Online Glass Art Gallery

Click HERE to check out Mike's gallery on glassartists.org.

The URL is glassartists.org/MikeWarren, FYI.

I will be working on getting more pictures on here every few days or so, so check back in periodically. This is just the tip of the iceberg, y'all.

Edited to add some pictures, in case you need some inspiration to click my link, you won't regret it, I promise!





And there are plenty more where these came from!

On Love, Random Stranger Style

A man who appeared to have all of his worldly possessions with him in a shopping cart handed me a photocopy of this poem, handwritten on a plain white sheet of paper, as I walked by on my way to the post office:


Love and marriage,
Love and marriage
go together
like a horse and carriage,
This I tell you brother,
You can't have one
without the other.


I couldn't tell if it was the Frank Sinatra version or the theme song from the sitcom Married with Children, though I can't see how that really makes a difference. I guess I appreciate the sentiment? I can't help but wonder what made him choose this poem to photocopy and hand out to passersby. I also can't help but wonder if he handed out his little marriage poem to men too. Maybe I have been proposed to and I don't even know it!

Well, at the very least, I now know this random stranger's opinion on love, AND marriage. And I'm glad too.

'08 is Great

What's New:

Seven weeks to the jazz festival, and still lots and lots to do.

Taking a photoshop class at College of the Redwoods starting February 25.

Volunteering/working in trade for glass classes doing office work at the hot glass studio where Mike works. First glass class will be end of this month, on a Saturday. I will try to make something cool.

Being "stepmom" on the weekends to 10-year-old Kaya and 12-year-old Josh, having all kinds of fun times, including baking cookies, having snow fights*, racing to the end of the street, learning hot glass techniques at their dad's shop, watching movies like Madagascar and Open Season, having sleepovers camp-out style on the living room floor, and other bonding-like moments.

Working on getting Mike's artwork up on various glass artist websites, will post links when I'm done.

Planning a trip home to Wisconsin some time in late April/early May, details to follow once airline tickets are bought and vacation time at work is approved, not in that particular order (vacation time is unofficially approved, but not the specific dates yet).

*For the record, it only snowed here that one day. Yes, I'm bragging a little. You all have each other, albeit having each other in 10 feet of snow. Two thousand miles away from my beloved family, I have to hold on to whatever I can, so I will "brag" about the fact that there is no snow here. Ha ha. And I'm sorry. I hope you all are being safe and staying warm.

Camping out:



Hanging out at the glass studio:



Playing with puppies:

It's Snowing in "Paradise"

Yeah, so Sunday it snowed enough for the kids and me to have a snowball fight, and I don't mean like a sorry excuse for a snowball fight either. It was a full fledged down and dirty knock 'em out snowball fight. And those of you who know me realize this means that it was a completely unfair fight that I only didn't lose because 1) I know how to outrun Kaya and Josh on slippery ground and 2) I used my umbrella as a shield.

It snowed for much of the day and the snow actually stuck. I'm pretty certain I was the only person in the entire town of Blue Lake, where one of Mike's glass studios is, who had an actual ice/snow scraper in the trunk of my car. Yeah, everybody was jealous. Everybody was also making a very big deal out of it, like they had never seen snow before in their lives. While I appreciate that Josh and Kaya, who have lived in Humboldt County for most and all of their lives respectively, don't recall ever having seen it in person, my being from Wisconsin sort of colored my personal experience. Let's just say I wasn't too pumped on the snow situation. Especially since Saturday was warm enough for no coats! It's like the weather taunted us with what it could be like, and then BAM! SNOW. Ew.

Yesterday it alternated between sun and rain, no snow that I can tell, but looking up in the mountains I can see they have been dumped on with snow up there, and the weather forecast has predicted that the mountaintop communities should expect another eight inches today/tonight! That is a lot for around here. Heck, I think that's a lot for anywhere.

OK, apparently, I'm a snow scrooge. Whatever. Mike scolded his kids for getting all wet playing in the snow and then being cold because they didn't have the proper winter wear, and I stuck up for them: "They are just kids. None of us knew to have proper winter wear because it hasn't snowed here in years." Yeah, OK, he said. And then we went home and huddled under blankets with cups of hot chocolate and watched The Family Guy. The way it should be on a snowy day.

Three, Count 'em, Three Excellent Things About Today

1) I have Fridays off so I get to do fun things like rearrange my living room and clean stuff and run important errands (well, rearranging my living room is fun).
2) The sun is out! And there's no wind, so it feels like almost 50 degrees! I had the front door open while I cleaned this morning and I was only wearing a teeshirt (and pants) and wasn't cold at all!
3) I bought a couch on Craigslist (for cheap!) on Wednedsay and Mike helped me move the living room around today and now my apartment is finally cute and comfortably livable!
4) I know I said three but I just thought of another thing! I have the internet at home now! That could also be bad.

