late october

saturday afternoon mike and i walked our bikes to the nearest gas station since both our tires were low. i brought my camera along with the intention of taking some fall-y pictures of the neighborhood, but this was the only one I took. oh well.

it was a really pleasant weekend. took a few walks, made granola, cleaned my art desk up a bit. i also made apple turnovers from scratch, including the puff pastry. super yum. And the puff pastry-I think I'm addicted now. It's really fun to make and tastes about a thousand times better than the frozen stuff. So of course I started thinking and had a little daydream this morning about becoming a pastry chef. All this from one batch of turnovers! But you know I get lofty goals sometimes.

$1000 shopping spree. . . .

. . . . I wish.

BUT I did just finish a small freelance project and have some "fun" money." this is what I've been looking at blowing it on:

j. crew sweaters and skirts

these adorable shoes from zappos

also this sweater from anthropologie that I can't seem to save a photo of. you should look at it though. the magic is all on the back.

j.crew has a great lookbook up right now, too. i think the purpose of really great fashion photography and wardrobe styling is to make you want to overhaul your whole life on the basis of one photo. such as this:


well, i'm off. . . . it's time for me to move to scotland, get a bike with a basket, and start wearing argyle.

movie film

this weekend one of my coworkers is making a short film. and i'm in it. it was actually pretty fun this morning. plus we've all been talking about the project for so long that it's good to actually get it going. and tomorrow there's more. It's been an interesting diversion. plus also, my character wears some sweet vintage shoes that are definitely going into my personal rotation after this.

After filming, spent the late afternoon painting and collaging, listening to wilco. seriously. . . . the less i watch TV the happier I am. working on that a lot these days.

Lately I feel like I'm improving myself by really TRYING to overcome some of my shortcomings. I made a chore chart, and I almost wish I were joking about that. Something about this has an adverse affect though, in that it really highlights all my other junk I'm not figuring out. The essence of most of it? I need to spend less time thinking and more time DOing. I'm also kind of a sloppy perfectionist, if that makes any sense. But I realize I've been dealing with this most of my cognizant life, so it's not going to go away just by writing a list and doing daily chores. Or will it? Hmmm. . . . Small revelations.

Boston '07

right up next to the green monster!

Last weekend we went to Boston for a short trip. It was a nice time, very baseball-centric. (Obviously.) We ate great seafood and walked around in the park. Saw some historical stuff and some cool art, ate gelato. Can't ask for more.

This wasn't my first time in Boston, I was there once, for one day, during the summer I worked at a camp in Connecticut. The strange thing is, it felt totally different this time, like my memories were of an entirely different city. I can't explain it but it kind of weirded me out the whole time.

Also. I've been rereading Infinite Jest this summer. I get really into the books I read and this one is, of course, no exception. So the whole time we were in the Boston MAMA I kept expecting to see like Don Gately on the T, or some ETA kids running around. We did see a lot of questionable people on the streets so I guess that satisfied me to some extent.

And on that note. . . I finished IJ this weekend and almost cried. It felt like losing a job or a best friend, I've been spending so much time with it in the past two months now I don't know what to do with myself. I guess it's time to start reading another 1000 page, unbelievably engrossing novel. Any suggestions?

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.

the latest. . . .

the latest. . . ., originally uploaded by oltremare.

i've always loved flickr, but in the past few weeks i've been crazy obsessed. my favorites are growing by leaps and bounds. i LOVE looking at my favorites; i really love seeing how my tastes and preferences change from week to week. this week it seems like i'm all about the muted/natural/organic.

other positive things
+ going to the white sox/red sox game with my husband yesterday. fun times, good game. it was actually a bit surreal; on the red line down to the game about 75% of the el car passengers were wearing red sox gear. boston fans travel well, apparently.
+ right now i'm listening to midlake on myspace and they're gooood. also, hello. . . . why have i not heard of this band? i think there's a theme developing, i'm about a year behind on new music. oh well. late than never, etc.
+ i ate an awesome peach today.

among other things. it was a good day.

internet-stolgia

Last night I had a dream about Tiny Showcase. I was visiting rhode island and was having a really in depth conversation with the guy that runs it, jon. We talked about art and artists and how I have never managed to successfully buy a print before it gets sold out. Also, I told him that I really miss Slatch.

It’s clear to me that I have been spending way to much time on the internet lately. Work is sloooooow.

