sex and the city

I somehow missed this, I guess not having cable helped, and the few episodes I did catch were on TBS which, now I know, makes no sense whatsoever since they basically edit out all of the good parts.

Anyway, I watched Season 1 this week and it's so funny. Sort of like a really long chick flick with curse words that you can have on in the background while cooking, cleaning the house, or whatever.

random shots of the day

This is where I spend my morning routine, sitting in bed with coffee and blogs:

These are the best casual shoes ever:

Here is the complete SATC. My neighbor brought them over since I watched the movie but not the show:

I love the huge, shared closet in this new apartment:

And my handing row of dresses and coats:

Here's my guitar case and leather jacket, waiting to be taken out for lessons:

I'm trying hard to learn stuff that still doesn't make sense (yet?):

yesterday

Spent a while yesterday chopping up veggies and found it strangely satisfying.

Although the onions made me cry and taking pictures of chopped up veggies felt weird even for me.

Mad men makeup

I took these pictures a couple months back when I was experimenting with liquid eyeliner (ignore the hair, please). I'd never used it before in my life and now I wear it almost everyday. Mad Men definitely got me out of my makeup rut (and maybe into a new one?). I like it with the red nails and lips for dressing up, but I really like it with subtle lipstick or gloss for an everyday look. I don't dress '60s-ish or at all vintage, so I think it works without looking costume-y.

I use this. It's sort of like a fine-tipped sharpie except you can wipe if off with a q-tip if you mess up. Don't try it if you are in a hurry or very tired though, can be disastrous. If you haven't tried it before, this will teach you.

meat eater

Here I am outside of Morton's Steakhouse, waiting to see if I actually like steak or if it was just that once.

My entire life I've hated steak, I'd try it occasionally just to see what everyone else was talking about, and just never liked the taste or texture of it. I finally gave up even trying it in steak places since I knew I would hate it. Until one night last October when I ate an entire steak at Fleming's in San Diego. I thought it may be a one time thing, so I tried again last week (two weeks ago?) when we were in San Francisco. Turns out I like steak now! Morton's was definitely not as good as Fleming's, but it wasn't bad either.

(restaurant light is always too dim to use an iPhone for pictures of your food)

guitar lessons

I sort of fired my guitar-lesson teacher and I feel really badly, but oh well, right?

I'm not very good still and I'm improving very slowly, and I'm trying to not compare myself to my husband who I guess is a natural, and this article is helping some:

If you are an artist, if you feel you want to be a guitarist, then, you would really be much better off eliminating the word “talent” from your vocabulary. You should not even be concerned with whether you have any or not. You should only be concerned with how much you love music and the guitar. You should only be concerned with how much you need to do it. Whether you have talent or not is for other people to waste their time wondering about.

I think the boys are going to be naturals too, plus they look so cute playing:

We went from 0 to 4 guitars (well, one is a bass) in two weeks. Guitars are addictive. They are like purses: you can only use one at a time, but they are come in so many shapes and sizes that you have to have more than one.

1994

I just can't make myself go to sleep when D. is out of town... the other night I stayed up until 3 am watching movies on Hulu. Specifically, Kurt and Courtney (oooh, bbc conspiracy theory! I am on the verge becoming obsessed with Kurt Cobain, poor guy, I think because D.'s been playing Nirvana on his guitar and we've been listening to them again), 100 Girls (sort of a porn-y comedic teen love story), and Mansfield Park (so good, book is now on my to-read list).

Oh, Hulu also has all the episodes of My So-Called Life available. I will always love this show, it takes me back so exactly to a moment in my life where I am watching it on mtv with my sister in my parent's living room. If you've not seen it, you should.

Today I figured out a genius way to make washing clothes in the laundry-mat bearable... I rented The Ugly Truth from iTunes, put it on my iPhone and brought my little pink headphones with me. It was really good, I was so caught up that I even didn't even check once to see if the clothes were dry, just waited until the dryers went off.

boots!

Oooh, I finally found a pair of motorcycle boots, and I love them! I was originally holding out for the Fryes, but these were there, and in my size, and really comfortable, and 40% off... now I need to either get more dresses or get over tucking pants into boots...

Sunday

Long drives, huge skies, and new iPhone apps:

Turn my iPhone into a video camera for 99 cents? Hell, yes. Obviously, this is not professional video quality we're talking about, but it'll work.

And in the completely useless (and completely free) category:

You can make any photo look like it's built of legos! Although, my household probably appreciates this more than the average...

all about steve

They were playing All About Steve on the plane to San Francisco, and I watched it twice. It was so funny, I couldn't stop laughing out loud, even though I was trying to be quiet. It was just as funny the second time, and to be honest if the ride was longer I would've watched it one more time.

I wasn't looking forward to this movie, because the trailer just looked obnoxious, and I dislike Bradley Cooper (although he's growing on my after his roles in The Hangover and now this). I probably wouldn't have watched it at all, even though I love Sandra Bullock. The trailer definitely does not do the movie justice, her character in this movie is just so good and likeable, it may be her best movie ever, but I'll have to watch it a few more times before I decide that...

Motherhood was playing on the ride back to Texas, and it was cute (predictable) but definitely don't watch if you are planning to have kids! Love this look for Uma though.

resolutions+reading

One of my resolutions for the new year is to get through my stack of unread books. I decided to read more, and to only buy a new book after I finish one I already have, and to only buy books off my to-read list instead of picking up whatever I see in the bookstore.

I finished Under the Greenwood Tree, and then left it for someone else to find. After I finished it, I bought The Tipping Point at the airport, and it was fascinating. One of those books that you keep annoyingly reading passages of out loud to your husband because it is just so interesting. I also cleaned out a lot of books during the move, and am only trying to keep ones that I really love and can imagine wanting to reread. The Tipping Point is a keeper.

