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7.02.2009 - My heroes have always been cowboys
1. Summertime is truly fantastic. I know I'm always getting excited when new seasons roll around, but seriously. Despite the warmer-than-comfortable temperatures, I'm really excited about this season. First, summer always brings about trips. I just got back Sunday from the Grand Assembly session in Columbia with the Rainbow Girls, which went well -- it's always nice to get to catch up with friends I usually only see about once a year anymore. This weekend is a long weekend thanks to Independence Day (hip hip, hooray!), and I have a MULA week coming up in August -- the current plan is to take a road trip to Ohio with Abby, to visit some of her family, and maybe a day or two in Chicago if time permits. And then, there are concerts. I'm seeing Pete Yorn / Zee Avi in Atlanta the 17th, Bob Dylan / Willie Nelson / John Mellencamp on the 29th (in Simpsonville? yep), and possibly the free Bele Chere Festival in Asheville the 25th. (The Old 97's are playing!) It should be a busy month, but I'm excited. 2. Productivity. Referring back to last month's list of things that really couldn't wait to get done, Very few of them ACTUALLY got done. I actually made a dent in some of the podcasts, though with few finds worth noting (The Blow being a somewhat short-lived and unexpected exception). Didn't fry any doughnuts, but I did make some chocolate eclairs, two lame batches of amaretti cookies (the first with almonds I blanched and ground myself; the second with proper almond flour, but to much the same effect), and two experimental batches of spiced molasses cookies. I will learn to make a good cookie if it kills me. I have not taken any photos, gone goodwill shopping, sewn anything of note, or dived in any way, shape, or form into my chocolate cookbook (though I have drooled over the pictures more than once). I have joined the gym, started running again with more dedication, and made a couple of half-hearted attempts at cleaning and organizing things. So all is not lost. I have, of course, added many other things to the list, including: Finish old paintings and start new art projects Catch up on films, possibly via NetFlix Read the Edith Wharton novel I purchased but never opened 3. And now, I will introduce a new feature to SuperAmy.com -- an informative, highly-relative "Did You Know" portion of the blog, devoted to keeping you up-to-date on all sorts of things I find interesting. This week, we're starting with the obvious: Philadelphia. Sure, you're thinking, "Why do I need to go to Philadelphia?" Well, according to WikiTravel, Philadelphia is the fourth largest urban area in the country. Where else can you go to one city and find the Liberty Bell, cheese steak, AND the biggest municipal park in the country? What about tons of art galleries, a diverse immigrant population, AND the prison which held Al Capone? So here it is: did you know that you can fly to Philadelphia this weekend from Charlotte for only $201.70 after taxes? Fact. US Airways has a special weekend deal running from Charlotte to Philadelphia. So if you still don't have any holiday plans this weekend, here it is: Philadelphia. Listening to: Wilco (the album) |
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6.06.2009 - always something to remind me
This is one of those times where I'm feeling pretty overwhelmed. This isn't a really horrible "life is too much" sort of overwhelmed, but more of my typical "I suddenly want to do a million things, only all at the same time" sort of overwhelmed. It might be a stretch to call it self-inflicted, but this is something that happens to me often. Usually when I get inspired or motivated to do something, it comes in a batch with about a dozen other things I'm inspired or motivated to do, and the result is that there is never enough time or energy to pull off everything. Even on a great, massively productive day, I can end up feeling like somewhat of an unaccomplished failure. Ahh, the complications of being an occasional over-achiever. So this is something I see coming for this week -- hopefully I can tackle it head-on without burying myself completely. In an attempt to stay organized, here's the list: Tackle the 38+ unlistened-to new-music podcasts, in an attempt to refresh my recent listening selection Attempt #2 at frying doughnuts (and maybe another batch of creme brulee and chocolate eclairs, in spare time) Dive headfirst into my new chocolate recipe book Use the recent unusually red sunsets as an opportunity for photo experiments Goodwill shopping Finish the skirt I started sewing last week, and result in at least moderate success Get back up to running a 5k again Massive spring cleaning, though a bit late Eat healthier, sleep more, drink lots of water As is typical