Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Puddy Tat, Part I

On September 30th at about 11:00pm, I got off my bus from work one stop early. No real thought to that, just did it. I nearly bumped into a girl as I stepped down, so I gamely said 'oops' to her and her doggie, a small Shepherd. I looked at the girl with warmth while saying hi to her dog, extending my hand under its nose.

I thought this girl was special. Just a feeling. Strong on the inside, delightful and gracious and sweet through and through. She had geek glasses and curly curls, her youthful manner seasoned with having been through some serious shit. I would learn her difficult story and witness her unsinkable spirit on our way to my apartment building's entrance. But back to the bus stop, where we're still chatting about the nice autumn temperature, her dog, my job, the price of coffee.

She: "Um, would you like a free cat?"

Me: ... ?

She reaches into a satchel I hadn't even really seen in the dark night, and draws out a little animal. It is so jet black and so small I have to focus to make it out. But there were the big golden eyes, clearly a bit nervous, but not spooked. The girl handed the kitten to me. I took a look at those eyes, the sprightly little ears, her sleek fur. I stroked the little neck. The kitten nuzzled her face into the crook of the sleeve of my black work jacket, and all four of us started our walk to 9th and Madison.

 

I'll continue tomorrow.

Thursday, September 22, 2011

My Totally Fucking Awesome Kid

This is Tony Baloney Balloon, Rock Star:

https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/320390_196724287067605_100001901043773_484208_1490640685_n.jpg

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Tony Baloney, Rock Star.

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Catherine Thatch to Mom
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https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/s720x720/296874_196724473734253_100001901043773_484214_336155454_n.jpg

Has been known to:

Teach English
Bartend
Take care of his Abuelita, affectionately known to all as Chelito
Take care of his beloved kitty cats
Play guitar
Play bass
Be an excellent kid, friend, cousin, boyfriend, son, grandson, etc.
Be awesome with kids
Be a total metal head \m/

You rule, Tony Baloney Balloon. Your Auntie Trinity and I are looking forward to visting you in Mexico next year, and hauling you back up here to Seattle for a while afterward! We can't wait to visit & celebrate Fiesta with you & Mimi & our whole family!

Love,

Mommy, Mum, Mama, Mom, Your lovely Mother, Me, Catherine Taylor Thatch :D
<3

 

Tuesday, July 5, 2011

New Blogger Interface: +1

At first glance, I like it a lot. Google will be re-branding Blogger as Google Blogs (and Picasa as Google Photos) in the coming 6 weeks (thanks for the info, @martymankins). This effort is in the interest of making their empire & all its constituents seamless. To prep for that, they've overhauled the interface.


I've never been connoisseur of these things, but since I'm not truly computer-literate I make a good litmus test person. If I find it easy & intuitive, if I don't stumble & get confused in making something happen or finding the cog in the machine I need to work on, it's a winner. So far, it looks like a success by those measures.

I'm not crazy about all the orange color on the dashboard page though :P. I do think I like how it's set up.

More thoughts to come as Rome gets built, I'm sure.

Friday, July 1, 2011

How To Be An Intolerable Interviewer

I like to be positive, so I contemplated scrapping this list and writing an earnest “How To Be a Stellar Interviewer”. I may go on to write that, but I’m still pretty irritated right now, so this stands.  Please indulge me; this morning I was pissed off listening to some idiot mangle an interview with one of my heroes. This list is not comprehensive and is leveled at that villain’s style in particular. When I write the positive version, I will be more thorough.

How To Be An Intolerable Interviewer:

1) Gasp, coo & say “Wow” at your subject’s every utterance. Be familiar with methods people use to  compensate for lack of genuine interest: clenching their smile, using ingratiating intonation, feigning thrill. Put a see-through veil over your arrogance, scan your subjects’ words instead of truly listening and nod your head with something approaching pity.

2) Interrupt your subject at nearly every turn. Palpably wish he’d keep his answers snappier. Goose-chase interest by pulling your subject in different directions and force him to backtrack if he’d like to complete his thought.

3) Assume your phraseology is superior and that your audience is an idiot; reiterate your subject’s answers ("In other words...") as if you were his only hope for coherence. Suppose that your purpose is to make your guest more interesting than he is on his own.

