my new favorite thing

Straight No Chaser
thanks emilee :)


The 12 days of Christmas


Sitcom Medley

two poems

still

tremendous quiet sounds

shhh, shhhh shh

airy and barbed

light through darkness

it lay down

perfect, in circling violent haste

wondrous happening.

***

***

it tries to get me

falling off roofs

freezing the ground

being sharp

disguised as fluff

fool me not you foul thing!

don't leave me

baby it's cold outside

I'm sick, and doing battle with a fever. I'm winning though because I have tylenol on my side (acetaminophen, actually) and all the fever has is heat....and it's snowing outside, so the heat doesn't even have a chance.

also, I've gone through almost a whole box of pomegranate white tea....from trader joe's

I really really really miss trader joe's

I put up christmas lights a few days ago, I remembered that it wouldn't feel like christmas until I did, so even though I don't have a tree at least I have something. I also got stockings :) one for me and one for charlie, cause he's a spoiled kitty. It looks like I have a fake fireplace.

the first snow....

...was last friday :) I drove in it and I wasn't even that scared. I laughed the whole time brushing it off my car, there was just so much of it. I put Charlie in the snow, he wasn't a fan...I thought he might like the cold since he does this sometimes :

I went skiing last weekend, second weekend in a row! I was even more scared this time, but after I got warmed up again I was ok. Zach said I went pretty fast down the mountain! And I only fell a few times....the other times didn't count because I kept getting taken out by runaway snowboarders! They bent my pole...I don't even understand how.

This Sunday I had two shifts of helping with children. I've never been so tired after something. First service I had 15 kindergarteners all by myself, one was crying, another one kept slapping the pastors kid, and I was supposed to be teaching them about being thankful....did not work. I looked around at all the other leaders with their groups of six children....it took all my energy just to get them to stop drawing on each other. During the second service I was helping with the 3-4 year olds....so much easier, there were also fifteen of them, but 4 leaders helping! And all we had to do was show them a video, do a craft, and feed them a snack. And they just want to sit in your lap the whole time...I had three children in my lap, one in the middle, and one on each leg haha, it kind of hurt, but they were just so cute. I also had a very smart 4 1/2 year old, she was so funny, she told me a story about a girl who died because she ate too much gum....I think she was confused. The video we showed them was pretty weird, it was like blues clues for sunday school, but instead of blue they had this creepy letter K, I haven't figured out why it's a K yet.

These are a few of my favorite things....

Autumn leaves :)

Tazo passion tea, it's like hot pink pez in a cup

Pushing daisies, one of the best shows ever, I want to wear all of Chuck's clothes

tubes of oil paint that haven't been squeezed, it's like perfect potential

on a similar note, brand new crayons :)

This boy!

mountain towns in the winter time

Victorias secret's lip gloss

Kinder eggs! I could really use a Kinder kinder uberraschung right now

crispy critters

I remember this cereal, probably because I still have the book at the end, but I do not remember it being so creepy!

carrows straws

Emilee and Eric try to turn straws around in their mouths, Eric was probably distracted by the homeless people watching him, but Emilee has no excuse :)

the amazing cat-dog

I do not like ice

my car door was frozen shut this morning, there was ice on the stairs which almost killed me, I don't have an ice scraper so I had to use my printmaking spatula, my wipers were frozen to the windshield, there were six car accidents on my way to work, two road closures, and since I have a convertible my rear window never defrosted.......winter will be fun!

but, it's 30 degrees outside and I'm not even cold :)

now we can swim any day in November...

So Zach has been in California for the last couple weeks which means I have a lot of time for other things like painting, and redecorating my living room. Melissa and I went to the Celestial Seasonings factory in Boulder last weekend, and came away with lots of tea:) We weren't allowed to take pictures in the factory, but we decided not to follow that rule, we now have all of the secrets to the factory. We've opted out of making our own tea at home though, I don't think anyone could handle the smell. Our tour guide acted like peppermint was a type of drug....she was kind of creepy. There were also several people in our tour group who I thought were men, but turned out to be women....I wonder if it's a boulder thing.

