Potpourri No. 6 (Anticipation.)

Gosh, I'm just so delinquent with posting!  I've written 18 posts in my head already; have you read them?  No?  Maybe when you develop that super power, we can truly be friends.  Until then, you'll just have to content yourself with my disjointed scraps of thought. 

• After much squealing and jumping up and down, I finally got to see the Hood to Coast movie last night!  I ran that 197-mile, 12-person-per-team relay in Oregon in the summer of 2009, and I absolutely loved every dirty, chaotic, brutal minute of it.  Marnie and I flew up to Oregon to run it with a drama-drama-drama team, and it became one of the many running experiences that have bonded us.  (Ohhhhh, the stories she and I giggle over)  We both want to do the relay again (I'm insisting on being Captain next time!); anyone want to join us?  You think I'm kidding, but I'm so not...  The dvd for the film will be released in the next few months, and they're working on doing more showings in theaters.  I'll keep you posted - you definitely need to see it.  If for nothing else than to see how beautiful the state of Oregon is ♥

• Remember this girl?  Caley (aka Sidenote) is flying all the way here from Minnesota to vist me tomorrow!  Holy cow, I'm so excited!  Also?  How lucky am I to have two best friends flying to see me within in a 2 month time span?  Over the top, pot o'gold (and not the Alabama kind of gold, folks), pinch-me lucky.  While she's here in the ATL, we're planning to do girly nonsense like bake cakes, make crafts, thrift shop, and visit book museums.  Yes, indeedy, we're a couple of wild ones, watch out. 

• We've lived in our cute little condo for 11 months now, and I just finally broke down and bought an area rug on Monday.  There isn't a speck of carpet in our downstairs, and dangit, I'm tired of having cold toes.  Bo and I have completely different tastes in area rugs; he's more Modern, while I favor Traditional.  He thinks what I like is dusty and uptight; I think his choices are primary color havoc.  But the beauty of procrastinating a purchase like this is that it totally wore me down.  I found one for cheap, with free shipping, in the right colors, and hit Purchase.  I kinda really think that it looks like a 3 year old took crayons to it, but Bo assures me that it looks nice.  It's supposed to arrive tomorrow, so cross your fingers that it doesn't cause erratic behavior or seizures every time I stare at the swirly geometric shapes.
• Tomorrow is my day to post something for the food blog, and guess who hasn't even settled on a recipe choice yet?  Eek.  I have an idea in mind, but I'm completely worried that it'll flop and I'll be forced to post a whole writeup for something that's icky.  Related:  Anyone have a recipe for Apple Vinaigrette dressing?  One that tastes a whole lot like the one at Panera?
• I haven't posted photos of mockups for a long, long while, so I thought I'd end with something - literally - sweet:



Mockups for a baby girl's baptism ♥





Potpourri No. 5 (Excitement.)

 

• Last night.... I saw lightning bugs for the very first time!! I'd heard all the grand stories - kids catching them in Mason jars and using them as lanterns for summertime camping trips.  Oh yes, I'd heard all that and appropriately "hmmm"d as I was told the tales.  But then, last night, Bo dragged me outside just as I was headed upstairs to the land of cozy beds and fluffy down comforters.  He was shocked that I'd never seen lightning bugs before, but really - not allll of us are from The South; they don't have those in the Pacific Northwest.  Sasquatch, yes.  Lightning bugs, no.  I have zero knowledge of the little blinky guys, but I'm hoping that as it gets warmer, they'll venture out from the depths of the mini-forest behind our house.  Not so that I can catch them, but so that I can stare at them blinking and twinkling from my upstairs windows.

• I made up a batch of Cupcake Pops last night (what's new?), and for whatever reason, they went together fabulously.  Since I moved to Atlanta, making Pops has been more a struggle, and I can't put my finger on it.  Is my oven somehow making the cakes moister?  Are the eggs larger here?  But last night's batch was cute and fun and easy, and gave me hope that my Pops Mojo may have returned!!  Ahhhhhhhhh....relief!

• I just signed up for a photography class, and I'm ridiculously excited about it!!  All this time, I've been hacking my way through using my Fancy Camera (aka a dslr), and while I've been able to capture some great photos, I still don't know what the heck I'm doing.  User manual?  What's that?  I'm supposed to read the dang thing?  Nope, ain't gonna happen.  So I signed up for a class using today's Groupon deal, and the instructor seems super cool.  Hopefully, I'll get the make time to attend in the next month.  I cannot wait!!   

Potpourri No. 4

• I just realized this morning that I haven't had sushi since before I left San Diego. Which is really odd for me because I usually have it at least once every week or so.  And it's been nearly 4 weeks now.  I'm pretty sure that my body is screaming at me for being so utterly salmon nigiri-deficient.  I must remedy this soon.

• Today, I'm wearing (with my clogs, because I still haven't gone shoe shopping) a brown corduroy peacoat with a zipped-in wool liner.  And I feel so, soooo cozy.  I can't remember the last time I had the liner zipped into it.  I may not take it off all day, despite its making me look like a jumbo raisin.

• Because of the time change, the sun doesn't officially rise here until 7:50am.  ACK!!!  No lie, it was completely dark at 7:30 while I was getting ready this morning.  It was insane.  But nice not having sun glare on the mirror while I put on makeup.  I think today might be the first day that my eyeliner and blush don't look whorish.

• We're going to Orlando this weekend for a wedding.  (And, no - we don't actually travel for any reason other than for weddings.  It's madness, I tell ya.)  Orlando is the land of Bo, and when he returns, it's like an enormous homecoming.  Old friends come out of the woodwork, and I'm introduced to more people than I've probably ever known in my whole life.  And every single one of them is just ridiculously nice.  It's some kind of awesome, really.