4) Place your own interests regarding your subject and his topic above that of the audience - and even that of your subject. Seem preoccupied with an aspect of his endeavor that has little or nothing to do with his larger passion.

5) Be vague. Be inarticulate. Ask “What’s [that] like?” (Fuck you. If you’re lost for a specific, well-put, thoughtful, intelligent question, please say, “Please talk about [that]”, or something comparable.)

http://paulvargaradio.com/paul_images/RadioMicrophone-final.jpg

Image credit: http://paulvargaradio.com

6) Don’t be well-prepared. Rather than bringing some excellent ideas to the table, bank on something in your subject’s current sentence prompting your next question. Meander in a loose, ill-directed & sloppy conversation rather than constructing a strong stage upon which your subject can shine.

7) Feign learning what you already know (“Ohh, you were born in Brussels? Wowww”) for any of the half-dozen misguided reasons you do that.

8) Use vaguely passive-aggressive word choice to liven things up with a pinch of defensiveness from your subject. Repeatedly put things in such a way that he’s stuck correcting you, thus sounding overly picky or sensitive.

9) Forget that this is about everything before you: your subject, the audience (professionals, fans, piqued bystanders who are interested in him and what he does), his thoughts, his personality, his point of view, his difficulties and solutions, his story. Forget that your job is to reliably and respectfully frame that picture, bind that book.

Tuesday, June 28, 2011

A Wild Image Culling Tool Appears!

You know how you fall in love with an image online, so you save it somehow? Maybe you email it to yourself & stick it in a pics folder. Or you keep it on your computer, or a photo-sharing site (or you Tumblr/Tweet it), etc., where it then gets mixed up with pictures you snapped yourself and other unrelated shit? And now your faves are scattered throughout cyberspace.

Enter my new crack cocaine: We Heart It.

http://legacyentries.weheartit.netdna-cdn.com/20090204193413.jpg

It is only for images you come across while hanging out online; no ‘browse’ button for loading your own pictures (except your profile pic. Read ‘Dos & Don’ts’ - check out the first ‘Don’t’).

It’s social media in that you may find & follow others, but it’s gloriously silent: no text, no chat, no articles, no news, no noise, just images special enough to have been culled from the vast eleventillions of internets.

Using it is ridiculously easy: drop the bookmarklet onto your toolbar. When you come across a keeper, click ‘Heart this’ and you’ll be prompted to choose the image, tag it if you like, and cull it to your stash.

If you start using this, please tell me or follow me: ccnomad.

Friday, June 3, 2011

Sasquatch Balloons

I love pictures like this:

[[posterous-content:pid___0]]Credit: Jason Ross of Seattle Theater Group

STG's Concerts Marketing Manager Jason Ross offers a great report on his trip to the Sasquatch Music Festival <-here. The above pic is of the audience cheering on The Flaming Lips - always fun & unique in concert. Jason got (among other things/people) a great action shot of true rock star Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters. Nice work, Jason :-)

P.S. I work via Staff, Inc. for STG, the people who manage the Paramount & Moore theaters.

Sasquatch Balloons

I love pictures like this:

Sasquatch_balloons
Credit: Jason Ross of Seattle Theater Group

STG's Concerts Marketing Manager Jason Ross offers a great report on his trip to the Sasquatch Music Festival <-here. The above pic is of the audience cheering on The Flaming Lips who are always fun & unique in concert. Jason got (among other things/people) a great action shot of true rock star Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters (scroll roughly halfway down). Nice work, Jason :-)

P.S. I work via Staff, Inc. for STG, the people who manage the Paramount & Moore theaters.

Monday, May 30, 2011

Day 275/1

Goals by February 29, 2012:

$15,000 (or better) saved

Slimmed down, fit & flexible (numbers & other reductions in vagueness to come as I math things out)

First draft of novel (finally) complete

Brain/mind sharpened back to optimum levels - no more cloudiness, sludginess. Math may not be available for this one, but I'll recognize the progress when I see it

Develop and/or commit to more specific goals as the days tick down & the shape of things emerges (I have some things in mind, but I need to see what the pace of progress of the more general goals is first)

No, this isn't turning into a diary of my 'leap' to the East Coast, but every so often I may pop in with a progress report.