Now I’m reading old slatch via the wayback machine and it’s making me intensely nostalgic for the internet of 2003, it sort of gives me flashbacks to my first job out of college. It’s also making me laugh out loud inappropriately in my quiet office. I miss slatch so much. Is it pathetic to actually miss a website?

boots!

it's almost 100 degrees out these days but of course my obsessive zappos searches are for winter boots. stupid august!

i'm looking for some mythical combination of dressy/work appropriate and cowboy-ish. these are the front runners so far:





the last pair are the least fun, but i'm kind of leaning toward them. maybe my look for the fall will be "classy cowgirl."

five minutes in my head

things that are making me happy. august 02 07 edition.

about grace by anthony doerr is absolutely killing me. LOVING it unlike any other modern novel i've read in a long while. it's changing the way i observe the world. when i read it i feel like i'm grabbing hold of a thin string that's attached to something momentous and REAL about the world. isn't that what a novel is supposed to do, ultimately?

more obsessions, musical: "boxer" by the national. i can't remember the last time i was this overtaken by an album. i'm getting that sick addicted feeling for it. like everytime i turn on my ipod or get in my car, i think, "i can't listen to this anymore or I'll ruin it." and then i turn it on and find more to love. also, this summer is the first time I've heard of them. where have i been for the past few years? the national is great.

mike and i went to the county fair the other night and I could just watch the goats for hours. we watched a pen full of young males, all careening around and jumping and headbutting each other. i think goats are climbing the ranks of my favorite domesticated animals. watch out, llamas.

i've been feeling lucky/blessed these days. work is slow so i get home by 5:15 or so and actually have time to do some housework and make dinner. is there anything more satisfying than cooking a square meal which features vegetables one has grown from a seed? the answer is no, my friends.

Caffé Sospeso

a definition from wikipedia.

A tradition in the cafés of Naples is to order a caffè sospeso – literally, a coffee "in suspense" – as a sign of your good fortune. When a sospeso is ordered, the customer pays for two coffees, but only receives one. That way, when a person who is homeless or otherwise down on their luck walks into the café, the person can ask if there are any coffees held in suspense, and can have one as a courtesy of the first customer.

i wish there were more things like this in the world.

been away.

checking back in, it's been months hasn't it?

more photos + commentary to come, but the past month and a half has been filled by:

- spending the last near two weeks at the national conference for my work. i wore a giant foam star costume every day and it was totally awesome. but it made me feel so removed from everything--my house, husband, dog, email, real food, real life. . . . it was so groundhog day ish. it was fun but i'm also sooper glad it's over with, back to real life now.

-a lovely wedding on lake superior in northern wisconsin. magical friendships that haven't changed in years. raspberries picked and immediately eaten. many beers. fun. and more fun.

-a short trip to northwest iowa and southeast south dakota. back to the tiny tiny town i spent my young youth in, which seems so much smaller now after the years. and my grandpas farm. it felt so natural.

- also. the garden growing. eating food i grew from a seed will never cease to amaze me. spent an hour or so weeding this afternoon, working up a sweat. it's really satisfying.

-other stuff. good books: about grace and four seasons in rome by anthony doerr. the girls by lori lansens, seven sisters by margaret drabble. i've been reading a lot actually. and music: feist, spoon, ryan adams. these words and music have been the steady undercurrent of all the craziness lately. so that's good.

i think that's it. i honestly feel like i've lost myself over the past few weeks, working hard at work and then being so removed at conference. i'm getting back into my life and trying to get every backward thing righted again.

two years

according to wikipedia, the second anniversary is the "cotton" anniversary. but apparently in our household it's the tennis racket anniversary.

anyway, yeah, we've been married for two years. it hardly feels that long... it was a good night tonight though. we had a nice dinner out and afterwards walked down to the county fairgrounds. the circus is in town tomorrow and we caught a glimpse of some of it. it was a nice evening.





may is such an excellent month for us. really, the past few weeks have been nothing less than perfect springtime.

old littlebook

December Little Book Cover, originally uploaded by oltremare.

i've been busy. i wish i had more time for ribbons and scissors and glue. it will be a few weeks though. I was thinking about how thankful I am to have co workers i like, since i spend an awful lot of time with these people.

someday there will be new art. sooner rather than later, let's hope.

other than that, things are excellent: arcade fire "intervention." these sweet spring days. reading lucy grealy's "autobiography of a face" in the five minutes before i fall asleep/pass out every night. and watching my seeds in their peat pots growing every day. i love the month of may.

once again

"I am happy here: when I or other have bruised my life, I close my eyes against the hurt and think of Rome; as possibility, and hope. And I feel more related to my environment and to my circumstances in Rome than I do anywhere else on earth; I am blessed, intensely delighted, satisfied, and reconciled. The world is lovable when the world is Rome. Everything good in my nature is nourished here. My body feels safe here. When I love the space around my body, I love my body. For the rest of my life I will love Rome and think better of my life for having known Rome. Rome, rooted and ethereal, stretching from earth to heaven, casts aside so little and embraces so much--there's room for me. It is everything; it is elegant, robust, common, spectacular, vulgar, exquisite, and above all rare...

