A pig in a santa hat

I’ve noticed it’s December 23rd and thought I might do a holiday blog post.  Luckily I’ve been taking holiday-oriented photos throughout the month!

While in Walgreens earlier in December I noticed their aisles of holiday stuff and the pig in the santa hat caught my eye:

Of course I promptly bought them for a friend and shipped them off.

Just outside of walgreens (or maybe a block up) I was offered the opportunity to purchase a wee reindeer made of little stumps. I didn’t.

Speaking of reindeer, the building I work in downtown had a “tenant holiday party” this year.  Tables of cupcakes and a live a cappella group belting out seasonal songs filled the lobby.  The tables were decorated with something everyone needs – gold glittering reindeer:

Holiday decorations are everywhere – even between the pure sugar and sweet and low packets at Einstein bagels, which is where I picked up this guy:

There was also the annual holiday potluck at work.  Being a particular kind of eater, I refrained from taking part as I usually don’t like much of the fare.  However, I did get some leftover cookies.  These are the worst kind of cookies.  King Sooper-made, whiter-than-white dough with bright green frosting and toxic sprinkles.  I ate something like three or four cookies…

The work potluck did have a theme! Tacky.  Seriously.  Even coming in late I did get to have my picture taken with a cardboard cut out of a couple wearing silly holiday sweaters and loving their pet.  Thankfully my friend Pat helped me out:

It wouldn’t be the holidays without ridiculous holiday cards, right?  I wished my family and friends a “meowy” holiday with this festive snowball of a cat:

 

Meowy Holidays!

11

 

It will pass

So I’m making this manchego-jalapeno beer bread the other night.  While cutting the jalapeno I absentmindedly licked my finger.  Instantly there was a soft burning sensation throughout my mouth and nose and sinuses.  The soft burning became more intense with every inhalation. My face was on fire. My tear ducts and mucus membranes leapt into action and I sat around the house with water pouring from my eyes and snot oozing out of my nose for about 90 minutes.  It was torturous.

I kept telling myself something throughout the experience: this will pass.  I had this happen in the past with my hand and knew that the pain would subside. While blowing my nose and trying to just sit with the throbbing face and deal with it, it occurred to me that “this will pass” is something I should keep in mind more often. How could I so rationally accept this while my face was on fire but I can’t get to that point when I’m feeling angry or sad or whatever?

Waiting room magazine

I think I’ve mentioned that I get allergy shots pretty regularly. If you recall, I have to sit in the allergist’s waiting room for 30 minutes after each shot – to make sure I don’t have a reaction.  I usually peruse email or the interwebs via my phone but sometimes I’ll look at the magazines.  The magazine selection is scant.
I want to share with you some of the disturbing ads I found.
Ad #1: Sally Hansen Airbrush legs ®
This stuff is available over the counter!? there are women who use this product regularly? This just seems like a product that exists to waste resources.  I guess I just don’t get the point…I mean it tells me that “Silky smooth, gorgeous legs are just a spray away!” but I have a hard time believing that this product wouldn’t look fake.

Ad #2: DiGiorno Pizza & Cookies

You know how much fat and calories are in a DiGiorno pizza?? Pairing it with buttery chocolate chip cookies is like inviting Americans to have a heart attack.

Ad #3: A Pill for Cellulite

Ironically, shortly after the DiGiorno pizza & cookies ad was an ad for a pill that would help relieve cellulite! How about no DiGiorno pizza & cookies?  Advertising is evil.

This all makes me long to read an Adbusters magazine.  They shine a strong light on our consumer culture:

Not that I don’t consume…

Where is 154W?

Things are not always where you expect them to be. 

Tonight I lost my locker at the gym.

After yoga I returned to the locker room and went to the area where I thought my locker was – locker #8 as I recalled. However, my key tag read “154W” and I assumed I’d picked up someone else’s key from the yoga studio floor.  I thought “I know, I’ll just go over to 154W and wait for that person to show up with my key.” 

I walked around the locker room twice and found no locker marked “154W.” I returned to the yoga studio imagining a woman standing there looking down in a befuddled state at a key reading “8W” – I found no such thing.

