And We'll Have Fun Fun Fun

She loves to laugh
She loves to sing
She does everything
She loves to move
She loves to groove
She loves the lovin things
—Any Way You Want It by Journey

i run a hard and fast life. right now, that means up at 4:30am and back home at 9pm. that means my husband and i communicate with a phone call after work, a kiss with a plate of spaghetti before bed, and a groggy kiss buh-bye before i plug into my ipod for my morning commute.

but something different happened two days ago.

4:30 am and i blindly run my hands along the edge of the bed until i hit my husband's feet, and then its a matter of steps until my fingers hit his face, as always—but something is different. he's awake. and lucid.

so i sit down next to him and make some small chitchat thinking one, two, and i'm on to the workout. but he's being funny. and charming. at 4:30am, people. and after a couple of minutes, i realize—i don't want to work out. i want to talk to my husband. so i shrug, kick my overstuffed workout bag across the room and curl up next to my husband. and we talk.

about the progression of colour changes in kitchen appliances as we grew up.

ok, first of all, we were talking about growing up in the 1970s and i brought up the colour changes of that era: first there was goldenrod. then avocado (AVOCADO! my husband laughed. we had a green stove! that was avocado?) then came harvest, which was a pumpkin orange. while my husband spent part of his misspent youth as an artist, he could only take so much talk about '70s colour palettes.

so then we discussed weird cooking gadgets. like a counter top pizza cooker
or the really odd hot dog cooker someone gave us for christmas. it involved impaling your hot dogs on these electric prongs, which then cooked the hot dog from the inside out. it was also in the shape of a dachsund, this cooker—which just made it all the more slapstick. then it turned out that as a kid, my husband had made a hot dog cooker under the same premise for a school project—only with a wood board, and two nails that were wired up with a stripped down cut off lamp cord. weeeeee! we were roaring with laughter. then we discussed the salad shooter
what a concept! the physical improbability of being able to shoot out a beautiful salad from very different ingredients had us laughing. and then the jingo! salad shooTER! we tried to think of other really simple, two word jingos. we could only come up with: byyyyy MENNEN! which made us roar again. the conversation lasted about an hour. then i finally drug myself out of bed and into the shower.

i glowed for the rest of the day. i even hummed.

i had forgotten how much fun my husband and i can have.
even at 4:30am.

Morgan: Summer Heat

I love the heat of Summer...feeling the hot sun on my head, sweat dripping off my brow. For the past couple weeks I have been playing basketball after work. The blacktop outside tower four radiates the heat like a frying pan. Almost to hot to be outside. But the lure of basketball overcomes the heat and pretty soon I'm drenched with sweat. My knees have been taking a pounding, and it has become extremely painful to jump or run. I recently started wearing a knee wrap which gives me a lot of support. I absolutely love playing there. Its never crowded, someone always wants to play, so we get a three on three game going, until someone has to leave. I'm not the best shooter, but that doesn't matter, I just love to get out there and play.

I had to mow the lawn today...It was the same sun, burning me like an ant under a magnifying glass. Thank god I don't have a big lawn. The novelty of mowing my own lawn wore off years ago and now it truly is a chore to get out there and do my duty every week. I used to bag the grass clippings, now I don't worry about that anymore. Its grass! probably good fertilizer.

