'I have bad news for you, it's a duck, not a chicken'

I found this duck at the junk shop and the proprietor Ray said "That's $0.25!" I said YES my dogs are going to love this rubber chicken. And then Ray says "I have bad news for you, it's a duck, not a chicken." And sure enough it has webbed feet! The dogs like this duck but my mom doesn't, so for now it sits on my shelf next to my lobster and an owl clock.

This shirt came out of a $1 pile at the PCC Flea, and even though I hate when people call me "Hannah" I got it out of ironic necessity. I once had a shirt that said "I survived the Road to Hana" that a friend brought back for me from Hawaii but I totally wore it out. I miss that shirt.

Do you become a different person when a camera is pointed your way? I do. I'm so much more used to being behind the camera so when I get snapped I almost don't recognize myself when I see the resulting photo. I also stiffen up and make weird faces without even meaning to. I think cameras just don't like me, but when I look at pictures like this one I can say "Yeah, that's me."

matte black + apple silver

The other day after painting my fingernails and going on my computer I realized there is almost nothing sexier than matte-black nails atop a MacBook Pro. Haha oh gosh. Just being silly here, but I felt the power of amazing aesthetics.

round and round and round we go

My favorite member of the "pure" geometric solids/Palladian forms is the sphere.

1 & 2 - sweet little metal globes at the Rose Bowl.
3 - a glass jar I filled with my marble collection
4 - my giant bouncy ball!

I like colors

My favorite thing to do at Sephora is to paint every nail on my left hand with a different color as I wait for my sister to make her purchases. I realized I don't like painting my nails a uniform shade unless it is black. So now I have an excuse to get some new nail polish colors, since all I have at the moment is matte black and a pretty pale metallic gold shade. And I will wear them all on my fingers like a mismatched rainbow, because uniformly painted nails (on me!) bore me (unless in the black/grey family).

Today I was literally incapacitated by monthly female issues and had to leave work early. I was very embarrassed about this, but after talking to my sister about it she made me laugh by saying "At least they (my boss/co-workers) aren't women. Men literally are powerless when it comes to dealing with women problems :)." It was just embarrassing because it seemed like I had gotten my period for the first time, because today it was particularly bad. I am going to instill a regular exercise regimen into my schedule now, to prevent this from happening next time I get my monthly visitor. Sorry this is a little bit too much information. Being a girl really sucks sometimes.

happy march!

Even after my complaints on Avatar, I go to Blick with my mom today and am drawn to the colors that made up most of the color palette of the movie. It must have been the overwhelming effect of being immersed in 3D for 2.5 hours, yes. I won't lie though, if I had a chance to live in a forest like the one on Pandora, I'd go native without skipping a heartbeat. Bioluminescent flora and fauna, jellyfish-like "seeds" that land on you if you're lucky, GIANT land-based versions of Christmas tree worms that collapse when you touch them, and being connected to every living thing and trees of life! Either there, somewhere out in outer space or the deep sea for me.

I ought to be sleeping right now but I've gotten a surge of unnatural energy that's keeping me from catching some good Zzz's and rising fresh and early for work tomorrow. This is not going to be good, but Mondays are usually that way. Stumble off to a difficult start, regain footing towards the middle, and at the end of the week fall apart and start the cycle over.

fruit monsters

Wanting a little break today from AutoCAD I opened up a package of freeze-dried fruit my boyfriend gave to me in a sweet care package of 'goodies for work.' In a bag of dried bananas and strawberries, I looked inside and saw faces! I made some monster friends, then ATE them. CHOMP! My boss looked over and laughed at me; I'm lucky that he knows me well, otherwise he would have thought I was being a slacker of all sorts of crazy. oh wait...

more bright stars

This is my current desktop background of the star Rigel alongside the Witch Head Nebula in the constellation Orion. Squeezing it into a little box here barely does it any justice, and letting it fill up my entire screen is still but a meager substitute for seeing or being amongst those actual stars in space. That's okay, I like being able to dream.

image from APOD.

