one hundred

i stole the idea from some other gal's blog.

(her blog, by the way, is very cool.)

also, my first "run" at this was, i noticed afterwards, on the more negative side (it's far too easy to point out your own flaws), so i've since gone back and attempted to be more forgiving and kind to myself, without losing the honesty aspect.


100 things about me:
1. i almost never feel like i know what i'm doing, but i try to not let that stop me.
2. i love cotton candy. and all sorts of candy you're not supposed to like after the age of 7. like pez. except the yellow ones, which are just gross.
3. i think i might like the idea of books more than the books themselves. bookstores are one of my favorite haunts.
4. sometimes i start to think about the idea of eternity, and i go a little nutty, like i might crawl out of my skin, because it's the one thing i can't comprehend on any level.
5. i have this intense crush on chefs (as a whole).
6. i've started and soon after discarded probably two dozen daily planners in my lifetime.
7. i have a mean temper, but i'm one of the most loving people you'll meet.
8. i believe in God completely, even though i sometimes get lost in the little questions and details.
9. i'm grateful for my family.
10. i somehow manage to be a perfectionist and a completely clutter-prone freak at the same time.
11. i often make wishes as 11:11 and 12:34
12. writing lists (like this one) gives me a oddly profound sense of peace.
13. i can't wear the color yellow. love wearing green.
14. i will always care waaaay too much about what others think of me.
15. i love how my voice sounds when i sing in the shower.
16. lying in bed is one of my most complete joys.
17. i'm intimidated by short girls - they're all cute and sweet and delicate and stuff like that.
18. one of my new year's resolutions to get better at domestic things like cooking, sewing, etc.
19. i think the cello is the most beautiful instrument on the planet.
20. i love living in big cities because it makes me feel like i'm part of my very own movie, like i should have my own soundtrack. everything feels more dramatic and intense.
21. i know the lines to the movie sense & sensibility by heart (complete with the accent).
22. my top five places to visit (if you asked me today) would be: 1) montana, 2) sweden, 3) peru, 4) sicily, 5) alaska
23. i was once valedictorian; now i'm a hostess. on one level i find this depressing; on the other i think it's awesome.
24. i wish all my friends lived in one place.
25. i tell my mom everything. it's probably very unhealthy, but it's a beautiful, close friendship.
26. song lyrics and quotes are among my most favorite things.
28. i love my chanel perfume.
29. sometimes it'll take me a week to put the sheets back on my bed after washing them.
30. the calendar hanging on my wall is still on october.
31. i love men with facial hair.
32. i have zero willpower. zilch.
33. i think having a guy roommate is the coolest.
34. i love beautiful, quirky, subtle, odd films. i also love chick flicks.
35. i give good hugs.
36. buying fresh flowers instantly makes me happy.
37. i'm very visual - i've been known to buy books or CD's because i like the cover; or i'll buy the "prettiest" pasta sauce at the grocery store. that sort of thing.
38. i love hazelnut in any coffee drink.
39. oldies music reminds me of when i was young and my dad would drive me to soccer tournaments at the crack of dawn and we'd listen to K-Earth 101
40. "these are the days" by van morrison has long been my first dance wedding song; but lately i think it might be more fun to go with something like "ain't that love" by ray charles. i'm torn.
41. the best present i've ever been given was the greatest hits cd of mel carter - i wish i could explain, but it just wouldn't do it justice.
42. i adore simplicity and subtlety and yet tend to make everything much more complicated than it needs to be.
43. i like having 4 part-time jobs. i hope never to have another 9-to-5 again.
44. winter clothing (i.e., coats + scarves + gloves) = my favorite garb
45. i collect mugs.
46. i don't care if i ever own a house. (but if i do ever own one, it'd better be old and quirky.)
47. i think summer movies in bryant park might be one of the most magical things on earth.
48. i'm terrified of flying.
49. i have very ticklish feet.
50. i love photographing inanimate objects.
51. when i get excited about something (which happens a lot), and then it doesn't work out the way i thought it would or match my idea of what it was supposed to be, it takes me forever to recover from that.
52. i don't like talking on the phone. i'm an in-person or over-email sort of person.
53. i'm slightly obsessive. perhaps more than slightly.
54. i want a dog. or, at the very least, to date a man who has a dog.
55. if i had a dog, i'd name him oliver.
56. i think math is cool.
57. i enjoy reading books aloud when no one is home.
58. one of my most treasured possessions is an illustrated copy of pride & prejudice published in the 1930's that i got at strand bookstore in new york - on the front page is written "miriam farall, 1120 park avenue"
59. i love cookbooks and kitchen ware and food photography even though (or perhaps because of the fact that) i, myself, can't cook worth a damn.
60. i've seen every single episode of i love lucy multiple times. every last one.
61. some part of me never left junior high.
62. i've never lost anyone close to me, and i think i'm still sort of in denial about the fact that it is inevitable.
63. i live in my head.
64. i once mistakenly said, in italian, "i'm sorry, but i have a sore rooster."
65. movie trailers are quite possibly my favorite thing about going to the movies.
66. even though winter is my favorite season, my idea of a perfect day is out in the sunshine during the summer with my closest friends - eating, drinking, playing cards, talking about whatever, quoting stupid movies
67. i want to be that person who lives without regrets, but there are a lot of things i look back on and question.
68. improper grammar in professional environments drives me up the wall.
69. i'm horribly ignorant when it comes to politics.
70. i love stationary. 'snow and graham' is the best.
71. i eat microwavable mac n' cheese from trader joe's at least twice a week.
72. i want to start up yoga again.
73. i love "window light" infinitely more than any elaborate lighting set-up concocted by the most accomplished photographer.
74. i can't go into target or anthropologie without struggling against purchasing everything i see.
75. in the next 6 months, i want to take a painting class and a creative writing class.
76. i love the last page of vanity fair magazine (the proust questionnaire)
77. i read magazines from back to front, and i always look at all the pictures before going back and reading anything at all.
78. i just got the most beautiful pedicure the other day, and now i keep staring at my pretty feet.
79. i adore, beyond words, my friends.
80. i want to fall in love and not feel foolish afterwards.
81. my most favorite song to sing is "come thou fount of every blessing"
82. i'm decidedly not punctual.
83. i love getting cards of any sort
84. i had a lumpectomy on christmas eve a few years back, (christmas day on vicodin is good fun), and the scar forms a division symbol with two of my freckles.
85. i think pinkberry is crazy delicious, but i don't like being in line surrounded by a bunch of 17-yr-olds with their jeans tucked into their ugg boots.
86. i use the word lovely a lot.
87. i deeply appreciate sarcasm.
88. as a child, i was convinced i was going to be an architect when i grew up. architect - accountant - photographer... it's a natural progression, i think.
89. if i have one strength, it's that i always genuinely want to be better than what i am and have the best of intentions for trying.
90. i like being a middle child.
91. i think humility is the most underrated virtue. humility + confidence = about as close to perfection as you can get.
92. i have about as much student loan debt as my lawyer friends.
93. i enjoy doing self portraits.
94. i'm generous.
95. i love listening to someone talk about something he/she really truly loves and seeing that person get so excited about it that words start to fail.
96. i want to find a good church up here in WA.
97. i get annoyed when people ask me how to spell my last name.
98. i love girly stuff; i would never want to be a guy.
99. oh, how i wish i was more fashionable
100. i believe sunday brunch to be one of life's most sublime pleasures, which is why i need to go to bed now, so i can get up on time to go to brunch with my friend kela in the morning.


