Friday, August 27, 2010
Things I am loving lately...
Here are some things I'm loving lately!
Excitement #1: Sacred Lotus Photography (well, Nicolle)
Sacred Lotus Photography is my friend Nicolle's photography business. She is amazing. We met on Twitter when she replied to my stating something along the lines of "I don't care what time it is. It's baked potato time." It was around 9:15am and she replied with something like, "Mmmm, a baked potato sounds good right now!" INSTANT FRIENDS!! Someone talking to me who understands that sometimes you just need a baked potato Right Now!!
We ended up meeting for the first time at North, which is right in between where we both live. How convenient! We met up around 5:30pm and didn't end up leaving until sometime after 10pm. Or maybe it was 11? Basically, excellent mojitos combined with excitement about life and new friends kept us at the bar for hours!
She also ended up doing the pictures for my coworker's wedding. They are so beautiful and amazing and full of love. There's only a few under that link, obviously, but, trust me, Oh My Gosh.
She has taught me a lot about photography and renewed my interest in it. I took 2.5 years of photo in high school and would have gone further, had I not gotten kicked out (that is another story, but it wasn't my fault - really!). I've since bought a Holga and a Diana and enjoy playing around with those and she is always game to answer my noob questions.
These are a couple of my favorite pictures of hers. I am a sucker for good-looking and happy sky.
This weekend I got to teach Nicolle about huckleberries and how delicious they are.
I'm just really excited that Nicolle is my friend! Thank you for being so great!
P.S. Make sure you read her blog, look at her pictures on Flickr, and check out her Etsy store, which will be open on Monday (which means you'll need to check back then)!
P.P.S. She has the coolest bangs and glasses ever! And a cute laugh! And is always dressed adorably!
Excitement #2: Lewis and Clark
(Yes, THAT Lewis and Clark.)
What you must know about me is that I am a history nerd. One of my nerdy things I love is Lewis and Clark's story. I find their journals interesting and would read funny parts out loud to Jonathan while I was reading the book on the couch. (Yes, there are funny parts! Lewis says "mockersins" instead of "moccasins" and the mens' comments throughout the book are pretty funny sometimes.)
Because a lot of their story happened in this very area I wanted to do a Lewis & Clark Nerd Trip in March. Thankfully, I didn't have to nerd it up on my own and two of my lovely friends came with me, Abbe and Jebby! Our goals were to hit up Cannon Beach, Ecola Park, the salt works, and Dismal Nitch.
I made celebratory cupcakes, each with a different part of their story. And you can tell I was up late making them because I spelled Lewis "Louis." Me!! Shameful!
We went to Cannon Beach to eat first. We went to a seafood place and I had a huge salmon burrito and a piece of really, really good smoked salmon on the side. Then we hit up the beach!
Our official doggie mascot of the day was Kiya, Abbe's dog. Isn't she SO cute?! This picture with Haystack Rock is so majestic and touching.
We headed to Ecola State Park next. Around Ecola is where Lewis & Clark found the natives butchering up a whale that had washed ashore. I believe this is the first time the men had seen a whale and were impressed with the size of it. They got some oil from the natives and were pretty excited.
Ecola is, hands down, THE prettiest place in Oregon on the coast. I'm positive. It was also in the mid-70s when we were there in March.
Our initial view. That cultivated grass *probably* not there during 1805. :o)
The view from the point. Nice! (Hi, Jebby!)
My explorer pose
Yeah, Ecola was pretty beautiful! We ate some cupcakes there and then decided to head to the next place, the salt works!
The salt works is where men would work in shifts, boiling sea water to get the salt. It was a 24 hours a day operation. The men were going to need the salt to help preserve meat on their way back east. This is where it happened!
After the salt camp we headed toward Dismal Nitch, which is over on the Washington side of the Columbia, which meant we got to cross the totally awesome Astoria bridge!
Dismal Nitch is where the Corp spent some time while it was raining and storming heavily. They couldn't leave because the weather was so "dismal."
The salt works is where men would work in shifts, boiling sea water to get the salt. It was a 24 hours a day operation. The men were going to need the salt to help preserve meat on their way back east. This is where it happened!
After the salt camp we headed toward Dismal Nitch, which is over on the Washington side of the Columbia, which meant we got to cross the totally awesome Astoria bridge!
Dismal Nitch is where the Corp spent some time while it was raining and storming heavily. They couldn't leave because the weather was so "dismal."
As you can see, the weather when we were there was awesome. Mt. Saint Helens to your right!
That was a pretty fun day. Jonathan also humored me earlier this year by taking me on a spontaneous adventure to Fort Clatsop, which is where the Corp stayed before heading back to St. Louis. This is a reproduction of the fort, but it was still totally awesome!
