Chuck Palahniuk

{via Design Crush}

Goal: Jump. Be caught.

{via ffffound}

Book Lust

{via Design Sponge}

Page 46

Even when alone, able to uncurl alone and sit slowly up and wring out the sheet and go to the bathroom, these darkest mornings start days that Orin can't even bring himself for hours to think about how he'll get through the day.  These worst mornings with cold floors and hot windows and merciless light - the soul's certainty that the day will have to be not traversed but sort of climbed, vertically, and then that going to sleep again at the end of it will be like falling, again, off something tall and sheer.

- Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace

Page 38

In the eight American-educational grade, Bruce Green fell dreadfully in love with a classmate who had the unlikely name of Mildred Bonk.  The name was unlikely because if ever an eight-grader looked like a Daphne Christianson or a Kimberly St.-Simone or something like that, it was Mildred Bonk.  She was the kind of fatally pretty and nubile wraithlike figure who glides through the sweaty junior-high corridors of every nocturnal emitter's dreamscape.  Hair that Green had heard described by an over-wrought teacher as 'flaxen'; a body which the fickle angel of puberty - the same angel who didn't even seem to know Bruce Green's zip code - had visited, kissed, and already left, back in sixth; legs which not even orange Keds with purple-glitter-encrusted laces could make unserious.  Shy, iridescent, coltish, pelvically anfractuous, amply busted, given to diffident movements of hand brushing flaxen hair from front of dear creamy forehead, movements which drove Bruce Green up a private tree.  A vision in a sundress and silly shoes.  Mildred L. Bonk.  

- Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace

Page 12

"I read," I say. "I study and read. I bet I've read everything you've read. Don't think I haven't. I consume libraries. I wear out spines and ROM-drives. I do thinks like get in a taxi and say, "The library, and step on it." My instincts cocerning syntax and mechanics are better than your own, I can tell, with due respect."

- Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace

Infinite Summer

Jared finally convinced me to take the plunge into David Foster Wallace's 1,000+ page tome, Infinite Jest, as part of the summer reading challenge on Infinite Summer.  

He used all kinds of blackmail (most frequently as related to my English-major past, but also in terms of the assured bonding experience of joint-reading, and of course the incredible and monumental significance of this literary accomplishment.)

I finally relented.   Mainly because he's cute.  

(and I WAS an English major, dammit!  I can so do this!)

The challenge?

Join endurance bibliophiles from around the world in reading Infinite Jest over the summer of 2009, June 21st to September 22nd. A thousand pages ÷ 92 days = 75 pages a week. No sweat.

1. Plus endnotes^a.

a. A lot of them.

{Photo by Wolf Gang}

The Big Love

And I'd like to be one of those people who lives in the moment, who doesn't plot and plan and scheme and control, but I don't know if my brain could take it.  What on earth would I think about all day long?  

- The Big Love, Sarah Dunn

Book Lust

{via Made by Girl}

Kitchen Envy

Darker than my usual kitchen fetishes but the in-the-middle-of-a-forest-greenery more than makes up for it.

{via Desire to Inspire}

Goal: Smile big

...and don't be afraid to show your teeth.

{via ffffound}

Pascal

There is no better proof of human vanity than to consider the causes and effects of love, because the whole universe can be changed by it.  Cleopatra's nose.

- Pensees, Blaise Pascal

Goal: Get your hair wet

{Photo via neloqua}

Kitchen Envy

Man, how many people are ballsy enough to rock a yellow oven?  

And it's perfect.

{Photo via Design Sponge}

Goal: Kiss often

(preferably in tropical locales)

{photo by neloqua}

Unknown

"You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life."

(So true.  But harder than it seems.)

Goal: Go out on a limb

{Photo by nebe}

Word

{via Bedlam of Beefy}

Book Lust

{Photo via Design Sponge}

Head in the Clouds

Very Jack & The Beanstalk-esque, don't you think?

{Photo via Design Crisis}

Wise

{via Lake Jane}

P.S.

Mr. BCBG,

I will gladly be your official spokesperson at any point in time. All you have to do is ask. I already promote your clothing a whole lot. I write about you and your beautifully-sewn spawn quite frequently. My closet is bulging with your offspring. Perhaps you'd like to send me some additional garments and I will wear your creations every day. And take photos of them. And post them on my blog! I will be your walking talking advertising campaign. I would not be ashamed. I would not consider myself a sell-out. I would consider myself well-dressed.

Sincerely,
Kathryn

Quandry

So. Let's just say you're at work. You're counting down the minutes until 5 o'clock.

