Monday, March 20, 2006

West End Sunset


West End Sunset
Originally uploaded by Kenny Maths.
Can't believe I'll be there in about 48 hours.

Friday, March 17, 2006

I'm exhausted


Rain Soaked (14)
Originally uploaded by Special.
Do you ever drive around and get the feeling that your life would make a good and interesting movie (with proper editing that is) and then other times you think...nah, it would just be boring as all hell. That's what I think - both, all the time. Sometimes I listen to 91.5 on my radio (most of the time actually) which is NPR, which I love and don't even get me started on my This American Life obsession because I totally love that radio show - but sometimes I'm inside out and I listen to 95.1 which is Latin Vibe. Which is really weird and I have no idea why I do that. Most of the songs are in spanish, which I do not speak, except to catch the ocassional phrase here and there but that's me. Actually that sorta says a lot about me. That and the fact that I never listen to latin vibe when other people are in the car. That also says something too I guess.

Tuesday, March 14, 2006

Red cloud


Red cloud
Originally uploaded by gwilmore.
This would be on the top of the list of the reasons we moved to arizona. So indescribably great are the sunsets here.

standing still - observing


standing still
Originally uploaded by swissmiss.
This was one of those online personality tests....to which I say DUH!

Lezlee, you're an Observer!

This means you're one of the more kind-hearted people around. You are unusually intuitive, and you probably understand yourself, as well as others. That also means you're a good mediator — though you may prefer to spend more time on your own than most.

You are better equipped than many to steer your life in the right direction. Understanding more about the components of your personality will reveal unique information that even people like you might not realize. And the better you know yourself, the more confident you'll be making decisions that affect your life.

Sunday, March 12, 2006

BirdVision


BirdVision
Originally uploaded by amsabri.
From Sass as she tagged some folks on minday with this:

Six things no one sorta' doesn't know (well or most people anyway):

1. I'm terrified of birds...particularly blackbirds, ravens, seagulls, starlings and pigeons.

2. I fall asleep during chase scenes in movies - they bore me to death.

3. People blurt out personal things to me all the time - complete strangers, I have a certain affect on people.

4. I hate it if I hate someone and have to figure out a way to feel sorry for them instead so I can let go of the ill feelings.

5. I keep people's secrets pretty well.

6. I love to go the movies alone, and usually won't tell my husband or best friend if I do it - it's a SECRET.

That's all for today except:

Why do I over-commit myself so much where church is involved? I always feel this compulsion to say yes to everything and I feel terrible if I have to say no. And I think it's because I get easily annoyed with the people who say "I'm too busy, I can't" because then 10% of us end up doing 90% of the work and it's always that way. But I never want to be in that 90% who does the 10% of the work. But they're probably on to something if you think about it.

Thursday, March 09, 2006

Sunlight


Sunlight
Originally uploaded by Anna Overseas.
I'm quite excited we get to go here soon! Equally terrified that I'm not ready at all!

Saturday, March 04, 2006

Favorites and other random thoughts...It's late



Originally uploaded by kilotes.
Four jobs I’ve had:

Picking Raspberries on my grandpas farm, early in the morning while in high school, he let me keep all the profits from the sale of said raspberries and the other main job benefit was that I would occasionaly see the boys moving pipe walking past with their shirts off and their wonderful summer tans displayed.

Information Desk girl at the College Campus (BYU Idaho - aka Ricks) where I basically worried mostly about looking cute every day because it was a great place to be seen and show off my fashion sense. Disemenation of information was actually only secondarily important. Actually flirting with co-workers and passer-bys while still trying to seem professional in my heels and skirt was second, disemenation of information third.

Worked for a complete hard ass as a secretary for 3 years and hold the record for working for that particular hard ass. So I feel sickly proud or like a complete massochist, I'm never sure exactly which.

Made shaved ice from a "sno shack" over one summer. Favorite flavor? (cause I sampled all 35 of them baby) mix some Tigers Blood and some Sour Pink Lemonade. You can't beat it. That didn't even seem like a real job. Except when you had to use the ice pick on the big humongous block of ice, I thought ice picks were made up devices used in movies to murder people. But they are real and they are sharp and they are hard to use and the COULD most defintely kill someone.


Four movies I can watch over and over:

Let's start with a John Cusack movie and see if they all turn out that way or if I can come up with something other than my JC obsession:
1. Grosse Pointe Blank, love John, love Martin, love the premise, never gets old even though I now know every single solitary line of the movie
2. Pretty In Pink - cheesey yes, but 80s awesome, totally. And I still want to be Molly Ringwald and drive that damn Carmen Ghia. My parents very well might have ruined the 80s for me by not buying me that car. Never get sick of it.
3. The Graduate. It never gets old. I notice new nuanced lines every time I watch it. Benjamin at the bottom of that pool...doesn't everyone feel like Benjamin at the bottom of the pool half the time?
4. Amelie. Greatest film ever maybe. So gorgeous, so oddly uplifting. Makes me want to live in Paris and you could even watch it with the sound off and it would satisfy over and over and over, but with the sound on and the Yan Tiersen soundtrack, you can't go wrong.

Four places I’ve lived:

Rexburg Idaho
West Yellowstone Montana
Salt Lake City Utah
Charlottesville Virginia

(that's not an all inclusive list but that's 4)

4 TV shows I've loved:

BEWITCHED!
6 Feet Under!
Brady Bunch
The Office

Four places I’ve vacationed:

Tough to list just four but
1. London/Scotland
2. Rocky Point Mexico
3. San Francisco California
4. Disneyland

Four of my favorite dishes:

Pastas - especially Farfalle With Chicken from Cheesecake Factory

My own fried chicken

Panda Orange Chicken

Kiddy cereals...esp, Captain Crunch, Apple Jacks & Honey Smacks with skim milk!

