Crude repairs

I had to do a rather Frankenstein-like repair job on my Old Navy sweater yesterday at work. Somehow I split the edge of my cuff's seam and was worried it'd get worse if I didn't fix it fast. At least I picked a similar thread color, and I didn't leave any loose ends hanging, right?

This is why I'm not a seamstress.

The last thing I thought I'd have trouble doing...

Sleeping. I adore sleeping. There's nothing better than getting all cozy in your bed, with the lights off and the doggies/husband cuddling with you, and snoozing the night (and morning, if I'm lucky) away. My head hits that pillow and I'm usually out within five minutes. And the next thing I know, my alarm is going off and it's time to get up.

I am one of those people that could easily sleep past noon every day, even after going to bed as early as 10:00. Yes, twelve hours of sleep is sometimes still not enough for me. I sleep so much at times that I hurt when I wake up (achy, stiff, etc.). Now THAT'S sleeping!

But lately I've been having trouble counting those sheep, and I'm not sure why. It's not necessarily that I'm up all night worrying or overly-caffeinated (although once in a while I end up down that path). I just seem to have very restless and broken sleep, to the point where I'm waking up several times a night, unable to get comfortable, tossing and turning more than usual...

It's frustrating. And of course I can take something to help me sleep, no problem. But I'd like to figure out why I can't seem to sleep uninterrupted. I'm curious what's causing my nighttime unsettled state of being.

Are you having trouble sleeping lately? If so, have you been able to figure out why?

Matt's birthday, and brownie cake—yum!

I stopped by my parents' house today on my way to a dermatologist appointment to say happy birthday to my brother, Matt. My mom had made a lovely (and quite gooey) brownie cake for him, so after my appointment I came back to celebrate with him and my dad, Shannon, and of course, Otto (my mom had to work and Pete was at home).


Matt and the lighting of the infamous number candles, this time a rather fresh and unused looking "24"


Dad looking eager


Shannon taking pix


Otto barking and drooling on my lap as we sing "Happy Birthday"

Yes, my mom just had a birthday on Tuesday, and my other brother Steve had a birthday on the 10th. And guess what? There's ANOTHER birthday coming up on Saturday! Guess who? (No, not me, I'm a Virgo.)

I guess you'll have to wait to find out this weekend, hee hee...

Kathy Roussel handmade jewelry

I happened to pop over by Etsy to check out what new things they're featuring, and I saw these pretty dangly earrings featured on the front page.



There's something quite lovely about their irridescent gold shimmer and offbeat shape that is quite appealing to me.

I also adore this line drawing necklace



and this autumn leaf necklace



(which are out of my price range, but still cool), and this sweet flower ring



which is quite delicate and nice.

They're all from a shop called Kathy Roussel handmade jewelry. Feel free to check it out, although don't say I didn't warn you that you'll be tempted.

Someone should drag me away from my laptop so I'm not allowed to look at such things. I might be tempted to accidentally drop one of those gorgeous pieces of jewelry into my little Etsy shopping cart...and I won't be held responsible for what happens after that. That's all I'm sayin'.

They might as well rot out of my head

A winning combination for your pearly whites

I know it's bad to drink a Coke after you have just had your teeth cleaned at the dentist, but I couldn't help myself yesterday. Good God, I was starving because I hadn't eaten all afternoon, and my stomach was rumbling while I was in the dentist's chair, which was embarrassing. Luckily, I had a can of Coke in my car that I had brought along for Pete to drink, who also hadn't eaten all day. I thought he'd have the Coke with some food I brought for him before our joint dental appointments. But he didn't drink it, and when I got back into my car to drive home, I couldn't resist the siren call of the sugary syrup. When I started chugging the Coke, I don't think my gums had fully stopped bleeding from the heavy-handed flossing by the hygeinist, but I didn't care. I have two caveties that have to be filled next week anyhow, so a little Coke won't make a big difference, right? At least it quieted the angry protests from my empty stomach on the way home...

Freeze!

One thing I gotta say for such frigid temps outside...when a girl wants a Bloody Mary (like I did last weekend) and has no ice in the house, the miserable cold becomes her friend.

Just fill up a tray with water, stick outside your front door...



...and voila! Instant ice cubes, Chicago-style.



Now if I can only find a way to stay WARM, especially inside my house, well, I'd be a happy camper.

Here comes Hawaii

A photo from Day Two of our honeymoon in Hawaii—Pete swimming in Queen's Bath, Princeville, Kauai

I have FINALLY started going through my honeymoon photos and prepping them to upload on my Flickr page. The sheer number of photos has been a bit of a deterrent for me, I must admit. There's about 3,000 photos—yes, you heard right, 3,000—but now that I have figured out how to convert multiple files at once, I am slowly slogging through them and getting them published to my Flickr page. It's slow going, so don't expect them to all pop up overnight. I'm working on the first few days right now, and they'll be posted in albums that focus on each day of the trip. I'm hoping to be done with them during the next several days, but we'll see. I'm working on finishing a freelance project first, which of course takes priority over playing with my honeymoon pix, unfortunately.