You get a text from your sister saying HUGE SALE AT BLOOMIES. You call her up and say Are you there now? She says Yes! Omg seriously every single thing in the store is on sale! You think, well, I do work right next to the mall. Perhaps I should stop by on my way home. You tell your sister, Hey, maybe I'll come by. She says I'm on the 3rd floor. You think you'll just stop by and take a buzz around. You haven't been to the mall in a long time and hey, why not?

In reality you really just want to go home and go for a nice long walk and reunite with the sun, which has been MIA for weeks and weeks and has caused you and the rest of your New Jersey peers to completely lose their sanity. You take a shower and consume your scrumptious shrimp dinner (thanks Ma!) and maybe do some of that freelance work that's due on Friday.

Basically, you just want to get your butt home and begin to prepare for the glories of SYTYCD.

You drive to the mall. You park your car. You enter mecca. The clothes call to you and all those colors and all those fabrics and you haven't been here in so long and oh it feels so good.

And then you find it. You see it. A dress. A BCBG dress. Of course. Because are there any other dresses on this planet? No. Not really. It's just you and BCBG in a little fashion vacuum, happily cohabitating in world of smiles and sunshine.

It's not black. Nor is it black and white. Which means it would be a valuable addition to your wardrobe. It is navy blue with fluttery little sleeves and a belt - a belt! - and fulfills all of your wildest fashion fantasies.

It fits like a glove. A god damn glove. It was made for you. Mr. BCBG himself crafted this exquisite garment for you specifically. You and only you.

When you bring it to the cash register the sales woman looks at the dress. She looks at you. She actually says Oh my gosh this is just SO YOU! She swipes some coupons for you (because of course you have selected the one. the only. the sole item in the entire store that is NOT at all on sale). She saves you $60. You (mentally) kiss her kind little cheek.

You whimper and offer up your credit card.

This was not in the cards. You've been so very good. You've been a thrifty little saver. You want to buy a new desk. And re-decorate your life. You didn't even WANT to shop.

So friends. I ask:

You find a made-for-you-glove-fitting-dress. Do you keep it? No matter what?

Just Plain Awesome

I'm sorry, but this is pretty freaking cool.

You know I've been on a Must-Redecorate-Kick.

How's that plan going? you might ask.

Oh, it's NOT going, would be my response.

But love this.

Totally eliminates the need for frames. Or wallpaper, for that matter.

{via you are my fave}

Oh Housewives of New Jersey...

... you are the best source of entertainment a girl could ask for on a suburban Jersey night.

Teresa - I love your new bubbies.  And the fact that you had complete and utter profanity-riddled breakdown.  And then kissed your husband and said "I love you" and flounced back to your seat like it was nothing.

Caroline - I bow to thee, o' matriarch.  You (and your new killer shepherd) could take on the world.

Dina - Did you get your hair did?  I'm liking the bangs.

Danielle - Seriously?  I have nothing more to say to you.

Jacqueline - You need to stop being so friendly.  But your husband is a real nice guy.

See?  Now why do people talk such smack about Jersey Girls?

{Photo via newsday.com}

Book Lust

A little dark for my usual taste, but contrasted against all of those light-colored spines?  Stretching over and around the door frame?  With a splash of hot pink coffee table?  Oh yes, I think I'd like it just fine.

{Photo via Design Sponge}

Do YOU Belong in NYC?

Love this commentary on the kind of folks who choose to survive and thrive in The Big Apple.

The big questions:

1. Are you an optimizer?
2. Do you want to be at the top of your field (or marry someone like that)?
3. Do you value an interesting life over happy life?

And then I highly recommend taking the quiz to determine "how much crap will you stomach in order to live here?"

My score:  68 

Do you belong in NYC?  

Only until you age out.

{Photo by Sandra Juto}

Page 281

"...I told him if he ever wanted to talk to me, he could throw pebbles at the guest room window and I would come down to meet him on the corner, I was afraid I'd never get to see him again, to see him seeing me, that night was the first time your mother and I made love since I returned, and the last time we ever made love, it didn't feel like the last time, I'd kissed Anna for the last time, seen my parents for the last time, spoken for the last time, why didn't I learn to treat everything like it was the last time, my greatest regret is how much I believed in the future..."

- Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

Book Lust

{Photo from Diane Bergeron via Desire to Inspire}

Explorer of the World

{by Keri Smith via even*cleveland}

Hanging by a Thread

I don't think I'd ever be ballsy enough to institute the dangling-lightbulbs-look into my own spaces, but I think it's pretty damn cool.