Rome is all things high and low. It is like God, it accommodates so much."

-barbara grizzuti harrison, italian days

a slew of emails in my inbox from my rome classmates, among other things, brought me back into the reverie today. some days it's like treading water in memories.

YAY

april 21: inaugural bikeride of the spring. woo woo! it's not even 1 PM on saturday and already this weekend is shaping up to be excellent.

I rode my bike to Target to make prints of our Rome photos, and on the way I saw my favorite bird for the first time this spring. inaugural favorite bird sighting! it's some kind of heron that lives in a pond near our house. i honestly have a crush on this bird, when I see it I feel all fluttery inside.

last night mike and I had buffalo wild wings for dinner and had excellent conversation. and tonight I'm going to visit valerie in the city and eat indian food. plus, it's so warm that maybe I will get to plant some seeds and stick my hands in the dirt this weekend.

seriously, YAY.

wants and needs

things i have had cravings for recently:
+ v-8
+ perrier*
+ laura veirs "bright glittering gifts" played on repeat ad nauseam**
+ a real simple-style home with either no clutter, or rather-- gorgeous, art-directed clutter.
+ a sunny weekend morning to buy seeds and stick my hands into the earth

obviously some of those are easier to achieve than others. but there's a theme of sorts. i am craving a little sparkling, wholesome, pretty austerity. rome and working a lot put my schedule out of whack and life without a routine makes me a little antsy. hence the need for simple clean things.

* i'm now addicted to sparkling water. it's true. i have a "con gas" problem. and I love it.

** speaking of laura veirs. the new one, it's so good. the lyrics are perfect, the music has that laura veirsyness. i can't put my finger on it. it's like being alone on an ocean liner in the the middle of the night, the middle of the pacific, every star visible in the sky. it has that celestial coolness. so it comes highly recommended from me to you.

laura veirs and saltbreakers

plus, i feel really connected to her since I read something where she said she dreams a lot about whales. swoon!

Rome O Morte

people keep asking me what was my favorite part of the trip to Rome. what a loaded question. my favorite thing? just BEing there. walking around. the street signs and cobblestones and graffiti, just the physical geography of the place itself, tiny streets and the hills with their poetic singing names, janiculum, esquiline, capitoline.



despite the fact that I have not been there in more than five years, i barely needed to consult a map. i remember those streets, feel like I remember them somewhere deep inside me, as if my arteries had rearranged themselves into a map of the tiber, via del corso, the lungotevere. . .



anyway, it was a good trip. our apartment was perfectly located in the dead center of anywhere we wanted to go. i discovered the most perfect gelato combination (caffe and bacio, coffee and hazelnut/chocolate). bought pretty paper at the lovely Fabriano store. visited the caravaggios at San Luigi dei Francesi and Santa Maria del Popolo.



we rented bikes at villa borghese and raced around with my mom and little brother. we ate some of the best sandwiches, seriously, the sandwiches: breathtaking! stood in line for hours at the vatican museums talking to a pleasant retired couple from canada. i bought red shoes, and the ruffliest blouse you've ever seen, and a watercolor from a street vendor in piazza navona.



my italian improved daily. we learned to navigate the idiosyncratic roman ways of life, the giving of correct change, the proper way to cross a street. i was disappointed at how crowded it was, but the people-watching was phenomenal. i had the chance to spend some good time by myself, drawing at my favorite fountain, shopping, taking pictures in the early evening post-nap.



the last day I woke up early to photograph the ponte sant'angelo, and it was just me and a streetsweeper and the misty sunrise tiber. so maybe that's my favorite part of the trip. just me and the city.



I honestly feel as if I'm wading and dreaming through all of this. it was so charged with emotion before during and after that the actual experience feels cloudy. returning home was a rude awakening and I was surprised at how hard I cried. and it hasn't helped that I've been working 12 hour days this week, and we woke up to two inches of wet snow this mid-april morning. just feels like everything is floating around me. I'll get over it, I know, and part of me appreciates the feeling. but it's hard to reconcile the two worlds.



it was great though. having been back gives me a peace I haven't felt in a while.