Okay I get it let me think I guess it's my turn

Current flings

fling (fleeng) n. 1. A brief sexual or romantic relationship. 

So.. like these: 

1.  Lupe circa 2007. Read: Lupe Fiasco's Food and Liquor

2.  e.l.f everything and I'm rolling in the $$$

3.  The thing my hair does when I don't brush it when I get out of the shower

4. Narnia-like Neuse River trails that are actually non-existent, but to C and me, are very much there and hike-able. 

5.  Freshly pierced ear cartlidge. (mm sounds hawt)

6. C's homemade guacamole. Goodness is just the first of too many words to describe. 

7. Bus lines. And all the friends I've been making each morning I refuse to make because I hate public transportation and will continue to walk on board with my no-drinks-allowed coffee drink blatantly in hand and sit down in my awful Bill-Cosby-sweater-like-carpet-coated bus seat keeping my sunglasses on and my earphones in until I am safely to the comfort and familiarity of the elevator in my lab building that talks to me like an old college friend. She says, "Which floor would you like to go to?" And I say "4th, please," and she says, "4th floor your highness" and it's like we're sophomores again. I don't take the sunglasses off or the earphones out until I stop to unlock the door to my lab. The whole thing of it makes you feel like you're Mila Kunis in Book of Eli.

8. The package of 4 chocolate chip muffins from the HT bakery of which I refused to look at the fat content, but did anyway and multiplied it by 3.5 and proceeded to nod my head like, good. That's just about how much I needed today.

What else I need today: for it to be over so I can get on with this LDOC of this godforsaken summer session that has taken 6 weeks longer than expected to arrive. 

Here's a song while we wait. R's favorite. haha

I'ma tell you 1 time

Here's me the day after my wreck before I left the apartment for the day. I couldn't stop busting out laughing about nothing until like lunch.  If you saw me you might have thought I was on drugs or something. I'm not! I'm just alive. And I'll tell you what, it's like the best drug ever. 

I'm about to be a little bit existential, so don't mind this post, because I don't even know if it will make sense in words. But it was the weirdest thing, waking up. One of my doctors said I'd be in pain for 72 hours and even prescribed me painkillers. Not that I got any injuries at all, but because of all the muscle tension during the flipping, I was ready to wake up very sore. But it wasn't like that.  It was different. For that very first moment entering consciousness, I wasn't anywhere. I was awake, but I wasn't my body in my bed. I was just like a brain somewhere in time and space.  I wasn't thinking about anything, I didn't feel anything physically or emotionally. I was just existing. 

And just that, that pure existence, was perfect.  

Maybe that's what heaven's like. 

The whole everything of the wreck is such a personal experience, it almost seems removed from me, myself.  Perhaps because we live such a public lives on blogs and Instagram and Twitter and Facebook, when something so drastic happens to you, it seems like it should go right up on the digital timeline of your life, like everything else.  (If it doesn't, doesn't it kind of make you feel like it never happened?) And I can do that, sure, but then I feel like that leaves something out.

By posting all the moments in our lives on those sites, we crave a published, permanent effect.  Something to look back on.  We tell virtually everyone that we want that part in our lives to forever be represented by that one moment- a photo taken with your phone, a status update, a perfectly constructed 140-character statement. I'm not saying that an Instagram picture can't be meaningful or a tweet can't speak from your heart; I bank on that to be true almost every time. What I'm saying is that when it comes down to retelling the truth, a nostalgic filter won't capture the shock.  A hundred well-meaning comments won't make it something to look back on. A couple re-tweets only take your words and deliver them further and further away from you.  

So, I don't think I can social media-ize my accident any more than I already have.  What I really wanted to say was that my wreck isn't going to be something to look back on.  It's really doing something to me, and I think for the better.  I have had so much fun these past 2 days and for no reason at all. It's like someone gave me a round 2 and I don't even know what to do with myself! Someone was like.. Ok, fine, you don't have to go yet, but you better start giving me a good reason why not.

I think it was God.
(!!!)

Hope you're all out doing everything you want to be doing. And if you're not, I hope everything you want to be doing is what you're doing.

Cheers/Evviva/הידד/Chok dee/ هتاف/to life!

Something for the Weekend

I'd like to take a second to talk about one of my favorite jewelry artists, Cindy Man Wai Chan, who's jewelry line, Dotoly, is cool as shit. It originally stole my heart with the precious elephant ring that clings to your finger like a baby koala. I shared the link to it in a post earlier this year, but because of my downright obsession with basically everything she creates, I decided it was about time to highlight Chan's treasures on here for round 2.  Also, because one of my alternate choices for classes at SACI is jewelry design. (I'm laughing at myself, too). 