 

Thanks for indulging me :-)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Saturday, May 28, 2011

Leap

That muffled splashy gaspy sound was my head breaking the surface, my lungs vacuuming oxygen, kelp getting squitched & splucked off my face & ears. It was forced, this surfacing. I've been sludging around in murk for long enough that I'd slowed & sunk. I'm gonna rot here if I don't move. So: treading, aiming to segue to a nice side stroke.

You'd either laugh or cry watching me try to contstruct a program or plan to stick with, of any kind, by myself. This thing that seems like it should be natural and easy for any human with two intact frontal lobes is wildly difficult for me. This flaw has been well-examined, & some time if you guys are super bored & I'm feeling incredibly self-absorbed, I'll go into that (or not probably). Discouragement & the blues compound this problem, & I usually do my best to shake these things off. Like a boss. *Rolls eyes* Anyway.

I need to move on, I need dry land, and it needs to be on the East Coast of these United States. I shelved my eons-long dream of heading to New York when the economy tanked and I came home to Seattle (from Los Angeles, where I'd been working as a tour guide) to regroup. Regrouping has been excruciatingly slow going. I mean...wow, glacial. This is not necessarily all bad in all ways, but my patience in leaving NY on that shelf has run the fuck out. Enough with the fantasizing. It's back in my hands, front and center. I need it there to get me going. I need the hope.

The date: February 29, 2012.

I don't know exactly how I'm gonna do this. It's not like I'm making enough money, and I owe my kid a visit first (he lives in Mexico City). But I have seen plenty of Disney movies, damnit, and I am going to do it. I've seen apparently hopeless situations do a 180. I've watched people triumph over their tangled psychology and two-bit odds. Yeah, I'm kind of a hard case, but I've still got some good old fashioned American determination in my veins. I will make this long-standing dream come true.

Yeah, I don't quite believe what I just said there yet. I'll get there. 

NEW YORK OR BUST <-enough with the bust 2/29/2012

Friday, April 1, 2011

TMI, (More or Less Discreetly Put), But Kinda Interesting

I came-to, confused & sight-fractured, on my bathroom floor very early this morning. I got up immediately, using a two year old's wobbly, unpracticed actions. My jammie pants were askew to the point of Failblog-worthiness, reminding me, as my vision resolved back to normal, what the hell I was doing there. Unfortunately, Margaritas had nothing to do with it.

See, my GI tract must have been alerted to #RoastFriday and/or April Fool's Day. At some time after going to sleep, I had one of those awful cramps we've all had. It was low down but not, I didn't sense, imminent (if you catch my drift - jeez, how to word these TMI things). I had been deeply asleep, so I tried simply flipping over onto my left side. The cramp disappeared, all better.

But just after I drifted back off, it reappeared. With a vengeance. Still didn't feel imminent. Got up and headed to the bathroom anyway.

There, I marveled at the pain level of this cramp. Astonishing. Gravity had begun doing its thing - just begun, no relief yet - and ... motherfucker, this pain. I popped a sweat all over. Pain worsened. Sat there, sat back, the popped sweat turning into rivulets that started needing a hand towel to manage. The backs of my arms and my forehead got clammy and cold.

At one point, many minutes into this extraordinarily unlovely experience, the cramp seized up as though it had been just kidding around so far. It seized up like the ghost of a slavering wolf was reaching in there to twist off my lower intestine for use as a jump rope.

Big_bad_wolf

Image Credit: Disney

At least that's the imagery that presented itself to me in the wee hours of the morning.

In ridiculous, insane pain, my skin now drenched & numbing, and the moment becoming surreal in every way, I said (whether aloud or in my head I'll never know):

"Nooooo -"

...then, nothing. Blackness. I did not fade out in a faint, I did not become gradually less aware; I have no memory or 'experience' of anything after the fifth 'o' of that 'No'. I just plain crumpled. In fact I can only tell you that much with any certainty due to the evidence that is my coming-to.

