Perforation Problems

This is a little more interesting, though not a very good picture. My friend and I drove down to Bloomington tonight to see David Sedaris read from Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls .

I am 100% unsure why I took a picture of my almost-empty ice tea. I told you the pictures were going to get even more boring than normal. Only 61 more days of Project 365. Hang in there.

It sucks when someone puts something delicious in your bowl (Is that cheese and bread? Why are we wasting that on Clyde?) and then makes you wait until they say you can eat it. Poor Clyde.

At work we're encouraged to spend one work day a year volunteering, whether it's at a company-selected event or something of our own choosing. A few of us ended up volunteering at the humane society on a day they supply needy families with pet food. Most of the day was spent handing out bags of Kibbles n' Bits, but we did get to visit the kittens inside. Kittens are pretty great.

My hands were cold, so I'm writing this while underneath a blanket. All the way under a blanket, with the screen of my laptop tenting the fabric and creating a bright glow to light my little cave. It's a good 10 degrees warmer in here, so even though Michael just scratched at my roof and essentially said, "What are you doing, weirdo?," I'm going to stand by my work environment choices.  After my poetry spasm the other day, I've been thinking about how one brings about a creative mood. I've always agreed with the thought that creativity is a muscle -- you have to exercise it, or it's harder to use -- but now I'm reminded that you also have to surround yourself with inspiration, as well. You have to get yourself in the mood, if you know what I mean. Heh heh. So basically I have to search out creativity porn.  Ugh, now it's getting too hot in my blanket cave. I made a "window" with my leg. Guys, being a writer is hard.  Let's g...

I was sitting on the couch tonight, reading The Mermaid Chair and obliquely watching the Olympics, avoiding writing because it just seemed like so. much. work. So heavy, so hard. It's been rough, lately. This endless winter. Whine, whine, whine. And then an iPad commercial came on, and that, of all things, knocked me out of it. Welcome, commercialism. But I'm grateful for it. I'm sitting there, half reading, half letting my mind wander to all the little worries floating around my brain, when I hear familiar words. Have you ever had that feeling, when you hear a phrase you know, a song, a line from a poem, a quote from a movie, and it turns something inside you, something warm, something that says, "here's what's worth it, here's what's true, what's beautiful, what's important." I guess it's joy. It was a voiceover from Robin Williams' character in Dead Poets Society , quoting Walt Whitman. One of my favorite movies, and one tha...

In reality, it's February 17th, 2014, and I'm finally opening up Blogger again, though it feels like making myself go to the dentist. I haven't written much in the last four months -- and I think I'm suffering for it. The writer in me has crusted up. In blog picture land, it's November 1st, 2013, our last full day on Eleuthera. It makes me sad to remember it. The last day of vacation is the worst. I just took 10 minutes to track down this little piece I wrote back in July when it was almost time to leave the cabin: On the last day of vacation you try not to count the hours – 24 hours left…18 hours left...10 hours left…one more swim…one more dinner… one more time to fall asleep reading in the sunroom, the night breeze covering your skin. But part of you counts, and part of you is sad. No, no, you say to yourself. Don’t think about it. Just enjoy it. The last ice cream sundae, the last evening walk. I feel different on long vacations. I turn ...

There are a few more days of Bahamas pictures. My set from October 31st is pretty bad... It took me awhile to realize I was probably trying to get a picture of the sunset as it ducked behind the trees. You can just barely make it out if you move your head up and down and look from different angles.  At least there's a moon in there? I guess this is fitting for Halloween.  By the way, guys, it's January and it's dismal outside. I haven't taken down the Christmas lights, which helps some, but it mostly just feels like I'm lying to myself. It's not Christmas, anymore, Haley. Time to move on. 

Anyone who knows me or has read more than a post or two on this blog will know that I love food. It's psychological and physical and emotional -- I know there are those of you out there who feel the same way, because you're my friends -- but there's nothing better than knowing there's something delicious in your future. I probably could write a book analyzing my relationship with food, but let's just say there's a direct correlation between my mood and the availability of good food around me. And by "good" I mean "Haley good," which is usually two steps below what other people think is good. The difference between a horrible 12 hour car ride and a completely fine 12 hour car ride? A stop for french fries and granola bars readily available in my purse. Have to go to a meeting that's going to be really boring? Totally fine with it if there are good cookies present. There were not many grocery stores or open restaurants on Eleuthera -- in ...

