War Horse

Before Christmas I saw an advertisement for the movie "War Horse". I remember turning to my sister and saying, "I wonder if I'm going to see that movie." There was something about it that kind of appealed to me even though it's pretty much the exact opposite of any movie I would normally see.

Well, see it, I did. Yesterday, to be precise. It was a very emotional movie. Luckily I was able to see it through a light hearted lens - literally. I bought a silly lens yesterday at the Detroit Institute of Art. My friend and I purposely sat in the back row of the movie theater so I could try it out on the movie. Don't worry, I didn't film the movie, use a flash, or have the sound on. I only occasionally took a picture that looked like this picture of the War Horse (right) and his best friend. (I added the heart later.)

BFFs

War Horse was pretty good. I give it 6 neighs (out of ten). I'd give it more except it was sad. War Horse had to go through a lot, and saw a lot of things I'm sure he'd rather forget. As far as animals movies go, it was much sadder than Babe, and even sadder than Free Willy, as seen on this illustration I made (I was told my whale didn't look right, but personally I think I nailed it):

All three animals had to go through a lot, but I think War Horse definitely had it the worst.

Babe: Had to learn how to herd sheep, make friends, and get the farmer to dance (which was pretty much the most emotional scene in movie history).

Free Willy: Had to teach a boy to love, deal with kids tapping on his aquarium without totally losing it, then jump over a breakwater to freedom. And didn't he also have to go through a car wash?

War Horse: I really don't want to say what he went through because it was too awful. But suffice it to say, he'll never be the same.

Throughout the movie I just kept repeating in my head, "no animals were harmed in the filming of this movie" because it's not easy to see animals suffer in any movie. Remember when a goose made fun of Babe? Heartbreaking.*

If you want to see War Horse, see it. Just know, it's sadder than Babe as far as animal movies are concerned.

*I don't remember if that actually happened but I wouldn't be surprised if it did.

Wednesday Thoughts

Mullet J Lo is the best J Lo

Today I did one of my favorite things - went to the hair salon and got my hair done. Going to the hair salon isn't just about beautifying though - it's about so much more. Like:

1. Catching up on my celebrity gossip. I read a People magazine from cover to cover today. I know who pulled off what outfit and who didn't, I know who Zach Galifianakis is (kind of), I know what jeans look good for my body type (actually, I just skimmed that one), and I know all about J Lo's divorce (which made me sad).

I have a secret confession about J Lo. I like her as (wait for it...) an actress. Or rather, I like her as an actress in Enough. If you haven't seen that movie, you have to! It's so good! Oh, and I like her in The Wedding Planner too. But that's it. And Selena. But that's all. She wasn't bad in Maid in Manhattan. That's it though. For real. Was she in any other movies?

2. Getting my hair shampooed is another reason I love going to the salon. What's better? Getting your hair shampooed (with a good scalp massage), or getting a back massage? Correct answer: scalp massage/shampoo. Heavenly.

3. Catching up on gossip with my hair stylist.

4. Looking fabulous.

In conclusion, I'm happy tonight and my hair looks better than it ever does when I style it myself.

In other Wednesday Thoughts, every now and then I hear something that creates a lot of imagery in my mind, like "BRAINS" - the clinic in Grand Rapids that inspired so many drawings from me awhile back. This week inspiration struck again. This time it was from something Congressman Emanuel Cleaver of the Congressional Black Caucus said. I think you know what I am referring to - when he called the debt ceiling deal a "sugar coated satan sandwich."

A sugar coated satan sandwich. I mean, what is that?! Without getting into the politics of it all (I think we've all had enough with the debt ceiling), I'll tell you what it could be: Or rather, show you:

a surprise in the middle!

With fries on the side

Happy Wednesday!

Wednesday Thoughts

It's so hot and humid. So hot and humid. The cicadas are buzzing loudly which seems to make the air feel even hotter. The cicada buzz is how you know you're in the dog days of summer. Not that I'm complaining. I'll take summer over winter every day. I'm just saying...  it's hot.

All I could think about yesterday was the water park and how much I needed its cooling powers. So I contacted my friend Sarah and asked if she'd meet me after work to head over to the water park with me. She agreed and my life was complete.