for me, nothing on this list is trivial enough to deserve putting off until next week, so of course all of it has to magically take place right now. This is why I can never focus, really. I just got back tonight from our girls' beach trip. We stayed in Hilton Head, my first time on the island, and I enjoyed it much more than I expected. There were a lot of bike trails, and the beach was very clean and not so crowded. It was nice having a house to stay in instead of hotel rooms, nice being right on the beach, nice not having any guys around, and especially nice not having an agenda. I have never been too much of a fan of "beachy" things like sunbathing, swimming, and whatnot, partly because of my tendency to burn at even the mention of a hot sun. That being said, there is something really wonderful and freeing about the ocean. I love the combination of textures and composition and senses at the beach... walking through the sand, feeling the water swirl around my ankles, and feeling inconsequentially small while gazing over the water -- these things always leave me in awe of our amazing Creator, and it's such a refreshing perspective change. While we were unpacking the car tonight, a nearby neighbor came into the yard to inform us that while we were gone, he discovered a six foot snake in our front yard. He had promptly called animal services, who drove up and promptly removed the offending creature and took him wherever it is that kidnapped exotic animals are taken. They informed the neighbor to tell us that we need to fill in the big hole in our front yard -- this is apparently where the snake has been living for the past however long. I'm having a hard time consenting to this request for two reasons. Firstly, the snake (which I have, since discovering his existence, named Leopold) did not ask to be kidnapped by animal services, and probably deserves both an apology and restoration to his natural habitat, where he was calmly, mostly minding his own business. Additionally, until we found out about the snake, we had been grooming the hole in our front yard to play part in a rather elaborate Halloween trick-or-treaters' trick -- one which probably won't get to happen now, since no child likes suddenly plummeting into a concealed snake nest. I'm not sure whether or not there are laws about recovering animals taken from your property, but if there are, Leopold and I are going to fight this one to the finish. I've been listening to massive amounts of nineties music lately, and not in a bad way at all. |
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5.26.2009 - cabin fever, silly day dreams
As I've mentioned here before, Mandy and I share a fascination with systems of organization. Around this time last year, I bought a Franklin Covey planning system -- desk-sized ring bound planner with two pages a day. It was really relieving to have so much space for schedules, to-do lists, and notes, but admittedly I never used every square inch of it. I run out of pages at the end of June, and while organizational supplies rank pretty highly on my list of worth-the-price-tag items, Franklin Covey's refills are at least enough to make me look around for some other options. So, lo and behold the lovely DIYplanner.com, which is designed almost entirely for organizational addicts such as myself! They offer lots of free printable planner pages and the like, as well as ideas and tutorials to help with defining your own perfect planning system. Right now, I've created a makeshift "hipster PDA," which is basically just a stack of printed index cards held together with a binder clip. It appeals to me for several reasons: I love the actual "DIY" nature of it; it fits very comfortably in a handbag, and it's super-cheap and customizable. Two things that will take some getting used to: not nearly as much writing space as I'm used to, and the binder clip doesn't make it easy to flip to what I want. We'll see if it sticks. I'm worried that starting with all of the geeky things first might be a little too much, too soon? I hope not. Sometimes, when people are riding in my car, they like to flip through the music on my iPod. It struck me how often this happens, and people say things like "(x) is such a great band!" or "oh, you listen to (y)?", only to realize that no, I've actually never heard band (x) OR band (y) before in my life, regardless of how many days / months / years it has been a part of my musical collection. I always gather music from sources or people, fully intending to give it a good listen. But as technology has advanced and data storage / transfer methods have gotten more complicated, this sometimes means hours of music at once, and well -- the "listening' phase often never happens. So I've planned a solution: The great iPod listen of 2009. My iTunes library currently