a little hello from sunday night

it's quiet, except for the sound of rain on the roof. the child is back at school. husband is on his way back from a meeting in copenhagen. it's just me and the cats. it feels peaceful. it's been busy the past couple of weeks with travels, meeting new people (and seeing some old friends), generating new ideas, taking loads of pictures and stretching outside my comfort zone photographically, practicing yoga, moving to a new place in copenhagen. life feels full and happy. i've been giving what leftover time i have to curling up with a good book in the evening. it seems to be what my soul craves of me right now. yoga is teaching me to listen to that.

more soon.

random list of happy things

happy right now...

~ about bright colors of paint in sabin's room.

~ that in my dreams, i can confidently use parts from one polaroid to repair another.

~ that in my dreams i apparently have a  polaroid.

~ that the t.v. is off and the only sounds i can hear are the cat purring and myself typing.

~ that i have a big stack of fabric i just cut to begin a new quilt (#3 this year) tomorrow. this one's in red.

~ that my sister's friends are way weirder than my friends (case in point: one of them, who is not jewish, is holding a bar mitzvah party for her husband, who is also not jewish. isn't that just weird? and possibly objectionable or at the very least culturally obtuse.).

~ new moo cards are on their way.

~ that i did all of the items on my list today except for one (and no, there were not only two items on the list).

~ that matilde (our horse) is gleefully covered in mud and loving it.

~ there was a bit of sunshine today.

~ i went running this afternoon and am amazed how much energy it gave me.

~ and i didn't die of a heart of attack by the side of the road (you know i usually run only when chased).

~ sunset well after 5 p.m.

~ bloggy lists to clear my head.

hope your day was full of small happinesses.

stamps!

one of the most creative people that i know has drawn some stamps that were released by the danish post office last week. jens hage is a political cartoonist whose work appears in several major danish newspapers and i used to take him to my workshops to draw concepts for us. he is one of the most brilliantly inspiring and funny people i know. and i am giddy about these stamps. they make me so happy! i'm putting them on all my postcrossing cards these days and it really makes me smile.

EDITED: i just ran onto the caricature jens did of me in late 2006 and i had to share it as well. jens is probably best known for his caricatures. and i really love this one. simple lines capture so much life.

the simple things

christina at soul aperture had the brilliant idea of doing a blog on june 10 of the simple things that make you happy. i love to make lists and i knew i'd be busy this week, so it was nice to have wednesday taken care of.

stones.

always stones.

what could be simpler?

the architectural beauty of plants

i see russian churches when i look at these chives

poetry on the streets of oslo

a sense of humor on the side of a plane

and another plane

and one more.

and then there's chemistry.
the chemistry you have with people.
i don't have a picture of that.
but it makes me happy.

and that's enough simple, joyful things for a wednesday.

what are the simple things that make you happy?

play along today on your blog.

but be sure to let christina know.

happy weekend!

bread was baked. food was prepared. wine was drunk. cards were played. spirited discussions were discussed. and much laughter was laughed in the famous kitchen today.

happy weekend.

a long hair day

i woke up freakishly early because i was worried about whether margie of resurrection fern had listed any more merfish. that's how cool they are. i have one and i want need more! i haven't gotten at exactly what it is, but these little guys just totally speak to me. and i'm a little obsessed. but i have found merfish meds, so this too shall pass....

mine is the one one the left

then, i got home and this beauty was waiting for me. i think if the D300 will move over, i'll snuggle up to this one too when i go to sleep tonight. there's another one too, that i'll photograph tomorrow and share. it's unspeakably wonderful.

this and the previous picture are margie's

 

the good part about waking up so early was that i noticed that i was having a long hair day. so i tried to make up with my D60 (after the neglect caused by the D300) by letting it be the one to take my morning self-portraits-in-hotel-room-on-a-long-hair-day. i think it forgave me.

i love the motion of the earring and my shutter finger on this one. 