Even if you're tired of me telling you to buy rings, you can't deny your heart melts at the mere sight of these guys-

1. For C


Sometimes C and I are the same person, but always we are our own spirit animals.  I don't know when we grew into our respective spirit animals it kind of happened right around the time months before animal jewelry became trendy. But every time I see something with a giraffe on it, I have to tell her.  If you and your best friend don't have spirit animals.... sucks.

2. For the Carolina girl 


The description says "mountain sheep" but I say Ram.  Wear this to all the football games in the fall for me.  I'll be sporting it in Florence and people will either think that I like sheep or that I am a UNC student. In Italy, probably the former.  Maybe I'll meet a shepherd.

3. Swamp Life 



It's actually Salt Life, but Gator fans think they're being cute. Speaking of college mascots, I couldn't leave out the other love of my life, K. My cousin goes to UF and makes orange and blue look better than Tebow. And that's saying something.  When we were younger, our families treated us to resort-like daycations every summer in the Everglades.  Plenty of sun sunburned earlobes that hurt so bad you have to hold wet napkins on them while you cry at the Steak n' Shake, sand sulfurous swamp mud, and tropical umbrella drinks Cokes we had to share with the snotty lips of our sweaty little brothers. I'm kidding, it was always pretty fun.  And we'd get alligator for lunch that we always felt so bad ass eating, but it really just tastes like chicken fingers. Shh!

4. "Snake"


This description doesn't have anything to do with these posts- which I think are really sexy- but I have a snake story. One August morning when C and I were visiting my grandparents' little bungalow in Florida, we went out (key word) to go surfing during a small hurricane. (I know, we're so cool.)  One of the other brave souls out there was a hot (duh) surfer, whose wild drug-dealing stories would be sure to get us to his hot tub party that night (what.. he's a surfer). But when I told my uncle about "how cool it was that he goes by "Snake" by his surfer friends!", we weren't allowed to talk to him anymore. I think C and I I won the naive-as-shit-boy-crazy award in my teen years.

5.  "Oh Fifty!"


If you know me in real life, you know that I actually can't stand the Fifty Shades books.  Despise isn't even the word.  Really bad literature (not news to anyone) and Christian might be hot but he strips a smart girl of her freedom, personality and..don't want to ruin it for anyone but.. future.  Ok I'm done. But since it is a really popular series and so many women do enjoy it, I think it'd be kind of hot to wear this necklace as a tribute to Ana  Miss Steele.

6. Princess 


Ending on a good note. I love these posts.  Since it's summer, I've been trying to color-up my normally neutral wardrobe and I'm thinking these would do just that with this [neutral] cotton number I recently ordered from American Apparel. Not telling which one. For Italy, I tell my mom.

...no. For this weekend. 

Seems like everywhere I go, the more I see, the less I know

Between midnight moscato and instant grits in blue cups and pizza hut delivery boys taking their shirts off and wearing them as turbans, I came across this Blake photo shoot on BNQT.com .

I then proceeded to update my *matching* cover photo and twitter background with one gorgeous black and white picture that encompasses everything I want for my own black and white prints in this photo class I'm taking: grayscale, darks, lights, composition, style. Blake Lively. Men in wetsuits. 

Here it is so that you don't have to go to my profile on your laptop wherever you are to see it and look like you're stalking me.  In case you don't already do.

This photo class is seriously affecting me, and I think it has to do with the chemicals soaking my brain each day more than anything I've actually learned.  Leaving the photo lab last night, I found myself critiquing the outdoor darkness and its perfection.  That grayscale! The darks, the lights! That tonality! Look how the edges are burned just so! I find myself looking at real life and seeing it as millions of photos, my surroundings a series of negatives my head develops in seconds. Why am I doing that? Isn't the purpose of photography to take a negative and develop it to appear as close to reality as possible? 

And here I am doing the opposite, just wanting my reality to freeze so I can take it with me in all its sharp and tonal perfection.  I think maybe I'm starting to realize the disparity between my prints and good prints.  Good prints mimic this perfection of reality. My prints just don't capture it.  

Yet, that is. Will they by the end of the semester? Yes.  If it takes 15 more 15-hour sessions in the darkroom. Yes. 


It's the reality of that photo up there that I crave. It's like magic. And I'm not giving up until I get it.   

Friday the 14th

My phone fell in the toilet this morning and it doesn't work anymore. Hoping the old bag o' rice trick might do something, but only because it's a lot of money out the window.  As far as being incommunicado, I wish I cared more. I kind of like it.

In other unlucky/lucky news:

My nail polish is chipping/ I'm excited for the new mango color I got recently called Sunny Side Up. Hopefully that name will resonate in other areas of my life.
I got pulled over today for not stopping at a stop sign in my neighborhood/ I didn't get a ticket and he did get a number.Weird being old enough to be the in the same age range as a cop. #adultlife
There's good deli meat in the fridge but no bread/ that's what hot British apartment neighbors are for.
The iPhone's on vacation in Rice land/ little brother was all too eager to show me all the cool features of a recycled "atrix" he's repaired [he does this for fun] and updated with Android technology. It's way better than your iPhone, Shan, I promise. This is sweet, see? I'd be happier actually.  And lil bro, being the little brother he is made sure there were "a bunch of songs on there I need to check out." Sweet.
I have so much work to do/ I just can't find it in me to stress out about it.