TEA!

Apparently Charlie likes friends too

This is Charlie telling me he wants to go outside

I decided that if I started painting fruit I would get to do everything I wanted to: use lots of color and paint in basic shapes. These photos are not a good representation....because I'm too lazy to move the paintings into good lighting and my camera hates me....a scanner would be so useful....



hmmm, and my other images aren't loading

oh well this one was my favorite anyway.

California weekend!

I wish it would have been longer, like two weeks, then I would have had time to do everything I wanted to! There were too many things to eat in just 3 days (Emilee, we left out the habit and/or in n' out!)

On Friday we went out to breakfast, to the beach, we saw a seal, the water was warm (I'm not even kidding), we got milkshakes, emilee got ridiculously sunburned, we went out to dinner with lots of friends and ate "the good pasta", and then played pictionary dictionary (which is not overrated - especially when Todd tries to draw someone wetting their pants - that's one for the book!). Das es die perfekte tag! (except that there was no amazing race)

On Saturday we went to get free things from the aerie store, loaded up the car with yummy snack, like cheez-its and blenders (how gross does cheez-its look without the dash, cheezits?)

and drove down to Fullerton, or Anaheim, I don't really know where we ended up. Met up with Becca, Fanny, and Allie at our super sweet hotel, and then headed to the wedding...where we had a blast. Weddings are more fun when you have four dates!

On Sunday my sister picked me up and we got to hang out for a few hours. We got ridiculous ice cream....I forget what the place was called, but you could add all the different kinds of toppings you wanted...oh man, it was like an candy explosion in every bite. Then we went to Cheesecake Factory, since I had never been....I think I was too full from the ice cream to really enjoy it though. Mom wasn't there, so we ate dessert before dinner....we're not ready to be grownups.

ps. extreme weather

this was exciting a few weekends ago

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/news/2008/aug/24/tornado-warning-douglas-county/

it was so close I really wanted to get in the car and go see it (safely from a great distance)

but Zach wouldn't go with me:(

so I had to be content watching the live coverage on the news, and running outside to see how big the clouds were.

things of CO

So I'm trying my best to fit in with all the other coloradoers, I'm preparing for my first real winter, I bought semi-ugly shoes that are ridiculously comfortable and waterproof, and have traction for snow, after the one day of cold rain here proved to me that I do not have any footwear that can withstand weather of any sort, apart from the rainboots that emilee and I bought last year, but houndstooth plastic rainboots are not for all occasions:)

I also participated in an event quite popular 'round these parts, Sniagrab.

Apparently Sniagrab is where all the sports stores explode into their parking lots, and you can buy ski stuff. It's madness. I went twice. The name confused me, I thought it was snigrab, you know, to grab ski or snowboard stuff, to sni.

Me: "wait, Snia? what's the 'a' for?"

Zach: "for? it's bargains spelled backwards, it says it right there"

apparently their event slogan is: Sniagrab: bargains spelled backwards.

And from this giant event my big purchase was a pair of socks and mittens. Zach however got the prettiest (I mean, the manliest) ski jacket in the whole world.

I also have a ski pass now, it seems weird to buy one in August. But now I can walk around with my pass wearing my ski clothes and pretend like I know what I'm doing, when I actually have no idea, and I'm pretty certain I will brake my leg trying to ski this season.

There are a few things I refuse to do to fit in though, I won't stop saying "the" in front of freeway numbers, like "the 70" or "the 25", I will also keep calling them freeways, not highways, or I-whatever. I know I must sound silly, but they sound goofy too when they talk about "highway I-5", dude, it's the 5.

