Saturday, January 30, 2010

In Process

Sorry friends for not posting for over a week. I am moving this week, and I get my keys on Monday. I'm so excited! I can not wait to get up there, I've spent the last couple of days going through boxes of stuff that I have in storage trying to figure out what is absolutely necessary to my life. There's not much storage in my new place, so I have to be very picky about what is an absolute must. I'll get some pictures of the process of the move up so that you can enjoy it with me, then I'll have everyone over for a big bowl of soup.

Sunday, January 17, 2010

Links

As most of you know, I am an obsessive reader; I tend to plow through a stack of books the way my dogs eat leftovers. This obsession has transferred itself to the web recently and I have been asked by several friends to send some links to my favorite sites. In that spirit I present you with the list of websites and blogs that I check on a semi-regular basis (honestly, daily, I am in stalker territory with some of these bloggers).



This blog is the first one I started following, and she's hilarious. Her husband's blog is also sublime.



When I feel sad about the world I go to PostSecret, and I always give these books as gifts. Love it! I'd love to figure out a way to get Frank Warren to speak here in the valley.



This artist takes the most stunningly colorful pictures. I just want to fall into her world.

These artist's blogs are just beautiful. Shabbyscraps (Shabby Chic!), Theodesign (illustrator), Pretty Petals (more shabby chic) & Flossy-P (gorgeous artwork).

Over at Mighty Girl I think anything is possible, and if it can be done Ms. Mason will figure out how to do it. The most inspiring thing is her Mighty Life List, all of the things that she wants to do in her lifetime.

To find out what's going on in Fresno I go here, here, or here.

I don't know why but The Sartorialist and his girlfriend Garance are photogs that I follow like a bloodhound. I get so disappointed when they haven't posted new pic for a few days.

I was really liking this Picture Fresno blog, but they haven't posted in a while, so I'm afraid they've given up. :(

The last couple of months I have added several independent fashion blogs to my list of must reads and it all started with Already Pretty. Then there was Fashion for Nerds, Bright Side Dweller, The Hidden Seed , Gilding the Frilly and Fab Frocks. There are a few more, but I thought that this list was already looking long.

Finally, there are a couple of sites that I go to just to smile. Here, here and here.

Oh, one more. When I can stand to deal with the outside world, I check in here.

Have a good week!

Monday, January 11, 2010

Time

There's never enough time in the day, right? Except here I am, at 2:23pm, sitting in my office, a stack of incoming bills sitting to my left, and I am writing a blog post. What I really want to talk about, though, is the fact that, although I now have a apartment rented in Fresno, I can not move into it until mid-February, and the time between then and now seems an eternity. The days have gotten longer, the hours pass slower. Are you aware of this phenomenon?

A few years back, at the end of my tour with MCT, I felt like the last week, in Gilroy, would never end. The Wednesday of that week I went to visit my friends in the bay area and on the way back to Gilroy nearly turned east on Hwy 152 to drive home. It was only three hours away - but three days in MCT time. What was also stretching the time was my planned trip to NOLA with Nicole and Brooke. I felt like it would never come, and yet on the trip it felt like we didn't have enough time to get to everything.

Time is currently playing lots of tricks on me. I need to find a job in the next month, in order to be able to sustain myself in Fresno, and it seems like I've been job hunting forever. I need to pack my belongings so that I am ready for the move, but I keep telling myself, 'Oh, I've got plenty of time'. It doesn't help that I am a confirmed procrastinator.

Enough about that, how cute is this picture of Karen R., myself and my mom with Love And Theft, from KJUG's Jingle Jam concert this Dec.? They signed my guitar! You can't tell from the picture, but my outfit was super cute, always with the red.


Thursday, January 7, 2010

Advice

The fact that I am surrounded by highly intelligent people for the majority of my life is one of the things that has made life fun in the past few years. I have exceptional friends. My exceptional friends are also caring and generous and occasionally overwhelm me, in good ways and bad. Luckily they are astute enough to know when my eyes are crossed with advice, and it is no longer sinking in. Also, I wouldn't be sharing my experiences, if I didn't want help and advice.

