Description:
i've been tracking my adventures, arts & crafty and otherwise, since november 2002 and there's some really fun reads here! a little bit about me for you new readers out there:
hearts and laserbeams is the wacky good-times art and design of steph calvert. striving to always make others laugh, she teams up with robots, cupcakes, and stick people to show people art isn’t all about seriousness, missing ears, and deep thoughts; it can actually be tons of fun.
Contents:
beware the white t-shirt ambush!!!
so last week, josh got new white t-shirts. and he wasn't quite sure what to do with the old ones yet, like did he want to save em as rags or whatever, so he made a little pile of them on the bedroom floor.
they stayed there for a few days, and then i asked him about it - he mentioned "yeah, i'm not sure what i'm doing with that yet." and i can't tell you what the starting point was, but shortly thereafter we were in a huge snowball-fight style tshirt throwing frenzy! TSHIRTS EVERYWHERE!!!
since then, it's become a source of comedy and careful planning. on sunday, as i was leaving for patchwork at 7:45am and saying goodbye to josh, he snuggled down deeper under the covers and gloated a little about how nice and warm it was in bed.
and he got a faceful of shirts! he told me later "you know, i didn't do anything with those shirts when you left, they just stayed piled around my face cuz it made bed that much cozier."
curses, foiled again!
a favorite ambush is hiding around a corner with an armful of white tshirts, waiting for the other person to walk through the door - WHITE TSHIRTS!!!
last night, josh was getting his new work phone set up and i took his concentration as a golden opportunity for shenanigans:
this morning i woke up to being covered up, coroner style, in white tshirts.
i love my life.
we feel fine book update!
OMG guys! so in case you didn't know, a photo i posted on this very blog is getting published in the upcoming book "we feel fine: an almanac of human emotion".
you can read the whole story about how this happened by clicking here!
and you can read the original blog post they found my photo in here.
you can check out the preview of the book by clicking here, and can preorder a copy here.
i'm just a chock full of superexcited links! hooray!!!
hot air balloons and rocks
i've been thinkin a lot lately about hot air balloons and rocks, and how we all get to choose which one we are.
which one are you?
when bad stuff happens, do you deal with it, rise above it and move on, or sink into the depths and let it ruin everything from that point forward?
i try as much as i can to be a hot air balloon.
it's funny that i've been thinking about this a lot lately, and then on the drive in to work this morning i heard on npr that a movie's been made of push by sapphire. they named the movie precious, so be on the lookout.
i read push about 10 years ago, i'm not sure how i found it - i think it just looked like a badass book cover, which is how i tend to end up reading any of the books i don't previously know about. it's a semi-autobiographical story along the lines of i know why the caged bird sings - a story about an illiterate teen in new york from a seriously effed up family and all of the horrible aspects of her life. and how she eventually overcame it.
like a hot air balloon.
it is not the feel-good story of the year for sure, but it spoke volumes to me when i read it. i am really glad it got made into a movie, mostly because i'm not sure how many people know about the book and it's one of my favorite reads ever.
this was a bit of a serious post. tune in tomorrow, when we talk about the best way to sneak swear words into your graphic design projects!
hearts and laserbeams book report: confessions of a shopaholic
ok i picked this book up at the las vegas airport on the way home from... vegas! shocking! gayle and i went out there last summer for a few days and had a blasty - when we were heading home there were big chunks of time on the horizon and i had left omnivore's dilemma in my suitcase instead of throwing it in my purse.
honestly i picked this one because i knew it'd be an easy read, something i could read for a few hours on the way home and then put on a shelf until i'd finished omnivore, the kind of book where you could pick right back up where you left off like a month or two later and not feel lost because everything about reading it is just so easy. plus, i hadn't seen the movie yet and i always dig reading the book before seeing the movie. and with that, i give you:
hearts and laserbeams book report: confessions of a shopaholic by sophie kinsella
ok I LOVED THIS BOOK. super fun read, super fast read, and before you know it you're done reading! the main character rebecca is just so flighty and lighthearted, just la la la la la shop shop shop hooray!
but the weirdest thing started happening as i was reading this - while i was having the time of my life reading about her shoppy adventures, as a chick who's pretty non-shoppy and has lots of living paycheck to paycheck experience, this shopaholic girl was seriously stressing me out!! i'd be reading about her going deeper and deeper into debt, and throwing away late notices and my inner old-lady monologue would scream things like, "YOU'RE RUINING YOUR CREDIT RATING!"
which is a completely uncharacteristically absurd thing for me to think while reading anything. but seriously, girl was freaking me out. other things my brain screamed while i was having a grand ol' time reading this book:
omg you did not just lie on your resume and say you're fluent in finnish!! they're gonna check that!
omg you're poor why are you buying coffee at a coffee house every day! make that shit at home!
omg you did not just do that on your date what is your major malfunction!
omg no you did not just blow off the meeting with the bank when you're gonna start sorting your shit out!
basically, i think part of the fun reading this book was how much it made my practical side sweat. i'll probably pick up another one in the series sometime soon when i need another fluffy feel-good read! (me thinks that may be the case after my next book report selection, the bell jar by sylvia plath. yup, i'm back on the high school reading list stuff!
ratings:
hearts: 4 hearts - really fantastically fun read, well written and funny!
farts: 1 fart for keeping my inner monologue yelling at me throughout the 350 pages.