First on the agenda was the lazy river. Sarah mentioned that she usually does the mature thing and avoids the part of the river with the over head water dumping/cooling devices, like the buckets below (this is me - I promise I wasn't nude, but it's hard to draw a bathing suit on a stick figure). I couldn't allow maturity today (it's too hot for maturity) so we headed into the fun section of the lazy river:

From there, we scurried over to the water slide. Sarah was a little reluctant but a little positive peer pressure got her on my side (it wasn't that hard to persuade her, really). There were two water slides available - one where you sit on an inner tube and one without. Inner tubes seemed to be the obvious choice, don't you think? I haven't been on a water slide in quite a long time and I forgot about the rush you get as you go around the curves and fear going over the side. As my inner tube slid up the side of curves I was almost positive my short life was coming to an abrupt end:

After that adventure, the wave pool was the last thing on our list. With the temperatures near 100 degrees and the humidity stifling, the pool was packed. I couldn't stop laughing as we swam into the middle of the hoard of people. You couldn't even see the water for the inner tubes covering it! This is an overhead picture an airplane took of us:




the curvy lines are waves, not snakes



In conclusion, day at the water park: success!

What are you doing to survive the heat? 

Happy Wednesday!

Hair Story

One of the most evil things about facebook is how people looooove adding awful pictures from bad hair years. I get it - it's fun to catch up with friends and laugh about how funny we looked back in the day. The only problem is that all my facebook friends can also see those pictures and um, I'm single. You get what I'm saying? I don't need cute boys I'm crushing on seeing that my hair used to look like this. Exactly like this:

Big, frizzy, too blonde (dyed), with short bangs. I am NOT proud of this. But I'm starting to find it amusing. Slightly. Kinda.... Well, I'm getting there.

Yesterday I faced what I hate the most: a cute guy saw my senior picture! I don't know how to explain my hair back then. Does saying "it was the 90's" excuse me at all? Please? And I am not being humble or self deprecating when I say it was bad. It was for real bad.

Do you guys want to see it? Because it's Monday, and we all need a little laugh

 at the beginning of the week, here it is.

awesome.

Here's another picture of me a year or two later. Thank goodness 1-2 years after this I grew out my bangs and stopped dying my hair. I still highlight it, but my crazy haired days are mostly a thing of the past. (Except in the mornings.)

why i have a fake tatoo at a fake
luau, I have no idea.

Nowadays my hair pretty much take two forms: curly or straight (or something in between, but only by accident). Here are both looks:

(left: no make up last summer, right: Instagram from a few months ago)

Am I going to look back on these pictures years from now and be embarrassed? Probably. What was your worst hair style ever?

Wednesday Thoughts

I wish I wasn't such a passionate person. I was talking with someone the other day about what super power we would choose if we could pick one and I chose the ability to control my own emotions better. Living passionately is fun in some ways - I feel like I really experience everything I'm doing. But in other ways, it can make you feel all k!jcei(*(#L2kjkao%c. You know?

K, I'll calm down now.

So, I found an amazing bike path I never knew about, and it's very close to where I live! I've been going there nearly every evening around dusk and riding until it gets dark. The best part about this bike path is that it is home to hundreds of fireflies. I've never seen so many fireflies in one spot! It's honestly magical riding down this path with fireflies sparkling like crazy all around me.

It looks something like this.

In other Wednesday thoughts, happy (two days after) Independence Day! Did you have a good one? My weekend was a lot of fun. I went on a mini-road trip on Saturday. We had no real destination in mind, so we just kept driving until we hit Lake Michigan. We ended up in South Haven, which is a super cute town. The only regret I have for the day is that the Mystery Spot we drove by wasn't open yet and we never made it back. Now I'll never get to see a ball roll uphill!

Have any of you ever been to one of those Mystery Spots? It's one of my life goals to go to one. I just don't feel like my life will be complete until I see gravity defied.

Another thing I enjoyed about my weekend was learning how to make ice cream in a bag! So simple, yet so delicious! If you want the recipe, let me know! Exclamation points!

Happy people making ice cream

Happy Wednesday!

Road Trips

On Saturday, most of my family (my brother couldn't make it) met up together at the Scottish festival, in Alma, Michigan, which is a couple hours away. I rode with my sister, Heather, and her three kids. It was nice to catch up with Heather and of course, I love spending time with nieces and nephews. Plus, my youngest niece, Samantha, is in the most adorable phase where she says "me" instead of "I." This conversation really took place, as all three kids were claiming they "didn't do it," though I can't recall now what the "it" in question was:

Paige: "I didn't do it!"
Ethan" I didn't do it!"
Samantha: "Me no did it!"

Melts my heart every time.

