Glow

Ever wish you could capture a moment in a jar forever?

Visit The Moment Jars to share one with the world.

But Will They Block Out the Sounds of Her Setting Your Car on Fire?

I've been doing a lot of online Christmas shopping this year since A) I'm always at the office, and B) I'm always in front of a computer at the office. It just makes sense.

And so, naturally, I've been cruising around Amazon.com -- as we all must, at one point or another in any given year, since it's like the Walmart of online vendors. Hooray for mass quantities and cheap prices, am I right?

Anyway, the other day a pair of shiny noise-cancelling headphones on the site caught my eye, and I started reading the consumer reviews. Below is a screenshot of one that I came across. Click on it to get the full dose of idiocy.

That's nice.

Talk to the Moose & Then Go Ho Ho

It's like GAP is breeding dancers or something.

This ...



... grows up to be this ...



It's the circle of (GAP) life.

Print Society

Printsociety.com has become my latest obsession. I love it. I love the photographs. I love the digital art. I love it all.

Above: "Anarchrysanthemum" by Chuck Anderson

Above: "West Nineteenth Street (Yellow Dress)" by Joseph O. Holmes

Above: "All is Not Fine" by Gregory Lang

Above: "The Checkered Path" by Jen ZahiganAbove: "Matika 01" by Joshua Davis

I want all of these! And so many, many more. Perhaps a few will be my Christmas presents to myself. Shhh. Don't tell! [Wink.]

Does "Augmented Reality" Have a Place in the Future of Magazines?

Being the magazine editor that I am, I've been curious as to the state of the print publishing industry as of late, wondering how and if it's going to continue evolving, and what role the internet will play.

Well, here's certainly something new. Esquire is calling it "augmented reality."



It will be interesting to see how many publications will eventually jump on board with this ... And which ones declare is blasphemous ... and then promptly shrivel up and die.

Me? I say that any technology that puts me in the same room with Robert Downey Jr can only be good.

Hey Honey, Where Should We Eat?

"Where do you want to eat tonight?"

"I don't know. Where do you want to eat?"

"I don't know. That's why I asked you. Do you really not care?"

"No, I don't care. Just pick a place."

"Well I don't know. What sounds good?"

"I don't care. Just pick a place."

Ad nauseam.

Please. Don't be that couple. And don't let your friends be that couple.

Here to save us all ...

The "Where to Eat Flow Chart (Chain Restaurant Edition)" [Click to enlarge.]



And for those upcoming holiday roadtrips ...

The "Where to Eat Flow Chart (Fast Food Edition)" [Click to enlarge.]



You're so very welcome.

Charts courtesy of Eatingtheroad.wordpress.com

The World According to Americans

Terrible but amusing, you have to admit. [CLick to enlarge and see the whole thing.]

I Knit Because the Yarn and Needles are a Few Things in Life That I Can Control

A few 100-hour-plus work weeks in the month of November and now I'm back. And I brought presents.

Well, kind of.

Who doesn't love bad knitting photography?

Here are long overdue photos of KT's finished Clapotis, which I was able to block into shape over the Thanksgiving break:




Another project I was able to both start and finish (it's a Christmas miracle!) over the weekend were these baby booties for the baby of a former co-worker and his wife. I really liked the way they turned out, even if the pattern was a little confusing at first.



And because I regularly use this blog to remember when I knitted what and for whom and with which needles and what yarn, I'm just going to start logging away these little details here for the purposes of Future Me ...

KT's Clapotis: Naturallycaron.com; Country; 75% acrylic; 25% merino wool; Color: 0015 Deep Taupe; size 8 straight needles; Pattern "Clapotis" from Knitty.com; at least 4 skeins (185 yds./85 g./3 oz./each)

KJ's Baby Booties: Lion Brand; Cotton Ease; 50% acrylic; 50% cotton; Colors: 152 Charcoal & 123 Seaspray; size 3 straight needles (could have been smaller size); Pattern "Saartje's Booties" from Saartjeknits.nl; 1 skein each color, not much used

The baby booties didn't require much yarn, and I love the colors, particularly the bluish charcoal color, so I'm going to use them for a pair of practice "Cashmere Fingerless Gloves" over at The Purl Bee.

If they turn out well and/or don't make me become violently frustrated and prone to screaming like some other knitting patterns, then I might consider buying some fancy cashmere-y yarn and making them again.

All in good time. Or, knowing me, all in a really, really, really long time resulting in a case of binge knitting.

Photos by Sway Sovay

Vertical Turn

Erik Johansson can do some pretty amazing things with Photoshop.

See for yourself.

Lotus Sake

A few days ago, I was in Anthropologie, one of my favorite stores of all time. I love that place so much I could practically move in.

Among the amazing whimsies carried by Anthropologie are perfumes and bath products by a brand called Tokyo Milk. I adore this brand and everything it produces. I usually can't escape the store without taking at least one thing with me, and this trip was no exception.

This time I was captivated by the enchanting packaging of Tokyo Milk's solid perfumes.