holds 10,214 songs. I created a playlist which included every single one, set it to shuffle, and voila -- the ultimate playlist for listening to everything I have. A challenge, yes, but hey -- I figured if I have 22 songs less than ten seconds each, then this is totally do-able. (A second check revealed 39 songs longer than 12 minutes. I guess you win some, you lose some.) The plan is to play the entire list, from beginning to end, without skipping tracks at any point. I keep the iPod in my car, so it's playing pretty regularly. So far, so good. It's only been four or five days, and I'm still only 120 songs into it, but I've already found a few surprises hiding in the batch. There was one particularly unfortunate incident as I was returning from Greenville on Friday evening -- Arlo Guthrie's "Alice's Restaurant", the entire punishing live version, took its toll. Don't get me wrong. I sort of like Arlo Guthrie, in moderation, but you have to believe me when I say that this particular 22 minute song somehow feels much, much longer. Anyway, iTunes tells me I have 27 days' worth of non-stop music. Eventually I'll average out how much of that I'm listening to a day -- this might turn into the "great iPod listen of 2009 / 2010" if I don't set a good pace. Hopefully new-old recommendations are forthcoming. For coffee lovers, these mugs are fantastic: the Biscuit Lover Mug, and the Lap Mug. Both links courtesy of @citybrew coffee. listening to: The Innocence Mission - "Some Clear Joy is Coming" |
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5.19.2009 - ay que venga la mańana
I've had Mexico on my mind lately. It might be that the weather is getting warmer, or that all of this rain has turned everything so bright and green, but I very much miss the sounds, the smells, the colors. The taste! Do you think that maybe sometimes a person's brain subconsciously schedules these things? The beginning of May, both last year and the year before, I spent in SLP. This must just be my internal travel clock sounding an alarm. You may have noticed a new blog design (and blog post! Hey, hey!). Can I just say, it's good to have the internet back. After moving in September, we managed to borrow wi-fi from neighbors and coffee shops for a very long while, before finally buckling down and getting our own internet last month. I had mixed feelings at first -- what an addictive habit! Without the internet, it turns out that life is actually productive and beautiful, and all it takes is a time-sucking internet connection to kill all of it! But with a little bit of time management, the internet and I have reached a sort of mutual understanding, the result of which is a new template, spurred by a sudden urge to collect and organize my online things (one can get very scattered trying to juggle facebook, twitter, and everything else). I've decided to make the transition from Picasa to Flickr. It was a toss-up, to be honest, because I really like Picasa -- I like having it linked to my Google account, I like the uploader for the PC, and I had fun mapping my travel photos. Most especially, I like that all of my photos are already there. However, Flickr coordinates better with iPhoto, which is a huge plus since I made the Mac switch. It seems a little quicker with website integration, too (see the new photo badge on the right?), has better community features, provides better copyright protection for art photos, and greets me in a different language every time I visit -- shazam! I’m considering splurging for a Pro account, at least for a while, to try and get more of my photos migrated from Picasa. If anyone has tried a Flickr Pro account, I’d love to hear any merits / cons. Is it worth the price? Crazy things always happen when I don’t blog for a while, and then when I finally get around to a post, I feel obligated to give a quick summary of recent events. So however outdated it may be, I’m going to feed the habit with a (hopefully brief) little update, no matter how redundant it must be for anyone who has spoken with me in, well, months. Work has been as exciting as ever, which means pretty exciting some days and run-of-the-mill on others. I have had my share of new projects to work on, which is always a welcome and delightful challenge, and refreshing when compared to the prospect of writing maintenance code all day long. Because of the glowing state of the US economy, we received some charming announcements back in February, detailing actions the company would take to cut costs and increase cash flow. One of these actions was a mandatory week of furlough, to be taken in March. While I don’t want to make light of a situation which surely caused hardship on people (and let’s not forget that furlough is way better than layoffs), you all know how I feel about vacation time, whether it is paid