***
so it's giveaway time! you want my copy of confessions of a shopaholic to check out for yourself? it's easy, just leave a comment here about anything at all before monday, october 19 at midnight and you'll automatically be entered to win! one entry per person, suckas!
new garden pics and uhhh... we got chickens!
ok so some major updates in our backyard:
our carrots got harvested last weekend! they definitely could have stayed in the ground longer, but we figured they wouldn't get much longer since our planters are so shallow. so we'll save carrots for another time (or big deep pots next year!), but these little guys were totally tasty!
and our sugar snap peas have started kickin out some peas - they're so freaking good! it's kinda crazy how tall these plants have gotten. we're thinkin about planting some more so we can have peas to share with friends or freeze or something like that.
but the biggest news in our backyard last weekend was...
WE TOTALLY GOT CHICKENS!
the one on the left is martha stewart. an easter egger type chicken, she'll in theory lay eggs that are blue, green, pink or brown. it's a good thing. the one on the right is paula deen - they said she was a silkie but we're not so sure, we're thinking she may be a hybrid of some kind.
and yes. we named em that because they're the dirtiest birds around! if we'd gotten a third it woulda been named oprah.
they're old enough to be laying eggs, but nothing yet. we read they'll most likely start molting because of the new home and then start again when they're done molting, so we'll see what happens! they're super cute, we've let em run around the backyard and they are crazy wily when it comes to trying to get em back in the coop!
check out the full flickr set here, including pics of the sweet chicken coop josh's uncle donnie helped us build!
hearts and laserbeams book report: the omnivore's dilemma
ok so you know how i go back and forth in my book reports - i'll do some books that are classic high school reading list pieces, some fun chick lit, some nonfiction brainy stuff...
after reading ya ya's in bloom, which i loved by the way, i really was needing something a little more thinky if ya know what i mean. i'd heard from a few peeps that omnivore's dilemma was good so i made that the next read on my list. (i think it's interesting to note that this book was such an intellectual read that i went right back to the other end of the spectrum afterwards and am now reading sophie kinsella's confessions of a shopaholic.)
hearts and laserbeams book report: the omnivore's dilemma: a natural history of four meals by michael pollan
so the omnivore's dilemma the title refers to, it basically is people have so many choices in food we don't know what the hell to eat anymore. food overload. i mean there's more to it than that, but that's the general idea.
if you're into food this book is for you. it basically follows four different food chains from start to finish, with finish always ending up as your mouth. he looks at corn, cows (both commercial and grain fed), and the hunting and gathering lifestyle. and this whole book pretty much makes you want to curl up on your couch and never buy anything from a grocery store ever again.
and it makes you start thinking about effed up the system is.
here's one of the big things i took away from this book, something that bugs the shit out of me:
farm subsidies are given to farmers because they can't sell enough crops to pay their bills. they can't sell enough crops because prices are too low. in an effort to make more money the only thing to do is grow more crops. which equals an even higher market surplus and even lower prices.
there's a huge corn surplus, and every day They (whoever they are) finds more ways to shove it down our throats. one way is to process it so it's kinda corn-flaky and feed it to cows. sounds like a great idea, corn fed cows are supposed to be real tasty. problem is it's a myth; cows aren't even supposed to eat corn and get sick from that diet. so farms have to drug up the cows with antibiotics to keep from getting sick.
another way the corn surplus is shoved down our throats is through value meals at fast food places. you don't need that much food. you don't need a 5 gallon paintbucket full of soda or a 12 pound hamburger. stop it.
basically i got really angry at these parts of the book, and then in the following chapters it talks about a farm that grows all kinds of crops and has all kinds of happy animals living on it in a perfect symbiotic system (thanks to the farmers help), and it made me want to run away to georgia and make all the food josh and i eat. those chapters made me so happy, i am not kidding you.
i loved the last section that was all about hunting and gathering, and i kinda wanna try catchin my own yeast to make bread with... i wonder what it would taste like?
and that's pretty much it - book about food and pretty non-biased but still very much an expose on the system. if you like brainy stuff, and long descriptions of different kinds of food totally turns you on then this book is for you the end!
ratings:
4 hearts: really good stuff to think about, and also it gave me some ideas josh and i can put into practice now
1 fart: it took me a really long time to read this - i'm a busy woman, dammit!
sorry i'm not giving away this copy, my buddy gayle already asked to read it when i was done - but stay tuned, i'll totally be doing a giveaway of my confessions of a shopaholic book.
we feel fine about getting published!!!
a while back (a LONG while back!) i had gotten an email from the website www.wefeelfine.org. their website is all about exploring emotions on the internets, and they had decided to create a book.
and they had discovered this blog post on the livejournal version of my blog, and could they use my middle finger picture in their book?
what's that you say? make my middle finger famous? YES PLEASE!!!
