attacked. I was, just not by what he might have expected.
• + Spray the hell out of that thing. Second guess my move.
• + Wander around the house with Raid spray in hand. Have some nightmares. They’re going to come and set traps.
• + Go to campus. It’s beautiful. Get an ID card so I can ride the bus for free. Get an appointment to set up internet at my house. Drive somewhere and don’t get lost and don’t have to check directions.
• + Make plans for queso and margaritas tonight.
• + Get my first mail in the mailbox.

That pretty much brings you up to date on the move.

The rain has stopped for a little while.

Time to venture out again.

—Meghan Daum, from Life Would Be Perfect if I Lived in That House

But when I look around my house, at the total catastrophe of stuff everywhere, and the piles of papers I still haven’t sorted, and just how many things still need to go into boxes, I am overcome with what must be despair.

Maybe it’s just the day after garage sale blues (successful garage sale, even) or the fact that Sundays are often a little melancholic. Or maybe I’m finally a little closer to facing reality about things, the reality that I won’t finish if I keep doing what I have been doing at the rate I’ve been doing it for two weeks.

I guess the other way to look at this is that in one week and one day, I’ll be on the road and finally starting with the next adventure. Austin, Texas here I come.

Now please just let me get through this week.

Ironic that my last post, about finding the time to prioritize writing, was written six weeks ago. It’s quite possibly been the busiest six weeks of my life.

Handed over board president reins after a hectic, but I think fairly successful, year.

Three weeks in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Lichtenstein, Sweden.

One last week of working. Unemployed for the next month or so.

Successfully ran a half marathon.

Packing up to move across the country.

Garage sale tomorrow.

Leaving in another week, driving a UHaul and pulling my car on a trailer. 1,950 miles.

In all of this, there are loads of specific posts. I think about this space every day, and yet I can’t seem to pull a single memory from the Pensieve. Too much swirling around in there.

But every day I’m getting closer. One of these days the memories and thoughts will be extracted, one by one, and I have a feeling quite a few will make it here.

In the meantime, sorry for the silence. Bear with me.

(photo by Lorcan O’Brien on Flickr)

But if we’re talking about writing, about coming up with characters and a scene, many scenes, or crafting and drafting and revising something with a little heft, changing this word for that and do-si-doing syntax for a better rhythm, well, I haven’t done much of that in a long time. And that kind of writing, for me, is more conflicted and best done at a computer, white expanse shining back at you while the cursor blinks.

In college, I majored in literature and creative writing. I wrote fiction, almost exclusively, forty or fifty pages per semester. Every time a story was due, I would walk around preoccupied for weeks, trying to come up with scenes as dynamic as the characters I had started to concoct. I loved writing characters, envisioning their morning routines, whether they would leave time on the microwave screen, whether they could carry a tune or not. The quirks. That part of the process appealed to my extreme attention to detail, allowed me to harness that trait that is otherwise a little exhausting. The problem was always making the characters do things. I wanted to place them on the stage, clap my hands and say, “OK, it’s up to you now!” Plot was not my strong suit. I wrote a lot of bathtub stories.

So to meet those classroom deadlines and turn in an actual story – beginning, middle, end – I would hole up in my apartment for the weekend. I would grocery shop in advance. I would buy beer. If at all possible, I would also clean beforehand, because even the most dreaded task becomes tempting when you’re sitting and staring and trying to make characters come alive and failing. And then I would play around and see what happened.

It was hard work, in some ways, but also really gratifying when I could make it go right. I assume this is how a mathematician must feel when a complicated problem is completed correctly, when the checks and balances lead you to believe you’re temporarily in control. Your effort justified.

I would rarely talk to anyone else over the weekend, especially about what I was writing, not wanting their input, not wanting to break the spell. I never knew how the story would end, figuring a solution would emerge at some point. The right moment to dim the lights. And honestly, sometimes that moment never came and I just ended it, sappily, when I had reached my page limit and couldn’t think of anything better. Before bed late, late on Sunday night (or more accurately Monday morning, if you look at it like that, which I never have), I would email my draft off to a couple of people. A friend or two, maybe my mom, maybe a creative writer who wasn’t in class with me. I would do one final draft read-through in the morning if I had time but wouldn’t check my email. And then I would make copies and distribute them to my classmates, feeling slightly nauseous while awaiting their critique two days later. It wasn’t finished, but it was done. For then. Ideas and people and places were on paper, things I had dreamed up, a few little risks I had taken. And as much as I had to force myself to do it, to be sequestered and anti-social for a while, I came back into the world feeling a sense of relief, of accomplishment, a turn of phrase ringing in my ears, a smirk on my face.

I miss that feeling.

I’m not sure how, but it’s a feeling I’d like to get back. It’s not so much “now or never” as “now or not now,” and in a way, that’s scarier. The obvious follow-up is “If not now, when?” A question without a clear answer. A mathematical problem without an obvious solution. A blinking cursor broadcasting the same message every second: write. write. write.

As someone who dreaded running The Mile in gym class every year, who was lapped on the track by the fast kids while limping along with a sideache most of the time, I must admit that even I am surprised by the following statement:

I ran seven miles the other day.

And I didn’t even feel like dying.

Something I didn’t talk about in this space last year was my decision to run a half marathon. The local marathon has gotten great reviews, on a national level, in the last couple of years and so many people in this town have started running it. On Sunday mornings from March to July, the streets and trails are teeming with people in various Lycra/DriFIT/whatever ensembles, huffing and puffing or flying by, either with iPods in place or Galloway run/walk timers clipped to their belts.  There are slow and fast, fit and fat, experienced runners and newbies out there, pushing themselves when it would be easy to be doing something else. Anything else.

Last year I got about six weeks into a training class when my lingering shin pain became worrisome. I saw a doc, who directed me to a physical therapist, who told me the pain wasn’t going to get any better without a fair amount of work (and, though he didn’t say this at the time, seemingly endless exercise printouts with photos of people in weird 90s exercise clothes and awkward positions). My half marathon goal wasn’t going to be reached, not last year. And that sucked, since it seemed like everyone in this town was running, training, talking about it all of the time. I don’t like announcing goals I can’t meet.

So I moved on. And I did a lot of PT, for months and months. Some strange realignment techniques involving my grip and my teeth, among other things. Lots of walking backward up stairs and trying not to fall on my ass. Various contortions involving stretchy bands and Kegels while blowing up balloons. No, really.

And I ran seven miles on Sunday with my running buddy with pretty minimal discomfort. Finally.

I leave on Monday for Europe, and I’m not too sure how the running plan is going to work there. I’ll run eight miles before heading out of town on Saturday. And ten the weekend I get back.

Only one week later, July 8, boom. 13.1.

Wish me luck.

(image source)

(thanks for that, R. Kelly)

It’s raining and chilly here. Go figure. I’ve spent the day thus far under the covers, finishing the third Hunger Games book, and then Skype-ing with some friends in Portugal. Always nice to see their smiling faces.

Last night, a friend and I made dinner and watched The Cutting Edge (which is apparently called “Pasión por el triunfo” in Spanish, thus cementing in my brain that whoever translates movie titles should look for a new job. Like accounting.)

But damn, I forgot how much I like that movie.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mrnd-rO456Q

There’s still a day and a half of this long weekend left, so I’m going to try to make the most of it. Take some pictures of my house before we start dismantling it in time for more transition: moving out, moving in. Post some things on Craigslist and start the slow exodus of about two-thirds of my furniture. Cross a few things off my list.

But also try to have me some fun. TBD.

Are you having any Memorial Day weekend fun? What’s on the weekend agenda?

My short walk to work over the past two years has changed very little. It’s not just that I could do it in my sleep – I often actually feel half-asleep when I wend my way across streets and between buildings on my five minute morning “commute.”

A month or so ago, a freak windstorm knocked down a huge pine tree, taking down the fence with it but somehow not crushing the car directly beneath it. I skirted that part of the block for a few days, but then the tree was removed. The fence restored. The car in the same spot, looking untouched.

There are these two trees right outside the Law School that turn the most beautiful red early in the fall, before any other leaves have turned colors. They are my signal that fall is officially here. And those leaves fall sooner than other leaves, too. Every morning for a few weeks in the past two falls, I was taken by their intensity and beauty, both on the tree and on the ground.

And just across the street is the spring counterpart, a tree that bursts with white blossoms and hums with bees right around the time of graduation. I walk under it and tilt my head back to take in the sweet scent. And every day, I wish I had my camera with me and I know that the flowers, the smell, the lovely little surprise, won’t last. Soon the flowers will grow brown around the edges. The petals will drop. And I’ll have no record of this annual ritual, one so insignificant in some ways that I doubt I’ll be reminded of it once I live in Austin.

Maybe it’s my trepidation about moving somewhere with less distinct seasons, maybe I’m feeling nostalgic, or maybe we all just need a deadline, but today I finally backtracked. I went home, grabbed my camera, and went back to snap a few quick pics of this tree, white, fragrant, beautiful. An exclamation point in an otherwise monotone conversation.

Because it is an interaction, the way we do or do not notice our surroundings. The way certain corners come with memories – of kisses, of near accidents, of slipping at icy crosswalks. Of beautiful leaves and crisp autumn air, of blossoms and sunshine.

(all photos by me)

+ The Moveable Type Truck made a stop in town two Fridays ago for just a couple of hours. My sister and I hustled down there to meet Kyle on the tail end of her ten month tour of the U.S. We were lucky to catch her on one of her last few stops before heading back to Portland, home of her letterpress studio. I was happy to pull this print to add to my collection:

She had lots of cool cards for sale in the truck (this one was my favorite, of course) but I was short on cash, too set on trying to get down there while she still had the truck doors open. Will have to do a little letterpress damage in her Etsy shop one of these days.