or not, and also how I feel about impulsive and irresponsible decisions, so I took my week as an opportunity to return to Winchester and Ireland, two of my favorite places in the world. I somehow managed to talk my wonderful sister Mandy into joining me for the second leg of the trip (London / Galway), and you can read a delightful summary of events on her blog. For a brief time between buying the plane ticket and arriving in Winchester, I definitely had a few panicked moments. Have you ever watched a movie or a television show you loved as a child, only to realize that it’s terrible? And it ruins all the good memories you had in the first place? That was my fear. But it turned out to be a wonderful trip. I got to catch up with a lot of friends and see a lot of familiar places, and it honestly felt like I never left. The downside to that is that now I want to go back every month. I’m convinced that in a perfect world, my car would be replaced with a transport device. Anyway, according to the plan, I’ll get another week off in the third and fourth quarters of this year. While my bank account doesn’t suggest anything quite so extravagant as Europe, my head is still swimming with exciting ideas. Mexico? Portland? Kansas? These daydreams are the reasons workplace productivity decreases exponentially after such announcements are made. Mandy, Brian, and I went to Knoxville, Tennessee in April, to see the wonderful Wilco in concert. I saw them a few years ago in Asheville, and both shows have been among the best I’ve seen. It was my first time visiting Knoxville, and as it turns out, I really like the city. The Tennessee Theatre is beautiful, too. Wilco has a new album coming out soon, and right now you can stream it for free. I haven’t given it a good listen yet, though I love the cover art. They didn’t play any of these new songs at the show (is that normal? I don’t think so), but played plenty of old songs, which are my favorites anyway. I’ve developed a few new hobbies lately: gardening, pasta dishes, and biking. I have a lovely patch of zinnia seedlings, a couple of poppy plants, and an odd assortment of potted plants littering my porch. I have a delightfully addictive pasta alfredo recipe, and have officially become on occasional work bike-commuter. So – can we call ourselves officially caught up now? Good. note: Archives links to the left are in a bit of a state at the moment. I'll fix it soon, I hope. But if we're honest with ourselves, nobody needs to read any of that, anyway. Listening: Little Joy |
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2.12.2009 - "springtime"
So this springtime weather is pretty ridiculous, right? It's finally started getting cold again, which is somehow always more obnoxious the second time around. I love cold weather, but every year I get more and more excited about spring. I love having all the trees that surround my bedroom, combined with the big old-brick-house windows. I woke up this morning with light coming in through my curtains, dancing around as it filtered through the trees, and it was very satisfying. So you can imagine my confusion when I called time and temperature to hear "local area weather: flurries today, clear this afternoon. high near 58." Flurries? Who do they let write this stuff? Something about weather changes always gives me the "new-project" bug. It's hit hard lately, and I've started a million different things I can't possibly finish. It's exhausting. Mandy got me a French Patisserie cookbook for Valentine's Day (what a wonderful sister she is), so of course I had to buy lots of new baking toys and get to work on that. My first attempt was at chocolate eclairs, which I expected to be a complete disaster. It just does not seem logical that one could pump a baked pastry full of soft egg-based creme, but they turned out surprisingly well -- it's rare for me to be so pleased with a new baking attempt, so maybe french pastries are my calling? Anyone ever heard of the RPM Challenge? The basic premise is that you take the shortest month of the year and use it to write and record an entire album's worth of songs. Not being a singer or songwriter, and having no recording skills, I somehow decided it was a task I'd be up to. I could not have been more wrong. I came up with half of a waltz, a country murder ballad (bonus track material, if nothing else), and... well, that's it. Sometimes I still entertain notions of an incredibly productive final week, but admittedly the whole thing just fell to the wayside, due to other hobbies and projects. I ordered a bunch of zinnia seeds and poppy plants in preparation of spring gardening weather, and yesterday my tax refund and I ordered a bike! It's a Giant FCR bike, and it should hopefully be in by the weekend (they had to order it). I've been wanting one for a while, and