This is true

meet my little nephew nathan

meet my little nephew nathan, originally uploaded by emdot.

one nathan under blog

is he the cutest ever or what???

breaking writer's block = breaking life blocks?

Read today from one of NPR's NaNoWriMo author interviews, on breaking writer's block:

"One thing I like to do is crack open the dictionary, find a word I hadn't heard of before and write a poem around it. Sometimes the poems are silly, sometimes they're painful, but they always get me excited about writing again. I'm also partial to choosing an object -- preferably edible, ideally a strawberry -- and taking time to explore it slowly, mindfully, using all of my senses."

This always calms me down, wakes me up, and blasts my writing right back open.
— Gayle Brandeis

» Read this interview
» See the list of interviews

Portraits of November Feet

-- from TheAlieness GiselaGiardino²³ - (?)
Gi in Argentina (where it's summertime)

-- from Elizabeth Taylor - (?)
Steph in Mass (where it's freezingtime)


Me in Big Sur (where it's pinch yerselftime)

sevens and the city

sevens and the city, originally uploaded by emdot.

taken two weeks ago from atop griffith park observatory. sevens inadvertantly (sp?) doing a good Wings of Desire impression.

remembering happy em

remembering happy em, originally uploaded by The 10 cent designer.

i.
was.
GRUMPY!!
today.

so grumpy i had to cancel dinner plans with KB. so grumpy that ... ugh... i couldn't even be with myself!

but here's the deal... sometimes if you just pipe up with a little confession (to anyone!) that "I am grumpy today"... well... i think the power of the grump begins to fade.

So, today, I confessed to the beloved Utata group my crankiness. And then I confessed to my beloved KB. And then I confessed again to the ever wonderful and likewise beloved 7-how-7. And the grumpy cloud began to dissipate (it turned from cumulus grumpy cloud to wispy partial cloudy.).

But the clincher? The thing that broke my frown and made me crack a smile? Miss 10-cent piece herself, doing an impression of me with my cowboy hat. It did more than clear the cloudy sky — it actually brought a little tear to my eye. Sigh. Life? It is good. No matter what my bad moods try to tell me.

Lori, you big goofball queen of the interior landscapes — thank you. Seriously. Thank you. :)

Fellow Female Flickr Photographer #8: the ten cent designer

So, everyone, it's about time I said this anyway &$151; check out the totally awesome 10 Cent Designer. Her interior shots cannot be beat. Can. Not. No way. They are the best. Her monkey shots? Perfection. But more than anything I love her slice o' life and her la-la-la take on life. We should all have that take.

» 10 Cent Designer
» Interiors
» Leonbard and his friends

grrr my camera

I love lurve luff my camera. Seriously. My camera? The perfect camera for me. Except for a couple of features. One of them is that the menu button falls naturally under my right thumb; I constantly hit it and change my settings.

Example: the photo above. Somehow I changed the setting from high to medium and the photo ended up only being 1600 px wide. Which means I can't enter it into JPG Magazine's blur competition. Boo to the hoo. Bum to the mer. Wah to the wah. Et to the cetera.

Blogging every day? DAMN HARD. I'm just saying.

Oh and also, me? Hungry. Again, I'm just saying.

AND... I finally talked to my grandma. Why did I put that off? She's the best. Really. Truly. A firecrackers amongst eighty year olds, not to mention amongts firecrackers.

my cat, he's got catfood breath

aka gratuitous blog post cuz it's harder than i thought to post every damn freaking day.

• chapin has calmed down
  thank the good lord above amen. ever since [monster truck voice] Chapin got into his Big Cat Fight of 2006[/mtv] he's been kinda pathetic. super meowlie. super pace-y. super jumpy. super not-fun-to-be-around.
  
  Lesson: spend time with cat = cat calms down. I stayed home this weekend and Chapin resumed Normal Cat Status. More purring that meowling. More purring than pacing. More purring than jumpingbean-aciousness.
  
  Mission accomplished.


• New car insurance.
  Can I get a collective YEA followed by a collective sigh of relief?


• Called my Uncle Robert. Called my grandma (she wasn't there; but hello I CALLED.
  
  All you people with a command over the key pad and the dial tone and the reciever? I envy you. I'm sure -- no! positive -- you take your gift for granted (the gift of calling). In fact, I got 10 smackers that say that you may even get angry when your friends don't keep in touch.
  
  Sigh.
  
  I am here to tell you that it isn't so easy for a select group of us. The phone-a-phobes. The mere thought of calling creates sweat beads on our foreheads. The mere pondering of people who'd like to hear from us? (Excuse me while I go to grab a Xanax.) (What was I thinking even starting this topic.)
  