Yay!

Here are some pictures of my insanely tiny but (finally!) cute apartment:












The outside still needs a little work, but...




Here's where my car is parked, next to the barn where the cows hang out:


Edited 1.19.08 to add a few more pics:





Trying to keep the main living area warm with a space heater, these are the doors to the bathroom, our bedroom, the linen closet (uber skinny door) and the "spare" bedroom (aka walk-in closet). I just thought it looked sort of cool:

(The angle is from sitting at our little eating "nook".)

Hope you enjoyed this episode of our tiny adorable apartment as much as I do.

OK, fine, here's what I have to say about my stupid hamster

I wrote this yesterday:

My two-year-old dwarf hamster, Smalls, died. I think he got too cold. Or maybe two years is his life expectancy. I have no idea. All I know is that I fed him and gave him water and tried not to hate the boring little sucker too much, and then yesterday amidst my running around between work and errands and life, it suddenly occurred to me that his food bowl, which usually remains empty, not because I don't feed him but because he eats his food the second it hits his bowl, was the same level it had been for days, and his water too. Suddenly I'm driving down the road about to pick up a sofa I purchased off Craigslist with my borrowed SUV and I have this thought: My Hamster Has Died.

I got home, moved the couch in, made some dinner, it was late and I was hungry, had a beer, it was late and I had been working all day, and then... I couldn't stall anymore. I took off his lid and yelled and rattled his food bowl. The little bugger always comes out when I call to him.

He didn't come out.

I found him curled up in a tight little ball in the corner under his bedding. The poor little thing just curled up and died. I feel like a terrible hamster mother. I didn't even much like him, because he's a poor replacement for the dogs in my life I've had to let go as relationships come and go, he just eats and smells funny and bites me. I usually called him whatever random name that came to mind and occasionally I would reach in and pet his back while he was eating and too preoccupied to pull away and turn his sharp little choppers on me.

But when I found him curled up there I cried. OK? I cried for my dumb little hamster and my apparent inability to keep even a dumb little hamster alive.

My sweetest ever boyfriend held me and didn't make fun of me even once. He said it was OK to feel sad because it was my pet and a life and I was taking care of him. He said he probably died of old age. Or coldness. But that it wasn't my fault.

You know, the sweet things good boyfriends say when their girlfriends are sad.

He also said we'll give Hammy a proper burial in the redwoods.

I feel so sad, relieved, guilty, and curious. I just hope he didn't suffer too much. I hope it was his time to go, that he died of old age, and that he was remotely happy in his short meaningless little life.

RIP, Smalls, April 2006-January 2008. I will miss you when I think of you. You didn't even eat all your gourmet hamster food I bought you, you little punk. I'm glad I didn't let Mike feed you to the owl that lives in the barn by our house.

The details of this post are peculiar.

President Clinton came to town yesterday. He spoke to the 400 "elite" people of Humboldt County, whomever that may be (in this case it was the 400 people who managed to fit into the building). Most of the thousands of people who waited for hours in the cold went home dissatisfied.

I spent my evening purchasing a couch for my living room (finally!) and transporting it home. Although it would have been nice to catch a glimpse of the celebrity that is Bill Clinton, I have a fair-weather interest, and that means taking off half a day's work to wait in the very cold wind for hours on end only to have to either push my way in or to have waited in vain did not fit within the parameters of my curiosity.

Some people would call that lazy. I would call it smart.

In other news, the worst part about this week is that my hamster died, and the best part about today is that I brought my super comfortable office chair from home into work and it is awesome.

Humboldt Has a Visitor

Former President Clinton may or may not be coming to Eureka tomorrow to advocate for his wife, but I can neither confirm nor deny this is true.

I will have to get back to you. (I just think this is interesting because Humboldt is so rural and off the map in so many ways.)

The Crazy Weather

Here it is raining and storming so much that many people (last I heard on the radio, 1/2 a million in California alone) are without electricity. I'm not one of those people. But I feel for those who are affected by this.

Back in Wisconsin there was a 50-car pile-up on I-90 because of the intense fog, combined with the snowy weather conditions.

Here they warn you not to leave your house if you don't really have to on account of the pouring rain. Being one who drove on a regular basis in snow back home in Wisconsin, I thought this was being a bit overly cautious. But the climate here seems to lend itself to ultra slick roads when it's raining a lot. So it's really not a whole lot different than driving in the snow. Combine that with the fog. The fog here is intense.

I hope everyone is being careful. The forces that be are beyond our control. Respect the weather. That's my hippy dippy speech of the day. I won't call it Mother Nature, OK, but just respect it. The road by my house was closed last week for a little while because the river jumped the bridge. The (happy) cows by my house could go swimming if they wanted. Somehow I don't think they want to go swimming.

