25 August 2011

Almost Time

4 Days

I'm in a state of disbelief. Everything is going by so quickly, or maybe it's thursdays..."I could never get the hang of thursdays." I've been packing yesterday and today and I plan to have all my major packing finished by today so I can enjoy my last few days in town with those I love the most. 


I just thought I would share this video with you. You can see the entire series here. I love these videos. There is just something so wonderful about them. The use of typography is perfect, the way the videos are filmed and edited and the music, perfection! I really just love every little thing about it. Have a wonderful day everybody and be kind to yourselves. ♥monica  

24 August 2011

Going Away Party

5 Days

We recreated the Last Supper. I just adore this picture.

This past weekend Blair and I hosted a "Deity Symposium" for my going away party. The symposium was a smashing success! We had tons of people show up and they where all decked out. I'm glad that my friends where so willing to go along with the theme. It really did make it that much more fun! I was super please with how everything turned out. Everyone had a really great time and the food and wine was all beyond delicious! A BIG BIG thank-you to Blair for being an amazing hostess and having the party at her house, to Mike for making the best sangria ever, to Steven for helping me prepare a boat load of bruschetta and everyone that came, had a great time and tipped into the kissing booth. 
I always end up dancing in Blair's kitchen. This time I wasn't the only one!

Kisses anyone?

The full spread and the proud hostesses.
I couldn't imagine of being sent off in a more fabulous style! Now begins the last 5 days, which are only going to get more and more difficult. I'll be busy washing clothes and packing and weighing my bags and trying to find time to spend with everyone. All of the while feeling a bit under the weather. I just hope I find the time to see everyone one last time and tell them just how much I love them all. Be excellent to others and be kind to yourselves. ♥monica

15 August 2011

Last Minute Encouragement & Sin

14 Days/ 2 Weeks

I'm very excited to announce that I will be living in a flat in London, not a dorm room (HOORAY!) So I will be living in the same building as all of the other masters students, so hopefully I can make some friends and have people to study with and bounce ideas off of. 
That would be a great way to spend my last two weeks here! ; ) weheartit 
I spoke to Dr Orenduff this afternoon and she really helped to ease my worries and encourage me. She's always been the best at that. It's impossible to not be happy and feel like you can take on the world after speaking with her. Her course on art criticism is what made me realize that I wanted to study Art History and that it could be so much bigger and better than naming artists and flipping through slides of paintings that I can't make relevant for myself. She also wrote one of my recommendation letters for my application, so I really owe her for helping me get into this school and all the encouragement she has given me. Dr O, if you're reading this, thank-you, thank-you, thank-you! 
Sin
Some of my old friends are going on a tour all the way to California from Georgia and they hosted a "Sin-efit" to help raise some bones for their tour. I showed my support and also took some pictures for them to use and I thought I would share them with you all.  
Sin
  I've know these guys, Jimi and Anthony, since high school and as they've gotten older their music has gotten better and better. I love the fact that they have always stuck with a raw diy ethic that is definitive of the early days of punk rock. Their attitude and persona conjure up images of Iggy and the Stooges and Crass. They're really great guys, so check out Sin. I've linked to their facebook page so you can look them up and listen to some of their tunes. Be excellent to each other and be kind to yourselves. ♥monica  

10 August 2011

Operation Cup of Tea

19 Days 
I leave for London in 19 days and I have been following the riots not obsessively, but as a concerned world citizen and a soon to be London resident. I've honestly had a difficult finding any new stories that really seem to capture (what my outside perspective deems to be) the essence of what is going on. However, this evening the Suicide Girls Blog tweeted a link to their blog and it had a very personal take on the events of late, that I really appreciated. The link at the bottom of the image will take you to the post. For those of you concerned, the post itself is safe for work, but their pages aren't necessarily so. So if you get in trouble or get weird glances for content that is NSFW; it isn't my fault. I warned ya. 
Suicide Girls on London Looters
They talked about and are supporting Operation Cup of Tea, a quintessentially British way to protest the rioters, oh the irony! They are asking people post pictures of themselves staying in and enjoying a cup of tea. I offer my support with a picture and links to their site. : ) 

Keep Calm and Carry On London  
♥monica

06 August 2011

Inspiration

23 Days

Today's post isn't going to be as lighthearted as I try to keep my blog, but considering the fact that I'm not always lighthearted and this blog is to be an extension of who I am for myself and the lovely people who are also bizarre enough to want to read my thoughts. I think I'm allowed to present a fuller spectrum of myself. Today I'm supposed to be working on my summer reading that I want to have finished before I get over to London, but I can't concentrate. I've been getting sidetracked, watching Conan O'Brien's  commencement address at Dartmouth (totally blows me away!), surfing around the net looking at what I can find and I've been coming across the most amazingly inspiration stuff today. 
This page has some really wonderful street art.
A friend of mine sent me a page of street art and that is something I've loved since I was a kid. Seriously, I used to get excited when my family was stopped by a train because that meant I got to watch all of the graffiti on the cars go by. Now people are elevating it to a whole new level of intention and craft and forcing people to take it seriously. People are making the man-made world beautiful again and taking art from the gallery and museum and giving it to everyone to view. People who do this are doing it purely for the love of art and their actions are creating a new series of questions to be asked of art and what decides if something is art. I imagine I will be wrestling around a lot of these questions in the coming year and I hope that I will have something worth hearing to say about it, but that is in the future and I am here now so there is no need to wonder about the future when I have the glorious present to live in, in every moment for the rest of my life.
rolandtiangco
 I was thinking about moving to London and being nervous, excited, scared and terrified (I call that emotional multi-tasking. It's exhausting!) and it hit me and I thought to myself: You're never going to make your dreams come true if you don't put yourself out there. .....okay, der! Everyone knows that, right? Then why are people unhappy and dissatisfied? Because, they obviously aren't living what they're saying. So they keep saying it, acting like saying something is the same as living it, which is the furthest thing from the truth. That's why it's cliché, because it's repeated endlessly as hollow words. That is the sad nature of clichés, they sound so dull and obvious because they're true, but the problem is we take them for granted and then we start to ignore it, then roll our eyes when someone comments on it.
Kind of like the air around us that we're breathing. I sound like a wack-o hippie talking about noticing the air, don't I? But seriously, really think about it, what air is composed of and how our body uses it and gives some back and how so many things interact in this invisible way. It's incredible really.  That is an extremely intimate interaction with the world around us. Most of us aren't that intimate with anything else except, perhaps, a lover. (You know what I'm talking about. When you kiss someone and for a moment or two you're breathing each other's air.) It's funny when you think about things like that and speculate on the way everything is connected and then you come across ideas like quantum entanglement that go on and prove that everything was always been all mixed up and entangled, ever since the beginning, the big bang. Beauty coming from chaos. The ebb and flow of everything.