Last week we drove up to Atlantic City, New Jersey on hot, humid Friday night. As we got closer to the shore all of the towering casinos glowed a neon red, beaconing all to come and try their luck. I did play poker until three in the morning but what really captivated my attention were the people. Atlantic City tourists are so diverse coming from all over the world, but the majority seems to be from New York City. I watched the People in the casino, People at my poker table. Old people dragging oxygen bottles and smoking cigarettes. Young guys with their baseball caps on backwards and gold chains hanging outside their unbuttoned shirts. Women of all types. Old women with buckets of coins playing slots. Young women with small slinky dresses stumbling back from numerous nightclubs, shouting drunkenly to each other. The next morning we went out to the boardwalk and I did a little more people watching. The glamor of the night before was harshly revealed under the New Jersey sun. People wore less clothing, shorts and tank tops, sandals and flip-flops as they traversed up and down the AC Boardwalk looking sleep deprived. The number of tattoos looked almost epidemic, most ugly designs faded into wrinkled sun burnt skin. Hundreds of Filipinos flocked outside the convention center which advertised a Filipino game show. I could feel myself beginning to sweat profusely, so we hired a boardwalk taxi. It is basically a hand cart that the driver pushes down the center of the boardwalk while attempting to not run over the other tourists. It felt very indulgent to hire the young man to transport us down the hot boardwalk...a guilty pleasure. We passed a group of African-Americans all sporting maroon t-shirts proudly proclaiming the Jones Family reunion of 2008. I noticed an older man walking hand in hand with a Beautiful young woman with decidedly strong Russian facial features, Mail order bride? But the most disturbing thing I saw was a 70 year old man with out his shirt, dancing provocatively next to an ancient boom box. "I'm to sexy for my shirt."
The boardwalk was to hot for me. I was glad to go home.

This morning my (hot) wife and I drove to Sterling, VA to attend the Buddhist Lent Begining Day & Abbot's Birthday Ceremony at the Wat Yarnna Rangsee Buddhist Monastery. Once again it was Hot! The sun was blazing down on a cloudless day. Thai Vendors had set up food stalls all around the outside of the modest Monastery. Thai people wandered from stall to stall sampling the various food delights. We sampled fried plantains, grilled chicken satay. We sat down and slurped a steaming broth of beef and noodles. Making small talk with the strangers sitting at our table. While just as hot as Atlantic City something wholesome about the simple Thai celebration made me forget the sweat running down my back. I leaned back on my little stool and listened to the bald monk singing "only the lonely " with a karaoke machine. Yeah It was hot, but not so bad.

OurGirl: A Few of My Favorite Things

i've come to realize that while list posts are the lazy girl's fall back to a meaningful blog contribution, they are also indispensable when the lazy girl finds the inspiration isn't hitting just right. don't get me wrong, i have many, many topics to discuss—its just the trouble of finding a suitable post for this particular blog. you know, the OurGirl specialty: a rambling tangential post of eosteric minutiae, quirky, with a touch of the everyday mundane that keeps my end of the blog humming along in obscurity.

in order not to disappoint, here is a list of stuff that i am currently interested in:



im a big fan of this for-profit, world-wide microlender—the vineyard blog has had a widget posted on it since its inception, over a year ago. for each kid's birthday, we give them the needed $25 bucks and they sift through kiva's journals and find an the entrepreneur. we loan the entrepreneur the money and follow their journal. it gives the kids an understanding of how other people in different nations work towards improving not only their lives, but their families lives and their community. the kids have grown up inside one family business after another, but its cool to be able to provide them with a global view.

i'm a big fan of wikispaces. in my grad studies, i find it invaluable. we set up a wikispace, everyone joins, and instead of sifting through endless emails, we have a highly participatory repository of pages, links, uploads and discussions. we can even see the history of each page's edits, if so desired.

widgets are addictive. i've made widgets for my vineyard blog, my etsy shop, and for other people's websites. i find sproutbuilder really intuitive to use and post. experiment yourself!

Morgan: Creativity, it's a Mutha'

Creativity is inventing, experimenting, growing, taking risks, breaking rules, making mistakes, and having fun.

- Mary Lou Cook

Wow! The 100th Post. Should I feel nervous? Is this one small step for this Man? One giant leap for who? I got to confess, I didn't think we would ever make 100. Writer's Block, Severe Climate Change and Mid-life Career Switches. We almost didn't make it many times over. I went on Sabbatical, Our Girl took a break. It's OK to take a break. The writing really has been a joy...sometimes. It's certainly therapeutic. So without further ado, Let the 100th Begin!

Creativity (or 'creativeness") is a mental process involving the generation of new ideas or concepts, or new associations of the creative mind between existing ideas or concepts. Sounds easy right?

