are you on my side?

my absolute favorite song of the moment. why did it take me so long to listen to much Rogue Wave?

love 'em.

autumn

When summer took its leave, I was initially quite sad. I was a summer baby; I love summer. Who doesn't, though, really?

We've had a week of consistently grey weather now, however, and I'm taking to it again. A very autumnal windstorm passed through on Saturday (no rain, with leaves flying all directions, and comical wind-whipped trees resisting the gusts). It's raining now, and there's something nice and cozy about all of this.

This is the weather that inspires introspection and cynicism, and heavy consumption of heavy coffee or alcoholic beverages to pass the time spent taking shelter. It also provides validation to put on a scarf, head inside, light a spicy candle, make a hot drink, and watch a movie. If you're really on a roll, you can put on Nat King Cole and have a warm cookie.

Leaves are red and orange and tumbling over the threshold on the way back in from outside, and I don't mind it or the drizzle...yet. I might be singing a different song though when I have to move in this in a few weeks, but I'll remain optimistic as long as I can.

nyc minus 23 days

aka No Sleep Till Brooklyn...

I am beginning to realize that I have no idea how I'm going to liquidate my Seattle existence in 23 days, of which all of my weekends until then are already partly spoken-for by a friend's wedding preparations. Yikes.

I have a one-bedroom apartment thick with eight years of life in this city, and a broken automobile. Double yikes.

My relationships with the recycling bin, the Goodwill, and my parents' basements are going to get a little tighter.

I also have two cats which have no idea what's coming... oh man. Here goes!

oh, and to be clear

I'M OFFICIALLY MOVING TO NEW YORK!

yippeeeee!

weirdest day ever

or, "excuse me, is this your life? because it doesn't look like mine."

today, I:

1. Woke up really late, at ten after nine.
2. Woke up to gross, grey rain after many warm, sunny days.
3. Got a call at work offering me a potentially perfect job in our New York office.
4. Was asked to pose as a community planner at a planning commission meeting in Puyallup by my boss and coworker, as they couldn't attend.
5. Attended said meeting, which took me two hours in traffic to arrive at, and ended up being a 4-hour, disastrous stress-fest in which everyone was angry and no one got anything done, and my company's work wasn't even presented due to four hours of heated discussion of Transfer of Development rights and property equity, of which I know next to nothing about.
6. Made the hour-long drive back in 40 minutes, though in a delirious state of low blood sugar due to only eating a small sandwich at lunch. Due to lack of options, purchased McDonald's food on Broad across the street from the Seattle Center at the end of my drive.
7. Actually ate McDonald's food.
8. Workday ended at 11pm.

Ain't no thang.

Design On the Cheap

a cool slideshow of cheap, creative design from the New York Times-

party on the weeknight

...oftentimes regrettable after the party is over.

this guy I don't know very well, a nice guy who I don't feel comfortable being my characteristically outspoken self toward, made me a drink, to be nice...with gin, as gin is my favorite poison, and it included an energy drink. I don't do energy drinks, but didn't want to be a douche. So I drank it.

And now I have a science experiment in my stomach, I think. The kind that involves baking soda and vinegar, and a large misshapen doughy mass to brew it... the doughy mass being me in this case. And I've an annual strategic planning session to attend and participate in at work tomorrow. Whee!

On a completely unrelated note, I had a moment of realization on the way home tonight that pretty much everyone in the world wears some type of shoes. We are all united by shoes. I'm not sure what other non-essential-to-survival, tangible, everyday things people of the world might have in common. That kind of amazed me. No drugs involved.

oh and I almost forgot

-has anyone been catching the sunsets of late? holy moses. -they're incredible, cloudless beauty.

with the bluish mountains and the graduated orange sky, it's been conspicuously Parrish.

swoon.

monsoon wedding

...what a lovely movie. By far the best I've seen in a while.