I picked this one. Isn't the tiny box just so cute? It's called Lotus Sake and smells divine. It smells so good, in fact, that each time I begin to use it, I daydream about just lying down and rolling around in a huge pit of the stuff. Ahhh ...




The box slides open to reveal not only the small bottle of perfume, but also some beautiful, tiny notecards.



A girl deserves a little indulgence every now and again, right?

Of All the Adjectives

The boyfriend and I are watching TV.



Boyfriend: She looks embryonic.

Me: Embryonic? Mariah Carey?

Boyfriend: Yeah. She looks like an embryo. Her face.

Me: As in ... not fully formed?

Boyfriend: Mm-hmm.


Boys are so weird.

A Pumpkin is a Fruit

Last night my boyfriend and I finally got around to carving our jack-o-lanterns. It was a really nice break from the normal evening routine and a good way to forget about work and laundry and bills, etc.

I mean, nothing cures one's ails like taking out some artful aggression on an over-sized squash, right?

My boyfriend's pumpkin (with the bat) is on the left, and mine (with the spider) is on the right.

What if I Entered the Conference Room in a Cupcake

Pray for me. I have to interview people today for the first time ever in my life, for my department's open copy editor position. I hope they don't pick up on the fact that I'm not 100% sure what I'm doing.

I think it will be OK. And either way, I'm getting a massage after all of it, at 4:00, in order to help with my back pain, so even if the interviews do go horribly wrong, at least maybe the stress will get massaged right out of me.

Plus ... yesterday some random person e-mailed one of our editors and asked her to please, please consider this item for the magazine's holiday gift guide:


It's a Cupcake Car. You can get one for a cool $25,000 right here.

I look at that photo, and suddenly, I feel better.

Image property of Neiman Marcus

My Job is Bad for My Health and Other News Bulletins

I took the above picture only a few moments ago. This is part of our "backyard" here at the condo, and that's a little family of javelinas that passes through every so often. Last night, while my boyfriend and I were eating dinner, we had opened our patio doors and so we could hear these guys munching around in the dark out there.

This morning, I got up and went out to the kitchen to open our window shades and make our coffee and, lo and behold, the javelina herd was still there, chewing up whatever edible things they could find among the dirt and rocks.

I watched them for a long time. I think next time they come by I should try to make a short video of them to post here. They're interesting creatures that a person might never really get to see unless he or she lives in the Southwest.

------------------------------------------------------

A couple of months ago I messed up my back. Actually, correction: A couple of months ago my back started feeling like it was messed up. Every time I stand up after sitting for a long time, I can't immediately straighten up. It's like my back seizes up, and I have to walk several steps before I can stand up to my full height. It's been very uncomfortable and at times, pretty painful.

I'm only 25 years old, and if I didn't do so much desk work, I'd say I had no idea why this was happening to me when I'm still so young. But for all I know, I've been doing damage to it for years, via poor posture for too many hours spent sitting at a desk, combined with eye strain, neck strain, stress and who knows, maybe even the occasional inaccurately performed yoga pose or weight-lifting move.

So I've started going to a chiropractor. Which, by the way, I will fully admit that I was skeptical about doing in the beginning.

I think most people grow up going to an eye doctor, a dentist and a physician, and that's pretty much what they stick with for the rest of their lives. But how did we all decide that those were the only three doctors we ever needed to see regularly? Maybe it's just tradition by now.

At any rate, I think going to a chiropractor for a regular checkup is a great idea. I've been going for treatment for just over a month now and I'm starting to understand why we shouldn't ignore our spines. I'm also wondering why in the world I thought that they only special parts of my body that needed special doctors were my teeth and my eyes. Now it makes sense to me that my bones and my spine need special attention, too.

So two to three times a week I've been having my back and neck adjusted, and my treatment will last for a few more months. I've definitely become more conscious of my posture during the workdays. And I try to take more breaks to get up and stretch and walk around.

This whole experience has been a really excellent reminder to me of just how human I am; I can't just abuse my body and not expect to face the consequences. If I'm not good to it, it's going to let me know it's unhappy with me eventually, one way or another.

--------------------------------------------------------

And while we're on the subject of bodies threatening to break down ... my eyes ... hurt ...

A week and a half ago -- or maybe two weeks, I don't know, time is running together -- my eyes started getting really red and sensitive to light, and my vision started to become blurrier. I just figured that my eyes were tired from too much work and that my vision was just doing what it's always done -- gotten worse.

Nope. I was wrong. I went to the optometrist's office yesterday and they told me that I have infections in both my eyes caused by wearing my contacts for too many hours at a time, which is also suffocating my eyes because they're not getting enough oxygen, and the tiny infiltrates in my eyes, combined with the white blood cells that are fighting the infection, are scattering the light, causing everything to appear brighter and blurrier.

And the doctor also said that the infections are so bad that they're one step away from cornea ulcers. Cornea. Ulcers. I could have ulcers. On my eyes.