Explorers like to point
Front of the fort
Taken from the back of the fort
This is the actual stream the guys got water from! It's still there!
The Corp were the first to describe many plants, such as...
and
This last picture is of the waterway that the men used that was near the fort. I saw my first cattails there!
And if you've been reading, you all know how much I love my tiny mug from the Dog River Coffee Co in Hood River.
So, yeah, Lewis and Clark nerd, 'nuff said. :o)
Excitement #3: My "museum" shelf area
This shelf area is one of my favorite areas in our apartment. The shelf itself was free from Beaverton. Someone painted it black for reasons unknown. I haven't had time to repaint it yet. The pictures on top are all ones of Jonathan and I that make me smile, except for the bird picture, which is my favorite picture by Tracy French.
The next shelf is my main "museum" area, which I call that because it's all sorts of neat things I've collected. It's my beach glass collection (residing in some vintage Ball jars) and what consists of some 10,000 year old clam shells I dug from an archaeology site on Prince of Wales Island (big ones on far right), some jingles (a kind of scallop shell), some otoliths (fish ear bones), neat rocks, sand dollar shells that still have their velvety "fur" (not clean like you usually find them), and a various assortment of other rocks, bones, shells, some vintage glass knickknacks, and one tiny kitty tooth from Halo.
The last shelf has a salmon bowl by an Alaskan artist (given to me by my mom), two moss terrariums, our cat Jeff's ashes (he died of cancer last July), a birch bowl from Anchorage that's filled with acorns and pine & fir cones, my first encaustic, a glass bowl that was a gift from an ex-boyfriend (this bowl is AMAZING), and various other little special things.
Here's a bigger picture of some of the cool second shelf stuff. Some of my beach glass collection is in those jars. The blue beads in front of the far left jar are from the beach at Tongass Island, an archaeological site. (It was okay for me to take these beads. They weren't at the site itself, but down in the low tide line.) Some of the jingles are in front of the middle and right jars. The shells are rainbow-colored and really pretty. The 10,000 year old clam shells are the far right. They were from an ancient sea bed. The otoliths are the little feather-shaped white bones in the lower left-hand corner of the photo.
None of this stuff has any monetary value (unless someone really wants at some of my glass collection), but it's just some of the neat stuff I've found over the years and find interesting.
Excitement #4: Icky (or as I call her "Miss Icky Pants")
Icky belongs to my friends Jessica and Waldo. She has a brother named Mojo Jojo, who is also a nice cat, but Icky is just hilarious. She's a polydactyl, so it looks like she's wearing mittens all the time. She's also a cat with a funny personality. She also likes to fetch beer caps if you flick them down the hall for her. She always has a lot to say in her "mi-i!" meows. I have been swearing for years that I am going to steal her someday and make her my own, but it hasn't happened yet, and so this post goes out to Icky. I found out today (Thursday night) that Jonathan and I will get to cat-sit her and Mojo while Jessica and Waldo are out of town and we are in town (until they come back). This is basically the best thing ever. I used to live across the street from them and would house-sit when they went out of town and now I get to do it again and I live 928 miles away (according to Google Maps).
Icky Stalk Commence!
Icky wants to play. She acts coy, but she yearns for it.
I know how her tiny cat mind thinks. She will play with the rubber band eventually.
Success!
We are BFFs.
I'm being stalked right now. The stalk-ee is stalking the stalk-er.
Icky doesn't go outside much. She's a little confused.
Mojo knows what to do. *streeeetch* Icky hangs out next to me. *best buds*
Icky just wants to snug on my lap.
This is my artistic picture. Don't be a hater. Fur + rainbow scarf.
Icky and I, playing again
Icky and Britt, BFFs for life
This is a gratuitous picture of Mr. Mojo because he looks so handsome in his scarf
This has been another episode of "Things I'm Loving Lately." Thanks for looking at my post and seeing some of the stuff that makes me happy!
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That is a whole lot of excitement for one week! haha! I had no idea you and Nicolle actually met on twitter- I thought you've always been friends. That's too cool! And I love both your explorer point and your sea glass/sand dollar collection and yay for kitty-sitting!
ReplyDeleteWhen you are me there is literally excitement every day! Ha ha! I think Nicolle and I actually met through your Twitter! I think I saw her icon and thought it was so cute and she seemed like a nice person, so I started following her.
ReplyDeleteI'm so super excited for kitty-sitting! Mojo and Icky have so much personality that I would swear they could talk sometimes. There will end up being a disgusting amount of pictures of my friends' cats. :o)