Well, this post may say 10/29/2013, but it's really 1/6/2014, which is officially 365 days since I started Project 365. I'm not sure if I can consider myself a success, since I missed several days and I'm 10 weeks behind on posting my pictures, but I'm not going to call myself a failure, either. The goal was to make myself feel more present in the day-to-day -- to have some kind of "bookmark" for my time -- and to be more creative/write more. I'd say that goal was accomplished. This will be my 331st post on a blog that until 2013 was mostly ignored. I also have THOUSANDS of pictures, though I'm not entirely sure that's a good thing. There's a balance between recording what happens /  what you do and spending so much time recording that you're experiencing everything through the filter of a camera lens. I read something somewhere the other day that said people remember more when they don't take pictures, which makes sense to me. I'...

Took walks along the beach -- picked up a coconut, some weird fruit I didn't recognize, and some shells. Saw a piece of metal that looked like it'd been ripped off a plane. Went swimming, ate hot dogs. Read.

Sunset over the pond on our first anniversary. We laid around all day, reading and swimming.

3:30 a.m, waiting for the airport shuttle. Cold but excited, because we're on VACATION. No work, no obligations, no stresses for a whole week.

This is the only picture I took today. It was a really good cookie. I went back for another.

I almost ate one of these cookies today, thinking they were chocolate chip. You can see where I started to pull back the wrapper. They are not, in fact, chocolate chip. They are oatmeal raisin. This is the subtle, cruel trickery of the oatmeal raisin cookie.

I like the discount barrel of flowers at Kroger. These purple tulips were $2. I've noticed that I go on color kicks. Red was my thing for awhile, then yellow. Purple didn't really do anything for me until recently. Now I want to see it everywhere. Does this happen to other people? 

Check out the new dents and scratches on my car. Someone backed into my car while it was in my mom's driveway for Haircut Friday. At first I was pretty irrationally upset. My poor car. I hate the idea that I'm driving around with a dent in it. It's embarrassing, plus it just makes me sad. I worked hard for that car. Yeah, it isn't brand-spankin' new anymore, but until now it hadn't had any serious body damage. Now it's got a smashed-in part.  But coupled with my anger over my car being messed up is this guilt that I'm worried about something so superficial. It could have been a lot worse. It's not a big deal in the grand scheme of things, right? At least I can drive it, and the dent could be a lot more noticeable. It could have smashed the headlights or messed up the wheel. Could be a LOT worse.  That being said, I've been trying to figure out ways to fix it -- I can't pound it out because the wheel well has plastic on the i...

Clyde got to go to Haircut Friday today. He did not really enjoy it. For those of you who do not know, my family has a weird tradition where we drive over an hour every 4 weeks to get our hair cut by Bev at Headliners in Marion, Indiana. I like to tell people it's more about having a regular opportunity to eat dinner with my grandparents, who live there, but we don't always do that. Sometimes we just drive a really long way to get our hair cut. Bev's been doing my grandma's hair forever. When we lived in Georgia, I remember visiting the salon during summer vacation so she could put highlights in my hair, and when we moved to Indianapolis, we started coming on a regular basis. It's cheaper than it would be in Indy, and though it means my entire Friday evening is pretty much a wash, it's time spent with my parents and usually dinner with some extended family. At this point, Bev is a family friend; my mom gives her a Christmas present each year, and it was a gi...

I only took one picture today -- me on the couch in my pjs editing one of our big holiday content projects. It's a 40 page recipe ebook. Do you know how annoying it is to edit recipes? There are all kinds of grammar conventions unique to recipes that you wouldn't have any reason to know unless you edit recipes on a normal basis. So it took awhile. But I'm pretty happy with the work the team did on it -- it made me hungry, which is exactly what a recipe book should do :)

We're going through some restructuring on the marketing team at work, and my team is being split up. The changes make sense for the longterm and will be good for everyone on my team, but it doesn't keep it from being a bit sad to say goodbye. We had our last lunch together today, and then later this afternoon they surprised me with chips, queso, and a card for Boss's Day. It was good closure to the last couple of years -- they're a really good group and they've made it fun to be at work. It took two waitresses and 15 attempts to get a non-blurry picture :)

When Michael is gone, I have to make the normally-still-sleeping Clyde get up and go outside before I leave for work. He also won't eat his breakfast unless he sees me sit down in the kitchen and pretend like I'm eating my breakfast, too. This morning we had a couple brushes with nature. First, Clyde stalked a deer munching acorns under our tree.  Then I caught this praying mantis underneath our table.  And before I got in the car, I had to catch a couple pictures of the pretty sunrise.  It's easy to forget, especially when winter means you don't see a lot of sunlight, that there's more world out there than your cubicle and computer screen. 

Today I looked at our circuit board for the first time. I was excited to flip some switches, but unfortunately, that wasn't the problem. I took this picture mostly to prove to Michael via text that a popped circuit wasn't the problem.  It ended up being that the outdoor light timer hadn't been changed back to the winter schedule, so I also got to mess with the outdoor lights for the first time, too. If I hadn't forgotten to put the trash out this week, I'd say I was being fairly successful at taking care of the house by myself.