wiggle room

sometimes, after all the hectic happenings (and the impending hecticness... this weekend is going to be a blurrr!), you need to work in some downtime. so we headed to the Blue Hills Reservation, just a hop, skip, and a jump outside of boston for some hiking. And much needed doggie time (sidenote: his energy is endless. I'm not kidding. after hiking up and down, over rocky terrain, and slippery roads, he was still bouncing.).

The hike was beautiful, even though the fall foliage promised wasn't as eventful — still plenty green last weekend! We sat by Houghton's Pond afterwards to guzzle the last bit of relaxation before heading home. Sunday was cold, drizzly, and we lost our soccer game. boo. hiss.

But with the Boston Latino Film Fest, Open Studios, and free music throughout, we'll be wishing for that drizzly day, I'm sure. shmoozing, no matter what the cause, is never as fun as one would hope...

a spoonful of sugar

before I met m, there was a long list of (un)official guidelines I was looking for in a partner... you know the type, must have: a sense of humor, a sense of adventure, confidence. nothing set in stone, mind you, but another one was exhibited last night when she convinced me to pull out my cello and play a little. just for fun. I whined. I was agitated. But it was nice sitting in our slightly muggy little living room playing whatever she pulled out of my music bag. So, I guess, another one would be: must challenge me and push me to do what's good for me. like eating vegetables or something.

anyway, it's been awhile since I've taken photos of my cello (Charlie, yes he has a name), but I do have one of me cleaning up a little on the sailboat. enjoy.

re: kristin's writers strike post-tv addiction

::not my house. duh::

somehow i feel inspired by kristin's blog, yesterday, "The Strike Rocks My World," wherein she finds she can now tear herself away from the small screen and enjoy the other fruits of living...

here are mine:
1. going out to dinner any time of night you want
2. laundry at the spanish laundromat, complete with awesome music to fold by
3. sewing/painting/getting my artsy side on
4. talking on the phone to friends far and wide
5. playing games
6. i second the movie outing
7. walking the pupster
8. planning out our new apartment

new apartment? well, really it's just the two floors above the one we're living in now. yes, you heard right. somehow our little hideway got sectioned off by the apartment gods into a studio (?!) and a two-floor taj mahal. so we're moving on up in a couple of months and the thought of a) actually having room to breath/work/relax and b) not having to rent a u-haul are making me ecstatic! oh and you can probably cross off number 2 up there because we'll actually have a frickin' washer and dryer. oh happy day.

time to figure out paint colors. i love it.

pregnancy pregnancy jiggety jig!

::Michael Cera and Ellen Page at the Toronto premier of JUNO::

It seems like the topic on everyone's lips these days, from celebrity baby bumps to the hottest indie flicks— pregnancy. Marie and I went to the latest offspring offshoot screening, Juno, last week. Awesome soundtrack, great story and the acting — cutthroat zingers delivered effortlessly by Ellen Page, and my favorite person in the whole movie, Allison Janney. Jason Bateman and Michael Cera never actually interact in the movie, but do seem to fit in a vehicle together, post their "Arrested Development" hijinks.

I do have to say, however, that I found the parental reaction to Juno's pregnancy to be a bit unrealistic... maybe it's just me, but I don't think most parents I knew in high school would take it as calmly if their daughter walked in preggers. but I'm sure that's just my midwestern upbringing talking. Another thing that bothered us was the insert of a Gibson guitar plug, not because we're guitar-hating neo revolutionaries, but because of Gibson's conservative stance on pregnancy, homosexuality, etc. and if we let it, the whole plot was being influenced by the Gibson agenda in our brains. I had no problem with Juno's eventual decision, but I had a sour taste in my mouth after the whole promo. Thoughts? Please.

BUT that doesn't mean you should have any sour/bitter tastes, because this flick is worth seeing (especially after the Love in the Time of Cholera drivel we sat through. shudder).

by any other name?

Poverty Jet Set: (page 6)

A group of people given to chronic traveling at the expense of long-term job stability or a permanent residence. Tend to have doomed and extremely expensive phone call relationships with people names Serge or Ilyana. Tend to discuss frequent-flyer programs at parties.


—Douglas Coupland's Generation X

Even though I'm not technically in the realm of generation x-ers, I think this is still pretty pertinent... thought I'd share the meaning behind my choice of url. AND because today is my friend Natalie's birthday and she read this awesome tome with me in college during our even awesome post-apocalyptic literature course. Where we also watched, coincidentally, Red Dawn.

one more reason...

