L.A.

Yesterday was spent in L.A. for work. After the work part, we explored a bit and had a couple hours of fun before heading back to Seattle.

I'm always amazed that I can fly from Washington to southern California and back all in one day (even though it's not very fun). Also equally amazing is the amount of technology available to you while flying Virgin America. You can watch satellite TV. You can play video games. You can catch a movie or listen to a decent selection of music. You can order a meal right from your seat. You can hop on the wifi and browse the Internet. Except for on our flight home, the wifi was down and the dude next to me grumbled about how he didn't get a partial refund on his plane ticket "like last time." Dude. You can watch TV, play video games, order snacks, and catch a movie, ON A FREAKING PLANE, yet you're upset that you can't surf the web? Are you serious? At one point the satellite TV fizzled out and the show I was watching disappeared, and I even caught myself thinking, "Aw damn this sucks! I want my MTV!" And then I was reminded of the clip below, and how honestly, everything really is AWESOME and nobody is happy. And I banished that thought and did crosswords on my iphone instead. He he. Seriously, our society has issues.

I'm guilty guilty guilty of technological ingratitude. But at least I wasn't looking for a discount like Captain Snuggle Pants next to me, who was cooing at and tickling his girlfriend the entire ride home. He even pinched her nose a couple times. I suppose a lack of wifi prompted him to get closer to his lady and have some real human interaction instead. Barf.

word. game.

A game. Answer each of the questions below using only one word.

Where is your phone? right

Your hair? wet

Your Mother? away

Your Father? gone

Your favourite food? spaghetti

Your dream last night? ocean

Your favourite drink? cold

Your dream/goal? write

What room are you in? cube

Your hobby? doodle

Your fear? death

Where do you want to be in six years? trees

Where were you last night? yoga

Something that you're not? tall

Muffins? sugar

Wish list item? fireplace

Where did you grow up? cows

Last thing you did? bathroom

What are you wearing? stretchy

Your TV? home

Your pets? love

Friends? scattered

Your life? good

Your mood? fluctuating

Missing someone? always

Vehicle? orange

Something you're not wearing? earrings

Your favourite store? thrift

Your favourite colour? many

When was the last time you laughed? morning

The last time you cried? tuesday

Your best friend? unsure

One place that I go to over and over? heart

Facebook? annoying

Favourite place to eat? impossible

Seen at High Up In The Trees.

list

ten things I'd like to accomplish this year:

1. find my niche. or become a really really excellent renaissance woman.
2. keep up the yoga. it feels so good.
3. take more photos with the diana camera and lens set that my wonderful husband got me.
4. figure out what to do with this blog. (gut feeling: more words, like I used to, years ago.)
5. enter my artwork in another show (or two, or three, or ten) of some kind.
6. keep doodling. obsessively.
7. find a good solid house.
8. be ok with uncertainty.
9. decompress my warped sense of distance. it used to be no problem to drive 20 minutes or more to get to the city when I lived in wisconsin. now it seems arduous. what happened? why is space and time so strange here?
10. finish reupholstering the ottoman that has fallen apart since my last attempt.

there are more, but ten seems reasonable for now.

Arts and Crafts to help Haiti

The list of ways to help Haiti is growing. I can't believe the success of the texting to help Haiti campaign, and there are so many other ways to help. But one of the coolest ways to donate, I think, is by supporting an etsy shop that has pledged to donate all of a portion of their proceeds to charity to aid Haitians. Victoria at sfgirlbybay has a lovely list of etsy shops and craft sources that are donating sales or hosting fundraisers. Or you can just do what I did and search the term "Haiti" on Etsy and see what comes up. It's really wonderful to see how folks are coming together in creative ways to help.

Here are some quick favorites from my Haiti search that caught my eye:

From upper left, clockwise: fat little hearts by Floridity, winter white soy handknit scarf by cristinrae, Danish blue woven heart garland by Eweniques, and the pink kitty baby catnip toy by plushteam.

I'm going to jump on the bandwagon, and will donate 100% of sales from all items in my shop (minus shipping) in the month of January to Haiti relief (exact charity yet to be determined...suggestions are welcome.)

A really nice mention

I was scrolling through my RSS reader at lunchtime and immediately noticed something was off. Why was my name appearing as a title for someone else's blog post? Ah. Well, that would be because Paola at mirror mirror was sweet enough to write about my photography today on her blog. What a lovely surprise! I wasn't losing my mind after all. I'm seriously tickled. I've been following mirror mirror since attending a meetup at Velocity here in Seattle. Paola was there with two other awesome local bloggers -- Mary from Shelterrific and Megan from Not Martha -- to share her take on design blogging with a room full of like-minded folks. 'Twas a good time, and I've been a follower ever since. Networking is an amazing thing...

So recently Paola talked about the Couch to 5K podcast program designed to get you off your rumpus and running a 5K in a mere few months. I felt mildly inspired. It sounded simple and organized and not overly strenuous for a total running idiot. I downloaded it, and tried it out that night. 90 seconds of walking followed by 60 seconds of running/jogging/shuffling/whatever you can manage. I only made it through two running cycles and had to walk the rest of it out. That's TWO MINUTES TOTAL, people. There could not be a worse athlete. My legs felt like logs.

But that just means that instead of three months, it takes me six months. Or twelve months. Or whatever. But my logic is that doing SOMETHING is better than doing NOTHING. And I don't care so much about running at all -- walking suits me just fine -- but having the goal helps. And it was actually kind of sort of fun. Trust me, it has taken well over a year to get into this mindset, and it's far more complicated than anything I'd care to get into here. But now I'm taking yoga and trying to get out of the house more (which is immensely hard in the dark, rainy Seattle winter). I don't call it exercise, but rather maintenance (and a little repair). I've just got this one life, and one body, and I had best take care of it.

Someplace else

My head is someplace else. Am I supposed to be writing a post about the New Year, or goals, or something? Well forget that. Here's a pretty picture, which is perhaps where my head is stuck.

Smuggler's Cove @ Oswald West State Park, Oregon. More photos on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/davejess/