South Bend bound!

Cheer cheer for old Notre Dame! I'll be back in a few days. Go Irish!

August 29: shoes

My shooooooooooes! I bent down to pick up a paper clip today in my office and noticed the mish-mosh of colors and patterns going on here.

[I'm taking a hiatus from posting for a few days -- going out of town and won't be near a computer. But I will be taking plenty of photos and will catch up on posting them when I get back!]

August 28: NYC

NYPD flash mob. How many police vehicles do you see? Extra credit: count the cops too.

August 27: cat

One of these things is not like the others...

No, I do not own a cat, a baby, or a baby-changing table. But we are currently cat-sitting for someone who has all three and is out of town at the moment.

Packages

All ready to be mailed. The square white one is for my friends Kate and James, who had a baby last week! Her name is Anwen. Congratulations, Kate and James! The small green one is for my friend Eryn. We've been sending each other packages back and forth for a few years now. We use the same box over and over until it falls apart. This is our second box. It's a challenge coming up with stuff that will fit into such a small box. I took pics of the package contents, but I won't post them til after the packages have arrived and been opened. Wouldn't want to spoil the surprise! I'm dropping these off at the post office tomorrow.

August 26: NYC

I'll bet you didn't know that a fire hydrant is a great place to store produce for ripening.

I hab a code

Meshum freshum *&^%$#@! I hate being sick. This had better clear up before Thursday, when we head out to South Bend for the foos-ball game.

August 25: Zoe!

Finally, in her zoe365 debut, it's... Zoe! Well, part of her anyway, sporting a lovely purple ribbon in this first edition of Stuff On My Dog. Let's all give a big hand to Zoe!

August 24: sign

Every time I see this sign across the street from my house, I think, "Curb my dog's what? Enthusiasm?" Heh.

Also, the guy who put up this sign is a crochety old fart, not a yuppie. NEXT TIME I W'ONT SAY PLEASE

At least he can spell, even though the apostrophe seems to befuddle him. So much so that he didn't bother with any other punctuation.

I really can't wait to see what happens "next time".

August 23: NYC

Today I have a two-fer of a NYC firefighter in dress blues. Two firefighters were killed recently in a fire in the Deutsche Bank building at Ground Zero. Today brought a funeral for one of them and visitation for the other.

Business card holders

I've been needing a small case for carrying business cards with me to conferences, etc. I didn't really find what I wanted out on the market, so I decided to try making my own. I came up with two different styles: a small box that will hold about 15-20 cards (depending on thickness) and a small envelope that will hold only about 5-8 cards.

You could decorate these a hundred ways. I made a box for myself, and just mounted one of my cards on the outside.





(Sorry for the lame disguising of identifying info; no Photoshop here.)

I also made an envelope for my friend Eryn. For hers, I used spray adhesive to attach decorative paper to some card stock (before cutting out the pattern), then added her name to the front.





I am pretty pleased with them!

August 22: books

I took a lovely photo of one of my hibiscus flowers covered in raindrops today. But I decided I didn't want to double up on hibiscus flowers during my very first week of the project. So I'm going with this one instead: a snippet of one of our bookshelves.

August 21: patriotism

Whose broad stripes and bright stars...

August 20: vino

White wine, red coaster.

Crochet bracelet

After reading FutureGirl's tutorial, I knew I wanted to try making this crochet beaded bracelet. So I made one tonight. It turned out great, even though I haven't touched a crochet hook in, oh, at least a few years.





I plan to make a few more to give away as gifts. :)

August 19: laundry

Apparently, our neighbors color-coordinate their laundry.

And it looks like I have a 'red' theme for this week.

Game on!

Alright, I'm in. I'm starting Project 365 today. You can follow my progress at zoe365.blogspot.com if you like. Wish me luck!

August 18: flower

One of my hibiscus plants on the front stoop.

(No time like the present right? I'm starting Project 365 today.)

coming soon...

Just getting set up to take on the Project 365 challenge. I decided to call my version zoe365 for a couple of reasons. (1) My other blog names start with zoe, so this way they all coordinate. (2) There's a good chance a bunch of my pics will feature Zoe, so it seemed appropriate to include her in the name.

Origami ball

I started this project about two Christmases ago, and finally finished it tonight. It's not difficult, I just set it aside and took my sweet time picking it up again. My mom taught me how to fold origami cones one Christmas. Over the next few months, I folded 40 of them in order to make them into a ball like a Christmas ornament.