I'm really hoping the warmer weather will encourage me to ride more -- I'm definitely not much of a bike rider, and have trouble stopping, turning, and not-falling-over. But ideally, I'd like to get to the point where I could commute back and forth to work -- that would be exciting, I think. So despite all of these other exciting options, I spent tonight at home, playing with some programming I keep having "good intentions" for getting just right, and searching iTunes for a version of the old folk song "Delia" that matches what keeps playing in my head. So far, I've not had much luck. I've slowly started edging away from the delights of Visual Basic and more towards distractions -- hence a brand new blog. Hope you're all well. If any of you have blogs which I am not linking, it probably means I'm not aware of them, and I would love to be. So leave a comment and let me know. listening to: David Bromberg - Dehlia (this is the one!) |
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1.02.2009 - become a new bird
I hope all of you had a wonderful and blessed Christmas, and that you got to spend it with people you love – for me at least, that always seems to make or break the occasion. I had a pretty good Christmas – got to spend a little extra time with my family and some friends, not to mention the five-day weekend which allowed for all sorts of projects and entertainment. My roommates have all been out of town for a while, visiting their own families, which means I had the whole house to myself since last Friday. I don't want to worry anybody or anything, but I've turned the dining room into a painting studio, the living room into a music room, and my bedroom into a catch-all for the cameras I've accumulated over the past couple of months. So after my recent obsession with the viewfinder photography I was finding on etsy and flickr (I believe I linked to Alicia Bock in my last post, and she's still my favorite example, but Irene Suchocki has some beautiful photos, too), I've decided to give it a go myself. I'm not much of a photographer, so I've had a big learning curve with it, but it's lots of fun, and I love the vintage feel of it. I ordered a Kodak DuaFlex camera off of ebay for less than $15, as it has this enormous mirror viewfinder lens. Last weekend, I built a little makeshift tunnel light-shield thing out of paper (do these things have proper names in the world of photography?) and took it around town for a trial run. I wish I had a digital camera with higher resolution / better zoom, since the end result comes out a bit smaller than I'd like, but otherwise I was very encouraged with the results. I might get around to posting a few after I get around to Photoshop tweaking. My biggest undertaking last weekend has been organizing my music collection. It's been hanging over my head for a while now as something I've been meaning to do, and the dozens of trips to the mechanic only made things worse, since every visit required stuffing all of my loose cds in a bag and into the trunk of my car to prevent robbery. So I finally installed my iPod hookup into my car stereo, and proceeded to rip every single cd I own onto my laptop. It was a bittersweet event – especially the process of putting every cd and cover booklet back into its respective case. For a long time I had said I'd never switch over to digital – I'm a huge fan of music packaging, from taking the shrink wrap off of a new cd to flipping through the booklet, and even the sort of joy that comes with having a car with hundreds of loose cds scattered around. But none of this can contend with the horrible disappointment of a brand new album skipping two weeks after I buy it because I accidentally sat on it or something. So really, necessity and budget demanded another option. It is nice to be able to listen to podcasts in the car, too. I can say that much for going digital. All that being said about Christmas weekend, I'm blogging to you right now from a lovely little budget accommodation hotel on the outskirts of New Orleans. Hannah, Corey, and I decided to do a bit of traveling for the long New Year's weekend. I've always wanted to visit New Orleans, and it seemed like a good candidate since I can't really afford a plane ticket anywhere (sorry, Macchu Pichu, but we'll just have to save you for another occasion). We left Greenwood right after lunch Wednesday, and to save ourselves from cruising down I-10 when the clock struck 12, we made an overnight stop in Mobile, Alabama, where we made history as a part of the MoonPie over Mobile. We obviously couldn't miss it, and while we didn't get there early enough to get a bite of the actual world's-largest moon pie, we did get little baby moon pies to eat, free entertainment, a less-than-whelming moon pie drop, and a beautiful fireworks show. I'd say it