Last night, I printed up four of my favorite photos (from the photos I’ve been posting these last few weeks) on my inkjet photo printer. I cropped them to square dimensions, just because I like that look.

Today, I took down all the craziness I used to have hanging above my desk at work and replaced it with the four photos and a postcard of a Charles Rennie Mackintosh botanical illustration which had been hanging there, but was surrounded by xkcd comics, book covers, and pictures of animals from CuteOverload.

I like that I will have my own photographs hanging at my desk; granted, they’re not framed or anything, but they’re lovely all the same and I’m proud of them.

There’s other excitement happening tomorrow at my desk. It will be a good day.

(Also, to bring me back from emotional wreckitude from “Away from Her”, I’m now watching Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell in “His Girl Friday”. It’ll cure what ails ya.)

Today, I drove down to Philadelphia: 270+ miles round trip. That’s about 3/4 of a tank of gas with my car’s nice fuel economy. Sweet!

My reason for going was that my friend Sara alerted me to the presence of the Art Star Craft Bazaar. So, my friend Theresa and I drove down, met up with Sara and went over to experience the crafty joys. And spend some money. I was actually there for work purposes, but I won’t write about those here (church vs. state, you know?)

It was held along the water at Penn’s Landing. Lots of tents filled with beautiful handmade, incredibly creative and unique pieces… clothing, jewelry, pottery, toys, stationery, prints, paintings, health and beauty products. Nice nice.

I picked up a few fun things - like this really cool alphabet print from The Small Object (# 107 of 300) which I will be framing as soon as I can spend more money on something like that. “L” is for lint. “U” is for underdog. It’s adorable.

I’ve been wanting smallish earrings, and these were inexpensive and lovely - those are small pictures of tree branches against a blue sky. As recent posts have shown, I’m having a tree thing lately. And I’m trying to remember the name of this shop, but I’m blanking right now. I’ll look through the business cards I collected and go from there.

My favorite, though, is this necklace. I saw several silver necklaces I really liked, but in the end, I chose this one since I thought it was the most “me.” It’s from 12linden, the company name for jewelry designer Eliza Mundy. I’ve admired her pieces on Etsy, but I was able to touch and see… and that made me buy it.

You can see a bit of the pink I developed from being out in the sun. Finally, I got this cute hair clip/bobby pin from Art School Dropout. The gray is a bit lighter, actually, but you get the idea.

I also purchased a handful of Mean Cards (when you get to the homepage, click on Mean Cards) - these very minimalist but hilarious greeting cards. There’s one they didn’t have in stock, but which I will most likely order online that says on the front, “Thank you for thanking me.” - inside, “You’re welcome.” One I did buy says “everything dies” - inside: “A friendly reminder.” Good times.

There were so many other things. I could’ve easily spent an entire months’ wages there. Thankfully, I did not. Nowhere close. I controlled myself. But this means the temptation factor on Etsy will be even higher since I’ve now SEEN these things in person. Goodness gracious.

• Violet is a repository of beautiful things. They sent me a “Penmanship” themed newsletter last week… and I am in absolute lust with these two items:

On the left, Cards for a Year… “40 cards and 42 envelopes. Each card is imprinted with an icon; text inside the card states the occasion.” Simple… perfect. I love the look and feel of these types of cards - just heavy white cardstock with a single iconic image. It plays right into my esthetic.

On the right, Punctuation Cards. Each card has punctuation marks letter-pressed onto it in bright colors. Striking!

• Then, there’s the new Portishead CD, “Third.” It’s been my soundtrack for the car/train/walk/computer since Saturday afternoon. It releases on April 28th, but some songs have been circulating on music blogs - and here are two that are in my top 4 from the album (so far):

  Portishead - Machine Gun
  

  Portishead -We Carry On
  

• Portishead will be performing at Coachella. So will a plethora of other musical acts I enjoy. Luckily, I will be attending Coachella, so I will get to benefit from all of these musical acts I enjoy performing in once place over a span of three days. Here’s another band I am looking forward to seeing - Cut Copy. They’ve a very retro 80’s feel to them which I enjoy… it’s not world-changing, but it’s fun. Especially around the 1:14 mark. I might be posting sample songs from several of other bands over the next few days:

  Cut Copy - Future
  

• I finally acted on the LibraryThing early reviewer email that I get every month and decided to throw my name in the hat for a few review copies of forthcoming books. I got an email today notifying me that I will be receiving one of them: Love Marriage by V.V. Ganeshananthan. It sounds right up my alley.