In other news, I don't hate my job! it's strange, after hating my last one so much. I even decorated my office space, my desk is the cutest one! I hung up pictures on my wall, I have flowers on my desk, and a candy dish, and my favorite thing, the teapot:)

I get to fly to California (which reminds me of my other pet peeve, "Cali" I don't shorten your state Colo. I decided I'm going to elongate the names of everything, like "Brekenekenridge" ha!)
Anyway, I get to go back on Thursday, and play with Emilee all day Friday! and go to Amy's wedding on Saturday, and stay in a hotel room full of girls on Saturday night! so fun!

I got this text from my sister at 2 am last night: "oh my gosh! I just got asked out!"
I can't wait for the story on that one.

muppet babies and care bears...

Apparently yesterday's post made me reminisce about my childhood, and then I started remembering all the awesome toys I had, then I found all these commercials for them, so I just had to gather them all in one place.

sally secret - I liked her because she was a "crafts" doll, her earrings were little rubber stamps, and stickers came out of her gut!



puppy surprise - I had a puppy surprise AND a kitty surprise, both had 4 babies inside:)



secret places, I had the one with the pool, I thought it was the coolest thing ever



my sister and I would fight over this all the time, we still have it and it still works



Baby talk, or Michelle as my sister knows her (still)


apparently girls AND boys will like this doll. I had one, I never really cared about it because I hated dolls and all she would say was "turn me over"

alphie, a "computer" for children



The doll who's hair grew when you put her arm up, my sister and I both had one, that matched our own hair color, my mom would always do that



commercials are so creepy in the 80's, I didn't have this doll, I had a magic nursery PET, where you dissolve something and find out what kind of animal you had...it was super creepy looking.



I completely forgot about this one! but I remember how the paper smelled!



this was such a cool toy in theory:

A Dear Diary

only, it wasn't really a diary, you could password protect it, which was cool, but you couldn't write a diary in it, you could store phone numbers, and notes like one sentence long, and every time it froze it would erase everything....but it was still pretty awesome

I had one of these, even though I wasn't allowed to play with playdoh, at least not in the house



I wish I could find the commercial for play-doh's "Flower making basket" it had a song that went "a tisket a tasket a flower making basket", and you'd push the handle from one side to the other and flower petals would come up, and they were scented, sometimes people walk by me and I think "their perfume smells like play-doh"

The Greatest Adventure

I just found this video of a show they used to show us on rainy days at school!



I completely forgot about it. It's right up there with Superbook and McGee and Me, ok maybe not McGee and Me, nothing is as good as those.

just for good measure:


and of course:

a few of my favorite things

I discovered at 11pm last night, that I can hear everything my downstairs neighbors say through the vent above my stove, and I wonder if they can hear me, "helooooooooooo" no response, but apparently they can't decide whether the leftovers in the fridge are ok to eat. They probably wouldn't like my answer, since I'm a leftover hypochondriac.

Everyday at work a Regis van pulls up outside, nothing special about that, until I noticed what was written on the side of it, "Father Woody's Wheels", reminds me of the Beebesmobile, but obviously not as cool.

I found a church here finally. I like it a lot. It kind of makes me feel old though, there are a lot of young people, and all the girls look like stereotype westmont girls, so it also makes me feel ugly, but I'll get over it.

Zach and I had lunch with my neighbors, they were nice and not scary. Kate and Brian, married a year ago, he's studying to be a youth pastor and she's in beauty school.

I saw Mamma Mia this weekend, with three other girls....it was not good, I'm glad I wasn't expecting it to be. I love musicals, but this was just bad, and why put pierce brosnan in a musical when he can't carry a tune? It gave me dumb chills. Although Emilee, I can see why Pam liked it, it seems to be all about old women being dancing queens.

But after we saw the movie we went to bar Louie's and I had the best grilled cheese sandwich ever. And saw this:
it's a lobster claw game, insert a coin try to grab a lobster, if you win then they cook it for you, it was the weirdest saddest best thing I've ever seen.

bicycles and digitals?

