oh my darlin'.

Apparently i only feel the need to post things when i'm having an o f f day.
Here are some things i found on the magical screen:


(this guy takes old bike/car parts and makes lifelike animals out of 'em.)


(this person makes tiny dioramas! awesome, tiny dioramas!! iii smell a craaft night!)


(a head, formed from a carefully-cut out street map. i like maps... and heads.)


(pretty seriously fantastic illuminated wire sculptures from some dude. they are around.)

Meanwhile, i sit here eating chocolate-chip cookies (the recipe claimed them as "the best ever", which they absolutely are not), paying bills, watching The Incredible Shrinking Man (gets surprisingly preachy at the end!), and above all, not cracking open my catalog of Spring 2012 community college classes. i also need to:

–touch up my bike (red nail polish is standing by)
–figure out which two hideous christmas sweaters nat and i will wear for our first annual Bad Holiday Photo
–stop biting my fingernails
–take the trash out,
–work on some photos.

On this last note i should mention that i'm sick and tired of being a perfectionist. It gets in the way of a person's ability to get a damn thing done... i would just like to edit and post some of these f*cking photos, okay, self? No need for them to be artifact-free; other people have easy-breeziness, where can i get some? Is it in potion form? Are they sprinkling it on their breakfast cereal? Is it in the genes? Hm.

Anyway, back to:
–scrubbing the toilet
–eating another clementine
–biting my nails
–anything else i can do to avoid everything else i have to do.

Love,
the girl who likes stormy cloud photos. big ones.

Pluerosis.

So, last night, for the first time in my entire dreaming life, i had a dream with a recurring character in it; in fact, a made-up character.

i was working at the flower shop. He was buying a large container arrangement with 30 blue roses for his recently deceased friend, Monica (?). The weird part was: either in the end of the dream (lucidly) or after i woke up, i remembered that the girl that had died was in a dream i had a few nights before, and he was her boyfriend. We were trying to "save" her from something, but now days later i can't remember the specific details.

In this new dream, though, he was wearing a leather coat and a blue scarf, and at one point dropped a beaded leather moccasin with metal (copper) detailing, that i bent and picked up for him. He was very tall, and smiled a lot, even though i profusely apologized after being funny and cavalier while picking out the 30 blue roses (which we had that exact number of), then finding out what the occasion was. He (in the beginning of the dream) literally walked up while i was checking the drawer totals for that morning and noticing how slow sales were. Well, this oughta make it better, he said, and wrote an order down for $202.92. i was surprised, and set out to help him. it was bright, and cold that day.

i wonder if i'll see this fellow again?

a tisket, a tasket

Been having some craziness lately. A rabid customer (she left us nasty comments on both Facebook and Yelp), a puppy with bloody paws (he came running up to me at the shop the other day; turns out i knew who his owner was and i guess he ran to us because he knew he was safe there... breaks my heart, in a way), and a psychopathic prospective employee (she was only seventeen, and more crazy [with each passing minute] than anyone i've ever come across in my life, which believe me is saying something).

But in between there is clarity: riding my new bike (he is red and white and his name is 'Fancy'), drinking homemade cider at a friend's house for a welcome to Autumn (it was dry and apply and delicious), growing out my nails long enough to finally paint sparkly red (it's been way too long), figuring out the ol' Halloween costume (not telling yet; let's just say it's not as awesome as the Flower-Headed Girl above), and enjoying the surreal bioluminescent dinoflagellates in the night-time water (we've had a strong red tide 'round these parts lately!)... i tried to get some photos of this last mentionable but the glow was not strong enough for the camera's eye.

Last night we watched The Thing, and it was great! Cheesy special effects, but a compelling tale overall. (i remember my dad had this on Beta as a double-feature with The Fog, which is such an obviously great choice.) Now i suppose we will have to drag ourselves off to the theater to see the prequel, starring Some Pretty Girl which was probably a Really Stupid Decision. But it remains to be seen.

And found a perfect 'M' in the shadows of a tree.

Until next time, here is a song about a whale, by a band about an ostrich.

tidbits

~Sometimes i drink too much coffee ('sometimes'– hah!) and feel like there's going to be an earthquake. Could these two things really be related?