Anyway, the ride up was overall uneventful, with nice conversation and the normal kid antics in the back seats. When we got to Alma and met up with everyone, my mom asked me, "So how was the ride up?" I replied, "Oh, it was fun. Ethan and Samantha got on each other's nerves, and Ethan asked 'are we there yet' about 50 times. Oh, and Paige threw up." In the retelling of the ride, I realized it hadn't been as relaxed as I'd thought. But really, it hadn't been bad. With a van full of kids, that stuff comes with the territory.

In thinking of this, I've been reminiscing about road trips I went on with my family when I was a kid. We went on at least one per summer, but usually more - a lot of them were to northern Michigan, camping in a borrowed camper trailer, or staying in a hotel or cottages. We drove to the upper peninsula to visit my uncle and his family, then to Ohio to visit them when they moved, then to Maine to visit them when they moved again! We went to South Carolina, and all the states in between. We basically drove all over this side of the country.

We always had a mini-van, but not the fancy kind with a DVD player, thank goodness. (I don't know why I say "thank goodness" except that for some reason I feel a DVD player would have taken away from the experience. I could be wrong though.) Instead we were loaded up with books, walkmen, blankets, flashlights, and snacks. We sang together, argued (probably) and pretty much had the time of our lives.

I drew a picture of us at Niagara Falls - in the cave you can go into to be behind the falls - but then later I was able to find some actual pictures from that trip for your viewing pleasure. (Though for the record, I think the drawing captures the experience pretty well on its own.)

I didn't realize we had our hoods up and weren't totally in a cave, but other than that,
my drawing was dead on. Please do not go back to my
drawing to find inconsistencies. Just trust me.

Pretty sure my fly is down in this picture, but I was too busy with
my lollipop to notice. Also, were my suspenders awesome,
or what!?

I loved family vacations, and have very fond memories of them. Every place we visited was so full of possibilities and my parents did a great job of taking us to fun and interesting spots.

As an adult, I'm still a fan of the road trip. What's more fun than stuffing a trunk full of as many suitcases and sleeping bags as possible then hitting the road? That reminds me of a picture I took last summer on a road trip with Katherine, Amy, and Brian (see below). Oh, and the road trip I went out to Moab with Emily last summer? Such a blast. Road trips are just unique in what they have to offer.

I hope I didn't have to put the car in reverse at all...

I think it was on road trips when my brother and sisters and I really bonded. Did we get on each others nerves? Heck yeah, I'm sure we did. But we also started inside jokes (like the time the ducks ate Katherine's bracelet), we told stories, we helped each other out, and we met vacation friends together. And not to be totally cheeseball, but we also formed lasting memories that we still talk about. 

What are some of your family vacation memories? Do you like road trips?

Post script: The first year my brother and I decided not to go on a family vacation was a bit of an adventure too actually, since my brother took the opportunity to allow a couple of traveling artisans to live in our patio for the week before they moved on to their next Renaissance Festival. They burned a hole in the grass in our backyard with the kiln they used to make their ocarinas. My brother and I tried to replant the grass the best we could but the hole was glaringly obvious. The memory still makes me laugh.

Crunch

When you work in a shared office space, you  get to spend a lot of time with other peoples eating habits. From the smelly to the crunchy, food becomes a shared experience in an office whether intentional or not.

I, myself, am not blameless. It's not uncommon for me to feel it necessary to apologize to those sitting nearest to me about the smell of a hard boiled egg, or the loud crunching of celery sticks. I think my worst offense so far was my brief stint with microwaveable bacon. That won me many enemies as the smell drove people wild with jealousy and cravings. Though I miss the candy of meats, I chose friendships and office harmony over the occasional blt.

Besides the foods I've already mentioned there are a few others I try to avoid in the office. Anything with a strong odor such as fish, or anything with a really loud crunch, such as popcorn. In fact, popcorn, it seems, is one of the loudest foods out there and can make people around you feel like this:

Not that I've ever felt that way.

What are some foods you prefer not to have a shared experience with?

Floating away

I like crushes. This is no secret to you guys, I'm sure. I'm kind of a flirt, I like men, and I get crushes from time to time.  I've even blogged about my love of crushes in the past. What I don't love is when a crush passes over into the "feelings" zone without any warning. I like when things happen in the natural order:

1. Girl meets boy

2. They go on a date

3. Crush forms

4. They get to know each other

5. Feelings develop

When things go in that order, it's awesome and exciting. What I don't like is when I think I just have an innocent crush, but realize I'm actually (unexpectedly) experiencing "feelings." I'm walking along, thinking everything's under control, then suddenly I think about a guy and my heart starts racing with lovey dovey feelings? Um, not cool!

