rounding up and moving on

It’s snowing outside and the apartment is lamp lit, tonight is New Year’s Eve. Always the awkward sister to Christmas in my mind, New Year’s seems a rather odd holiday. Maybe because Christmas was always more interesting, anticipated and more of a family event growing up. New Year’s was the holiday in which I tried desperately to be cool enough to have something to do, but at the same time preferred to stay in and just hang out.

Tonight we are throwing a low key party, chex mix and champagne kind of affair. I plan on wearing jeans and scruffy socks. Maybe I’ll be able to persuade our guests (of unknown numbers) to watch Sound of Music with me. We’ll turn on the TV in time to watch the ball drop and then we’ll blow out the candles on the ‘08 cake and then probably go to bed when the sugar wears off.

The rest of the week will bring visits from friends, some personal berating in my attempt to get myself to finish up cough*start*cough grad school applications, work in the belated family Christmas gift and maybe clean my room.

Tomorrow I plan to take some time and do a bit of 2007 round-up so stay tuned and maybe I’ll even post my belatedly merry Christmas post

I hope you all have a lovely evening (especially if you happen to be enjoying fondue!)

a probably too late christmas wish list

Did any of you know that Christmas is only 11 days away!  If so, WHY did you not tell me?  I have to admit I a little behind on this whole Christmas present thing.  My plans are brilliant, mind you if pulled of they would be grand, but I am not sure everything is going to happen as it should, considering the late date.

In other news if you are one of those people out there searching for what to buy me for Christmas, here are a few ideas:

a pretty tea pot and a new loose leaf tea strainer

a warm somewhat water resistant winter hat (maybe something like this) although one has to take into consideration the giant size of my head

some more work appropriate socks (preferably in shades/patterns of brown/grey)

a nice pair of gloves (maybe something like this, but black or grey)

one of those surge protector multiple outlet things that lets you plug lots of items into one outlet (maybe this one)

a new CD by the musicians behind the amazing, incredible Once (this one)

some nice decaf tea (maybe some Rooibos) (okay I got some of this already, but I’ll leave it on here, because who doesn’t need more Rooibos)

or maybe a nice fiction book to add to my huge list of “want to be reading right now” (I am really looking forward to reading this one)

UPDATE: After celebrating Christmas last night with the girls (three cheers for bread pudding and mimosas) the above items are no longer wished for.

art sale round-up

Okay that was really strange, it just erased my post, but left the title and categories….Anyways moving on.

As talked about in a previous post I had a table at this past weekends Art Sale. It was put together by the church and community I have been connecting with for the past year. Somewhat nervous about the whole idea of labeling my photographs as ART and asking people to spend MONEY on them, I got Tim to join me coming up with photographs. In order to give us some coherence we came up with the theme of traveling (big surprise there, right!) and picked our 11 favorite pictures taken in places we had visited. We ended up with a pretty impressive spread considering that Tim living in London for 2 years, and has traveled repeatedly to South America. All of mine were of course from my crazy big trip this summer.

What ended up being the biggest part of the weekend was preparing rather last minute for everything. In a rather stunning display of forethought I decided that I should have plenty of time to cut out 22 pieces of foam board, 22 pieces of brown bag and mount 22 pictures all on Friday night. This turned out to be a wee bit of an underestimate of time. Fortunately my wonderful roommate, who earned herself a better place in heaven for it, stayed up to midnight with me AND woke up at 8:30am in order to finish up the mounting. Also my other wonderful roommate drove to the store on Saturday morning to fetch adhesives, after I learned that double stick tape is not the complete solution to all your mounting needs.

After the chaos of Saturday morning, I ended actually getting the display set up, showered, fed and pretty much ready for whatever by around 2pm (only 1 hour after the show started). For the display itself I took a few boxes to serve as props for the photos. Covered everything up with scarves and then placed all the photos out with labels as to where they picture was taken and who took it. I have to say I really liked the end results.

