Dec 06 2008
Our daughter got to ride in the St. Stephen’s float in the B. A. Christmas parade this year and my husband got this awesome shot:
St. Stephen's float in the Broken Arrow Christmas parade 12-6-08
OK, I’m definitely hiring him on as my photographer for my sites!
And I’m off - it’s a weekend full of Christmas rehearsals, shows and holiday meals.
Dec 06 2008
I was playing around with my WP theme and came up with a new one with blurry blues, black background, and a white content area - now available for download: nytewurks (I’m currently using).
It has the nifty featured section - just label a category as “Featured” to have it automagically show up in the sidebar. I have used the Thumbnail for Excerpts WP plugin to get the images to show up in the featured posts (though the word wrap isn’t not quite right in Safari). Or just remove the ‘featured’ code section in the sidebar if you don’t want this.
nytewurks
Comments/suggestions welcome!
Dec 01 2008
Since I have so much to be thankful for, and since it is Thanksgiving, I wanted to do a stream-of-consciousness post on 101 things I’m thankful for. I thought about ordering them at first, but that just didn’t seem right somehow.
Christine & Natasha in Grandpa's Jaguar
1. Natasha, Natasha, Natasha, Natasha, Natasha; my sweetest of sweets daughter. I’ve been ‘in love’ with people and even music and other media/art, but having a child is the best of all. You miss them terribly when they’re away, you get scared by their fragility, and at the same time you love them like nothing else and they truly are the most charming people you will ever know.
2. A great family including sisters that I can act totally crazy and bizarre around and they think it’s just as hilarious as I do!
3. A thoughtful husband who shares so many common interests and ideals with me.
4. Fond memories of people I’ve lost.
5. The ability to focus on what I can learn from tragedies and not on the negative (I was blessed with quite the self-preserving personality!).
M Ward
6. Incessant, uncontrollable… well, passion, for lack of more accurate word - I am constantly amazed by some new song, book, personality, color combination, weather, and it goes on and on - like M Ward sings, “God, it’s great to be alive / takes the skin right off my hide / to think I’ll have to give it all up someday.”
7. The fact that I’ve found a church that I actually like (it’s sometimes hard to be a Christian when you don’t like any of the Christian churches that you’ve been to and find some serious flaws in the members as well (and I’m still trying to figure out how much of that is my own problem)) - I recently started going to a small Methodist church and I think I finally feel like I’ve found a church that I feel I can grow in. I love the social history and focus of the church, they’ve played an active role in American civil rights issues and to this day they are very socially active. The church I’ve been going to houses our Meals on Wheels kitchen and is very focused on helping the poor in our community. The are also spiritual without taking the whole of the Bible literally. (This could be a very very long item and it’s already past midnight so I’ll leave it at that for now).
8 That I was born in the age of air conditioning, pain medication, movie shows, and teh internets! (Though this one could be a blessing and a curse…)
9 That I’ve found a home-based business that has been successful thus far, and that I enjoy (making sites).
10 That I have a nice, relaxed job that lets me wear jeans every day, and hang numerous plants, music posters, child drawings, and various art/craftwork around my desk until the grey walls are almost completely hidden.
Fuji's IJ Roll & Spicy Tuna Roll
11 Fuji’s sushi, particularly their spicy tuna rolls.
12 Iced coffee.
13 Anh Hung Tran.
14 Woody Allen.
15 Michel Gondry.
16 T.S. Eliot.
17 e e cummings.