From a scientific point of view, the products of creative thought are usually considered to have both orginality and appropriateness. I like to think a little simpler, creativity is simply the act of making something new. Sounds easy right?

Although intuitively a simple phenomenon, it is in fact quite complex...sometimes it's a mutha'.

Creativity has been attributed variously to divine intervention, Cognitive processes, the social environment, personality traits and my favorite lucky chance. It has been associated with genius, mental illness and humor. Some say it is a trait we are born with; others say it can be taught with application of simple techniques.

Although usually associated with art and literature, it is also essential part of innovation and invention and is important in all professions.

I've always wanted to create...design, build something unique and cool. Before I joined the Air Force I wanted to be a Graphic Designer. During high school I took as many art classes as possible. I drew, painted and sculpted and slowly the idea began form that possibly, maybe I could do this for a living. But instead of going away to Art School...I joined the US Air Force. I didn't go to Texas unprepared, I took my porfolio and two letters of recommendation, with me. It must have helped the poor guy in charge of choosing our destiny, because 8 weeks later I was flying to Denver for a crash course in Air Force graphics. I had found what I was looking for. The Air Force appreciated what I did. My perspective was perfect for communicating their ideas visually. I did well and made a 20 year career out of it. As the years went by I rose through the ranks and with every promotion I got further and further away from my creativity, until finally the people I worked with didn't even know I could draw.
That's why I was so excited to get this job as a graphic designer, complete with a sobering pay cut. I was returning to my roots. I was going home. I was rusty at first...compared with my fresh young coworkers I was positively archaic. But I see myself getting better with each Job. Sometimes the initial idea stage is overwhelming...but I'm an idea guy. Now I just have to implement them.

So I ran across this pretty Cool Meme that helps with the creative process by making it random. I started creating CD Covers using the following rules, listed below. I think I'll use this process at work, it might just be a hit! Whats a meme?

About CD Cover Meme

Always wanted to be in a rock band?
Well here's your chance...sort of. Make your own CD Cover with the following steps and rocket yourself to mult-platinum status and start fending off the groupies.

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The first article title on the page is the name of your band.

2. www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
The last four words of the very last quote is the title of your album.

3. www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days/
The third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

I did 11 covers, I think they turned out pretty good.
Tell me which one is your favorite.

OurGirl: Walsh's Despair 2.0

walshie walked into the cubbie, sat down in his chair, dragged himself over to the pennisula and in reverent tones announced: "they did it again. they are genius. i don't know how they keep topping themselves, but they do."

i peered over my faux hand-thrown coffee mug with the word "inspiration" half stamped into it and asked, "who?"

"despair.com! they now have a whole do-it-yourself store. its genius i tell you. you can upload your own image, type in your own quote and make your own poster. genius."

i've posted before about walsh's love for despair.com. i even bought the "more people have seen this shirt than have read my blog" shirt and wore it in on casual friday, just to make the dude smile. my brother just shook his head. "i ain't buying that dork shirt."

"walsh—omg! they are having their users generate content for them!"
"even better. they will sell you the poster you make. custom poster!"
"wait—tell me they are keeping a gallery of their users generated content. that way, if you try to make your own content and you just aren't funny, you could then look at what others have made and then buy their posters. omg! then the user could get a cut of the action—a percentage off the top! tell me they are doing that!!"

walsh looked at me and said, "they don't have to. they are genius. check out the clown funeral poster."

so at home i look into despair.com. and i do have to tell you, the despairware grey t-shirt with with the words: "THE TIME FOR ACTION HAS PASSED. now is the time for senseless bickering" really speaks to me right now. but i tore myself away from the on sale shirts and checked out the DIY section. there are the posters—even the clown funeral one walsh had talked about. so i couldn't help myself. i uploaded an image, wrote a couple of quick lines and made a poster for walsh:


are you kidding me? that laughing you are hearing? that's walsh. monkeys are genius.