festivity

I'm off to iowa for a few days. . . . have a happy holiday, friends.

clothes I won't be wearing in Florida

burberry prorsum, chloe, fendi, & louis vuitton resort. images from vogue.com

I have to admit I've never understood the purpose of the resort collections. until I was invited to go to Florida in December. if I had tons o' cash to spend, I'd totally want to buy new warm weather clothes right now. but i'm pretty sure that burberry trench costs more than a mortgage payment. . . so I think I'll be okay without it.

So yeah, Florida next week. Usually I'm the kind of person who checks out a hundred travel books from the library before going on vacation, this time it's different. I have almost no expectations for this trip, which I think is good for a winter holiday. I only have three things on my list of must-dos:
1. read a lot.
2. not think about work a single time.
and
3. pet a manatee!

I really really really hope I get to pet a manatee. my heart will probably burst from the pure joy.

If You Come to Greet Me

I've been making a lot of things lately. So of course that making needs a soundtrack. I think I first heard Laura Gibson on KEXP some morning, it was one of those few instances when I heard one song and immediately bought the entire album. If You Come to Greet Me is her full-length debut. This is pure Katie wintertime music: soft, sparse, folky, girly. It's perfect for quiet background music.

Laura Gibson's website and myspace.

Penguin Magellan

This is Penguin Magellan. He's the product of some nerdy riffing during a conference call + about two hours of work in illustrator. He's my little scamp. Sextant in hand, off to see the world!

Someone I worked with on an old project really loved Penguin Magellan. He loved him enough to spend an afternoon creating these:







Don't you love it? Best thing in my email in-box in weeks.

Missed connections

Caravaggio, Calling of Saint Matthew. San Luigi Dei Francesi, Rome.

Tonight was the last night of my art history class before the final. Despite being slightly stressed about having to do homework and write papers again, I couldn't have asked for anything more. It's really renewed my passion for art history. I keep leaving the library loaded down with giant art books.

However. Since this was mostly a Renaissance course (Europe 1300-1750), a lot of the things we covered were already familiar to me, having already seen and studied them. And lived next door to them. For as much as I saw in Rome, I keep discovering so much more I never saw, never bothered to stop into, or never even knew were right beneath my nose.

We looked at this Caravaggio in class tonight. I love it, the light and the positioning of the hands. Paintings like this are hard to process as slides or images in books though. The real thing is a million times better. So, to torture myself, I looked up its location. Here's a little map.

yellow line=my walk home from class a few nights a week.

arrrrrgh.

Resolve

It's been an eventful week in katieland. Last week I had my annual review at work and got a raise. The next day I had a job interview. Today my boss found my resume online (eep!) and we had a talk about it, which was pretty awful but unbelievably excellent in the end. It's been a lot of pondering all crammed into seven days, but I feel like I'm coming out of all these things with a new resolve towards my career.

I'm 26. But most days at work I feel like a fresh college grad—ambivalent, awkward, sloppy. I'm always thinking about what comes later rather than what is in front of me; it's dawned on me that this is immature and pointless. Selfish too. In the long haul my attitude is what has made me unhappier and more dissatisfied than I should be. I'm owning up to it and it's giving me a better perspective.

So here are my new career/workplace goals:
1. Work as hard as I possibly can.
2. Mind my own damn business.

I'm pretty sure between those two things I can vastly improve my situation.

(side note: so much for not talking about my feelings. that didn't last long!)

Hello blogspot.

I've officially moved on and up from diaryland. I kept a diary there for nearly six years, though to be honest, content has been pretty crap in the past year or so. Six years though! That's a long time, and a lot of different versions of me. I don't know if I really have it in me to keep track of my feelings in a public way anymore. (say it with a girl voice: "i have feeeelings!!")

I'm excited about a new blog though, more subject-oriented than me-oriented. Here's to change and moving in a better direction.

My Newest Love

Created with fd's Flickr Toys.
1. unicorns are real 2. wonder to behold 3. narwhal 4. NARWHAL ! 5. narwhal-decks 6. narwhal doll 7. arctic narwhal 8. a narwhal for wiley 9. narwhal

As you may have heard, I recently became intruiged by / obsessed with narwhals. They're fascinating. Did you know they are the only creatures on earth with a spiral tusk? And that the tusk is actually a sensory organ? I'm really becoming a bubbling fountain of narwhal information. Ask my husband, he's heard it all.

I have also discovered that many educated people have never heard of or don't believe in narwhals! Yeah, they're totally weird and mythical, but they do exist. So I'm making it my mission to educate the world on the glorious narwhal.

A few useful links:
wikipedia entry
fascinating new york times article