My Monday workday is over now so I am going home. Today the weather was so strange that I didn't know if I should bring my sunglasses or my umbrella. By the end of the day I had used both interchangeably. Never a dull weather moment here.

P.S. Snow may be cold, but you can't go sledding in the rain, you can't go ice skating in the rain, or skiing in the rain. My BF likes to say you don't have to shovel the rain off the car, but I'm cooped up inside a lot, and right about now I think I could go for a little bit of snow. At least snow is fun. Cute umbrellas and rain boots lose their appeal pretty quickly.

A Bloggy Year in Review

I borrowed this idea from my friend's blog (the word blog came from "web log" and then was shortened over time); she borrowed it from some other blog she reads.

The idea is that you take the first sentence or two from the first post of each month and that is a [hopefully] interesting way to sum up the year. (Sometimes I had to take a tad more than that for the sentences to make any sense at all; my mother never accused me of being pithy, folks!)

I didn't start this blog until I moved to California which was in March. But that's close enough:

MARCH
Driving to Cali took 3 days-ish from Friday night to Monday night. We slept in the car for a few hours Friday night/Saturday morning 130AMish to 530AMish, drove all day Saturday, stopped Saturday night @ Little America, Wyoming, less than an hour from the Nevada border...

APRIL
Sunday the weather was beautiful. It was sunny and warm and amazing. I packed us a couple sandwiches, one PB and honey on this really good 9-grain-or-something bread that Mike likes and one mild cheddar cheese and cut them in half and wrapped them up and put them in my shoulder bag. That was a really long run-on sentence. But anyway.

Then Mike and I put on our walking shoes and walked. We walked down the big hill, past the grocery store, turned into a residential area and walked about four more blocks to the Sequoia Park Zoo! It's a very tiny, charming, free zoo with amazing scenery of lots of huge trees and trees full of flowers and foliage and of course animals!

MAY
My plates have expired on my Nissan. This means I have to go get California plates now. I wonder if I could get a vanity plate that says Made in WI. I wonder if I would really want to do that. I'm rather proud of Wisconsin and always have been.

JUNE
I got another job!

JULY
Well, Hayley and Dan are back at home. They left yesterday on a red-eye home to good ol' Wisconsin. I was very sad to see them go, but relieved that they got on the plane without a hassle.

AUGUST
Today, we signed an apartment lease! So regardless of my homesickness, I'm here for at least another year. We are moving into our new apartment, in Bayside, this weekend.

In other news, Mike and I are going to make a road trip as soon as time permits. Mike has been doing really well making aquarium scenes and butterfly garden scenes in glass, and his latest is jellyfish. Those things are so popular. We are going to drive up the coast and sell them as we go.

SEPTEMBER
OK so I have finally moved. It has taken much longer than we had anticipated and hoped. But now it is done (except for all the unpacking but we are working on that day by day, slowly but surely).

OCTOBER
Two Weird Things About Yesterday:
1) The internet went down in the entire county.
2) There was a 100% chance of rain according to the forecast for yesterday and it didn't rain at all.

NOVEMBER
In the past three-ish weeks I have:
*quit my job
*started a different job
*unpacked a lot more boxes
*got rid of stuff I don't need
*cleaned a lot
*rode my bicycle a significant amount
*read a lot
*worked on growing my hair
*sang to music and danced around my house
*went for loooong walks at the marsh and by my house - it's been so strangely warm
*mostly worked a lot as job transitioning is really energy- and time-consuming

DECEMBER
It started on Saturday. The wind has been blowing so hard that it sounds like waves crashing outside my window while I try to sleep at night. I live close to the ocean but not THAT close.

Well, that's it. Though I do think some of my best work was in the two months (March and April) that I was unemployed and had nothing better to do than think up things to post on my blog. As fun as that is, it doesn't appear to support the hobby of living. So what that means is that anyone still reading this blog by now is suffering in agony at how downhill it has gone, but I do have a bit more of a life than when my blog was really good. Maybe one day I'll learn how to balance the two.

Then again, probably not.

A Year Change is a Natural Time to Reflect

So here are my lists off the top of my head:

THINGS I'M PROUD OF:
*moved 2000 miles out of my comfort zone to try something completely different
*have stuck out the hard parts of the above decision and have been rewarded for it
*earned not one but two good jobs in a really tough local job market
*successfully negotiated a job that has only been temporary in the entire 20-year history of the organization into a permanent one on my terms

THINGS I'M NOT SO PROUD OF:
*haven't talked to my older sister since moving away
*don't call my family often enough
*wasn't able to handle tough situations with former roommates as well as I would have liked (though I do feel I did the best I could at the time)
*still trying to break that impulsive nature of mine: impulse buying (Can you say Us Weekly - EW!), impulse moving across the country, impulse eating a pizza when I'm supposedly trying to eat healthier (oh, but see now I can add "being able to admit my weaknesses" to the "things I'm proud of" list!)