I made an account on GoodReads.com, which is great to keep track of your books, with shelves for read, to-read, etc. and a nice rating system. For some reason I love these organizational type websites, maybe too much.

handlery hotel

For our trip to San Francisco, we stayed at the Handlery Hotel on Geary Street in Union Square. The hotel was decently inexpensive for the area, and had a great location. Our tiny (the petite) room felt more like a guest bedroom in an old house (maybe in part to the light blue walls, which to me is a bedroom color) than a neutral hotel room.

My favorite part of the hotel was this:

A outdoor courtyard in the middle the hotel completely sequestered from the busy Union Square (read: panhandlers). Complete with pool and even a row of trees. I loved looking up and seeing the sky and other buildings, but couldn't really get good pictures on the iPhone.

My least favorite part of the hotel was this:

The absolute worst shower I've ever been in in my life (much worse than even the corner shower on a cruise ship). It was too small to move much and the shower head was more like a faucet streaming down. If the new apartment didn't have a bathtub so that I get my fill at home, I would've been seriously disappointed.

The street it was on was lined with really great art galleries such as the San Francisco Art Exchange, which would have been the perfect place to build my Varvatos-inspired rock and roll photography collection, if we had a million dollars. Another really neat one was the Art of Dr. Seuss, with some crazy busts - "unorthodox taxidermy":

I love San Francisco. The weather is always great, even raining and foggy, and it's so much fun just to wander around, even with bums and panhandlers accosting you if you stop moving for even a few seconds. But it's nice to be home...

union square

San Fransisco! We are staying in Union Square so that means (mostly window) shopping! Here I am outside of the Chanel store...



But my favorite store, even though it is only men's clothes, was John Varvatos. The rock and roll photography collection lining the walls was incredible. I was surprised to know a bunch of the musicians - I guess I am getting old. I want to take photos like that, or, at least, I want a photography collection like that! Or, maybe we could just live there, it looks like it would make a great apartment.


(photo from here.)

you are calling

We bought this photograph about a month ago from our next door neighbor. I sort of fell in love with it. Seems like we have a "street art" theme here, I didn't think so but that's a comment that was made about our new place. Anyway, just picked it up from the framers and I like it even better than I remembered!

It's a photo of a street painting on a giant wall. I love that it has the original artists name in the photograph, as well as the place and year, almost like it was signed by them.

Close up, with tons of glare:

Painted with rollers and spray paint, isn't that incredible?

lavanila laboratories

I picked this up on impulse for a little Christmas present to me last time I was in Sephora. The scent caught me on the way down the aisle, and it was $28 for 4 mini rollers. I'm actually really glad I bought it. Most perfume, even if I love the scent, gives me a headache when I try to wear it, but this doesn't at all (maybe 'cause it's all-natural?). They came in a little box, with a note key listing all the stuff in each one.

I like the pure vanilla and the vanilla grapefruit best, hubby says he likes them too, and the vanilla coconut (smells like suntan lotion and beach cocktails) may be a favorite in the summer. I don't care for the vanilla lavender very much, but I am not much of a lavender person.

It's very easy to put on just enough with the oil roller, and I can keep one in my purse and one in my makeup bag to remember to put them on. I've been wearing perfume much more often since I bought these, and I will definitely replace them when they're finished.

guitar lessons

I need a haircut, badly. Add to my new year's resolutions the getting of a haircut more often than every 6 months...

Had the first guitar lesson yesterday. It was not bad at all, pretty helpful in getting over my social anxiety. I was really torn between dread and excitement. I know it seems little, but I really think I need to do more things like this to keep from becoming a completely anti-social hermit.

Things I learned that I pretty much already knew:

This electric guitar is not like the guitar in Wii RockBand.

It is heavy.

It hurts your fingers.

I'm not going to break it.

I also learned a bunch of things I didn't know, an easy version of Mazzy Star's Fade Into You (one of the prettiest songs ever) and a G Major scale, and this guitar is definitely going to take me a lot of practice to be able do.

This man, on the other hand, took about 5 minutes to pick up the guitar and play from memory the scale that I am still working on translating the diagram for:

He's going to be a great guitar player. It's the first thing he goes for when he comes in the door, at lunch and after work. I visited his guitar yesterday:

It's pretty sweet. And then we will need two more for these guys:

(this little dude is hooked on his saint's jersey. he opened it, put it right on, and then put it back on every day after that.)

(ignore the messy house - it was the middle of Christmas vacation week!)

today...

I woke up early, got dressed (makeup!), and it's not noon yet. And, I scheduled my first guitar lesson for tomorrow.

This story is so silly... We've been playing so much Wii RockBand and I am pretty much the best on the guitar, while D. is best on the drums. It's so much fun that we started wanting to learn how to play in real life. So, now we need a guitar. We visited guitars last weekend at the store, then went home and watched youtube videos of people playing all kinds of different guitars, then researched and read and read about the ones that we thought sounded the best. I didn't realize that they can sound so different, I also didn't realize that I would have strong opinions about the way I wanted mine to sound (or not sound). Anyway, I pretty much picked the one I wanted based on the internet, and then we went back to the music store, and just told the guy we knew nothing and here is what we want to be able to do and he picked the same guitar. Sign, right?

Look how pretty it it - I swear the color wasn't the main concern, but it may have been the clencher:

I also love the guitar strap we picked for it:

I can see why people would start collecting guitars, they are all so different. I think one like this is coming home next for D. (!):

Seriously, I love this guitar so much that I want to learn how to play it. Seems backwards, but I guess that is ok. Back to the lessons - I'm excited but mostly scared. It feels like the first day of school. It feels like I'm too old and unhip to start this, but I'm going to do it anyway!