Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Q
One of the best things about blogging is making friends with other people out on the interweb. One of my favorite discoveries has been a lovely red headed engineer living in one of my dream cities (did you know that Katie? I think Boulder is divine!)who got married not too terribly long ago and writes about all sorts of lovely things. She recently started a weekly "Blogger to Blogger" post and I was so honored when she invited me to be part of it. She asked me three questions and I asked her three questions and you can find our charming answers here (and also poke around KC's Masterpiece because it really is!. Thanks for letting me play with you Katie!
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Avoidance
Almost every night after I take a shower I spend at much time as I possibly can putting off drying my hair. I love just about everything else about my nightly routine but for some reason-I just can't STAND the blower dryer portion of the evening.
Is that weird?
Is that weird?
Sunday, April 26, 2009
Meh
I'm very sorry to tell all of you this but...
I finished Twilight last night and I honestly don't get all the fuss. My roommate and I have been discussing it in depth all week because she didn't love it either and we think it all depends on whether or not you fall in love with Edward. And I thought he was a snore. All I got from the endless descriptions of his beautiful smile and his marble arms and his amazing breath and his golden eyes was that he was super hot. I kept waiting for him to be funny or charming or charismatic in some way-or even have some sexy devilish side. I just felt like he was hot and rich and that was about the size of his appeal.
Lest you think I'm some kind of romantic cynic...plenty of girls probably thought Mr. Darcy was a big fat jerk and I think he's dreamy. I preferred Noel Crane to Ben Covington, Aiden to Mr. Big and would take Seth Cohen over Ryan Atwood in a heartbeat. I still swoon when Anne tells Gilbert "I don't want diamond sunburts and marble hallways,...all I want, Gil', is you".
This just wasn't my bag. You can all come back and give me a hard time when you hate The Time Traveler's Wife.
I finished Twilight last night and I honestly don't get all the fuss. My roommate and I have been discussing it in depth all week because she didn't love it either and we think it all depends on whether or not you fall in love with Edward. And I thought he was a snore. All I got from the endless descriptions of his beautiful smile and his marble arms and his amazing breath and his golden eyes was that he was super hot. I kept waiting for him to be funny or charming or charismatic in some way-or even have some sexy devilish side. I just felt like he was hot and rich and that was about the size of his appeal.
Lest you think I'm some kind of romantic cynic...plenty of girls probably thought Mr. Darcy was a big fat jerk and I think he's dreamy. I preferred Noel Crane to Ben Covington, Aiden to Mr. Big and would take Seth Cohen over Ryan Atwood in a heartbeat. I still swoon when Anne tells Gilbert "I don't want diamond sunburts and marble hallways,...all I want, Gil', is you".
This just wasn't my bag. You can all come back and give me a hard time when you hate The Time Traveler's Wife.
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Project!
(I sent this out as an email today so it might be a repeat for some of you. But I have a lot of blogosphere friends I wanted to include in this project)
Last year I was wandering around an Anthropologie in Georgetown and happened upon a little book called "Letters to My Younger Self." It was a book of 41 letters written by all kinds of famous women to a younger version of themselves at a particularly crucial moment in their history. They wrote advice about starting starting careers, dealing with heartbreak, the way to treat people, thing not to worry about....I was so struck by the honesty and the really great advice that I went right back to my hotel and pounded out my own letter to sixteen year old Katie. It was a really fun thing to do and quite satisfying to think that I might have actually learned a thing or two as I have gotten older. I go back and read that letter a lot, and I hope that if I ever have a sixteen year old daughter, maybe some of what I wrote there will be meaningful or helpful to her.
The more life experience I have, the more I feel that as women, we have a tendency to hold ourselves to some fairly ridiculous standards. We compare our worst selves to someone else's very best, we worry that we aren't good enough/smart enough/hot enough/accomplished enough. We minimize our good qualities and blow up the ones we are struggling with. But the wonderful thing is that when we open up and have the courage to be honest with each other about our fears and insecurities, we find that not only do other people feel the same way we do, the very act of encouraging each other usually pulls us right out of our own funk.