+ Have you seen The Killing? What an addictive show. My sister told me about it on Friday and I’ve used it as an excuse to barely leave the couch today.

+ Tulips really are my favorites. I love them in all of their stages: their shape when they’re closed tight. Their colors when they’re opening, the contrast of the centers and the petals. When the petals start to curl and become frilly on the edges. And even when they’re falling apart, when the striated colors become even more obvious, the petals increasingly translucent. Having not one but two bouquets at my house this week, both with beautiful tulips (and lilies, and bells of Ireland, and those cool coral berries) has been a real gift.

+ Still haven’t gotten around to reading The Hunger Games – was hoping to see the movie in the theaters, but it might not be in the cards – but I have read some interesting books lately. Susan Orleans’ Rin Tin Tin was interesting but a bit too…dragged out. Should have been about 75 pages shorter. Room, on the other hand, kept my attention from start to finish. So many instances in which authorial intrusion was a risk, and yet it never felt heavy handed. I was impressed, as both a reader and a writer. Now I’m reading and liking The Hare with Amber Eyes, thus far a surprising and interesting familial tale across borders and generations. More non-fiction. Aaaand… I should probably admit that I’ve been powering through the Sookie Stackhouse books over the past few months. I squeeze one in between “real” reading, finishing most of them in a day or two. Such a guilty pleasure, everything Sookie.

+ One more exciting announcement: I’m going to Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and Sweden in June! A school trip needed a chaperone so I’m getting hooked up in a serious way. Now that some of the other big questions in my life are getting answered, I’m finally thinking about this trip, prepping and getting excited to hop on a plane again. I have a feeling that it will be the fun, more relaxing trip I’ve been needing for a while.

What’s going on with you recently? Reading anything good? Any travel on the horizon?

I’m moving to Austin, Texas in August to start grad school!

For the last few years, I’ve been making ends meet – relieved to have a job with excellent health insurance, really to have a job at all, but still kind of going through the motions. I think that one of the reasons I haven’t written much here about my trip to Spain in October was because it was a lot more complicated than I had imagined – as two of my best friends met me in Barcelona (and met each other for the first time), both urged me to make my move – literally and figuratively – and open myself up for a new start, the one I had anticipated in 2008 when I moved back from Córdoba, oblivious to the impending economic crash (I refuse to call it a “downturn”) that started just a few weeks after I arrived home. And, even though I totally agreed with them and had been initiating upcoming changes (taking the GRE, researching and deciding on a program of study, applying), it was still hard to hear – like I hadn’t been doing enough, like the boundaries I perceived only existed if I allowed them to be. There were some tears shed on a couple of occasions in Barcelona bars. When, a few months later, another friend gave me practically the same pep talk, I found myself in tears once again, tired of feeling so limited – not helpless, but extremely limited – for so long. I’m aware that these “youth frustrated by the economy” stories are ubiquitous, and so often are viewed with a certain disdain, echoing the sense of entitlement my generation is known for. Every “adult” has some story of a recession they got through – a tough time, sure, but the narrative always concludes with the final unscathed emergence. Back to normal.

I’m not quite there, and the loans I’m looking at taking on are daunting, to be sure, but I also realize a few of the other costs. As my friend, that most recent cheerleader, said to me, “I think we’re all telling you this, unbeknownst to one another, because those who know you see that you’ve been functioning at half speed for a while. Maybe you need a little push.”

I guess I did – a little push, some time, feeling bored enough for long enough to think that most alternatives were pretty good options.

But in the end, I’m lucky. Austin isn’t just a pretty good option. My program is ranked #1 in the nation. During my visit this week, people were universally friendly and down to earth and approachable. Austin is a haven for arts and music and libraries and nightlife. It’s relatively affordable and more diverse than anywhere I’ve ever lived. But it’s also strangely familiar – walking out of the Austin airport on Wednesday, leaving the air-conditioned sameness of every airport for the warmth and humidity of an April evening in Texas, the very first thought that came into my head was “Whoa, it smells like Spain.” As much as the Montanan in me liked seeing all of the cowboy boots and microbrews, and the Missoulian recognized the strange cross-section of generally laid-back hippy/hipster culture and big-time college football, another part of me connected to the Spanish influences in a way I wouldn’t have imagined. Walking down a wide boulevard under dappled light, looking at the tiled roofs and hearing Spanish spoken, it seemed as much like the south of Spain as the American South. It will take some getting used to the heat of Austin, yes (it was 90 degrees there on Thursday. in early April!), but I also lived in a 5th floor apartment with no air conditioning in Córdoba, when the nightly lows were in the 80s and the highs soared well into the triple digits. I’ll learn to make do, and the sunscreen I stocked up on and thought might expire will be put to good use!

Remember how I chose “fresh” as my word of 2012? Well, I’m practically giddy to see some of my wishes and plans coming through – a fresh start in a new city, back to thinking critically and feeling challenged, a new space to settle into and city to explore. And I’m relieved to be getting back into a place in my life where I have lots to write about – where I’m experiencing things with open eyes and a fresh perspective, wanting to capture little bits of it all and post it here.

(photos by me)

The first day of spring, I heard on the radio this morning, my head still nestled into my flannel-sheeted pillow, my body enveloped in a down comforter. A quilt. Sweatpants.

I used two fingers to separate the mini blinds. “Please, don’t let there be snow on the ground.”

No snow. But gray. Yet another day of gray. Another day of going through the motions. Dishes piled up in the sink, on the counters. Meetings. Emails. Feeling shrouded by some unnamed lethargy I’ve been feeling for a while.

I get to work and there’s a bundle of daffodils on my seat, wrapped three times with a thin rubber band. A benefit for cancer. I think they might have arrived yesterday, and I’m a little annoyed that no one put them in water. I’m not sure I’ll be able to appreciate them before I leave tomorrow. They’re closed tight, the stems all ending in a thin, pointed tan sheath. I find a vase on my desk (a cup, really), add water, and plop them in. Nothing thereafter could really constitute “arranging.”

Two hours later, most have burst from their shells. Yellow is emerging. I hear a “crack” and watch the light brown membrane separate from the stem. Within minutes, the brown falls away, color is exposed.

The brown falls away, color is exposed.

My springtime wish.

Afterwards, a few local women were on a panel talking about body image and the media. They were insightful and funny and said some interesting things. A girl down the row from me, maybe 12 years old or so, asked the panelists how they get over looking in the mirror and feeling badly about themselves. And they gave some legitimate answers, the kind I could see myself giving. I wake up late so I barely have time to look in the mirror. I look in the mirror, notice a zit, notice this and that, and then move on. I don’t comb my hair. I try to avoid full-length mirrors.

All of those answers are fine. They’re real. They’re honest. But they’re not very inspiring. And, at least for me, they’re not the whole picture.

You know how you shower all the time and they’re all basically the same, but then suddenly, often for inexplicable reasons, you take what I like to call the super clean shower? You get out feeling awesome. Fresh. Ready to take on the world. And so, so clean.

There’s nothing wrong with the other showers. They’re pretty good. Fine.

I feel the same way about looking in the mirror. I’m happy with the way I look. Sure. I don’t think a ton about it.

But every once in a while, out of nowhere, I look in the mirror and do a little double take. Damn, I look good, I say to myself. I smile. I might even wink.

And that’s OK, too. Women have a way of cutting down the competition, of keeping each other in our rightful places. Keeping us feeling like confidence is something you’re supposed to have but not show, never flaunt.

I read a post today by Susannah Conway about always wearing an invisible crown. She’s been writing really interesting things lately, and this was one of them. And I totally agreed with her premise, that it’s OK to like ourselves. That we’re better than “not too bad.”

But I would take it a step further. I don’t think our crowns have to be invisible. I don’t think our strength needs to be something we keep inside, save just for ourselves.

When I spoke up on Thursday night, a room full of women turned to me, some of them smiling, nodding. I don’t think I’m alone in occasionally smiling in the mirror. Grinning. Not just being “not too bad” looking, but pretty damn good. And being not afraid to feel that way, too.

» Sunday was my birthday. Great sushi, friends and family in town, and lots of fun presents. I’m finally the owner of a pair of TOMS (the Carpe Diem style), a present from my mom. Just in time for spring! As my sister said, inspirational. footwear. Just my style. There was also a snarky comment in there about them probably being vegan – and they totally are! (though I’m not…but I guess I seem to flock toward touchy-feely footwear. I also have vegan Danskos…)
» Today is International Women’s Day, as you’ve probably seen around the web somewhere. I don’t pay too much attention to National Ice Cream Day and International Wear Your Heart on Your Sleeve Day or whatever, but the treatment of women still gets my heart pumping and in a world where Rush Limbaugh still exists, it’s worth taking time out to envision a society in which women are valued and treated accordingly. I think it’s still possible to make a $25 Kiva donation to a low-income woman and her business without putting any of your own money down. A five minute, zero-risk investment in an entrepreneurial woman in need of a hand – a great way to celebrate today.
» I also plan to attend a showing of Miss Representation tonight. Have you seen it? There are 3 and 8 minute trailers on Vimeo.
» I loved this NPR story on the 50th anniversary of A Wrinkle in Time. I devoured A Wrinkle in Time and all the rest of the Madeleine L’Engle books. Totally connected with Meg! From the story:
“Even if a young reader doesn’t know all of the words, or know who all of the quotations are from, or if they can’t grasp exactly what a tesseract is … it sort of gives room for the reader and shows possibility and a place where you want to go and understand,” Voiklis says. “[L'Engle] didn’t think condescending to children was the right thing to do.”
» When I’m stressed, I buy pens. My newest purchase: Pentech Hybrid Technica in the Extra Fine 0.3 mm size, black. Super smooth for such a fine tip. Makes me delusional enough to think I might eventually get around to some photographic journaling.
» Excited to see Cataldo and Blind Pilot tomorrow. You can listen to all of the Cataldo albums streaming online. Worth checking out.
» I’m going to Toronto in two weeks! Have you been there? Any recommendations for me?