Here's the one my mom made, the model for this project. (That's my bear Frank in the background holding it up.)



And here's my starting material: 40 paper cones.



You arrange the cones into four rings of 10 cones each, then tie them together so each ring lays flat.



Then you stack up the rings, and carefully weave them together one at a time using thread, following a specific pattern. Finally you pull the thread tight, drawing the cone rings together into a ball shape. Here is my final result:



I used a loop of white ribbon for a hanger, and Mom used some red cord. Plus, hers has a cool tassel at the bottom! Mine looks more like an egg than a ball, because I should have pulled the thread a little tighter. But overall, not bad! Now if I can just remember how to fold the paper cones...

Baby's got a brand new bag

I bought myself a little present today:



I've been wanting a tote for a while and Le Sportsac has the cutest patterns! I bring my lunch to work most days, so I usually carry my little lunch bag, plus my large purse. I'd like to downsize to a smaller purse, which I could toss (along with my lunch, umbrella, etc) into a tote bag that fits over my shoulder. Plus I'm now thinking about doing the Project 365 thing (see my last post), which would mean bringing my camera along all the time too. Larger bag was definitely in order.

I resisted the temptation to get this as well:



It would be just the right size for my Sidekick.

Yay guest book!

I finished the guest book tonight! (The page above isn't really crooked, it's just that the book is leaning a little.) I am pretty pleased with how it turned out, especially considering it was my first scrapbook attempt! Plus, this means I get to move on to try some of the other project ideas I have piling up.

Project 365

I am evidently one of the last people on the planet to learn about Project 365, where you take (and post) a picture from your life every day for a year. I find this intriguing and I think I might give it a shot. I often wish I had my camera on me whenever I spot weird, random, beautiful or eye-catching things around me.

In case you are even more out of it than I am and have never heard of this, here is some background on Project 365 from Photojojo and a Flickr group dedicated to the project.

Weekend in New York

Jen and Ron came to visit us this weekend and we had a great time exploring the city. Here's a mini photo tour. There are extra pics on Flickr.

We visited Rudy's Music Stop, the last indie music store on 48th Street. Please disregard cell phone guy.



Then we headed to Central Park, which was abandoned in the chilly rainy late afternoon.



And we saw a hawk!



Bethesda Fountain.





The next day we took the Staten Island Ferry...



...to see the Statue of Liberty.



Then meandered through lower Manhattan to see, among other things, the NYSE...



...City Hall park, where Sean did an archaeology job...



...various rodents...



...and the Municipal Building.



Then we headed over the Brooklyn Bridge right around sunset.







We finished off the day at Grimaldi's with NYC's best pizza. Yum!

The cow says moo

I was thinking this morning about words for animal sounds. Like "bark". (Truth be told, I was saying, "Bark bark bark" to Zoe and then commenting on the fact that she has no idea what "bark" actually means. But anyway.) Why is it that this is one of the first things we teach our children? Is knowing that the cow says moo really that important to our development? Is "the cat says meow" the key to our future success in life?

It's not just Americans. Other cultures do this as well. This led to a discussion between me and Sean about words for animal sounds in other languages.

Me: What does a dog say in Spanish? I can't remember.
Sean: Barrrrrrrrrrrk [rolling the "r"].

According to this comprehensive glossary, the correct answer is "guau guau". "Bau bau" in Italian, "wan wan" in Japanese, "vov vov" in Danish, or "woef woef" in Dutch.

Fascinating.

Guest book

I've made some good progress on our wedding guest book, about 2/3 finished. Here are a few pages. There are a few more on Flickr.

The Police!

The Police together again
Originally uploaded by Dog Company

We saw The Police last night at Madison Square. Fantastic. Check out this Flickr pic by Dog Company! He has a whole photo set from the concert.

It was a great show. Tons of energy, especially Stewart. Sting sounded great. And Andy was jumping around like a madman. They played most of their big hits, and the whole crowd sang along to most of them.

The average age of the audience must have been pushing 40, which didn't surprise me. What did surprise me was the number of them that were falling-down drunk. Odd, especially considering beers were $7 a pop. I guess when you're paying over $100 a ticket, $7 beers are to be expected. Some people dodged the $7 beer problem by bringing their own, um, herbal refreshment. Nothing like a bunch of 30- and 40-somethings smoking weed and shouting along to "Roxanne".