How much do I want this camera? Not only is it a Diana, but it takes half-photos as well, allowing 72 photos! I can only imagine how many cute little pictures I could take . . .
(Found via Daydream Lily)
Monday, September 7, 2009
Baby Diana
How much do I want this camera? Not only is it a Diana, but it takes half-photos as well, allowing 72 photos! I can only imagine how many cute little pictures I could take . . .
(Found via Daydream Lily)
A Dapple of My Weekend
I crammed this weekend full of everything I could think of. I went out in the city for beers with friends(ha, city), tag saled with my mom (and got a great, harly-used french press!), had a slumber party, made an early-morning breakfast run, planned a certain girl's birthday party, cleaned and organized and cleaned some more, tried my hand at making vegetable samosas, played with three ridiculously adorable kittens, obsessed and freaked out yet again over my Big New Job, watched a funny movie and sucked on a Blow Pop, went apple picking and baked some apple crisp, and snuggled with Mary in attempts to forget about having to go back to work and school.
The samosas didn't really work out. I don't think I'll try that recipe again anytime soon. They definitely didn't taste the same as the ones we ate in South Africa. Anyone know a good samosa recipe?
Now that the long weekend is over (in the US, anyways), what are your thoughts for the hopefully-short week ahead? I'm going to try to get acquainted with my office and settle into the school setting that I'm oh-so-unfamiliar with. My goal is just to, well, not freak out anymore. I've done enough freaking out to last me a lifetime. Here's to a four-day work week!
Sunday, September 6, 2009
send me on my way
Flowers from my family for my first day of the Big New Job this week:
Aren't they sweet?
a pretty picture
I find thoughts of rotten weather intriguing when, in reality, the weather is nothing but gorgeous. And when there's rain, I think only of sun. Somehow, that doesn't seem right.(Photo found here via Flux Capacitor)
Saturday, September 5, 2009
Friday, September 4, 2009
all in a day's work
A fabulous start to the Labor Day Weekend--so far, the Big New Job isn't as daunting as I thought it might be!
The state capitol dome
Nathan Hale. What a hero.
The "Genius of Connecticut"--who knew?
My new favorite place--the rose garden
You can't see bushes of chili peppers and not take a picture, right?
Have a fabulous holiday weekend!
(Are you new to Ruth Writes? Welcome! Be sure to become a follower and check back often for updates--thanks for visiting!)
Thursday, September 3, 2009
Felicitous Findings: Part 15
1. I Heart Strangers--fascinating!
2. Finding new blogs and making them new favorites
3. Having a good cry and then feeling better than ever afterwards
4. Parks and Recreation
5. My very own desk
2. Finding new blogs and making them new favorites
3. Having a good cry and then feeling better than ever afterwards
4. Parks and Recreation
5. My very own desk
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
The end of my (former) life as I know it
Caution: Ranting and raving follows. I become gloomy and fearful and pessimistic and melodramatic in the sentences to come.
When I was younger, I was never one for change. I hated everything from moving around the furniture in my room to wearing a different color nail polish. I needed order.
I guess I was raised in a very habitual home. My parents are creatures of habit. My dad has parked in the same spot in the driveway for as long as I can remember. My mom always cooks too little vegetables at dinner and way too much meat. They do things the way they’ve always done them, and I don’t think they’re going to change anytime soon. Maybe that’s partly where I got my fear of change. I liked things the way they were and never wanted them any differently. I saw change as bad, for some reason.
Seasons were even worse. I know, I know—I just wrote a whole post on how I didn’t mind summer ending and loved welcoming fall. I do. I really do. But the whole adjustment from season to season has never been easy for me. The end of summer always meant a new school year was starting, the end of fall always meant everything was halfway over, the end of winter always meant a year was all over, the end of spring always meant the school was over and I’d be another grade older.
Wow, I guess I really wasn’t the most optimistic of children.
But this year, I wasn’t going back to school. I didn’t have to be another grade older or sit in classes all day again. But I did have to start my Big New Job.
And that meant the end of my life as I know it. I know that sounds negative, but I don’t mean it that way. My life as I knew it was just . . . not going to be anymore. Everything would change. I would go from college student (yeah, so maybe I continued to call myself one throughout the summer . . .) to working professional. Even though it’s not really a real job, it’s still somewhere I have to commute to and work at from nine to five. Anyone reading this over the age of twenty-five is going to roll their eyes right now, but I just feel so old.
I actually pay attention to the traffic updates now. Rush hour is my enemy.
The night before work I have to seriously consider what I’m going to pack for lunch the next day, and then make it by myself and pack it some kind of lunch box thingy that won’t make me look like a child nor a middle-aged working mother.
I come home and when someone asks me how my day was I have to say things like “We had a really long workshop today” or “Meetings can just be such a drag.”
I have to actually put gas in my car more often than every three weeks.
This is me? Is this how my life is now going to be for the next year, at least?
I know I shouldn’t be complaining, because I at least have a job and am making some money, but I can’t help but feel strange about all this change. I’m trying to jump in with both feet and really embrace this new opportunity, but I’m a little wary.