was pretty exciting, and even after nine hours of driving. We explored the city yesterday, mainly the French Quarter, and took a ferry across the Mississippi to Algiers, which was not exactly the "heart of New Orleans" it claimed to be on numerous billboards. It seems to be my knack for picking bizarre times to travel places, because today just happens to be the SugarBowl game between. Well, two football teams, I guess. The French Quarter was insane yesterday, as they were having a fan fest of some sort, and it was almost too packed to move around. The game is tonight, and hopefully all of those fans have tickets and will be in the SuperDome, so that we can enjoy the sights and get some pictures more or less undisturbed, and maybe even fit into Cafe du Monde. We ate the world's best fried chicken yesterday at Willie Mae's Scotch House, and it really was quite impressive. It was especially nice to see a more residential part of New Orleans. It really is incredible how much work has been done to rebuild since the storm, and also how much still needs doing. The roads everywhere are a disaster -- cracks and lumps and potholes everywhere, even in parts of the city that otherwise seem practically new. My car has been an absolute joy for the entire trip. It was probably the riskiest factor in the trip -- I've already mentioned its numerous encounters with the mechanic recently, and I just put new spark plugs and wires in it a couple of weeks ago. It's been a little shaky and has displayed a prominent "check engine" light for a month or so. I guess it's a fault of mine that I tend to take such threats as challenges more than anything, and with a vague memory of "probably" having roadside assistance with my insurance policy, I made the executive decision -- the neon goes. And here's the conclusion I've come to -- cars need excitement just like the rest of us. There were a couple of lurches and noises at the beginning of the trip, and the little neon wasn't too fond of some of the bumpy parking lots in Mobile, but by the time we made it to New Orleans, the check-engine light had gone out, and we handle the ridiculously narrow, curvy interstates here with finesse. I can't recall a time when this little car ran better, actually. Now if we can just make it home without incident, I can drag myself into work Monday and everybody wins (Sunday involves about a 12-hour drive home, plus we'll lose an hour in the exchange). Hopefully we'll get to check out some museums and different things today, especially if the streets are as crowded as yesterday. I made a nice long list of things that sound fun while we're here, and while yesterday was a good start, there's still a lot on the list. Sleeping in for a bit today didn't help, as it's now after 10 and we're still in the hotel, but then a vacation is sort of pointless if there isn't at least some laziness involved. For the record, the coffee here is phenomenal. I hope all of you had a really nice New Year celebration, wherever you may have been. New Year's is one of my favorite holidays, if only because I'm constantly enchanted with the idea of fresh starts. I have a pretty clean-cut list of resolutions this year, some of which I've already gotten a head start on this year (exercising more often, eating more natural / organic food, etc.), and some of which are more "stretch goals" than anything. For those of you with resolutions, I hope they're going well so far (it's official! 0.41% of 2009 is already over!), and for those of you without any resolutions, I admire your confidence and/or ignorance to your own shortcomings. I'll post some photos and things later, I hope. listening to: Blind Pilot - The Story I Heard |
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11.26.2008 - without wishful thinking
Happy Thanksgiving, guys! I made a list this evening of everything I could think of that I have to be thankful for, and it was ridiculously long. By the time I quit, I didn't feel anywhere close to the end. It's humbling to think of all the things that I take for granted -- I have so many wonderful things to be thankful for that I can't even list them all. I hope all of you are with family and friends, and also remembering how much you have to appreciate and thank God for. My grandmother passed away last Wednesday morning. She was ready to be with her Lord, and also with her husband, my Papa, who died in August. I will miss having her here, because she had one of the most generous and loving spirits I've ever known anyone to have, and she was so much fun to spend time with -- both of them were. I have a hard time not wondering what I might have learned from them if I'd have taken more time to. My grandfather had an incredible green thumb, and grew some of the most beautiful orchids in the world. My grandmother had family stories