I went to the front desk and had a woman who worked at the gym go and look for 154W.  She couldn’t find it…She fetched the master key and went to locker 8 and opened it.  That wasn’t my locker.  Right next to #8, sandwiched between 8 and 14 actually, was locker 154W!

This defies all sense of the order of things. Kind of like this “dog.”

This experience got me thinking about looking for things; we can look for something using rational thought and even a solid process in some instances and not find it.  It seems plausible that some things can be found only once we abandon those rational thoughts and processes. 

What I’m applying this to is dating.  I went full throttle into the online dating world.  I was on three sites and had a lot of single dates (you go on only one date and realize that person isn’t your cup of tea).  It made me learn a lot about myself, other people and dating in general.  It was like a crash course in dating.  I had a process, a spreadsheet, and a sense of adventure.  There was some good luck; I found a few good guys.

It was while I wasn’t looking that I came across someone organically (i.e. not through a website). It defied my sense of order but it’s been amazing. I would have never looked between locker number 8 and 14 to find number 154…

Phoenix, Arizona

Phoenix for me was a melancholy room at the historic Hotel San Carlos where I camped out with a cold.  Well, that is what was going on with me when I wasn’t at the WTS Chapter Leadership training, which was being held in a different hotel about a half mile away.  That’s right, I got to commute via foot through the desolate, dusty streets of “downtown” Phoenix for two mornings. 

The first night in town I wandered fruitlessy through those empty streets in search of dinner and perhaps a beer.  While I didn’t really find anywhere good to eat I did see some Phoenix sights.  This is supposed to be an artistic interpretation of a desert flower on the ASU campus:

I also got to see the famous “Westward Ho” building.  An old hotel-turned senior housing or something.

This little guy was a treat to come across – seriously.  How often do you get to see a gecko on the sidewalk??

Of course, I took the light rail a bit. This is Phoenix’s relatively new light rail line:

On my last afternoon there I walked about a mile and a half from “downtown” and visited the Phoenix Art Museum.  This was my first solo visit to an art museum (or museum of any kind).  It’s different when it’s just you; it’s just your own thoughts and contemplation.  I was ok with that.  Here are some photos from my art museum experience.

There was a place on one floor with tall windows and big, black, leather chairs.  I sat for some time in those chairs observing the sunny Phoenix afternoon through the glass.

I think this was saved from an old hotel sign (the hotel was destroyed in some tragic catastrophe of some kind).

This is just a frog I really liked.

Me

Parting shot:

That was Phoenix for me.

slasher victim

I find it excessively difficult to come up with a Halloween costume.  Every year I want to do something clever, but that idea never seems to come to me.  It has only been in the past few years that I’ve dressed up.  So it’s a new topic to think about for me. 

This year I was saved by Emily.  Well, she saved me a few times this year, but also for halloween.  She had the idea to be an 80’s slasher victim and we did it together.  Brilliant idea – just the purchase of a good will prom dress and application of fake wounds and blood and you’re there!

Here’s us in costume being dead:

This is my self portrait with tiara:

See how good the wounds looked!

Now I should get thinking for next year…I could be a gorilla again.

MMMM

Last night I went to see Martha Marcy May Marlene at the Esquire theater, a place I haven’t been in some time.  It’s a disturbing story of a young woman (played by Olsen twins sister – Elizabeth Olsen) both during and after living with a cult.  The cult included elements of sex/sharing each other, initiation and cleansing, gender roles, and manipulation. The cult is, of course, led by a man - the scrawny but commanding Patrick (John Hawkes of Winter’s Bone).

I can’t stop thinking about it. 

The many women of the cult seem more like a harem for the group of men that live there.  The men are clearly more important in this micro-society.  The women make the men food, wait for the men to finish, clean up, and then eat dinner themselves.  They seem to serve the needs of the men let’s say. Patrick, the quiet bull of the herd, has his needs met most of all. 

The heroine – let’s use the Martha name – does get out of the cult and lands in the somewhat safe home of her sister and brother-in-law.  Even though the world of her sister is starkly contrasted with the cult, there is a blurred line between memory, reality, dream, and paranoia.  The movie jumps around in time and you don’t always know where you are or what’s really happening and neither does Martha. It was a little painful watching Martha struggle to decide which world is better, that of the structured and sexual cult or the clean, expansive, uncertainty of the real world of her sister’s home.