{via Design Crisis}

Page 33

"I thought about life, about my life, the embarrassments, the little coincidences, the shadows of alarm clocks on bedside tables.  I thought about my small victories and everything I'd seen destroyed, I'd swum through mink coats on my parents' bed while they hosted downstairs, I'd lost the only person I could have spent my only life with, I'd left behind a thousand tons of marble, I could have released sculptures, I could have released myself from the marble of myself.  I'd experience joy, but not nearly enough, could there be enough?  The end of suffering does not justify the suffering, and so there is no end to suffering, what a mess I am, I thought, what a fool, how foolish and narrow, how worthless, how pinched and pathetic, how helpless."

- Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

#1 Fan

Um.  Isn't she just the cutest?

Page 17

"Does it break my heart, of course, every moment of every day, into more pieces than my heart was made of, I never thought of myself as quiet, much less silent, I never thought about things at all, everything changed, the distance that wedged itself between me and my happiness wasn't the world, it wasn't the bombs and burning buildings, it was me, my thinking, the cancer of never letting go, is ignorance bliss, I don't know, but it's so painful to think, and tell me, what did thinking ever do for me, to what great place did thinking ever bring me?  I think and think and think, I've thought myself out of happiness one million times, but never once into it."

- Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

Living in the moment...

Anyone have any recommendations on... you know... how to do this?

Because it is NOT my forte.

{Photo by Matea Jocic}

Hammer Pants

There is nothing.  I repeat.  NOTHING.  Better than "spontaneous" group dances in public places.  I get goosebumps every time.

{via The Winger}

7.

sometimes we work so hard to 

make a living 

that we forget to

live

Katie Baum

{by Katie Baum via 20x200}

Still in Love

Seriously.  Is Pippi not the cutest kitty you've ever seen?

Closet Envy

My shoes are calling out for a similar arrangement.

{via Design Sponge}

Book Lust

{Photo from Domino}

Finally...

... started reading again, after a much-too-long hiatus.

All I needed was an incredibly awesome book to get me back into the swing of things.

And the perfect weekend weather helped.

There's nothing better than reading a good book, poolside.

The only thing Jared failed to take into account when loaning me the evil book was my addictive tendencies. And how I would plant myself on a lounge chair for 6 hours reading away, rather than doing work due at the end of the week. Mama had to confiscate my book.

Question to the bookworms...

Have you ever read Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer?

Have you ever read The History of Love by Nicole Krauss?

Have you ever noticed the EXTREME similarities between these 2 novels? Which happen to be written by husband and wife, respectively?

They are both AMAZING. Full of completely inspired and goosebump-causing writing. But the similarities seem a bit uncanny... almost like this literary power couple sipped their coffee on the porch one morning, brainstormed a writing prompt together, and then sat side by side with their laptops, typing away...

PS - don't give anything away... I haven't finished Foer's book yet!

PPS - ah ha! I already feel slightly validated... though I'm afraid to read too closely for fear it'll ruin the ending for me... but check it!

I Want to Go to There

On the other hand....

I really really really like this dress.

All signs keep pointing to VINTAGE.

And yet the thought just skeeves me a bit. Call me prissy, but I like my clothes brand-new.

Maybe I'll have to get over it in order to find a dress that rocks. And has sleeves. Since apparently no designer this century supports wedding gowns that flatter one's arms.

{Photo by Boutwell Studios via A Cup of Jo}

Why Hello

I am a bad blogger.

I am feeling uninspired.

I'm also a fan of instant gratification, and simply do not understand why I am not yet a bloggilionaire. Or a Zumbillionaire. Or any other kind of "-illionaire."

Perhaps you might say I am invested in highly unrealistic expectations.

I am also a cranky pants.

I will choose to blame my lady hormones, which at this moment are rubbing their hands together maniacally, developing all kinds of cruel and unusual ways to stir my sanity in a frothing swirl of Crazy.

I have yet to find a job that doesn't drive me to tears, boredom and unfulfillment.

I have still not succeeded in drugging Jared and forcing him to wed me immediately, at which point he will be legally obligated to move into a glorious Hoboken apartment with me.

This is not where I thought I would be.

(I know. I know. "Life is what happens while you're making other plans" and all that. But still. I'm waiting for MORE.)

Shoe Heaven

A brilliant idea for those of us who have...ahem...more shoes than we know what to do with.

{via Desire to Inspire}

Book Lust

{Photo from Domino}

Dillard

Land is a poured thing and time is a surface film lapping and fringeing at fastness, at a hundred hollow and receding blues. Breathe fast: we're backing off the rim.


- Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm