instadump

word count: 37,228

happy halloween!! (quick picture post)

i eventually learned this sign on my cubicle is actually intended for our accounting director whose office is through the adjacent doorway... or so they tell me...

are we having fun yet?

my office gets pretty enthusiastic about seasonal decor.

my grandma and her cowgirl neighbor!

bits and pieces

i couldn't really sleep last night, which made me expect today to be dreadful.  quite the opposite, i'm rather punch drunk and giddy for the following reasons:

due to packing, i have tons of clean laundry right now.

steve comes home tonight!

the guy who wolf whistled me this morning definitely appeared to live inside of a building (ok giddy might be a bit much to say about this one, but it's a step up from getting accosted by homeless men).

and.....

i have successfully surpassed the 10,000 word milestone with my draft!

that one, for me, is really big.  if you need a little perspective that's 39 word doc pages with 1" margins double spaced times new roman size 12.

of course, this also means i'm only about 1/5 of the way there, but it's pretty exciting when you have the opportunity to surprise yourself.  given my track record of false starts i honestly expected to peter out somewhere around nine pages.  i cannot express how glad i am that i decided to keep myself honest by posting my word count to this blog (thank you everyone who encouraged me to do this).

the thing i've learned about creativity so far is that, even though the work is more fun, it's still work.  inspiration isn't all it's chalked up to be.  creativity is a skill, but a creative project is a task and it requires the same mundane, frustrating, laborious crap that i see everyday in the workplace.  realizing this, makes the task at hand seem a lot more manageable.  if i can plug away at databasing building stats, i can definitely plug away at a novel.

"Fiction is one of the few experiences where loneliness can be both confronted and relieved. Drugs, movies where stuff blows up, loud parties -- all these chase away loneliness by making me forget my name's Dave and I live in a one-by-one box of bone no other party can penetrate or know. Fiction, poetry, music, really deep serious sex, and, in various ways, religion -- these are the places (for me) where loneliness is countenanced, stared down, transfigured, treated." - david foster wallace

"No kid can do whatever they want to do. It's a total lie, but they have the right to try to do whatever they want to do. That's their right, to aim to do whatever they want to do. And you know what? Life might kick you in the face, life might not let you do what you want to do, but [my grandparents] always taught me that, you know, 'Go for it! Yeah, you wanna do that? Go for it, son, you've gotta do it.'" - james mcavoy

happy giddy tuesday, folks!

word count: 11,329

giveaway winners and evidence we still exist

first off:  congratulations to lisa at making life's lemons and rebecca at girl about chelts for winning the giveaway!  links to their sites will be featured in the sidebar for the next month!  they are both delightful ladies whose blogs i read regularly.  you should definitely head on over and see what they are up to!

we are still trucking away through summer over here.  the beastly heat has finally subsided a little, which should be helpful in preventing that face-melting look i've become used to wearing at work.  currently we are most preoccupied with the upcoming move (you mean i have to do laundry and pack?  boo).  but it is still terribly exciting.  i'm already fantasizing about the christmas decor options we have now that we get a fireplace and mantle!

on the whole lately, things are a tiny bit dreary.  i don't often like to admit how much living in ann arbor can be a huge drag.  i think it is a bit childish to blame your feelings and frustrations on the place where you live.  it's a bit of the "grass is greener" mentality, which i refuse to subscribe to, and it just reminds me far too much of being an angsty high schooler spewing that line "if only i could get out of this town."

that said, southeast michigan has been a bit of a turd lately.  it's something i often notice during summer.  it's a cruel paradox that my favorite season has to be the one that totally buzzkills the city i live in.

i'm tired of settling for a rocky river and graffitied bridges, when i grew up minutes away from lake michigan.

i'm tired of living in a city whose roads were designed for about a quarter of the population.

i'm tired of how campus turns into a shadow of itself when the students leave.

i'm tired of how stupid slow-walking tourists fill in the blanks that the students left.