That being said, I am developing my own philosophy about dating, along the lines of my new take on my wardrobe. I do love clothes, after all. Here it is: If you try someone on, someone that everyone thinks is a perfect fit, even if you see that they are a perfect fit, but they just don't suit you, put them back on the rack. You will regret taking them home, and if they are still on the market, they have the chance to get picked up by someone that truly fits, and so do you. In love as in fashion, if you don't absolutely love it, you'll never wear it.

Thank you friends for your advice! I truly treasure it. Keep it coming.

Tuesday, January 5, 2010

Shoulda, Coulda, Woulda...

I will endeavor this year to be more honest with you, my faithful readers, with the people I interact with, and more importantly, with myself. To that end, I have decided to tell you my reactions to Saturday night, at the risk of embarrassing myself. What have I got to lose, I embarrass myself on a daily basis anyway, right?

Alright, so Saturday night, after Rocky was over, I headed to Starline to hang with ARN. I was really looking forward to it, cause I'd had such a great time the night before. On the way into the Grill I stopped to give SM a hug and kiss, but he stopped me, not wanting to give ARN any wrong impression of our relationship. Which, come to think of it, is increasingly weird. The Grill was packed with people, and ARN was sitting with Jag and Brooke, having a drink. We should have gotten out of there, should have made for a quieter place, but we didn't. The Rocky cast descended on the Grill as well, in full costume, which really made it hard to talk and get to know each other further. I was exhausted, and falling asleep in the booth, but trying valiantly to stay in tune with the flow of conversation. Anyone who has been around me in this state of mind can tell you that I get vague, make strange references to things unconnected to the convo, and generally give people reason to be concerned, so at 1:30am I called it a night. ARN walked me to my car and like a perfect gentleman stood five feet away! Am I crazy? He could have tried to kiss me, that's where I thought it was going. Once again I have misread some signals somewhere.

ARN is back at school now-far, far way, so I won't be around him for at least two months, but hopefully, even after this post, he will keep in touch and we can try a do-over.

Saturday, January 2, 2010

A Running Start

2010 has already started out well. Thursday night, after a surprisingly fantastic run of Rocky, I joined HP and Jag at the grill for the turn of the year. Whilst chatting with them, they mentioned Jag's friend (I'll call him ARN) that would be joining us for a drink. HP declares that we are the male and female version of each other, which I find intriguing, and a little bit scary. ARN joins us and is funny, charming and pretty cute, so I, towards the end of the night, awkwardly ask how long he is in town and if he would like to go out the next night. With some help from HP*, we set a time and place to meet, exchange phone numbers and promises to be there the next night. I have a date! On Jan. 1st! An auspicious start to the year.

*Really, I wouldn't have ended up being able to set a time and date. I am intially confident, but my follow through sucks.

So last night we met in front of a strangely closed Starline and headed west on Olive. Neither of us, making the date at the last minute, had planned anything, so we decided to walk Olive and see what struck us. ARN is a theatre grad student, so we had plenty to talk about, including mutual friends. He knows a director that I worked with 6 years ago. Totally random. We had dinner at Sequoia Brewing and then headed over to Manchester to see Sherlock Holmes. I ended the date after the movie, only because I had to drive home and be at work this morning at 9am, but I encouraged him to call me, facebook me, email me, whatever. What do you know, he added me on the FB and we are meeting up again tonight after Rocky.

No pictures of my outfit, but I was looking pretty cute. Black tights, black denim pencil skirt, red turtleneck sweater, black chucks, and my giant blue shell earrings.

I am having some regrets that I didn't mention that he would be the subject of this post. Still on the fence about letting people know that I will be sharing these details with a small selection of readers. What do you think? And, ARN, if you happen to read this, any impressions you'd like to share?