someday I'll live in a land of green skyscrapers

One last random thought before sleep: The way sunlight looks when it's streaming in through bright green leaves is like a shining beacon, a reminder that life exists because of the sun. When I was younger I wanted to be a bug or a fairy that would live in a city of giant verdant umbrellas, feathery whorls of enormous skyscrapers, I'd play all day in the "jungles" of the garden and at night fall sound asleep in silky-soft silvery leaves... I love plants, the sun and I've secretly always wanted to be a wild child running around barefoot in the forest with my very own spectacular treehouse hidden in the canopy to sneak away to when I'm feeling tired.

watcher watcher watcher

A funny little sculpture my sister's friend Kenny made; it kept me company while I was brainstorming Holocaust memorial ideas yesterday. The first one in my mind says "HEY! You better be working right now/Get back to work!" The second one says "You've been working hard!/You can take a break now" And the third one would say something like "You've procrastinated to the point of no return." I hope to encounter the last face very, very rarely, hehe.

some tidbits you might not care about but that I'll share anyway

I've been on a mint + dark chocolate kick for about two weeks now. 'Mint Bliss' indeed!

I love striped clothing, and stripes in general.

I found old magazines chock-full of pictures of James McAvoy and I still find him dreamy and desirable as ever.

Allure by Chanel (note 'por homme') is my fragrance of choice. I'm running out!

This is the state of 3/4 of my bedroom floor as of today. Disastrous.

Lately I feel uncomfortably like a self-indulgent blogger who spends all her days talking about herself, not doing anything really useful and just going "blah blah blah blah." Part of me feels guilty for eschewing traditional journal-writing - I recently found about 6 or 7 old diaries and journals of mine, all filled from cover to cover, but now all I have is this... blog, to help me recount what I've been up to for the past two years, to chart how I've changed and to monitor how I am constantly changing. But whether I feel guilty about the medium I use or not, it is still essentially an outlet, so that justifies my compulsion to blog. Plus pictures make everything much, much better. But this surge of activity is merely reflective of the sudden absence of the responsibilities of school since I have the semester off. I think this will change once I start working - which will hopefully be next week. Still, even with the slight concern I just mentioned, I'm having a lot of fun!

lifts the weight off your shoulder

Temporarily at least. Relief for one who can't sleep. I get texts from him anytime from 2 AM to 7 AM and when I respond he doesn't get my message until at least 8 hours later. It's fun to say sleep is for the weak, but we all need it.

they say great minds think alike

I bought "The Medium is the Massage" (the white one) last summer, and my sister swiped the black copy from the coffee house on campus. Neither of us had any idea that the other owned a copy of this book until today. So weird/cool!

legacy(?)

I asked my mom where my old water polo parka was. She said that she gave it to a fellow teacher whose daughter in high school started taking up water polo this year. My old coach spotted it on her and asked her how she came about it. The girl explained, and he apparently told her "That's a legacy parka you've got there." I was stunned. I was never the most skilled player on the team, but I worked my tail off to improve, swimming all the sets, blocking shots, eggbeater-ing like there was no tomorrow. I made captain my senior year, which was a total surprise to me, but coach said I showed extraordinary passion and dedication, and that he wanted me to lead by example. Now that I think about it, that's all I really worked hard for during my time in high school. It'd be great to get that drive back for my upcoming endeavors. Just an interesting anecdote that made me think of deeper things.

paper shredder

shredding unwanted files at work. it's fun, and therapeutic too!

sorry about them crappy photobooth pics

BORED and I want to...

STRUMMER on my shoes?

or DYLAN?

I have a pair of white Vans that have turned a dingy brownish-gray from my travels, and now slightly faded purplish after some old paint-water spilled onto my feet in studio. With my last pair I spray-painted Joe Strummer's image onto the left shoe to make it look cooler and I LOVED it, but after repeated threats from my mom to throw out the shoes I burned them in a bonfire at the beach.

I got materials today while stocking up for studio. One can of black spray paint and a pack of PVC sheets for stencil-cutting, plus an Olfa blade to cut. I need a place to print but I can always just look and draw then cut, haha.

So now, do I repeat the look with Strummer or go with Bob Dylan. Or something else entirely?