what i've been up to

1) Conquering mountains avec maman.




2) Celebrating my b-day with lilies from Nicole, cupcakes from Lauren and fruit stripes gum from Regina.



3) Driving to Norfolk, where I had the surreal experience of walking in the Christmas parade as a volunteer for The Virginian-Pilot, wrangling a giant dragon balloon and dodging horse poop. Weird, weird, weird. No pictures exist of this, but there is this video: Parade.



4) Christmas shopping. I saw this sing-a-long kareoke Elvis at The Sharper Image. Scary! I also wrote about my Black Friday exploits here

5) I've also been learning video editing from Miss Margaret. Remember when we shot a story about llamas? This is how it looked when she finished: Llama movie

I'm 23 today

When you grow up, your birthday is such a non-event (you can't skip work, everyone's busy, etc), that I literally woke up today and went, "oh! it's my birthday. I forgot!"

I have gotten some money though, and that's awesome. I'm supposed to have a birthday lunch with work people later, so that's good, too.

Hopefully I'll do more birthday-like things this weekend. 23 is a bad, odd number. I just like even numbers. Huzzah to 24!

beards!

forget all that other stuff. what i really need are prints of bearded men! huzzah!
available at Ashley G's etsy site: Etsy

birthday time! (and maybe Christmas ideas, too)

I have received a request for Web sites that I enjoy that could possibly yield birthday gift ideas for me. Here are some of my favorites that would be pretty safe no matter what someone bought (but I put pictures of some items I'd like):


Thomas Paul address book, $15, from See Jane Work
See Jane Work


Terrarium, $40 from Sprout Home
Sprout Home


French Flash Cards from Fred Flare, $14
Fred Flare


Zig zag throw pillow from Twinkle Living, $50
Twinkle Living


Thomas Paul pillow, $48 from Bluefly Home
Bluefly


Screenprinting kit, $64 from Urban Outfitters
Urban Outfitters


Scarf from J.Crew
J.Crew

Other sites I like:
Anthropologie
Paper Cup Design
Elsewares
Art Effect
The MOMA Store
Velocity Art and Design

thank god for youtube

speaking of things I never thought I would see again in my lifetime, here are three of my all-time favorite Sesame Street clips that my mom and I talk about all the time.

what i've been up to

1) I got new bangs.



2) I was in Chanelle's wedding and Ryan was the photographer.



3) Sean bought a black suit!



4) Sean and I went to Gypsy Hill Park in Staunton and it was BEAUTIFUL.



5) We celebrated 2 1/2 happy, fun years by going to the park, seeing foliage, bickering a little, seeing Michael Clayton and predicting that Tommy Lee Jones will win the Oscar for "In the Valley of Elah," while George Clooney will probably be nominated.

even more boring pages

These are my most recent lifestyles pages. I drew the tree on my Quark page and my editor came over and was like, "where did you download that illustration from?" I was like, "um. I drew it." It was way cool.

pick-me-ups

I want to be Kate Spade when I grow up. Just design china patterns, be adorable and work with artists to make amazingly adorable films and ad campaigns.

On her web site, she has little films the company has made and they are so adorable it hurts that I can't seem to embed them in this post. One was a birthday present for her husband; it features children walking through the woods, reading and pondering famous quotes from the likes of Brecht, Freud, Oscar Wilde, Amelia Earhart and Katharine Hepburn. It was directed by Mike Mills, who dates Miranda July, who made "Me and You and Everyone We Know," and it totally has that same vibe.

The other film, "Blondie," is also adorable. It looks like this:




Go watch now! Click "Projects" and then "To Andy Love Katy." So cute!

more boring newspaper stuff

This is my much snazzier A1 for today. Later this week, I'll post some of my entertainment and lifestyles pages.

Cookie Time! - Troop Beverly Hills

Just a littlefun to start off your day. EDIT: Jenny Lewis is not the redhead who sings. She's the OTHER one.

start spreadin the news

So, last night I did my first A1 AND came in under deadline, with 8 minutes to spare. It's not gorgeous, but it's mine.
Here's the goods!

current excitement

This mini-movie, "Hotel Chevalier," is available for download at iTunes. It's very good and I have a hunch I probably liked that 15 minutes more than I'll like the 2 hours of The Darjeeling Limited. I love all the yellow; I'm in a very yellow phase. Love Wes Anderson's shooting style and dialogue so much. Always understated but stylish.



Sean and I saw "The Kingdom" this weekend and I'm firmly resolved that Peter Berg, the director, could put that haunting guitar music over anything and I'd cry like a baby. He used the same band that scores "Friday Night Lights" and I swear, gets me every time.

whew...almost

so, with the exception of some heavy boxes in my car that I am too tired/lazy to tackle, I am moved.

The apartment is old, shabby, somewhat in the ghetto (on only one of its four sides) and still charming. my bedroom is what sold me on the place and what still sells me.

