Flick, rrr.

Flick, rrr.

Yeah, it's only just beginning. But here I am on flickr - "_julia_"
Look for the cute blonde kid avatar, and then instantly wish she was still that sweet and unmanipulative.


inside st. paul's cathedral, london, dec 2004
picked for the blog link entirely due to the coloring, because i'm shallow like that.

Our scanner is currently malfunctioning (actually, nonfunctioning. I give it too much credit), so we're sequestered with old stuff and puny pictures from the puny Gateway digital camera that, I promise you, is literally falling apart. After a brief and unsuccessful attempt FROM SOMEBODY IN MY IMMEDIATE HOUSEHOLD WHO'S NOT ME to take the camera apart to, you know, check the battery, the camera body no longer completely screws shut. A screw even hangs halfway out.

Meanwhile, the 80s Nikon and the fabulous purloined Autocord are sitting here making beautiful matte finish pictures (courtesy almost entirely of Chrome labs and courtesy only slightly of me accidentally framing shots and pressing buttons). But you can't see any of the recent ones until I find the scanner install disks or find some time to do some good old misappropriation of resources at work.

Happy flickring.

Ve-toe.

Ve-toe.

Eleven months after the horrific toenail injury I sustained on this famed night hike, the mangled toenail has finally left me. It took it's demise quietly yesterday evening, as I sat down in the desk chair only to feel something different with my toe. Sure enough, part of the toenail was just sitting there on the bamboo floor. Luckily, since it had been eleven months and somehow, by the grace of god, this fidgety, picky, obsessed toenail owner didn't forcefully remove it, I had a little baby toenail growing beneath the dead disgusting mangly mess. I have saved thousands of unsuspecting, law-abiding citizens and residents of this fine land from accidentally glancing at my feet only to see the shiny stump of a toe where a toenail used to live. At least I have something there. From afar, my feet don't look any grosser than your average long distance runner's.

I can't believe it survived the marathon. I can't believe it survived this one cute pair of shoes I got from Moo Shoes that are really about 3/4 of a size too small. I can't believe it survived just being painted over and forgotten.

Technically, it didn't really survive the marathon. It completely blackened after not even the first month of training, and stayed that way. I actually talked to my coach about it because I was afraid I should be doing something to prevent nail loss (which was only slightly less mortifying of a conversation than the time I asked him about poop schedules for marathon day). I'd go into more details, but really, who wants to hear toenail details? Exactly. Nobody. Although if anyone has any similar toenail stories, you know damn well that I'm all about hearing them.

Sufjan Stevens

Sufjan Stevens

Friday night, we went to see the spectacular Sufjan Stevens at the Belly Up Tavern. First of all, Sufjan, will you be my boyfriend?



Anyway, this show bumps something I really can't think of to enter my Top Five All Time Shows category. I think it's even #2, right after Radiohead at the Santa Barbara Bowl. One day I'll make a post where I list the other three, but first I will need to figure out what they are.

This man is a creative genius. His songwriting is so beautiful, so poignant, and so bizarrely adventurous. For the love of god, the man wants to do an album for every state. So far, he's done Michigan and Illinois. His earlier works range from the freakishly experimental orchestral to spiritual and gentle songwriterly sketches. This tour was the "Come on feel the Illinoise" tour, and they wore Illinois cheerleading costumes and even had pompoms and did some intermittent cheers. Another reason to love this man: he plays oboe and english horn, as does your friendly blogger here. And he's episcopalian. And he loves drywalling.

"Sufjan's other interests include graphic design, painting, running, knitting, crocheting, weaving, quilting, cleaning, photography, haircutting, and dry wall installation."

Honestly, you should all run to your nearest small venue to see if he's playing there this summer/fall. I promise you an incredible, beautiful show, complete with hand-claps, cheers, costumes, and some of the most remarkable stories that make you feel like you totally haven't lived yet or made any real mistakes or had your heart or body broken nearly enough. At the very least, just buy the CDs and listen to what Illinois or Michigan sound like in musical form and secretly* wish you were in his band.

* = announced publicly on the internet.

Top down.

Top down.

