When I was carefully walking through each aisle of the thrift store a few weeks ago, I felt excited to find a few vintage feeling items- editing the photos now, I’m bored.

Pea green stand mixer. (how did the glass mixing bowl make it this far?)

Do I see faux wood grain?

It is fun to see old color pallettes and design features- but not nearly as inspiring as this:

I even love the blurry parts.

I used to scoff at the concept of journeying to ‘find’ oneself. Seemed so cliche and contrived, and I didn’t believe it actually worked.  I was wrong. Colorado is an excellent tool to learn about myself.  I continuously settle the question, “What is me and what is New York”.  So-lesson for today: I think objects can be interesting but what really gets me going is the natural world, even (especially?) when edited by man.

Another great find, this one being an item I may actually return to purchase:

Hope it works.

This morning, and every morning for the past two months, wait- start over. Ever since I was little, I wished I was a morning person. I have visions of people awaking early, enjoying their coffee, planning their day, going outside to the quiet energy of stores just opening, being prepared for what the day may bring. I imagine these people being insanely productive due to their earlier hours.  I wish I could do it. Every evening I tell myself that I can leave such-and-such for the morning, because I can get up early and finish it then.

Artistic photo attempt. fail?

No, no I can’t. I am incapable of getting up early for personal reasons. If I must catch a bus or train or will be fired otherwise- I will get up. If I want to study extra for the GRE, be able to go for a walk around town before work, or just get a great start on my day- I stay right there under the covers until 8 or 9am. Then I’m running like a mad person for the rest of the day. Great.

I won’t give up. I will continue to bribe myself with coffee and breakfast and dreams of being a successful adult. Over the summer I was better at jumping out of bed earlier- perhaps if I keep trying I can beat the winter urge to hibernate, and get a groove established once-and-for-all.

I moved to Colorado with high hopes of thrift store treasures. I was not disappointed:

Pre on-the-door-crushed-ice-maker. I miss when things were called ‘o-matic’.

Nice curves.

Only $10?!  Wonder if it works…

One of the ‘projects’ I keep trying to find time for is getting myself into grad school.  It’s very important to me to enter an M.Arch program in the fall of 2011. To do this I need to take the GRE and prepare a killer portfolio. In the free time I find lately, I end up paralyzed between doing a little of word review and a little of 3d modeling.  Doesn’t seem to be going well for either. Perhaps I’ll buckle down on the GRE studying and get that out of the way- then dive full on into the design work? Come December I’ll have my monthly unlimited bus pass- then I can feel free to drag myself to a cafe early in the morning to stay focused on ‘aver’ and ‘garrulous’.

These shorter days have me battling to get up with the sun to grab some time to work on my projects before heading to the store, and leave me with little energy come dark at 5pm.

These early sunsets sure are gorgeous though.

Time to break out the evening coffee.

As you may have guessed, the mountains get much more snow than the cities of Boulder and Denver, strictly from the elevation.

 

Saturday morning before leaving to go to Boulder, the mountains looked like this. It was 11 am, but still looked like dawn.

Twenty five minutes later, it looked like this.

I love this quiet grey type of day.  Especially here in Colorado, since a sunny warm day is only a short way away. Whereas, in Brooklyn, a grey day is usually followed by weeks of grey days. Even then, I love them.

My week is going quite well, projects have been moved further along, good food has been cooked, and a bit of balance has returned. I hear Eldora and Winter Park have opened- wish I could go skiing!!

Today I’m doing alright really, thanks for asking. Two days off from work in a row is like magic.

I took the bus halfway to Coal Creek this past Friday. On the second leg of our trip we noticed a small group of elk divided by the roadway.  Their backs are more interesting than their fronts, but I didn’t get a shot of them from behind.  On our way back down the next morning, the group was all together on the other side of the road.

Back in Brooklyn, I became obsessed with Planet Earth.  Best dvds ever. It blew my mind that there could be herds of thousands anywhere on the planet.  Not that it’s theoretically impossible, but in my experience, us humans have been in the way of everything. How is there still the space for herds of hundreds? I grew up in the ‘country’ and all we had were raccoons, deer, squirrels, chipmunks, and birds.  No room for packs of wolves or migrating herds of elk.

Here in Colorado, my path is crossed by a large wild animal almost once a week. Every time it happens, I stop and think ‘Wow’.  They’re still trying to deal with us. Our houses, cars, roads, fences.