MOVIES I SAW IN THE THEATRE (this would be a "best of", except that these are the only two movies I saw in the theatre in 2007):
*Across the Universe
*Pirates of the Caribbean 3

BEST OF THE MOVIES I RENTED:
*Waking Life
*A Hard Day's Night
*Pink Floyd's The Wall
*Fast Food Nation (OK, this is debatable, but it IS the last movie I rented in 2007)
*The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Mos Def = Ford Prefect = awesome)

BEST OF THE BOOKS I READ:
*The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
*The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom
*Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris
*How I Became Stupid by Martin Page

BEST OF THE BOOKS I REREAD:
*Chocolat by Joanne Harris

BEST OF THE NEW (to me) MUSIC I HEARD:
*Cat Power
*TV on the Radio

MY ALBUMS OF THE YEAR:
*Across the Universe Original Movie Soundtrack, Deluxe Edition
*Joyful Sign by Girlyman

How about you? How was your 2007?

Sometimes There is Just Nothing to Say

I hope you all have a wonderful 2008.

Good Morning

Dear Family,

You are all in my thoughts every single day and I just wanted to say that I hope you are well and I miss you so deeply. I hope that we will see each other again soon and that it will be joyous.

Love,
Naomi

P.S. My life in California is pretty good but it would be so much better if you were here with me.

I Just Realized I'm Obsessed With the Radio.

I got rid of my television when I moved here and haven't bought another one. So I miss all the TV commercials people are talking about. Big whoop. (Yeah, people still say that! Whatever!)

But when it gets dark at 5:00 just when you are getting off work and it's cold, your after work activities are limited. I read a lot. But that's not so much interactive. So Mike and I listen to the radio and play cards or board games. Cook dinner and wash the dishes. Argue over if we want to watch a DVD or not (me: yes; him: no), argue over whether or not I own good movies (me: yes; him: no), argue over whether or not he owns terrible movies (me: yes; him: no). Go back to playing cards or board games.

Anyway.

So I have discovered talk radio and how great it can be. I always used to think it was boring. If you suffer from this "affliction" as well (yes, that would be the talk-radio-is-boring affliction; it exists, so whatever), you should just get rid of your television and then run out of things to do that are free. You too will discover talk radio. Maybe.

I'm bored at work today because it's the calm before the storm of a big project I've been working on all week. I'd go into detail, but it's probably boring to anyone who is not here experiencing it. Basically I'm at an impasse, waiting for something to happen until I can keep going. Tomorrow is the big day. La la. And blah blah.

In case anyone who is reading is wondering why I'm posting here all day instead of working. I am working. Just kind of waiting too. Waiting to get sick, or to meet this deadline and be done with this week, or waiting for the sun to stick around longer, or who knows what else. The waiting game. It's what life is all about right. Hurry up and wait.

Ugh. I can't stand my whiny self today. UGH.

Also Just Heard on the Radio...

Just in case you think I made up this humboldt honey thing, HARDLY. (Not that any of you actually thought I did make it up.)

Click here: http://humboldthoney.org/. The Humboldt Honey 12-Month Calendar is Now Available for Purchase (that's the part I heard on the radio)!

Also, if you click on the honeys, the first one is "Hayley", spelled the same way as the one and only (in my world).

That's all.

Heard on the Radio on My Way Into Work...

"Humboldt County, Home of the Nation's Highest Gas Prices."

Really, is this something to brag about? Really?

Sometimes I really really wonder why it is I live here. I've met some wonderful people, but I've also met some really really crazy/lazy/weird/eccentric people and it seems this area attracts them like flies. And this area attracts flies like flies too. Which is just yucky.

Now I just sound judgmental, don't I? Well I'm tired and crabby today. I've been fighting something for weeks now and my immune system, while it hasn't succumbed to it, is TIRED of FIGHTING. I almost would rather just succumb to whatever flu bug is trying to bring me down and just get it over with. Almost.

Since I'm clearly in a complaining mood right now, I will tell you what winter is for. It's for making the bugs and spiders go away. Maybe it's so cold your body hurts back in Wisconsin, but here the bugs are around all the time. All the time!

Really really.

So THIS is Winter

It started on Saturday. The wind has been blowing so hard that it sounds like waves crashing outside my window while I try to sleep at night. I live close to the ocean but not THAT close.