I promise I will post pictures someday, once I find my camera battery charger (i haven't unpacked anything, I just finished packing up the H-burg apartment).

The move has been all-consuming and fraught with worries, but soon, once I'm unpacked, I can get back to actually communicating with people.

I never realized how hard moving can be when you don't take any time off to do it. It really is a full-time job as it is and I'd never moved before when I only had one full day and a bunch of half-days to do it. Never do that ya'll! Always take a week off!

new home!

I am moving into the above apartment next weekend!

potential problems: i forgot to look and make sure that clawfoot tub has shower option. disasters?
Otherwise, kindly old man landlord has promised to remove ugly wallpaper in kitchen, repaint, fix closet doors and AND I only pay electric, no gas. WOOOT!

The house is way shabby chic (partially b/c the artists downstairs seem to do all their art projects on the porch AND broke the porch swing), but it gets tons of natural light, i have more rooms than I know what to do with (one room I didn't even remember being there!), central air, clawfoot tub, hardwood floors, mantels and a bay window. Now, if I could only start fostering kittens and get Sean in the vicinities, I would have a dream come true!

no widows, ya heard?

just M-A-C and me, I'm a design gangsta.

That's from www.newsdesigner.com

and the beat goes on

my week in pictures:

The good








The Bad




The UGLY


These are images from four apartments I saw this week, ranging from $450 to $895 a month. It seems $895 gets you prettier wood floors, the end. One of those places has scuffed wood floors, but is MASSIVE, and the American spirit in me was swayed by the idea that bigger is better, even when it doesn't come with a W/D.

And the search continues!

going down down down

I'm finally ready to post some pictures from my visit home and to Asheville.

In Wise, we have this gift/furniture shop called The Clapboard House. I went in for the first time in decades and found these gems:





yes, that's right. coal jewelry. and coal miners made of coal. meta, much?
Don't be jealous; I'll pick up some for ya'll come Christmastime.

Mark: those were not my floors; that's a wood table at a restaurant. I haven't moved yet (dammit!).

everywhere like, such as

This was Miss South Carolina Teen USA, answering a question about why Americans can't locate the U.S. on a world map. Maybe they should have asked her to try locating it. Woot for South Carolina schools?

people, let me tell you bout my best friend

This is my new deskmate, Stango the Stego. Some of you might recognize the name, wink wink.

He is a walking stegasaurus pencil sharpener. His head contains the shavings. The pencil winds him. He is my new best friend.

I got him at this really cool store in Asheville called Lost Objects, Found Treasures. It looked like this inside:

So, adjusting to work is not easy.

For two days I woke up at 9:30. Today, I woke up at noon.

So now, I have like, 2 hours to shower and run all my errands.

On the up side, I'm learning how to design pages again, so that's good. I just got to figure out how to live life AND go to work. Needless to say, I have a whole new understanding of Sean.

OMG shoes!

I just got home from traveling home to Wise and Asheville for a brief respite before I sign my life away for my new job.

I have many, many pictures to post, but for now:



We went to Beaty's (a discount shoe store in Johnson City, Tenn.) I walked away with these:

actually, that's irritating

I was supposed to see the ideal apartment tomorrow

$650, 1 bedroom, AC, Washer/Dryer, above a fancy restaurant in Staunton, across from the independent movie theater and literally BEHIND my new job.

but alas, the realtor, a kindly older gentleman, emailed me tonight and said, "Actually, it's rented. I was nervous when you said you couldn't see it today, but I didn't want it to sound like a threat. Call my friend Tim and say I sent you! He'll have some places to show."

I can't decide if that's really rude or really nice. For now, I'm going with "annoying."

I am, however, seeing a different apartment downtown tomorrow. It's an open showing, and I'm not really ready to put anything down, but whatever. We'll see how it goes. Bet you're all glad to be done with your housing searches, huh?

holy cow!

I've never watched baseball, and I've never heard Phil Rizzuto call a game, but upon reading his obituary in the Times today, I'm sad I never did.

Some of his calls were transformed into "found poetry" by a couple enterprising writers in a book called "O Holy Cow!"

Here's one I think you'll especially enjoy:

Legs
The legs are so important.
In golf, they're very,
People don't realize
How important legs are in golf,
Or in baseball,
And football, definitely.
Track.
O, in track.
All-important.
Jumping.
Soccer.
Is there anything, what?
Is there anything where the legs
Are not the most important?

cat porn!

bwahahahahahaha



could this, a cat called "Gwyen," be my future kitten named Baba Beaton?



or could this be my future spicy kitten, Esteban?


oh, cat porn. I hate you, SPCA website.

want. hardwood. floors.

I looked at the apartment in the front of the top floor. The window was the only good thing about it, unfortunately.

So, the Staunton apartment search continues.

in other news, i cannot get a cutout to work in photoshop. i don't understand layers on photoshop. It's like how I speak french; i know what I want to say, I know about half the vocabulary, but I don't know the in-between words. In this case, the layers part. argh.