Snap Judgements

My roommate's boyfriend is not the flower buying kind. He had to be yelled at (not by her) before he consented to buy her flowers for valentine's day. My roommate is such a clever person. She bought herself flowers one day. Then she left them out on our kitchen table in a pretty vase. Boyfriend arrives. First question on his mind, where are these flowers from? Who are these flowers from? When he voices his concerns she tells him that she had to go out and buy herself flowers. The pictures above are of the flowers he brought her the next day.

My roommate has an adorable and evil dog. She refused to look straight at the camera. The instant I have a camera in hand she runs away.

The shoe section at Target has always been bad, but this may be a new low. My sister demonstrates the pain and sadness that Target is causing.

Actually, I don't like most of the clothing at Target at all. I love their housewares and office supplies, but their clothes all seem strategically designed to flatter no-one.

Weekend Adventures

Friday:

I went to dinner with a friend. The friend had car troubles and so we didn't get to our restaurant until 8:30 - and we still had to wait 20 minutes for a table.

Said friend always takes an eternity in the restroom. I was amusing myself by taking photos of the salt and pepper, when the waiter came up behind me and said, "Should I even ask?"

"It's probably better if you don't," I told him, but then he looked really concerned so I said it was for a photography project and that seemed to make it better. Of course there is no photography project (unless of course I entered it in the art expo to illustrate "The Glory of God"!) but it seemed less unsettling than the fact that I take photographs of everything.

Then the waiter asked me what happened to my friend. All waiters think it is their duty to comment on the length of my friend's absense, as if I don't realize how long it's been. This guy is the first one to say something to my friend. Awkward & unnessacery.

Saturday

I spent a good chunk of the day reading Od Magic, by Patricia McKillip. Excellent story. Actually, it kinda reminds me of some of the discussions Jon and I have had about the church, except for the church would have to be a school of magic and Jon would have to be a wizard and right, but there are similarities...really.

I went to RadioShack in the afternoon. My car speakers have started to die and I wanted to get a discman so I can still have tunes in the car. The salesgirl tried to sell me an MP3 player and looked at me like I was an idiot when I told her I like having the actual cds. Then she continued to try and sell me the MP3 player.

In the evening I went to see Bethy. We tried to find a Steak 'n' Shake and ended up getting lost because there were roads closed from flooding. We get lost every time I visit her. I cannot successfully navigate Ft. Wayne.

I tried to help her run some errands, but mostly we were met with disaster. I am pleased to say that we managed to get her some granola bars and some running shoes that do not look like they belong to our grandmother. The shoes were a happy coincidence. She wanted to look at Walmart and I made her go to Payless. Both places were duds. We happened to see a Shoe Carnival. Shoe Carnival is a weird little store with random sales that don't last very long at all.

Bethy found a pair of shoes she liked, but they were 20 bucks out of her price range. Well, I thought that since she managed to make her last pair hang on for five years that she deserved something she liked, so I offered to chip in the 20. In the end I chipped in nothing though, because there was some random five minute sale when we checked out and the shoes were 20 dollars off.

Sunday:

Church. Goofing Off. Church. We played charades in youth group. I wasn't thrilled.

One of the kids was taking pictures for photo team. I'm pretty sure they should warn the leaders before they do that...the other leaders seemed incredibly confused and thought the kid was just goofing off rather than on assignment.

.

Monday:

I was really tired and uncoordinated (I dropped everything) all day. And really mad at the advertisers for the number of times they changed their minds. But Robin and I went to Barnes & Noble to read and have some coffee and that was nice. I read another Patricia McKillip book, Winter Rose. I love Patricia McKillip's writing. She's amazing.

Six Hours

One of my favorite things about Etsy is that there's also something new. I really like these photographs from Six Hours.

Photographs & Russian Spies

At work we've been without internet for a few days. Since these few days have been our slow period, this left me trying to stretch about 20 minutes worth of work over an eight hour period with absolutely no distractions.

Yesterday was all foggy so I suggested I go take some photos around town, in hopes of getting something good for the cover. My boss could tell I didn't have enough to keep me busy, so out I went.

Typically when I see a good photo there is no where to stop and park, so mostly I drive around looking at good shots and then I park my car at the nearest store, church, or cult lodge. After that I have to hike along the side of the road and hope no one gets mad at me for taking pictures of their store, house, livestock, buggy, or weird getup.