Today I asked my coworker if this is normal for winter. He replied in the affirmative, and the eavesdropping cleaning lady (OK, I directed the question at anybody listening in the room) gave me a look like I was an idiot.

If you don't think wind can blow hard enough to blow a person away, you should really give this place a try. Really.

Then again, it could be snowing. I heard Wisconsin got a huge snowstorm, and I can't say I miss THAT.

PLUS I have a really fun umbrella, which makes rain more bearable. Of course, I have to wait until the wind dies down a bit to even go out there in the first place because the rain sort of seems to be falling from the ground up when the wind and rain get together for tea. But I mean, as far as umbrellas go, this one comes with a lifetime warranty if it fails me. That's how hardcore it is here.

Anyway, it's still relatively warm and the sun was out this morning. So all in all it's not that bad... ask me again after a week solid of this and we'll see if I feel the same...

My Fortune Thinks I'm Fat

So we went to this STUPID Chinese Buffet restaurant yesterday (OK, so it wasn't stupid, but it was overpriced and not very tasty). The highlight of the experience is the fortune cookie, naturally. Well, my fortune cookie actually called me fat.

"Here we go. Low fat, whole wheat green tea."




OUCH. Guess they don't want me to eat there anymore.

Unshiny Day at Patrick's Point Last Sunday

A photo of us, for any who may be interested. It was a gloomy-ish yet warm-ish day at Patrick's Point, a nice state park with lots of hiking trails and huge rocks on which to climb. It costs $6 to get into the park, but that gives me a better sense of security that jerky vagabonds won't be breaking my car windows while I sit on Wedding Rock and watch the wild ocean do its unpredictable thing below.



The purpose of this post is to show you Mike sans dreads, because "of course" people keep asking. He was wearing a beanie one second prior to the taking of this picture, so he is suffering from some major hat head, among other inflictions, namely cutting his own hair and not allowing his girlfriend to fix it for him. :-)

Favorite Gig

My favorite part of my job is when tons of musicians send us their CD's for free and we get to listen to them and decide if we want to book them at our festivals.

Soooooooooooooo fun!

Word Nerds Unite: Give Rice to the Hungry AND Have Fun At the Same Time!!!

OK, I stole this from my friend E's blog, but it is so fun and amazing!!!

Click HERE to play a fun word game and give rice to those that need it.

What's New

I've been missing from Blogland for a while. Busy busy and what-not. In the past three-ish weeks I have:

*quit my job
*started a different job
*unpacked a lot more boxes
*got rid of stuff I don't need
*cleaned a lot
*rode my bicycle a significant amount
*read a lot
*worked on growing my hair
*sang to music and danced around my house
*went for loooong walks at the marsh and by my house - it's been so strangely warm
*mostly worked a lot as job transitioning is really energy- and time-consuming

So, I am now the full-time permanent assistant director at the redwood coast jazz and blues festival production office (the same one I temped at last summer). Full time, permanent, negotiated to work with my life and my priorities, and this is one happy and fulfilled woman.

I'm reading a book that talks about the extreme importance of living in the moment, not a moment this afternoon, or one of your favorite moments from last year, but this one. And now this one, and now this one. And this one too. Get it? It sounds oversimplified and it is. Because humans need oversimpflication or else they forget. Or that's my soapbox, I guess. I don't mean it as a lecture but rather just a snippet of something I feel like I've learned recently. And probably learned it a year ago too. Silly humans.

So, hopefully I will get back on here and give more interesting updates but wanted y'all to know I'm doing better than I ever have been since I got here and feel like I'm starting to call this place home finally. FINALLY. And Mikey and I are making big plans and actually starting to implement them.

In other news, Mikey cut off all his dreads and he looks adorable with short hair. It changes how he looks drastically, and he didn't want me to even write this so I'd better leave it at that. (And no, it wasn't my idea, not even a little bit. It was all him.)

Here Comes the Sun

It's nice and bright and sunny outside now. The ground is almost dry and you almost can't even tell it rained cats and dogs this-

ohyeahthatsrightgottadropwhatimdoingandgooutsidenowbye.

Three Weeks Notice

So I did it. I gave notice. And people here are really sad. It's ridiculous how sad they are, but at the same time it makes sense. It's not about me, really. It's about the amount of work to do in the office and the fact that they are understaffed with me here. The fact that transitions are hard. The fact that no one seems to know how to do my job and I'm just now figuring it out after three months.

But they don't much seem surprised either. They seem to understand. They know I've put up with a lot here and that things are not run efficiently, to say the least. They are excited that I have such a fun job opportunity. They are happy for me. And sad for themselves. I hate letting people down. I just hate it so much. But again, that's not a strong enough reason to stay in a situation that is not right for you.