“‘In this globe-scattered Sri Lankan family, we speak of only two kinds of marriage. The first is the Arranged Marriage. The second is the Love Marriage. In reality, there is a whole spectrum in between, but most of us spend years running away from the first toward the second.’
The daughter of Sri Lankan immigrants who left their collapsing country and married in America, Yalini finds herself caught between the traditions of her ancestors and the lure of her own modern world. But when she is summoned to Toronto to help care for her dying uncle, Kumaran, a former member of the militant Tamil Tigers, Yalini is forced to see that violence is not a relic of the Sri Lankan past, but very much a part of her Western present. … (show rest)

While Kumaran’s loved ones gather around him to say goodbye, Yalini traces her family’s roots—and the conflicts facing them as ethnic Tamils—through a series of marriages. Now, as Kumaran’s death and his daughter’s politically motivated nuptials edge closer, Yalini must decide where she stands.

Lyrical and innovative, V. V. Ganeshananthan’s novel brilliantly unfolds how generations of struggle both form and fractures families.”

• Here’s a super creative move: this spiffy perfume tester technique from Givenchy. Elegant, eye-catching, and a bit unusual: ribbon. Three styles of ribbon, actually, each pre-printed with the name of the three fragrances in this new line (which they’re treating like a wine - complete with a vintage). Long enough that you can tie it around your wrist/hair/purse strap.

The fragrances themselves are a bit too strong, too floral and too “my summer mink is at the cleaners” for me (and I realize that that might mean something different to different people… I guess it’s my shorthand for something that’s cloyingly sweet and reminds me of extremely wealthy older women).

And yes, I did actually hear a woman utter that sentence once upon a time. It was surreal.

… I’m messing around with Photoshop to see how I can get some decent photos of things I find lovely. Mostly things I’ve purchased. For example, my favorite candles in the world at present - these Henri Bendel Home candles in Fig (available at Bath & Body Works, I think).

I love the scent, the design, the font and the frosted glass. A simple pleasure.

Then, there’s this awesome notecard action from Paperchase (it’s a folder containing 10 each of two designs similar to this cover):

I think a fun experiment will be to try taking photos of these same objects when I have the new happy snappy action on Monday. That will kill a good few hours when I get home from work. Mmmm-hmmm. You can look forward to seeing photos of various objets d’art (in a generous sense) such as books, nicely packaged anything, and much much more!

Something tells me that these will look a bit sweeter once I have the Nikon D40. It’s not a top of the line dSLR, but that would be wasted on me at this point anyway - just as it would be a waste to give a 15 year-old girl a Bugatti Veyron as her first car. Yeah. That’s the analogy I want to make.

It’s a solid “beginner” dSLR and I’ve gotten a bunch of books about the camera itself as well as digital photography in general so I can study up on composition, lighting, portraiture, etc. Then I can use it to take awesome photos of whatever I deem worthy when I go to Coachella and on a little vacation later this month.

This week has been good so far. I’m glad. I usually get pretty down in the dumps when I near my birthday, but that melancholy cleared itself out a few weeks ago and now I’m OK with turning 30 tomorrow. I’ll be spending the afternoon and evening with a few of my dearest, closest friends (and hearing from others who aren’t as geographically close right now) and I think it’s going to be really fun and chill. Just how I like it.

Note: this photo exists only because my back was turned. But I’ve cropped it to a satisfactory size. It’s from about 6 or 8 weeks ago - at least my hair is the same color. That’s me, about to ascend a wall.

