For my birthday Nathan got me tickets to three different shows that happened here in Des Moines right around my birthday: Rooney, Phoenix and Tegan & Sara. Rooney was first, and it was a really fun little show in an intimate venue, and it was early in the day which turned out to be nice for us working types. Phoenix was the very next day, and their show was a little too loud and a little too packed and a little too blinding as far as the light show, but it was still fun.

Next came my actual b-day, which i spent trying on wedding dresses, watching Eat, Pray, Love and playing Apples to Apples with a handful of my lovely friends.

A few days later we saw Tegan & Sara, which was definitely an interesting show. They performed at Hoyt Sherman which is a really lovely old venue here in Des Moines. There was no opening band, and T&S played two sets: an acoustic set and one with the full band. During the first set they did some Q&A sessions which got to be a little long-winded, but they’re funny people so it was interesting to hear them talk about some adventures they’ve had both in the recording studio and on the road. We had to cut out of the second set a little early, but i still got to hear all of my favorite T&S songs.

Nathan’s gifts (comic books & concert tickets!)

Nathan made me tacos and fresh tortilla chips, french toast, and strawberry shortcake for my b-day. It was all AWESOME.

First thing i saw when i got to work Monday. Love it.

The day after Tegan & Sara, we went to the Iowa State Fair. If you haven’t been to our fair, it’s pretty much the best one in the country. And i say that because i think Martha Stewart said it, or something. It’s all about excess: who grows the fattest pig, the biggest pumpkin, the most enormous stalk of corn; how many calories can we pack into a single $6 fried-on-a-stick commodity; how many big ol’ corn-fed Iowans can you pack into a few hundred acres? I used to absolutely hate it and now i think it’s great fun.

I really wanted to steal a little chickie. They’re SO CUTE.

The calf looked a little sad.

Our famous Butter Cow. Life-size, all butter.

The biggest pumpkin weighed over 1,000 lbs.

So *that’s* why they call it eggplant.

That cabbage in the back was the size of a beach ball.

…And these were tiny! I like photographing produce…

“Star Boars” sand sculpture

Jabba

A sampling of the many, many pretty quilts

This year we ate: mini doughnuts, some rootbeer, a couple of exorbitantly priced brewskis, fried cheese curds (a must), i had 2/3 of a tenderloin (it took a while to find one that wasn’t the size of a dinner plate), and a turkey leg which we took home and made stock with. Have i mentioned that we’re getting really into the whole “domestic” thing?

This is the video for the song Bulletproof, just one of many catchy and dance-able tracks from the fantastic self-titled album (which you can get for $5 on amazon mp3 right now):

Despite all the buzz that’s been filling the media of all sorts for years about Eat, Pray, Love, i never had any interest in the book solely because of that ominous middle word, pray. A book like this is meant for entertainment and when you see the world one way and the author sees it another, it’s just hard to get anything out of it. However, having read and enjoyed the sequel Committed (which contained very little mention of religion or spirituality) and seeing that the movie was set to come out on my birthday, i decided to give Eat, Pray, Love a shot anyway.

First of all, i was hoping to learn more about why Elizabeth Gilbert decided to leave her marriage. The book does a good job of illustrating how completely incapacitated she was by the unhappiness she felt with her marriage and suggests that there was definitely a very good reason for all that misery, but fails to actually disclose what exactly the problem was. Gilbert says the reasons are “too sad and too personal” to write about, and so she doesn’t. And so i still can’t feel for her at all.

Here’s my problem with this: she chose to write this book. She disclosed a lot of personal stuff in the book (like the page about masturbation that made me want to go bury my head deep in a sand dune). She didn’t want to tell her ex-husband’s secrets, but he hates her anyway so why not go ahead and write about it and maybe help someone else’s marriage in so doing? Her divorce made her miserable, which made her have to go on a spiritual journey, which ended when she forgave herself for destroying her marriage. I see some sort of animal eating its own tail here. And the weirdest part is that she ends up getting married again. I’m sure that all of this is more complicated than i’m making it out to be and i definitely agree that marriages just need to end sometimes, but Elizabeth Gilbert has told me everything about these five years of her life except for what sparked it all and i’m left just wishing to know WHY.