I just finished the film and it makes me want to wear rich colors, travel to India, get married, and dance to electronica and exotic sitar-ry music at the same time.

I'm such a sucker. Especially for looooove.

Though I easily am moved by the screen and cry at just about every movie, I almost never watch them more than once, and especially not in close sequence. I might have to for this one, however.

Does this qualify as Bollywood? I think probably not, but I might have to see what Bollywood is about- branch out from my Euro-centric foreign film repertoire.

the finer things

had an excellent weekend; this may be largely due to the fact that I let go of all obligations that I tend to let plague my weekend (parental, chores, etc.) . also, the weather here has taken a surprising turn for the amazing, when a week or two ago it was as if a toggle was suddenly flipped and the grey arrived. here we go, i thought, here are the next nine months. but alas! it will be eighty tomorrow.

saturday i met up with a friend from work and we made a pilgrimage downtown to the third H&M to open up in a previously H&M-less Northwest. though I did find some good stuff, somehow when i went to new york last fall and spring i felt the selection in attire was much more overwhelmingly incredible. maybe it's just the current stock, or the fact that i'm depriving myself the right to splurge in light of the upcoming expensive move that i couldn't allow myself to go crazy. got some work clothes out of the deal, however.

the pandemonious environment of the recently-opened store drained us and gave us need for sustenance, so we headed to happy hour drinks and sushi. after two drinks, i came up with the amusing idea that my friend, getting married next month and still without wedding band, needed a trip to tiffany's.




this is quite funny to me, as i'd describe myself as somewhat anti-capitalist, and pretty socialist, and definitely of the money-conscious, practical scandinavian tradition. i don't think i've ever actually been in a jewelry store, really. but we walked in that giant, stainless-steel revolving door into another world and ogled the shinies together. she tried on bands and bands, getting ideas for things to eventually match to her heirloom engagement ring.

i watched, somewhat like i would had i been dropped into a tea ceremony in kyoto. interested, but relatively estranged from it all. so pretty. so incredibly sparkly. she was trying on plain bands, and bands studded with diamonds, and though they were all small and dainty, some of them ran upwards of five thousand bucks. the lady kept brining them out, shifting them around, and after a couple had sat out for a while, and i'd been invited to join in, i picked up a thin one that seemed to just be a ring of diamonds miraculously merged together and slipped it on. i don't wear jewelry on my hands as I find myself fidgety or rashy when i do, but i was blown away and slightly betrayed by myself by actually liking the really expensive fanciness. i'm not sure if it was that ring in particular, which I really liked, but it actually looked good on my pale finger.

when i think about it, it makes sense that a designer would fall prey to something so aesthetic. i think about nice aesthetics for a living. sadly, i have unfortunately expensive taste, no matter how small or least-consumptive i try to live, it won't go away. that tiny little circlet on my finger was four thousand dollars. cost aside, it was the simple shiny-sparkley factor that turned me into what felt like some horrible stereotype of the superficial yuppie girl: we had literally gone shopping for dresses, handbags, and shoes, had sushi alongside fruity drinks in martini glasses, and then tried on diamonds at tiffany's. really?

the best part was that we decided to look at and inquire the price on, in good fun, of this beautiful necklace that greeted us at the front when we walked in. turn-of-the-century and edwardian-esque in style, it was diamondy and chandeliery and divine. the lady was happy to show it to my friend, who had the perfect wedding dress waiting for the necklace. as we both tried it on, finnicking with the tiny, delicate clasp, the woman told us the price- thirteen thousand dollars. perfect! we'll take two.

the surprisingly down-to-earth, accommodating folks behind the counter should not be underestimated... they know what they're doing. they and the lighting designers for the space; it feels like some sort of parallel glamorous universe in there.

but really, as ridiculous as it all was, i relish adventures like this. i feel like a willingness to do whatever, no matter how outside of my norm, accompanies a happier me, with a better sense of self. i'm open-minded and am enjoying experiencing new things.

shiny new things.