Thursday, January 28, 2010

Thanks!

Well guys—sincere thanks to the few of you who have followed this blog regularly.


I don’t live anywhere cool and I don’t have any kids who aren't already being blogged about. Maybe someday if I do either of those things, I’ll bring my “personal” blog back to life, but for now I’m going to focus on A VW for Everybody and Books Fill My Mind.

Please come visit me at one or both of these blogs!

Friday, January 15, 2010

Emily Bear

A few nights ago I was practicing the piano and wanted to hear a recording of a particular song. I searched for it on my best friend YouTube and stumbled upon recordings by Emily Bear by whom I’m now totally captivated.

I’m not easily impressed by child prodigies as a lot of times they are kids who showed an early aptitude for music after which they were more or less forced to practice constantly, and as little kids, they can memorize like crazy. These kids play better and have a broader repertoire than most adults, but generally they lack emotion, creativity and general musicality (which is fine, hello—they are kids).

While Emily’s life does appear to revolve completely around being a piano prodigy, she is different in a few ways. A) She looks genuinely happy when she plays the piano. B) This kid writes music which possesses emotion, depth, and beautiful chord progressions. C) There is nothing mathematical about her playing. You can tell this stuff comes from her heart. She plays with real sensitivity and dynamics which as a child are very unique to her.

Enough of my talking, here’s a video of her playing one of her compositions. Enjoy.

(Oh, and when I heard her playing Doctor Gradus Ad Parnassum, I thought—oh, THAT’S what that song was supposed to sound like when I played it at age 17.)

Wednesday, January 13, 2010

The United States of Blah

America is great and everything, but we are so boring sometimes. I love how people in Asian cultures take time to make things artistic and cute. Take for example—the panda pig correction tape:


Photo from engrish.com

Also, one of my favorites—check out this vehicle’s interior.



Come one people, that is just fun! Are depression rates lower in Asia? I think I know why.

Thursday, December 31, 2009

%^&# 2009

In all honesty, we had a great year.

I feel like I should be all depressed about some of the stuff that happened in 2009. Maybe it is just that I’m heavily medicated or something, but really I’m pretty happy about the way the year went down.

I made a New Years resolution this year that I wouldn’t eat any doughnuts. This wasn’t so much in an effort to be healthy or lose weight or save money or anything logical like that, it was just that I wanted to make a resolution I could stick to and while brainstorming, I walked by a box of doughnuts and voila—the perfect New Years resolution!



Today holds my last chance to muck up my doughnut resolution and as a result, the cravings are coming in strong today. My mind is simply determined to make failure my destiny, but this year it is going to lose. Ha! Take that, brain! (Mmmm...doughnuts...only 15 more hours…)

Moving on to 2010 (I’m so excited to say twenty ten instead of twoooothoouuusssannndddddwhatever, we'll save so much time). Craig decided to join in with me in my—pick-an-attainable-and-somewhat-ridiculous-resolution—idea this year.

We had decided on not going to any movies at the movie theatre in 2010, but then we watched the Alice and Wonderland trailer and lost confidence in that plan. In light of that, right now, our resolution is pending, but I’ll be sure to keep you posted as soon as we are enlightened. I know, you’re waiting on pins and needles, right?

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Christmas Spirit


As we don’t have a tree up this year and the economy has kind of crunched our purchasing activities we have had a really tough time getting into the “Christmas spirit”.

I tried several things—listening to and performing Christmas music, making cookies, drinking lots of Abuelita, and incorporating winter smells into our house, but nothing really worked.

Then the following happened:

1) The ladies in my performing group invited me to participate in the gift exchange that I had bailed out of due to the aforementioned crunched purchasing activities.

2) Went to a Christmas party.

3) Then the big one—three of my co-workers, acquainted with the lack of Christmas décor in my house (due to it being staged), brought me a wonderful little silver tinsel tree and tiny colorful bulbs. Serious turning point.

4) Went to another Christmas party.

