Big thanks to Papi Chulo and Secret Agent Scotch for the amazing tickets!
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At a two day management off-site. My favorite parts are the personality tests.

Color me yellow, mostly. Except for the jelly beans. With those, I like the black licorice ones best.

what color am I today?

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The bad things:

• The sweating
• The things at the back of the cupboards
• Self-deception
• Breaking up is hard to do
• Heartburn and other forms of indigestion
• Sleep shortage
• Negotiating, particularly with an attorney involved
  
• The proliferation of homeless people
• Schizophrenic in the showers at the gym, having loud arguments with herself
• Anorexic/ skeletal girl changing at the gym to whom I would like to feed ice cream
• Missed deliveries
• Phone books

• Sun and thunderstorms
• The Oregon Coast
• mint.com
• Cute bird who wants her head scratched
• Guided by Voices
• Morning Pages
• The sunlight in my living room
• Flex-time
• Health insurance, for free
• Chocolate Chunk cookie from Dahlia bakery
• New laptop @ work - no more carrying mine back and forth
• Powell's books
• Yoga
  

Seattle is HOT after 6months of 40 degree cloudy drizzle, it is a nice change.  Sadly for me, heat makes me groggy and cranky and, well, pretty useless.  Combine with that the fact that the relationship I was in for the last 9 months or so just ended (amicably but heartbreakingly), and I could not sleep much at all over the weekend, and I ate a hotdog that made me almost throw up from acid reflux, and the movie I was planning to see tonight isn't playing tonight, and I accidentally deleted about 1,000 words of my memoir... well, I'm pretty much not having fun.  I could use a happy surprise of some kind.

I blogged about one of our great weddings over on my other blog, and forgot to post about it on Vox, whoops!

Golden Gate Bridge Portrait Session

I've been feeling a wee bit sorry for myself, for no particular reason other than a confluence of life's regular up and down stresses and a need to remind myself to focus on what I have to be grateful for.

When I get like that I tend to make myself feel better by buying things and so last week I opened my Amazon Wishlist and one-clicked ordered a couple of new lens for the camera; a telephoto * and a macro **. I haven't played around much with the telephoto, but yesterday I took a few shots with the macro just to start to learn the settings.

I'm feeling better already.

Raise a glass to a cold beer on a hot day!

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Blowing in the wind

*  Canon EF 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6 IS
** the Canon EF-S 60mm f 2.8 Macro USM

These are some photos I took today around my apartment.  Is a picture worth 1,000 words?  We shall see...

shampoo & conditioner

This is the pretty new shampoo and conditioner my hairdresser sold me last weekend.  And they should be pretty for the price.  I have thought a lot about the price of haircare since I started going to a "real" salon (instead of the $12 hipster barber shop).  I do like to chat with my hairdresser, but is it really worth $130 every 6 weeks for a cut and color??  Every time I go I feel like a sucker.  But then there's the consumerist part of my brain telling me I deserve it and I am paying for quality.  It's like there's an ad for a lifestyle I can't get out of my head.  The haircuts arent really any better than at the barber shop.

glass doorknob, no toilet paper

My doors all have original glass doorknobs.  One of the charming qualities of my apartment.  I bought those cheap pink plastic beads in London 3 years ago and they have hung there pretty much since I returned from that trip. I haven't replaced my empty roll of toilet paper yet.

hullo, I am a behrd.

This is my bird.  Her name is Beatrice.  She would like my attention! And yours too! I got her when she was just a 3-month old chiclet in Jan '07. She flies.

jewelry tree

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A jewelry tree I bought at Urban Outfitters.  It looks like a bare tree branch, which I like. When I bought this it took two UO employees to wrap it in about 3 cubic meters of paper so it wouldn't break.

bird toy

When you have a parrot, it is important to keep it entertained. Before I left for 3 weeks in Europe, I picked up a few new toys to help appease her loneliness.  As far as I know she has never so much as looked at this one.

my hats w/ family photo

My two most frequently worn hats. The top one (houndstooth) came from a boutique in Ballard (Seattle), and the army-esque cap came from H&M in Berlin.  My man-friend hates houndstooth, so I am asking for trouble when I wear that one.  It's like an allergy or something.  Behind the hats and above the exercise bands is a family pic of me, my mom, aunt dawnelle, and grandpa frank taken in 2005.

lucky frog, dad's dogtag, and hand cream

The lucky frog was a gift that some friends bought me in Spain when we all went to Spain in 2006.  When flying out of Amsterdam to the US the overly-cautious airport security asked if I had received any gifts, and I said "a marble frog." That stumped 'em for a minute. Next to that is my dad's dogtag from his short stint in the army in the late 1960's.  The verbena hand cream came from the Metropolitan Market the day I temped at Publicis and found that the AC dried me out.

rocks, feather, gravy boat, silver egg & grandma

That thing in the middle is an egg-shaped thing that makes a dong-y sound when moved around.  I have no memory of how or why I came by this thing, but I find it strangely appealing.  Also shown: some rocks, a cute good-smelling thing my uncle once sent me from Hawaii, a feather from my deceased cockatiel Agatha, grandma Ireland's gravy boat where I keep my change, and a photo of my grandma Pat as a little girl.

art + eyeballs

A piece of art created by my man-friend, eyeballs not included.  That light switch actually activates a 60 year old fan in the wall that does nothing but make a horrible noise.

einsturzende neubauten apron

I bought an apron at the Einsturzende Neubauten concert in Berlin.  How silly is that?  If you look closely, there's a bird.  I never remember to put on an apron while I'm cooking, and really what's the point?  But at least I have a cool apron.

sugar bowl in breakfast nook