So now I am banned from wearing my contacts, and in fact, I have to throw out the rest of the contacts I bought for the next six months because it turns out I have to switch to a different, more "breathable" kind. AND, I get to put a steroid antibiotic drop in both eyes every three hours from now until my next check-up with the doctor Friday morning. Meanwhile, driving has become a tad bit more challenging during the day, and I just don't drive anywhere past sunset if I can help it. My boyfriend's been nice enough to chauffeur me around. Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

----------------------------------------------------------

Tonight I'm going to the pre-opening party of the Barneys New York in Scottsdale Fashion Square mall.

My editor and I are on a super secret mission. First, he and I must look the part -- there will be Armani suits and Chanel dresses involved. Next, there will be cocktails of the most frivolous, most delicious variety. And last, but not least, there will be charm like you've never seen charm before ... Our mission? To locate and approach Barneys creative director and fashion expert Simon Doonan and elicit from him some of the most burning questions in the fashion industry this holiday, i.e., "Simon, what do you want for Christmas?"

OK, so it's not really a secret mission, and we'll probably actually wear something like J. Crew and Banana Republic, but we do still have to track down that adorable man amid a crowd of gorgeous, expensively dressed socialites and ask him holiday questions, lest we wanted our editor in chief to kill us come the December issue. It will be just like an episode of Alias, I'm telling you.

Good times!

Puppies Make Everything Better

The bad news is that one of the web publications I've been freelancing for, my highest-paying client, actually, has cut back on freelance articles (I suspect due to budget constraints), and so I will be receiving significantly fewer checks from them. Bugger.

The good news is that this video makes me feel so much better about, well, everything:

Test

"This life has been a test. If it had been an actual life, you would have received actual instructions on where to go and what to do." -- Angela Chase, My So-Called Life



Have you ever gone through a personal crisis and just thought that it seemed so unfair that the world just kept on turning? Like how you're still expected to return phone calls, go to work, pay bills and get groceries? When all you really want to do is stop somebody, maybe even everybody, and say, "Hey, wait a minute. I can't deal with all this crap right now. I have bigger problems to take care of. Can't it wait?"

But the sick thing is, it can't wait. You still have work to do, you still have a family that needs you, and you definitely still have bills to pay. And so we simply have to deal. On the fly. On the go.

Have you ever noticed that how people deal with things -- how we all process the bad stuff that has happened or is happening to us -- really reflects what each of us is all about? Some people lock themselves in their bedroom for hours and cry their eyes out, some people watch TV, some people punch pillows, some people punch other people, some people drink, and some people start wielding weapons ...

We all deal different ways, because we're obviously all very different. Sad, non-confrontational, frustrated, angry, apathetic, aggressive. During really bad times it's like we get stripped down to the basic stuff we're made of in order to find out what kind of mental and emotional obstacles we're capable of overcoming.

But the really interesting thing is, this is always going on. Every person is dealing with something. And whether that something requires five seconds or 50 minutes to fully be explained, it is still being dealt with, still being processed, still testing that person.

I am currently dealing with a personal crisis. Probably just like everyone else. And I'm trying to remember that latter part every day. The cashier at my regular coffee shop ... The teller at my bank ... My coworkers ... Maybe they're all dealing with difficult things, too. Maybe the next time someone comes up to me and says something mean or rude, I'll be able to hear what they might really be saying: "Hey, wait a minute. I can't deal with all this crap right now. I have bigger problems to take care of. Can't it wait?"

Get Yer Knit On

Up until a week or two ago, I hadn't done any serious knitting in months. Something about my insanely demanding job and freelance writing activities, combined with the 100-plus-degree weather here in the summers, made me put it on hold for a while.

But I plan on getting back into the swing of things. In fact, I've already started something -- as well as compiled a list of all the future projects I want to work on. I'll keep these items in my queue, whether it takes me a year, or five years, to get to them.

In an unsure order:

1. "Ms. Marigold," a V-neck, sleeveless tank
2. Glampyre Knits' famed "One Skein Wonder"
3. "OpArt," an optical illusion baby blanket
4. "Bonbon" bath loofahs
5. "Sonnet" cardigan, knit from side to side
6. The other mitten to Kate Gilbert's "Gifted" pattern (I got sidetracked after the first one.)
7. "Easy Drop Stitch Scarf" at Frazzled Knits
8. Picnic Knits' "Snappy Hat"
9. "Buttercup Beret" by Sweet Sassafras
10. "Saartje's Bootees" by Saartje Knits
11. "Cashmere Fingerless Gloves" by The Purl Bee
12. "Daytrip Cardigan" by Neoknits
13. "Tank Girl" camisole (I would probably alter this one a teensy weensy bit ...)
14. And something by Presents Knits. Maybe even this.

Whew! I should be busy for the rest of my life with all that!

First thing's first, though ... I have to finish this ...


... because it is a birthday present for my dear friend, Ms. KT. Happy birthday, KT!!! It's a Clapotis, the color of um, dirt -- yeah, that's right, dirt -- just what you wanted. ;-)

I know it doesn't look like it, but I'm nearly halfway finished, and I'll mail it to you as soon as I can!