So I spent a good two hours hiking through the Amish countryside. I did this in July too, but it's a lot more pleasant in the winter, even with the snow and slush and flash floods.

Later I went to take photos of science fair winners at the elementary school. The evil photographer was there, but she was chatty and friendly, which has never happened before.

Usually she's content to look at my poor little point and shoot camera with all the condescension of someone who is never without their SLR. She works for a real newspaper. You know, one that people pay a subscription for? My boss always says, "You work for a magazine," but honestly that isn't very comforting when it's newsprint and gets set out at stores for people to pick up a copy.

When I run into people a lot, but never talk to them, I tend to make up personal histories for them. It's not intentional, it just happens.

So the evil photographer is in her 30s, and she's from Russia. Her complete lack of accent doesn't really help this backstory, but for the purposes of my imagination we'll assume that she can drop the accent at will, like Hugh Laurie.

She's an American Citizen (obviously), but her job at the podunk newspaper is a front for the fact that she has ties to the underground soviets who are clinging to the hope of one day ressurecting thier movement. Because she has to be able to put thier plans into action at a moment's notice, she doesn't have a family or even many friends.

Much more entertaining than the more probable reality that she graduated from the local highschool, has 2.5 kids, is divorced, and recently took up pottery, where she met a swell guy.

The other photographer doesn't bother to notice that there are other photographers in the room. His superiority is made known by the number of lenses he has available for his camera, which must have cost several thousand dollars.

He's probably in his 30s too, he wears his hair in a trendy ponytale to let you know at a glance that he lives in a clean modern apartment, refuses own anything but a mac, and only listens to Indi bands. He probably heads eco-rallies in his spare time. And dreams of moving to New York where he will expose the impoverished American's condition a la Upton Sinclair or Jack London.

This is the most probable reality there is for this guy. His life couldn't be anything else. There's no way he's married either, I'm guessing he has some immigrant girlfriend who speaks limited English and hopes to one day get married, but knows the photographer will never commit.

Saturday:
The roommate at I got up at an extremely unreasonable hour and went shopping in our PJs. Every year in Amish-Land there is a massive sale available only to those willing to crawl out of bed at 4 am and go shopping in their nightwear. It's entirely Robin's fault that we were part of that crowd. The best part was getting my amazing mango-danish-panini. So good.

I went back to bed at 8:30 and slept till 11:30.

Sunday:
Of course I watched the Super Bowl. I love watching the Super Bowl commercials, but unfortunately there were a lot of people talking so I didn't hear most of them. They didn't look that amazing though, unfortunately.

Normally I don't pay any attention to the game, but this year I had a running commentary by Katie and that made it a lot more interesting. I was even excited when the Giants won!

Erica and...her husband, whose name I do not recall, brought their kids. And to be perfectly honest my first thought was, "Great. Children." I tend to not enjoy kids until they're at least in the third grade, but Erica's kids are under five and pretty darn adorable. Even the baby who insisted that my purse actually belonged to her.

The oldest (whose name I also do not recall) wanted to know why I was drawing and could he draw too? I had to give him a piece of paper and a pencil. If I can't make it through the superbowl without a little doodling, how can I expect a five year old to? So then Kaitlyn (?) the middle kid, wanted to draw too, and I ended up just grabbing another notebook for them.

One of the many reasons why I dislike small children is that when drawing is involved they inevitably say, "I can't draw that, you do it for me!" Of course they can't draw it, they're four, their lists of accomplishments include standing upright and using the toilet. My actual, more kosher, but still wantonly harsh, response is that I couldn't draw that way when I was four either. If they practice hard they're be able to draw it when they're as old as me. It's mean, think about it.

However, I enjoyed Erica's two oldest, because neither of them did that. The boy just drew whatever he wanted and by the end told me he wasn't going to tear his last picture out of the book because the next drawing would be just good like mine and the girl asked me to show her and then gleefully made scratches that vaugely resembled mine. She was so spyched and adorably unaware of the disparity between our drawings.

Monday:
At work the internet is down and has been since Friday. There was very little actual work to do, so I had to make some up. Mostly I made clip art. It's a little tiring after a while.

Then I drove home in the ridiculous fog.

Seasons

In the summer I think that no other season can be so beautiful. But fall always amazes me and when it's fall I think fall must, must have the best colors. Normally I'm not a winter person, but this year for some reason I think it might be the prettiest season of all. And it's kind of nice to be able to enjoy winter too.. .

My Day In Pictures

Ok - not really, but these are the pictures I took today.