I think I am at my weirdest in the morning and in the kitchen. Today I stood on a stool and turned in a circle while my bagel was toasting and imagined that I was 7 feet tall in my kitchen for about 5 minutes. I have the slowest toaster oven on the planet. Then I cut and ate a mango. I am beginning to understand the subtleties of mangoes after this, my 5th mango in the span of a lifetime. There seems to be a thin line between the three stages of mango, green, ripe, and rotten on the inside. What I may never understand is the amorphous and chaotic center-of-the-mango that you just can't plan for. Where the fuck is it? Why can't it just stay in the center of the mango like you would expect? What does it do? It seems to exist for the sole purpose of making mangoes more dangerous to chop up. Why is there an e in mangoes?

I went to an informational meeting by these folks, The American Society of Media Photographers, about being a photographer's assistant. I think it would be an awesome job for me but I have no sense of how realistic it would be for me to find work as one. At the meeting I won the door prize for one free day of studio rental at a place called Orbit Studios. This is evidently a fancy schmancy nice deal. I looked at their website and even their smaller studio is 400 dollars a day, the larger ones going for 600 or more. I am going to post here and on Facebook looking for friends of mine who are photographers who want to share the space with me for the day free of charge and are willing to help me a bit since I have never used a studio for taking pictures and I think it would really help to have some studio shots in my portfolio whenever I actually have a portfolio.

I have been stupid sick for like two weeks and I'm tired of it.

The chickens are ready for winter to be done and so am I.

Ian and I decided we would go to Hawaii, then realized that Hawaii is crushingly expensive to visit, so we went to Cancun which has been officially recognized as the poor man's Hawaii. We landed in an all inclusive Sandos resort, which could be the Spanish word for "Sandals" but I've had trouble confirming that because according to the internets it's urban slang for something considerably less wholesome.

It's pretty there!




( I mostly take pictures of animals regardless of where I go. )

Super behind photo posts! I didn't take a lot of pictures in NYC, but I had a wonderful time. I was on my own a lot and was nervous about being mugged so kept my camera in its little camera sack even in situations where I should have had it out, doing its camera duties. Most of the trip was spent practicing yoga and hanging out at the Jivamukti School. It was wonderful but I didn't take any pictures of it either. Here's what I do have!
( NYC! )

I got up too early this morning. I read the internet for a while. I walked around the kitchen doing random things like tapping the grapefruit in the fruit bowl and looking in the refrigerator and opening all of the cupboards and not closing them. My kitchen constantly looks like that scene from The Sixth Sense where Haley Joe Osment tells his mother that he was looking for Pop-Tarts. I scrolled through my old picture posts. I do that so often, it has to be a mental defect. Whenever I think anyone might have been looking at my old picture posts, I compulsively look through them too. I was younger but fatter. I frequently think about which is more attractive, a leaner 30 year old me, or a fatter 23 year old me with higher tits, thicker hair, and fuller eye hollows. Today I will buy a piece of carry on luggage. Tomorrow I will fly to New York City and when the TSA agent's hands slide along my legs up to my crotch I will brush my lips against her ear and breathe into it while she parts my labial folds with her fingers, searching, always searching. I will get on that plane and meet the future, head on.

I wish that Octopuses were longer lived. If so I would have a whole wall of tanks filled with them and I would teach them all to communicate through sign language and wear little octopus clothes, but it's no good loving something that will only last 3 years at most. I learned that from my last relationship. BAZING!

Got the absolute BEST couch surfing request ever today.

Lara wrote:
>Hello,
>
>My name is Lara, I am from Paris, France, Im a student, studying english, spanish, arabic, cinema at the university.
>I am coming to Minneapolis, my very first time in the USA, on the 19th of november. I am going there for personal reasons, actually to seduce the man I love. He is american, he lives in Stevens square. I do not know where it is but it does not matter, I am doing it.
>I can stay at his place but I want to feel free and not relying on him. I also want to meet people and see how is the american way of life. I do not know how many nights Im planned to be hosted, probably the two or three first nights, so I can see how the area looks like, I can prepare myself, practise a bit my english and then go meet him.
>I have money in case I need to go to the hotel if he wants me to leave but I think being with people is so much better and I do not really see the point in going to a hotel on my own. I had many sufers, visiting me in Paris, it was fantastic and it gave me the will of traveling like that from now.
>If you can help me, give me advice or meet me there or something else, I would be very glad.
>
>Hope to read you soon.
>
>Lara.