Whatever it was that happened, it made her decide to pursue pleasure, spirituality, and a balance between the two. So she goes to Italy and that’s all fun and good. And then she goes to India and subjects herself to little sleep, little social interaction, a lot of hard work and a ton of chanting and meditation. This is the part i couldn’t relate to at all. Except maybe the beginning of it when she’s all whiny about the whole thing, ’cause that’s what i would feel like, too, in a place like that. But then it gets pretty mystical and i couldn’t help thinking “of course you’re going to start seeing electric snakes and stuff when you do that sort of thing to your brain.”

By the way – i’m going to excuse myself if i’ve used tenses incorrectly here because this is a blog and nobody is paying me for it, but Elizabeth Gilbert bounces from one tense to another in this book with a truly distracting frequency that to me just makes no sense. I think someone needs to go back and edit it one more time.

In Bali she meets a lot of interesting people and falls in love and seems to be a normal person again. Elizabeth Gilbert certainly is good at making friends with people, and i can imagine that traveling the world eating delicious food and talking to interesting people would be pretty great. I didn’t get the whole spiritual bit though, and i think the book was hyped way beyond its actual value. Overall, i’d say it was an okay book.

I did go see the movie on my birthday, and i thought the beginning where she just up and leaves her husband was even sadder on screen than in the book. I felt really sorry for her ex-husband. The spirituality was down-played and some plot elements were added for effect, but i think for the most part the movie was true to the story and, much like the book, all-in-all it was pretty alright. Save your $5.50-9 and get it at the Red Box some day.

Kinda catchy, eh? “Don’t put an apostrophe in ‘its’ unless you mean ‘it is.’”

Thank you, Jennifer!!

Happy Birthday to Me!

However, something about scouring the web for the perfect color palette for our wedding has made me totally smitten with color. This is somewhat odd considering that the primary colors of our wedding will be black and white and that a wedding is probably the one event where that palette is appropriate, but searching for the perfect accent color has really opened my eyes to all the subtly-different millions of colors out there and how certain combinations of them can change the way a person feels. I’ve even been buying more colorful clothing lately. It’s such a wonderful thing – who knew??

There’s a website called COLOURLovers that i’ve been using for several years as a source for color palettes, but i never created an account or started creating my own until now. I’m getting off to a slow start in terms of popularity, but i’m having a lot of fun creating color palettes from photographs. For example, the palette you’re seeing to the right is one i created from this photo:

…Which, by the way, i have forgotten the source of. I didn’t take the photo and i can’t remember where i found it, so if you know its origin please let me know!

And – designer friends – you should really consider trying this site out; it’s a lot of fun despite the fact that i have no idea why you can love a palette, follow a palette or a person, send love notes to a person or (i think?) a palette and yet can’t really go back and find the colors you loved/followed/left notes for. I wanna see what colors make you swoon.

This week i’m going to talk about The National. Their new album High Violet came out earlier this year, and while i don’t think it’s quite as good as Boxer it’s been steadily growing on me and i think it’s a really solid album. I discovered The National at pretty much the same time and in the same manner that i discovered Stars. I still don’t have their older albums, but i’m working on that.

Evidently The National doesn’t really “do” music videos, so here’s a live rendition of the track “Terrible Love” off of High Violet. There’s a little flub in the beginning, but keep watching.

So if you’re new here, welcome! A lot of my writing is purely about my own life, but i also like to review books, movies and music, rant about religion, post my photography, and correct people’s English. I’m also a bride-to-be, and i’ve been keeping track of the things that i find inspiring as i do my planing on my tumblr. Have a look around and please enjoy!

I bought the new Stars album The Five Ghosts a few weeks ago and it hasn’t left my CD changer yet. (Yeah that’s right, i have a disc changer in my vehicle and i use it. Way old school.) I discovered Stars a few years ago as i was finishing up at college, i believe, when i first heard a remix of their song Your Ex Lover Is Dead on the college radio station in Ames and thought it was hauntingly lovely. I think their style has gotten more upbeat since then, and i enjoy both the old stuff and the new.

This is my favorite track off the album. It’s called Fixed. Enjoy, and let me know what you think.

It was great to see everyone, but unfortunately all of the portraits that were taken are on other people’s cameras, so i can’t share them here.

