Weekend Recap

Alright, so I promised a weekend post and it's tuesday, but I was doing stuff and I was a tad bit homesick this past several days and I really didn't want to write a post up for you guys if I was in a blah moody. It would be like a really long whiney facebook status, so I went out with some new friends from my masters program and let me mood go away on it's own time. So here I am, super chipper and ready to share some pictures and stories about my weekend with ya! 

The Natural History Museum: You ride and escalator through this behemoth!

When I say this I couldn't help but think of the y u no? meme Click if you don't know it.

A group of us went out to the Blackbird a pub right around the corner.

Sarah, Emily and Joseph at the pub.

Kari, Gry and Nick from the International Relations Program.

Dude! There's the TARDIS! Right on Earl's Court!

When my loan money came in I treated myself to a pedicure. 

Now that I've played a quick game of catch up I thought I'd share a stupid little video I made, but first, a little back story. Since I was in middle school my mum has always slipped a card or a letter into my notebook on my first day of classes every year. This has happened every year, without fail. So of course this year was no different! When I made it back to my flat from my first day of class there was a card from my mum waiting in my mailbox. : ) It said "Wear some cool boots. Cool boots make you feel like you can handle anything. (and on the inside) Or at least kick real hard."

I love Reepicheep! He's fearless, spirited and tiny. 

She also included this quote by Reepicheep from The Chronicles of Narnia,  "Extraordinary things only happen to extraordinary people. Maybe it's a sign that you've got an extraordinary destiny. Something greater than you could have imagined."(of course I got all verklempt!) 


Now that you have the back story, here is a video response that I made for my mum. Be warned....it's me dancing and note the intense derp face that I have. I'm sacrificing my dignity for humor, so enjoy and feel free to laugh at me. : ) Please also note that this is my first attempt at video editing, so sorry if it isn't well refined. Have a great week and be kind to yourselves. ♥monica

(herp-a-derp-derp-derp)

Sunny Saturday

Well hello there! I'm taking a reprieve from walking around all day to drop off a bunch of photos that I took today. I spent yesterday in orientation for classes that start monday! eek! I'm kind of nervous, but  that motivates me to do really well in school. Masters Degrees are no joke and I want to do well, so here's hoping for the best! Seeing as how I don't have much to say today. I'll get on with the photographs, if you  haven't already seen them on facebook.  

Albert Memorial in Hyde Park

I didn't even know that there was this gigantic memorial in Hyde Park. See what you find when you keep your eyes open and a willing sense of adventure to wander around! 

Detail of the gates surrounding the Albert Memorial

A beautiful day in Hyde Park

I have to admit it. I got couple envy seeing everyone with boyfriends and girlfriends in paddle-boats. It's really hard not to wish you had someone close to lay down with in grass that was so soft. And even more so when you see all the couples laying together and holding hands or with there heads on each other's chests. I imagine I will be coming out here all the time and hopefully having a picnic too. There where plenty of families having picnics in Hyde Park or Kensington Gardens today. The English really seem to know how to take advantage of beautiful days like today. I could learn a bit from them.

I hope that you all have been having a great weekend and that maybe you're somewhere with a loved one in a paddle-boat or a park, or somewhere inside if that's more your thing! Take care, stay excellent and be kind to yourselves. ♥monica 

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  

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.

Move by Rick Mereki

Learn by Rick Mereki

Eat by Rick Mereki.

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

New Camera and Band Photos

I'm beyond excited to tell everyone that I am now the proud owner of a Canon Digital Rebel XT with a 35-80mm lens. I love how terrible the "Rebel XT" sounds in the name, but it's a wonderful camera that I bartered for with a massive supply of oil paints. I'm proud to be the next person to shoot with it. My dear friend, Josh, learned to shoot on it and so the torch has been passed to me; I just hope that I can get as good as he is. He will tell you that he hopes to be as good as Jamie Harmon, his photography mentor. I received a crash course in photography last night and hopefully I absorbed some! I went on today to shoot pictures of my friend's band, Pigtoad. They're really goofy guys and after shooting with them, I have spent most of my afternoon listening to the storm outside and editing the pictures of them.  Have an incredible weekend and be kind to yourself and one another. -monica

Not too shabby (first time photographing a band)

(late) Weekend Photo Drop

I hope everyone out there in hypothetical reader land had a marvelous 4th of July weekend. I headed to Mexico Beach with my girlfriend Blair and we crashed at her dad's new condo, relaxed on the  beach and cruised around Port St Joe. I wish I had better photos to share of everything, but I wasn't able to take too many that where worth sharing. I'm still working on being a better photographer and my camera is the best I've had, but still not ideal. (so, I do my best! What else is there really to life?)  