Fairfield

“A guy I used to know — he taught me all about the sky.”
Humphrey Bogart in High Sierra

I wanted it depressed, one dusty road
and two cafés both with ‘help wanted’ signs.
Where I ate, the waitress was too in love
with the cook for the things I wanted to say.
The canal passed through town ripe green
and grain, I had to admit, grew assured.
A dog slept fat on warm gravel. No trouble foreseen
raising funds to build the new gym.

I’d expected hurt, the small town kind everyone
knows and ignores, a boy who tried and tried
to leave home, sobbing his failure alone
at the mirror back of the bar, still wearing
his ’39 letter sweater, still claiming
the girl who moved to Great Falls will return.
I wanted to honor him in this poem,
to have the sky turn dark as I drove off
the town in my rear view mirror
huddled with fear white in black air.

The drunk I saw seemed happy. I drove empty away.
What if Fairfield sent signals to Mars
and signals came back saying all weather is yours
no matter how vulgar? I imagined cruel sky
left every bird orphan. When I passed
Freeze Out Lake I saw herons accepted that refuge
as home, and I knew the water was green with sky,
not poisoned green with resolve.

—Richard Hugo, from White Center

(Freezeout Lake photos taken by me last March)

But, in fact, the opposite happened. I made valentines with my sister over the weekend. I dressed up, wearing some of my favorite red shoes and a cardigan of my grandma’s. I got a fun box in the mail and a heart cookie from a friend (and one, um, anatomical cookie that made me laugh). And lots of nice little things happened.

gettin' crafty

ready to mail

one of my favorites

We used the Printable Tattoos from Fifth and Hazel, but since they were reversed for tattoos, and we didn’t have the paper, we flipped them to print. And then we hauled out my somewhat absurd collection of stamps, pens, tapes, vintage Letraset, and all the rest and I carved us a little heart stamp. 90s rom-coms seemed required (Hope Floats, Sliding Doors).

Yesterday at work, I was pleasantly surprised by all of these little signs posted around the building in random spots.

(excuse the crappy camera phone quality)

The signs’ pro-love messages, and not specifically of the commercial, heteronormative V-Day variety, were such a nice surprise.

Love, Love, Love. Love is all you need.

(all photos by me)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKVcQnyEIT8

And what did I buy?

Photoshop! InDesign! Illustrator! Acrobat Pro!

Hooray! Hooray! Hooray!

Turns out I had a fair amount of gift card credit, plus a University staff discount, which meant that the balance was $84.90. Seemed fated.

I’ve spent the majority of the day playing around in Photoshop, using some of the Pugly Pixel templates I bought forever ago, and generally setting up preferences and nesting. Exciting!

The timing was just about right, since I’ve finally gotten past some big deadlines and have spent the last few months thinking about photography, why I’m feeling less creative, why my Flickr is 5 months behind and I’m rarely posting images here anymore. I think I have a few answers.

In the meantime, my first little project: the many faces of Lucas. Remember that baby shower I threw a little over a year ago? Well, meet Lucas:

I was greeted by this cutie on the morning I landed in Madrid. (oh yeah, remember how I went to Spain and then never really talked about it? that’s upcoming too, I think.)

Having been there for the baby shower and on the day he was born, both of these things back here in Montana, it was so hard saying goodbye to him (and his parents, who had become dear friends) just four months after he was born so they could start anew in Portugal. But it did make the reunion a few months later pretty sweet.

So now it’s time to pull myself away from my new toy for a little while and re-enter the Land of the Living. But expect the occasional pimped out blog post, now that I’ve got a few more tools. Hooray!

(Any favorite Photoshop references or sources to share?)

But I don’t care. Nothing even close has come around since. And because I just saw this and I AM PSYCHED.

Magazine hoarding be damned, this will join my old stashed away issues!

So, Domino fan? Do you also hoard magazines? Which are your favorites, or the hardest to get rid of?

Somehow, I managed to post 99 times in 2011. That’s kind of incredible to me. And I spent most of the time thinking that I wasn’t getting around to posting often enough, feeling that nagging blogger impulse to start off a third of my posts with an apology.

But those are boring, so I’m going to just skip it this time around and chime in for only the fourth time this year.

Life is nutso. Again. (Still?) I’m never home in the daylight to take any of the many pictures I’ve been wanting to take. Ideas that spark in the few open moments, mostly when I’m roaring through the quiet streets of this town from one appointment to the next, mostly go unwritten.

But I do zone out more than occasionally via Pinterest, pinning and liking my way toward a total fantasy life, full of inspiration and quotes and rainbows. It’s like a drug.

But then I file them away into boards and rarely get a chance to go back through them. Kinda pointless.

So I thought I’d pull a few of my recent favorites. Shall we fall down the rabbit hole together?

I vote yes.

Mmmm. Ok, that was a nice little mini-vacation. No rhyme or reason, just a little departure from the day.

Are you on Pinterest? Do you use it as a way to step into fantasyland for a few minutes a day, or do you use it for actual real-life planning?

Many summers ago, my dear friend had a mix among his many burned CD mixes called “My Martin.” I burned it, tacking on my friend’s camp name to the mix, so that, to this day, my iTunes reads “Rumble’s My Martin.”

And so I was introduced to Martin Sexton.

When I heard he was coming to town again, I was quick to buy a ticket (ticket #21). Long before I knew whether anyone else would come.

Because I’m tired of trying to rile the troops. He’s wonderful in concert and I didn’t want to miss out.

For a while, a friend was going to meet me. But her work plans changed, last minute.

And so I went to dinner alone and ordered my new favorite pizza. I read a bit from “Life Would be Perfect if I Lived in That House” (recommended by Holly from Nothing But Bonfires). I had a couple of beers, beers that really hit the spot (kind of like the mystery of super-clean showers). And then I reveled in being alone in a crowd.

Alone in a singing, clapping crowd. Feeling a sense of community I haven’t felt in a while, even in a city where people throw around the “c” word like it’s, well, candy. Singing along to some of my favorite songs. Singing backup when he asked the crowd to “sing like angels.” Clapping and snapping and tapping my toe. Yelling out the request for my favorite, “Hallelujah,” something I never would have done had I known the person sitting next to me. But my seatmate and I made friends after all. Her boyfriend loved “Hallelujah” just like me. And even though he didn’t play it, I left feeling really content. Pleased I came.

So here it is, Hallelujah, but a couple of other favorites. If you get a chance to see Martin Sexton, alone or with others, I highly recommend you go.

Martin Sexton, Hallelujah
Martin Sexton, Angeline
Martin Sexton, Beast in Me

As far as I’m concerned, all of these are from “Rumble’s My Martin,” the album.

I didn’t get glasses until high school, even though I started failing eye exams much earlier (and hiding the results from my parents…) I knew I wouldn’t be able to get contacts right away, only dorks wore glasses, so I just ignored the blurriness. Which is shocking to me now, the idea of going through life not seeing any leaves, just green blobs for trees.

I only got them because my high school algebra teacher with the wicked coffee breath used to write pop quizzes on the chalkboard in his tiny handwriting. One day I couldn’t read any of it, panicked and started to cry, and a kid I didn’t especially like figured it out, subtly asked my teacher if he could copy the quiz for me, and placed a copy of the problems on my desk. I decided it was time. And from then on I was a lot nicer to that kid.

For years I wore contacts, but they never really suited me. I’m not one of those people who only feels awake once I put my contacts in – they make me feel tired, give me headaches, I get the dreaded halos and my eyes guzzle tons and tons of eye drops. Anymore, I really only wear them when I’m playing sports or getting really dressed up. And I’m all about the dailies so I can pluck them and chuck them once they start to drive me nuts.

Which leaves legally blind me as the glasses girl. And I’m cool with that. They’ve become a big part of my identity. But deciding on a pair, the first thing people see when they look at you every day, is a big choice. I’ve had a couple of pairs I really loved. And a couple that were just so-so.

After a multi-country search, I finally found a pair I really like. Kinda scholarly, kinda artsy, not too mannish/Teutonic. Tortoiseshell, which I always dig. But also purple. They’re even called marbled lilac. Ooh la la.

I’m a fan, even with the silly logo on the side of my face. They suit me.

Do you wear glasses? Are you one of those people with perfect vision who wishes she wore glasses, kind of like how straight-haired girls always wish they had curls? (figures.) Do you agree with my grandma, a woman who probably wore 50 pairs of glasses in her life, that boys don’t make passes at girls who wear glasses?

(all photos by me except the product shot)

Hope 2012 is treating you well thus far. Did you buy a new calendar? I’m still contemplating my options, but would love hearing which ones others chose. I thought about skipping a calendar this year, but now I’m having second thoughts. There’s something really pleasing about the monthly ritual of flipping a beautiful calendar to a new, seasonal page.

If you’re wanting to make some goals for the year ahead, I highly recommend Susannah Conway’s free Unravelling the New Year download. I’ve never done it before but sat down the other night to fill it out, think about last year, make plans for this year. And, finally, made the big step and chose a Word for the Year for the first time.

So what’s my word for 2012?

Fresh.

It’s all about fresh starts. Looking at the world with fresh eyes and stopping to appreciate what’s around me. Taking risks because every morning is fresh and new again. Staying on track. Eating better. Not beating myself up too much.

I’m excited when I think about what lies ahead.

What does 2012 hold for you?

(photo by me last night before hitting the town)

And it was just OK.

If I got really into a TV series (hello, True Blood!) I’d be getting discs one at a time for weeks, hardly ever seeing anything else. Seemed kind of silly. I don’t have cable, so my only non-Netflix options are Redbox (pathetic) or five versions of PBS (occasionally great, but extremely hit or miss. Way too many Holocaust documentaries for me this year.)