Sun Jars

Yesterday my boyfriend and I made sun jars using one of Lifehacker's tutorials.


Sun jars are solar-powered lights in frosted jars, so they charge up all day while the sun is out and then begin to glow after sunset.

I've wanted some of these things for a long time, ever since I saw them on ThinkGeek. Unfortunately, though, everywhere I looked online the jars ranged between $30 and $40 -- more than I could justify spending on outdoor whimsies.

And then I came across the Lifehacker tutorial, which you can find here. The assembly process is pretty straightforward, and we made our two in less than 30 minutes. In the end, they cost us about $11 each. I'm happy with how they turned out, and they give off a surprising amount of light.


If you make some, let me know how they turn out!


Photos by Sway Sovay

The Near-Nightmare in My Sister's Closet

A few weekends ago I went to one of my favorite clothing stores in Scottsdale -- a consignment boutique called My Sister's Closet.

The place is an answer to most women's prayers. They buy and sell "gently used" name-brand and designer clothing, shoes, handbags, jewelry, sunglasses, etc. And I am telling you, this store is a gold mine -- provided that you never go in looking for a specific sort of item. You have to just be ready to see where the shopping trip takes you, so to speak.

I went on a Saturday morning -- in fact, the Saturday morning the shop was unveiling all their new fall inventory and everything in the store was discounted even more than usual. I figured it would be worth checking out.

When I arrived, I was immediately overwhelmed. Here was my beloved, usually casual consignment boutique swarming with 100+ crazed women.

For probably a solid 10 minutes all I really did was wander the store from one end to the other, back and forth, weaving in and out of people and watching in semi-horror the chaos that was taking place. I honestly had a woman lean in front of me and step on my foot in order to snatch a top she thought I might be reaching for. (I wasn't.)

After I finally snapped out of it, I got down to business. But while other girls were grabbing animal print blouses and coats that looked like carpet bags, I was perfectly fine sifting through whatever GAP articles had come in.

I should confirm that I am, by no means, a style snob, although, thanks to nearly three years in the Scottsdale area and a year and a half working for a fashion mag, I do, for better or for worse, now know Burberry from Tod's and Alaïa from Diane von Furstenburg. It's not like I studied the labels, it just kind of happened. Kind of like how when I used to work at the Oklahoma Aquarium in Jenks, a byproduct of my job was that I learned the names of all the fish and could start telling the individual sharks apart from each other. Yeah, it's a little like that. But I digress ...

I have absolutely no shame in admitting that I love MSC both because I like nice things and I am frugal. Aren't a lot of other women out there, too? But on this most recent trip to the boutique, I rediscovered that there are different categories of frugality when it comes to Scottsdale women.

For example, I am not frugal in the kind of way that makes me feel obligated to buy a really hideous dress just because it's a marked-down Missoni. I don't consider buying an ugly, $1,000 article of designer clothing on sale for $200 to be coming out on top. I am more the kind of frugal that says, "Hey, isn't that the Banana Republic jacket I was looking at in the store window last year? Wow, it's only $17.50 here. I'm taking it."

Although there were women who staggered up to the checkout counter with both arms full, I walked away with only three things -- a white organic cotton cardigan knit in a lace pattern with a drawstring waist, as well as a light blue T-shirt with small flowers sewn on to one side of the neckline, both by J. Crew, and then a really lucky find: a black, sleeveless V-neck top with satin trim by Marciano by Guess.

The total cost of my purchases? $5 and change, thanks to some store credit I had after taking them some of my jeans at the beginning of the summer.

And on that note, happy Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week -- New York's annual celebration of all types of fashion, both beautiful and ugly.

Hunting

Some Background Information
A few weeks ago my boyfriend and I were guests at a dinner party in North Scottsdale. Our hosts were our friends -- who happen to also be our landlords -- who live in a newly finished 7,000-square-foot Southwest-style home that is utterly gorgeous (if not a tad outrageous), nestled into some Arizona foothills.

One of the great things about our friends' new home is that it's on the outskirts of town, therefore they have peace and quiet, privacy and excellent unobstructed views for miles and miles.

One of the not-so-great things is that there are a lot of unwelcome creatures and critters lurking around just outside of town, including, but not limited to: rattlesnakes, javelinas, bobcats, mountain lions (yes, mountain lions) and scorpions.

[If you're wondering what a javelina is, Wikipedia can help with that. That main lesson, though, is that they're wild hogs. I know they don't immediately look like cold-blooded killers, and I will admit that the baby javelinas can sometimes be cute, but make no mistake, the adults have sharp tusks that can do some major damage. Each year dozens of domestic dogs are reported as having been killed by javelinas.]

And on the night of this particular dinner party, our friends and my boyfriend and I found the largest any of us has ever seen of one of the above-mentioned species of vermin -- up close and personal ...

Yup, a mountain lion.

No, not really. Thank god, no. That would have been one seriously tragic dinner party!

