Flashback Friday: Seeeesters

Today is Friday, they are paving the parking lot outside my work window, and I believe the inside of my brain is rattling as loudly as the building. So, given that we are all slowly (or not so slowly) going batty today, I'm throwing in the towel and flashbacking from work. Don't judge me; I'll sic the guy with the compressor on you. He's only, like, 15 feet from me.

Flashback Friday taking it easy style. My sister and I, I'm guessing around 1983. This photo tells me a number of things:

1. We are at my grandpa's house. Note the awesome carpet.
2. My sister is wearing an amazing pink and white checkered bandanna that I remember coveting. Who knows, perhaps I'm trying to discreetly yank it off her neck.

3. My entire family had those quilted slippers in different colors throughout my entire childhood. The inside fuzzy lining always started so fluffy but became flat and disappointing rather quickly.

4. I want that chair in my apartment. Family, does anyone have that chair tucked away?
5. I would say that my dad dressed me (overalls), except that I match really well and there are tight pigtails involved (thanks mom).
6. I really wish I could read my sister's sweatshirt. I am, however, enjoying the pinkness of her outfit.

and finally,
7. She might be scratching my head or about to pull a pigtail, but sisters love.

Happy Friday.

The best sentence I've ever written...

"During construction, a person qualified in wetland restoration will monitor construction to ensure construction is as specified in the final detailed construction drawings and specifications."

-An excerpt from a report I wrote two years ago and apparently, appallingly, never proofread.

Babay!

made me so happy, i almost cried

Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.

I vote for Bellatrix

My sister and her family have a new dog! She is a rare red airedale, is 10 months old, and her name is Bella...she doesn't really respond to it (or anything) though, so they may change it. We suspect that at her previous home, she didn't receive a lot of attention, but with a wee bit of training (no paws on the counters!), I think she will fit in just fine.

My sister and I grew up with airedales. It's amazing how much I inherently love this breed of dog. LOVE.

floor matching.

dopplegangers?

waitingwaitingwaiting for Brian

Flashback Friday: on any given Sunday

Me and Mom. That looks like church paneling behind us, and we are definitely in church outfits, so I think it's safe to say we were at church. My mother was always obsessed with bows in my hair; they are evident in almost every school photo I ever took, except the year my dad dressed me on make-up picture day, which is another Flashback Friday post altogether.

I think I'm five here. And it's definitely the 80s.

Our placemats will ROCK

My company has a placemat policy. If an employee has been here at least three years and leaves (for more amiable reasons), they get a send-off collaged placemat of photos and funny sayings. This placemat will become part of the placemat shrine of former employees and maps of the Grand Canyon that are used to protect our awesome conference table at lunch time. Amy and I will have the BEST placemats because we take the best field photos. Mid-thistle monitoring (yes, we were counting thistles), we stopped the cart and took jumping pictures. Amy is a seasoned veteran of jumping pictures, but these were my first. It took a bit to get our timing down (Amy=hare, Leslie=turtle), but we ended up with these beauties.

Future sandwich eating employees are so lucky. They don't even know.

<3 <3 chocolate <3<3

A few months ago, I went on an Association of Environmental Professionals (AEP) tour of the Scharffen berger Chocolate Factory in Berkeley. Yeahsure hobnobbed whatnot, I was there for the chocolate and ended up staying up until 2 in the morning because I was so wired.

Lo' and behold, the following pictures showed up in the Spring AEP newsletter and, as a result, were posted in my office's kitchen today with a "find your coworker!" post-it attached:

My frontside, post eating a lot of samples. See content.My backside, looking at chocolate in an enormous stirrer.
Too bad Hershey now owns the line. The chocolate still gets a big thumbs up, but the loss of the localized, small town-ness of the enterprise is disappointing.

For You!

If you at all need any sort of a pick-me-up this afternoon, go to THIS website and watch one of the mini-clips. Unbounded joy bounded. Nothing short of brilliant.

One person's trash

People doing awesome things with trash and projected light. See this blog for more info. So rad.

in the office, beware the reply-all

"Throwing out yogurt with a current date is not only ludicrous, but wasteful and a totally unacceptable procedure. Next time someone tosses a perfectly good food item away, stop and think of all the starving people around the world that would love to have just one bit of that food item, then if you’re conscientious is still good with the idea, then go ahead and toss it!

Since I wasn’t here and do not know who exactly did the tossing, I’m referring this back to you and you can forward it to any other guilty person or persons."

Update:

"Congratulations! You are the winner of the “next person who complains” gets fridge duty for the month. No good food is thrown out during this moldy, smelly, volunteer-based chore. You will find yogurts gathered in the cheese drawer.

If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the precipitate. There is an awful lot of precipitate in this building…."

Update Update:

"Lets just all stick to the rules, shall we? Label your food or take it home at the end of the week and it won’t get thrown out. Plain and simple."

sure, footed sans tats

Once upon a time in my life, I dated a tattooed boy. Like, lots of tattoos, and I would stare at them and look at the curves and dips and corners of lines and swirls and colors. Often, I felt sorry for a lost freckle, trapped under a red and black dice. Overall art pieces on one's body seem preferable than a hodgepodge of random thoughts and afterthoughts...this one guy I went to grad school with had one sleeve of ocean flora, another of rainforest flora, to meet in this awesome mix in the middle across his chest. That was pretty. I like tattoos artsy.

In the years following dating said tattooed fella, I have had this reoccurring dream. I wake (in dream), and my legs are tattooed, solid, from the knee down, swirls of green and red and mostly black, but also some blue...frightfully filled in, solid, from top of knee all the way to in between my toes. Somehow I have been tatted, completely, and I freak out that I will never be able to wear skirts again.

Last night, I had a tattooed dream, but this time I woke to find the image of a muscle man tattooed on my back and arms. Like, so when I flexed, it would look like he was flexing. Distraught doesn't cover it, and I couldn't decide if I wanted to have a large Iris created to cover the muscle man, or to spend $5,000 to have it removed.

I woke woke, relieved. Clean skin. Simple. Freckled.

Unexplainable joy

The photo is from an article on Wired.com about new cars that can tell drivers when they are too old to drive.

Just turn around and go back inside.

Today is one of those days when you were in the shower, trying to decide what to wear, you think, Oh, I haven't worn that green belt in awhile, I should wear it, and then, Oh, I haven't worn those black pants with that square design on them in awhile either, and then, I should wear them together because that would be fun, and then, Oh, I should wear that brown shirt with it because it is cute and has puffy sleaves and then I have those fun flats to wear, Oh, look how last minute mellow fashionista I am.

And then you put it all on. And the belt doesn't want to stay in place because the pants have no loops and all facets (belt and pants) are slippery. And the tank you had on under said brown cute shirt looks too butch, so you opt for a more feminine one, but the bottom hem of it is a bit baggy. And you realize you need to make the 8 AM meeting at work, so you don't have time to blowdry your hair and you stick it back in a barrette. And, when putting on make-up, you are scouring the dregs of your blush with your blush brush (poor brush) and add that to your mental list of impending purchases. And you fly out the door with coffee and purse and presentation notes only to get halfway down the stairs and remember you left your phone charging on the piano.

By the time you get to work, the belt is tossed, abandoned in the backseat. You've scrounged out some renegade jewelry in your car to spice up your now blah outfit. Hair is in a pudgy ponytail. And it occurs to you that pants held together with safety pins (buttons long gone) should really be tossed out the window. But you have to wait until you get home to do that. Because then you would be pantless. And that would be awkward. Especially during Monday morning meeting.