But now, I have but one word for you: Roku.

I got the TINY purple Roku LT for Christmas from my brother. Set up took less than ten minutes. It has a dedicated red Netflix button on the remote. And all of a sudden I feel like I have the best TV options ever. (not so much the TV, which despite being called TruFlat is anything but and has a weird green spot on the screen which generally corresponds perfectly with people’s faces…it was abandoned at my house for a reason…but I digress)

So many movies! So many TV shows! Plus Pandora and Amazon Video on Demand and Spanish TV channels and who knows what else since I’ve only had this thing hooked up for a few days! It’s awesome.

So I’m looking for some TV recommendations. I’ve heard good things about Friday Night Lights but have never seen it. Apparently it has amazing music? Think I’m going to start watching The Office – should I start with the UK version, or just go straight to Steve Carell and Co.? I’ve seen two seasons of Mad Men but might need to take a little break, since it’s a little depressing to me. What’s your favorite thing to watch on Netflix Streaming?

This sort of echoes my general, near-constant state of attempting to “catch up,” but seeing as how the majority of my most recent posts have been random updates, and random updates aren’t all that interesting, I’ve decided to go with one of my very favorite themes: organization.

There’s a grand irony to be found in my obsession with organization, out in full force every January with the coming of the “clear the clutter! solutions for small spaces! get organized at last!” magazine covers. Although I am organized as far as knowing where things are, at work, paying my bills on time, and so on, I am also sort of a huge mess, basically all of the time. When I travel, my suitcase has exploded within one day of arrival. My house has no shortage of piles. All of the time. And I have way, way too much stuff.

All of this organizational stuff is completely aspirational for me. I get that. It’s one small part of my love for IKEA and the Container Store. I fantasize that, someday, when I’m more settled and life is less hectic and I can actually build in storage, I will be less of a train wreck. Every January, it seems less and less likely.

And there’s something so silly about the fact that this push to organize and clear out comes right after Christmas, the root of so much stuff. And I love stuff, don’t get me wrong. I know I’ve written about this phenomenon before. I’m totally giddy with my new presents. I’m excited to have enough wine glasses to have friends over. I am wearing new earrings here as I type, new wool wrist warmers were perfect for my walk to work this morning, hot coffee in hand.

And that doesn’t even count the (many) things I buy for myself.

If all goes as planned, 2012 will be a year of great change. Everything is still uncertain; I’m feeling both excited and really, really freaked out. But, just as I’ll never be a minimalist, I also don’t want my stuff weighing me down. This is the year of use it or lose it. All of that stationery I’ve been saving forever? Trying to actually use it as part of my 52 Weeks of Mail challenge. The “fancy” paper napkins? Seems like a good excuse to have people over, or a way to spice up a solo brunch. I’ve been burning candles like nobody’s business, almost every night. The time to do it all is now.

So I’m going through some clothes and clearing out some of the clutter, as the magazine gods tell me to do. I’m scrolling through my Organization board on Pinterest more often than normal as the new year approaches. And I’m trying to jump on the new year, new (organized) world bandwagon one more time.

Wish me luck!

(ok, fess up: do you derive strange pleasure from images of organized spaces, even as you sit among total clutter? any tips that were promised to be life-altering actually have an effect on your everyday life?)

(ALSO, I would like to take this moment to remind everyone that paper goods are spelled STATIONERY. It’s not an unmoving, stationary anything, y’all. I see this typo all of the time and it drives me batty. And now the WordPress built-in spell check tells me stationery is not a word. False! 2012 resolution, paper people: spell stationery correctly. That is all.)

My mom bought it for me. I’m a big fan. It needs a little more crack-filling and a fair amount of sanding.

Then comes the fun part: painting.

It’s been sitting, propped up against the non-functional fireplace in the living room, for a long time as I’ve debated what color to paint it. (ok, I’ve also been putting off sanding, as I hate sanding).

One part of me wants to paint it chartreuse. Because I love chartreuse.

Another part of me wants to use the sort of goldenrod paint I have in the basement, which was the result of the dude at Lowe’s claiming he could wing the color combo and come “pretty close” to what I wanted. Which was totally false. But the resulting color is bright and cheery, but best in very small doses.

And then a voice in my head says, “Stop making everything another random color. Paint it white.”

White would match the trim in my house right now and look good against the light gray walls, but might look dingy against not-quite-white walls in the future. Although seeing this similar mirror on Design*Sponge a few weeks ago might be moving me slowly into the white camp:

So, what color should I paint this mirror, keeping in mind its rather large size but thin frame? Do you typically stick to neutrals or are you like me and let a rainbow explode all over your living room? Any tips on making sanding less lame?

(first photo by me. second one from Design*Sponge: Sneak Peek: Samantha Hahn and David Moldawer.)

Why I’m Here

Because my mother was on a date
with a man in the band, and my father,
thinking she was alone, asked her to dance.
And because, years earlier, my father
dug a foxhole but his buddy
sick with the flu, asked him for it, so he dug
another for himself. In the night
the first hole was shelled.
I’m here because my mother was twenty-seven
and in the ’50s that was old to still be single.
And because my father wouldn’t work on weapons,
though he was an atomic engineer.
My mother, having gone to Berkeley, liked that.
My father liked that she didn’t eat like a bird
when he took her to the best restaurant in L.A.
The rest of the reasons are long gone.
One decides to get dressed, go out, though she’d rather
stay home, but no, melancholy must be battled through,
so the skirt, the cinched belt, the shoes, and a life is changed.
I’m here because Jews were hated
so my grandparents left their villages,
came to America, married one who could cook,
one whose brother had a business,
married longing and disappointment
and secured in this way the future.

It’s good to treasure the gift, but good
to see that it wasn’t really meant for you.
The feeling that it couldn’t have been otherwise
is just a feeling. My family
around the patio table in July.
I’ve taken over the barbequing
that used to be my father’s job, ask him
how many coals, though I know how many.
We’ve been gathering here for years,
so I believe we will go on forever.
It’s right to praise the random,
the tiny god of probability that brought us here,
to praise not meaning, but feeling, the still-warm
sky at dusk, the light that lingers and the night
that when it comes is gentle.

by Jacqueline Berger, from The Gift That Arrives Broken.

Whenever I come home from seeing my friend Anna, which isn’t all that often as she’s typically living in Sweden or Spain, I come back and have found new ways to I emulate her. She’s fashion-forward and Swedish, so I get a lot of my Scandi-fix from her. We can communicate in IKEA-ese, no problem, and there aren’t too many people who know their BENNOs from their BILLYs and completely understand my interest in weighing the pros and cons of what are, in the end, cheap bookcases. The perfume I wear most often is the same as one she wears, and I bought it both because I like it and because it reminds me of her. I consulted her a while ago about my dark corners above my built-in bookcases problem, which we solved with a KNUBBIG. We spent a lot of time in Barcelona talking about clothes and wandering H&M and Zara, Anna giving me tips on the newest and the best.

I’ve done a lot of shopping since I’ve returned. But this time around, the main takeaway was the power of candles.

I have this clear memory of arriving super early at the Göteborg train station when I was visiting her five years ago – something like 6 a.m. The station was quiet and I was early, so I stopped in for a latte and a cinnamon roll (they are everywhere in Sweden). All along the bar where you order, there were tealights lit. In the windows facing out to the main station terminal, there were small candles in shallow bowls of sand. In every other way, it was a typical train station cafe, indistinguishable from any other. I remember thinking “This is it. These little touches are what define Swedish style.”

It’s dark around here. Really dark. Sunset tonight is at 4:47 p.m., and I rarely leave work before 5:30 or 6. It’s nothing compared to winter in Sweden, but I’m inside during the fleeting light of day, so it feels similar. Dark. Closed in. A little heavy.

And so I’ve been lighting tealights in the windows almost every night. I got this simple 6 slot glass tealight holder for Christmas a few years ago, and then I found almost identical versions, both 4 and 6 slots, a few months ago at Ross. I love their simplicity. I love that I don’t have to watch them as closely as tapers (although the holder next to the [real] tree is taking a little hiatus). I love how they flicker and how the windows reflect the light back into the room. Cozy. Mysig. One of the highest compliments a Swede can give you.

Following her lead, I’ve even started lighting candles during the day. I don’t have her IKEA scent combination concoction down quite yet (apparently it’s common knowledge that certain kinda funky IKEA candles smell good in conjunction…) but I’ve been lighting one good-smelling candle along with my tealights when I’m home on weekends. Why reserve candlelight for special occasions or romantic rendezvous? Maybe I’m not quite Swedish, because I have to admit that I still feel like candles make things feel special. I’ve just decided that special can happen every day.

Are winters dark where you live? How do you cope? Candles? Tea? Gobbling down mass quantities of Vitamin D?

I’m sitting in my living room, listening to “Linus and Lucy” for one of the first times this season, a little transfixed by the Christmas tree, finally decorated. It’s my first tree (and I even wielded the saw!) and is mostly covered with my parents’ castoff ornaments and a bunch of FIMO fruit ornaments I made a couple of years ago but never had anywhere to hang. It’s a little motley, I guess, but it has tons of lights and so far it hasn’t fallen over (it’s threatened it, more than once, and two of the stand’s legs are propped up with books should you happen to lift the white sparkly tree skirt…). Did I mention this same tree also slid off the top of my car and had to be re-attached in 40 mph winds on the side of the highway? It’s been a trial.

But now it looks pretty good. Cozy.

It’s sort of a weird reflection of how things have been going for the past couple of weeks. Stressful. More complicated than seems necessary. And with a couple of frantic moments to keep me on my toes.

But everything is going to be alright.

Beef stew is simmering in the crock pot. A load of laundry is humming in the basement. I’m finally unpacking two suitcases – one from Spain, the other from Thanksgiving weekend. One has summer dresses and ballet flats, the other is stuffed with fleece and wool and capilene, the necessary Montana tree cutting armor. The storm windows are in place, and there’s snow on the ground.