What I meant was, we found several of these guys crawling around the property:


(A Very Poor Primer on) How to Hunt For Scorpions
1. Do not hunt for scorpions alone. Take at least one person with you, preferably more, say, a half dozen. This will ensure that someone is able to call 911 if events should turn in that direction. (Important: see #2.) Note that the odds of at least one person being able to dial 911 greatly increase with the number of people accompanying you. This is particularly true if you take into consideration #2 and #3.

2. Take a cell phone with you. Just do.

3. If you are hunting scorpions after perhaps many, many (many) glasses of wine, be aware that wearing flip-flops on the excursion is not a good idea.

4. Actually, wearing flip-flops to go scorpion hunting is never a good idea.

5. Things you will need: A pair of pliers. A spray bottle filled with a lethal concentration of ammonia. And a black light flashlight. Of these, the black light flashlight is probably the most important. Why? Because for whatever reason, scorpions ...

GLOW!!!

(And no one knows why.)

At any rate, the pliers you will need in order to grab the little buggers and keep them from moving. The spray bottle you will need to then stun and annihilate your victims. (The ammonia makes the exoskeleton disintegrate. Yum.)

6. Also, take a camera.

7. Good luck.


Scenes from a Scorpion Hunt






**No humans were injured during the course of the events described above. However, the same cannot be said for the scorpions.**

Photos by Sway Sovay

I Had No Idea He Could Do Flips Like That

I would highly recommend the film 500 Days of Summer. Not only was it creative and an interesting expression of storytelling, but it was also an honest movie about love and loss and growing up. I think its one of my new indie faves.

And, just for fun, here is a short song and dance video that Zoey Deschanel and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, the film's stars, made to accompany the She & Him song "Why Don't You Let Me Stay Here?"

(I should mention that the music video's bank robbery theme really doesn't have anything to do with the movie; however, She & Him is comprised of Miss Zooey Deschanel herself and the very talented M. Ward. Also, Marc Webb directed both the film and the music video. Still, I wouldn't want you going into 500 Days of Summer expecting a high-stakes heist...)

"Xixi No Banho" is Portuguese for "Pee in the Bath"

First, some backstory as to how I wandered upon this bit of information. I am currently writing a series of articles focused on the waste management situations of various countries. In doing so, I have had to do a lot of research and read all the information I can pertaining to these countries' environmental-friendly and not-so-environmental-friendly practices.

Right now, I am writing about Brazil. And in reading articles for research, I came across this oddity:

Brazil Forest Group says "Go Green ... Go in the Shower"

Yes, it is what you think. It is an environmentally conscious organization promoting encouraging people to pee in the shower in order to save water. And if you click through, you will find a link to a YouTube video from the ad campaign, as well as the campaign's website.

Let me just say this: I see their point. And their point makes sense. However, I still think it's unsanitary and disgusting. No "xixi no banho" for me.

An Open Letter to Life

Dear Life,

Hey. So. It's been a while. Sorry I haven't had more time for re-examination. Guess I'll have to make it up to you.

Anyway, I guess the reason I'm writing is because I have a few things I'd like to discuss. Such as ... for example ... why July went so fast.

I mean, why did it go so fast? Right? Did you feel it, too? And for that matter, why is this whole year going so fast? It was January, like, yesterday. Are you sure you aren't messin' with the clock or something? Not even a little? It's OK, you can be honest ...

And another thing. A bigger thing. I would like to know why, exactly, you look like this. Please explain. Why am I coming home to an empty house, skipping dinner, pouring myself a glass of wine, watching episodes of My So-Called Life on DVD, keeping the thermostat on 82 to save money, changing my mind about dinner and having a sad, cold piece of pizza, turning to my blog (my blog! I swore I would never become one of those people ... too late ...), keeping an eye out for the hummingbird at the feeder outside the dining room window and washing new towels over and over again to get rid of the fuzzies in order to keep myself occupied on a weeknight? Hmm? ...

WHILE

... My boyfriend has been half a world away, in Venice, Italy, with his family, since last Friday, having a world-class life experience for one week, without me ... although he and I have known each other since we were 11, been dating for almost three years and have never -- I repeat, never -- been on our own vacation together ...

?????????




Whatever, no big deal. You must be mad at me for something I don't remember, and OK, I get that. It's fine. I'm sure, somewhere back there, I probably pushed the envelope a little too far and crossed you. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. I will now take this time to say I'm sorry. So ... I'm sorry.

But still, I do think that maybe it was a bit much for you to have orchestrated for it to be Print Week at my job in the week leading up to my boyfriend's departure. You know I always have to work late every night of Print, so that was kind of harsh. And the fact that I had to drop him off at the airport at 4:30 in the morning? Seriously, what was that?! Adding insult to injury, that's what.

Sigh. Life, I love you, but honestly, you're really, really lucky that things like friends, sisters, sushi, chocolate, wine, Apple (yes, the company), fluffy pillows, the GAP and The Pioneer Woman exist. Otherwise, I'm fairly certain I would be hating you right now.

