now & then

(source)

I've always wanted a tree house.  Now that it's actually sunny and warm, of course i'm cooped up in the library with an essay mountain and 0.00 motivation and my feet itching for my birks and the feeling of pedals underneath them.  I just want to lie on a blanket by the water, passing a bottle of wine back and forth.  I want to put my hair in a french braid, walk around in shorts, and occasionally step into stores only for the air conditioning.  I want to sip on a cold fountain soda, gingerly place it onto a flat part of an upper branch, and climb up the wooden planks to my tree house.  I want my bracelets (friendship, hemp, boondoggle, bead) shaking with each inch upward.

BIRKS and BIKES!

WHAT I WANT TO DO RIGHT NOW:

1.  Read Sylvia Plath's journals.

2.  See this pink dolphin for myself.

3.  Put on my birks, get back on my bike.

4.  Fall asleep in a bear sleeping bag (more photos on creator Eiko Ishizawa's website).

5.  Lie on my back and look at the sky through tree branches.

6.  Learn to play the ukulele.

7.  Write long letters (and send them!).

8.  Write like James Franco.  Or Randa Jarrar.  Or Sean Michaels.

9.  Apply bug spray, drink Rickard's Pale, listen to crickets, smoosh a golden-brown marshmallow in between two digestive cookies, call it a night, crawl into a tent.

10.  Make galaxies with a photocopier and sugar.

TEXT MESSAGES I WOULD EMBROIDER:

1.  That's why i dont carry a purse.

2.  Come home to me       please

3.  Do You Know How Much I Love You?

4.  You're hot. PS are you at players? Lets party after i am drunk and naked and in need of some Vla.

5.  Look, I'm texting you! La la la i am a cute little house hippo, I like eating dust yum yum yum.

6.  Vlada, by the light of moon i can only try to put words to paper how i love you so. I shall send you my loveletter tied to the modest leg of a songbird..

7.  I cant help it: i miss u

8.  if that joke was on the referendum i would vote no to it

9.  God doesnt like chili stains

10.  There is a dinosaur museum here!

image credit: YOUNG AND LOST CLUB record label

Slipping Through The Years

Before i leave for a week of water trampoline, swimming with one of these, roasted marshmallows, some reading, wearing sunglasses, bingo, and maybe mosquitos, i thought i'd leave a post.

When i was in Israel, i went through my uncle's old photographs, which he had inherited from my grandma or grandpa (can't remember which). Like all vintage photographs, they're lovely and were swiftly scanned onto my laptop. The feeling i get when i look at these and have to reconcile who these people are now and who it seems they were then is probably not something you'll get from glancing at these, but they're still pretty cool.

my uncle

rockstarbadass
my mom and grandma visiting my uncle in the army
the whole fam.

my grandpa, brooding before both Ryan Atwood and my brother my grandpa (right) and a friend
my grandmother Sara, looking gorgeous.
(note her dress sleeve caught on the chair)
my uncle and mom (also known as Sailor Moon in Japan)
a little more grown up

(you can see my uncle turning into a rock star here)
(everyone thought my mom was Mongolian when she was younger because of her dark, dark hair and blue eyes)

Work was incredibly boring,

So i spent almost the entire 9 hours surfing the net.
I bring gifts:

If my wanderlust were as strong as it was earlier this year (or last summer!), looking at Michael Hughes' "Souvenirs" flickr set would most likely make me teary. But right now it just leaves me in awe. He uses little souvenirs (postcards, pencil cases, models, magnets, mugs, etc.) to displace actual buildings or scenery in all these amazing foreign places. Up above is this Eiffel Tower coloured model from which the lowest part fell off -- incredible. One more (and then you should go check out the album for yourself):

the Piazza in Sienna, Italy

Mr. Big - To Be With You [mp3]
Sounds like summer to me. Well, okay... summer of '92. But, more recently (this year!), Andrew Spencer made some "To Be With You" dance mixes that sound pretty awesome, the best of which you can listen to here. Incidentally, i miss Alfie's.


A really cool graffiti find in the UK: I am free.


Pretty productive day at work.

My Romanticization of the Kingston Summer

Okay, so i have a bike and it has a little basket in the front of it (preferably pink) and i ride this bike in the warm summer sun to Pan Chancho's, where i pick up a French baguette and place it in my bike basket. Then i ride to the lake, the baguette smell wafting through the air as i cruise, a breeze blowing the hair out of my face. When i get to the lake, there are others there and a picnic blanket laid out. I throw my bike down beside the other bikes (metal clashing noise!) on the grass, so green and alive, and sit down with my friends, one of which brought the picnic blanket and a knife, another the butter. And we sit and lie near the lake, eating buttered pieces of baguette with buskers and/or town troubadours playing guitar and harmonica nearby. We laugh at jokes and talk about our weddings and who will be invited and we gossip and make plans to have a seance and squint up at one another because of the sun. Then it starts to get kind of chilly and dark and we decide to call it a day and go home. We're only wearing t-shirts and shorts, after all. So we gather our things and one friend wraps the picnic blanket around his/her shoulders and arms and someone else catches a glimpse of the sky, which is full of stars and so vast, and points it out to the others and we all stand there staring up.

(photo by El Andariego)