This is my reflection from the passenger seat of new BMW M Roadster. I took this shot for the most recent Photo Friday challenge, Vanity. Alas, the moment where my ass was being caressed by soft Italian leather and fine German engineering was fleeting.
But damn, I made that car look good.
Here it is, my very first scanned photo. Woohooo! I'm as happy as a little girl!!!
This thing has so many features and settings to choose from I am going to be occupied for a while. The pile of negatives that I have waiting to be scanned is enormous and I didn't know where to start. So I began here, with a shot from my Amherst, MA days. This waterfall was a half a block from my old house. It makes me sad to think of the days I spent wandering around this hood pretending I was Thoreau or something. Well, Thoreau with a camera anyway. Somewhere I have a shot from this same location, but the waterfall is almost frozen and the trees are covered in snow. I can sense your excitement, please I am asking you nicely- calm down.
I am very happy to finally have my scanner, which from here on out will only be referred to as Blue Steel. Blue Steel and I have a long road ahead. In the words of the musical sensation known as the Carpenters "We've only just begun..."
(Yes, I am fully and painfully aware that I have climbed out of the crazy tree. Just amuse me for a while, K?)
There is a film scanner waiting for me. It is sitting in a store and knows that I will be picking it up in a few hours. It even has my name on it. When we finally meet it will be bliss. I plan on taking her home, turning down the lights, igniting some candles, and cracking open a nice bottle of Cotes du Rhone. Then we will test the limits of her power, if you know what I mean. When you don't hear from me for a while, or if you see me tired and frazzled, just know that I have been enjoying every single second that I spend with my new mechanical friend.
Bliss I tell you, bliss.
I am in slump today. My mind is wandering. I am worried about someone, as are a few of you I imagine. So, I wanted to post something to make you smile. Really, it is to try to get me to smile, but I will use you as an excuse. Cute photos of children can often be a cheesy cliche. I know that, but today I am embracing it. This shot is one of my all time favorites.
That kid in the background wishes he was this cute.
If you call my work phone number and I am not there, please go ahead and leave me a message. I would love to talk to you, but I am probably just away from my desk. I could be in a meeting, or out to lunch, or placing a fax, or sometimes I even go to the bathroom. So just speak into the phone and leave me a recorded message. I know that voice mail is fairly new technology and all, so I don't mind explaining it. I will even explain it again if you call my line and reach my voicemail. See, I can leave this recording of my voice, some people call it a voicemail box, and it will let you know that you reached the right number. On that message you can hear me say my name and my department, as well as my request that you leave me your name and your phone number. So please, go right ahead and leave me all of your information. As soon as I get back to my desk, I will then listen to that recording and obtain your phone number. With your phone number in hand I will then be able to call you back. Amazing, isn't it?
However, if I have to play back that voicemail message more than three times to understand your phone number, chances are I ain't callin' your ass back. If you really wanted to talk to me, you would have left a coherent message that did not sound like a micro machines commercial. K?
Talk to you soon!
Last week my organization was given over a thousand books by various publishing houses. The books are all specific to our field and cover almost every aspect within our field. Apparently, this happens every January and we are allowed to take what we want while the rest is donated to charity. For me, this is like winning the lottery. I, along with two other women in my office, was in charge of opening the boxes and placing the books out for people to look at. Basically, this translates to me getting to look at all the books before anyone else could get their grubby little fingers on them. If you could have seen the look on my face during all of this you would have thought that I was on crack. As I opened my own boxes and read the titles, I couldn't help but wonder what juicy gems were in everyone else's boxes. What do they have? Do I want those? Coo Coo.
By the time we were halfway through, our large conference table was drowning in crisp new hardcovers and there was a double row of books lining the outside perimeter of the room. By this point my coworkers were teasing me about how excited I was getting. They were happy about the books, but not like I was. In my harried box opening frenzy I turned to them with a glowing psychotic look in my eye and said, "Don't you just want to lay down in the middle of them all?"
Needless to say, their answers were "No" and "Oh God, Meatman has finally snapped."
So, maybe I am a little excitable. Fine, I can handle that. But they were brand new books. Brand new books that I want to read. Brand new free books that I want to read.
What more can a girl ask for?
Seriously.
In light of this weekends sports debacle, I am going to focus on happier times in sports. The Photo Friday category is success, and this shot is from the Nationals first ever opening day last year. They beat the Arizona Diamondbacks 5-3 and all of RFK stadium was on fire. Ahhh, much better times in sports.
Both the Patriots and the Redskins lost in Saturday's double header. We thought it would be fun to have a party so we could watch the games with our friends. After 8 hours of football, plenty of beer and pizza, our guests were left with two pathetic looking hosts miserable from defeat. We thought that at least one of our teams would win. Oy.
I sat down at my desk with a Coke and a package of Hostess chocolate donettes. Mmmmm. Just as I started to enjoy my sugar packed breakfast of goodness, one of my coworkers informed me that someone sent her chocolates and they were in the kitchen if I wanted some. Trying to pass up the ghirardelli is impossible.
T minus 5 minutes until sugar induced lift off.
I used to love that game as a kid. Our family's AppleIIC got a ton of use from me tracking Carmen all over the world. Maybe my love of geography has led me to travel so much, thanks for that Carmen. As I copy Jen, who copied Kottke, and list my cities visited in 2005, I am feeling a little lame. 2005 was not a big travel year for me. To make myself feel better I am going to include 2004, because that was a much better year for my passport.
