heather armstrong hits seattle

i came upon dooce.com many years ago while at UBC, and i adored her writing style in that flatly-stated-douglas-coupland kind of way. i've never been an avid, day-by-day follower of any blog, and when i rediscovered her blog years later, i was surprised to finally realize that people categorized it as a "mommy blog"......maybe i had first come across it pre-Leta, when it was just her, her husband and a photogenic dog, but to me, heather armstrong will always be just a woman who has an addictively stark, punchy writing style laced with tequilla and the F word.

so heather armstrong came to seattle this evening...actually, what's better, is she came to the suburb of lake forest park so i didn't have to battle traffic or parking downtown. i showed up in time to hear her addressing a large crowd with a passage from her book wherein she managed to use the word vagina about 10 times within a 2 minute time span. gone are the days of those small cue cards we used in school when giving presentations; she read off of something i could only possibly attribute to be a kindle.

afterward, she opened up the mic for questions, and after a few, a man who had never heard of her before stated so, and said that she'd managed to freak-the-heck-out-of-him about her inability to have sex for the 7 months after childbirth. the man got a roaring cheer from the crowd, largely comprised of what i could only fathom to be mommy-bloggers....but in the more traditional sense - less tequilla, less f-words... and i figured i was as good as any to follow up his act. i walked up to the mic and said i'd made her something because of anyone i'd ever met, i thought she'd really appreciate it. everyone "awwed" and then laughed when i politely presented her with a vagina pouch. i also said i hoped i'd gotten the right hair color, and all she could respond with was, "it's so hairy."

inevitably, her pronounciation of the word "crayon" was brought up, except i didn't realize it because i heard her say what sounded like "crown," and compared it to something that also sounded like "crown" in a southern drawl, and i instantly and incorrectly attributed it to some birthing process...because "crowning" exists, right?

unexpected registry gifts

so friday i get this unexpected red package at the front door. i very recently had a very unpleasant experience trying to get a blender from target with a 10% registry completion discount that arrived in my mailbox already expired, and was like, maybe this is to make up for it! whatever was inside rattled around like it was broken, though. so i open it up, and it's got an invoice dated july 08 from my uncle....and one of the pieces is broken. so i call up target and they happily order a replacement set for me. when i ask them why the invoice was so old, she says, well, yes i can tell you reason! your uncle ordered this in july and it was on backorder, so we've been sending him an email every month for the past 8 months, if he wanted to continue to wait for the item, and he kept saying yes.

and here i thought he couldn't figure out how to do online ordering.

o+m part 2

while we rain held out for us, it was a very cold day, and these two braved the seattle weather in their fabulous wardrobe. i'm glad, though, because i love, love, love these images!

jennifer+doug part 1

o+m

we pulled off a wedding and an engagement shoot this weekend.

IS 70-200mm f/2.8 L

i rented a 200mm f/2.8 prime and was sold, and at $750, the price was awesome for a second generation L series canon lens....because on my 18-200mm nikkor, i use the 200mm length a lot. when i went to buy it....i had this sudden panic attack that i should get the 70-200mm IS f/2.8 L instead, because being able to zoom out would be useful....but it's turned my camera into a five pound tank with a look-at-me-white gun barrel....and it's so-incredibly-heavy. i've got biceps, but i need forearm muscles apparently. we'll see how i fare with it this weekend.

ryan+soosie on Vimeo.

near emissions testing center....remond, wa

dippin' dots from the sky

the sky let out something this evening that i can only possibly describe as dippin dots...not quite snow, not quite hail. coincidentally, when we were at blockbuster, i saw a box of "baskin robbins soft candy" that resembled starburst but laid claim to some sort of ice cream affiliation. i was briefly excited at the notion that it would be freeze-dried ice cream, but realized it was not.

i remember trying neapolitan astronaut ice cream at some sort of science fair when i was about five or six years old, after school...with my mom. andrew says he's never had it, and i'm tempted to buy a pack or two...it even comes in the ice cream sandwich variety!

let there be lent

i had a lazy sunday. natasha! i painted my corkboard (although it's certainly not an original design of my own). i grew up with very basic art supplies, but once, perhaps more than ten years ago, my parents bought me set of nice acrylic paints for christmas. so, armed with nothing but magenta, yellow, cyan, black and white, i came up with a punchy color scheme. i have this intense desire to buy more cork boards and hang them all over the house. i went to 5pm church service today to get a big hug from chelsea and to see one of my photographs on the postage-paid tithe envelope.

so, lent is upon us and everyone at work chose something to give up. i grew up catholic, and fridays during lent i remember my mom cracking open old jars of home-made canned salmon that i may very well have caught with my own hands. i hate fish, and this, proved to be the fishiest of the fish-based products, except maybe tuna. when i got older, my mom told me i was exempt from abstaining from meat because i wasn't an adult. my dad made the observation one year that eating fish wasn't a sacrifice for my mom because she loved seafood! when i went to a protestant high school, i realized that the kids gave up things they actually enjoyed, like chocolate, and not just on fridays.

so for forty days, i am giving up "not cleaning," and andrew is giving up "not eating." in other words, i'm giving up messiness and andrew is giving up starving himself, because he doesn't eat at work.

quiet weekend, yellow buds