18 Fyodor Dostoyevsky.
19 Glenn Gould.
Glenn Gould
20 Sergei Rachmaninoff.
21 Frederic Chopin (so in love)!
22 Claude Debussy.
23 My beautiful black Baldwin upright.
24 The joy of playing piano.
25 The feeling of the air moving against your chest while playing the accordion.
26 The Jersey shore and endless summers I got to spend there while visiting family.
27 Tulsa, with the friendliest people, cool architecture, magnificent thunderstorms, Cain’s, and its thick green-ness.
28 The time I got with a truly amazing piano teacher, Claire Jones.
29 Good friends I’ve kept over the years and friends to come.
30 Sonic Route 44 diet Coke with lots of lime.
31 Being born in an era of countless amazing bands & musicians!
Rainy Fall
32 Rain.
33 Snow.
34 The magic in the perfect speed of riding a bike.
35 Recording devices.
36 Looking out the window of a moving car.
37 The mystical Tahlequah, OK.
38 The dreamy Peggy Lee tune ‘Where or When’ and the perfect snowy December morning I was awoken by that song on the radio.
Peggy Lee
39 The moment that I first heard Paul McCartney’s ‘Maybe I’m Amazed’ (in high school right after a breakup with a boyfriend who I had mentioned this song to and who didn’t find anything special about it) and thought that it was so underrated and awesome that I would marry the guy who told me he intimated the same feelings toward the song without knowing my feelings about it (which is a small part of why I’m married to who I am today and whomever reads this first will be the first to learn this)!
Christian Bale!
40 Red wine.
41 Somewhere Over the Rainbow.
42 M Ward.
43 Christian Bale.
44 Leonard Cohen.
45 New Order and They Might Be Giants (and numerous others) for being major players in getting me through high school in one piece! …But don’t forget the songs
That made you cry
And the songs that saved your life
Yes, you’re older now
And you’re a clever swine
But they were the only ones who ever stood by you…
46 Arcade Fire, Modest Mouse, Neutral Milk Hotel, Animal Collective, Wolf Parade, The Fiery Furnaces, and Sufjan Stevens for showing up just when I thought there era of good music of my generation was over.
47 Talking Heads for managing to be so hot and intellectual at the same time.
48 NPR for their ‘driveway moments.’
Carlsbad Caverns + Doll's Theater
49 Caves.
50 National & State Parks.
51 Glorious blank paper and a black pen.
52 Magazine collages.
53 Smalti mosaics.
54 The Golden Number.
55 Hello Kitty.
56 Niagara Falls.
57 Growing up with parents who loved to take road trips.
58 Mojitos.
59 Gardening.
60 The Russian language with which I am enamored but haven’t found the time to get past general greetings. Strastvitya.
From the Japanese folk tale "The Crane Wife"
61 Folk tales & mythology.
62 Shakespeare (I know, yawn, how quaint) - I like Hamlet and Midsummer’s Night Dream a lot, almost as much as the fact the he varied the spelling of his name.
63 Night swimming and that I was fortunate enough to grow up with a pool with lights and an overview of dreamy, spooky woods.
64 My propensity to daydream.
65 Symbols.
LOST
66 LOST.
67 That I got to major in two subjects that dealt heavily in symbols in mirror opposite ways - Mathematics and English Literature.
68 Dreams (”in dreams, emotions are overwhelming” -Science of Sleep).
Gael Garcia Bernal in The Science of Sleep
70 Motorcycle Diaries (I liked the book and the movie) - even though I don’t agree with everything Che Guevara did in his lifetime, I’ve always admired the humanity of this book and his altruistic spirit - this journey really gives some insight into his life before it the politics (and what led him to that), and his love, respect, and care for the people he met.
71 Dark chocolate with orange.
72 Icicles.
73 Coconut lime verbena body spray from Bath & Body Works which gives me a little extra vigor each and every day.
Arctic Wolf
74 Wolves.
75 Language.
76 Silence.
77 Chinese silk shirts and dresses.
78 A cat who has so much personality that she’s more human than cat.
79 Google Adsense
80 Coffee Shops
Mt Fuji woodblock print by Hiroshige
81 The early Christmas present my husband just gave me - a MacBook - yay!
82 Hobby Lobby so my daughter and I can easily find a new craft project to do any time.
83 Hiroshige.
84 Vladimir Horowitz.
85 Hoodies.
86 Banana Republic.
87 Illuminations Candles.
88 Andrei Tarkovsky.
89 Richard Kelly for making Donnie Darko.
Philbrook's 1st Garden Glow 11-29-08
90 College radio.
91 Starry nights.
92 Connections.
93 Noodle bowls.
94 That I discovered the combination of saltine crackers, plain cream cheese, and green olives.
Creepy Cute Crochet: Zombies, Ninjas, Robots, and More!
