Daily Delight #38
Luckily, after a few terrible dreams, I got to end on a good one.
I was back in high school and I didn’t know what class I was supposed to be in – like all high school dreams – so I just went home. (Getting home meant riding this 1-person, crazy metal contraption with wheels that you sit in and rode around on giant curved ramps like a skateboard, scooter hybrid something.)
There were four or five girls playing in my yard (which was about three times the size of my actual yard) with their mother, I assume. I didn’t think much of it as they sang and danced around throwing their arms into the air, etc. But as I walked past them I saw this really great little tree bush. And even better was their was a face in the bush. Not a real face, but like parts of the bush and warped and twisted in just the right way, and I was walking up to it at just the right angle that I could make out a face.
In this dream, it really wasn’t so subtle. The eyes were like tea saucers with black rounds like olives barely holding onto the edges as if they had rolled down the plates, and bright red lips that looked like they were torn right off of Mrs. Potatohead. I whip out my camera phone to capture this amusing little piece of nature, and the girls see me and come running over. Like all little girls they ask what I’m taking a photo of and they ask to be included. How can I explain to some seven year old’s my artistic inspiration is a crazy looking face in a bush?
I reluctantly take their photos. They giggle and jump as little girls do. I’m snapping away terrified of losing the bush, when something spectacular happens.
I zoom out a little, and then more and more. And the next thing I know, a huge, gigantic, gargantuan maple tree — 10 stories high — pops up in the background and it is shimmering and shiny like it were made from the finest metals. It is absolutely radiant. No one else in the dream seems to notice it. The girls continue their dance, I continue to pretend I’m photographing them when really my camera is arching further and further upwards toward the tree.
The sun begins to set in my dream. And this magnificent tree bounces all the reds, orange and pinks of the sky off every tiny limb, from its massive trunk and it is absolutely beautiful as the light twirls within the tree. I look into my camera’s viewfinder and found that I have the most perfect picture. One massive, warm tree and a group of carefree, little sprites dancing at its bottom.
Merry Christmas all.
Daily Delight #23
The Walking Dead on AMC.
I dig zombies. The finale was a little heavy on the exposition, nevertheless compelling. Looking forward to next season!
Daily Delight #16
Fortune cookies said “You will enjoy good health.”
And it’s true. Big sigh of relief.
Daily Delight #8
Foamed/steamed milk. It doesn’t really matter what it is, but if it’s warm and liquid-y and has an inch of steamed milk on top, I’m probably going to love it.
Less of a delight? Dropping my entire $4 latte on the floor the second I walked into my apartment. ::sigh:: At least I had drunk most of the foam by then, ha.
Willy Wonka’s Vermont Chocolate Factory
[NOTE: Sorry for the delay in posts. It's been one of those things where the ideas are churning but the posts aren't happening. Expect more posts this summer.]
I didn’t get to cross anything off my 30×30 list, but I did make a tiny tick on the list. #17 – Visit all 50 states. Last week for business, my manager and I flew up to Burlington, Vermont. I left BWI at 6:00 am, stopped at LaGuardia and made it to Burlington by 9:30 am.
We met with our client, Lake Champlain Chocolate and got a factory tour. This is the brightest, happiest, cleanest factory I’ve ever seen (and I used to work in a factory, so I know.) We didn’t walk the floor or anything, but in the back of their retail store/office space, is a big glass wall where you can see the workers and the chocolate being made.
We watched a woman hand make this awesome chocolate sculpture (I’ll try to get a photo if I can) of the local theatre. She even once made a chocolate clock, that was an actual functioning clock! They even had a chocolate waterfall (although, it was probably only about three inches high) that was part of the enrober. The enrober covers the truffle or ganache or whatever filling in a chocolate shell.
After the tour, we had our meeting. Apparently, at a chocolate company it is completely acceptable to eat chocolates at 10 am. They had a plate out for us with all sorts of chocolate goody things – by mistake I grabbed a chocolate covered ginger thing. I hate ginger. Oops.
Pat on the back, I did a very good job on the presentation. I was pleased that they were interested in what I was saying and that I was providing them with good ideas. Yay me.
We went to lunch at this cute hippie restaurant that was the first restaurant to be certified green in all of Vermont. It reminded me of Spoons in Baltimore, which sure enough was the first certified green restaurant in Maryland. Burlington reminded me a lot of Ithaca, probably because it’s a college town too.
Then we did some more work stuff. Before we left we got to choose some more chocolates to take home for “product research.” The coconut, champagne and anything with nuts were my favorites. Their chocolates are really fantastic and I’m super excited to design them a kick ass website. This is their old one. But mine will be much better. 
At around 5, my manager and I hopped back onto the plane–oops, we even got on the wrong one! Seriously, we were on the wrong plane looking for our seats when we realized it was going to Newark and not Cleveland! But we figured it out and made it to Cleveland and back to Baltimore.
And that was my day trip to Burlington. In a nut–err, chocolate–shell. Ha.
That’s 14 states down. I don’t know if I’ll make all 50 by the time I’m 30, but I do have hopes to hit Oregon and Washington, Illinois, New Orleans, Georgia, Delaware by the end of the year. Whoo.
Works Well Under Pressure
Have you ever wanted to ditch your life and go on a whirlwind adventure that lasts a lifetime? (Boy, that sounded like some lame plug to a travel blog.) But if lots of people feel this way, why don’t we? I’m one of those people that works well under pressure. And considering that’s a pretty common phrase, I’d assume that there are many, many others who also work well under pressure. I was giving it some thought, what exactly does working well under pressure mean. For me, it means that I step up when it matters, when I have to.