So I was thinking, famous women are all well and good but hey, I've collected a pretty fine group of female friends over the years myself. It would be fantastic to get all of THEM to write letters like this, throw them on a blog, and then use one of those handy dandy blog slurping programs to create a book of my very own so I can be inspired and uplifted any old time I want.
Enter you. If you are getting this email it means you are part of my "fabulous women" web and I'd like to invite you to participate in my little project. And I'd like to ask you to invite important women in your own life as well. So send this off to your friends/sisters/grandmothers/running buddies...I would love to collect as many as possible from women of all ages and backgrounds.
That's my pitch, if you are interested in being a part of this super fun project that will require little effort and yield a wonderful return, leave me a comment and I'll be in touch with more details. In the meantime, here is my own little letter. Ah 16, you were so funny.
Last year I was wandering around an Anthropologie in Georgetown and happened upon a little book called "Letters to My Younger Self." It was a book of 41 letters written by all kinds of famous women to a younger version of themselves at a particularly crucial moment in their history. They wrote advice about starting starting careers, dealing with heartbreak, the way to treat people, thing not to worry about....I was so struck by the honesty and the really great advice that I went right back to my hotel and pounded out my own letter to sixteen year old Katie. It was a really fun thing to do and quite satisfying to think that I might have actually learned a thing or two as I have gotten older. I go back and read that letter a lot, and I hope that if I ever have a sixteen year old daughter, maybe some of what I wrote there will be meaningful or helpful to her.
The more life experience I have, the more I feel that as women, we have a tendency to hold ourselves to some fairly ridiculous standards. We compare our worst selves to someone else's very best, we worry that we aren't good enough/smart enough/hot enough/accomplished enough. We minimize our good qualities and blow up the ones we are struggling with. But the wonderful thing is that when we open up and have the courage to be honest with each other about our fears and insecurities, we find that not only do other people feel the same way we do, the very act of encouraging each other usually pulls us right out of our own funk.
So I was thinking, famous women are all well and good but hey, I've collected a pretty fine group of female friends over the years myself. It would be fantastic to get all of THEM to write letters like this, throw them on a blog, and then use one of those handy dandy blog slurping programs to create a book of my very own so I can be inspired and uplifted any old time I want.
Enter you. If you are getting this email it means you are part of my "fabulous women" web and I'd like to invite you to participate in my little project. And I'd like to ask you to invite important women in your own life as well. So send this off to your friends/sisters/grandmothers/running buddies...I would love to collect as many as possible from women of all ages and backgrounds.
That's my pitch, if you are interested in being a part of this super fun project that will require little effort and yield a wonderful return, leave me a comment and I'll be in touch with more details. In the meantime, here is my own little letter. Ah 16, you were so funny.
Sunday, April 19, 2009
Giving in
I know better then to trust that the nice weather is here to stay but Spring made a real valiant effort this weekend to let us know it's on it's way. My roommate and I managed to eat dinner outside on Friday night even if it did mean leaving our coats on. My friend Nat and I celebrated not needing coats and boots with an evening of dancing downtown and the next day a few of us took a little road trip up to Rockport to enjoy fresh lobster and some shopping at The Rack.
So it was a good weekend but I stayed up waaaay too late both nights and so today I came home from church and crashed on the couch. I'm a little tired of watching movies after the long winter so I'm doing something I sort of thought I would never do.
I'm reading Twilight. I'm all for a great love story but everything I've heard about Twilight has made it sound more like obsession then romance. Plus I'm kind of a snob when it comes to books and no one is claiming this thing is literary genius. But it's kind of a cultural phenomenon and my roommate has a copy so here I am, 121 pages in and frankly, kind of intrigued. I'm definitely planning to review it when I'm done. Which judging from how quickly I got this far could be later tonight if I was feeling ambitious....the AP english student in me is weeping just a bit.