So that's it. I just wanted to say, "What gives?" and wish you -- and me -- a good rest of the week.

Oh, and one teeny, tiny request. I would like to take a vacation in September. Do you think that could be arranged? Let me know.

All the best,
Your friend Sway

Help! The Ride Through Freelance Hell is Making Me Nauseous

Note: If you look at this photograph very, very closely, you can see something melting in the red-hot center of the fire. That something is my sanity.

Hi there. I'm at an amusement park, trapped on a bumpy rollercoaster ride called Sway's Freelance Career.

In January, I challenged myself to get my freelance writing career off the ground by the end of the year. Well, now it's the middle of July, so maybe this is a good time for a checkup. [Er, it was the middle of July when I started this post, promise.]

Verdict: I've succeeded.

That is, if by "succeeded" we mean "contracted, completed and earned money from one or more freelance writing assignments." In which case, the answer is, "Yes! Yes! I've done that! I made that happen!"

But if by "succeeded" we mean "earned some sort of reliable income from said assignments," then the answer is no, not quite.

Right now, payments for freelance assignment make up a tiny, tiny fraction of my full-time income. And one day, I'd like that equation to shift in the opposite direction.

But do you want to know one very important thing I've learned about trying to make your income -- or at least part of your income -- via freelance writing?

It will steal your soul all your free time.

Because if you want to write for profit, you have to be writing all the time.

Every day I wake up, check my e-mail, check in on my assignments and follow-up as necessary, Then I go to my full-time job, where I work and write in between working. And then I go home, and I check in on my assignments and write and follow-up as necessary again. Write, eat, sleep, repeat.

It's pretty exhausting to always be stressin' about deadlines, and that is starting to take its toll on me -- on my energy, on my patience, on my attitude in general ...

But, then again, it's not like I didn't see this coming. And, it is what I've always wanted to do. And it is what I believe I'm good at. And we all want to do something we're good at, right?

So until I get to the point where every one of my articles nets me a healthy wad of cash, I have to find the discipline and motivation to keeping chugging along for the smaller payments.

Can I do it?

The Uniform Project

The Uniform Project kind of fascinates me.

Sheena Matheiken began the project in May 2009 to raise money for the Akansha Foundation, a non-profit that supports education in the slums of Mumbai. As the central part of the project, she has pledged to wear the same dress every day for 365.

Well, it's sort of the same dress.

Actually, to be fair, she has seven identical dresses. Seven black, short-sleeved, hang-just-above-the-knee, button-down tunic dresses, one for each day of the week.

But just because Matheiken is wearing the same thing every day doesn't mean her outfits all look the same. See for yourself.

She says the project was inspired by the uniforms she wore each day to school while growing up in Mumbai. She remembers how she and the other students were forced to be creative with accessories, etc., in order to project their individual personalities beyond their uniforms.

I find this concept interesting because it proves that you don't have to wear something radically different each day to let your tastes and uniqueness shine through. In fact, I think this project might prove that you can actually get a better idea of what another individual's personality is like by observing how he or she circumvents restrictions to deliver a distinct, personal brand of flair.

Ah, darn. I knew I couldn't do a post like this without using the word "flair" ...

Can't a Girlfriend Get a Sparkler?

Happy Independence Day to America and Americans everywhere! I hope you get to see some fireworks today, if you like that sort of thing.

I do, but somehow I managed to move myself into the middle of the only no-fireworks zone in all of Western America. (See below.) In this state, apparently "novelty items" do not include sparklers, but do include those annoying little popping things kids throw on the ground to scare the bejeebuz out of adults who weren't looking.

So for the sake of fellow Arizonans -- and those living in Delaware, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York and Rhode Island -- this will just have to do:

Why I Love to Take Photographs

To notice the small things. (The many small things.)

To play in the rain.

To take pause in each moment.

To see stories all around me.

To daydream.

To appreciate the world's beauty.

What have you seen so far today?

Photo by Sway Sovay

"Cardboard Bear Runs Loose in Ohio"

Here are the facts. A WJW Fox 8 reporter had to do a two-minute segment on a bear sighting, but had no footage of the bear. How would you handle the situation?

Here was the reporter's solution:

How My Face Caught Fire

Look at them. The little suckers look so innocent, don't they? But don't you believe them, not even for a second.

The story goes like this. For weeks now, I have looked back and forth and forth and back through Pioneer Woman Ree Drummond's online cookbook, found here.

I've already tried a few of her fabulous concoctions, and believe me, sooner or later, I will get around to making nearly everything on her list. I must, because they all look delicious -- even if most of them aren't exactly dishes I could eat more than once a year, not unless I want to end up looking like a hot air balloon. (Ree, you lucky gal. If only I were a pioneer woman, too, and then it would be bye bye to workout dvds and hello to burnin' off calories chasin' around rascals and cattle and mustangs, diggin' things up in the garden and so on and so forth!)