So, I'll be relieved when this day is over. It's raining buckets anyway, so it's a pretty depressing day. The good news is that it's pay day so I have some money to go buy a decent rain coat. They tell me I'll need one here. Yeah, I am kind of sensing that, what with the hydroplaning all the way to work this morning and what-not (it's sort of like surfing, only different).

Hope y'all are doing great.

My Coworker Has It

I just found out that there is a thing here known as "The Crud," or "The Humboldt Crud." My coworker has it and announced it at our staff meeting. Everyone nodded knowingly. After the meeting I discreetly asked her, "what do you have?" Sort of fearing for my life and all.

"Ah, yes, you are new in town, that's right," she replied. Then she explained what it was, even saying getting it is like a rite of passage.

Right.

Me being slightly less gullible than previously went online and Googled it:

The Humboldt Crud Exhibit A

The Humboldt Crud Exhibit B

I don't have it. But it sounds like I have something to look forward to. Oh, crud.

Also,

I seem to have embraced the area's allergies. Fun, fun.

P.S. On a positive note, it is really pretty outside. I should take some pictures of my new neighborhood. I'm lucky to live on a lovely street.

Seasonal Humboldt Advice of the Day

The best advice I've heard so far about winters in Humboldt County (which I have yet to fully experience) is when it stops raining and the sun comes out, stop whatever you are doing and go outside and soak it in (the implication being that you don't know when the sun will come out next, or how long its visit will be).

In other news, I am 99% sure I'm quitting my job. And starting a different one.

Ah, fickle fickle me, right? What's new, some may say.

Two Weird Things About Yesterday

1) The internet went down in the entire county.*

2) There was a 100% chance of rain according to the forecast for yesterday and it didn't rain at all.**

*How can the internet go down in an entire county, you may ask? Good question, I may answer. It has something to do with a fiber optic cable being cut, possibly by a branch of a redwood tree falling on it from the crazy winds. Or so I hear. Only the cable being cut part is confirmed. I suspect the second half of the story is something like an urban legend, but I actually don't know that for sure. Something else of note: this isn't the first time since I've been here that this has happened. Gee, it sure is backwards here sometimes. According to "the hype" (aka what people I have talked to in Humboldt County think) Wisconsin is about as backwards as they get. I can't think of a time when the internet went down in an entire county in Wisconsin, but hey.

**Speaking of crazy winds, there was scary, tornado-like weather going on all day yesterday. A warm strong wind and dark ominous sky. But this isn't tornado territory so I was the only one scared. It did eventually storm last night (regular, not thunder) and it didn't let up until about mid-day today, so I guess last night still counts as yesterday. But still, when you think 100% chance of rain, do you think bright sunny day? Because that's what yesterday was. I just can't keep up!

In other news, I realized the other day that I have been saying "eh" a lot lately, as if I were Canadian or from the midwest or something. This is only strange because I don't believe I ever said it before. It's like I'm trying to prove I speak Wisconsin-ese or something. It does come up a lot that I: a) have such a distinct accent, or b) don't have an accent at all (depending on who you ask, which in my case is nobody, just a "fun" side effect of having only a Wisconsin driver's license to produce whenever asked - but now that has changed, thank goodness). So I don't really know if I sound distinctly midwestern or not. But I did have a girl at the bank tell me that she wished I had that "cute Wisconsin accent." So at least we've determined my accent/lack-of-accent is not cute. In case that is information I can ever use. I am relieved, let me tell you.

Oh yeah, and if you've actually read this far, I got a cell phone over the weekend and I have my very own phone number now. Yay.

Google Loves Us, Yes It Does

I just read in the paper that Humboldt County has been blessed with the Google Transit feature, which if you are unfamiliar, is where you can get up-to-the-minute Humboldt County public transit information by plugginig in your starting address and destination address (after Googling "Google Transit" of course).

Why is this cool?

Two reasons:
1) Humboldt County is the only rural area in the US to get this feature.
2) Humboldt County is the only place in the US in which Google calculates your place-to-place using multiple transit services.

Nifty, eh? I think so.

Also in the news, OK the same news article, the Google Street View VW Beetle has been spotted around Arcata. Street View is a Google project that takes photographs of every inch of the city and puts them on the web.

Why is this newsworthy? Well because Street View is only for the big cities. Except apparently for Humboldt County. Yep, Humboldt County is on the map. The Google map. Heh.

Havin' My Cake

So I haven't written a decent update in a while. Well, what is there to say? My daily activities include working, washing dishes, reading books, playing Scrabble, riding my bicycle, to name a few (no one can ever name them all no matter how one may try, and really nobody wants to read a complete activities list of anyone's, anyway, now do they). I live in a country-esque setting, and I'm loving it. It's getting chillier here, and sometimes it rains. Every day usually/always consists of fog and sun, intermittently. And there is actually a fall, as everything is no longer all green but includes reds and browns as well. I'm learning everyday and striving to live in each and every minute, but also with a reasonable eye to the future and how actions translate into consequences no matter which way you live or look at it.

