florida, and cows of the sea

we're old skool and use a real camera. so these are finally, finally my pictures from florida. we jetted around on a boat. and we saw some manatees. and many other things. basically, it was the best ever.

i'm a midwestern girl at heart, always will be, but I'll be damned if I don't end up a snowbird in my later days. one of those old ladies that spends half the year down south. while I don't completely adore florida that year round sunshine is hard to beat.

february

A lot of people are hating the weather right now, but it kind of makes me happy. The temperatures finally climbed back into the double digits after what felt like months, the high today was a balmy 25. It snowed so many inches today, so pretty. and it's windy. i love the organic sculptural quality of a good snowdrift. even if traffic is awful it's so peaceful in my warm car listening to kings of convenience.

i'm feeling thankful for all the little things. new magazines and an anthropologie catalog in the mail and turning the fireplace on after work. phone conversations with my dad. the barrista at my new morning coffee stop knowing my order every day.

First time for everything!

Something happened to me yesterday that's never happened before. I got a speeding ticket. $75!!! for 16 over the limit. The funny thing is, about five minutes before I got it I saw a cop and thought I should slow down on the stretch of road. Oops, guess that didn't last long.

I was listening to the Hold Steady so I'm officially blaming it on Craig Finn.

Is it wrong that I feel so tarnished by this? I'm a criminal!!

shoes, new office

zappos, of course.

there's something about working in a legitimate office that makes me want to buy better shoes. not to say I don't love my shoes, I do, but all of the sudden I feel like there's a hole in the shoe closet. . . . a hole that needs to be filled by a pair of bone and tan spectator d'orsays. I can't really say why; I'm not really that kind of girl.

By the way, none of the above really do it for me. I can't find what I have in mind, I am on a quest though. I'd go into more detail but I'm fairly certain that's not necessary.

So yeah: my new, legitimate office. It's GOOD. great actually. People talk to each other. The women wear pumps! I know it's not a big deal, but it is to my girly self. It really is kind of showing me what a completely bizarre environment my last job was. One day last week I went to lunch with some co-workers; we had Thai food and afterwards stopped into a thrift store. yeah, NOT joking. good stuff.

I feel so excellent about the whole thing, feel like I've found a good fit for my personality and my talents. I just feel happier. It's pretty amazing what this change of scenery is doing to my psyche.

Quiet and content

It's a quiet Sunday, snowing and the sun just setting. In the living room the fire's going and Mike is asleep in front of the Bears game. I'm in the office painting and listening to country music. It feels really nice.

A few months ago I joined an art group, the Midwest Collage Society. So far I've felt a little . . . . conflicted about it; mostly because I'm SO much younger than everyone in the group. I feel quite a bit out of place. Today we had a meeting, and beforehand I felt like this was going to be my last. But then something changed and I've resolved to stick it out. I think I need to accept and work with these kind of challenges in my suburban life (ie, always feeling out of place.)

One good thing about the group is that I was able to get some artwork professionally photographed for free. It's a step in the right direction.

one of my very few pieces that I consider "finished." as of yet untitled. acrylic, vintage papers, and pastel on canvas.

Happy today

two things.

Uno. There's a reason I never do a "best albums of the year" blog entry. It's because I end up discovering my favorite music of the year after reading everyone else's "best albums of the year." I would say I need to stay on top of it better, but I know that's not going to happen.

Anyway, so I see this band, The Whitest Boy Alive, on some year-end lists. Sounded interesting, but I didn't pursue it. Then it pops up into my iTunes "just for you" selections, so I give it a whirl, and . . . .



AAAH! Why didn't anyone tell me Erlend Øye started a side project? I swear I would purchase an album consisting solely of Erlend Øye sneezing, or making small talk with shop clerks. Everything he does is golden to me. So yeah, The Whitest Boy Alive, Dreams, is really sweet and it's too bad I didn't figure that out months ago.

Dos. My little brother is studying abroad this semester in Spain. He left last weekend and we finally got a chance to IM this morning, everything is going well and I'm so happy for him.

One of the first things he told me is, "my family is good, the dad looks like the head itchy and scratchy guy."

this guy

For some reason this made my day and I'm still laughing about it five hours later.

new everything

it's january already! i should probably do a 2006 wrap-up but don't have the energy for it right now. here's the last few weeks though.

Florida. Well, I didn't accomplish any of my three goals for my Florida trip, but it was everything I needed it to be. Perfect Katie vacation. you know: nature walks, thrift shopping, white wine with lunch, art, and of course, manatees.

I got to see a bunch of manatees. it was everything i had hoped it would be, and more. the pictures of me with a giant manatee-viewing smile on my face are being processed, I'm sure I'll post some eventually.

Who knew there is an awesome art museum in sarasota, florida? John Ringling, of circus fame, lived there and his estate and personal collection of amazing art was turned into a museum. there is also a circus museum which was fascinating so now I'm sort of into the "circus aesthetic."

Holidays. christmas was good, family time, playing with my nieces. it kind of feels like a million years ago now. new years was low-key, I ended up staying home, baked a pie, watched a girl movie, fell asleep at 11:30. lame but relaxing. I have been embracing the low-key loner-ish side of myself lately. mostly because. . .

Job. I got a new job, which starts in a week and a half. It's an awesome new gig and I'm super stoked. but putting my two weeks in at my current job was pretty terrible and the resulting stress makes me not want to do anything but watch the America's Next Top Model marathon on VH1. God bless you VH1.

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