  Let's just suffice it to say that it isn't so easy for a select group of people and that I am their Patron Saint of Not Calling.
  
  If god sends me to hell for not calling my grandparents often enough? Pfffbt. Then he is no god of mine.


• 4-star hotels.
  GOD I LOVE THEM


• Forgiveness.
  Even in all your notariety (sp?) you are underrated.


• Dixie Chicks
  A. it is not my fault that their songs are so catchy.
  B. It is not my fault that I blared them from Santa Barbara to San Luis Obispo non stop.
  C. I hold no responsibility for looking like a right idiot for singing along like a wide-mouth frog to tracks 1 through 12.
  D. If you were the Honda that passed me, pointed, laughed, and mocked me, just know this: Your time will come. Probably when your kids turn 13.
  
  
  oh oh. and p.s. finding a Fellow Flickr Female Photographer on a daily basis? EASY! Getting my fingers to type out the requisite HTML? Not so easy. But my heart is in the right place. You guys are just gonna have to trust me on that.

So, a little background here: San Luis has very few "late night" eateries. Basically every place shuts down at 10:00 (maybe 10:30) and all those late-night after-the-bar party kids? Out of luck!

A new place opened up just a couple of doors down from SLO Brew called Bel Frites -- fries fries and more fries. Fries with sea salt. Fries with garlic salt. Fries with season salt. Fries with Chipotle sauce. Fries with dill sauce. Fries with this and fries with that and I think you are starting to get the idea.

Somehow, Sunday afternoon, me and Steve wound up as this new place's third customers. There was a line waiting to get in the door (and, as said, this was the afternoon -- not even prime party-goer hour).

Within minutes Tom and Cami coincidentally wandered by, saw us in line and joined in. It was fun. The owner took our photo (all of us in that first few customer line) and said he's going to hang it on the wall.

So what did I think? Tasty! But I have a serious weekness for salty super fried things. The sauces were delicious (and have better names than how I put it above) and the owners were sweet. :) Good location. I think it'll do good. :) I hope so. Long live the mom-and-pop french fry shop!!! :)

sunday equals...

...swapper to bishop's to new chair to new fry place to the angel marathon. and that's a lot of stuff.

I used to be one of those climb Bishops every day kinda girl. I used to be able to run about 3/4 of it. Used to used to used to. I hadn't been up it in what seems like a year. So me and steve joined Shane, Becky and Dan to power up Ye Ol Volcanic core. To say that I was bringing up the rear is an understatement (and not the metaphor you are thinking). I was LAGGING. My heart was a-pounding and I was a-panting. Note to self: work out once in a while self.

I love this picture of Becky. :) One of the few photos that I took and loved immediately right out of the camera (tho I did crop some sky). Really fun day. :)

Evoking the power of compassion in us is not always easy.

I find myself that the simplest ways are the best and the most direct.

Every day, life gives us innumerable chances to open our hearts, if we can only take them. An old woman passes you with a sad and lonely face and two heavy plastic bags full of shopping she can hardly carry. Switch on a television, and there on the news is a mother in Beirut kneeling above the body of her murdered son, or an old grandmother in Moscow pointing to the thin soup that is her only food. . . .

Any one of these sights could open the eyes of your heart to the fact of vast suffering in the world.

Let it.

Don’t waste the love and grief it arouses.

In the moment you feel compassion welling up in you,
don’t brush it aside,
don’t shrug it off and try quickly to return to “normal,”
don’t be afraid of your feeling or be embarrassed by it, and
don’t allow yourself to be distracted from it.

Be vulnerable:

Use that quick, bright uprush of compassion—focus on it, go deep into your heart and meditate on it, develop it, enhance and deepen it. By doing this you will realize how blind you have been to suffering.

All beings, everywhere, suffer; let your heart go out to them all in spontaneous and immeasurable compassion.

— Sogyal Rinpoche

Fellow Female Flickr Photographer #7: Meeralee

Set: A Model Husband | Set: These Days
All photos shown above are created and owned by Meeralee

I love it when you can see a photographer's love and appreciation of their subject. A good example is in Meeralee's "A Model Husband" set. It's as if you can view her love and admiration of her husband. The way she captures a glance, a split second. It's very sweet and the photos are very good.

In addition, she has a great set where she showcases her latest favorite photos in her stream -- just twenty. I think that's a hard thing to create; how can you limit things to only twenty? Within that you can see what is important and meaningful to her -- or simply what has just caught her eye in a certain way.

» View meeralee's Flickr stream
» View her A Model Husband set
» View her These Days set

favorite thing ever: right was right

pfffffbt. i giggled while reading this list. here are but a few charmers...