I am not usually one to recount tales from the restroom, but I had a strange urge to tell about this; it's unusual, for one thing, kinda scary, maybe interesting. And, thanks especially to my state upon coming-to, potentially rather comical. Among my first thoughts were that a certain sort of YouTube/FailBlog peep would be ALL over this, heh. But my next thoughts were: Heck, dangerous. Super chancy. My head had been so close to the radiator when I came-to that I wondered whether my vision was so fucked up because I'd hit my head on it. (Probably not; no head bump or pain has presented itself).

The care I received was that of my own body doing what it could to right itself. The knowledge of what had just happened belonged to me only. I live alone, and I treasure my privacy, my autonomy, but if this episode had resulted in need for life-saving medical attention, such as if my head really had conked that radiator, a vertebra had fractured, or an artery had ruptured, I'd have been fucked three entirely different ways from Sunday.

"Life's better with company. Everybody needs a co-pilot." - from the movie Up In The Air

For all that awful, literally gut-wrenching pain, I am one very, very lucky person. But I'll feel a lot luckier if I find a co-pilot.

Co-pilot

Image credit: Lucasfilm

 

P.S. You may or may not be wanting it confirmed: I am indeed all better now. 

P.P.S. When searching for the above photo, I stumbled across this one:

Leia__chewie

Image credit: Lucasfilm

Love that. :-D

 

Thursday, February 17, 2011

Stick 'Em In Your Pocket

Five Haiku, for your dining & dancing pleasure:

Origin

[A nod to the origin of the art of Haiku:]

Solitary bloom
culled from fragrant abundance
striking lotus breathes


Water:

Creek meanders then
tackles ever larger stones
cold river rises


Sun:

Vaulting into light
each new time zone a ruckus
from a sleeping silence


Music Box:

Rigid plastic doll
popped out of her pirouette
into velvet abyss


Imperative:

Splash into the glass
drip drip i can hardly wait
coffee saves my life

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Light A Match

Light a soccer match

In a secret pocket of

Barcelona, Spain

Photo Credit: Oriol Tarridas

Haiku by C.T.Thatch (though it can be argued that it pretty much wrote itself)

A+

The Oatmeal seal birdie of approval:

The Twitter Spelling Test
<p>Created by Oatmeal</p>

I'm glad. This made me nervous; I am an excellent speller, but have, every once in a great while, been known to get something wrong. And it's often something obvious and simple and stupid and common. So hooray :)

 

Friday, February 11, 2011

Ancient Nickname Resurrected: WIN

Totall random post. I'm just bored and too brain fried to do any more work on my portfolio atm.

So this one time? at band summer camp? there were half a dozen of us: Katherine, Katie, Kathy, Kat, Kathleen, and me, Catherine. The Katherine went by Katherine and I went by Catherine. The tribe of us were already so prone to mix-ups that they tried to get one of us to go by something else. They asked her, how 'bout 'Kay'? Vast swivels of dramatic head-shaking ensued. They asked us, how 'bout your last names? I roared 'Never. Ever. Ever.' I had the name of the adoptive couple I stayed with, and hated it. It began with C and I pointed this out. One of the kids said: "C.C.!" My eyes went wide - I loved that! I was so surprised, really, and felt that weird sense of honor to be nicknamed. But it didn't stick very well, because I then sang, "C is for Cookie, that's good enough for me. Hey!", and:

Everyone started calling me Cookie.

This is a chocolate chip cookie from Levain Bakery in Manhattan; photo credit: My Baking Addiction

I just loved it. I was tickled anytime anyone used it, especially if I was introduced that way. 'C.C.' held here and there, but 'Cookie' won the big prize. In typical 10 year-old style, I started writing it on everything.

Alas, my beloved CYO camp (Don Bosco that year) session came to an end, and I was Cookie no more. Ever since, I've referred to myself that way in my head, maybe not as often as 'Cath' or 'Hey' or 'Dumbass', but it's never really left. I think I've held this secret hope that somebody else would (cosmically?) think it up for me again. Well, no such luck yet, so you know what? I'm resurrecting it myself, damnit. It ain't the same exactly, but whatever. It's cute & I love it and it's mine.