P.S. I'll be featuring select photos from each day on vivid as I post the pix to Flickr, so check back often!

Trapped!

The infamous bathroom


Max looking spooked

Poor Max was trapped in the bathroom all last night. I discovered this when I got up at 5:00 a.m. this morning and heard him crying from somewhere in the house. I traced the cries to the bathroom, where I discovered him waiting to come out and greet me. I petted him for a while and he purred his thanks, while Dollie sniffed him and looked baffled by his sudden appearance. As a consolation prize, I gave them both a meal of Fancy Feast, something that I normally reserve for the weekends. I think he forgot all about it once that food was in his belly.

Mama's birthday

Pete and I arrived at this little birthday gathering on a bit of a fluke. We had dentist appointments scheduled yesterday for 5:10, which I confirmed with both my iPhone calendar and the reminder call we got from the dentist's office the day before. When we showed up, we were told it's actually scheduled for today at the same time. Argh!

Since we were already halfway towards my parents' house and it was my mom's birthday, we decided to head over there and have dinner and cake with them. My mom had had a hard day at work, so it pleased her to see us arrive with some cold beer (for the brats she was cooking, and our bellies) and smiles on our faces.


My mom's wacky sense of humor

After dinner the celebratory birthday pound cake was brought out, and it was ceremoniously lit aflame with a few molten number candles on top. Of course, Otto instantly began barking when he saw the cake being placed in the center of the table, and would not shut up, even after we were all done singing.


Matt and the honorary pound cake


Dad waiting to start the festivities


The gigantic knife my dad got out to cut the wee little cake


Mom laughing as...


...Otto entertains and annoys us with his usual birthday song barking


The cake aglow with birthday splendor


Mom blowing out her candles


Pete looking amused as my dad cracks joke after joke, heavily laced with puns


Me groaning at all the punnery involving the words "pound cake"


The aforementioned birthday-pun-pound cake


Otto waiting for some cake to be tossed his way


Some lovely flowers for mom's birthday

We had a great time, lots of laughs, and got to relax a little, which was nice. Best of all, it made up for my mom's bad day and gave her something to be happy about. That's the best gift we could have given her today, I think.

esdesigns—Elizabeth Scott Botanical Jewelry

I love the shop called esdesigns (Elizabeth Scott Botanical Jewelry) and everything in it. I think this ginkgo ring has been in my favorites list for ages. I keep meaning to buy one of these lovely pieces, but never seem to get around to it. And of course money is tight at the moment, but I still like to window shop every once in a while...

Blog roll update

I just updated my blog roll to include those cool little thumbnails and titles of recent posts from other blogs. I've tried to duplicate the ones I already had in my old boring list, in addition to some new blogs I'm reading, but I think I've missed a few. I realized I don't follow all of the blogs I read, even though I thought I was, so there is a bit of a discrepancy. Now I gotta try to remember which blogs I'm accidentally not following. Yes, I'm very confused.

If yours is one of the forgotten ones on my list (and you don't mind being on my blog roll), please let me know in the comments section. Thanks!

Inspiration is a funny thing

(Me having fun recently with my camera and self portraits)

As you can tell, my inspiration comes and goes here at reverie (and of course vivid). There are days and weeks where I have no creative inklings at all. Those are sad and dark times for me, very frustrating and weird. I'm not used to being like that for more than a day or so, and when I entered my third week of limbo last week, I was really starting to feel sad and a bit scared.

Then something changed this weekend. Somehow the world looked different, I was full of ideas, and couldn't run around taking pictures fast enough. Why? What had changed? I'm not sure, but I noticed I was a bit more bubbly and content than I have been during the last several weeks. I think there's a definite connection between state of mind and the pursuit of creativity, at least as far as I'm concerned.



Which raises a question: If things go on like they have for a while, with me being in the doldrums and things not going so well in some areas of my life, am I destined to remain dry and lifeless in my imagination? I certainly hope not. If anything, having fun with photography or drawing make me very happy, and make me want to create more.



So how to get that happy cycle going continuously? I'm not sure, but I'm glad it's here for the moment, however long.

A junk food junkie no more

Have you ever eaten so much junk food and candy that you feel sick? I have reached that point this past weekend. I think I ate enough Doritos on Friday alone to feed a family of four. Not that I ate so much that I was gorging, but I think it was just the sheer variety of junk food I consumed. Candy, ice cream, chips, soda—you name it, I ate it.