i'm tired of how it takes 25 minutes to drive the 1.2 miles between my home and my work.

i'm tired of the ridiculous metro detroit highway system.

i'm tired of how expensive it is to do anything besides eat counter food and take walks outside.

routine is one of those things that really wears me down.

maybe i should try reading eckhart tolle.  either way steve and i made a pact to move out of michigan by a certain date (spoiler alert: it's not very soon).  nothing against momma mitten (we totally think she's the bees knees) but we are only going to be young and childless for so many more years, and we'd both be letting ourselves down if we didn't explore a little bit more.

happy hump day everyone!

word count: 7,471

chicago saturday

on saturday steve and i got up early and drove to chicago for an adventure at the field museum and a walk through millennium park.  we ended up doing a lot more trucking around than we planned on, but the weather was beautiful and we had an absolutely amazing time.  expect more photos (i was a crazy camera lady), but for now here's a little iphonery:

omg narwhals!!

steve in egypt.

rawr!!!

there was a whole ton of taxidermy at the field museum.

seriously though, lots of taxidermy.

the happiest dead bear.

taking pictures in the bean!

thanks for being fun chicago!

hope everybody had as great a weekend as we did!

word count: 2,645

vsco grid

if you love mobile photography like i do (wait you didn't know that yet?) you should probably already be familiar with vsco cam.  it is an app with some of the easiest and most essential editing tools:  everyone digs it because it is awesome.  there is a good chance you've seen some of my vsco edited pictures on instagram.  the app allows seamless sharing with a lot of other social networks.  it's really just tops if you love snapping iphone photos as much as i do.

previously a $0.99 app, vsco is now free and recently announced their new visual portfolio platform vsco grid.  it is less focused on social networking than instagram and provides a simple, clean mobile photography portfolio for vsco users.  right now, your vsco grid can only be created by request to promote "long term sustainability" of the function.  this morning, my grid request was confirmed by vsco and i feel very lucky to be one of the early users of the new function!

i'm having an absolute blast with it so far and i would love to check out your vsco grid if you're already a part of it.  if not i highly recommend checking it out!

view my grid at:

becky.vsco.co

iphonery and more

i promise one of these days i'll post something besides rehashed instagram (though one of the photos above isn't from instagram... if you follow me you might know which one).

so as you can probably tell life lately has been a lot about animals, weather, and highly nutritious food.  i've also fallen head over heels in love with those flip flops in the second row.  if you're still looking for a cute and comfy pair i would more than recommend them... they are available here.

one of the highlights of our week unfortunately had to go unphotographed because my camera is not waterproof.  on wednesday evening a group of our friends all took an inner-tube float down the huron river.  it is probably one of our new favorite things to do, and hopefully i can find some way to document it.  there are lots of little waterfalls to slide down, which leave nobody dry at the bottom.  perhaps my holga could survive in a plastic bag?

and on a less related note (hey i skipped blogging yesterday because i had work deadlines... brevity is not my skill) i'm going to ask my readers for a bit of advice.

long haired ladies:  how do you live?

one of the things many people don't know is that my hair is currently the longest it has ever been in my entire life.  historically i always kept it at more of a layered bob, but in february of 2010 i took the plunge and got a pixie.  it was quite fun and i really liked how it looked, but i perfer a bit of variety when styling my hair and found it very limiting... i haven't cut it since.  

i am planning on continuing to grow it out for probably one more year, but let me tell you it is driving me up the wall... it gets in your mouth when you eat... it gets in both your mouths when you kiss... it gets stuck underneath your own body when you lay down or sit back in a chair... it's maddening.

what do the rest of you long-haired ladies do?  what are the tricks of the trade?  do you swear by products or some perfect top knot for sleepy-time?  do you simply develop unfathomable amounts of patience?

let me know, if you have any tips to save what little is left of my sanity.  hope everyone is looking forward to as lovely a weekend as we are!