COOOOKIIIEE!

Saturday, February 5, 2011

The Rules In Los Angeles

Hung with duct tape or tacks
On the back of a piece of paper,
Lime green highlighter, red Sharpie,
Spray paint over posted bills
Statements, commands
Misspellings, poor grammar.
But their soul is a riveted metal placard,
They are the fresh, current law
And we follow it, happy to do as they tell us
and share the message
With passersby and newcomers.
Faced with these crooked haphazard signs
We thoughtful rebels are filled with respect
For its letters, its spirit.

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7LmA5zJ8Mq_Hr0f9azyX_GZzSiE4jZzXpcTdRtDZm5jr1HPBf5IhH65RMJPSuV9CJ2eo86y1gSvAt1FroHE18Aan2Z9hBBSbXrb2DDpO3HR95hw9dvlJCgnk5vJixI1sbP1CSuS8r9C0/s400/live_leave.jpg

photo credit: 4.bp.blogspot.com

Thursday, February 3, 2011

On Crappy Behavior and the End of the World

I grew up in a big American city. I recently lived in one of the Ten Point Alpha World Cities, and I'm moving to one of the four Twelve Point ones in the near future. Ever in an urban environment, I've routinely seen of every conceivable type of behavior, all my life, from heroic to abysmal. People will make your heart sing with their unbounded kindness one moment, and they will break it with tragic indifference or mean-spiritedness the next.

Agatha Award winning Jacqueline Winspear wrote for The Naked Truth. Just prior to its demise, she had lamented discourteous behavior (amen, and it was cathartic to commiserate). But she introduced the transgressions as “[giving her] pause to consider – again – what sort of people we’re all becoming.”

Heavens, what is the world coming to?

I understand this thought, I really do. But I disagree. Humans have been both beautiful and awful (sometimes within the span of a single moment) for the full length of our history, and we are hardly the only animals so capable. Elder generations have been critical of and distraught over the wretched behavior of the upcoming generations since the dawn of humanity. People of all kinds everywhere for all time have experienced that jolt of dismay over a disrespectful act, been shocked at the depths of another’s cynicism and how that worldview causes him or her to behave, and seen heartbreaking apathy or cruelty.

The basic nature of our race is not changing. Not even a little bit. Yes, there have been enormous, drastic changes to our world since the Industrial Revolution that have rocketed civilization forward - novel types of changes, and at a shocking pace, I realize. We have experienced mindblowing cutting edge scientific advances. We have amazing new tools for looking at ourselves and measuring who we are and how we and our world is coming along. We have new technology so astounding that they look even to most of us like impossible, improbable magic. I know, things are different. And yet? We are in our deepest nature simply the current issue of who we have always and forever been.

I am definitely not saying that there are no disturbing new trends and particularly horrifying people (school shootings, Jeffrey Dahmer). I am saying that there have always been disturbing trends and particularly horrifying people (The Crusades, Caligula). There will be disturbing new trends and particularly horrifying people until the Sun gets too hot for Earth to host human life.

We are not becoming an impolite race from having been a polite race. As long as humans exist, we will have rules governing our behavior, and there will be times when we will break them. There will be people who have a chronic habit of breaking them, sometimes in a most colorful manner. As always, most of us will put some kind of a premium on good behavior and develop a set of measures for assessing it. We will hang our heads in despair when we or other people’s intentions or actions fall outside of them. We will celebrate with happy hearts and renewed faith when the usual expectations are exceeded.

It's the same as it ever was. There will always be good guys, good chances, good days, redemption, sweetness, the capacity to move others beyond words and be so moved. There will always be the humdrum, the remarkable, the specular. There will always be grief, disappointment, loss. The vast majority of us love somehow, or understand some kind of love, who at some point grasp how short our time is here and begin making choices which reflect that.

We are animals; magic touchscreens & transcontinental travel changes how we do things and how fast, not who we are. What is the world coming to? Well eventually, indeed, an end. I can't know how long humanity will remain on this planet, but I'd put my money on at least 3 of the whole 3.2 billion years Earth has left to host us.