It's kind of exciting, but it's mostly really scary. Here's an illustration:

One of the last times this happened to me, that's exactly what it felt like. Powerless. Luckily, the guy did something kinda jerky the next day and the feelings/crush balloon deflated, bringing me safely back to earth.

Do any of you single readers feel this way?

No lectures on how I need to get over this if I ever want to get married, please. Condescending comments will make me raise my fist to the computer in rage and mutter under my breath which just makes me look like a crazy person. And that's not good for anyone.

(Nor is it moving me any closer to marriage, let's be honest.)

Note: Because a couple people asked, I wrote my distinction between a crush and feelings in the comments section. Please feel free to add how you would define them if you are interested!

Pedestrians

When I was in college, there was this guy I'd sometimes see walking around campus. Or rather, I'd hear him walking around campus then see him. He'd walk around with his headphones in, singing along as loudly as he could. Every time I'd see him, I'd get really scared. Who is that uninhibited!? I'll tell you who: psychopathic murderers. That's who.

Recently I encountered another pedestrian singer. I was on a walk in a residential area and I heard something strange in the distance. Some kind of ruckus. As I got closer, I realized it was a man walking along, singing/rapping at the top of his lungs. I knew for sure that if I got too close to him, my days on this earth were limited. Luckily he turned at the next block (either he's an easily distracted murderer or he was on his way to his victim's house).

Isn't it sad that just because someone is uninhibited and feeling the music, I assume the worst? I don't know why those people scare me. I guess I just think if they're ok with flouting society's norms to that extent, who knows where they draw the line!?

From the safety of my car however, I find pedestrian crazies amusing and harmless. Today as I was driving home from work, I saw a man walking down the street playing air piano. And when I say playing air piano, I mean, really getting into it. Thrashing his head about, pounding the keys like nobody's business, stepping on the pedals, everything. I don't know what he was playing but it had soul. Think Mike from Friends.




And a few months ago, I saw a guy walking around all normal like, when he suddenly kicked his leg up over his head and then kept on walking! Like nothing had happened!

What about you? What's the craziest thing you've seen a pedestrian do?

Brraaaaaiiiiins

Ok, so someone unfollowed my blog today. Which one of you was it? Was it because I made you choose between tv and your cell phone? Look, these decisions aren't binding! There's no reason to freak out.

But anyway, I can be strong. This isn't the end of the world. I'd say crying for three hours is a reasonable response and now I'm ready to move on. (Please know no tears were actually shed, I promise. I just had dust in my eye.)

Now to move on to the point of this post. Art. Specifically, my art. Many of you know that my sister, Katherine, is quite the artist. She has sold paintings, been commissioned to do more paintings, is getting her masters degree in painting, and is all around a pretty talented gal. But what you don't know is that she's not the only one in the family with drawing skillz.

The other day, Katherine and I were chatting, and she mentioned a place called Brains, which is in the city where she lives. I guess I was only half listening (sorry, Katherine), because I suddenly backed up and said, "Wait, 'Brains'? Is it a Halloween store?" She said, "No, it's an actual medical place." I said, "Well, it doesn't sound like a legit medical place. It sounds like a Halloween theme store." And I quick-like drew up a few sketches of what they might have on their store sign.

Now keep in mind, I am not making fun of the actual medical place, since I know nothing about it. I'm sure they do wonderful work and don't deserve to be mocked. I simply think the name of the place is amusing and odd. Halloween monsters popped into my mind because it seems like they're all the time hobbling around yelling "Braaaiiiinnnsss!"

Dang, I'm going to lose more followers from this aren't I?

Anyway, which do you think would be the best drawing on the front of a place called Brains? (Think of it as a Halloween store called Brains so you are less offended. I will do the same so I feel less offensive.)




I often get my monsters mixed up. The one above is supposed to be Frankenstein. Katherine reminded me that he doesn't want to eat brains, he just wants a brain. Also, his bolts go in his neck, not on his head like ponytails. My bad.

This is a zombie looking for brains to eat. Duh.

This picture requires no explanation.  

This is something straight out of a horror movie, especialy because of how life like it is, right? It's just a Halloween decoration, not real, so don't be scared, ok?