I still haven't heard, and probably never will. For me, at least, one of the hardest parts is dealing with the missed opportunities. That being said, though, I am very blessed to have had the time I had with both of them, and while I'll miss them both, they both knew the Lord and are with Him now, which is wonderful. It's only been a half-week at work because of the holiday, and it's strange because everybody sort of has that Friday-attitude on Tuesday (lots of them took today off), making it very difficult to stay focused on work. My task this week has been exporting hundreds of database tables, and it's an extremely tedious one -- not hard, but repetitive, while still requiring full concentration. Things like that make me mentally and physically tense, and on several occasions today I found that I had to make a conscious effort not to stop breathing. I left work around five today, feeling somewhat dizzy and light-headed. When I close my eyes for a second, I see access tables scrolling up across my eyelids. My job can be so funny that way. Tota is home! After a healthy stint in Bolivia with Peace Corps, she's finally returned to us, and I couldn't be happier. She brought her new puppy and tons of stories, I'm sure, and I can't wait to catch up with her. So please, if you know Tota (or even if you don't; as she's surprisingly stranger-friendly), leave her a comment or an email to welcome her back to the country. I played with inventing some muffin recipes the other night: A citrus almond-toffee muffin, and a curry-spiced persimmon muffin. For my first attempt at inventing muffin recipes from scratch, I was pretty pleased with the results -- they could use some work for sure, but they weren't inedible, and I know what to do to improve on them. It's an exciting process, I've found, and something that really relaxes me. The more I think about it, the more I think that I could see myself doing something like baking for a living somewhere down the road. Another perk to spending a couple of hours in the kitchen: perfect opportunity to listen to new music. Apparently, people have known about these things called "podcasts" for a long time. Technically savvy though I may be, I'd not until recently caught on to the usefulness of such a thing. It's highly likely that most of you, while reading my pitiful whining in my last post about not knowing where to go to discover new music, were thinking "has she never heard of podcasts? What's wrong with her?" And you have every right to be concerned. Anyway, the point is that I think podcasts are a fun thing to listen to while baking, and I'm particularly fond of NPR's podcasts -- all of my favorite radio programs are there, and I'm loving it. It's an easy way to find good new songs without trying. The internet has quite nearly redeemed itself. I was sifting through old notes in my planner today, looking for any major projects I might've forgotten to list as goals, and found this: aliciabock.etsy.com. Her photographs are beautiful, particularly the viewfinder photos with warmer tones, and I'm trying to justify buying a couple of her prints. So far, it hasn't been working, but mostly because I can't think of anywhere to put them, especially after the painting I bought in Athens. I finally talked Mandy into taking a trip to Athens with me. Day trips to Athens are sort of a guilty pleasure for me, since it's a town filled with lots of little things I love: downtown shops with handmade, fair-trade / imported things.. vintage clothing, books. There's Wuxtry Records and OK Coffee (mm), the botanical gardens, dozens of good music venues if I'm there at night, and the cream of the crop: Agora. It's a tiny little junk / antique shop, which apparently has dozens of vendors working there sort of like consignment. Anyway, it's about the most exciting place to poke around, and I always find sunglasses or coffee mugs or something to take home. Friday, I found a painting. It has no signature, and it's a pretty crudely sketched and painted beach scene -- either by a very amateur painter, or somebody who wanted it to look that way. The colors are beautiful, and I'm really fond of the technique.. there are big brown flowers lining the sand. It was $10. I find a weird sort of comfort in not knowing who to attribute the painting to. I wish there were places I could go to stumble upon art like this more often. I'm going to work on the design some more -- I have more ideas I meant to use, but I guess I got a little overzealous the other night. It's been really nice having time to work on things like this -- it reminds me that I don't, in fact, hate design, I just hate feeling forced to sit at a computer for too long. So this is good. And it feels good to write here again. listening to: Loney, Dear -- Airport Surroundings (I'm excited about this cd...) |