95 The city.
96 The country.
97 Holidays and the events they inspire, like warm lingering meals, The Nutcracker ballet, and Philbrook’s Garden Glow.
98 iTunes Genius.
99 Creepy Cute Crochet for getting me back into crocheting and sparking some ideas.
100 WordPress for being the most awesome CMS and making this easier than it could have been.
101 You!
Nov 26 2008
Over the past few weeks I’ve been converting HTML sites to PHP/WordPress, attempting to create creating clean WP themes for new sites, and bridging blogs with forums. You could say ‘Web 2.0′ has been on my mind a lot lately…
That’s how I found this. This video is cool. And spooky. And sums things up very well.
“The Machine is Us/ing Us”
Nov 20 2008
I want to live here..
[Edit + later today...] you can now have the theme in Gmail too!!
Nov 17 2008
Last week I started a new regime that involves playing more piano and implementing a healthier lifestyle… well I did work up my Bach and Debussy (though the Debussy has a little more work to go) but I only got half-way through my Hanon - I just got blocked when I got to the scales! I figure since I’m going through a different key each week, I can skip over the scales and arpeggios for now and only do them in the particular key. So it’s on to Hanon book 3 to catch up (and that’s no easy task)!
I found I had less ‘extra’ time for playing than I thought I would - I forgot that the WoW Wrath of the Lich King expansion pack came out this week - how on earth can I do anything else with this time when I have Frostyna to work on?!? (And I’ve always wanted a frosty character!)
My Death Knight Frostyna
As for the health part, I did manage to go all week without eating beef - it was actually quite easy! I even forgot about it until I almost ordered my Thai noodles with beef and then changed to chicken. 1200 calories a day worked until the weekend where I undid most of the good (though I did lose 2 pounds for the week).
Nov 16 2008
I love making grand plans - and small plans - and everything in between - call it an addiction. Of course following through is the hard part… what I’ve been doing is creating grandiose plans and then if I get a little bit of it done, I’ve accomplished a lot. I know setting realistic plans might be a better way to go, but I’ve been a little scared to shake up my plan-making. However I’m going to try making them more realistic in 2009.
I’ve already got my new 2009 Chococat calendar hanging up at my desk, and I will be getting my planner pages soon. Here are my goals so far:
So, there’s a rough draft - now I have a few weeks to polish things.
Nov 15 2008
Spencer Krug of Wolf Parade, Sunset Rubdown, Frog Eyes, Swan Lake, & Fifths of Seven
10 Wolf Parade + You Are a Runner and I Am My Father’s Son
09 Wolf Parade + Grounds for Divorce
08 Sunset Rubdown + Us Ones in Between
.:*Spencer Krug gently singing in the lamplight*:.
07 Sunset Rubdown + For the Pier (and Dead Shimmering)
A great glimpse into Spencer Krug’s show intensity!
06 Wolf Parade + This Heart’s on Fire
05 Wolf Parade + Modern World
04 Wolf Parade + Soldier’s Grin
03 Wolf Parade + I’ll Believe In Anything
02 Sunset Rubdown + Shut Up I am Dreaming of Places Where Lovers Have Wings
01 Wolf Parade + Kissing the Beehive
FIRE IN THE HOLE, FIRE IN THE HOLE, FIRE IN THE HOLE…!
Nov 14 2008
Today I went to the funeral of an old friend from high school. I hadn’t seen him since school but I remember him well and he was truly one of the nicest guys - the type that’s always positive and always friendly. You know how high-schoolers get moody & cocky a lot? I never saw that in this guy and I don’t even know if I could say that about anyone else.