A few weeks ago I had an art show opening. It was about as classy as I expected it to be. In looking for shows to participate in I noticed that they all have a theme, like "miniature art" or "art by the river" or "watercolor landscape", this one was "compositional challenge" meaning that everything had to be on a square, circle, or oval surface.....I don't really know why that's a "challenge", but I was painting things on squares anyway, so whatever. This particular show let everything that fit the criteria in, so there were some that were...well, not so great. Some were really good, like the one with metal fish. There were far too many paintings of flowers, I'm guessing that's because the average age of show participants was 65. But I would much rather look at pictures of flowers than Charley's "digitals". Charley was an older man, but not old enough to excuse his work. He came to the opening dressed in a nice collared shirt....with mickey mouse embroidered on the back...and wanted to tell everyone about his "digitals" and how he used a "transparent layer!" in photoshop....just because you can play with photoshop doesn't mean you should...it was seriously painful, and I only wish that Darcy was there so I would have someone with me to understand how awful they were.

So that was my first Denver art show...at least I participated in something...and I'm taking a small victory in that my work didn't look like anyone else's, so at least I was unique.

Zach and I went to Vail a few weekends ago, his grandma has a time share so his family was up there. We went for the day and rented bicycles and rode around the town. It was SO much fun, and a great break from the heat, like a mini vacation. It also makes me wish I had a bicycle, with a bell, and a basket. It was so weird to see Vail without snow, it's such a cute little town. We had the best pizza ever at the Blue Moose, and saw the cutest puppy with the biggest ears I've ever seen.






oh ya! I almost forgot to mention my second art show! a solo exhibition, as it will appear on my artists resume. I had to undecorate my apartment in order to have something to display though.

best kid poem ever...

this made me laugh so hard today, I think it was just the way the kid read it though:

clop clop clop the horse won't stop,
oh no here comes a truck!
oh poor duck!
the duck is now flat, I hate that.

Life in Denver

Living in Denver doesn't really feel that much different than living in Santa Barbara. It's hotter, but it rains almost everyday. I do miss the beach, it just doesn't feel like summer without it.
I love my apartment. I love that I have space to do art. It makes such a difference, I work on something almost every day. I love that everything in the refrigerator is mine. I love that my vacuum has a million little attachments to play with. I love having a bigger bed, and a room to myself, a closet. I can turn the light on when I get up in the morning.

I'm trying to list everything that I love, so I won't think about all the things I miss. The biggest thing I miss is having girlfriends around. Someone to watch ridiculous TV or movies with. Play random games, like "how much can we fit in Darcy's top" or "how pregnant can sharon look?" or "crazy hair", group readings of Mortified, brownies in a pan, guacamole for dinner....and good girlfriends are hard to find, WAY harder than a boyfriend.

I don't feel lonely though, I guess it's good that I enjoy alone time, if I didn't I would probably freak out.

Now this post is making me sad.

I'm going to Vail this weekend. I think we're mountain biking, which I've never done. We'll see how much I injure myself.


My job is decent, I don't hate it nearly as much as the old one. My co-workers are pretty cool, not crazy, although one smells (A LOT) but that gives everyone else a game to play, it's called "stay away from Bob". I would feel sorry for him, but everyone has talked to him about it (seriously, everyone) and taking a shower and changing your clothes isn't that difficult.


I think I finally found a church I like. My neighbors invited me. And now I've finally met them, and they're not crazy and drunk all the time!

I'm taking art classes at the Art League of Denver, it's in this great old building, I love it in there, it has that wonderful smell of oil paints (the fumes are probably toxic, but whatever) and the wooden floors creak, and I swear there are secret passageways in the basement, and I saw a bat upstairs one night.



And I guess I'll say something about Charlie, so I can put a picture in. He's definitley been more difficult than I expected. I feel bad for him being alone all day. He finally sleeps at night, and only wakes me up sometimes when he wants to play fetch. He's a terrible jumper and falls on his face a lot, not graceful at all.
And he just learned that he has claws, so now he bites and scratches...oh joy.

I think it's funny

that I made a blog just because I wanted to pick a template