The best part of the trip was, without a doubt, walking the beach at night (jack and coke in hand) with our flashlights and finding little crabs and watching them scurry sideways into the water or pull their legs in to make themselves taller, kinda like how people puff out their chests and bow up for fights. On our walk back to the condo we all shut off our flashlights and let our eyes adjust and we were able to see the stars fairly well, fortunately the new moon was less than a week prior so the only light pollution was from the town lights. I bet it would be incredible to be on a boat in the middle of the ocean and get to stare up at all the stars! 

This sign made me really happy for some reason. It was on the way, off of some back road in Florida.

I scored the brown owl glass for free at a junk shop and it goes great with the rest of my owl stuff.  

Veggie Dog...forever alone. 

 I spent the fourth with my family. They weren't going to do anything special, but I convinced them to cook out since I won't get to do this next year with them. My mum made this delicious watermelon, lime and club soda drink to have with supper. That and hot dogs was a perfect southern summer dinner!

Steve-o (Broken End Stereo's tour manager, I believe) playing with DJ equipment.

That night I went to a party at a friend's house and this really great band from Tucson, AZ was crashing there for the night. The guys from Broken End Stereo, their tour manager and the merch girl where all there and they were all SO much fun. There are touring for 12 months on The Gila Monstour, which is a hella DIY tour. I wish I had thought about it in advanced, but I would have made them all something for dinner, but they are slated to make there way back through Valdosta in 6 weeks or so, so I will hopefully get to carouse with them one more time before I hop the Atlantic.  

Best part about vegan baking? Licking the beaters and say 'gtfo' to salmonella!

That brings us back to today, what a great long weekend! I slept until noon today and made some fabulous Vegan Snickerdoodles. They're a bit crunchy, but that makes them perfect for dunking into coffee or tea, which is how I plan on having them this evening. I hope you all an amazing weekend and have an even better week. Keep the peace and love yourself. 

-monica

Weekend Warrior

I kept very busy this weekend, exhaustingly so, but compared to my usual weekday boredom it was a welcome reprieve. 
My "weekend" started early with hanging out with my dear friend and former roommate, Hunter. Thursday afternoon Hunter, Steven and I all had coffee together and shared wonderful conversations about life, growing up, vegetarianism, environmentalism and how people become polarized on issues. I wish I could recall more of what we discussed, but I have a terrible memory for details. The feeling that is evoked is what lasts for me. 
Friday evening I went to see Super 8 with several friends and it was too amazing! Wow, I could go on and on about it. JJ Abrams and Spielberg really put together something incredible. What made Super 8 incredible to me was that unlike most modern Sci-Fi/ Thriller/ Action-Type films this one is focused on how everyone in the film is impacted by the alien/ monster character, rather than focusing on the thrills of having a monster smashing through a quaint town. The focus is placed on humanity and the way the characters eventually develop compassion for the "alien/ monster". A refreshing new turn in cinema for me. (Mind you, I am no movie critic.)

Joe Chrisitan and I at his 880th race.

On Saturday I had to be up at 5am to help my mum at a 5K Fundraiser for our county's 4-H program. (I was very disappointed that I wasn't able to run, it would have been my first 5K. I couldn't run because a melamine mixing bowl fell on my foot a few days ago and I have been waiting on the soreness to go away. It's really been killing me not being able to go for my regular runs!) The road race was quite a success, but what was really great for me was meeting Joe Christian. He's a local that is about to be inducted into the sport hall of fame next month for his record. This was his 880th road race! He plans to make it to 1,000. His 73rd birthday is also in July, a week before my 23rd birthday. We spoke briefly and he told me about his favorite 3 marathons that he ran, the Hawaii, New York and Disney marathons. He talked about how he and some friends went dancing all night after running the Hawaii and Disney marathons and he told me that the secret to being healthy was exercise. He said if you exercise regularly and eat half-way decent you'll be ok. I take his word on it! Congrats Joe; it was a pleasure to meet you! 

Dear Future Reader....

That afternoon Steven and I bought some sticky notes and went to the book store and left notes to future readers in some of our favorite books, like Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, several Carl Sagan books, and I left note in several beauty books reminding them that they are beautiful just the way they are. It was great fun and I really hope that the next readers of those books react positively to our little notes. 


Sunday I took it easy and spent the day crafting and running errands with my mum. I've have a really wretched sore throat the past week or so and my allergies reached a fever pitch sunday so my crafting was punctuated with consistent nose blowing, which really just sounded that a broken trumpet. I then finished my day by consoling my sore throat with the better half of a pint of frozen yogurt and finishing Season 5 of Doctor Who. I hope you had a lovely weekend as well!
-Monica