I’m going to catch up on my letter writing this evening, get back on track with 52 Weeks of Mail. I’m excited to send out Christmas cards in a few weeks – letterpress cards I bought on sale last spring.

I’m not caught up. Not even close. I’m not even sure what that might mean anymore.

But things are good. Everything is going to be alright.

How are things with you, friends?

(photo by Brian W. Ferry, used with permission. If you like dreamy photography and artful everyday moments, his blog is probably for you.)

(Murmuration from Sophie Windsor Clive, via the thinking tank)

So much swirling in my head so I’m not quite ready for any Spain posts. Still need to download photos to my computer. Still need to unpack my suitcase, bulging everywhere in the middle of the living room. Whoops.

I had a great time, as you probably might have guessed. Saw lots of important people in my life. Took some photos. Ate lots of good food. Watched an entire season of True Blood on my computer, mostly at night and wearing headphones while I was wide awake and everyone around me slept. Turns out True Blood is totally not the show to watch on planes or trains or in public places – mortifying, really, like watching super sexy scenes with your parents. Plus blood.

It also gave me nightmares about people coming up from behind me and grabbing my neck..and then pickpocketing me. Still worth it, though. Such a guilty pleasure, that show.

I also read Prayers for Rain, one of Dennis Lehane’s Kenzie and Gennaro detective novels. Have you read any of them? Gone Baby Gone is probably the most well-known thanks to the Affleck brothers. Really quick, well-written, funny but dark reads, if you’re looking for a little change of pace and a trip into Southie. And I had to love the two main villains’ names. So, so perfect.

(speaking of everyone’s favorite blue collar Boston neighborhood, did you see Matt Damon and Ben Affleck are going to make a Whitey Bulger movie? Ought to be an interesting trip down Boston lane, no?)

Now that I’m looking at this I’m realizing that my carry-on entertainment consisted almost entirely of blood and torture. Go figure.

A (much lighter!) fashion post coming this weekend. I’ve been sort of sartorially obsessed since my return.

- Bill Bryson, At Home

I’ve been reading At Home for quite a while now. I’m actually really liking it – how things have found their way into our homes is sort of incredible – but I’ve just been short on reading time lately, and flipping through magazines is about all my brain can often take. I’m looking forward to finishing it on a train somewhere in the rain on the plain in Spain.

It has me taking a closer look at some of the things around my house. The macro lens I borrowed for a while this summer helped, too. I want one so, so desperately.

 Are you a detail person or a big picture person? Guess which camp I fall into?

“Yesterday. I use the mail. I use the mail. I don’t pay any bills online. And it would be terrible for the Postmaster General to be paying bills online.”

It made people laugh, but it also made me think. “I use the mail.” (repeated for emphasis!) If I love the post office, and I want the postal service to continue to be a part of my life, I need to use it. I can’t be one of those people bemoaning the state of the universe when I’m contributing to it just as much as the next person.

The thing is, I love writing letters. Sure, I love receiving letters (any mail, really, which may be why I get about 12 magazines via subscription) but really I just like writing and sending them, whether or not I get a reply. It’s reaching out to someone you care about. It’s a way of showing friends that they are on your mind. It’s a pause for gratitude. It’s a longer than normal break from the go, go, go lifestyle. It’s stepping away from perfection and allowing cross-outs and missing words and realizing “this should be four paragraphs and not just one.” It’s an excuse to use my massive pen collection.

And I have yet to meet someone who isn’t pleasantly surprised to receive a handwritten letter in the mail. It’s a day maker.

So I’ve decided to write more handwritten letters. And as a way of keeping track, I signed up for 52 Weeks of Mail, a plan to send one handwritten letter or postcard per week. Although the challenge started in early October, I have sent out about a card a week in the past few weeks, and with postcards from Spain starting very soon, I think I’ll be on track. Writing weekly is going to be sort of difficult, I’d guess, as far as remembering and planning and making time, but I’m also really excited about it. It’s not a chore – it’s prioritizing something that I really love to do and that brings happiness to other people, too. Plus, it will assuage some of my guilt. Ha!

So I’ve decided not to do November Blog Posting Month this year. I spend plenty of time online. I’m going to start writing more letters instead.

Did I tell you that I’m starting a calligraphy class in November?

I can’t wait to join one of the letter writing clubs around the US and Canada.

Send More Mail is a blog full of inspiration.

Do you write letters? Have a love of postcards? A favorite calligrapher?

Do you let world events influence you personally to the point where you sign up for ambitious projects so you feel less guilty?

(image from the portfolio of Mary Kate McDevitt, found via Pinterest)

Playing in the background right now? When Harry Met Sally. Always makes me giggle. As my sister said today, “This movie is so perfect. A movie that can make me want Billy Crystal? Quite the feat.”

So, as a bit of a Ryan Gosling follow-up, I’ll confess that I’ve been waiting patiently for Crazy, Stupid, Love. to come out on DVD, with high hopes for a legit romantic comedy for once (despite the stupid punctuation and name I can never seem to remember). It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a killer romantic comedy – smart enough to make you forget just how unrealistic/cheesy/over the top they can be. Or enough of a guilty pleasure that you’ll willingly suspend all disbelief. We all want a little romance and a little comedy in our lives, right? And even more on rainy fall days.

I love it when people list recommendations. And I’m in need of some, since I’m in rom-com withdrawal lately. So, in no particular order, a list of key romantic comedies:

Before Sunrise+
Before Sunset
Love Actually*+<
Bridget Jones’s Diary*+<
The Holiday*+<
Maid in Manhattan*
10 Things I Hate About You+<
Love and Basketball (comedy? not sure. still love it.)+<
Mamma Mia!+
Sixteen Candles+<
Princess Bride<
Sleepless in Seattle*
Notting Hill<
My Big Fat Greek Wedding+
Dirty Dancing+
Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights*+<
Serendipity*+
Say Anything
He’s Just Not That Into You<
When Harry Met Sally*+<(here you go, Billy!)
Two Weeks’ Notice+
Brown Sugar+<
The American President+
Kate and Leopold+
Away We Go<
While You Were Sleeping*+
Knocked Up +
Father of the Bride (I have to confess a preference for Part 2)
Sex and the City (the original, part 2 was atrocious)<
13 Going on 30 +
My Best Friend’s Wedding+<
You’ve Got Mail*

*includes Christmas scene
+ includes dance scene
< includes particularly hot guy
*+< Ultimate Romantic Comedy

Any favorites I’ve forgotten? Any recent rom-coms make your list?

I actually met him way back when while he was filming The Slaughter Rule in my hometown. He’s gotten hotter. And the feminism helps, along with his dog.

(From Feminist Ryan Gosling, the funniest Tumblr I’ve seen in a long time.)

So to the girl who shouted “Love your shoes!” while riding her bike by in the rain, thank you.

To the guy who saw me through the window with my hands full and went way out of his way to hold the door open for me, even though he was going the opposite direction, thank you.

To the girl who came up to me while I was attempting to wheel a cart consisting of heavy AV equipment, my laptop, and my dinner (frozen Tai Pei dinner I had microwaved…yep), all shielded with an umbrella, across a very long brick walkway and said, “I saw you were struggling. I know what that feels like. How can I help you?” thank you.

No really, thank you.

Even on the not so great days, the world can be a really wonderful place to be.

Their readings were quite wonderful. Some poems were funny, some were poignant, some were intense.

But more than anything, what stuck with me was the poets’ courage. Their exposure.

I am not a risk taker. And I’m a really private person, despite posting thinly veiled emotions here, relying on some strange sense of anonymity I can’t quite put my finger on.

He read in a language not his own, despite an almost impenetrable accent made stronger by his limited hearing. He was shaking and sweating – so nervous after having written almost 20 books, after countless readings in his native tongue – and there was something so endearing about his discomfort. I don’t mean endearing as in cute, but as in humanizing – he seemed like any other guy, except that he was reading his funny and sometimes really beautiful poems, poems few could write. All of this from a man who intimidated me so much at first that I almost dropped his class. I wanted to hug him.

The next readings have stayed with me this week. She read from a couple of books, her newest about a breakup, and so many people in the room knew just who she was referring to, her former love who is well-known around town. She spoke of loneliness and disappointment and longing, emotions we’ve all felt, sometimes in the same combination, but are ashamed to admit for fear of seeming weak. She seemed, at times, weakened by all that’s come to her in recent years. But in being so honest, so out there, sometimes seeming almost on the verge of tears, she also appeared so strong, so gutsy, steely at her core. Someone not to be trifled with. I was sort of in awe of the whole thing. It’s not easy in a small town to speak about love and loss, about homesickness and isolation.

I was totally inspired.

After not putting myself out there for a long time, I’ve been trying to be a bit braver lately. Walk up and talk to people who pique my interest. Express how I’m really feeling to friends. Admit to my weaknesses, my exhaustion, my fear. And I’ve fallen on my face a couple of times. It’s sucked. But I’m OK. A while ago, I read somewhere “I’d rather be fearful than regretful” and that has sort of stuck with me lately. There’s a strange power in vulnerability.

In the next months, I’m going to need to be brave, to be open to new experiences, to see where new adventures may take me. I feel like a bird, scared but ready to leave the nest, just looking for the next branch to which I’ll fly.

A work project that has been ongoing since about May is finally starting to wrap up – in a few short weeks, the whole ordeal will have ended. Finally. And I can start unburying myself from emails and unfinished projects.

Despite my mostly last minute GRE prep, I think the test went pretty well. I took the new GREs, but was given a score range at the end of the testing based on the old scoring scale, so who knows how it will all shake out. The score range seemed good. Better than expected. Mostly, it is over and I can stop lugging around this beast:

And then I’ve been devoting a ton of time to admin stuff for the community arts center where I’m a board member. Lots of good things upcoming, important changes being made. But I’m exhausted at the moment.