That's a resounding yes, super cute french girl! If she actually makes it here, we are throwing her a "I'm an adorable Parisian" party and you're all invited.

For those who don't know what Couchsurfing.org is, you should check it out! We love the hell out of it.

http://www.couchsurfing.org

I got laid off/fired from my job. It is a very strange feeling to be unfettered by a 9-5 after 8 years of desk job. I was super sad and ashamed at first, but then I thought, "Wait a minute. I can do anything I want, now. So I did.

( Trip stories and lots of pictures! )

BURNING MAN!!!! NSFW
( Thar she blows! )

Random thoughts:

If your greatest talent is being young and attractive, the happiest times in your life will be memories by the time you're 10 years out of puberty and then you will be boring and sad for like another 50 years.

I still wave at fire trucks. Well, at firemen in fire trucks.

The best revenge against jerks who actively hope and work for your destruction is to live a healthy, happy and well balanced life, to the best of your ability.

My 30th birthday party was the most fun I've had at a party in my honor since my batmitzvah. I fed 60 people vegan pizza and vegan meatballs, got hugs from everyone and my hair looked really good. I wish I could turn 30 again next year. Haw!

I burn 1.2 calories a minute while I'm sleeping or sitting in front of a computer. I burn 12.6 calories per minute on a 5mph jog on a treadmill. I'm learning to love that hamster wheel.

While I was collecting eggs this morning, my chickens ate my peanut butter toast out of my hand. I love them so hard. Every morning I pick them up and hug them and kiss their ears and smell their feathers. Some day we will have goats too, and then I will be able to eat goat cheese again. It is the cheese I miss most of all since I stopped the dairy.

I have stopped a lot of things so far this year, some intentionally and some by accident. At the new year I stopped taking nicotine lozenges after 4 years of using them heavily. That was an intentional choice because it was embarrassing, expensive, and bad for me. I am very proud of the fact that I am done with them. I stopped eating dairy/eggs that don't come from my chickens after Taxi and Number Four died, also in January. After crying every day when I woke up, I figured that it just wasn't worth it to me to do something that brings misery and death to thousands and thousands of chickens when the sickness and death of one made me so terribly sad. I am really really happy with my choice. Convenience is overrated, feeling like you're living an authentic life is priceless for me.

I stopped taking anti-anxiety medication every day after taking the meds for around 3 years straight. This was mostly an accident, but a happy one. I had tapered down the dose for a while, fell asleep without it altogether for a couple of nights in a row and just decided that I wasn't going to use it as a regular sleep aid any more. Again, this is something I wouldn't hesitate to use again if I needed it, but it's really very good to not need it.

I've stopped washing my face. This has helped my skin immensely. The reason I've been able to do this is because I don't wear make up, so I'm not all covered in goop all the time, so I don't need to wash all the goop off which makes my skin dry and then oily. So, I'm just a normal amount of oily all the time, but it looks really good. I have had to let go of the joy of exfoliation though. :(

I stopped going to therapy around the end of last year. This is after 4 years of therapy once or twice a week. I'm actually feeling really good without it. Something I learned in therapy is that 99% of happiness is perspective, and I think I was using a lot of that time to focus on all the shitty things I could think of, and that wasn't helping me by the end of it. I truly believe that therapy helped make my life something worth living simply by teaching me how to live it better, and I wouldn't hesitate to go back if I needed to do so, but it's nice to be able to go about my business without it, honestly.

CON is on the horizon. Yoga is an increasingly amazing and beautiful part of my life. Volleyball is great. My friends are so awesome they make my heart ache. Ian and I are 4 years into our relationship and are doing well. Life is pretty good right now, and that's wonderful. I hope you all are the same, and if you're not, you should call me so I can listen to what's going on and care and tell you how much I love you, because I do. Like whoa.