My hands are all dry and raspy and torn up from tonight’s climbing; it’s great (really). Nothing that some Neutrogena Intensive “Swedish Norwegian Fisherman Love This Stuff” Hand Cream won’t help. I was never going to be a hand model - especially after the wrist surgery - so I feel good that there’s something I can do with these hands (Gimpy and Not-Gimpy). I thought they were going to be pretty useless.

I expressed a desire to go climbing more frequently to the friend with whom I climb; I climbed thrice last week, and it looks like I’m on my way to climbing thrice this week, too. Which is exciting. I still have to learn to revel in my little successes (because I don’t, but people who are ten times the climber I am do it for me - maybe because they see the progress in a big picture way, while I’m just dismayed that I wasn’t able to finish a problem - despite having done some good technical work that would’ve been beyond me even a couple of months ago… or so they tell me).

Anyway. It is a good feeling. I am beginning to feel the addictive pull of it quite a bit more. I’m still running on my non-climbing days, but I don’t derive as much pleasure from that - though I have also made strides (pun intended) there. Where a 3/4 mile rapid walk used to get me all winded and sweaty, I can now do 2 or 3 miles (depending on a variety of factors - how hungry and tired I am, if I wore heels to work that day) in the same time it used to take to do .75 miles. And I don’t get nearly as tired or winded.

Yay, progress.

I think I need to hit the stores tomorrow and buy a few new shirts for the impending milder weather. All my t-shirts have silly illustrations or sayings on them (notable shirts include: “Cocaine Blows”, “If There Was a Problem / Yo I’ll Solve It” with a picture of a calculator, “Reading is Sexy”, “Haikus Are Easy / But Sometimes They Don’t Make Sense. / Refrigerator) so I need to step it up and get some more work appropriate springtime gear.

Oh, here’s a picture of the shirts:

Then get a font of your handwriting.

Fontifier lets you use your own handwriting for the text you write on your computer. It turns a scanned sample of your handwriting into a handwriting font that you can use in your word processor or graphics program, just like regular fonts such as Helvetica.

Link here to check it out. I’ll try it. For $9? Sure. I have Fontographer, but it’s a way old version and it’s not worth buying for a single use and I’m not a typographer, so the whole process of going through and making sure the fonts are kerned correctly and whatnot will quickly become tedious instead of fun.

Then I can use it to print “handwritten” notes on my lovely lovely Charles Rennie Mackintosh stationery. That’s a glamour shot of it over here on the right. It comes in a nice box that will be saved for… something. I don’t have any love letters or anything that would be suitable for saving in a stationery box. It’s just as well. That would run contrary to my personality overall.

Also, I think I will share my little mnemonic device for remembering which word is which in the stationary vs. stationery confusion.

Stationery - paper goods ‘n’ stuff.

I remember that it has “-ery” on the end, like “papery.” However, I would sometimes forget whether I should be paying attention to the “a” or the “e” in the word “paper” and use the wrong one. So I needed a double-check.

Stationary - as in a bicycle that goes nowhere or anything that stays put.

I use a visual for this one. I picture a sturdy cartoon-ey letter “A”, standing with its legs apart and hands on its hips (forming a triangle, like a capital “A” does) with a whole lot of attitude, as if to say, “And I tell you I am not moving!” See? STATIONARY. Not going anywhere.

Target is selling Converse sneakers.

I now own a pair of sparkly silver One-Star skimmers. My friend Sara may be getting a pair and then we can be sneaker sparkle twins!

Yes. I think it’s perfectly appropriate to call ourselves sparkle twins even in light of the fact that we’re not 25 anymore. Or 27. Or 28. Even 29 will be a thing of the past sooner than I’d like. Focus on the sparkly sneakers. FOCUS!

I also think it’s OK that I wore them to work today. It was raining and icy - I couldn’t risk wearing heels and possibly slipping and breaking my ankle. And the other flats I own are too flat to wear through puddles. These were my only alternative.

A few years ago, my friend Michelle gave me this gorgeous tea strainer which I break out when preparing a cup of double bergamot Earl Grey (of the loose tea variety).