I haven’t been home for much more than sleeping and changing of clothes in what feels like a really long time.

The dishes just sit in the sink. One more frozen meal after another. Sleeping on a flat sheet because I need to do laundry and wash the fitted one (!). It’s pretty bad.

Two weekends ago I finally spent a little time tinkering around at home. Made a huge stir fry and used a bunch of veggies from the farmer’s market. Put together the IKEA cabinet I bought over a month ago:

(was convinced I had taken a picture in my living room, but…yep. Can’t find it.)

Unpacked and sorted another box from my parents’ house, as I’m slowly trying to get everything in one place so I can actually assess how much I have and how much needs to go. A long and sort of overwhelming project.

But the upside? I found my favorite quilt, a high school graduation present.

And I’m not the only one who’s a big fan.

I’m finally ready to welcome you.

Celebrating with quilts and peppermint tea, quiet evenings listening to Adele. Leaf collecting has officially begun. Pumpkin muffins on this week’s agenda.

So, pull up a chair and tell me: what are your favorite fall rituals? Who’s playing on your stereo these days?

Adele, One and Only from “21″
Adele, Lovesong from “21″
Adele, Someone Like You from “21″

(photo via hier houd ik van on flickr, first seen on Pinterest)

“The idea of having travel in your future is like having a book that you haven’t read by an author who you love.” – Paul Theroux

One month til takeoff.
(from NPR’s Talk of the Nation)

So I had to laugh (ok and kind of shudder!) while studying GRE vocabulary words a few weeks ago, at Kaplan’s definition of “engender.”

ENGENDER: to produce, cause, or bring about
His fear and hatred of clowns was ENGENDERED when he witnessed the death of his father at the hands of a clown.

I kid you not.

Apparently I’m not the only one with clown issues.

(direct quote from Kaplan New GRE Practice, Strategy and Review)

(also, the book misspells eulogy. Pretty much spells it like Zoolander says it.)

The “Vintage Wood Office Chair” from Restoration Hardware:

$495. Shipping starting at $95.

Cost of my chair? Nada. Given to me. And I like mine more.

I can’t express how happy these kinds of things make me.

(chair image from restorationhardware.com, via houzz)

Moonlight blank newsprint across the lawn,
Three-quarters moon, give or take,
                  empty notebook, no wind.

When it’s over it’s over,
Cloud crossing moon, half-clear sky, then
                  candle-sputter, shadow-crawl.

Well, that’s a couple of miles down the road,
                      he said to himself,
Watching the moonlight lacquer and mat.
Surely a mile and then some,
Watching the clouds come and the clouds go.

Citronella against the tiny ones, the biters,
Sky pewter-colored and suddenly indistinct now—
Sweet smell of citronella,
             beautiful, endless youth.
The book of moonlight has two pages and this one’s the first one.

Foresake me not utterly,
Beato immaculato,
          and make me marvelous in your eyes.

—Charles Wright, from Bye-And-Bye: Selected Late Poems

Yes, this is odd.

Perhaps it was driven by my too little too late attempt at buying some Missoni from Target bath towels. I’m not super in love with the chevrons, necessarily, but I’ve accumulated a somewhat random assortment of bath and hand towels, but they just happen to be in a palette of colors pretty much encapsulated here:

So I thought, throw in a little zig and a little zag and I almost seem to have some method to my madness.

Of course, they sold out immediately. So much for my bath towel fantasies.

Growing up, we lived five blocks away from my grandparents’ house, a big rambling brick house on two and a half lots with three stories, plus a basement, plus a super creepy cement basement below that. One of the strange features of this big old house was the single bathroom on the main floor – a half bath tucked under the stairs. To adults, I’m sure this space was sort of claustrophobic, especially to the mostly tall members of my family. But to kids it was just the perfect size – a secret space.

Like many (many) of the walls at this house, the walls of the bathroom under the stairs were covered in green large-scale floral wallpaper. Additionally, there were a few paintings my uncle did, which I’ve always loved. Simple watercolors, one of a group, one of a single man.

And then some literary art.

In front of the toilet, nestled in the weird little alcove made by the slant of the stairs, was a framed excerpt from a John Donne poem. And behind the toilet, art with Ahab and an excerpt from Moby Dick.

You don’t really think about the time you spend in the bathroom every day over the years, but when my grandma died and we moved everything out of the house, it seemed that most everyone could recite that Donne poem from memory. I can do it right here:

“No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s, or of thine own were; any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore, never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”

Fixed a couple of punctuation marks, but otherwise, it’s lodged in my brain to stay. Only the guys really know the Moby Dick quote…since it was hanging behind the toilet.

Anymore, the bathroom is one of the few places where we stop for a few minutes with very few distractions. That might say something about the state of the world.

So maybe I shouldn’t be advocating for any kind of multitasking. But isn’t there something kind of beautiful about this wallpaper? And wouldn’t you get really good at identifying small areas of the globe, after a while?

Do you ever find yourself deep in thought about things like bathrooms, topics you’re sort of embarrassed to admit fill the empty spaces in your head? (please say yes.) What does your perfect main floor bathroom look like?

(photos from target.com and the Sept/Oct. 2011 issue of Lonny magazine, found via Pinterest)

When one is faced with studying for an exam one does not wish to take, at least new paper products provide a little relief.

GRE. On Monday. Wish me luck.

(back to re-learning algebra)

Dave Matthews Band, The Gorge, 2004

All but one of these yahoos will be joining me to relive our youth at the Caravan this weekend. Four nights, three days of concerts, flying and driving in from Chicago, L.A., and all corners of Montana, with a couple of new people (sisters, wives, fiancees) added along the way.

These will be my 7th, 8th, and 9th Dave shows – small potatoes – especially since I haven’t been to one in forever. A couple of people in our group have passed the century mark, pretty sure.

Should be epic.

Ordering purple suede shoes is the answer.

Did I miss out on some gene for an internal Ann Taylor Should Appeal To You Now clock? Loud music and socially inappropriate hair colours still seem infinitely more worth my time and attention, and I don’t get what all the fuss is about.  I don’t see anyone wagging accusatory fingers at JD Salinger while crying “Peter Pan complex! What about your Adult Life! Why do you keep Talking About Teenagers!” to the high heavens, and frankly, I don’t see why I don’t get to play with the boys, too.  And besides, I pay my bills on time.  I’m a great cook.  I have dental insurance.  I’m a Reasonably Functional Adult. “

-  from The Rayanne Project, a smart blog I discovered via nogoodforme.com. My So-Called Life, you still know no equal.

(this Rayanne Project post was also pretty great)

I often get asked what I’m doing when I’m taking pictures of food. People find it quite odd, all in all. But this video hints a little at the beauty to be found in the food we prepare and eat. So many colors, so many textures – and a little strange alchemy in all of these ingredients coming together and forming something totally unique.

Don’t you wish every recipe was like this?

(via Little Upside Down Cake, but created for Kinfolk magazine, the top e-mag on my long To Read list)

After months and months of talking about it, thinking about it, planning a trip and then having to reconsider, daily Kayak email alerts about rising and falling fares, I finally bit the bullet and bought a ticket to Spain for this fall. It took a bonus at work (in about September), putting $30 or $40 per paycheck in a savings account, and a bit of my tax refund, but when I thought about the seemingly ever-growing list of things I want to buy, and the guilt that comes with that, I realized that nothing will make me as happy for as long as ditching this place for a while in favor of friends, food, photography, writing, and relaxation in my surrogate country.

My little jaunt will take me to Madrid for a few days, Barcelona to see a dear friend, back to my old stomping grounds in Córdoba to catch up, meet new babies, see old friends, and spend at least one quiet morning in the shadows of the Mezquita’s arches, and then back to Madrid, where I’m hoping to squeeze in time with friends now living in Portugal before I get back on the plane.

It’s never enough time. But still, I’m going.

Y no puedo esperar.

You know those roads you’ve driven a million times? For me, it’s the 200 miles between where I live now and my hometown. It’s a quick drive in the summer but a pretty beautiful one, with dramatic changes in scenery and a hop over the Rocky Mountains. There’s one section with rolling hills, about 60 miles outside of town, where the clouds are always dramatic, making you understand where the Big Sky Country motto comes in.

It’s so familiar and yet always surprising, too. I had a smile on my face when I merged from state highway to interstate, seamlessly, in contrast to the first time I ever merged on the highway, ever, at that same exit, driver’s ed teacher in the passenger seat as I clutched the wheel and looked over my shoulder over and over again.

So…my heightened stress levels last week may have made me vulnerable, but when I saw the Omiyage Surprise Pack featured on the Send More Mail blog…it was inevitable. To quote Janet (Ms. Jackson if you’re nasty), I was like a moth to a flame, burned by desire. (that’s the way love goes.)

The Canadian exchange rate is doing me no favors right now, but I don’t care. When I opened my door last night after another very.long.day and saw a pink shiny package, I actually squealed. Despite a desperate need to pee, the package had to be opened. Immediately. Bodily functions be damned.

And inside: so much freaking kawaii goodness. The perfect counterpart to a long, grueling day when not a single person said things to me like “What a sweet honey,” “take a rest,” “always thanks for you,” or “Good Lcuk” (actual spelling). These stickers said all of those sweet nothings, and did so with style to spare.

It’s funny that my last couple of posts were about having a homebody weekend, things being crazy, because they’ve only become so much more so. In some strange way, that weekend was less about rejuvenation as it was about gearing up for the next challenge, as it turns out.

Huh.

Sometimes we get what we need even when we’re unsure of what we need. A comforting thought.