• And just because, here's a quick picture from yesterday's baking stint with my friend's daughters.  Their post will go up on Friday.  And there are oodles of awesome pictures of them hard at work in my kitchen.  I can't look at this picture and not laugh :)

Potpourri No. 3

• If you squint super hard, you'll see that my fortune from last night's dinner says this: "Play lottery today. Lady luck is upon you." So, I did. One must always obey the fortune cookie gods. I drove myself to the nearest 7-11 and moseyed up to the counter. I glanced at a lottery sign for the right words and then asked the guy for a "Super Lotto Plus" ticket. Come this Saturday night at 8pm, you can start telling people that you know a real live millionaire. And she's just the nicest and hasn't let the money affect her in any way, and she still bakes cookies for everyone, and smiles a lot, and buys groceries with coupons. Sidenote and I will have to get started with the planning of elaborate vacations now that we'll be joining the Stinking Wealthy Club simultaneously.
• Speaking of Ms. Sidenote, we just ordered the same shoes. I'm not one to enjoy having people wearing the exact same things as me, but 1) She lives allll the way up in that corner of the Midwest, so no one will know that we're en route to being outfit twins, and 2) She's got such fantabulous taste in clothing, that I don't even care if we are twinsies. I swiped that picture above from the Anthropologie website (dreamy sighs), but ours are actually the shoes in the picture below. (Photo courtesy of my crappy phone camera.) They are DEE-vine. I truly blurted out "ahhhh" when I put them on, and they're 4" wedge heels. Yes, comfortable 4" heels do exist. Life is grand. Just so, so grand.
  
• Andddd, speaking of 7-11, I made a quick stop there this morning to grab coffee on my way to work. Let me just say that the coffee counter area there at 8am is mayhem. People looking all frantic and grabbing and pouring and stirring at a lightning speed. I kind of stood back to take it all in. And to figure out which of the 11 (yes, 11) coffee pots I was supposed to pour from. Is there any possible way that blueberry-flavored coffee can taste remotely good?? Methinks not. But as I stood there, trying to read all the coffee pot handles, a man joked to me that it looked like I needed a consultant. I laughed and explained that I was looking for the regular coffee. Then he turned and said, "Well, you sure do look nice today" in kind of a twangy, old school kind of way. It totally surprised me, and I decided right then and there that I'd start doing the same for others. When a complete stranger pays a compliment, it is just surprising enough to make you stop and think about it. So that's what I'm going to do. So don't be surprised if some oddball girl with frizzy hair approaches you to insist that your jacket is just so incredibly cute.
  
  
• I'm flying to Atlanta this weekend to see one of my best friends, Natasha. We met in college, a gajillion years ago, and I haven't spent time with her since we ran Hood to Coast last summer. And for that, we were crammed into a minivan, stinking to high heaven and motion sick and totally sleep deprived and dealing with Girl Drama. So, I'm super duper excited to see her and her brood and the city I've heard so much about. This week has been such a whirlwind that I haven't even done laundry or thought more than 26 seconds about packing, yikes. But, regardless, I'm starting to get reeeeally excited, yayyyy!!!

Potpourri No. 2

• I can't wait for the Supreme Court hearings to be over, because I've had the words "Sonia Sotomayor" stuck in my head for the past 2 days straight.
  
  
• I didn't realize until I was halfway finished writing this post that my last Potpourri entry had the exact same phrase stuck in my head. Evidently it's a plague someone has cast upon my house.
  
  
• My mom's side of family sweetly passes on a gene that predisposes us to get the hiccups so bad that they're painful. (Why oh why couldn't I have got the tall and skinny gene instead?) They give me a stomach ache immediately, and I can't even hide them in public because they're incredibly loud too. But! Over the years, I've learned to make them go away. No peanut butter, no sugar, no drinking funny out of a glass. I've decided that since they're a result of spasms of the diaphragm muscle, that if I can get it to relax by breathing calmly and slowly, they'll stop. And they so do. I'm a genius!
  
  Bo straight up laughs at me every time I get the hiccups. He says they sound like baby alligators. Leave it to someone from the South to recognize that sound:
  
  

• I originally didn't have a whole lot of interest in seeing this movie, but now that I've seen the preview, I. Cannot. Wait. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that I spent yesterday wanting to punch someone and be violent. But the soundtrack could be amazing, too. Who wants to see it with me?!

Potpourri No. 1

I piled on a goodly amound of layers this morning, and I'm feeling pretty cute at the moment. That happiness may take a hiccup when I get dubious looks from the engineers here. Because they possess such discerning fashion sense and all. Here are my layers (worn with jeans and olive green heels):

Ever get words or phrases stuck in your head? I get them repeating on a loop, the same way songs get stuck in my head. This morning's culprit was "Sotomayor." Yes, as in our newest Supreme Court nominee. CNN was talking about her, and her name popped right into my head and stayed there. Thirty minutes later, as I walked Rory, every third clip-clop of my highheeled footfall had her name broadcast in my head. The only thing that saved me from this self-inflicted form of torture was listening to a song I love.

Which song? Why, Billy Joel's "Uptown Girl," doncha know ;) I triple dog dare you to listen to it and not be tempted to sing along.

They're moving everything around on the manufacturing floor here, and it's making me want to jump up and help them. Not because they need my help and not because they need my input. I just love rearranging furniture. My sister, Magpie, and I used to move the furniture around all the time in our high school and early college days. It might be because we moved so much while growing up - and thus think it's exciting, that rearranging furniture stirs up some of that same excitement? I should have had this in mind when I bought my current stuff. It's all so enormous and heavy that I can't move it by myself. And there are very few configurations that will work in our place. But that manufacturing floor out there. I tell ya, so many possibilities! Think I should hobble out there in my heels to offer my help? Ha!