It really is amazing when you are 10 feet away from an elk larger than you are and you understand that YOU are completely in their way and making their lives beyond irritating.

 

Hello, hello!  Where have I been, you ask?  Working at the store, fighting with a cold, visiting the new family, and trying to keep on keepin’ on.  Also, the day I tried to post something last week- Google Chrome issued a new release to their browser, so WordPress wouldn’t work, and I was too with cold to realize IE would. 

Lately, I’ve been battling time and money. One goal for my Colorado chapter is to snap out of these battles and get things balanced once and for all. I very much want to coordinate my personal projects and work at a paying job.  Currently, those days that I work at the paying job I completely forget all the other tasks I need to do.  I spend a lot of time drawing charts of my schedule lately. Then become upset that I’ve wasted so much time ‘organzing’ so I ignore such things and make mistakes like heading to work 45 minutes early on a sunday. Fun times. My notebook obsession claims the solution is the ‘perfect notebook/planner’ system.

Looking up from my backyard on Thursday before heading to work. 

Moving to Colorado has helped me realize this perpetual crunch for time is me, and not New York. (Sorry New York! I was blaming you for years!)

With today and tomorrow free from working at the store, perhaps I can get things together?

My next day off is tuesday, but happy friday to all of you office workers!

So a quick ‘Hello!’ and a photo of the tree this week.  Yesterday it was 77 degrees. I wish I could caps lock numbers to make them bigger.  SEVENTY SEVEN !!

Apparently, this big temperature swing isn’t normal, but the complete return to sunshine and happiness is. Yay Boulder.

 

 

 

I’ve been wanting to share a big ‘difference’ but couldn’t figured out a photo to include. It’s been two months- so here it is, sans entertaining photo.

After living and working in Manhattan and Brooklyn for four years, I adjusted by sculpting my own personal social shell. Get on the subway, look at everyone’s shoes, listen to my iphone so it’s the only thing I can hear, read a book while doing A and B. Go for a walk, do not smile or talk to anyone- unless you already know them. Get on bus, swipe card, sit down, listen to iphone, read book.  Basically, IGNORE EVERYONE, thereby giving them their ‘space’ in an otherwise very intimate setting.

When going for coffee in Brooklyn, I’ve been friendly to the person at the counter, but never really interacted with the other customers.  Same at the markets, be quiet, get your groceries, pay the cashier, out.

When I was introduced to running errands in my new non-urban setting, I was immensely thankful to have a friend chaperone. When it was time for my first Colorado errand session, I froze when strangers began making eye contact with me and asking how was I today.  My friend was able to see me in distress and intervene.  She often would respond friendly to everyone and then quickly say- “she just moved here from NY”, while I would stand frozen and obviously uncomfortable.  I couldn’t go to the store without her, I was too overwhelmed and uncomfortable.  It was just too much.  My intuitive signals were all screwy- telling me that all these people were up to no good.  WARNING WARNING – friendly people are trying to take advantage of you – DO NOT RESPOND.

I eventually adjusted.

Then, I moved to Boulder and began taking the bus around town.  I had taken the regional buses between Evergreen and Boulder/Denver, but not the local ones.  My first attempt, I get on the bus, pay my $2, and sit down.  Everyone is quiet, but doing the smile and eye contact thing. The bus makes the next stop, a CU college student gets off through the back exit and she says ‘Thank You’ to the bus driver. He says “Have a good day!”.  I immediately thought the interaction was strange, and chalked it up to the girl being an overly friendly co-ed. Then, EVERYONE says thank you to the bus driver! I guessed this was because the first girl did it, causing everyone on the bus to feel obligated to do the same. Oh no. Oh no no no.  I come to find out, this is what you do. Each and every person who gets off the bus says ‘Thank You’ to the driver, whether out the front door or the back door.

New Yorkers, I wish you were there with me when I realized this. I wanted so badly to balk at everyone in the company of someone who understood how odd it was for me. Instead, I had to calm down and make sure to say ‘Thank You’ on my exit as well.

So.  The difference for today is- in Brooklyn you never speak to anyone on the bus and do not make eye contact, in Boulder you smile at everyone you are near, make eye contact, and loudly thank the bus driver as you exit the bus.

(I can hardly wait for my first visit back to Brooklyn to see how I feel the other way around!)