And so tonight, I’ve earned a little time to wander my house. To put on some mellow music. To drink a PBR or two. And to bring order to a very small space, inspired by an article,”The Art of Arranging,” in this month’s Real Simple decorating issue.

Back in the next few days with Before and Afters.

Even so, it’s mid-July. I think I’ve eaten a total of two meals involving the barbecue. And now we’re going through this weird afternoon/evening thunderstorm phase that is even further preventing me from being outside when I get home from work. Time feels like it’s slipping away.

And so even though it’s not June anymore, summer feels like it’s just begun. This song has been on my mind, and spinning in my stereo, quite a bit lately. The Decemberists will be in town this coming week, and I finally decided to bite the bullet and see them again. This song is a big part of what tipped me into the “yes – go for it” category. That, and the use of “panoply” and “barony” in this song. Get a couple of beers in me (the concert’s at a brewery, after all) and I just may find myself shouting “Colin Meloy! I love your vocabulary!”

The Decemberists, June Hymn from The King is Dead

I’ve just been feeling worn down by all of the running around like a crazy womanness.

So I’m really relieved to be having a productive, at home weekend. Trying to minimize the errand running. Checking a few things off my ever-growing to do list. Cleaning. Organizing. Putting away. Because at this point, leaving town and coming back to things the way they are wouldn’t feel very rejuvenating. There’s no way out but through. (Did you guys sing the Going on a Lion Hunt song when you were kids? Reminds me of that. “Got to go through it!” But I digress…)

It’s also been a long time since I did a house-related post, so I thought it would be fun to come back on Sunday (or even Saturday? I’m on a roll) with some photos from around the house, a little glimpse into my quiet weekend.

But for now, the back patio is calling me. Happy weekend!

ast night, after plans changed slightly from what I was anticipating, I came home and watched Annie Leibovitz: Life Through a Lens. Within a few minutes, I was reminded that I had seen it before. But as an unabashed Annie fan, it was fun taking it in again, watching her eye and her style and her confidence grow through film over the years. It’s not a balanced portrayal of her strengths and flaws, as it is written and directed by her sister, but I’ve heard the horror stories – how demanding she can be, how poorly she can treat her assistants, how her shoots balloon way past their budgets. That doesn’t really interest me as much as the central question: with millions of people toting cameras, how does a photographer develop such a unique and recognizable style, and all while evolving and changing with time? I would argue that no photographer makes work as recognizable as hers. And it is so striking and so often so lovely.

I loved this line from one of the interviews: “I remember sitting down and looking at that book [The World of Henri Cartier-Bresson] and seeing that you could travel the world. The camera gave you this license to walk out and be alone in the world but, you know, you were there with a purpose. It was a very important discovery.”

I did a presentation about her in high school and I knew the (apparently very low-res) photos I used for it were still lurking somewhere on my hard drive. I thought it would be fun to see what my high school self found and decided to highlight.

I own and highly recommend her massive book A Photographer’s Life: 1990-2005, which I bought used at Powell’s in Portland a couple of years ago. I flip through the photos, ranging from family snapshots to high-end Vogue cover shoots, when I’m looking for some new photography ideas, especially as I try to improve my portraiture. Trying to edit down her massive portfolio is one of the storylines of the documentary, actually, shots pinned up all around the room in her massive barn/workspace in New York. She’s such a master of portraits that I just ordered her book Olympic Portraits – because, come on, Annie and Olympians? What more could a girl want?

(drop cap by Jessica Hische; all photos by Annie Leibovitz)

And it wasn’t even super deep or fascinating, just thoughts that had come to mind over the course of the day.

For whatever reason, lately I’ve been having publish block. I start writing a post, I add some photos, but something seems to be missing and I don’t hit “publish” – and isn’t one of the perks of blogging that it’s supposed to be low pressure? Off the cuff? I need to keep that in mind, get back into winging it and seeing what comes along. Actually publish a few of the many posts I have saved.

Save fewer drafts, publish more posts. Good mantra.

There’s actually a lot to be told these days. Good things, mostly.

Bloggers out there, have you tried the new WP full screen Zen mode? I think I like it. I could use a little more Zen in my life.

This MacBook is nice and all. I’m not Mac inept, but I still find the “use two fingers on the trackpad to right click” to require way more coordination than just right clicking. I’m feeling a bit Goldilocks about it, I guess – the keys are a little too far away from one another, the keyboard a bit too small. And if I’m using a Mac, I’d like the Dashboard and move the windows out/see everything don’t know what it’s called function shortcuts, please.

But one big perk of this particular model: Photoshop. I may not have my fonts at hand, but surely I can knock out some projects I’ve been needing to work on, right?

So, wrapping things up, here are a few photos from the last couple of days:

God, moving sucks. And I wasn’t even the one doing it.

Things have gotten away from me a bit lately, in general as well as in terms of this little June project. Life is in flux, in so many ways. And, in wanting to talk about it while also maintaining my carefully curated semi-anonymity here, I’ve found myself feeling stuck.

I say that I don’t want to get Dooced, but that’s a small part of things – sort of a cop out. I know that. I’ve been surprised to find how private I am, in a lot of ways. Maybe it’s smart. Or maybe it’s personal preference or paranoia – not wanting any random person to know the ins and outs of my life. Or maybe there’s more to it.

In the world of Facebook, we broadcast our whereabouts, our relationships starting and ending, our frustrations and happiness, our lunches. It has a tendency to make things that really matter seem on equal footing with all of the banal bullshit. Or at least that’s how it feels to me. I’ve heard about countless engagements and divorces, even deaths, via the status update. And I can’t help but resent that.

Recently I spent a little time with someone who has no qualms about telling everyone what he loves and hates. He has a tendency to express himself so openly that he sometimes looks kind of pathetic. Kind of angry. Kind of a lot of things we all are, sometimes, when we’re not just showing the PR version of ourselves.

I know the same level of honesty or bluntness, the total lack of filter, whatever you want to call it, isn’t me. And I’m thankful for that, in a lot of ways. But I’m also kind of in awe of it and trying to learn a little something from that acceptance of vulnerability. It’s so goddamned refreshing. Somehow it’s different from the unfiltered broadcasting of big and little, good and bad. And that’s something I’m still sorting out: how to respect the importance of how we feel, be honest and authentic, even in cyberspace, while still maintaining my own sense of boundaries and what feels right to me.

“The heart of authenticity is the courage to be vulnerable.” – Brené Brown

OK, so blah blah – what does all of this have to do with creativity, you ask?

I’ve been reading a bit of Brené Brown’s blog after watching a TED talk she gave about vulnerability. And I came across this post about living a creative life. This thought really resonated:

“I had the creativity scars that many of us have; the ones that come from not being able to draw a still life in middle school and being told that I better stick with writing and reading.”

Yep. Because my grades were all-important for so long, I grew to dread art class – the one class that would get in the way of my perfect report card. Not only was I, along with others, given the impression that I had no talent, no ability, but we were also graded A-F dating back to grade school art classes. Maybe the kids who couldn’t carry a tune dreaded music the same way? I have no idea.

I spend a lot of time now pointing out that “I’m not artistic, just kind of crafty.” Because anyone can be crafty. Crafty just relies on the willingness to try, to buy random supplies, to not get your feelings too hurt if it doesn’t turn out the way it looked in the magazine photo.

But isn’t the same true for so many aspects of creativity?If you’re just willing to try and not be embarrassed and practice, you can do it, at least kinda. I won’t pretend I have innate drawing ability or painting ability or musical talent. I could work at all of those for a long time and not create a single masterpiece. Or a single thing that didn’t look like a fourth grader was involved. I’m not foolish.

But there are things, creative things, I do pretty well. Writing is one. Photography is another. And there’s no shortage of crafty projects!

But there’s also the unsung creative heroes: Problem solving. Curiosity. Wandering. Decorating. Fantasizing.  Cooking.

And so, in honor of some of those, a few things that have been inspiring to me in the past couple of days, in the midst of moving chaos and carpet cleaning and furniture stacked up in the kitchen and to the rafters in the garage.

• My garden style pinboard on Pinterest
• The Empire State building looking like this
• Bon Iver cover songs

Bon Iver, Your Love (The Outfield cover)
Bon Iver, I Can’t Make You Love Me/Nick of Time (Bonnie Raitt cover [with a little Leon Russell intro] live on Jimmy Fallon) (two of my favorite B.R. songs mashed into one!)

• 29 Ways to Stay Creative video on Vimeo
• Coffee can lanterns
• Vision and Voice: Refining Your Vision in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom (just arrived yesterday!)
• The Hairpin
• my journal
• The book I’m trying to read (more on that soon)
• The homes in Brothers & Sisters reruns (ok, and Dave Annable)
• Sunshine on my shoulders and walks to nowhere
• Also, walks to get ice cream

A few photos coming tomorrow.

Do you feel creative? Artistic? Crafty? Inspired? When? Where? Why not?

Not a bad place to have a couple of drinks with family and watch the sunset from the patio. A good Monday.

We got rained on in cycles throughout the afternoon. But got rid of a lot of junk! Sometimes cleaning some things out makes room for thinking, and occasionally even for creativity.

Sunday dinner: Vegetarian pot pie stew, served over Caulipots. Both from Appetite for Reduction: 125 Fast and Filling Low-Fat Recipes.

Not the most photogenic subject, but quite tasty.

Cooking is one of my favorite Sunday afternoon activities, hands down.

But not so long ago I was remembering the best msn.com feature – the Week in Pictures. Every Friday, MSNBC pulls together about fifteen photos taken that week around the world. They come in from the big dogs – the AP and Reuters and AFP, but also from some small town papers. As the headlines have flown by in the past few months – Japan, Egypt, Libya, flooding in the Midwest, volcano in Chile, to name a few, and always Iraq and Afghanistan – the Week in Pictures has made each tragedy seem real. Has made the people who live in these places seem like individuals, crying into the shoulder of a husband because a tornado took the roof off the house and left nothing inside. The sheer number of identical cars, stacked like blocks in a coastal parking lot in Japan, has given a scale to the suffering that reading articles full of statistics will never be able to do.

