a while back a trainer at our fabulous gym recommended a website to john: crossfit.com. daily workouts are provided, supplemented with instructions and videos to ensure proper form, and with a little modification (ok, a lot of modification) and a fair amount of whining i've been slowly transforming into a she-beast. I'm still terrified of using a lot of weight lest my arms be ripped from their sockets or my neck snapped if something goes wrong, but it's pretty amazing how quickly the human body responds to strength training. the upside is a voracious appetite that i can readily justify satiating. anyway, i saw this photo on their website and was charmed enough to steal it and post it here. this chick is so badass. i especially love her socks.
18.6.09
INSPIRING
a while back a trainer at our fabulous gym recommended a website to john: crossfit.com. daily workouts are provided, supplemented with instructions and videos to ensure proper form, and with a little modification (ok, a lot of modification) and a fair amount of whining i've been slowly transforming into a she-beast. I'm still terrified of using a lot of weight lest my arms be ripped from their sockets or my neck snapped if something goes wrong, but it's pretty amazing how quickly the human body responds to strength training. the upside is a voracious appetite that i can readily justify satiating. anyway, i saw this photo on their website and was charmed enough to steal it and post it here. this chick is so badass. i especially love her socks.
28.5.09
DELIGHTFUL
we've been pretty busy at lightstudiola lately. my boss landed a gargantuan project (57,000 sq. ft. house in bel air. the average american home is about 2,300 sq. ft. so...yeah. it's definitely gargantuan. ps: the wife's walk in closet is 1200 sq. ft. so is the theater in the basement.) and of course the architectses we're working with want everything yesterday. i've been working a lot more than usual. it kind of sucked, at first, b/c i wasn't used to long hours. i'm bad at taking breaks, so my eyes get tired, and i have bad posture, so my back does too. i'm more used to it now. but i digress.
so i was in a terrible mood, day and night, for a while.
one day in the midst of this grump fest, a rabbit hopped by the sliding glass doors my desk faces. a fucking rabbit. in culver city. i thought i was hallucinating.
it was obviously someone's pet. jamie and chris and i had pet rabbits when we were kids. they were all males, and territorial--rabbits mark their territories like dogs do. they piss all over. our three rabbits lived in adjacent cages. not together, but pretty darn close. and they pissed all over each other. we rotated their cages so each rabbit had it's turn being in the middle cage. despite that, they needed baths pretty frequently. we would wash them with the hose in a plastic basin, and they would come out looking really pathetic then run away and find a safe spot to lick their fur back the way it was.
this random rabbit looked like my rabbit, midnight, post a good bath. it was all wet. so i immediately thought: someone was bathing their pet rabbit and it got away!
i went outside and grabbed it, and brought it inside so we could find it's owner. turned out it belonged to my boss' neighbor. his name was pitch. he was in the backyard (she called it "the garden" b/c she's british, which automatically makes it and her way fancier. i'm imagining a profusion of roses and dainty china tea cups and....uptight fabulousness.) while it was being watered and got out.
so there's my anecdote for the day. notable only because it was notable--and strangely uplifting. it made me realize that i need to let more amusement into my daily life. so often i choose to be annoyed or pissed off by something that just as easily could be entertaining. there's so much out there that's amazing and miraculous, just waiting to be witnessed. i wanted to tell everyone about this rabbit. and now i have.
so i was in a terrible mood, day and night, for a while.
one day in the midst of this grump fest, a rabbit hopped by the sliding glass doors my desk faces. a fucking rabbit. in culver city. i thought i was hallucinating.
it was obviously someone's pet. jamie and chris and i had pet rabbits when we were kids. they were all males, and territorial--rabbits mark their territories like dogs do. they piss all over. our three rabbits lived in adjacent cages. not together, but pretty darn close. and they pissed all over each other. we rotated their cages so each rabbit had it's turn being in the middle cage. despite that, they needed baths pretty frequently. we would wash them with the hose in a plastic basin, and they would come out looking really pathetic then run away and find a safe spot to lick their fur back the way it was.