Do you often feel intimidated by changes, too? Even if it’s a really positive change?
Pardon me. I’m grappling.
(Bottom photo via J.Ota)
When I was younger, I was never one for change. I hated everything from moving around the furniture in my room to wearing a different color nail polish. I needed order.
I guess I was raised in a very habitual home. My parents are creatures of habit. My dad has parked in the same spot in the driveway for as long as I can remember. My mom always cooks too little vegetables at dinner and way too much meat. They do things the way they’ve always done them, and I don’t think they’re going to change anytime soon. Maybe that’s partly where I got my fear of change. I liked things the way they were and never wanted them any differently. I saw change as bad, for some reason.
Seasons were even worse. I know, I know—I just wrote a whole post on how I didn’t mind summer ending and loved welcoming fall. I do. I really do. But the whole adjustment from season to season has never been easy for me. The end of summer always meant a new school year was starting, the end of fall always meant everything was halfway over, the end of winter always meant a year was all over, the end of spring always meant the school was over and I’d be another grade older.
Wow, I guess I really wasn’t the most optimistic of children.
But this year, I wasn’t going back to school. I didn’t have to be another grade older or sit in classes all day again. But I did have to start my Big New Job.
And that meant the end of my life as I know it. I know that sounds negative, but I don’t mean it that way. My life as I knew it was just . . . not going to be anymore. Everything would change. I would go from college student (yeah, so maybe I continued to call myself one throughout the summer . . .) to working professional. Even though it’s not really a real job, it’s still somewhere I have to commute to and work at from nine to five. Anyone reading this over the age of twenty-five is going to roll their eyes right now, but I just feel so old.
I actually pay attention to the traffic updates now. Rush hour is my enemy.
The night before work I have to seriously consider what I’m going to pack for lunch the next day, and then make it by myself and pack it some kind of lunch box thingy that won’t make me look like a child nor a middle-aged working mother.
I come home and when someone asks me how my day was I have to say things like “We had a really long workshop today” or “Meetings can just be such a drag.”
I have to actually put gas in my car more often than every three weeks.
This is me? Is this how my life is now going to be for the next year, at least?
I know I shouldn’t be complaining, because I at least have a job and am making some money, but I can’t help but feel strange about all this change. I’m trying to jump in with both feet and really embrace this new opportunity, but I’m a little wary.
Do you often feel intimidated by changes, too? Even if it’s a really positive change?
Pardon me. I’m grappling.
(Bottom photo via J.Ota)
Autumnal Confession
I’m spilling it:
I really enjoy autumn.
I’m not sad that summer is over (or, most-of-the-way over).
I much rather prefer 50 degrees and cozy sweaters than 90 degrees and tank tops.
I know--weird, right?
When I was little I used to think there was something wrong with me, because I was always the only one to be happy when fall started and the dog days of summer had ended.
But what’s there not to love? Pumpkins, apple picking, cozy sweaters, Halloween, cider, crunchy leaves, scarecrows, my birthday--I love all of it. (Okay, so my birthday probably has a lot of sway in choosing fall as my favorite season, but whatever. I love anyone’s birthday.)
It was fitting that the day after I got home from my summer vacation, the air had changed and cooler weather had rushed in. I didn’t mind at all (if it had rushed in to my beach time and ruined my balmy island breeze, well, that would have been a different story). On the TV, on the radio, on blogs everywhere, the news of fall’s arrival flew around. I reveled in it. While everyone else moaned and groaned about summer being too short and rainy (in the Northeast, that is), inside I secretly soaked up the crisp chilly air and marveled at all the leaves on the ground. Starbucks has Pumpkin Spice Lattes again and before you know it’ll be Christmas. CHRISTMAS.
Then I’ll get REALLY excited.
(Don’t tell, but I also secretly love the fact that while commercials advertise back-to-school deals and kids are forced to buy new lunchboxes and backpacks and get hit with mounds of homework once again, I’m beside myself with joy that I’m not one of them. I’m not moving into a crappy dorm room and I’m not wasting hundreds of dollars on textbooks. I may be living at home again and working nine to five, but at least I don’t already have a paper due tomorrow and two hundred pages to be read by Friday. Just saying.)
(Photo via NixieMichelle)
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
So Long
Vacation is over.
The beach is gone.
It's no longer eighty degrees and air conditioned.
My bathing suit is in the drawer and I haven't seen a beach towel in days.
My body does not smell like sun tan lotion 24/7.
This greatly troubles me.
It's not that I'm really that crazy about summertime (more to come on this later), it's just that I really enjoy doing nothing on the beach all day every day. I don't mind drinking more than one glass of wine every night with dinner and I don't mind lounging in a hot tub for hours on end. We don't even have palm trees in our backyard.
What kind of place is this?!
So, so long summer vacation. I'll miss your long car trips (did I just say that??), your endless amounts of junky food, your annoying family relatives, your hazy hot beach days, your sunrises on the sand, your shell-collecting and mermaid-building, and your surf shops galore.
I'll miss you.
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