But last Saturday evening, I finally had the time and energy to try my hand at one of Ree's recipes that had looked particularly intriguing: the "Bacon-Wrapped Jalapeno thingies." Not exactly light in calories, but I did want to try one. At least one. Just once. Please? Plus, I knew my boyfriend would probably go gaga for them, seeing as he likes hot foods, cheese and dude, what man does not love bacon?

So, with great anticipation, I begin working away in the kitchen while the boyfriend was watching something on the Discovery Channel. (Any other women out there who can relate to this scenario, raise your hands. Oh good, I'm glad so many of you could make it here today.) I start cutting the jalapenos in half and then scooping out their insides, just as instructed in the recipe. The process might go faster for someone who has made these many times, but for me, it's rather tedious, and so I decide to make only six. I only want one, anyway -- maybe two, at the most -- and then I'm giving the rest of them to the nice young man sitting on the couch.

[Did you notice me switch from past tense to present tense somewhere back there? That's the signal that this is going to be a good story.]

With maybe only two jalapenos left to go, I realize that I am feeling a slight tingle on the outside corner of my right eye. Now, knowing that you are not, under any cirumstances, EVER supposed to touch your face when you have jalepeno juice on your hands, I was very careful to use a clean washcloth to rub my eye -- because I thought that maybe my eyes were just getting dry, as they do most evenings.

SADLY, I must have gotten some jalapeno juice on my face anyway somehow. Now, I don't know whether this happened as I absentmindly brushed aside my bangs, or whether the darn thing squirted a little when I cut into it, or what. All I know is ... Gradually, but swiftly, that slight tingling I was feeling became a stinging. And then the stinging became a burning. And then the burning became a full-on BLAZE.

And while this is going on, I am setting down my kitchen tools, and I am screaming for my boyfriend to help me, and I am telling him that I think I'm going to lose my vision, because, you see, the fire was beginning to spread. It started expanding from my eye area to my cheek and my eyebrow, and then to my forehead and around my mouth and even down to my chin. MY FACE WAS ON FIRE.

So the good man, god bless him, follows me as I stumble-run to the bathroom, where I try to splash cold water into my eye and onto my face to get the evil, evil jalapeno juice as far away from me as possible. Tragically, however, there is something frustrating about jalapeno juice that I had yet to discover -- it can't really be diluted. Meaning, splashing water into my eye and onto my face only spread the stuff around to any other parts of my face that hadn't already been affected.

I look up try to look up at my boyfriend and tell him that I think we may need to go to the emergency room. He says, "OK, let's wait a minute." And I'm thinking, I don't even know what that means! My face is BURNING! What does you want to WAIT for? It to spread to all my limbs, too? And as I open my mouth to voice these thoughts, I can't even get the words to come out. I just start crying hysterically. Because it hurts so bad, and because I am afraid that I may never see again.

So there I am, wounded, frantic and about to crumble to the bathroom floor, and my always-calm-in-a-time-of-crisis-Eagle-Scout-boyfriend says again, "Wait just a minute, I'll be right back." And when he returns, he is holding a cup of milk. I am confused. Maybe because the jalapeno juice has started to saturate my brain at this point, I just don't know. He tells me to lean my head over the bathroom sink, and then he begins to slowly pour cold milk over my face.

[Are you picturing this? I hope it's making you feel better about your day, if you happened to have had a bad one. You're welcome.]

The milk did help; it set the blaze back down to burning status, and I was no longer lamenting things like the possibility that I may never see again, or never have a career again, or you know, DIE. And since I was in no condition to continue cooking, my boyfriend sat me down next to him on the couch with a cold ice pack so that we could watch an informative special about trains.

[And there's the switch back to past tense. Is it sad that the copy editor in me has to point these things out? Actually, don't answer that.]

I don't really know how long it took for the pain to subside to the point where I could go back into the kitchen. I think it must have been at least an hour or so. (And in fact, my face still tingled when I went to bed, so let it be known that the effects are long-lasting.) And like a child who has burned her hand on a stovetop, or been bitten by a dog, or fallen off the jungle gym, or been thrown off a horse ... I really, really wanted to just avoid anything and everything to do with the mishap forever and ever. And ever. Amen.

But, I am a firm believer in the ol' "If you fall off, you gotta get right back in the saddle" saying. Because, I believe, if you don't, you're left scared for a long time after, and that can be crippling in certain situations. You have to face your fears!

So, like a nutter butter brave, determined person, I went right back to the cutting board and hacked that little pepper to bits. Oh it got what it deserved, all right. And then I stuffed them all with cream cheese, wrapped them in bacon and threw them in the oven! [Insert wicked witch cackle here.]

Do you want to know how they turned out?

TOO DARN HOT. Apparently, I had not scooped out enough of the peppers' inside membrane, which is supposed to be where the majority of the hotness is contained. So after all that, I really couldn't eat the darn things. On the plus side, my boyfriend somehow loved them, even if the only way he could get them down was to stamp his feet while chewing and repeatedly exclaim, "Whew! That's hot!" over and over again, while wearing a slightly pained look on his face and guzzling water.