Is this reasonably vague or annoyingly cliché? Well, alright, here is what is exactly at this moment on my mind, you who may from time to time tune in to my blog and skim its contents:

When I started my job search here I wasn't convinced I'd find one good job. Now I find myself in a predicament; I have two long-term job offers, both places want me, and I want both of them. However, both are full time so I cannot choose both.

So now I REALLY understand the saying "you can't have your cake and eat it too."

I used to think this made no sense because if you didn't have any cake how could you eat it, in other words, you had to have it in order to eat it!?! But after you eat your cake, it's gone, so you no longer have it. Hence the saying. (I'm slow sometimes.)

When there are difficult decisions to make, how do you make them? When I knew I had to give living in northern California a try, I couldn't even give energy to thinking about all that I was leaving behind. I knew if I did I wouldn't leave. The result was I spent a lot of lonely time here in an unfamiliar place thinking about all that I left behind. I couldn't have my cake and eat it too. If I would have made pros and cons lists about my friends and family and familiarity back in Wisconsin and pros and cons lists about living in northern California and trying to make a life with Mike, which set of lists would have won?

I have no way of knowing because I never made those lists. I don't know what purpose that would serve now. I am here. I'm putting my all into it. Before moving away from home I used to say "if I do go I might regret it; if I don't go I WILL regret it." That was the only way I knew how to make a rational choice of 'to move or not to move'. That was my logic and it worked for me. I wasn't hearing anything else anyway, but that's another tangent some other time, or never.

So can I apply this now to two great jobs and which one to take? As a matter of fact I can. If I walk away from my non-profit Angel Fund grant-making work, I WILL regret it. At this point in my life anyway. So that must be the answer.

I did, I'll have you know, make my pros and cons lists for what I will lovingly refer to here as Job A and Job B. The pros list of Job A was equal in length to the cons list of Job B; while the opposite lists respectively were significantly shorter and also similar in length. So that could also be an answer for me, right? Job A wins. Right?

Why oh why can't I just have two pieces of cake? Yes, this is like asking why there aren't 48 hours in the day instead of 24. Yes, I know it's silly and nonsensical. But I never claimed to make sense. And I never claimed to enjoy making choices.

On the flip side of all of this, it feels pretty excellent to feel so wanted by employers. Especially since I've already had a chance to prove myself at both jobs, it's not like I just nailed two interviews. They know my work ethic, they know my skill sets, and they want me. (It stands to reason that the job market here is so poor for a reason, that I'm not so fantastically wonderful like I'm slanting this post, but that I'm relatively better compared to the options around me. In other words there is quite an unemployment problem here, and quite a poor job market here. Good employees are hard to find. But let's not focus on the negative, shall we? This is about something else.)

Ah, well, aside from sharing what has been on my mind I have an uncanny desire to go eat some cake now...*

P.S. Job B is the music festival job. Giving up such a fun job is no easy task, let me tell you.

*I forced Mike to let me read him this blog entry and his two responses were a) it sounds like a normal Naomi tangent and b) you could have been more honest about the fact that we have not finished unpacking yet.

My Five Earthdance Photos for Y'all

I'm "stealing" a wireless connection from Mike's work. Actually his coworker Gabe is a friend of mine and is super glad to have me use it. He said so. He's an uber nice guy.

Anyhoo, here are some photos for y'all. I didn't have my camera out much and didn't take as many photos as I would have liked. Oh well. You'll get a bit of an idea, I think.

Back from Camping

So I have been camping from Thursday night to Monday morning and now I am back at work, sort of. In body anyway. Tired is the understatement of this post. On my way into the office, got my mail and lo (high!)* and behold (hark!)*, I have a California driver license. This makes me quite official now. Or something.

The weekend at Earthdance was quite an experience. Not sure even where to begin in describing it. Let's just say I felt transported through time into scenes (or rather more like observing them, with my mouth agape) that I had previously only seen in glossy pictures of Life Magazine. All of a sudden it was the 60's. At least that's what I think. I wasn't actually there in the 60's. Hence the Life Magazine reference, obviously. I took five pictures, which maybe I will share later. They have a website also, which is www.earthdance.org (which I can't link to this page for some reason) where I'm sure you can see all the beautiful and strange wonder that is people at Earthdance.

Speaking of strange, I'm also reading Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. Uber creepy book. And yet I can't stop reading it...

