Mystery film

I’ve had these rolls of film kicking around the house for years. Yes, actual film. (Well, two rolls of film and one of those disposable cameras… ) Finally, I decided it was time to either take it in to be developed or throw it away. I literally had no idea what was on these rolls, so I was really looking forward to finally seeing what was on them.

Two of the rolls were what you’d expect. One produced three poor quality prints of our cats in our Oakland apartment (which dates them between 1999 and 2001, yikes!) Another was a random assortment of candid shots from our New York years, enjoyable to look through but nothing spectacular. But the third turned out to be unbelievably awesome. Somehow, shots of the set design for a play I directed in 2000:

ended up superimposed onto some landscapes of what looks like Alaska, producing some really nice artistic effects, that I’ve scanned for your enjoyment:

Pretty cool, huh? I have no idea how photos from Alaska, which I visited in 1997 ended up on the same roll as a play I directed in 2000, but that’s just one more mysterious aspect to the project. And for those of you who are familiar with Eugene O’Neill’s play Moon for the Misbegotten, wouldn’t this be a bad-ass set?

New toy

I picked up a new toy this weekend, a new digital camera to replace the one that’s being held together by a rubber band. I’m always amazed by technology and how quickly it moves forward. The new camera is smaller, better and cheaper than the one we bought *cough* five *cough* years ago. I mean it’s literally half as thick, it’s crazy. The new one is also shockproof and waterproof, so hopefully it won’t break when I drop it and I’ll be able to take swim pictures (oh boy!)

The tricky thing is getting used to how the new one works. It also seems to hate T, here are the first three pictures it took:

I mean really, what’s that about? It did take a very nice picture of Wally:

And a cute one of M in her new shirt:

I just need to get used to it’s timing. I’m sure there will be decent pictures of T in the future. (I mean, they’ve got to get better, right?)

Sweater cat

Since I’m not a particularly crafty person, I really appreciate those talents in others. Particularly, those who are skilled at recycling or repurposing old materials into something new and fabulous. So, in this spirit I have to give a shout out to M for her newest creation:

Isn’t that adorable? It makes me want to find some old sweaters and make one of my own. Almost…

Cautious optimism

Last night marked the sixth time I’ve voted for a president, but this election was a completely new experience. Obviously, there was the historical precedent of an African-American candidate. But as I watched Barack Obama’s victory speech, I felt this totally unfamiliar emotion: hope. I’ve never really believed in a president before. I’ve grown so apathetic to the political machine and all of it’s nonsense, that I never truly believed that he would win. He has huge expectations to live up to, but just to have a president saying that things are bad and they need to change is such a relief.

M & J hosted an awesome election night gathering. Clearly, spirits were high…

But, not everyone was pleased…

M did an awesome job hostessing. There was wine, candles and an awesome dinner of homemade pizza and these beautiful salads:

Is it just to celebrate the election, or is M working us? Hard to tell…

J was a little late getting home from work, but he jumped right into some major pizza-making. The boy’s got mad skills:

Yummy!

Getting closer…

And we have a winner!

Major thanks to M & J for the awesome gathering. Hopefully, this will be the start of a new era of change in our country.

Pizza school

I’m pretty much over this election already, given how much media we’ve been enduring for the last year and a half, but I LOVED this pizza box from local pizza chain Pagliacci (also affectionately known as “pags”) It’s filled with “fun facts” about the electoral process:

It had some really interesting information, such as:

and this one:

I wish we’d had this pizza box back in my high school government class…

Curse you!

I know I can’t really blame others for my short-attention span and inability to not engage in the many distractions I come across on-line, but isn’t unsubstantiated finger-pointing what the internet is all about? Today’s example is Wordle, which I discovered courtesy of Erika’s blog (which she got from Ariel’s blog – gotta love the infinite loop that is the internet… ) Warning: it is way too much fun to play with, so do not open unless you have some time to waste, but once you do you can make stuff like this:

This is all of the text in my blog, made into a “word cloud.”  It’s pretty amusing to see what words I over use (really?) and it looks pretty cool. You can play with the colors and the fonts and geek out on it pretty hard-core, so don’t say I didn’t warn you!

Because nobody believed me…

(Apologies for the crappy photo, I took it with my phone.)

I saw this during an earlier visit to Target but when I talked about it’s existence, was summarily not believed and mocked by T. & my friend M, but here it is in all of it’s glory – the cat wheel. Now, no cat I’ve EVER met would use this thing, so I’m not sure what they did to get those cats to sit on the thing. The fact that they had to put a cat bed in it speaks volumes…

“You go, girl!” – graffiti style

Every now and then, I come across what I think of as “empowerment graffiti.” When I was a youngster, graffiti was so negative, it was vandalism, swear words, gang tags, etc. Even the really cool graffiti murals that would pop up along freeways would get painted over by the city (or themselves graffitied, which was sort of ironic.) But here in Portland, you’ll come across something like the following painted on the sidewalk of the Hawthorne Bridge:

and a little while later

Just getting that validation from a spray-paint wielding stranger really makes my day…