goodnight.

observations

i love photographing my grandparents' house.







speaking of my grandparents, i pray that one day i will look at a man this way...

merle

haggard

kicks

ass.

winter Flora

my pretty sister

There's this chair at my grandma's house, where we were yesterday for Christmas, and it jumped out at me as a perfect setting for a portrait. Anyhow, I love this picture.

blessing upon blessing

alan rickman is in this month's issue of los angeles magazine, complete with lovely photos. that's joy enough on its own. but then in the interview he mentions that he has an upcoming movie about the 1976 paris wine tasting in which california wines trumped french wines, causing a huge hullabaloo and all that. there was recently a book about this tasting, called judgment of paris, which i read maybe 6 months back. really liked the book. really really like mr. rickman.

hence, my excitement.


p.s. if you haven't yet seen sweeney todd, get your rear to a theater. i'm not usually into the gory stuff, but the visuals + the music + the story + the depp/rickman/bonham-carter combo = a fun/depressing meditation on revenge.

christmas eve, eighties style

Tonight we decided to watch an old VHS of Yogi's First Christmas, recorded off TV back in good old 1985. Complete with all the brilliant '80's commercials.


Ridiculous amounts of fun.

water like fabric

carpinteria, ca.

"gloriously different"

I came across a C. S. Lewis quote a few days back:

Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.

I've only read a limited amount of Lewis, so I didn't know from which of his works it had been pulled. But I was curious to read the quote in context. The concept of originality - what makes one an "artist," unique and worthwhile - has been running about in my mind a lot lately. There seems to be such a prevalence of snobbery in the art world, whether it be music or film or photography or whathaveyou. I often find myself overpowered by it, such that I feel as though I couldn't possibly have something new to offer or that whatever I've created is in some way cliched or inferior. A feeling which doesn't exactly inspire one to create. So it's been a struggle, to say the least.

But yeah, so I looked it up tonight and found the larger passage, which (of course) opened up a whole new can of worms for me. Here it is, from Mere Christianity:


At the beginning I said there were Personalities in God. I will go further now. There are no real personalities anywhere else. Until you have given up your self to Him you will not have a real self. Sameness is to be found most among the most "natural" men, not among those who surrender to Christ. How monotonously alike all the great tyrants and conquerors have been: how gloriously different are the saints.

But there must be a real giving up of the self. You must throw it away "blindly" so to speak. Christ will indeed give you a real personality: but you must not go to Him for the sake of that. As long as your own personality is what you are bothering about you are not going to Him at all. The very first step is to try to forget about the self altogether. Your real, new self (which is Christ's and also yours, and yours just because it is His) will not come as long as you are looking for it. It will come when you are looking for Him.

Does that sound strange? The same principle holds, you know, for more everyday matters. Even in social life, you will never make a good impression on other people until you stop thinking about what sort of impression you are making. Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.

The principle runs through all life from top to bottom. Give up yourself, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favorites wishes every day and death of your whole body in the end: submit with every fibre of your being, and you will find eternal life. Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will ever be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ, and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.


I can't imagine a more amazing and challenging goal than to give up the concern for my idea of my own self. It seems to be such an inherent concern. But, regardless, I'm inspired. That, short story long, is my point, I suppose.

scout says hello