december resolution

so that whole posting every day, err, every OTHER day in november thing. well, yes.

tomorrow is a brand new month - december. this one promises to be chock full of anxiety - i can't wait! i am going to try to set up some mini goals for myself periodically throughout this month to get ready to not make new years resolutions. first on the list for this week: going to turn off the computer/tv/phone at 11pm every night and read a damn book. first I need to finish Oishinbo: Japanese Cuisine and then i have no idea. 47 minutes to search the interwebs for good books before it is lights out.

The Monocle

What I meant to say is that I am TOTALLY on board NaBloPoMo on the EVEN days of the month. So today's food for thought prompt from them is: Would you rather be wealthy and ugly, wise and sickly, or beautiful and stupid?

No, I didn't think so either.

Instead I will take one from October 22nd: Do you have any scars? How'd you get them?

Yes - I have scars, three of which have stories I like to tell. My favorite is from 2nd Grade.

In 2nd grade I had these 2 big hardcover science books that were prized possessions, constant companions. I can still visualize them quite clearly, but not clearly enough to get a good google search result. One book had a light blue cover (I can't recall the photo), the other was orange with a baby seal who kind of looked like this:

So I brought the books to school pretty much every day. During an arts & crafts project which may or may not have involved a pine cone and/or macaroni, a drop of glue fell on the orange book - smack dab on top of one of the baby seal's eyes. I did not realize it right away so when I discovered the drop it had already hardened into a perfectly round shallow dome - an opaque eye patch if you will.

It was rainy that day, so morning recess was inside - a perfect opportunity to restore the book. I held the book firmly in place on my desk with my left hand, palm down, fingers spread. In my right hand, a pair of open scissors. I proceeded to scrape the glue spot using a jabbing motion with one of the scissor blades. One of those jabs made less than perfect contact and the scissors soaredover the small milky dome in straight in to my hand - the point jammed in to that soft spot at the bottom of your thumb that you are supposed to squeeze when you get a headache.

It started to bleed pretty much immediately so I quickly formed a bowl with my right hand to catch the dripping blood and ran out to the hallway to find Mrs. Baker, the teacher on duty who in turn sent me to the nurse, etc. etc. Those details are not interesting at all.

When I returned to my desk, someone had cleaned everything up - wiped up the floor, the desk, the book - apart from my bandaged hand, you would have never known the incident had occurred. Of course the first thing I did was inspect the book. The eye patch was gone (?!), but replaced with a monocle - a perfect ring of dried blood surrounding that poor baby seal's eye. Sort of like this:

I don't REALLY know how or when the glue spot popped off, leaving just the thin ring of blood. I don't know what happened to those books - likely replaced by Beverly Cleary as it was right around this time I entered the Ramona phase. But I do know that it was an ill conceived method of removal and that little memento on my left hand will always to remind me.

NaBloPoMo

So it's National Blog Posting Month and I am totally signed up for this thing. And I am already behind a post - off to a great start!

So is everyone talking about Halloween? That's what I thought. Or maybe that was yesterday (but I missed that day).

So instead let's talk about the jewelry thing that is suggested for today and THEN I will get to the Halloween bit where I tried to talk Caleb in to giving me the Whoppers (unsuccessfully).

About four years ago I purchased my very favorite piece of jewelry EVER from a couple who was exhibiting with the American Craft Council. Actually, I didn't purchase it - my sister and I discovered them together and gave the pieces we selected to each other for Christmas presents (this is some sort of buyers rationale). In any case - I wear this necklace almost daily - so much so that on more than one occasion, someone has said "oh! i thought that was a tattoo!" (i have none but that would be a good one!)

so here is a photo - brand spanking new. mine is delightfully faded and well worn. sadly i have lost the match to 2 sets of earrings from them so I just wear the mismatched ones together and it works (look at me! SO quirky)

So I give you the amazing talent at M.A.D.E. and the link to their Etsy Store.

Insert Link - Insert Link - Insert Link

I'm not a huge blog follower, but do have some voyeuristic tendencies for a few people that I find humorous for a quick mid-day distraction. So a new one for me is that of Danielle - I found her blog through another that I pop in to from time to time - FUSSY. Now, about Fussy - she did these amazing action figure yoga classes - if you haven't read them, time to get to it by going HERE - so brilliant!

SO...Danielle. She's funny! I wish I could write like her! But then she CRUSHED me with her internet pet peeves - see HERE. Maybe we can't be internet friends after all.

Farmer's Market haul? GUILTY. Posting every week of our CSA to my Picasa site. But in my defense, I intend to make a little Mac photo book to give to my farmer as a little thank you for an amazing season of veggies! Isn't that a great idea?

Hipstamatic? Now granted, I am not nearly as overzealous as I was when I first got this app - but I DO like it! And not everything is green - look at this!



Kate Beaton - so I'm not ALL that in to comics but a good friend of mine REALLY is (check him out at DHARBIN) and he is always going on and on about her on Twitter. So this just gives me another reason to follow Kate more regularly because I think I might be missing out on something!

The fourth item - well, this is a new one for me. I am certainly guilty of using technology at inappropriate times (but never dinnertime) but I don't need an app to tell me so. But yes, I need to power the fuck down much more often. Thanks.

And finally, following that many people on Twitter? Now that's just plain silly. And downright sad.

june 2010

eesh - what happened to june? i'll tell you what happened...one week at the beach, one fundraiser, one trip to charleston, one long weekend of birthdays + father's day, one week of the craziest of crazy weeks at work and one week in spain.

highlights:
tanned, not burned
feel good feeling of doing some GOOD work for those less fortunate
mccrady's pork duo
star wars birthday cake
all things birthday related, except for the cleaning up part
seeing best college friend for five crazy hours
and of course spain...more on that later

bartender

the other night we were at our favorite sushi place and Caleb's favorite all time restaurant - Cuisine Malaya - or 'Robert's.' because the sushi bar seats were full (didn't they know it was Tuesday? And we almost always come on Tuesday after swimming??), we sat at the real bar. on these occasions, caleb is usually allowed to have a sprite or a gingerale and because of where we were sitting, he even got to see them pour it in to his cup. So this my friends? THIS is what Caleb has decided he wants for his birthday:

stuff white people do

when erik was a little boy, he thought what most little white boys thought - all asian people knew karate and all black people knew each other. such innocence, such hilarity.

so the other night we rented the animated Clone Wars movie for Caleb and at one point during the action the character Mace Windu is introduced. and Caleb quietly turned to me and said, "is that Barack Obama?"