October 9, 2011 · 11:16 am

redesign

I’ve had this plaguing sentiment that my blog didn’t look very nice, but wasn’t really sure how to fix it.  I knew that the prefab Ocadia theme on WordPress was part of the problem.

I really didn’t like the look of the page on top of a background.  Or the round edged colored boxes.

I knew I wanted something cleaner and better, but the gargantuan number of theme options available on WordPress, while commendable, is kind of challenging.

But then I saw a blog on the Freshly Pressed page that I liked, discovered that you can find out what theme they’re using, and then I swiped it.  Immediately, things were looking much better.

Although, this new theme comes automatically with a header with an image of some book spines.

Books are definitely nice.  I read books.  Sometimes I write about books.  But it’s not really the right header for me.

My books aren’t leather bound.  They are much more likely to have gamboling bunnies or wizards on the spines.

Thankfully, there were options to replace that image with one of your own.  I thought that I’d really like to have a collage sort of image there, so first I tried to find myself a collage making tool.

But I didn’t like that at all.

So I pulled up my boot straps and I opened PhotoShop.  After several attempts and a lot of googling for instructions on how-to, I finally got something that I liked.

And now I think that the whole thing is just much prettier.  I like looking at me at lot more now.

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October 8, 2011 · 8:37 am

boo

I can not stop cracking up over these photos from a haunted house in Canada.  There’s an entire Flickr feed, which hopefully will continue to be updated for all time because I will never get tired of these.

scared conga line bros

i REALLY wish i knew what was in that corner

a lot of scared in one place

woah my god!

booby grabber

this one is my favorite

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October 7, 2011 · 7:17 am

the sky is falling

One evening this week, I came home after some post-work socializing to an empty apartment.  This was to be expected, since the david was in Vegas for a work conference.

What was unexpected, though, was the COLOSSAL mess I found in my bathroom.  Chunks of plaster and grit and dirt and dust in piles on top of the toilet and scattered everywhere… in the tub, in the sink, resting on top of the wee pit of space created by the molding on the wall…

I stared at it.  And in retrospect, I wish I could have videotaped myself staring at this mess in the moments in between discovering it and realizing that I should look up.  Where a large chunk of ceiling was missing.

my bathroom ceiling

I did not snap a picture of the mess.  I went into autobot mode and started sweeping it up immediately.  Also, I really had to pee and the potty was buried in an archaeological dig.

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October 6, 2011 · 2:03 pm

time in the woods

We went camping!  It did not involve a tent, though, but a “tent cabin” so it was really Camping Lite.

tent cabin #15

We had a whole double bed (largely made of foam and plastic canvas covering).  We brought sheets and blankets and pillows, so it was cozy and sans sleeping bags.  And there was a little wood stove inside the cabin!  We had fire in the night time while we were sleeping!

And there was a fire pit with a grill, so there was some cooking food on open flame.  Which is obviously the #1 factor in labeling something “camping.”

best sausages ever

We also had s’mores and baked potatoes with cheddar cheese.  And during the day time whilst traipsing about in the woods, we ate turkey jerky and apples and nuts and berries.  It was very squirrel-like.  Except for the jerky.  I don’t like to think about squirrels eating turkeys.

And there were trees.  Very big redwoods, as redwoods are wont to be.

big old trees

So even though it was actually a really gorgeous weekend, we didn’t see much sky and there was ample shade.  And since I go scurrying for the nearest cover whenever exposed to direct sunlight, it was a very good spot for me.

 

We did some hiking both days that we were there, but failed to achieve our über plans.  We had sights set on a 12 mile hike on Saturday, but we got a bit of a late start to our day and then we made some errors in navigation,  like choosing to ignore a trail closure for mud slides.  So our results for the day were less epic, but still largely spent in the trees enjoying the outside time.  And Sunday’s hike mysteriously took us about an hour and a half instead of the posted 3 hours.

the david in the woods

Even still, I got sweaty and I panted going up hills and I also pointed out a lot of stuff.  I am a very good noticer.

noticing the david taking my picture

I immediately wanted to go back again, before we’d even left.  So I’d say that this scientific experiment was a success.  If properly outfitted with bratwurst and she doesn’t have to sleep on the ground, Maggie will like camping.

 

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October 3, 2011 · 2:02 pm

“one day i will have your tongue ripped out with hot pincers, and that will be hilarious”

I just finished reading A Dance with Dragons, the fifth book in this epic series of books.  And even though there are still two books and so many unanswered questions left, I am just so glad to be free!  Finally!  Free from the madness of thousands upon thousands of pages.  The entirety of August and September were monopolized by this saga of a billion pseudo-medieval characters.  Characters, who George RR Martin had no qualms about viciously murdering on a regular basis.  By the end, I was all “Yeah.  You’re dead?  Right.  Who’s next?  Whatever.  You’ll probably just end up being a zombie anyway.”

I’ve so over glutted on these books I can’t even form an opinion about whether or not I liked them.  They were addictive, that’s for sure.  I absolutely could not stop.  I read into the night.  I read first thing in the morning, before I could spur myself out of bed.  I read while walking through downtown San Francisco to get to work.

There’s a tv show of the first book that I’d love to watch, but it’s on one of those fancy channels.

So in the interim between now and the availability on Netflix, I will make do with these fancy illustrations from the Fire and Ice wikipedia:

Probably these images can really help you to visualize just how awesome the awesomeness is.

 

 

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September 30, 2011 · 3:19 pm

the best thing i ate all week

Yotam Ottolenghi’s new cookbook, Plenty, fulfills so many of my hopes and dreams for greater vegetable consumption, pretty photography, and what the shiznip is for dinner?