Watch it but make sure you are expecting to be unsettled.

whiskey and smoked gouda

I relaxed with some of both last night. 

Yesterday morning I ran the farthest I’ve ever run in my life – 10 kilometers (6.21 miles)! I ran The Stride 10k (benefit for Littleton public schools) with Lisa and she was an amazing running partner.  We ran the entire length and didn’t stop.  Now, I know to some this is no big deal but I typically run only about 3 miles at a time and have been doing that for 10 years off and on.  Also, I only ran about 5 times in the past month.  So I had serious doubts about my ability to run the full 10k without stopping. 

But we did it! I’m so proud of us – here we are just after completing the run:

There were some hills on the damned thing too.  See the profile below.  Sure there’s some vertical exaggeration but still! I had no idea Littleton had so much elevation gain and loss…I know it’s no trail run.

10

This bit of Exploding Dog art expresses so much about my life right now.

To do

• hardwood floor research
• clean computer
• repair sandals
• mail Audrey’s t-shirt
• orthopedist appointment
• vacuum car
• get camera cleaned
• fix prairie dog photo frame
• dust
• find new sunglasses
• buy camping water filter
• Learn how to clean bike chain

This list is weighing on me*.  What’s not on the list are the “regular” things like laundry, grocery shopping, give the cat her treats, and so on.  I suppose I’m lucky that the list doesn’t have things like “don’t be late for chemo therapy” or “buy enema.” Nevertheless, making it to the frame shop, the shoe repair place and schlepping myself around town to glasses/sunglasses places (prescription sunglasses needed) is not exactly high on my list of things to do when I have a spare moment.  I’m not going to list what I do in those spare moments because, well frankly, who cares? I’m not solving world peace so whatever.

* I realize that this is a massive first world problem…

SD-CB-Salida

In August I took a road trip around Colorado and I went through the Great Sand Dunes, Crested Butte, and Salida.  Colorado has so much beauty.  I’m just going to throw in some photos here as opposed to much narrative.  The trip was amazing – enough said.

Sand Dunes

Inspirational card kind of sky on the way to the Dunes:

Almost there!

The view from the campsite:

A few shots from a short hike that went around the dunes and allowed for some good photo opportunities:

The forest surrounding the Sand Dunes had experienced some fires in years past, thus the problem of hazardous falling trees:

Crested Butte

Crested Butte is a never ending photo opportunity.

Views from a hike:

 

This has got to be the most amazing rainbow I have EVER seen:

Views from town (Crested Butte):

Finally, sunset in Salida:

Microblogging

Is Twitter dying? An article at tipping point labs indicates that it is and that Tumblr is well-positioned to be next.  I’m not sure about the demise of Twitter, but I am Tumblr-curious.

Tumblr is another microblogging platform and is an interesting hybrid between a full blown blog and a spot where you can spew a few sentences (Twitter). What is “microblogging” you ask? Well, according to Wikipedia it’s:

a broadcast medium in the form of blogging. A microblog differs from a traditional blog in that its content is typically smaller in both actual and aggregate file size. Microblogs "allow users to exchange small elements of content such as short sentences, individual images, or video links.”

It feels more appropriate to post an interesting Oatmeal link and a sentence rather than a full-blown blog post on Tumblr. Here are a few examples of Tumblr pages:

• A tumblr devoted to the movie Raising Arizona
• A tumblr about classic and beautiful women
• A tumblr about fake science

The list goes on but these give you a sense of the brevity of a tumblr.  I never got into Twitter and I already have a blog, but that didn’t stop me from starting something on Tumblr! I now have an additional spot from which to yell into the void. 

And now for something completely different – I re-watched Rushmore recently and it has rekindled my love of Wes Anderson films.  I was reminded of the Jason Schwartzman-Natalie Portman couple in the Hotel Chevalier short and thought I’d share a moment from that:

Blogger app

There is an app for Blogger! I am testing it out...so this might not be a very worthwhile post. Basically, I can create blog posts from my iPhone.

I've tried to Insert some photos but I'm not sure how they will show up.

There's an app for this!