I found this series of three videos and I just fell in love with them. I've always wanted to travel, see, do, experience, to just soak up all of the nuances of the local culture. I want to walk everywhere and eat street food and buy locally made fabrics. I want bug spray to be my perfume and to live out of a book bag. I want to have to struggle with a language barrier and to understand more from the crinkles in an old woman and man's eyes than what they actually say. The world is such a huge place and to see only one small corner of it just seems like a shame. I don't want to regret not seeing the world when I'm old. I want to be like Marge and Jack Pruden (family friends that watched me grow up). Before Marge died, nearly a year ago,  I remember sitting with them in her hospice room and they told stories and one of them was about a boat they where on with a bunch of Australians and how friendly they where and how much they drank too! They where sailing on the Indian Ocean and they could see so many stars and of course they told the story better than me. They've had years and years to get good at telling stories and know how to insert the proper anecdotes to keep everything interesting. 
I hope that I'm getting better at telling stories. I am a notoriously poor story teller, but I'm crossing my fingers that it's endearing for now, while I get better at telling stories. I hope you all liked my long-winded post and that you don't think I'm some kind of whacky hippie, because I have an odd aversion to people thinking I'm a hippie. I have no problem with hippie-types, just so long as no one thinks I'm one; I guess those are my punk rock roots still lingering. Oh well. Have a wonderful weekend and be kind to yourself. ♥monica

05 August 2011

Visa Received and Ayn

I'm so excited to tell everyone that I received my visa and UK entry clearance today. It's valid from yesterday until Dec 22, 2012. I'm thrilled and so nervous at the same time. I still in a sort of daze from it all. It just hasn't really hit me yet, but every now and then it registers and when that happens I get happy and sad. I have so many beautiful friends and family that I will be leaving in that states and Ayn won't be with me. That really bugs me out. I've gotten so attached to her and snuggling with her at night that I'm going to be really lonely with her. 
I just love her to pieces!
Steven and I where playing with her the other day and I tried to get some good pictures of her. She really is the least photogenic dog I've ever known, but she will melt your heart once she gets comfortable around you. She is SO shy and timid and because of that she barks, a lot when strangers (really anyone) comes into the house. Terribly frustrating, but she is wonderful! I got her groomed the other day so she doesn't look like Benji anymore, but really cute and dainty like a terrier. I'm hoping to get some good pictures of her before I make the big move! I hope you all have a wonderful weekend and be kind to yourselves. 
♥monica

04 August 2011

New Hair

 Howdy folks! I hope you all are having a superb thursday. I've haven't been up to much, just a little here and there, but yesterday I got my hair done by the lovely and talented Ryshelle at Sublime. Ryshelle's been doing my hair for quite sometime and has been primarily responsible for all the awesome my hair was ever been.  

Just a sample.
We opted to go back to a natural brown, around the same color as my natural hair, just a bit richer and glossy looking. I'm very excited about my hair, but I'm still adjusting to it. It was a big jump from blonde to this chocolaty brown, but we're both very pleased with the result. I'm going to miss Ryshelle doing my hair while I'm away. She really is that good!  

new hair and new glasses, so classy!
 Tonight I'm going to be photographing Pigtoad again. I've never shot at a nightclub before, so I'm concerned about my light and all my settings. I've got a decent idea, but I don't know if it'll come out the way I want. But it's a great opportunity to get some experience shooting in a new environment, so I hope to learn a lot and get a few good shots. Take care, have a great day and as always, be kind to yourselves.
♥monica
This seems excessively appropriate. From weheartit, but I don't know the original source.  


01 August 2011

Happy August


It's hard for me to believe that it's already the first of august. I'm thrilled that I'll be leaving for London at the end of the month, but as the story goes I'm still nervous. I'm still impatiently waiting on my UK visa and my irrational side is flipping out thinking, what if it doesn't make it or they reject me and I'm stuck here and then I have to change my blog and blah blah blah blah blah? 

That was totally obnoxious, so I'm going to move on to something positive and happy. How about this awesome calendar for August? 
get the calendar here

I also found this super groovy site that links to a bunch of craft and diy blogs. It's a wonderful way to spend time on the internet if you just want to see random crafty goodness. Blam! Craftgawker! 
College Life DIY
This is one of my favorite blogs that I found on Craftgawker today, so I thought I would share it with you all. Well, that's all for today. I would have posted first thing today, but there was a really gnarly storm that knocked out the internet for most of the day today. So have a wonderful day and I'll be posting a lot through the month of August and I anticipate either a very happy or a very sad post when I finally get word about my visa. Cross your fingers for me! 
Have a wonderful day and be kind to yourself.
♥monica