This week, we were scouting out recipes to use up the massive quantity of heirloom tomatoes that we’d gotten in our last CSA box and this recipe:
A) used up 4 tomatoes!
B) was awesome

Ottolenghi tomato, bread and quinoa salad

1 baguette, left to stale-up a bit.  Decrust it, cut into cubes, toss with a bit of olive oil and bake at 350 for about 15 to 20 minutes until crispy

1/4 cup of quinoa rinsed, then boiled for 9 minutes.  Strain and rinse with cool water and let to drain and dry

4 gorgeous tomatoes, chopped and diced

2 balls of mozzarella cut into cubes

2 cups of cucumbers chopped

1/2 of one small red onion sliced in thin slivers

4 TBSP of chopped cilantro

2 TBSP of chopped parsley

2 garlic cloves crushed

1 TBSP of lemon juice

3/4 TBSP of red wine vinegar

1/3 cup of olive oil

salt & pepper

Mix it all up.

Not so good for leftovers once the toasty crouton bits get soggy, so you will have to eat it all now, which is what you were really hoping for anyway.

 

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September 27, 2011 · 5:15 pm

Just like I imagined, but better

It was my birthday on Saturday.

Some people came to the gathering I organized. And some of those people gave me presents.

One of those people is my friend Ali*.

She gave me a little brown box that had a note reading “Hopefully this is just like you imagined…”

Intriguing.

Inside was a little golden box.

Did I imagine a little golden box? “I don’t get it.”

Ali is looking like she is about to burst with the glee from a million baby bunnies bippity-hopping around in her head. “You have to open it!”

Alright.

Inside is a big round locket with a peacock pattern on the front.

Now, I do like lockets. And this locket is pretty crazy, in a cool way. But I am almost certain that I have never articulated a vision of a big brassy locket with a peacock feather pattern on it. Like 97% certain.

I look at Ali.

“Maggie! Open it!”

So I open it. And inside, there is a picture of Ali and her husband, Cooper. But not just any picture. It’s one of their Christmas photo pictures. The one in which they’ve dressed up as Wisconsonian nerds from the 70’s.

It is a photo that I love and a photo that I did declare I’d love to have in a locket. Although I only remember saying that with 7% certainty. But it sounds like something I would say, and now that I have a locket with this photo in it, I am certain that I really would like to have this photo in a locket.

And I was absolutely gobsmacked with astonishment. This little delightful treasure! This nugget of ridiculous creativity and bizarro weird humor! It is mine!

*This is to be pronounced like Alley Cat and not like Muhammad Ali.

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September 26, 2011 · 8:29 pm

a year later

last year on my birthday, I made some goals about what I was going to accomplish in the coming year.

1.  No credit card debt
2.  Lose “some” weight
3.  Leave my gray hairs alone and refrain from pulling them out of my head.

And so, the gray hairs – not a single one yanked.  In fact, I’ll say that there are more of those than there were a year ago, so… success!

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September 25, 2011 · 5:27 pm

Thirty four

Yesterday, I turned thirty-four. And it was a Saturday. The convergence of the two led to feelings of a planned gathering.

So I planned, and they gathered… at Ocean Beach for a beach bonfire birthday.  It was gloomy and it was blowy.  It was misting and sand was swirling.  But there was fire and everyone was appropriately bundled and despite being damp and very dirty, it was grand.

Some people left early and some people showed up quite late, so there was a nicely rotating mix of folk.  There were hot dogs and s’mores and carafes of spiced wine.

And at the end, after all of our wood was burned away and I was hemming and hawing as to whether we should go get more or just be done with, a guy showed up with a tree’s worth of more wood and asked if we were about to done with our pit.  He was on his own, just wanting to build a fire, so he joined our group and created a monstrous blaze which was really almost magical in the dark.

If I hadn’t managed to turn the tide from pleasantly tipsy to distressingly, spinningly drunk right there at the very end, it actually would have been just about perfect.  So I kind of ruined my Sunday a little bit, but the birthday itself was just really nice.

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all the people

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hot dog

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me

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the david

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sunset on the pacific

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bi and stephanie

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kite flying

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ali and sloane

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emiliana

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alex

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night time fire

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August 26, 2011 · 12:55 pm

sometimes i wear clothes

I like to read blogs about how-to-have-a-good-blog.  I read these bits of advice and fantasize about implementing them.  And then I do none of them.

Like having a theme.  Or a meta-narrative, which I think is a theme with sequins on it.

And that is my introduction to how I want to randomly post today about  what-i-wore.  Just like Erin from calivintage.  I admire her times 7, at least.  Her clothes are interesting and beautiful.  She wears shoes with heels on them, and from appearances, she seems to actually walk around in them, as well.  She writes for Modcloth!

So there’s me.  Wearing clothes.  And yeah, the bushes are in focus instead of me, but they’re really good bushes aren’t they?

Dress from Modcloth.
Pink tights from American Apparel.
Scarf very, very old and from Gap.
Shoes from some dance supply site.  I got them in a time when I was taking a lot of swing dance lessons.  The shoes are not supposed to be worn outside, because then you scuff their slip slidey soles.

Also, I have worn this outfit before, so you can have a second, more in focus picture.

 Slightly different in that there’s a cardigan from Boden.
The shoes are Worishofers.
Also, my head is missing and I’m standing on a bench, but that’s because it was for a Bench Monday shot.
And this one was taken by Ali, who is pretty admirable, as well, but with extra awesome weird-sauce drizzled all over her creative, amazing, unshowered pants.

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