I found out this week that since high school he and his wife have raised quite the family - seven kids! And it was obvious that he appreciated every moment and celebrated his family. What I gleaned from today is to celebrate every moment that I have with my family while I’m on this planet.
Nov 12 2008
Glenn Gould
I couldn’t sleep this morning - I was wide awake at 4:00 and couldn’t get back. I tried the usual plane crash daydreams but to no avail… so I thought it was the perfect opportunity to start my new regime.
I’d been planning to make some changes this week anyway and was falling behind, so really, this was perfect.
For one, I want to really get back into piano so I’m getting to know the keys again - I plan on spending each week being intimate with a different key, starting with C of course and going around the circle in the usual fashion. I hope to get through Hanon (sans the nasty thumb-under excercises
Glenn Gould
which my brilliant piano teacher advises cause carpel-tunnel and of which I was painstakingly reminded after trying them this weekend) once a week in one key, then I’m picking two (or more in the case of C) interesting but not terribly difficult pieces in each key for each week. Part of being intimate with the songs and keys is going to be listening to different well-done versions of the songs each week as well.
This week (week of C) I’ve been playing Bach’s “Prelude #1 from The Well Tempered Clavier” and have been listening to M Ward’s version (everything Ward touches is golden) as well as Glenn Gould’s (my former teacher studied under the same master teacher that Glenn Gould did!) - he had Bach down:
Glenn Gould was so hot.
And my other piece for this week is Debussy’s “Dr. Gradus ad Parnassum” from “Children’s Corner,” what a dreamy tune - I just get lost… Alfred Cortot playing here:
My other regime involves health - I’m starting by having no more than 1200 calories a day and taking a variety of vitamins. I’m also slowly moving towards becoming fish vegetarian but I’ve got some work there… though I very rarely eat beef so that’s a good start.
I would like to include some sort of exercise, but it just won’t fit in right now because I want to spend as much time with my daughter as possible and I’m already getting up early to do most of my piano playing before she wakes up and putting my internet publishing business on hold (just hiring out some work right now).
I was playing around with my WP theme and came up with a new one with blurry blues, black background, and a white content area - now available for download: nytewurks (I’m currently using).
It has the nifty featured section - just label a category as “Featured” to have it automagically show up in the sidebar. [...]
Since I have so much to be thankful for, and since it is Thanksgiving, I wanted to do a stream-of-consciousness post on 101 things I’m thankful for. I thought about ordering them at first, but that just didn’t seem right somehow.
1. Natasha, Natasha, Natasha, Natasha, Natasha; my sweetest of sweets daughter. I’ve been ‘in love’ [...]
10 Wolf Parade + You Are a Runner and I Am My Father’s Son
09 Wolf Parade + Grounds for Divorce
08 Sunset Rubdown + Us Ones in Between
.:*Spencer Krug gently singing in the lamplight*:.
07 Sunset Rubdown + For the Pier (and Dead Shimmering)
A great glimpse into Spencer Krug’s show intensity!
06 Wolf Parade + This Heart’s on [...]
I couldn’t sleep this morning - I was wide awake at 4:00 and couldn’t get back. I tried the usual plane crash daydreams but to no avail… so I thought it was the perfect opportunity to start my new regime.
I’d been planning to make some changes this week anyway and was falling behind, so really, [...]
if you’ll believe in anything.
I took a rare week night out with my sis and her husband to go see Wolf Parade at The Marquee in Tulsa tonight - it was the best show I’ve seen in years.
First we stumbled out of the T-storms & tornadoes into “Lola’s,” a dia de los muertos themed tapas bar [...]
It felt like my family and I spent the whole of October celebrating Halloween; or at least celebrating the cool weather and the orange backdrop of fall, as well as out-of-town family & friends coming and going.
Our family loves fall anyway and we always get an early start on the festivities… this year it started [...]
Well - I may not have produced the world’s greatest modern mosaics, but I did end up with three little pieces of color and awkwardness that I like enough to display in my decor. Plus going to art class was really a nice segway from the office.
So here’s what I made - three tree-themed smalti [...]