this random rabbit looked like my rabbit, midnight, post a good bath. it was all wet. so i immediately thought: someone was bathing their pet rabbit and it got away!
i went outside and grabbed it, and brought it inside so we could find it's owner. turned out it belonged to my boss' neighbor. his name was pitch. he was in the backyard (she called it "the garden" b/c she's british, which automatically makes it and her way fancier. i'm imagining a profusion of roses and dainty china tea cups and....uptight fabulousness.) while it was being watered and got out.
so there's my anecdote for the day. notable only because it was notable--and strangely uplifting. it made me realize that i need to let more amusement into my daily life. so often i choose to be annoyed or pissed off by something that just as easily could be entertaining. there's so much out there that's amazing and miraculous, just waiting to be witnessed. i wanted to tell everyone about this rabbit. and now i have.
26.6.08
Share Time
I am mostly a prude. It's not that I'm totally unwilling to engage in any discussion involving sex or sexuality--gender is a fascinating concept and I love that human physiology and psychology have evolved because of variations in reproductive success. IE: We are the way we are because, for some reason, our ancestors got off on each other's (inheritable) traits.
Still, I am mostly a prude. I like to intellectualize sex rather than share all the naughty (or normal) things I may (or may not) be into. When it comes to my own personal behavior, I will blush and stammer and decline to comment.
UNTIL NOW.
Don't get too excited. I'm just trying to write a witty preface for the following, only slightly related, topics.
I have mentioned before my strange obsession with Regency-era Romance novels. After a rather long hiatus from indulging, the addiction has resurfaced.
I had a pretty tough Spring. My grandpa was hospitalized in early March--his lung failed to re-inflate after he had some fluid removed. After about two weeks in the hospital they found where the fluid was coming from. He had mesothelioma (it's that lung cancer caused by asbestos exposure the infomercials want you to join a class-action lawsuit about). So the doctors told him he had a few months to live, and my family started the extremely painful process of saying our long good-byes. He was totally okay with it, as far as I could tell. He said he had a pretty awesome life--that's paraphrased--and figured he'd live on in the genes that his progeny would keep passing around. Someone somewhere would show up with his nose or his eyes, and there he would be. He lived to see a lot of history happen (true, he was 88) and was a lot luckier in life than many he knew. So he was ready to go. He died on May 19th, in his own home with opera playing and the windows open to the garden in his back yard.
Of course, grief works its way into every aspect of daily life, especially when you try to ignore it. I hated my job, I hated school, I hated everything. It was all excruciatingly tedious and irrelevant, when my grandfather was uncomfortably dying and my whole family was choked up with the pain of it all.
So, now, I'm trying to find my way back to things that make me happy. And, dammit
, I like Historical romances. I found a website specializing in the rating and reviewing of romances and their authors, printed out a top 100 list, and bought a few of the higher-ranking titles second-hand on Ebay. They arrived in the mail today. They are ridiculous things. Especially the covers. Exhibit A, over there to the right, made me laugh out loud. There's one I will NOT be reading on the bus or the beach, lest some burly, long-haired man with an open shirt carrying flowers gets the wrong idea. I am still a prude.
Onto exhibit B, which I have been meaning to post about. John and I used
to live with our fabulous ex-roommate, still friend Georgina in a second-floor two-bedroom apartment not far from our current site of cohabitation. John and/or Georgina, I can't remember who, found a bunch of nude sketches inside/near the dumpster. I finally bought some frames for the two John and I picked as our favorites, and now they hang above our bed. Dirty! There are cartoon nipples in my bedroom! I mean art. There is beautiful art in my bedroom.
So those are two things that make me happy these days. Stories about passionate nineteenth-century lovers, and drawings of a naked chicks with fros.