5) I worked on some gifts.


6) My grandpa (who had fallen down the stairs and broken his neck and spent 3 weeks in the ICU, 3 weeks in a long term acute center, and 4 weeks in a care center) went home!!


7) My brother (who I didn’t think was coming home for Christmas) will be home next Wednesday!

I guess the biggest thing I’ve learned is that the Christmas spirit seems to be a lot more about having people who care about you than I ever really understood before. Also, having the little tinsel tree on my desk really helps, but probably half of what makes me so happy about that is the fact that there were three people in my office who cared enough about me that they spent the time/money to bring me Christmas joy. I hope I never forget how I felt when they came up behind me and sang “We wish you a Merry Christmas” and I saw the tree. If I can remember that, then I’ll always be able to feel the Christmas spirit.

P.S. I’m entitled to write two cheesy posts devoid of cynicism twice per year. This is one.

Monday, December 7, 2009

Green Eggs--no seriously!

I always thought Dr. Seuss was just being goofy when he asked if “you like green eggs and ham” but did you know that some chickens really do lay green eggs?

Check it out!!



I love to eat farm fresh eggs but they are so astonishingly expensive at the grocery store. Turns out that one of Craig’s scouts raises chickens and sells the eggs for $2 per dozen. Totally worth it and totally green (pun intended).

Of all of the blogs on my daily blog roll, I think ours is about the only one who hasn’t posted anything about a Christmas tree or decorations.

Truth is that we’re trying to sell our house and it is staged which means that we’ve completely removed every ounce of personality from our house (except for our cat) and it has become Pottery Barn central—gag. Yes, I gag, because it looks nothing like “us” but actually it looks awesome. For some reason the decorator was not a fan of our Cosmo Kramer portrait or the large empty frame on our living room wall, or our Dia de los Muertos dolls…or even our piano for that matter, but I won on the piano.

Our house has its very own URL for your viewing pleasure. Enjoy.  

Monday, November 16, 2009

Art.

I’m a perfectionist (stupid 1st child syndrome). When I was in 2nd grade, we had an assignment in art class. I don’t exactly remember the specifics other than we were (as I understood it) supposed to find a picture in a magazine and then paint this picture (as best we could). I wasn’t exactly an artistic kid, but I did my best on the assignment and was pretty happy with the finished product. I showed it to my art teacher and she said “that wasn’t really what I had in mind”. I think I cried and then decided that I was not artistic and that was the end of my career as an artist.

About 6 months ago, I decided that it was about time I got over being offended by my 2nd grade art teacher and I was going to learn to be artistic. The internet is full of people who produce such amazing, peaceful, inspiring things and they have me enchanted. Unfortunately this doesn’t seem to be the kind of skill you can just decide to develop and voila, you’re an artist. I’ve been trying really hard, but I’m not sure that I’m progressing. (See my fully developed art skills here.)

One of the things I love about my husband it that he is such a “guy”. Between the two of us, we couldn’t paint our way through a halogen lit tunnel. The colors would clash, the figures would be unidentifiable, and we’d both sit down halfway through and decide that it was a stupid project and we should go eat pizza or something.

My mother-in-law made me a shirt for my birthday. This was really sweet of her and I wanted Craig to take a picture of me in the shirt so I could send a thank you card and she could see how well she estimated my size (I was pretty impressed). Craig and I had the following conversation yesterday morning.

Maryn: Will you please take a picture of me in this shirt?
Craig: Why?
Maryn: So I can send your mom a thank you card.
Craig: Oh, that’s nice of you. (He is so sweet.) (Retrieves the camera.) Smile.
Maryn: No, not in here, I want the picture to be more artistic.
Craig: okay, what do you mean?
Maryn: I dunno, you know how people have pretty pictures on their blogs? I need pretty stuff in the picture or something.
Craig: You’re pretty. (Aww, he is so sweet)
Maryn: I think I need to be holding something.
Craig: Okay, hold this Coke.
Maryn: Laughs. Okay, fine.