So it was a good weekend but I stayed up waaaay too late both nights and so today I came home from church and crashed on the couch. I'm a little tired of watching movies after the long winter so I'm doing something I sort of thought I would never do.
I'm reading Twilight. I'm all for a great love story but everything I've heard about Twilight has made it sound more like obsession then romance. Plus I'm kind of a snob when it comes to books and no one is claiming this thing is literary genius. But it's kind of a cultural phenomenon and my roommate has a copy so here I am, 121 pages in and frankly, kind of intrigued. I'm definitely planning to review it when I'm done. Which judging from how quickly I got this far could be later tonight if I was feeling ambitious....the AP english student in me is weeping just a bit.
Sunday, April 12, 2009
The Little Things
At the insistence of our weekend houseguest I took a personality test last night. I'm pretty fascinated by stuff like that and I've taken bunches of them over the years. I have no idea how scientific such tests really are but I stay relatively consistent across the various versions so there must be something to them right?
This one last night turned out to be a pretty accurate description of me. Tests like this usually make you feel so good because obviously they concentrate mostly on what makes your personality so great, and since you are reading about yourself, you can't help but think that THIS type is seriously the best one and yeah, you are awesome. But they always balance it out with a list of your "limitations" or "weaknesses" to bring you back down to earth. I was reading the weaknesses associated with my personality type and something jumped out at me that I have really been struggling with lately. It's a weakness I have battled my whole life actually but for some reason it's been after me hard since I moved to Boston (there is a whole separate blog post for one of these days about how not fun it is when a flaw that has been living in the background decides to come punch you in the face one day). I've spent a fair amount of time lately being really, really hard on myself due to this little issue and there was something about seeing it there in black and white as a statement of fact and not a value judgment, that felt totally freeing. Here was this great list of strengths, many of which I really do have and then oh by the way, people that get all these awesome traits often have to deal with this list of challenges. They come as a package deal and it's not just you Miss Katie. There are millions of other folks out there trying to make this kind of personality work too. Of course this doesn't give me a free pass to stop trying to be better. And if I'm honest I know that I've done a better job managing certain weaknesses at other times in my life then I am doing right now. But I know I have it in me and it's rather a big relief to know that the stuff I am working on is just totally normal.
Sometimes the very last thing you want to be is special.
This one last night turned out to be a pretty accurate description of me. Tests like this usually make you feel so good because obviously they concentrate mostly on what makes your personality so great, and since you are reading about yourself, you can't help but think that THIS type is seriously the best one and yeah, you are awesome. But they always balance it out with a list of your "limitations" or "weaknesses" to bring you back down to earth. I was reading the weaknesses associated with my personality type and something jumped out at me that I have really been struggling with lately. It's a weakness I have battled my whole life actually but for some reason it's been after me hard since I moved to Boston (there is a whole separate blog post for one of these days about how not fun it is when a flaw that has been living in the background decides to come punch you in the face one day). I've spent a fair amount of time lately being really, really hard on myself due to this little issue and there was something about seeing it there in black and white as a statement of fact and not a value judgment, that felt totally freeing. Here was this great list of strengths, many of which I really do have and then oh by the way, people that get all these awesome traits often have to deal with this list of challenges. They come as a package deal and it's not just you Miss Katie. There are millions of other folks out there trying to make this kind of personality work too. Of course this doesn't give me a free pass to stop trying to be better. And if I'm honest I know that I've done a better job managing certain weaknesses at other times in my life then I am doing right now. But I know I have it in me and it's rather a big relief to know that the stuff I am working on is just totally normal.
Sometimes the very last thing you want to be is special.
Friday, April 10, 2009
Tuesday, April 07, 2009
Bad Blood
I don't know about you guys but I really hate it when there is a major news story that I don't feel I fully understand. It puts you in the uncomfortable position of having to depend on the gazillions of people on TV/Internet/your life who have the loudest opinions and it can be hard to know who to trust. The financial mess the world is in right now is one of those news stories. So I was pretty delighted this week when I was catching up on This American Life podcasts and came across one called Bad Bank that explains clearly and simply what is going on. Now I feel like maybe I could have an intelligent conversation on the topic and not just parrot whatever I heard watching the news.