::Lucy In the Field With Flowers::
Oil on canvas by Unknown
24" x 30"
Acquired from trash in Boston

...to love Boston. MOBA — the Museum of Bad Art. This place is on my wish list of visitations here in the greater beantown area. And the whole idea of the museum reminds me of a documentary we saw a month ago — My Kid Could Paint That — about the debacle surrounding 4-year-old Marla Olmsted. The doc not only addressed whether or not Marla could actually paint the works displayed under her name, but if what she was said to have created was actually ART. love it. love it. Personally, I'm not here to judge Marla (she's got enough to worry about) or art (plenty of awesome books/magazines/critics to do that). But it is interesting to jump into the whole debate and throw some opinions around.

For example, I recently got into a heated debate about when someone can be defined as an 'artist.' We had to actually call up a third party to ask their thoughts. This third party put in her two cents on putting it at, 'when a person creates art, they are an artist.' This same third party just told me two weekends ago that (and I quote), "Painting is dead." Which leads me to believe getting your MFA in New York is potentially hazardous to your health. Proceed with caution.
(*disclaimer: I've also known several others to get their mfa's in new york who've turned out fairly normal... of course it took a moment or two for them to snap out of their pretentious fog... it happens, I guess).

i made myself go...

because it looked like it might not be my cup of tea. You know, when you see a poster of Kevin Bacon and Marcia Gay Harden looking all sad and distraught, and the title of the movie seems uninspired (Rails & Ties? really?), it just puts me in a 'do I hafta?' mode. But, it was a free screening, which trumps all the other excuses bar none.

And... it was good! The acting wasn't contrived, the plot was believable and the sad parts didn't bother me. The night turned out well — slices of pizza from Emma's, watching a great movie with marie — actually making me forget that I'd waited for a half an hour in the cold for the bus to take me to Kendall... *sigh*

the weekend cannot come fast enough

in other news, here's George Dvorsky's blog about Dumbledore's 'outing.'

"Trust thyself only, and another shall not betray thee"

—Thomas Fuller (1608-1661)

lunch...

What a great weekend and beginning to the week... and I usually do not. like. mondays. Friday, our friend morgan came in town, and we of course headed to the north end for italian. Saturday and Sunday, marie and i took our very first sailing lessons. each day was distinctly different. Saturday = hot, muggy, with a very careful almost timid instructor. Sunday = cold, rainy, with an instructor who wasn't afraid to let marie heel the boat until water came in. exciting! Also in the list of firsts, we had our first soccer game sunday (with morgan as our cheering section) and we won... and last night i went to orchestra rehearsal in cambridge. (Later I picked the two wanderers up from their red sox game... they hiked around beantown yesterday until their feet fell off).

There's something about the weather getting cooler that equals cooking... I've been on a cooking kick partly because of that and also because marie's back home (contrary to whatever my sister might say, I like sharing).
since morgan is in town, we made these crazy delicious tomato tart things that went down nice and easy with morgan's homemade guacamole.
a few days ago for lunch, I made this pita pizza (Ingredients: pesto sauce, one sliced tomato, parma. cheese/mozarella. Heat it in the toaster oven/microwave until the cheese melts. eat.). deeelicious.

the divine gas

chiho aoshima, the divine gas

Last night, m. and I took a journey to the financial district in Boston, and then over to the ICA for free Thursday nights. The museum sits on the inner harbor, with views of Eastie, and the Tobin. It was our first trip down there together, and the buildings/water/art all served as inspiration (that word again!). The Philip-Lorca diCorcia exhibit was a mix and match of his previous showings and the Louise Bourgeois show spanned six decades of her work, but m. was not interested in this room's contents.

The first thing you see when you walk into the museum, is Chiho Aoshima's giant mural, The Divine Gas... the lines are so clean and the colors vivid, that at first you wonder, "is that really a mural of a giant tooting?" love a sense of humor in art.

soars through the air with the greatest of ease

Argentinean photographer Esteban Pastorino Díaz took this photo. He photographs landscapes using a kite with a camera mounted beneath it. It looks like a doll's house, with tiny clay people and plastic trees...

"The capacity to register time is, indeed, the most important aspect I wish to emphasize. This aspect becomes evident when temporality is distorted and I create a fiction of the extension of the photographic instant, and it is the extreme expansion of such instant that evidences this capacity."

This and about 11 other aerial photographers will be shown at TO FLY: Contemporary Aerial Photography from Sept. 7- Oct. 28, 2007 at the Boston University Art Gallery.


photo by Marilyn Bridges