Love teh kitties, hah!

All the power was out so I read my book by candle light. We emptied the fridge and put everything on the porch to keep it from spoiling. This morning we had to dig it out from under all the snow.

I’m not going to say much about my trip to LA because I’m saving it for later (read: super top secret project!!) but I do want to acknowledge that I was there and it was one of the greatest weekend getaways ever. The endless sunshine and 80 degree weather made for an amazing escape from the slushy walks in the never ending darkness of winter in Chicago.

Pretty&fun.

Crappy image quality aside, I’m pretty disappointed.  Granted, this seems to be more of a printing error than an editor’s oversight, and there is no way they can check every book, but I still find stuff like this distracting.  I mean, had everything been lined up perfectly, I’d still be reading.

I guess that’s the thing about print media – the human quality it takes on, without even really meaning to.  The hand that touched the page, that loaded the ink, that slipped the dust jacket on… or more accurately these days, the hand that flipped the switch on the machines and then dug itself back into a bag of Doritos.  But the hand was there, and all of the cheesy fingerprints it leaves behind are what make the end product unique.  Sometimes the colors on the Sunday comics are lined up all funny, and nobody really gives it any thought.  Except me, maybe.

Anyway, I don’t know why I got so worked up.  Maybe it’s just a bummer that the one flaw I come across in an otherwise perfect (so far, at least) piece of fiction is one that is totally not a fault of the author.  But, if it’s gonna happen anywhere, I’m glad it’s on a page about James Taggart :)

These are from last week’s snow fall, but for some reason they never posted.  It’s raining now and undoing everything, which is actually a good thing, as my neighbors don’t shovel and it’s a pain to have to walk twice as slow in the sub zero temperatures just to avoid falling on the ice.   Everyone keeps saying it’s too early for the weather to be this bad, but it’s the middle of December in Chicago.

I haven’t really done any holiday shopping (buying things for myself doesn’t count), and I’m not really looking forward to it, either.  I always come up with good ideas for gifts six months before hand and then forget when the time comes to buy them.  I also never know what to ask for when my family asks what they should get for me, and it’s only after I don’t receive it, do I realize what I would have liked to get.  Isn’t that how it always is?

The perfect way to get into the holiday spirit? Take a ride on the Santa train, where the seats are upholstered in gingerbread patterns and the air smells like peppermint (for real!) and tinny Christmas music plays over the conductor’s speakers, and guys dressed up like elves hand out candy canes.

A super sweet collaboration between jewelry designer Verabel and artist/designer Alyson Fox.

For my birthday, my sister sent me probably my favorite present I’ve received in a long time – a Lomography Fish Eye camera.  For some reason, I thought the images would take up the whole shot, but instead, they are framed in the circle, which I actually kind of like now.  I don’t know why it always takes me forever to get my film developed, but it was a nice surprise to get the photos back and be able to relive the summer through a different lens – a nice bit of sunshine on what otherwise has been a miserably sad day.