 

 

 

Monday, January 24, 2011

all your bake are belong to us

As yet without a lusted-for camera, I am baking. No, I don't  think of baking and photography as directly interchangeble activities, but creative energy's gotta go somewhere, so there it is. I love cooking too, but the funnest activity for me lately is under the stovetop. I like the process of preparing stuff to bake, and it's a pretty cheap and easy hobby. And baked goodies always go over well; Cookies, pastry, etc., are easier to present to neighbors you don't really know all that well than a thing full of leftover stir fry, say. You never know what people like or what's gonna get wilty too quickly, etc.
So now I'm super jonesin' for the camera, because I want to take delightful photos of this yummy stuff. It's coming ASAP. I've never tried anything 'molten' before, so I thought I'd challenge myself with the Guittard recipe on the back of my sack of  chocolate chips. They came out looking something like this:
http://t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSm4ReDXV6QWuk1H84nrL72rkMdWhTgEDF9cJOKdEIS91Vg2D19Vg
And they tasted even better, mmm :) Sexiest chocolate thing I've ever created.  I get some sort of impish glee out of tweaking recipes, especially if booze is involved, so trust me when I say that these were not only molten, but drunken (Grand Marnier). I'd like to tell you exactly what I did, but I forget (Absolut).
I think I'll tweak my Posterous into an occasional amateur food blog as soon as I get that camera.
Bon Appetit!
.

Saturday, January 22, 2011

An Eye On Quora

I'm not using Quora much yet, just watching (like most people do with @twitter).
http://www.hung-truong.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/quora-logo-500x216.jpg

My grasp of what it is and how it's evolving is getting firmer. My perception of its culture is resolving ever more sharply. I like it & feel it has potential. I believe that if it was not too broadly conceived, it may be too broadly presented. Although Quora has tags, I think it might work more smoothly if questions could be categorized (upon submission) on a more basic level (Yes/No? Philisophical? etc.). Here's an example illustrating why I think this would be helpful:
Gabriella is incredulous at what she feels is an abominably low rate of pay for copy writing services, which prompted to her to ask,
"Would you do anything if the price was right?"
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQy1jF8Pp9I30CgOl8MsBYyjaBsTuZ7a35OnoO9AVDE8D3m6svMg3CQSI5wsxhyjjgI49Pq4ZVtlXiR3ur_0leyIABcTegEKM-qYYtdL8OLfRgJd_MylgRdi39jnAVm35evvGDvk7IMa0/s1600/sellout-1.jpg

Huh? I finally understood her to be getting at something like 'If you were say, hurting badly enough, would you accept an atrocious rate of pay just because it was better than nothing?' But since she was specific in her subtext about that rate & the type of work, I offered a reply which extracted the predicate from her query and addressed that:

http://b.qr.ae/Rhetoric2Logic

Here is an example of random cool shyte to be found at @quora:

http://b.qr.ae/QuoraAnimalBand

Notice the great question, simple and straightforward in concept and language.  Notice the smart, jaunty 'To the Cloud!' pop culture reference in Erik Frey's reply. That answer, upvoted (as of this moment) nearly 500 times, is not only interesting, fun and maybe surprising, but it demonstrates its data (proof! See 'the cloud' atop the list of animals). I like the charming gameness implicit in both the asking and the answering of such a question in a more or less formal environment.  The whole thing makes for a good solid example of what Quora is becoming.

Friday, January 21, 2011

Mimi's Blonde joke: Blind Cowboy

My mother, Mimi, just sent me the most roflmao I've ever heard:

An old, blind cowboy wanders into an all-girl biker bar by mistake. He
finds his way to a bar stool and orders a shot of Jack Daniels. After
sitting there for a while, he yells to the bartender, "Hey, you wanna
hear a blonde joke?"

The bar immediately falls absolutely silent.

In a very deep, husky voice, the woman next to him says, "Before you
tell that joke, Cowboy, I think it is only fair, given that you are
blind, that you should know five things:

1. The bartender is a blonde girl with a baseball bat.

2. The bouncer is a blonde girl.

3. I'm a 6-foot tall, 175-pound blonde woman with a black belt in karate.

4. The woman sitting next to me is blonde and a professional weight lifter.

5. The lady to your right is blonde and a professional wrestler.

Now, think about it seriously, Cowboy. Do you still wanna tell that
blonde joke?"