in all, it's been a couple of great days. i feel a little guilty being so giddy and so fortunate when there's a GEC going on. so i'm trying to restrain myself and not be too obnoxious. but i have to admit that i want to shout for joy from the rooftops. i can feel a return of energy that is more than just impending spring. there is of course relief in having a job at all but there's also a sense of elation that it's a great new job, one that seems to be everything i could have wished for. and in light of all that's going on in the world, i promise not to go on and on about it (like i did with the inspiration thing). because i am humbly, profoundly grateful to whatever fates may have intervened and brought me into this situation and i by no means want to rub that good fortune in anyone's face.

do you ever have long hair days?

does sunshine make you sneeze?

these are the questions to ponder as the weekend is upon us...have a lovely, inspired, laughter-filled one, wherever you are!

the object(s) of happiness

i'm not sure why i've spent so much time of late thinking about happiness, but the fact is, i have. maybe it's my incessant reading of the curmudgeonly paul theroux (it depends on which one you're reading...his more recent stuff (dark star safari and ghost train) is less curmudgeonly). i'm now reading his happy isles of oceania and he's back to being a curmudgeon. and it has a lot to do with his level of personal happiness and it seems his long-crumbling marriage is in the final stages of crumbling in happy isles.

happiness is affected by so many factors. those people around us--the ones closest, but also the random ones we encounter every day. our jobs. our co-workers. our kids. our pets. the food we eat. our homes. things we create. whether we have time to be creative at all. having enough money. whether we have someone to clean for us. staying in a fabulous hotel. taking a vacation. what we read. how much t.v. we watch. movies we see. do these things make us happy or do we seek out all of these things because we're already happy? it's the chicken and the egg, really, which comes first?

living in this grey, dreary climate, i've found that my camera can contribute greatly to my happiness. there was plenty of sunshine the past two days and i took a lot of pictures. so, today, i can look at this jumble of glass beads in full sunshine and remember how wonderful that sunshine was:

and having the picture can help me through the dreariness. i've written before about the capacity of color to make me happy. and i can see that the things i was drawn to photograph in the sunshine of the past two days were colorful. something about the rays of the sun on bright colors is so cheerful. of course, it helps that this home is filled with bright colors, so there must be something to knowing on an intuitive level that they contribute to my happiness.

maybe all of the gloom and doom that fills the newspapers every day is what has me consciously thinking about happiness and what makes me happy. or maybe it was just the cupcake i had for breakfast...

taking off

iPhone photo of SAS in-flight shopping catalog

despite the fact that i have, for years, now, thought known that i will die in a plane crash (a statement that makes people very, very nervous when you utter it calmly and matter-of-factly), i love to fly. i adore it. it gives me a rush and a high.  sitting on the runway, catching a glimpse of the shadow of the plane, i feel a flutter of good excitement in my chest:

just thinking about how incredible it is that such a large hunk of metal can be airborne. the moment where it's our turn and the plane pivots into position at the end of the runway.

you can almost feel the whole plane taking a deep breath and getting ready for the rush of speed that will  lift it off the ground. and then, the blissful rush of speed. and lift and the sight of the ground moving away beneath us. the feel and the sound of the landing gear tucking up into place in the belly of the plane (unless you're on one of those Dash 8-400s (note: never name a plane something that rhymes with crash) planes that SAS sold off to Philippine Airlines, the landing gear not so reliable on those, naughty design, you Bombadier people. however, i digress). the climb up to cruising altitude.  i love it all.

i love seeing the ground recede. i love catching a glimpse of sunshine glistening on the wing. i love bursting through to the quiet, clear skies above the clouds (which almost always happens in leaving copenhagen, since it's ALWAYS cloudy).

i have more affection for taking off than for landing. i think it's because i'm always a little disappointed that we're landing already, especially on the short flight from oslo to copenhagen, which i will be taking more frequently again, since i'm starting a new job up there. with the same company as i worked for last year, but in a different position and this time as a "real" employee, rather than a consultant. and despite the GEC and CO2, i will be flying quite a lot, not only to work, since i live in a different country than my workplace, but also to all sorts of exciting destinations to interview people and gather stories. so i have lots of take-offs and landings to look forward to. and i think it only hit me yesterday, when i flew for the first time in nearly two months, how much i crave that take-off rush. i hope i never get tired of it.