~Last night Nat and i were reading through the True Blood wikipedia page (we grudgingly [yet semi-enjoyably] watched the first season, then came to the conclusion it was not good enough to pursue, thereby deciding to check out the rest of the plot for the remaining seasons), and when it was revealed that (SPOILER ALERT:)
Sookie was part fairy, i almost jumped out of my chair. No fucking fair!! i want to come from such an amazing lineage, too! Balls. Why can't life be a fairytale? [*EDIT: who am i kidding? it basically is– i spend an inordinate amount of time daydreaming about toadstool houses and pixiedust and forest moss. Plus, i'm tiny. Nat said he would be surprised if i wasn't from such stock somewhere way back].

~As of 3:40 p.m. on September 3, 2011, i have no fucking clue what my Halloween costume is going to be. This is a new low. Suggestions, people?

~There have been 3 shark sightings here in the past week. Eek.

~The More You Know: After spending several hours scanning in a hefty portion of my old film photos and saving them as jpegs, i noticed that they (the brand-new digital files) were all looking a bit worse for wear; subsequent internetting has led me to understand that this is due to lossy compression– did you know that every time you modify and then save a jpeg it loses information(quality)? So, say you rotate that bitch because you scanned it in upside-down: boom– information lost. Cropped the edges? bam– quality down the tubes. Saved it after sharpening or lightening the image a bit? biff– you're further screwed. i was furious to find this out, but not surprised. There is just so much to know about technology, it is nearly impossible to keep track of it all. So, now i have to go back and re-scan all of those photos, then save the scanned images as TIFFs, which is a lossless form of image compression. Sigh.

~My bike was stolen about 2 months ago; recently a nice neighbor of mine gave me an old one he had laying around, which i promptly took to the shop for new tires and a tune-up so i could at least give it a test-ride. Well, i just got the call and it turns out that this bike will cost me more money than it's worth, which is unfortunate because it's actually more than bit too big for me and i was only going to ride it if the fix-up costs were minimal. Now i'm stuck in a limbo decision-state. Spend the money and try to ride it anyway? Or take it back, as is, crumbling tires and rust spots and all, and hope for a trade? Never tried to trade anything before, and now i don't have a bike– again. Double sigh.

~Complaining is so lame. Apologies.

~Made the best lemon meringue pie of my life a couple of days ago. The secret seems to be swapping some of the water for milk, and using half sugar/half powdered sugar in the meringue. Taste-tastic! Also, i added a quarter of a scraped vanilla bean to the filling. Delish. Highly recommend. Feels like it mellows the lemon out a bit.

That's all for now, folks. Here's a song i literally cannot stop singing every time i'm alone in the house (thank goodness i'm too scared to sing in public). Here's where to buy the digital song (or album), but honestly you should just go to your local music store and get it there!

Simple Men.

If i could give one movie director a great big hug, it would be Hal Hartley. (Trust is one of my all-time favorite movies.) Seriously, the man never lets me down. Am currently watching Simple Men and being reminded of what a genius he is:

"But that’s what life’s about.
The adventure, the not knowing.

- No, it isn’t.

I want adventure.
I want romance.

- Ned, there’s no such thing
as adventure. There’s no such thing as romance.
There’s only trouble and desire.

Trouble and desire?

- That’s right, and the funny thing is
when you desire something
you immediately get in trouble,
and when you’re in trouble
you don’t desire anything at all.

I see.

- It’s impossible.

It’s ironic.

- It’s a fucking tragedy, is what it is."

Y'all have 2 days left to watch the thing on Watch Instant before it goes away who knows where for who knows how long, where you may never get to see it! And that, my friends, is the real fucking tragedy... watch it. Watch it now, and watch it good. Learn about subtle metaphors for the fragility of life, relationships and love (trees, fire, stolen motorcycles, not necessarily in that order). Marvel as a nun tackles a policeman, but not in a slapstick way. Listen to Sonic Youth while the cast does an impromptu dance number.

Yes, it's a bit stilted, and theatrical– but that's just his way. Get over it. And watch.


As a bonus, here is my favorite Thomas Newman track from Desperately Seeking Susan, which would fit right in almost any Hal Hartley scene:



Happy summer.