But seriously, I feel sick. Enough to swear off that crap for a good long while. I know it's crazy, but I just don't feel like eating something that makes me so queasy. Unless the stomach upset is from siphoning that dirty aquarium water into the vacuum pump I was using on my fish tank last night. That fishy poopy water didn't taste very good, surprisingly.



Ugh. Anyhow, no more Doritos for THIS girl!

Camera ready

Do you ever have those nightmares where you're on vacation somewhere fabulous and you realize you don't have your camera with you? Mine always seem to center on Australia for some reason, but the story is always the same. I arrive somewhere gorgeous, reach for my camera, and—what??? No camera! I become insanely panicky and run around town, looking for a shop, any shop, that sells disposable cameras. Which is funny, because I never seem to search for shops that sell digital cameras in my dreams, which would be the smarter and more logical thing to do.



I haven't had one of those dreams lately, but I thought about it for some reason yesterday, probably because I was lucky to have my camera handy. It was one of those magical days where I saw photo ops everywhere I went. Granted, it was just inside my house, but the time and place didn't matter. I couldn't stop taking pix, and I had an absolute blast. I got lots of great images from those sessions and had so much fun. It feels so good to kick that creative drought in the butt and get that excited feeling again, the one where I feel like I can't take the pictures fast enough—or take enough of them, for that matter.



And while not every picture is frame-worthy, as Georgia would say, I still had a blast and practiced the ol' craft. I can't say that Dollie agrees with that as is evident from these outtakes, but that's okay. I suffer enough when I go to the washroom and she makes me turn on the water for her, so we're even.

(Check out all the pix from Dollie's nap here on my Flickr page.)

Photo conversion help?

Anyone know how to take a large batch of photos and resave them as smaller files, without having to individually open and save each image? I always have large batches of photos to upload, and I hate the time and effort involved in this process. Georgia showed me this once in Photoshop, but I've forgotten how to do it. The hassle has definitely stopped me from uploading lots of pix that I might otherwise share. So I'm eager to find a way around this. Any help is much appreciated!

And yeah, I'm still goofing around with my blog's look. Don't be surprised if it changes here and there while I try to settle on the look I want.

(P.S. This image of Max and others like it can be seen here.)

UPDATE: I figured out how to do this automatically in Photoshop, but as far as remembering each step, well, I'll have to trace back my steps and write everything down. Needless to say, I did it! And now I'm uploading my pix to Flickr. Check out vivid tomorrow and you'll see what I've uploaded...

Capturing the moment

I'm grateful that there are times when I'm able to grab my camera and squeeze off a few shots before the moment has passed. I don't necessarily get award-winning pix, but I do get some memorable shots that make me smile.



I happened to be passing by when I spotted Max sitting quietly in our dining room, gazing outside, bathed in sunlight. I whirled around, grabbed my Alpha, and took a few pix.



Max was startled by my presence and didn't stay still very long, perhaps a few seconds, and then moved on.



But I got a few pix out of the moment anyway. This sort of thing makes my day.

(P.S. Check out vivid, where I have posted more photos taken of Max, Dollie, and the crazy construction in my dining room.)

Missing Pete

It's just not the same without him here, as Adora can attest.

Officially obsessed

That funky theme song, those fashion victims crying out for help (and even better, those who aren't), the sarcastic yet helpful hosts, Stacy and Clinton...how can a girl NOT obsess?



I freely admit it, I'm totally obsessed with What Not to Wear. If it's on, I'm there. And the marathons? Like giving candy to a sugar addict. I'm in makeover heaven on those rare days.



What is it about this show that draws me in? I'm always a sucker for a good makeover, and there have been some seriously bad cases on the show. The best episodes are when the person is not only fully transformed on the outside, but on the inside too. You can see their excitement and confidence when they've finally figured out how to properly attire themselves.



I love it when Stacy and Clinton go through the person's closet and comment on various articles of clothing. Some people laugh and act sheepish, but others are outraged and fight for the last piece of polyester in their closet.



And the 360? How can they NOT see what they're doing wrong? Sometimes a glimmer of understanding begins here, when the person is confronted with their wardrobe from all angles, but there are still others who won't budge an inch.



Once the shopping is underway and Stacy and Clinton make their surprise appearance on Day Two, a transformation is clearly visible. And then Nick and Carmindy swoop in to make the finishing touches, although I don't always like the haircuts Nick gives. Does everyone have to have a chin-length haircut? Is long hair really so bad? And must everyone who has curly hair have their hair straightened?

At least most people are pleased and excited by their new looks, although there are always a few holdouts that are quite obviously NOT impressed. Those are the saddest cases, I think.



Anyhow, I'd love to babble on and on about What Not to Wear, but I can't. I'm in the middle of watching yet another episode—gotta go!