Hammer Time

I didn't realize how internetty I was until I left it for a week. At work I'm on the internet constantly looking up stats for the company, our online presence, and generating a more prominent online presence via news releases, case studies, etc, etc, etc. My email accounts (all three; two for work, one for me) and Google Reader have stocked up to the brim and since I'm on vacation I don't really have the motivation to keep up. Instead, I've been shopping, reading, tanning, eating out, road tripping, swimming, roller coastering, and hanging out in front of the boob tube.Will add longboarding to that list soon.

Some peeps have been crashing at our place back in Idaho and keeping it from being lonely. As much fun as I'm having, I already miss Idaho. Is that weird? Being back in the place I grew up in makes me feel like a kid and I'm kind of eager to get back home and be an adult again. It's like I have to remind myself that I am a grown-up with responsibilities somewhere . . . can't remember where . . . need to stop sleeping in till noon.

In other news (and this is for my Russia peeps) I finally got some hammer pants! These babies were all the rage in Moscow. You know what I'm talkin bout:

Little List: 10 Stupid Internet Pictures I Love

Most of them involving cats.

Like if our world was what Jules Verne imagined it to be.

Anyone else a fan of steampunk?

It's this new thing Seve and I are into. Well, new to us, anyway.

H-E-L-P

In the vein of artists I enjoy, here's my other love: Annie Clark of St. Vincent. Natasha and Annie speak such love to my heart; we three could start a little love nest and I'd be content the rest of my days.

Annie's music is quirky (LOVE) and all the more heightened by her multi-instrumental tunes, bringing in woodwinds and brass to accompany her talky-vocals and sometimes pretty, sometimes eat-your-face guitar. She composed the tracks from her recent album, Actor, by pretending they were the backing soundtrack to some of her favorite films, such as Bad Lands and The Wizard of Oz.

In fact, I'm quite convinced her song Marrow is about the Tin Man. The lyrics include references to being in a locked state, but being able to sense your muscle connected to bone, and your ire; and the request that "Honey, can you reach the spot that needs oiling and fixing?"

In the chorus she spells out the letters to "help me," which to me sounds like a frozen man barely whispering a plea through rusted lips, and after years and years, he's only able to mumble letters.

We walked arm in arm

Natasha Khan of Bat For Lashes is one of my favorite artists. Khan writes dark, romantic songs with a gothic quality, sans the Hot Topic variety. She sings about wizards, mystical horses, and knights--and I'm just waiting for a unicorn song to rear its beautiful head. When she performs on stage she really dresses the part, wearing the likes of Indian headdresses, wings, or antlers and projecting the image of a wolf howling at the moon behind her. I eat that stuff up.

I've written about my love for Bat For Lashes before, but I've got to ask, is anyone else a fan? Seems like I'm the only one among my circle of friends who even really listens to her.

My brother-in-law studying theatre at BYU had to watch this music video for a narrative/storytelling class:

Discuss.

This little comic has had me thinking a lot about Seve's career aspirations as a teacher and the kind of things he has to look forward to . . .

Little List (let's get lost)

As you all know, life is crazy and busy and crazy and busy. Here are some things putting me at ease lately:

via Dawn Tan

1. My new headphones!
2. Bombay Bicycle Club
3. The Hunger Games (who else has read this? SO GOOD. Mockingjay out next month!)
4. Interviews at work end this week - and to accommodate the new hires we'll be moving to the rockin' corner office! You have to see this place. Windows galore. I might actually feel inclined to decorate.
5. Knowing Seve will be done with his play on Saturday and then the rest of the summer will be dedicated to long, beautiful, unadulterated Seve + Jules time. Can you imagine? Longboarding, camping, Netflix, taco vans, Texas . . . caaan't wait!

Time for a long, reflective post

In a previous blog (that I've since imported over to this blog if you're truly curious to run through my archives), I used to write about my aspirations to become a YA lit acquisitions editor. I used to cruise YA editor, agent, and librarian blogs and once applied for an internship to Random House. Was it Random House? I don't even remember. Up until I met Seve, I was pretty determined to move to New York after graduation and fumble, grow, learn, and mature into a fantastic editor. Marrying Seve changed those plans as I accommodated his dreams into my life as well, which meant staying in Rexburg so he could finish school. I now find myself a copywriter/marketer/advertiser/PR guru for a software company in Idaho, and I'm quite happy with that, though it doesn't bring me anywhere near discovering and publishing the next J.K. Rowling.

So my dirty little secret is that I like to write as well, and no, not just my obvious technical writing, but fiction. It's something I did a lot in high school and my early college years. My high school friends were all into writing and we'd share stuff with each other. We even tried to start a zine once, and later a "prose mix" group, where you make a mix tape and then write a story for each song, then create a quarter zine for it that we'd pass around the group. It was so much fun, but as the years have gone by, I found myself embarrassed to admit this passion to anyone, and it died out after China.

In China I told all the volunteers about NaNoWriMo (from which Water for Elephants was brought to fruition), and they loved it so much we all decided to write "China novels." There was no real word count goal, just "write a novel," and the time span for completion was just our semester abroad.  We all bought paper journals to fill our novels with, and only one girl actually finished hers. It was a hilarious retelling of our time in China with each of us as featured characters.

Anyway, during my recent time off I went back and read my China novel. It practically brought me to tears, not because it was amazing but because it reminded me how much I love writing. How did I ever let this go? And actually, yeah, I thought my story was pretty good, so I've decided to just finish the thing. And I can't go much longer reading Sam's tales of query wars before wanting to just jump in and join the bloodbath myself.

Oh, and, uh, Happy 4th! Hope everyone had a good one. We went to the skate park, haha.