scary blossoms

Look how pretty!

When the cherry blossom trees bloom in the sunshine there is nothing prettier. But what happens when the skies turn grey, and the wind and rain descend?

I'll tell you...

 Those pretty little petals fall like rain. And then they're everywhere. In the streets, in my hair...

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Here's how the walk to the bus stop looked one chilly windy morning early this month:

It seems kind of surreal; all these beautiful pink and white delicate petals blowing in the wind, floating in puddles, and getting stuck to my glasses.

Diptych, tattoo edition.

1. Overprocessed photo of Ryan's new goalie/ghost/grim reaper tattoo, from the Tattoo Zoo flash page made for the Vancouver vs. Boston Run. He got it to remind him of our adventure in Vancouver that day, and because it's a little piece of history. And because it's awesome.
2. I found a piece of a stencil at work that I thought was from my pony tattoo...upon closer inspection I found it was actually from a koi fish but you can see how I made the mistake at first glance.

Things I Love Thursday!

Well...who doesn't love bunting? But I love seeing it around construction sites. It makes it feel like a party! 

This week I am loving...

This video of the "citizen wall" in Vancouver. You know, that whole riot thing that happened? Well the looted stores had to board up their walls, and the people of Vancouver brought their markers to work with them apparently the next day. It's pretty heartwarming, actually...it just goes on and on and on. 

These pictures of grains of sand, taken by a microscope that I found via the Dainty Squid. I mean, I knew they are tiny tiny rocks, but this is amazing. Also found on her blog? THIS PAINTING by Dieter VDO. I Must. Have. This.

This post  on ... household etiquette for bodily functions on Slice of Lemon.

How people work out in other parts of the world. 

Gala Darling's posts on fashion bloggers and body image: Blogger Beautiful? An Examination of What it Means to be Beautiful and Valuable in Fashion Blogging, and Body Pressure in the Blogosphere: Bloggers Speak Up Part One. and Part Two.

This tutorial on using a Diana F+ camera by Kyla Roma. Because seriously, I could use a lesson or two. I SUCK! haha! I should show you guys what a disaster my first roll was. Only one photo was okay, which is quite terrible for me. I have to get a 35mm back for sure!

This skate deck totem on Pale Horse design.

Everything by Lena Hoschek. The dresses are killing me, they're so good.

All these links I found via Nubby Twiglet this week: what I actually wore, The 100 Greatest Non-Fiction Books, and these behind the scenes photos from older movies!

Interview with a female funeral director. 

How to Self-Promote Without Being a Jerk.

Morgan's Ride. A seven week bike tour through India on a hand-pedal bike to raise money and awareness for spinal cord injury recovery. The actual ride is over now, but the videos are delightful and it's still totally worth checking out.

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Todd McLellan's photography! 

These are great, but my favorite photos of his are the newest...he took stuff apart, arranged it like the stuff organized neatly site, and then threw it in the air. Awesome. Here's a typewriter, a camera and a clock:

See more here.

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I'm also loving...

Get out a skeleton... you can help CupKay out by anonymously posting a deep dark secret you have on her Formspring. She's going to publish it in her zine, so watch what you tell her!! :)

Being on Leigh Ann's blog...along with like sixty other people, haha!

Danielle's post "Jordan Catalano and my "Mom Reality".  Personally, I have recently realized that Bill Cosby was kinda good looking in the Cosby show days. Um...what the hell?

How 'bout those catacombs under Paris that people go exploring in?  Anything that can be described as "filled with human remains" is not something I want to be crawling through in the dark, I can tell you that much! Although it does seem very interesting.

Shops Helping Shops! Ashley at After Nine to Five is including other businesses' cards with the orders from her online store. She's including a little note that says "Here are some other shops you may enjoy." And best of all, she's doing it for free. What a cool idea!

Watching the process of changing a yucky vintage motorhome into the coolest damn motorhome I've ever seen on Volume 25 Blog.

Jurassic Park's Velociraptors were actually something else. Read about it here.  Also? I just found out that the Smithsonian has a "Dinosaur Tracking" blog. You like dinosaurs? You're welcome.

Are you a fan of ampersands? Then click here, my friend, and enjoy. 

Living so close to a temperate rainforest. No joke, this place is just up the highway a few km. This year I'm gonna try to check out the "eagle extravaganza"...usually I just make it to the very stinky end to the salmon run and see fish corpses everywhere.