Here are some photos that i took:

Grandpa’s Oranges

We stayed at my grandparents’ house, which is awesome because they make some really tasty European dishes and they insist on feeding their guests as much as possible. Every morning Grandpa makes fresh-squeezed orange juice from the tree in his own back yard. He explained to me that they have two different orange trees; one that produces fruit in the warmer months and one that prefers the cooler months, and this way he gets oranges all year long. If you’ve never squeezed an orange to make your own juice, you really must try it.

Weird flower-looking cactus things

We walked around the neighborhood and i photographed a bunch of the plants in people’s yards because they were just so weird. I told this to Jo and she didn’t understand what kind of world i was used to. I told her “leafy trees,” but i probably should have just said “corn.”

We drove out to the coast on day 2, and we of course experienced a lot of traffic despite having departed in the late morning. When we got there it was cloudy and breezy and cool, and thus i was cranky. When is it EVER not beautiful in California?! We got some In-N-Out burger and then decided to lay on the beach anyway until we could check into our hotel. Gradually it got sunnier, and when we retreated to the hotel we discovered that we had gotten burned something fierce. Tip for living: if you’re a pasty Iowan, don’t just sprawl out on the beach in the middle of the day for two hours and expect not to get roasted, no matter how cloudy you think it is.

This was the view from our hotel balcony. Did i say hotel? I meant resort. That was a surprise that came with several unexpected and incontestable fees. But what’s worse is that we were too sore to even take advantage of the amenities. We made it to Karl Strauss in Costa Mesa and the beer numbed our pain slightly, but we still turned in early and headed back inland right away the following morning.

Side note: it’s been two weeks now since we got burned and i’m still a little bit peely and itchy. I don’t even want to express what a humiliating, guilt-inducing and uncomfortable situation that was. But! We still had a really nice time in California. We wrapped up our trip by exploring the Huntington Library in Pasadena, which was huge and fascinating and could have occupied us for an extra day, easily.

Nathan getting a shot of Pinky. The original.

The bonsai trees were one of the most lovely & interesting things. How do they do that?

I find my teeth clenching uncontrollably when people write “I’s” and they aren’t talking about multiples of the letter I.

“I’s” is not English. You should say “my.” You would never say “I’s house” when talking about your dwelling if you weren’t faced with the grammatical problem of describing a place that belongs to both you and another person, so don’t say it when you are. The IMproper phrase would be “Nathan and I’s house.” The PROPER phrase is “Nathan’s and my house.”

Please scroll down to the Compound Possessives section on this page. Study it! Remember it! People like me will thank you!

Thanks & have a nice day.

I give you IowaCASA:

Check it out! This is one of Spindustry’s less-customized sites, so it isn’t my absolute best work but i think it looks pretty nice.

I was drawn to some of the same artists this year that i have enjoyed in years past, which means that if i had, say, and extra $1,300 lying around it would be well worth it to invest in a painting since my taste isn’t changing too rapidly. If only! Anyway, here are some of my faves:

Bruce Holwerda

I posted about this artist last time, but i was very happy to see him return to the festival this year because i think his paintings are so lovely and interesting.

Rick Preston

I’m always drawn to the photography, as you can see…

Andrew Sofjani

David Powers

It seems that strong, simple forms are what i enjoy the most. There were a couple of other painters that i enjoyed a lot but they have crap for websites so i couldn’t find good images to post. I also wanted to mention Keith Grace‘s work again but i couldn’t find images of his new object-on-gray pieces.

Check ‘em out, and if you missed the festival this year, i highly recommend that you not miss out again next year!

The first time i saw this movie was about three years ago and I pretty much hated it. I was told that without the context of the Syfy show Firefly on which it’s based, it probably wasn’t as good. So this spring when Nathan started watching episodes of Firefly on Netflix Instant Play, i wasn’t very interested at first. However, unlike Stargate which failed to interest me even after several chances, the show soon drew me in and Nathan and i finished up the one and only season together in no time. Afterward we watched Serenity, which was SO MUCH BETTER the second time.

So then a couple weeks ago i heard via twitter about this event called Can’t Stop the Serenity. There are a lot of Firefly fans out there (called “browncoats”) whose love for the series has only been fueled by the fact that it was canceled so early on and by their hopes that it might be revived again some day. These fans get together once a year in quite a few different cities around the world to watch Serenity on the big screen. I figured the event would probably be a nerdfest and thus a pretty awesome time. I had no idea.