Four sites I visit daily:

Ebay
Flickr
Mindsay (secretive lair of JC fans)
Go Fug Yourself

Four places I would rather be right now:

Vegas baby (preferably the spa at the Mandalay)

On a warm beach, white clean sand, diet coke at hand, licorice, bad magazines, good books, comfy chair, cool clean ocean water to dip in whenever I feel like it.

Bed, sound asleep having really great, non-anxiety dreams.

London, just exploring.

4 Books I highly recommend:

1. Life of Pi

2. Catcher in the Rye (and if you come back and tell me you didn't like it I will probably not ever see you in the same light ever again, also you have to at least imagine that you're about 19 while you're reading it)

3. To Kill A Mockingbird

4. The Bell Jar

Random Chess Thoughts

So I’m at this chess tournament thing for Brennan. And we’ve never done this before. And it’s exactly like I thought it would be. Like on searching for Bobby Fischer. All these kids, in a room, with signs on the windows telling the parents to stay back. I’m looking around at all these kids and their parents and this is a totally different set of kids and parents than the ones that you see at the Basketball games or the baseball games - things like that. Those parents always make me feel nerdy. Like I don’t really fit in, and they’re all in their team tshirts and yelling and screaming and telling their kids what to do and I’m always just sort of observing, and quietly, in my head, praying for my child and praying he will do the best he can and just nervous. Too nervous to chit chat with the other parents and then you get the looks. Looks like “she’s the one whose kid is making us loose”. Becuase quite frankly none of my kids have ever been very good at sports. And you sign them up for all these teams when they are young because you want to give them a shot and see if they have any aptitude and because they beg to do it. But then they’re on the team and it becomes painfully obvious that all these other parents are spending a lot of time teaching their kids the fundamentals of the game and all these other parents are obviously throwing a ball around in the back yard a whole lot with their kids and well...I was never any good at sports and I’m just not that mom. And quite frankly, Kirk has never really been that dad. So now I’m here. On my laptop, which seemed a novel idea, but actually the place is filled with parents on their laptops. Which I find amusing, because I’ve never seen a laptop at a baseball game. But here...to be honest, I am defintely not fitting in either. Because I’m not a big enough nerd or brainiac or whatever for this. These parents are actually practicing chess with their kids on portable chess sets before the tournament starts and they are all dressed for comfort. Which can mean a lot of different things but there are a lot of Tiva sandals and fleece jackets and occassionaly bad track suits. Once in a while there’s a mom with a Dooney and Bourke bag and carefully coiffed hair and expertly brown and blonde dye job who looks at her child like “how did I wind up with a nerdy kid like you?”. But I don’t really fit here either. Because, I don’t know, I’ve got on my black converse and my damaged jeans and a tshirt and levi jacket. These are the same black converse that Kurt Cobain was wearing when he committed suicide, or when Courtney had him killed, depending on which version you believe. And that’s just it, I’m pretty sure nobdy here is really up on the controversy of whether or not Courtney Love might have had Kurt Cobain killed because he was about to divorce her lipstick smeared drugged out ass. And I’m also pretty sure nobody here would care. So me and my obscure knowledge about where John Cusack is buying his latest apartment/penthouse and the ins and outs of the Seattle “Grunge Rock” scene’s beginnings are not really the norm here. To be honest, I’m not really sure they’re the norm anywhere - because frankly I’ve never been able to figure out just which kind of parent I am. I’m not really the cool parent who thinks underage drinking is just the norm and “fine with it - they’re going to start sometime” (these by the way are the same parents who freaked out when their kids rode their bikes without their bicycle helmets). And I’m also not the over-protective huvering type. I like to watch children challenge themselves and I don’t know, I just don’t have it in me to panic if my kid is riding his skateboard without his safety pads. But I’ll buy the safetypads. But I don’t have it in me to worry about the lot of things “normal” parents seem to worry about. So I don’t know what that says. I’m not the parent who wants my kids roaming the streets unsupervised but I’m also not the parent who freaks out to leave her nine year old home alone for an hour, if neccessary. As a parent I often feel an odd mixture of being over-involved in their lives and under-involved. Selfish and self-less at odds with each other all the time. But I’ll sit here for 4 hours while my kid plays chess, my butt on the hard pavement, typing this out on my keypad so I don’t really have to interact or talk to any of these other parents. So I guess I’m that parent.

There are teenagers who look like they just don’t quite know where they fit into society yet. Or maybe even where they will fit into society. And that’s interesting to watch. Because you just wonder, is this kid going to turn into the next Bill Gates or is this kid going to wind up in some sub managerial role in a small firm just content to enforce the “rules” of the office. Like Dwight on “The Office”. There is a group of five boys roaming around who are probably 13 or so and I just realized one of them is a girl. Her legs are shaped slightly differently from the boys and ilook freshly shaved, f you look really closely you can see that she has prettier softer features. Not like a pretty boy but like a girl who is trying to just hang with the guys. Her hair is the same length as all her guy friends, but all her guy friends have should or chin length hair. She’s wearing skater clothes, baggy sweatshirt, cutoff jean shorts and skater shoes in black. It’s so easy to miss that she’s a girl. She blends in so well. But not in that butchy tomboy girl sort of way, although I’m sure she considers herself a tomboy. But more in a, this is my comfort zone, kind of way. For now, for this little bit of time, I am a chess nerd. Later she might be a raving beauty. But for now, she hangs out with the guys and plays chess and probably skateboards. And I heard her make the comment “I should make a documentary called ‘The Freaks I Hang Out With’. Which made me smile.

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