The blind cowboy thinks for a second, shakes his head and mutters,
"Well, no...not if I'm gonna have to explain it five times."

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Not Asleep.

Bored, looking at iPod skins. I just fell in love with the work of Joe Ledbetter:

Love this Angel & Devil Bunnehs image:

http://www.whoateallthepies.tv/angel_devil-bunny.gif

My favorite new artist :)

Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Rescued!

The Employment Verification thingy mentioned in the last post WAS RESCUED!!!! It is, as we speak, waiting for me up at the drugstore.  I am even more blissfully relieved as I was mad with frustration last night.

Thanks to your amazing superpowers, today's a great day.

Peace & happiness to you on this lovely Wednesday

<3

Monday, January 3, 2011

Seahawks NFC West Champions!

Good morning. :)

Laughing, Seahawks Head Coach @PeteCarroll said, "Hey, it's cool we're doing something that's never been done before...!", referring to the fact that he took a team with a losing record to the Playoffs.  He also said, "I guess we won for all the teams that have a losing record and think they can't be champions. It can get done, you can do it." That's a genuinely sporting, fun, positive attititude, and I love it. I feel proud that he's a Seahawk.

I love this coach to pieces. Rather that being your typical surly, hard boiled Pro-football coach, he is happy, positive and knows how to have fun no matter what the circumstances.  He has perspective, humor and grace. He does things like tweet whatever he's chosen as the Seahawks' #SOTD (Song of the Day) - usually a spirit-building & motivational tool for the team; in this case, a gift to the UW Huskies' Coach Sarkisian). If you ask me, that's awesome.

Carroll remarks on what made last nights' win happen, the season, QB stuff & a few other things (audio's a bit low):

http://www.seahawks.com/videos-photos/videos/Week-17---Rams-Postgame-Recap/c71bd727-d83a-4fbf-920d-4613f4a3d26b#?id=ca86f419-2361-4a72-927f-67e5a0b3488e

Colossal congrats to the Hawks!!! Let's go hammer the Saints next week!

Saturday, January 1, 2011

1.1.11

Happy New Year!

<anti-jinx>I have a pretty good feeling about 2011.</anti-jinx>


I kicked it off spending a lovely afternoon out with my friend @nwmargaret. 


 We shared appetizers at Julia's on Broadway, chatting & entertaining each other. We stopped on Thomas near Melrose, looking west, and alternated between shuffling through her Christmas pictures and ogling the spectacular Olympic Mountains (w/Space Needle in the foreground), pre-sunset.



At this moment, I have this Haydn piece in my head and an excellent cup of coffee beside me. I have elevently hundred tweets to go enjoy & SNL to look forward to this evening (a rerun, but new to me). There is a kitteh watching me intently from across the alley. I keep recalling the sunset on my short walk home from the store, which was the most insanely beautiful Technicolor spectacle I'd seen in ages. I made random strangers pay attention to it and gasp in awestruck wonder.

Some of them looked at me funny for making them gasp ;-)


Tomorrow, the Seahawks take on the Rams here at home, a game that's been fraught with some intra-12thMan conflict.  In my eyes, it's a sportsmanship issue; I stand firmly in the Pro-Win camp. The Pro-Tank camp can go to Hell is well-intentioned, I'm sure, but misguided. And wrong.

GO SEAHAWKS!!!
In the less immediate world, I have other stuff to look forward to. Things are brewing. Some small but important things are shifting and changing a bit. 

All sorts of stuff is plenty fucked up, don't get me wrong. but I'm seeing that there is a more hopeful & peaceful way to be, right here in the midst of it all, and I'm headed there. Whatever I can possibly work out, heal up, improve, etc., in myself and the world, can be done probably a lot more effectively from there.

I know this was just pointless rambling. Just marking the day, I guess.  I wish you the very best of all things, anything you might want for yourself, and a few happy surprises in 2011.

Love,

Catherine
:)