In summation, it was the worst physical pain I have ever experienced. Excruciating. Childbirth should not be a problem. If you are such a whizbang that you can cook with these things and not end up incapacitated on the floor, then congratulations, you should probably head for Hollywood, because you are a superstar with skillz, baby.

But, if you are like me -- ambitious, always meaning well, but a little bit of a klutz -- and have never cooked with jalapenos before and were planning to do so one day in the future, please, I beg you, in the words of Heather B. Armstrong, "BE YE NOT SO STUPID."

Tweet This

I know, I owe you a story about face-burning. But I just endured a very bumpy five-hour car ride from Phoenix to Las Vegas in a Toyota Sequoia, and I want nothing more than to go lie by the pool and let all my body's internal organs get back in sync in peace and quiet for a few hours.

I will, however, in the meantime, leave you with this:

Tweeting Too Hard

The webpage's tagline is: "Where self-important tweets get the recognition they deserve." Basically, tweeters rat out other tweeters who feel compelled to tell the world things like:

"it makes me sad, the more I have success the more people don't like me...."

and "OMG i was saying how i couldn't afford the gas to fly daddy's jet to the riviera this summer, and this barista totally rolled her eyes at me"

and "I love how some dudes hate me for dating their fantasy girl, as if they were going to if I hadn't." [Note: This was said by John Mayer. Yes, that John Mayer.]

and my personal favorite, "Off to lunch with the ex soon. My breakups are always dramatic but then my ex's always become my BFFs. Guess no one can quit me. :0"

Don't know what Twitter is or how it works? This will help.

Time to Move the Wagons Again

Dear dear internet world, I have good news: I have not been ignoring you of free will. Promise.

Rather, my boyfriend and I just moved into are still unpacking in have only recently found things like our internet cables in our new place. I feel like I've been basically spinning in circles for the past several days -- packing, unpacking, packing, unpacking. And we're still neither officially out of the old place nor officially into the new place, but we will be soon. Very soon. Like, next Tuesday soon.

The better news is that we've moved to something akin to a mini desert wildlife preserve, meaning every morning when I step outside to drink my coffee on the back porch, I see one of these:


And usually a lot of these:


And occasionally, one of these:


We've also been told there's a resident bobcat that likes to scare the you know what out of local house cats, but I haven't spied him yet.

I love our new home. It has a lot of space for all my favorite pastimes: cooking, reading, knitting and of course, writing. And it's pretty neat to be so close to a metropolitan city and yet still on the outside edge, looking in on all the chaos.

Speaking of cooking, I already told you about how I nearly burned my face off making dinner in the new place last Saturday, right? I haven't?? Oh right, missing internet cables...

Well in that case, I'll be sure to cover all of that in my next post. It involves some bacon, a tall glass of milk, my own stupidity, a spicy little treat and a very nice young man who was willing to take me to the emergency room. To be continued.

Moving Windmills

Someone needs to make this into a movie, because it's incredible:

"In late 2006, a Malawian newspaper first wrote about a remarkable young man from a remote rural village north of the capital city. This is his story."

"Economic Applications Are Not Just Black Voodoo Magic"

This is a YouTube video some girls made for an economics class and it's about four different kinds of tragic.



I don't even know what to say.

You Just Thought That I Was Finished

I'm still stuck on the whole tilt-shift photography thing. Here are more fascinating examples at Smashingmagazine.com.

Something Amazing Has Happened

Maybe you should sit down for this big news...

Are you ready?

Yesterday, we finished the magazines at ...

Are you really really ready?

... drumroll ...

7:45 p.m.!!!

And you have to know something in order to understand why this is important: In the year and a half I've worked for the magazine, there has only been ONE other month that we have finished anywhere close to that time on a Friday evening. For Print, we always always always (always) end up working from 9 a.m. Friday morning until sometime into the wee hours of Saturday morning, so maybe now you can understand why I consider this to have been a miracle.

A Big Post on Small Things

I was browsing How About Orange today to catch up on the many posts I've missed this month, and I came across something incredibly awesome and very fun that Jessica actually posted on my birthday: a link to the website Tiltshiftmaker.com.

If you upload a photo to the site, it will manipulate the image into a "tilt shift miniature-style" photograph for you. Here, I'll show you what I mean. Since Europe is so excellent for providing shutterbugs with photographs containing lots and lots of details, let's have some fun with Sway's travel photography, shall we?

Here is a photo I took of St. Peter's Cemetery while I was in Salzburg last fall:

And here is that same photo, run through the tilt shift program:

Totally wicked cool, right? Here is a photo I took in 2005 of the village of Wernigerode, Germany:And now the miniature version:

And here's Vatican City in Rome, which I also photographed in 2005:

And now a teeny tiny Vatican City:

I could do this all day! Go to the site and give it a try. Remember that photos with lots of detail tend to produce better results.

And also, for some extra fun, here is a "little" tilt-shift video, which I also originally saw on How About Orange. I love it so much that now I really, really want to make my own! I shall put that on my list of things to do...

Bathtub IV from Keith Loutit on Vimeo.