So, this was the picture we ended up taking. Craig did a great job—especially considering that a) he’s a boy and b) he has no idea what it is I’m asking him to produce something that is only defined in my own head.

I’m convinced that I need the following before I’ll be able to create an artistic photograph. 1) a 12.1 megapixel camera, 2) a Mac, 3) Photoshop, 4) an interior designer, 5) a chest full of vintage knitted pieces, 6) rainboots, 7) a personal trainer and 8) a weekly manicure. Alright 2nd grade art teacher, it is almost Christmas time. Pony up. *

*I feel really awkward joking about my 2nd grade art teacher since she died in a car accident. I’m not really trying to blame her for anything, I’m just screwing around like I always do. It is actually all my mom’s fault. :-)

Friday, November 13, 2009

Cruise Report


I try to keep this blog from being a) all about my cats and b) a photo journal. I wanted to write about our cruise though, so you’re gonna have to put up with a little photo journaling and next week you’re gonna have to hear about my cat (and yes, I know that gonna isn’t a word).

Our cruise started with a lovely bus ride to the port which I always love because it gives you a good overview of the port city. With a degree in urban planning, I like to pretend that I know a little about city development, suburbs, etc and I like to watch these things go by.

Since I live in a city with no big breathtaking bridges, I am obsessed with them and took about 20 pictures of this bridge. (Craig totally made fun of me.) I’ll just post the one which includes both the bridge and the cruise ship.

Here we are being cute in Cabo.

Cabo San Lucas was a beautiful port. We went scuba diving right next to the ship and the dive ship was outfitted with all of the gear so there was no long boat ride to the dive shop or to the dive site. Freaking awesome! There were sea turtles, hunting seals, a wrecked ship (still think that was orchestrated by the dive company), dolphins jumping in the ocean (that was in the morning before we got to Cabo, not while we were diving), and all of the pretty fish.

I loved Mazatlan because we went downtown instead of the tourist strip. I don’t think that Craig was too crazy about it, but I am a nut for culture and for old stuff, so I had one hell of a time looking at the old cathedral and shopping in the real deal Mexican grocery store. We also got to ride in one of these sweet little VW golf cart taxi cab things. I’m totally asking for one for Christmas. :-)

We decided to do a bike ride in Puerto Vallarta, which ended up being a lot of fun. Here we are at a little church. How quaint.

I think I’ll just leave you and your thoughts to come up with the story of this photo…

Okay, since Halloween is over, this was something at the distillery where we started our bike ride. I don’t know what it is, but I’m hoping that it has to do with the process of making tequila.

Craig and I go on cruises to have fun in the sun, but also to read…okay, we’re dorks, whatever. We always have to find our favorite reading spot, on the ship. This was it.

Comfy chairs, sodas, cookies, books, my favorite person, and peace and quiet. Oh yeah.

Friday, October 23, 2009

Here comes the sun...or perhaps the hurricane...

We're boarding this cat (spoiled rotten; but the alternative is to come home to a bird blood bath) and we're going on a cruise (tomorrow)! I'm so excited (wahoo!) to get out of dodge with my honey (husband of my dreams) and take a week to decompress. (Plus, they have cheese plates on cruise ships! I love cheese!)

Friday, October 16, 2009

Doesn't hurt to ask...or does it?

You know the phrase “it never hurts to ask”? Do people really mean that? I, for one, think that it does hurt to ask sometimes. Sometimes people say “no” and that can be unpleasant for both the inquisitor and the respondent.

Now maybe it just hurts me because I’m kind of a highly sensitive person, but I really wish people would start saying something more like: “if you want to increase the probability of getting what you want, perhaps you should ask—even if it crushes your heart into millions of pieces and makes you realize that everyone hates you”. See, isn’t that a bit more realistic?

(Okay, don’t worry, my heart has not been crushed into millions of pieces and I do have friends, this phrase has just been running through my head and pestering me.)