If you’re not familiar with this method of preparing tea, the top portion with the “wings” rests on the rim of your teacup and you put loose tea in the basket portion.

Pour hot water over it, let it steep for a bit, and then remove the strainer and rest it in the accompanying base until you want to perhaps pour yourself another cuppa.

It’s beautiful and elegant and stylish and I love it.

(I also love the digital macro feature on my sister’s camera, borrowed for this purpose.  It’s not bad at all and makes me wonder whether I would even need a digital SLR to get some good macro action. This was taken with a Canon Powershot SD600 and then photoshopped to produce that ethereal glow.)

Dear sweet object of lust and desire. How friggin’ AWESOME would this be???

Staircase and bookcase IN ONE!

I want to cry because there is no chance I will ever have anything this cool in my little world

Update: I cheered myself up with this font quiz from mental_floss:

I’ve just spent an hour or so researching new cell phones (because what else would I want to do on a Saturday morning after I’ve already gone running at 9 a.m.* ?) and I think I’ve decided what my new phone will be when I’m due for a new one in May—providing that it is actually released around that time. I mean, I could wait until July or August, but any longer than that and the small portion of my brain that is a rabid tech-toy junkie will be getting way tired of my current phone (despite the adolescent-like presence of Tetris, Mah-jongg and Bejeweled game apps).

My carrier is Verizon (since 1996, actually) so there’s no dancing with the iPhone for me (which is fine. I’m not that fashionable, anyway). As you might assume from my 12-year relationship with Verizon, I’m quite happy with their service. I can honestly say that the only places I’ve had a drop-off in reception have been:

• The wilds of New Hampshire - parts where you can’t even pick up a radio station clearly
• The former bomb-shelters now used as classrooms in NYU’s Stern Building (hell, they might not even be used as classrooms anymore. This was my experience when I had classes in that building in 1999 and 2000)
• In a tunnel during my train ride home. Sometimes the signal doesn’t drop off, but it has one more than one occasion, so it makes this list.
• A small stretch of road in a nearby town where reception inexplicably drops off for everyone I know on every carrier in this area. It’s just “that dead zone.”

But I know that for lots of people (granted, they are generally people who have careers involving a great deal more responsibility, international travel and larger salaries than mine), the whole CDMA thing is crippling (”I can’t use my phone in London??? No SIM card?? Inconceivable!“) so I understand the issues with Verizon there. However, the only time I travel internationally is for leisure, and if I ever decide that I need a mobile phone while abroad, I can just pick up a cheap pre-paid deal while overseas. That makes a bit more sense in my case.

Anyway - the phone. I looked at a few of the BlackBerry models Verizon offers and while they are nice, I don’t think I need to make that leap yet. They’ve got their BlackBerry World Phone that works on both GSM and CDMA networks, but that’s also perhaps a bit more smartphone-ish than what I need (it would be kinda like giving me a Bugatti Veyron to drive to the train station and back - not that I’d refuse that).

I want: decent web-browsing and email capabilities. Bluetooth is nice, too. QWERTY keyboard definitely. And a bit of style.

PhoneArena.com tipped me off to the upcoming phone offering from Verizon - the Samsung SCH-U940. It’s the CDMA version of the Samsung SGH-F700, which is available in Europe and Asia. The specs on that one are pretty OK for me (and while there will be some changes coming over to the States/CDMA, it should be fine).

I found some photos of the SGH-F700 “in action” (including the one at left) which confirm that it’s got the style factor. It is a slide phone, so there’s a QWERTY keyboard underneath that screen if you slide it open and rotate it 90°.

So this might be it. I’ve had a Samsung cell phone before and I was happy with it in terms of the feel of it (had a good heft, felt solid, etc. - I trust that, whether or not it’s a good part of the decision-making process). I don’t think it’s going to be prohibitively expensive; it won’t be more than a BlackBerry in any case.

*I realize that’s not early for most people. That’s early-ish for me. I’ve just been waking up unnaturally early the last week or so - before the alarm even goes off. It’s distressing.