But the Week in Pictures isn’t just about tragedy. Each week, there are truly lovely photos – from NASA, of festivals, the seasons unfolding north and south of the equator. There are charming moments and scenes to make you laugh, too. I love the peeks into everyday life, photos that would never make most newspapers because they aren’t directly related to a news item. They are what happens, all of the time, just outside the frame of the images that normally make it to our pages and to our screens.

And after looking through the week’s photos, you can vote for your favorite. Or which you think is best, which is different than a favorite, really. I guess the criteria is unclear, which, to me, is another level of fascination – each week I choose what I think is the best photo and then I guess what will come out on top in the voting. Then I click submit, and I am so rarely right. There are certain themes that are more likely to rank highly – anything involving the US military, cute kids, dogs – but I can’t seem to put my finger on any sort of algorithm to explain why people are drawn to what they are. And the photos I choose almost always land in the middle of the pack, and occasionally toward the very bottom. Apparently what attracts me is different from the norm (but I guess I could have told you that after having read so many women’s magazine articles!)

Now I subscribe to the RSS feed, so spending a few minutes looking through what happened in the world this week has become a bit of a Friday morning ritual. As I walk to work, I wonder what corners of the world might enter into my frame that morning. I reflect a bit on what it would be like to have tragedy come to your front door. I delight in the small changes that signal the start of a new season. And I smile as I think about how different we all are, how different our desires and preferences are, but also how photography can make so many exotic locales and customs seem not to different from our own.

In the meantime, these caught my eye.

I am so, so incredibly tired of the rain and semi-darkness at this point. Flowers help.

I know that some of this is a middle class luxury, one of omission more than actual disdain, like not knowing how to change your oil or being blissfully unaware of coupons or something. But, unlike canning or knitting or other semi-forgotten generational knowledge that one can learn, be relatively sure one is doing correctly, and not risk losing any limbs, there’s something a little intimidating about power tools. It’s hard to teach yourself, to my way of thinking. Maybe that just shows the extent of my ignorance.

At the local home resource center, they’ll not only let you use their woodshop for as little as two bucks an hour, depending on your household income, they’ll also teach you how to use their tools. Safely. And so with a fair amount of excitement and a healthy dose of trepidation, I enrolled in a four hour Intro to Power Tools course. Figured, if nothing else, it totally counts as a creative activity worthy of a blog post!

It was actually pretty bad ass, to my way of thinking. I was the least experienced by far (one guy was “building a small house” while another came with a sketchbook full of furniture drawings….) but I walked away feeling pretty OK about operating a jointer, a planer, a drill press, a chop saw, a belt saw, and even the dreaded table saw. When I walked in this evening after work, I didn’t even know half of those things existed, what their names were, let alone how to use them and keep all of my limbs. And already I’m thinking of projects, which is pretty empowering. I’d like to build a small bench for my back patio. I think I could cut mitered corners to frame a basic mirror. And now I’m going to look at all of those Before & After projects with a whole new set of eyes.

Do you know your way around a shop, or do you hammer nails in crooked (um, guilty as charged)? Any projects you’d like to tackle, either with tools you have or if only you knew how to use the tools you need? Any advice on where to begin building a basic toolbox with more than hammer/screwdriver/wrench/drill?

Yes. Most certainly.

Getting back into the real swing of things, I thought I better include another photo of flowers. Weekend, here I come!

Lately I’ve been rescuing a lot of random stuff from the curb or the garbage. I figure that if I don’t revamp them soon, they can just go back on the curb, no harm done. Basically no one I know shares this mindset and they all think I’m crazy, but that’s OK. One man’s crazy is another man’s creative? Maybe.

This was in the garbage at work, since no one else could see removing all of the many generations of tape (Scotch, masking, remnants of masking long gone).

Others saw junk, I saw a project! Popped in a movie and went to town with my razor blade. Now I just need to wipe it down and paint that sucker. I need few things in the world like I need paper organization.

And then to the retail therapy. Started off the morning on Sunday by buying a midcentury dresser on Craigslist. Ended the day knee deep in homewares at Ross/TJ Maxx. Bought plenty of useful things, some less so. And then there’s the cast iron apple pot. It looks like this, and is about three times the size of an actual apple:

And it was THREE DOLLARS. I said to a friend that it’s either going to be one of those dumb purchases you made because it was cute and cheap OR it’s going to be one of those things you never knew you could live without. First I’m going to try baked apples with cinnamon and maybe nutmeg and maybe ginger. Then, I might try roasting garlic. Or peppers. Or pears! Don’t worry, these are all going to be done separately. Decided it would give me a creative cooking outlet and be weirdly cute, to boot.

And then today was busy and Monday and … still raining. So my creative move of the day was contributing to someone else’s creativity. Amy Martin is a local musician who is attempting to fund her work via a Kickstarter-esque campaign. She writes pretty hippie songs and led a kids choir with a repertoire of songs about science. They opened for Ani DiFranco a few years ago and I was totally smitten. So, about the campaign: though I didn’t have much to contribute, I have a CD of hers I really enjoy and thought I could at least chip in. “Green Valley” is my favorite song written about the city in which I live (I think The Decemberists’ “The Apology Song” might be number 2). Also, for whatever reason, her political satire song “It’s About Oil” pops into my head sometimes in the shower. Listen to this song and you’ll see it’s really quite an image.

So, how was your weekend? Any exciting recent purchases? What would you roast in a weird little apple pot (if only you were so lucky to have one)?

Amy Martin, Green Valley (live)

Amy Martin, It’s About Oil (live)

(apple photo from amazon.com, other photos by me, Amy Martin’s music available on Amazon and iTunes)

This morning, pre-magazine lunch break, I was thinking about my Day 9 post and about the various mediums at my disposal. Still photos. Video, if I get less self-conscious about it. The written word. Expressing my thoughts through music.

But what about smell? Aren’t smells some of the most evocative in terms of nostalgia, in terms of memories?

Because we’re here among friends, and I don’t have a background in biochemistry, I’m going to tell you the best idea I have in terms of a future invention: a smell capturer. (copyrighted, as of right now!) I envision it looking a bit like a Flip cam or something, where you could stick it out and capture a smell – churros frying late at night, the smell of their accompanying chocolate mixing in (with a splash of drunkenness, just to capture the entire experience of waiting in line). That untouchable smell of chic in high end boutiques. The smell in the spines of old books. Hell, libraries in general would work for me. Would smells not be some of the best memories to bring home, from places near and far?

And we’re not talking those cloying, fakey fruity smells that come out of candles. This is the actual smell of fresh cut grass, the smell of electricity and earth before a thunderstorm. I have a feeling this library candle might not soothe me the same way a walk in the stacks does, because it wouldn’t smell quite right:

Just in case there are any lingering doubts about the power of smells, and to get back to that New York magazine, today I was looking at this page:

and found that all of a sudden, I was thinking of my friend Anna. She just popped into my head. And of course, she has nothing to do with “What to Buy Your Gardening Grandparent.”

Well, then I saw this ad on the facing page, which I swear I had not looked at up to this point:

Light Blue is the perfume she wears, but just some of the time. But ironically, it’s also what I often wear. And when I smelled it, I didn’t think, “There’s my perfume,” or “Light Blue.” I thought of my dear Swedish friend, now living in Barcelona, and getting ready to go out when I was visiting her in Pamplona. One specific night of trying on clothes and shoes and listening to Fito y Fitipaldis and pre-gaming in her apartment, where we had to be kind of quiet and keep the door closed because we didn’t want to disrupt her roommates. I have photos from this specific night.

much later that night (and the elusive author shows her face!)

But the smell brought me there, to that very room on the outskirts of town, to a moment I wouldn’t have even thought about photographing. And there was something kind of wonderful about it all. An entire creative walk down memory lane, all brought on by a perfume strip in a six month old magazine.

So now the obvious question: if you had one of my magic smell capturers, what would you capture?

But this damn ad just evoked the most disgusted response from me. I saw it in the back of an old New York magazine I was reading over lunch.

Here goes. Brace yourself.

1. Gross and ugly and totally nonsensical (rain boots that CAPTURE all of the rain in a tray-like sole, making your feet especially squishy? no thanks.)
2. If you’re going to cut up rain boots for your stupid ad, do you really have to use $125 Hunter Gloss rain boots, the same ones I’ve been coveting (in violet) for years?
3. I don’t know about you, but I think I’d hesitate about putting my feet in the hands of someone who so clearly has no respect for shoes.
4. I would comment on their lame photoshopping of the tag, but then I went a little crazy with the smudge finger.
5. Apparently they use dull implements at this place, because if you look closely, their hacking off of the toebox is all janky and crooked. Confidence booster.

These are the kinds of things that stick in my head all day. Do with it what you will.

I was thinking yesterday about the little ways we insert creativity into our lives, especially day-to-day. Do you doodle during meetings or when you’re on the phone? Do you read a novel over your lunch break? Watch a thought-provoking show or movie in the evening?

I subscribe now to the Writer’s Almanac emails. Once a day, a poem lands in my inbox. It’s a bit like how I drink coffee – sometimes I want to start my day off on the right foot and it’s the first thing I do in the morning; sometimes I save it for the mid-morning slump. But whenever I decide to read the daily poem and a bit about literary history, I look forward to it. I never know what kind of poem might come my way – nostalgic, melancholic, funny, traditional, modern, short, long – and part of the joy is in the anticipation, the daily surprise. Whatever it is, it just might be a poem I like. One that sticks with me. One that inspires other musings and creative thoughts throughout the day.

So I’m wondering, what’s your favorite creativity booster on days that can sometimes feel a little…beige?