maybe i was a bird in my last life.

welcome to wonderful...

so much inspiration today. so many ideas. so much beauty. so much wonderfulness. so much elation and happiness. so many words tumbling in my head. so i will let them gel and instead just show you pictures. more tomorrow, i promise...

this was the moon when left this morning:

this was when i arrived in oslo and waited for the train. 

it was a cold, crisp -11(C) and the snow was fantastic:

and this is where i worked all last year

and where i will work again very soon:

isn't it lovely?

i still blame i all on the moon.

take that, GEC.

because i can't be all serious

instead of election madness today, i bring you good cheer...



clearly, i need to get out the sesame street CDs and buy a video camera. and maybe a purple wig. i think purple is more me.  or green, so i could do "it's not easy being green."

P.S. this is NOT me, it's some random girl from toronto...

i totally love...

because i love lists most of all, a list of things i love right now, at this very moment:

1. this picture with a bee in midflight next to the most gorgeous pink frilly poppy:

2.  this beautiful (and now treated) oak floor in the kitchen:

3.  that feeling of satisfaction that comes from knowing you did it yourself (together with husband, who actually did most of the work).

4.  sitting outside in the sunshine with a cup of tea and the sunday paper.

5.  lensbabies - fun lenses for my Nikon that will give me sweet lomo effects!

6.  this picture:

7.  and this one:

8.  that Sabin comes home in one week!

9. the new lines from cosmo cricket!

10. weeding in the garden.

monday morning ponderings

"A small group of thoughtful people could change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has." --Margaret Mead

last week, the department manager of my new department in my new job began a dinner speech with the quote above. i felt a surge of happiness and even a few goose bumps at that moment. it represented so much to me--a feeling of having found the right place to be, the right job, the right mindset, that i was now working with people who wanted the same things i wanted. i found myself palpably relieved, once again, to have left behind the job i left at the end of last year--yet another sense that leaving that job was the right thing to do.

it's so strange how you can slowly become miserable in a job (or any other situation for that matter) and not really see it. it happens slowly, over time. you keep holding onto the things you do like about it...the travel, the people you work most closely with, some of the projects, the customer you're serving (since these days, we're all in some sense in the service business). you tell yourself that these things make up for the things you don't like--the politics, the ever-changing array of bosses, the starting over every time from scratch with a new boss, the lack of continuity, the lack of really building something that you get to see though to its conclusion, the culture of blame, the fact that people hide what they're doing and only share it once it's done, the nagging feeling that all that talk about company values masks a lack of values--especially in the middle-upper management layer.

and then one day, you do wake up and realize you can't live that way any more and so you take the radical decision (in the face of your mortgage payment) to leave. and then, you start something new and feel hope because you find that it CAN be different. you can work for someone who has real vision and who has the patience and resources to see it realized. and that you, lucky you, get to be part of that. that you can use your passion and your brain and that it will be recognized and even valued! and you feel so relieved and confirmed in your decision. and happy that you've found what feels like your place in the scheme of things.

and joy that this is what you have to think about on a monday morning...

happy monday!

reasons why this is a great monday!

1. i filed the paperwork to start my own business today! it feels so exciting. so liberating. so liminal! on the threshhold of something new and exciting.
2. i just got a new cut and fabulous color!
3. i have all kinds of gorge-i-o-us scrapping papers and supplies on their way (think tinkering ink and love, elsie...ooh, ooh, i can't wait!!!)
4. monica's coming back today (with prezzies!) from spain.
5. i'm making a delicious pot of The Soup.
6. i've got yael naim's new soul playing on repeat on the iPod through the henry kloss. i will only stop once i reach 600 times!
7. the sun is shining. at least i think that's what the big bright fireball in the sky is...it has been awhile since we've seen it.
8. it's almost time to go pick up sabin from school/sfo.