So, I give you the cities that I spent at least one night in for 2005-
Alexandria, VA
BrockVegas, MA (Home of Champions Baby!)
Hingham, MA (AKA The Ham)
Walpole, MA
Atlanta, GA
Beverly Hills, CA
Santa Monica, CA
San Simeon, CA
Carmel, CA
Oakland, CA (aaah, beautiful Oakland)
Ocean City, MD (AKA Hell on earth, avoid this place like the plague)
And to make me feel better, 2004-
Alexandria, BrockVegas, and the Ham
Arlington, VA
Dennisport, MA
Dublin
Paris
Bayeux, France
Avignon, France
Nice, France
Menaggio, Italy
Milan
Vernazza, Italy
Florence
Rome
Venice
Vienna
Salzburg
Hallstatt, Austria
Budapest, Hungary
Krakow, Poland
Prague
Munich
Stuttgart, Germany
Rothenburg, Germany
Just to let you know how my mind works, I looked at that list and thought to myself "Damn, I thought there was a lot more." Just the other day Dave and I were talking about how much of Europe we didn't see. Perhaps that why we get along so well, we both want to see everything.
Here's to seeing more of this earth in 2006!!!!
I have been in Philly for the past week enjoying this sick view from my hotel room. I felt like a gangster waking up to this every day. Since I was there for work they put me up in this fancy shmancy corner room with an amazing view from two sides. The turn down service at night staged the room so that the lights were on very low, the curtains were open and the city shined before me. Crazy.
The city was all that I was expecting and then some. My twelve hour work days prevented me from doing much sightseeing, but at night I was able to live it up a little. Dave came up and on Friday night we went to the art museum for their "Art after five" event. The museum stayed open late and they had a Brazilian band playing in the main corridor. It was nice to see an eclectic mix of people out at a museum on a Friday night. If you follow the lights down the street on the right in the picture above you can see the museum at the end. And yes, it is the place where Rocky ran up the steps. Would it surprise you to know that we reenacted that scene? Yeah, I didn't think so.
Philly is a hard core northern town, not unlike Boston in many ways. I loved it. Sunday afternoon we went into a bar to watch some football and we were able to have an intense conversation about sports with everyone else at the bar. Everyone had different teams, different theories, and good stories to tell. You can't get that in D.C. Philly has a soul. You could feel its personality in the people, in the sounds on South Street and in the food. Amen to the Gods above for cheese steak. In South Philly (AKA Rocky's hood) there are two competing joints, right across the street from one another, vying for the title of best cheese steak. We tried both, and they were great, but Pat's won out over Geno's. Pat's tasted just a little bit better, but it also seemed like the place where the people eat. Not the tourists, but the people.
So yes, my trip was awesome. When you sandwich a Patriots playoff win in the middle there, you can't ask for much more. I do miss that view.
I hate packing. I am going on a trip for work this week, so instead of loading my bag full of clothes I am procrastinating. I feel like my life is a rollercoaster of packing an unpacking. I am never completely unpacked because there is always something lurking in my bag for weeks after I get home. But, before I know it I am grabbing the bags again to fill them back up. In my younger days I would haul around enormous bags full of crap that I thought I couldn't live without for three days. Carrying everything I needed on my back for two months while gallivanting around Europe ended that practice real quick. Consolidating all of my clothes, toiletries, extra shoes and presents into two small carry-on bags this Christmas felt like the completion of my dissertation on packing. Travel light and you live longer, that's my theory.
This year marks the first year in eleven that I will not be moving. I lived with my family for the first eighteen years of my life, but have been in a constant state of moving since then. Three dorm rooms, 10 apartments, 5 states and one storage space later I am finally going to be living in one place for more than 12 months. Thank God. As you can probably imagine whenever I move somewhere I never really unpack fully. Something, usually a lot of things, stays sheltered in a box because it is too much effort to find a home for an object when you know that in a few months its fate will lead it back to the box. After renewing our lease last month I felt like I could actually make this place fully ours. The folks at U-HAUL may be wondering where I am, so if they ask about me let them know that I am OK. I am just taking a break.
I will never give up traveling and I know that I will not live in this apartment forever, but I want less packing in my life. Fully unpacking at some point will feel nice.
Tim,
You are my little brother and I love you, but you fucked with me on Christmas so you had this coming.
Tim started out really normal and cute, as you can see here. Not as cute as his older sister, but cute none the less.
One day we thought it would be funny to wrap all of our Dad's old ties around Timmy. We were right.
On the left is Tim at age eight. On the right is Tim now. As you can see, not much has changed.
How he has a girlfriend is beyond us all.
I wish that I was the one who created this photo. Whoever did this is a genius. I will never understand your obsession with donkeys my brother.
Who has their graduation announced on the sign at DQ? Who besides Tim? Really.
Ummm...
yeah...
I don't want to know...
But nice socks and sandals.
This is Tim in front of the White House. Not kidding.
And last but not least- Tim in drag. Damn you are fabulous.
How did we go from that adorable little kid to this? If I had known back then how you were going to turn out...
Have a great birthday Tim, you lovable little donkey you.