First there was a costume contest which we missed and which we realized once we got there that we probably could have won if we’d dressed up. There were door prizes which included Anime box sets, chopsticks-and-pocky combinations and Firefly fanclub memorabilia. We won some fake Firefly universe currency – w00t! There was a showing of Dr Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, which we discovered is a short musical starring Neil Patrick Harris that was directed by Joss Whedon, the same guy who did Firefly (and a lot of other stuff, it turns out). That was pretty enjoyable. And then, of course, there was Serenity. (Which was STILL BETTER the third time around.)

But besides all of the delightful nerdery, there was a really good cause for all of this. I knew that the proceeds were going to be donated to a charity, but i was excited to learn that Equality Now is an organization that essentially fights against the things i hate the most in this world: rape, domestic violence, reproductive rights violations, trafficking, female genital mutilation, and gender discrimination. Unfortunately, i didn’t learn about this until after the silent auction had ended or i probably would have ponied up at least fifty bucks for a graphic novel to benefit this organization right then and there. (I can still donate, of course, but i won’t get a sweet comic book out of it.)

The main aim of Equality Now is to facilitate awareness about the atrocities being committed against women every day all over the world. It upsets me enough that i find it hard to write about, but this is something i think is really important so please check out their website and be sure to like them on facebook!

So nerdy sci-fi love + proceeds going to a great cause = a really awesome event that i’m already planning to attend again next year. And with that, i’ve just destroyed whatever “cool points” i may have gained with my big bro by drinking IPAs with him over the past couple of weeks.

I waited on that list for at least four months, and i tore through the book in a week and a half once it finally became available to me (about a week and a half ago). Although the citations of her resources are vague at best, Gilbert provides a wealth of information about marriage, so the book reads more like a non-fiction than a memoir (YES, i know memoirs are included in non-fiction, but you know what i mean). I told Nathan that if i were ever to write a book, it might be like this one; a lot of vaguely-cited facts, some probably-less-than-accurate yet educated conclusions drawn from those facts, a few not-too-detailed anecdotes, and a lot of musing.

I loved the book. I’m not a huge fan of modern-day memoirs because frankly i don’t find other people’s lives to be as interesting as they do, generally speaking. But this book is different; it’s more like looking inside Gilbert’s mind as she researches and ponders the topic of marriage and gradually finds a way of looking at it that makes her feel comfortable with getting married again. She isn’t a psychologist or an anthropologist or an expert on (or at) marriage, but she apologizes for all that and the book is what it is. One thing she is certainly good at is getting people of very interesting walks of life to talk about any given topic, and the conversations she has with people in far-away places about marriage are fascinating. She also includes a section about not having babies, and i was particularly interested in what her mommy friends had to say both for and against having children. Some were surprised by how much happiness having children brought them while others told Gilbert that it wasn’t really worth it even though they love their children dearly. And then there are the facts: that even though people think the childless will die alone and miserable, the happiness of people polled at the end of life is not dependent upon whether or not they have children. I found that fact encouraging, and i enjoyed Gilbert’s praises for “The Auntie Brigade.” There are a lot of us childless aunties out there, and we’re important.

The one thing i thought was lacking in this book was a little more intimacy. Gilbert doesn’t go into a lot of detail about her relationships, particularly the one that ended in a nasty, devastating, ugly divorce. What went wrong there, one wonders? One would think that a person who is so skeptical of marriage on account of having been the victim of divorce would analyze that failure thoroughly in her search for peace. The only concrete thing she says about it is that he wanted babies and she didn’t, and that she was twenty-five when they got married. She says that last bit as though it were explanation enough for why the marriage failed. Uh, excuse me?! You really need to clear that one up for me, Elizabeth!

The book is supposed to be a memoir, and it’s ultimately about Elizabeth Gilbert’s search for reassurance that getting married is the right thing for her to do. Personally, i was left biting my lip for her a little bit, because the conclusion she reaches is wobbly at best. She hasn’t analyzed her first marriage and deep down she seems to still hate the whole idea of marriage. It seems to me that in the end she just put a fresh coat of paint on a rotten attitude. But – that’s her problem, i suppose. Maybe this book just doesn’t quite convey the full extent of her mindset. Either way, i really enjoyed the majority of what she had to say.