But on the other hand, I have a lot of social anxiety when I feel pressured by other people to perform in a certain way – did I say something stupid, why are they all looking at me, am I being left out – etc. Fairly benign things, but I have the habit of taking them to their extremes and internalizing everything to the point of curl-in-a-ball, cry on a sunny afternoon, bouts of depression. Oh, turns out that there might actually be a reason why people suffer from depression, and it’s fairly positive. Check out the Times article, Depression’s Upside: Is there an evolutionary purpose to feeling really sad? It says in the article that Darwin actually suffered from terrible mental health and he was so perplexed by it, because his most important scientific findings and theories support the notion that his depression makes him a weak-link in evolution or a freakish anomaly. This is reassuring for some reason. But I digress…
So, if depression helps people fixate and analyze things better, and if I work well under pressure, wouldn’t the most logical thing be for me to throw caution to the wind and just go for the adventure? Because survival in some form or another will kick in? Plus, what adds more pressure to your life than your money running out, having to scrounge for food and needing to find shelter? Now you might wonder, hey, this is just a one-way stop to homelessness. Don’t you see all those homeless people living out on the streets? Well, yes I see them. But I’m under the impression that most homeless people end up that way because they’re seriously mentally ill or have other issues. I realize that I’m coming from a place of privilege and that I have the resources (I have skills so I could work if need be, I have parents who would help if need be, etc.) to avoid ending up completely lost. …Would knowing that I have these resources/back-up-plans make me feel any less pressured? Probably. …Maybe this is just an unachievable human desire…
My other thought was that people should go on these non-stop adventures on the premise that they’d kill themselves when they stop. Talk about pressure! And it doesn’t have to be some road-to-hell, drugs-sex-alcohol, craziness a la Hunter Thompson. You could actually go out and make a real difference. What if your adventure was to help every person who ever asked you for help. And when people stopped asking or when you had no more to give, bang. Off with your head. I think I just have the desire to see what I’m capable of. But that’s the problem with life. Life itself doesn’t pressure an individual person. Pressure is just a construction by other people put onto you. So, it’s like I know I’m not achieving all I can, because there’s no pressure. Hence, my thinking on the off with your head bit. And the whole, you could get hit by a bus, so live every day like it’s your last, is too hyperbolic for me. I want to sign a contract or something (in blood of course.) Anyway…
I saw Sheryl WuDunn, co-author of Half the Sky–this amazing book that basically posits that gender inequity will be the global initiative of the 21st century, speak today. She talked about many of the stories from the book, but she also offered a Hawaiian parable. Often when talking about changing the world, people feel overwhelmed and think how can I make a difference, what can I do, it’s too big for me to solve, etc. But she said this:
There’s a boy walking along the beach. There are hundreds of starfish on the beach, just hundreds, completely covered. And he walks along and every few steps, he bends over and picks one up and tosses it back into the ocean. And he keeps doing this. He’s thrown in maybe five starfish, when an older man passes by him. The old man says, Child, what are you doing?! You’ll never make a difference, look around, there are too many starfish. And the boy bends down and picks up a starfish and throws into the ocean. And the boy says, I sure made a difference to that one.
The meaning of life might just be throwing a starfish into the ocean.
For more on Half The Sky, which if you only read one book this year – it should be that one, visit their website: Half The Sky Movement.
Lights, Camera, Action!
In the past few months I’ve been trying to get rid of old furniture and stuff to sort of maximize my little room. Today, I sold a women my Ikea dresser for $50, wahoo! So, I set up my photography lights, which my very awesome boyfriend’s parents had bought me for Christmas. Just an update. Check out my awesome lights below.
Dr. Spaceman Visits the Office
P brought his Shiba Inu, Dr. Spaceman (Space for short) into the office today for his birthday. I snapped off a bunch of photos. I didn’t do much editing besides some slight color tweaking and I played around with the vignetting feature in cameraRAW for some of them. Enjoy!
Camera specs: Exposure – Auto, Focal Length – 55.0 mm, Max Aperture – f/5.7, file – RAW
Camera specs: Exposure – Auto, Focal Length – 55.0 mm, Max Aperture – f/5.7, file – RAW
Camera specs: Exposure – Auto, Focal Length – 55.0 mm, Max Aperture – f/5.7, file – RAW
Camera specs: Exposure – Auto, Focal Length – 55.0 mm, Max Aperture – f/5.7, file – RAW
< Note, I’m hoping that by writing out the camera specs, I’ll start learning more about them. You can ignore them, really they’re for me. >
Miscellaneous Update
Nothing specific to write on. Just wanted to say that I’m still doing well. I had a really fun new years eve minus some minor annoyances. On the first, A and I went letter boxing for the first time. (Letter boxing is basically like a scavenger hunt. You get clues for a specific location, and you search until you find a box. Inside is a stamp with a notebook. You leave a stamp in their book and you put a stamp in your book.) You’re probably wondering what’s so fun about that? Well, it lets you be outside, explore a new area and smoke a pipe in the woods. Or at least this instance did:
Unfortunately, we failed. We made a lot of mistakes–we went into the park about 15 minutes before the end of sunset. We didn’t have a stamp. And worse? We didn’t even read the part of the clues that said: The park has experienced major renovations, and I [the letter box host] haven’t had a chance to update the clues. 12/27/07. 2007?! Oops! However, I will not give up. I will find that letter box in Double Rock Park, if it’s the last thing I do!
In other news, I updated the design blog. I’m starting a new series on letters I love. Nerd, I know. You can check out the first installment here: Brought to you by the letter…
I also put up my first items on Etsy. (I told you I was busy.) Want to check it out? Here it is. Want to buy something? Hey, even better. Don’t let me stop you. Ha.
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