Well that's me in a nutshell. (Help, help, I'm in a nutshell! How did I get in this crazy nutshell?)**

Hope you all are well. I'm muddling through this day called work/Monday and then going home to crawl into my bed (A BED! A REAL BED!).

*Hi, Mom.
**Inane reference to Mike Myers movie from once upon a time.

Still Blogging at Work = Not Good But Yet Good

Although I've actually been reading far faster than I can keep up with updating my "Currently Reading" sidebar here on Blogger, and also working on getting settled into my new apartment which is always more complicated than I wish it was, but also quite good to have my own space again (and more fun to share it with someone else and decide together what to do with the place, which is surprising I must admit because I historically don't like to share but he being an artist means while he does not care in the least about what he wears he actually has a wonderful sense of color and style and we seem to like a lot of the same things - not all things, but enough to make things really fun), my blog life is suffering because I don't have the internet at home. But the rest of my life is improving because I don't have the internet at home. Go figure.

So since I have sold most of my furniture we are starting over in that department. This means picnic style dinner on our living room floor by candlelight (we have lamps, it's just that candlelight is more exicting) while playing Scrabble and listening to CD's on my laptop plugged into some random speakers I still own from the PC I used to own, which actually makes quite a good stereo. This also means shopping at places like Bed Bath and Beyond (when necessary) and thrift stores (more adventurous) and choosing quality over quantity, making decisions slowly and mutually. I am loving every second of this having our own place thing. And realizing with each passing moment just HOW BAD my previous living situation was.

Which brings me to my next point. Sometimes things just don't bear repeating and just don't matter in the "big picture". My month of August, though the weather was EXQUISITE the ENTIRE MONTH, was one of those months that it is just good to be done with, and now that it's in the past I don't even want to rehash it all just to explain on here.

So I won't. A few of you know the story anyway from phone conversations. Suffice it to say things were rough through August, I am stronger for it, and we are all smiling here in northern California.

But seriously, August was sunny and warm and glorious EVERYDAY and we wore sandals and tee-shirts and there was no cold chill to the air. September, alas, has brought me back to the reality that is Humboldt County. And I have learned from the locals that it was unusual for August to be this "hot". (It was low 70's most of the month. To me that is not hot. Looking at the weather reports for Wisconsin, my hometown folks know what I'm talking about. People here are just nuts if they think 70 is hot.)

This weekend is my first camping trip. I'm really scared/nervous/excited.

I'm Still Alive!

OK so I have finally moved. It has taken much longer than we had anticipated and hoped. But now it is done (except for all the unpacking but we are working on that day by day, slowly but surely).

I have emailed as many people as I can think of off the top of my head my new addresses but if you did not receive the memo realize that my brain may have reached its capacity and please don't take it personally. If you are reading this blog, chances are I really love you. Or you really love me. Or both. Or else I'm just an intriguing freak of nature to you. Or something else I just couldn't guess right now. But what I'm getting at is that you should pretty please contact me if you did not receive my new mailing address. Unless you don't have my new phone number. But you should at least have my email address. Or, you know, comment on here!

I will send pictures soon and more details as well. One thing I can think of right now is that the price you pay for not living with roommates anymore is increased rent and that means no home internet connection right now - can't afford extra frivolities like that. So I'm on my lunch break at work. This complicates things a bit. There is a sweet little coffee shop within walking distance from my house with free wi-fi and all that jazz. It's called Hank's. The coffee house not the wireless connection. Although then I run the risk of buying silly things like vanilla steamers, which they make just right there, but as Mike loves to point out, you are paying $2 for a glass of milk.

But anyway. I'm still here. I think that was the main point of this post.

Cheers!!

Blues by the Bay Photos, July 14 & 15, 2007

Mike's (and Gabe's and Ryan's) vendor booth full of amazing glass art made by themselves:


From left to right, Jo Jo, Brent, Glenn (the festival director), Naomi, Mike:


By the time I got a shot of the crowd, it was pretty late in the day and a bunch had left:


The crowd at a different angle (that building up on the hill is our library):


You know who these weirdos are:


Washington, the volunteer coordinator, and Naomi, the assistant director:


From the back of the field:


View from the stage at the end of Saturday:


Vanessa, the intern, and a very sweaty and tired me:


Mike, the stage manager, and moi:


Jo Jo, the other assistant (and me):


Me on the stage first thing Sunday morning (that's part of the Carson mansion behind me):


Too early in the morning to be at work:


The view from the stage looks essentially the same as the night before, but anyway:


I held a guitar on the stage:


The guitar was being raffled off for a good cause:


Amy, the emcee, and me with that guitar, which was signed by every artist at the end of their set:


Mike took a picture of this guy because he was gettin' down to the music, and it was so great:


Dinner with Guitar Shorty:


Naomi, Shorty, and Glenn (the director):