months and months and months went by, enough that i totally forgot about their exciting email. then yesterday i got another one from them, saying "hey sorry it's been so long since you've heard from us, your section of the book got cut but we liked it so much we found a way to put it back in - so you'll be in it!"
and there you have it! my middle finger will be in the book we feel fine, in stores december 1. you should probably go get a pre-order copy from amazon!
this morning's commute playlist, or you should check out these hot traxxxx!
lots of mornings on the way to work i'll hook up my ipod, pick a particular somethin' to listen to and that is it.
other mornings, i set the ipod to shuffle through my schizophrenic music library and pick some gems for me for the 40 mile drive - this morning's playlist was killer! your homework is to check out any of the songs you've never heard before:
1) "take me with u" by prince and the revolution
2) "happy rap" by junior senior
3) "talk dirty to me" by poison
4) "the other way of stopping" by the police
5) "rockabilly" by the mavericks
6) "like a virgin" by madonna
7) "interlude... the set up" by foxy brown
8) "fat bottomed girls" by queen
9) "she's automatic" by rancid
10) "won't get fooled again" by the who
11) "heaven must be missing an angel" by tavares
12) "only the lonely" by roy orbison
13) "dick lips" by blink 182
a quick thought for a monday evening...
i have quite a lot of times in my life where i am excited and happy about things that are going on.
and i am really fortunate and grateful for how freaking awesome my life and the people involved in it are.
T to the G to the I to the F y'all!!!
this weekend is gonna be jam-packed with awesomeness, here's what josh and i have on tap:
kickball championships on saturday - it's the last games of the season, and it's almost unnecessary to play the games because i know exactly how it's gonna turn out... there's 3 games being played. #1 top team will play the #4 bottom team, the #2 (us!) and the #3 team will play each other, and then the winners of those two games will play each other.
so basically, #1 team will win and we will win (cuz we've beat the #3 team twice before), then we'll play the #1 team and they will kill us because apparently they're amazing. but it'll be good times and there's gauranteed snacks!
after that josh gayle and i are gonna go to the sneak preview showing of whip it at the long beach towne center. i don't know if i've mentioned before... but i'm crazy about roller derby. if i'd discovered it like 10 years ago when i didn't have things like a sometimes-angry knee, and i had the money and time, i would so join a league! but alas, for all the reasons stated above, i must be content to sit and drink my beer from the sidelines.
SO EXCITED FOR THIS MOVIE! josh and i have been waiting for it to come out for months. and if you go to the sneak preview they're givin out free tshirts! they're showin it at more places than long beach town center, check out moviefone.com or fandango.com and you can find the theater near you!
also, sunday morning josh and i are starting a 4 week long sailing class - i don't know why this terrifies me... but i'm kinda freaked out by the idea of driving a boat. i'm pretty sure i know why, but it's a stupid reason so hopefully i'll be able to put that behind me and kick some watery ass!
and then mixed in there will be the usual weekend web design class homework and some writing for the next week's oc weekly blog posts. and painting a commission. aaaaaand what else. sleeping i hope! i definitely hope there'll be some sleeping in there.
like i said, this weekend's gonna be chock full of awesome! will hopefully get a post up this weekend with an update on our backyard garden - our plants have completely BLOWN UP!!!
fight for your right to carbs!
josh decided the other day he was going to start making ribbons out of spaghetti noodles to sell on etsy - to raise carb awareness!
concert fun and internetty news!
ok so last week josh and i went to see the killers play at the hollywood bowl, and it uberrocked!!!
i didn't realize until like a day before the show that the psychedelic furs were opening for them, and i was like uhhh that's cool. because it makes me wanna rummage through thrift store racks for pink things to shove in jenn's face while singing (badly) "PRETTYYYYY IN PIIIIIINNNNNNNK". i didn't realize at the time how amazing this one-two punch of musicness was gonna be!!
so we pretty much had the perfect concert experience - we drove up to hollywood early afternoon, got there before rush hour traffic had even begun. checked into the best western that's like 2 blocks from the bowl, and moseyed down to the hollywood/highland complex. it really kinda cracks me up how this place is billed as so hip and trendy and the oscars are held there, but really... it's just a fancy mall.
i'm not exaggerating. it's a mall. there's a hot topic. steps away from where they hold the oscar. it just cracks me up.
we were lucky! we were there the same day hot topic was having a q&a about that new jennifer's body movie, and i guess panic at the disco was gonna play. i didn't so much care about that, we were just there to gawk at celebs. so we hung out directly behind the sound booth, listening to them talk shit about everybody was awesome. and on the second level you could see celebs getting their pics snapped and doing interviews. saw adam brody from the oc, megan fox and diablo cody.
i don't know about you but i wanna party with diablo cody. she reminds me of my girl liz. i bet she rocks the karaoke stage!
anyhow, i found out after the fact that my old pal ed killmond from scad was there and thought he recognized me, and that is super awesome even though we didn't get a chance to say hi. hi, ed!
after we hung out there a bit, walked back to the hotel and packed up our snacks for the concert. i LOVE that you can bring your own snacks to the h-wood bowl. we brought enough for 20 people, but it was just me and josh... we may have overpacked. for certain shows you can't bring your own booze, and i declare shenanigans!
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