Love this from Time's Lightbox

Anotha day anotha dolla

Things to try:

1. That song. We're so sure you'll be satisfied, we're including a full money-back guarantee if you're not.


2. Lemon ginseng green tea. I wanted to Instagram it to tell you to try it, but a certain little bird once told me girls always Instagram pictures of their drinks and I wanted to prove him wrong.


3. This flavor of Organix shampoo and conditioner.  I tried it recently in my friend's shower and almost ate my hair for lunch it smelled so good. I figured this couldn't be healthy so I went out and got my own bottles and some lunch food.


4.  Tostitos scoop style with sour cream and avocado. So you take the chip and dunk dip it in sour cream (I have to buy the lite kind because I have zero sour cream self control) and place a piece of avocado in the middle. Eat it after breakfast, before lunch, after lunch, before dinner, during dinner, after dinner, after bars. I'm definitely about that life.

5.  These headphones. My big sis hooks me up like an L.A. queen. Some people text eachother to keep in touch. We send eachother trendy merchandise.  Is eachother not a word? It keeps underlining it in red. And by eachother I mean her to me. She's the trendy one.

6. Look up birthday flights to Florence. (C, that one's for you.)


7. Make it through the day without singing the ooo la la part of that Foster the People song up there to yourself at least once.

Savages

I think of this movie as my religion. Really speaks my language. Critics think it's all style and no substance. I think it balances the two like cheese and ketchup on a good burger.  Both style and substance equally hit home for me.

You need to see it.

Photo source

Taking pictures of strangers and being cool about it

For my second project in this photo class, we have to present 10 portraits of strangers.  That means you have to take about 100 pictures to really get a good 10, and if you've ever tried to talk to 100 strangers in 1 week you'd understand how awkward and creepy this task really is.  I had it easy at the beach over the 4th of July, because everyone's drunk and wanting their picture taken and about my age anyway, so those shots were quick steals.  Then I got home and still needed more pictures, so not really having a plan or any idea how I was going to pull this off, I ventured out to Franklin.  I figured if those gay rights people or save-the-tigers people in t shirts could make conversation with random people, I could, too.   And about half a roll into it, I realized I really actually could.

Sneak into your roommates bedroom while her and her stranger are still sleeping

Here are my secrets:

1. Introduce yourself as a photography student
This provides every explanation needed for why you're in a hair salon with a '93 Nikon around your neck and a diaper-bag-like case overflowing with film canisters over your shoulder.

2. Mention that this person is actually exactly the kind of person you were searching for.
She'll beam at you like she is the chosen one.  He'll think you're hitting on him.  Either way, they'll think they're models and cooperate. Win-win.

3.  Talk.
Wait for them to pose and it will be less awkward, but click away while you talk to them and you'll get way funnier pictures

4. Joke around
Say something like, "hey, guess we're not strangers anymore!" or "Wow, that's profile pic material!"

5. Thank them and leave like you've got somewhere to be
Makes you look more like a busy student rather than a sketchy street artist.  Pull out your iPhone as you walk away -if it's not already a habit- but don't look at the back of your camera like your checking out the pictures you just took because 1. your model stranger might ask to see them, and 2. Op, not a digital camera.

Overall, I had fun with it and met more people than I have Facebook friends.  I actually made Facebook friends.  And the time spent in the photo lab developing everything with my classmates was equally entertaining, getting to see all the shots they got.  My favorites are by this guy in my class whose pictures are all pretty girls shopping in Forever 21.  Suave, man, suave.

As weird as it was, you do end up with some amazing pictures and I have much respect to photographers who do this on a regular basis. That said, I hope I never have to do it again.

I love it, I love it when we cruisin' together

Ok don't you love those songs that make you want to throw a big party in your backyard and hang up little white lantern lights in the air just so you can hire a band to come play at your party. Don't know how else to explain it. I'd have mine in the backyard of my [future] house at the beach right around July 4th and my [future] good friends of Grouplove would come set up their stage and play for my guests. Around 8 pm, they'd play this:



And I'd start slow dancing with the cute guy that came and complimented the salsa I made in my new food processor.

There was a lot of beach house/boat/cook-out action this 4th of July (when is there not?), so that's why I was thinking of that.

Look, mama we made it:

Cheese, eggs and potatoes

We're always cheesin in pics because we're always in the middle of laughing too much. 

And always isn't even the word. 

Kimpa Vita

Read about this goddess of a woman here