Now that the election is behind us, and the Democrats control both houses of Congress, there's no reason not to admit it: the Right was right about us all along. Here is our 25-point manifesto for the new Congress:

4. Border fence replaced with free shuttle buses

14. Pledge of Allegiance in schools replaced with morning flag-burning

23. Ban Christmas: replace with Celebrate our Monkey Ancestors Day

24. Carter added to Mount Rushmore

» Check out the Right was right (you can add your own, too)


Right on America, uploaded and copyright by Laurie

chevron

chevron, originally uploaded by emdot.

Fellow Female Flickr Photographer #6: Morran

Set: morran


Set: Stuffed | Set: Pictures and stuff
All photos shown above are created and owned by morran

I don't know Camilla, the keeper of Morran (her adorable dog) and the creator of great images, paintings, illustrations, and softies, but the photos of her craft, art, and aforementioned adorable dog heavily populate my favorite's folder.

If I ever get another dog, I hope to have a dog as cool as Morran. And I hope to be an as-cool dog owner.

» View morran's Flickr stream
» View her Morran set
» View her Stuffed set (for softies)
» View her Pictures and stuff set (for paintings and more)

No you can't have a pony

No you can't have a pony, originally uploaded by mathowie.

quoted from flickr central (from .bastion)

A digression, but I had to post this picture because it's plain hilarious. The rabidly anti-gay U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) lost his seat in the senate. This could have been a Norman Rockwell picture.

Santorum looks like he had just emerged from a long weekend of glory hole pleasure.The son looks like he's about to be hit by a truck, and the fact that the younger daughter is dressed like her doll makes me giggle. Were they dressing her like that to appeal to the Amish vote or something? It was even better to watch two elderly men hold up a BIG sign in front of the screen while Santorum conceded that read, 'PA REJECTS HATE'. Gold.

sigh. this picture made for real laugh out loud at my desk at lunch. ohmigod. perfection.

update: the doll's head spins!

Pollyanna and Suzy Sunshine Debut on the World Wide Web

Pollyanna and Suzy Sunshine Debut on the World Wide Web, originally uploaded by Elizabeth Taylor.

A blog for gratitude started by two great flickr'rs! (one of whom was highlighted in these pages only days ago.).

run run run and check it out! ;)

things i need to remember

Is karma really so hard to see in operation? Don’t we only have to look back at our own lives to see clearly the consequences of some of our actions? When we upset or hurt someone, didn’t it rebound on us? Were we not left with a bitter and dark memory, and the shadows of self-disgust? That memory and those shadows are karma.

Our habits and our fears too are also due to karma, the results of our past actions, words, and thoughts. If we examine our actions, and become really mindful of them, we will see that there is a pattern that repeats itself.

Whenever we act negatively, it leads to pain and suffering;

whenever we act positively, it eventually results in happiness.

— Sogyal Rinpoche

Bishop's Peak at Sunset 2006

Bishop's Peak at Sunset 2006, originally uploaded by mayhem.

Classic SLO County shot! Taken from the top (near the top looks like) of Bishop's by SLO's own Rob Kaye. Check out more from his hike: he's got 13 pics in the set.

Oh, and good morning!

meanwhile, brezny really knows how to sweet talk a girl

VIRGO Aug. 23-Sept. 22): Sometimes, Virgo, you're too damn smart for your own good. You may describe a problem so brilliantly, for instance, that you think you've solved it merely by talking about it, and never get around to actually fixing it. On other occasions your fine mind runs amuck in an orgy of razor-sharp analysis, cutting things apart in order to understand them but not putting them back together again. I beg you not to indulge in these excesses during the coming week. Your intelligence will be soaring beyond even its usual exceptional levels, and it would be a shame for you not to capitalize on it momentously.

my favorite flickr comments

Can be found on this photo. Only five people (me included) have left comments, yet there are well over 100 comments here. It cracks me up. Maybe it's too much of an "in"side joke.... :)

Fellow Female Flickr Photographer #5: mygigi

Set: DoF | Set: the evolution of my gigi
All photos shown above are created and owned by mygigi

How do you begin to talk about Gigi? She's ultra feminine with a very sharp edge. And when I say edge... how to explain... do you know what I mean when I say that beauty and fragility are in the most real and raw things? That's what I mean when I say edge here.

She's a classic beauty. Extremely pretty. But what I love about her is how she completely transcends her beauty. I think this is by a.) not taking herself that seriously (yet, never minimizing herself) and b.) showing herself without filters, despite whatever hardware may be attached to her camera.

I admire her. I respect her. And I love seeing the new images that pop up in her photostream. She recently took most of her photos private, but seems to be trickling them out to the masses again. So run, masses, run. And meet Gigi. You will be glad.

» View mygigi's Flickr stream
» View her Dof set
» View her the evolution ofmy gigi set