We had a pretty successful sale managing to earn $112. Which didn’t allow us to break even, but exceeded my expectations. But mainly the sale was fun because it gave me a lot of practice in receiving compliments (something that I am generally not so great at) and boosted my confidence that while the exotic nature of the locales were a part of what attracted people to my photos, there was something more. Also I really enjoyed the chance to see the creative talents of other people in the community put to use. Here are the most popular photos (I took the one on the left and Tim took the one on the right):

now for something really deep*

email exchange from 2:05pm to 3:17pm

A:these are pretty darn cute
http://www.planetshoes.com/itemmatrix.asp?groupcode=1543

fun!!
http://www.planetshoes.com/itemmatrix.asp?groupcode=193

ugliness incarnate
http://www.planetshoes.com/itemmatrix.asp?groupcode=82

covet….drool
http://www.planetshoes.com/itemmatrix.asp?groupcode=239

also incredibly ugly especially in the green
http://www.planetshoes.com/itemmatrix.asp?groupcode=81

(Abby takes break from shoe viewing to find out if the library has Atonement by Ian McEwan.  It doesn’t, she is extremely disappointed, but returns valiently to shoe viewing)

gorgeous, but not exactly practical for winter wear
http://www.planetshoes.com/itemmatrix.asp?groupcode=2332

also incredibly cute and tempting!
http://www.planetshoes.com/itemmatrix.asp?groupcode=2336

J: You must be stopped! http://www.planetshoes.com/itemmatrix.asp?groupcode=2299 Here you are. Black comfortable flats

A:they are very comfortable looking, but they look a tad momish to me (maybe I have too high expectations)

maybe I should run off with kenneth cole, I think we could be very happy together
http://www.planetshoes.com/itemmatrix.asp?groupcode=1484

slightly cheaper than earth option, but also cute (and available in both our sizes)
http://www.planetshoes.com/itemmatrix.asp?groupcode=2014

knit shoes! the black is very chic, but the tan is also lots of fun
http://www.planetshoes.com/itemmatrix.asp?groupcode=1618

oh so perfect, except for that pesky calf circumference
http://www.planetshoes.com/itemmatrix.asp?groupcode=1961

*alternate title “what Jess and I do when we don’t want to be at work on a Monday”

who says you can’t switch thoughts mid….

Remember when I used to post happy things, maybe about the city, or about my friends, or about how pretty life can be. Yeah I miss that too. Too bad this blog has turned into lots of links and occasional blah fests. My current down in the dumps mood is pretty directly related to my “time of the month”, but also compounding on the regular issues in my life of non-direction, lack of peer groups, and more depressingly the lack of males. You know I don’t think I really want to write another post about how I don’t have a boyfriend. You know and I know the issue, why hash it out again.

Instead I am going to radically switch gears and tell you about something I am doing this weekend that I am really excited about. Essentially the church/community I have been connecting too over the past year decided to do an art show/sale/fundraiser thing. I thought it was a pretty cool idea so I volunteered to put some stuff together. But also being rather intimidated by the idea of having some of my photos labeled as ART and asking people to use their MONEY to obtain them, I got my older brother Tim to go in on the idea with me. So we came up with a theme (travel) and each picked out 12 pictures we had taken in various countries. Tim has the largest range seeing as he lived in England for 2 years and was able to take weekend jaunts to Spain and Germany, while I have essentially pictures from My Giant Trip this past summer. Today after school I am going to go get our selections printed out, then tonight and tomorrow will be spent crazily matting them all (paper bag on foam board, cause I am all kinds of classy). Then Saturday (from 1pm to 6pm) I will be over at the church peddling my wares and then again on Sunday from 12pm to 2pm. So if you are in the area, come check them out, because if no one buys them you all know what you are getting for Christmas.

a frustrating dilema

My age old recipe for dealing with “lady issues” has been caffeine (preferably intake methods include black tea and chocolate), sleep and comfy pants.  However I am discovering that the first and the third ingredients clash slightly with each other.

In other news my cat officially drinks out of the toilet (she also does laps around the apartment during the hours of 10pm to midnight and enjoys pouncing on and under the carpet.

I also love the fact that it seems the entire country experienced the same snow storm over this past weekend.  And via various internet forms I have enjoyed its progress the whole way from the west coast through the midwest to east coast.