in my dreams

in my dreams, originally uploaded by oltremare.

another flickr love-fest.

my nighttime dreams have a few repeating themes. there's this gauzy half-real destination that i return to again and again; a partially crumbling european city set in the water. kind of like venice, but not exactly.

so, searching for pictures of venice on flickr a while ago, i realized i could create a more tangible representation of this through my favorites. what you're looking at right now is pretty much where I go at night. isn't it lovely? this has made me really happy.

it's also made me realize i should visit croatia at some time . . . apparently my dream world looks a lot like croatia.

fashion week: hats

it's spring/summer 08 fashion week and you know what that means! i've wasted at least an hour a day online looking at clothes I'll never be able to afford.

there's a lot of stuff I'm liking, and for some reason, one of the things is: seriously nuts headgear. next spring you can either look really chic, or like a half insane vagrant, depending on how you style yourself. check these out:

"spare some change?"

detail shots from style.com. proenza schouler, marc by marc jacobs, and 3.1 phillip lim.

seriously though, i kind of love it. i mean honestly. you have to be pretty daring to wear hats like these in a non-marching band / community theatre public situation. i give props to anyone who actually pulls it off.

Feist - 1 2 3 4

Feist, 1234, from youtube

i'm obsessed with this video. seriously. everything about it is perfect. I can't remember the last time i loved a music video this much. (I'm assuming it was mo money mo problems back in 1997? ten years man.)

anyway, part of the reason i love it is that the song is tops on my list of Tracks to Listen to on Repeat. Runners up include Roscoe by Midlake and Myriad Harbour by The New Pornographers (fyi, links go to myspace and the songs are there, DO IT, listen). I estimate that about half of my music listening in the past five days have been just these three songs.

oh yeah, and PS: in case you're wondering, the answer is YES, i am already teaching myself the dance to this video.

gourdy howe

gourdy howe, originally uploaded by oltremare.

this past spring i noticed some strange foliage in the flower bed in front of our house. i put two and two together and realized it was a pumpkin. . . last fall our halloween pumpkin had fallen apart, and apparently its seeds were really tenacious, since a pumpkin started growing seven months later.

i loved the pumpkin growing. i named it gourdy howe. sadly, gourdy's life ended a few weeks ago when I pruned a little to hard on his vines. this is how big / orange he got. not bad for a volunteer pumpkin in a tiny patch of dirt.