I'm borrowing the indefatigably fabulous Greg and Shawna's almost equally fabulous but slightly more fatigable bright yellow convertible VW Karmann Ghia again. This is the second year in a row that I've swapped cars with them to enjoy the sheer summer-ness of the little yellow car.

The downsides are that it's really tough to drive and I'm making more than my fair share of emissions. And that everyone can see me during my almost daily NPR-instigated cry.

I've noticed that my back hurts, not necessarily from the broken seat, but from the fact that I'm always so tense. Maybe it's the fact that I've rolled a car before; maybe it's just the lack of power steering. While I absolutely adore borrowing this car, getting all the attention on the road (not that I'm checking craigslist's missed connections with any more frequency than usual), and feeling the wind blowing gently* through my hair and the sunshine warming my body, I'm kind of glad that there's an end in sight; I have options. I can just pick up my breeze-less car whenever I'm ready.

Allow me to quote an email from John, because it's kind of rare that something he says really makes sense out of context - even seemingly normal phrases will be followed with a dependent clause about robots, vietnamese soup, or manual labor. Anyway, he wrote: "Wow. Summer car. You have nice friends."

I really do have nice friends, and that makes my world go round. Nice friends with nice cars, in fact. It's like living in The Valley in the early 90s without the drugs. Or money. Or smog. Wait, I'm working on the smog, remember?


* = by blowing gently, I mean blasting every errant strand into a permanent knot.

Lights, brighter.

Lights, brighter.

I really don't have much to say about New York that hasn't already been said. The city has a feverous energy, and I caught it. I honestly wasn't really all that tired when I came home, despite the 5am bedtimes and 9am mornings. It must have been the city.

There are lots of pictures, etc, but they're all pretty boring and standard, whether they're the nightlife/bachelorette ones of the tall buildings vs. skies ones.

At the risk of losing my highly protected "I Make Time For" slot on This Fish, I called sweet Heather to see if she wanted to get together. We made a loose plan for Friday night, and I'd call her when I got in and knew where we were going. However, I didn't really get into the city until midnight. By the time I called, she was fast asleep preparing for a weekend out of town. I was really sad and would have rather lost my sweet spot on her links list and entered the "I Know" one. Also, Heather, sorry about that rambly and gaspy message. The cab driver, of course, had driven me not only to the wrong intersection but also to tears.

I also wrote a blog post on the plane, in between being completely glossed over, watching all the pretty channels on the in-seat mind pollution/DirectTV, but it's currently tucked away on my laptop which I left at home today. I watched that one movie with Chris O'Donnell climbing K2 or whatever it is, and I had no choice but to blog. JUST YOU WAIT.

4:00am, Sunday morning:

Jet set.

Jet set.

With my two day work week, this week, I'm a little too busy using every last ounce of concentration to try to maybe think about doing work. Thus, not much blogging. Actually, not much anything.

I will, however, hold you over with a shutterfly album of our Cambria trip for the 4th of July weekend.

Excuse the gratuitous self-portraiture and jolly pictures of Erik. Also, note that I'm running again! I've probably logged 30 miles in the last four weeks, whereas the last few weeks of May I was logging 30 miles a week. It's feeling so great to be getting back into it, and, especially, to not have a training schedule and plan. I can run hills WHENEVER I WANT. None of this every-other-monday-only shit.

Also, please note the Prius performance. Hot damn.

Tomorrow I'm heading out solo to New York and, apparently, there's a good chance our room will overlook the Statue of Liberty. I'm ridiculously excited and, at the same time, totally underwhelmed by my wardrobe. I'm not surprised that New York has this effect on me before I even get there. I started a super secret yet-to-be-unveiled Flickr page a few weeks ago, and once I upload some NYC pictures, I'll post the link and share the vertical city loveliness.

In other news, since a lot of people have been asking, I don't have any relatives in London, or that were visiting London at the time of the attacks this morning. We do, however, have some dear friends that live in the city. We have yet to hear from them, but chances are they were working on a film until 4 in the morning and were sound asleep and nowhere near public transit when the explosions took place. The news hit incredibly and surprisingly close to home for me. I didn't think I was still so emotionally tied to my motherland.

We are in the midst of a really strange and really sad world war.