You're welcome.
You're welcome.
Friday, April 03, 2009
Good Girl
One of my very favorite moments of any given week is the one happening RIGHT NOW. It's friday night and I'm slipping into bed, super content in the knowledge that can sleep until any ridiculous hour I choose tomorrow. Then I can get up, go for a run, do some shopping, get a pedicure, go to lunch, goof around and then meet up with my dear friends Mike and Kim who will be in town for the night. I l-o-v-e my lazy Saturdays. And right about now, snuggled in my clean white sheets with some soft Ryan Adams and a good nine or ten hours of shut eye ahead of me I tell myself, you have a pretty charmed life kid.
Thursday, April 02, 2009
Old Love
A few years ago my friend Melissa and I were having a discussion about new-to-us older music. She had recently discovered that Van Morrison wasn't just "that cheesy guy whose songs always show up on soundtracks for romantic comedies." I'm sure her life is the better for it.
Today I was polishing a powerpoint presentation to the strains of a James Taylor station on Pandora when an Eric Clapton song came cycling through and I had a Melissa like moment of clarity. Now I have a guitar playing father so I am not stupid-I know Mr. Clapton has a reputation for being kinda good at that thing. And since I did spend some time as an adolescent female, I have a few fabulous memories of high school dances and "Wonderful Tonight". But you know, in my era, Clapton is kinda adult contemporary. Well this song is straight up adult hott and I found a version on You Tube that was almost making me blush in my chair. This my friends is why women lurk backstage and then make really bad decisions after the show. Be patient and hang in there because around the six minute range I promise you will not regret sticking around. What must it feel like to be THAT good at something? (I mean, besides being awesome become clearly, I have that DOWN.)
Today I was polishing a powerpoint presentation to the strains of a James Taylor station on Pandora when an Eric Clapton song came cycling through and I had a Melissa like moment of clarity. Now I have a guitar playing father so I am not stupid-I know Mr. Clapton has a reputation for being kinda good at that thing. And since I did spend some time as an adolescent female, I have a few fabulous memories of high school dances and "Wonderful Tonight". But you know, in my era, Clapton is kinda adult contemporary. Well this song is straight up adult hott and I found a version on You Tube that was almost making me blush in my chair. This my friends is why women lurk backstage and then make really bad decisions after the show. Be patient and hang in there because around the six minute range I promise you will not regret sticking around. What must it feel like to be THAT good at something? (I mean, besides being awesome become clearly, I have that DOWN.)
Wednesday, April 01, 2009
The One with the Theater
When I was in college our Thursday nights pretty much revolved around the television show Friends. I have LOTS of good memories of sitting around in various living rooms, shushing anyone dumb enough to think they were allowed to talk while we watched. One night, everyone was so engrossed in the show that when I FELL DOWN THE STAIRS, they didn't check to see how I was until the commercial.
These days Friends is on TBS pretty much all the time. I started Tivo-ing them a few months ago even though I have seen every single episode. They make a nice little 22 minute snack when I want a little TV time and nothing is on. So tonight I was watching and thinking, "it's funny that they set this show in New York and they NEVER talk about ANYTHING in the city." And like two minutes later, Ross walks in and says, "hey who wants to go to a show at the Angelika tonight?"
Apparently my television is reading my brain. Creeeeeepy.
These days Friends is on TBS pretty much all the time. I started Tivo-ing them a few months ago even though I have seen every single episode. They make a nice little 22 minute snack when I want a little TV time and nothing is on. So tonight I was watching and thinking, "it's funny that they set this show in New York and they NEVER talk about ANYTHING in the city." And like two minutes later, Ross walks in and says, "hey who wants to go to a show at the Angelika tonight?"
Apparently my television is reading my brain. Creeeeeepy.
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