Kathleen is GONE

My wonderful friend Kathleen flew to Florence for the semester on Saturday. It's really sad that she isn't here! Not that we saw each other every day or anything (she lives in Lake Forest/DeKalb, IL) but knowing she isn't really a phone call away anymore is just sort of weird to me. Of course, this is the opportunity of a lifetime - she's studying art and what better place in the WORLD to do it besides FLORENCE, ITALY?

Kathleen, have FUN and I love you! I know you're doing fantastic.

Other people I know who are out of the country this semester:
Griffin
Jen
Anne
Heather
James

I feel like I'm missing out! Oh well, the way I see it is that I'll be traveling around the world with groups of curious high-schoolers once I get out of college. Then I can go for free-ee! (Let's hope, at least)

Sigg Water Bottles

Get one. Available at Whole Foods Markets, relatively inexpensive (anywhere from $15 - $20), really wonderful cute designs, AND they save the Earth. What more could you ask for?

Probably the best purchase of 2008 so far. I've saved a lot of plastic bottles and it's a pretty schweet conversation piece.



(this last one is the one that I bought)

[pictures via here]

Puppies!!!

OMG. So, me and Pete took a little trip down to Cairo yesterday and today to see the new puppies that Chip and Bella made. Well, we had seen them once, and they were little LITTLE guys, like this:


But now, NOW, they're fun and yippy and they can walk and their eyes are open and they play with each other and eat a lot of food and sleep and cuddle with you and look at you with their pretty, pretty, big wide eyes, just taking in the whole world...







I had at least one in my arms whenever I wasn't at church, sleeping, or eating. So, so, SO cute!

BlogHer '09

BlogHer was something I had never heard of until last summer. It's basically a giant convention that everyone and their mom (um, literally) goes to every year. Intended for female bloggers, thousands flocked to it this year in San Francisco. It looked like a LOT of fun - tons of promo parties, dressing up, etc.

There is talk, via this post, that it maaaaaay be happening in St. Louis next summer. EEEEEEEEEEE! How fun would that be!?!?!?!




Answer: A lot.

Cool hotel

I really, really like swimming. But I hate watching it on TV. BORING! So instead of watching water polo (also boring, to me) with dad at 12:15 AM, I decided to flickr "swimming pool" and see what I came up with. And, well, one thing led to another and I came across the website for Reflections Rooms in Bangkok.

From what I could gather, the hotel is like an ongoing art project experiment. Artists are commissioned to design and create one room in the hotel. Here's some pictures of some of them:

"Natty Polly" - "Have you ever been in love with someone? Once falling in love, it's like wearing pink glasses. Everything is so sweet and the world becomes a wonderful place to live."


"Hong" - "Enter a spacious art studio where you can eat, sleep, and make your own art! Get your brush from the locker, mix your paint at the sink. Add to the paintings on the walls. Wash up, chill out with a beer, turn up the music, have an “upter party” with your mates and the attic stairs, or your own streetside balcony. Arty-Party!"


"Sleep Well" - about the relationship of a woman and her lover, and the inspiration? (It was hard to figure out what was being said)


"GreyDay" - "GreyDay is a room for you to hideaway from all the messes in the big city on your tired days."


Oh, yeah. And the exterior of the hotel?

:)

flickr photo via derekb

Olympics

Generally I had a great day today. Took a 10-mile bike ride with Pete, played with Louie a lot, went to the dentist...?

While at the dentist, we were talking about the Olympics. First of all, it amazes me that people like Olympian athletes exist. When I was three, I wanted to try and do everything- one minute I would be reading a book, five minutes later I would want to play with Barbies, and then later that evening I would be digging in the dirt. My parents put me in organized sports - volleyball, basketball, softball, soccer - but I was pretty miserable at all of them (besides v-ball). What I'm trying to say is that I NEVER was into one thing for too long of a time. How these little kids are okay with training eight and nine hours a day - for YEARS - is beyond me.

But anyways. Fun to watch. BUT the thing that REALLY upset me today was the news story about the two little girls - "one pretty, one 'not so much'", as one news article titled it, totally floored me. In a bad way. What a horrible example! Makes me wanna gag.

Smiles

I've been somewhat down in the dumps lately - my grandfather passed away Tuesday and I just haven't been myself, at all.

But every time I see this commercial, I feel a little bit better. Because it's really, really adorable.

They sound so much SMARTER when they're foreign!

Kirtsy found a cute video of a cute little French girl hiding from her daddy, because she ate more candy than she was supposed to. Super adorable. I love her voice. What a cutie!


Too much candy from Capucha on Vimeo.

[found here]

Things I really, really am liking right now

1. Freaks and Geeks - I watched this show with my parents over the weekend, and they both loved it. It's fantastic. You should go watch it riiiiiight now. Like The Wonder Years, if it had been set in the late '70s.

2. T.S. Eliot - thanks to Steve, I got a little anthology of Eliot's work that includes Prufrock and The Wasteland. I went through a couple preludes and poems today and they are just wonderful.

3. Sudoku

4. These pretty cloud earrings

5. Headbands. I got my hair cut again, with bangs straight across my forehead and a lot more layered. It's cute. Headbands/barrettes/other pretty things look nice in my pretty little head. I am loving this bright punch of a hairpiece, from Jen Gotch's shop Ban.do (via A Cup of Jo)

6. Better Together collection - gorgeous. Pulled at my heartstrings, HARD.




PS: sorry about the quality of these photos. They aren't as clear as I would have liked them to be.