Thursday, September 27

Bring on Fall

It is still hovering in the mid-80's, but I think fall is coming. Seeing all of this yellow and gold at the produce stand made my heart sing.

Fall at the produce stand

Wednesday, September 12

some of my favorite (internet) things

I'm often writing about my little adventures out in the real world, but today I am going to share some of my most visited and favorite stops on the internet.


The most hilarious ecards I've ever seen, anywhere.


The life hacks and productivity advice at 43 Folders by Merlin Mann, make me work smarter, plus he often makes me laugh. Merlin writes about productivity from a Getting Things Done framework and offers great Mac pointers as well. Less of a GTD purist and more of a "take what you want and leave the rest"gal, Merlin offers up pointers that are easy to integrate into my work flow immediately.

What would I do without skype? I wouldn't be able to talk for free (with video) to my little friend in Tokyo. I can talk skype to skype (computer to computer) for free and I bought $10 worth of Skype-out (for calls to landlines and cellphones) time months ago and I still have $8 left to call the landline in Tokyo when Keme's not on her computer. I can't imagine how useful it would be if I had lots of international buddies, instead of just one.

If you are a blog reader (and you are reading one right now) and you aren't using Bloglines, what are you waiting for? And if you are a Bloglines user and you aren't using Bloglines Beta, shame on you! I love the new look, ease of use and the drag & drop start page. It makes keeping up with all my blog reading manageable and easy.


Who doesn't love flickr? and I love many of these flickr toys from Big Huge Labs on fd's Flickr Toys (the mosaic maker is my favorite). The iphoto plug-in for uploading photos to Flickr easily is also my indispensable Flickr companion. I also love my moo cards and they now have stickers!

ReadyMade Magazine makes me weak in my knees and their website is pretty darn sweet, too.
Here's my most recent favorite find on their site: ReadyMade Shrinky Sheets. I'm imagining some very cute gift tags in my future.

I'm a regular reader of Lara's blog Kirin Notebook, and an admirer of her beautiful fabric designs. She goes to great pains to offer excellent tutorials for fabric projects and they are some of the most well-written instructions and cool little projects I've seen on the web.
Check out her tutorials for covering a lampshade or making a reversible journal cover.

I'd love to hear about some of my friends' favorite stuff, nudge nudge.

Floating on Dale Hollow Lake

lake photos
I forgot to bring my camera, which was probably for the best, since I tend to break cameras when near a body of water. I shot my pics with a disposable camera and Toni shot most of these with her digital camera. As you can see, we had a lot of fun and a lot of quiet relaxation. Not represented in the pictures are all of the wonderful meals we enjoyed. Every morning Dwight cooked a breakfast feast and every evening he cooked us something amazing over a campfire, then we wrapped up the evenings with s'mores. The weather was mild and lovely, with one gray day that gave us a little break from the sun just when we needed it.

I had just enough time to grab my camera and some clean clothes when I got home Saturday before heading out to the farm with Daisy to let the doggies out. I spent a few days farm-sitting to ease myself back into the world again.

Now fully ensconced again in the civilized world of cell phones, hi-speed internet, and television I am longing for simple lake-living. Can I please go back to the lake where I did not think once about job-searching, bills, checking voice mail or email?

Monday, September 3

What the Unemployed Are Doing

Amazing how busy one girl without a job can be. Looking for a job is a full time job (and worrying about not having a job takes up some time too) and I have been doing many assorted things to make a little money here and there. My massage table has been seeing more bodies than it has in over a year and it has been good to reconnect with bodywork and making people feel happy. I have also enjoyed doing some projects for friends, everything from building a database (I swear I'm almost done, Dave) to house-sitting.

In accordance with my uncluttering manifesto I have been in the process of brutally assessing the necessity of every item I own. I have made it through a couple of rooms and amassed a large amount of garage sale fodder (September 15, mark your calendars!). I have also had time for a few fun adventures with friends, namely the recent trek to Vanleer for the auction. Beth and Shona documented the adventure rather well and Rebekah got some great pics as well. My pictures weren't nearly as good as theirs, I was having too much fun watching my friends enjoy themselves.

Speaking of friends, I have to say once again, how lovely my friends are. They have treated me to many meals, given me many helpful job leads, suffered my grumpy moods with smiles and encouragement, and even given me sweet little presents (like this and this). That Susan is one sweet girl, I'll have to think of some perfect way to return her kindness.

Tomorrow morning I am off with some family friends for five days on a boat. I intend to spend many, many hours just floating. No phones, no internet, no tv and a very limited amount of soap and water. I had a stress-related illness flare up recently (are there any illnesses that aren't stress related?) and I think that unplugging from everything is just what the doctor ordered. On the day I return from my water vacation, I have a four day farm-sitting gig in Bon Aqua, at my friend's beautiful retreat, Soul Spring Farm. All of this floating and retreating is going to make me a new woman. I hope to return rested, rejuvenated, clear and focused.