Always,
Carolyn
Still, I am mostly a prude. I like to intellectualize sex rather than share all the naughty (or normal) things I may (or may not) be into. When it comes to my own personal behavior, I will blush and stammer and decline to comment.
UNTIL NOW.
Don't get too excited. I'm just trying to write a witty preface for the following, only slightly related, topics.
I have mentioned before my strange obsession with Regency-era Romance novels. After a rather long hiatus from indulging, the addiction has resurfaced.
I had a pretty tough Spring. My grandpa was hospitalized in early March--his lung failed to re-inflate after he had some fluid removed. After about two weeks in the hospital they found where the fluid was coming from. He had mesothelioma (it's that lung cancer caused by asbestos exposure the infomercials want you to join a class-action lawsuit about). So the doctors told him he had a few months to live, and my family started the extremely painful process of saying our long good-byes. He was totally okay with it, as far as I could tell. He said he had a pretty awesome life--that's paraphrased--and figured he'd live on in the genes that his progeny would keep passing around. Someone somewhere would show up with his nose or his eyes, and there he would be. He lived to see a lot of history happen (true, he was 88) and was a lot luckier in life than many he knew. So he was ready to go. He died on May 19th, in his own home with opera playing and the windows open to the garden in his back yard.
Of course, grief works its way into every aspect of daily life, especially when you try to ignore it. I hated my job, I hated school, I hated everything. It was all excruciatingly tedious and irrelevant, when my grandfather was uncomfortably dying and my whole family was choked up with the pain of it all.
So, now, I'm trying to find my way back to things that make me happy. And, dammit
, I like Historical romances. I found a website specializing in the rating and reviewing of romances and their authors, printed out a top 100 list, and bought a few of the higher-ranking titles second-hand on Ebay. They arrived in the mail today. They are ridiculous things. Especially the covers. Exhibit A, over there to the right, made me laugh out loud. There's one I will NOT be reading on the bus or the beach, lest some burly, long-haired man with an open shirt carrying flowers gets the wrong idea. I am still a prude.Onto exhibit B, which I have been meaning to post about. John and I used
to live with our fabulous ex-roommate, still friend Georgina in a second-floor two-bedroom apartment not far from our current site of cohabitation. John and/or Georgina, I can't remember who, found a bunch of nude sketches inside/near the dumpster. I finally bought some frames for the two John and I picked as our favorites, and now they hang above our bed. Dirty! There are cartoon nipples in my bedroom! I mean art. There is beautiful art in my bedroom.So those are two things that make me happy these days. Stories about passionate nineteenth-century lovers, and drawings of a naked chicks with fros.
Always,
Carolyn
14.2.08
cha cha changes
few people are aware of one of my most amazing talents. i am a human sound track. i can, without conscious thought, come up with a song to compliment almost any situation.cha cha changes, indeed. after many months of using our TV as a computer monitor, john and i decided it was time to set up a real work station. i won't lie; all my whining about not being able to play the sims while john watched football on saturdays (and, sometimes, sundays) may have had something to do with it.
so here it is. jay desk from westelm, in acorn, with sweet 19" wide screen monitor wall mounted above. the monitor can swivel out, so i can show anyone in the living room the awesome shit i just found on ebay. the desk has an extension that rolls out from underneath, doubling the workspace! wow, cool!
what i did not include in this post is a picture of the massive pile of packing material we were left with. sorry, the environment. i try very hard not to litter you up with trash by bringing my own bags to the market, and hardly ever buying bottled water. please forgive me this one.
1.2.08
check out the new house plant
it's gigantic, and that's why i love it. we've had this beauty for going on a month now--it was a "spruce up the apartment for the new year" idea. i did some research and found a species that doesn't mind low light: Warneckii dracaena.
27.1.08
hideous trend alert
just click. don't puke on your keyboard.
http://www.shoes.com/product.asp?p=5055722&variant_id=EC1074390
http://www.shoes.com/product.asp?p=5055722&variant_id=EC1074390
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