I don’t think the book really changed my mind about marriage at all – i was already a cautious fan, by which i mean i don’t think marriage is for everyone but i’m pretty sure it’s for me – but it certainly made me think about a few things and informed me of some cool tidbits. Like, for instance, the fact that (statistically speaking) age 25 is the dividing line between marriages that are pretty likely to fail and those that endure. I’ll be 25 and Nathan will be 26 when we get married, so we’re sort of squeaking past that line. We’ve also got the advantages of: being of the same age, ethnicity, economic class and education level; not wanting babies; and having similar jobs. Our disadvantages are: not being strongly religious and not having a huge network of friends.

So, let’s hang out more, okay?

How do you people sleep at night?

This is not a militant atheist manifesto like The End of Faith or God is not Great. If you’ve ever watched The Cosmos, it reads more like a few episodes of that. In fact, it contains some of the same content. If you have not watched The Cosmos, you really ought to. You can stream it on Netflix or Hulu and it’s educational (if occasionally outdated) and fantastic. It’s not about God, it’s about – you guessed it. If you’re unfamiliar with Carl Sagan entirely, he’s also the guy who wrote Contact. I didn’t understand the flick as a kid but man, do i appreciate it now. Ok – watch this, this is a sweet song composed of auto-tuned clips of Carl Sagan:

He was a brilliant scientist who was extremely passionate about astrophysics and the possibility of life beyond Earth. This particular book was published by his widow Ann Druyan after his death, and it’s actually a transcription of a lecture series he gave on how the idea of God fits in with the scientific perspective. It’s really thought-provoking, and it makes you feel like you’re auditing a fascinating course at an Ivy League school for free. There are even visuals and Q&A sessions included. Almost makes me want to go back to school…

Reading this book, i saw a lot of the same ideas that Dawkins likes to talk about, but i think here they’re presented in a more approachable and open-minded manner. I don’t know why they decided to make The God Delusion blindingly shiny-metallic/day-glo orange considering that nobody wants to be seen reading it in the first place. But if you’re even the least bit curious about how anyone could be passionate about the fact that there is no scientific evidence for the existence of God, nobody will sneer at you if they see you with your nose buried in this one.

Saturday we celebrated my friend Calee‘s move back to Ames from Des Moines by hitting the town with her. We got barbecue at Uncle Wendel’s and then went to see the Des Moines Derby Dames‘ roller-derby bout. We lost to the Old Capital City Roller Girls, but it was a fun experience despite the fact that i had to sit on a concrete floor in my short skirt. Hopefully next time they’ll do it in a venue with more seating.

After that we headed to The Lift where i had a grand total of 3.25 drinks and ended up drunk enough to say quite a few silly things, but unfortunately not so wasted that i couldn’t remember them. That Bradie was trying to kill me. I don’t really want to talk about it except to say that i’m sorry if i offended anyone but i had a good time.

Yesterday evening we went over to my grandpa’s house where my mother had been seeing barred owls in the trees for the past few nights. At first we didn’t see them, but Mom was sure they were around because of the commotion from the smaller birds. Sure enough, we spotted one just as we were about to leave. There are four of them hanging around; two adults and two nearly-full-sized babies. We watched all four fly from branch to branch, saw them get pecked by the smaller birds, made noises at the juveniles who made noises back at us and bobbed their heads, and saw one adult feed her babies a small animal.

As it was getting dark, one of the younger owls perched on a post right in the backyard. I got about five paces away from it to try to take photos. It didn’t really work out because of the darkness, but it was amazing to just watch her calmly examine the ground for mice and occasionally swivel her head around to look at us.

This is how i wish my photos had turned out.

It’s been hot and humid here the past couple of days, and that will probably continue for the rest of the week. I’ve been working out several times a week in preparation for dress shopping, but i’m not sure how i’m going to run outside now. I don’t do hot & muggy.

*EDIT: Oh man, i forgot to write about our awesome waitress on Friday night! We went to a place called Paradise Pizza in WDM that we’d never been to, and we had a waitress who was probably just starting out. And had probably never been to a restaurant before. She brought us our beers with straws in them, and brought the check out to us before asking how the meal was or if we wanted any dessert. She wandered around looking bored when she wasn’t helping us. It was an all-around hilarious thing to see.