Strongman plasters, please.

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This Indonesian underwater hunter:

And Tete, man he's brave.

I found this video via Thought Catalog.  

Click here see more of the BBC's Human Planet videos.

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Rosie Hardy's photography! Wow!

This forest clock.

This disturbing picture of Barbie dolls in a very Dexter-esque scenario. This is the type of thing I used to do with my Troll dolls when I was a kid.

Andy Warhol's celebrity polaroids, especially the Debbie Harry one. 

You know that thing where you make tea and then don't know what to do with the teabag when it's done steeping? Voila...tea bag coasters! So. Cool.

These idiotic questions asked on Yahoo Answers about sex.

I can't for the life of me think of any occasion a person would need a plush steak or a stuffed ham, but if you find yourself in that situation, you can buy them here.

This article on laws and changes in a human's brain. So interesting!

Echo Park Time Travel Mart.

A cat wearing a hat, and apparently being happy about it, which makes it even cuter.

These killer ways to reuse an altoids tin. Because those cute little boxes are just too hard to throw in the garbage, aren't they?

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This amazing video put together by Ohadi Ahram of 36 people doing okay covers of Radiohead's song Paranoid Android. I was incredulous at first but by the end I had chills and maybe a tear or two fell out of my eyeballs. If you're a Radiohead fan you should really take a few minutes and watch it. 

It's powerful, not only because the song sounds amazing this way, but because it's so many people coming together from all over the world and doing the same thing unknowingly, and together the pieces make a beautiful whole.

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And last but not least, LULU AND HER WHITE MOUSE by Marc Da Cunha Lopes

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What are you loving this week? 
Post a link to your own list of cool stuff! I promise I'll stop by and say hello.

Diptych: what I almost stepped on yesterday. Yes, both of them.

And the day before I tripped and fell while walking the dog and skinned my knee. I can't even remember the last time I skinned my knee, what am I, seven years old? Maybe it happened because I've been walking so much lately that I forget to look where I'm going.

Are Twinkies real, papa? (please help)

Ryan's kids love the movie Zombieland. And so do I. And so does everybody because, um...Woody Harrelson. Need I say more? I think not.

But I will say more because Bill Murray has a hilarious cameo for like ten minutes which rules. Anyway if you've seen the movie you know that Woody's character is raging around, being bad-ass and killing zombies every which-way, but all he wants deep down inside is to eat a Twinkie for some reason that I forget.

Here's a trailer for the movie in case you're totally lost, and also because I want to put it here. 

It's my blog, bitches.

One day, after multiple viewings of this movie, one of Ryan's kids asked him "Are Twinkies real, papa?"

*record scratch* They've never had a Twinkie! They've never even seen a Twinkie! What kind of world are kids today living in, where Twinkies may or may not be mythological food?

We set out the next day to secretly buy Twinkies and surprise them. But alas...Twinkies are not available in Canada. Literally, they are nowhere. Not even WalMart. (Yes, we checked EVERYWHERE.) And that's where you come in, my awesome internet buddies! I know many of you live in the good ol' US of A and totally have access to those disgusting little submarines of cake and goo. Please, oh please, can you send me some? I'll send you something back. Something totally Canadian. It'll be fun, I promise. If you can help us with our terrible dilemma, give me a shout at novaisawesome(at) gmail (dot) com.

Please, help us make their dreams come true.

(LOL)

A little blogging secret...

I "drew blogging" for you guys there. I suppose it's kind of like a brainstorm? Whatever. 

For the next week or so I'm not really going to be around this blog too much. Life is happening, and by that I mean our new girl at work who was working my Tuesday/Wednesday weekend went to Mexico and I was all like "Can I work every single day for the next two weeks?" ... I'm not complaining about working all those days at all, it's really fun, plus my paycheques will be large enough for me to finally buy myself something amazing like this or this. Big plans, I tell ya.

Anyway, my general blogging strategy is this: every Tuesday (or "my Saturday", as I like to call it) I spend a few hours putting together fun posts for the next week that are not date specific. (i.e. photos, etc.) as well as adding to my Things I Love Thursday posts for the following week or two. Then, if something rad comes up or I want to actually write things, I can just shuffle the photo posts around and post whatever on a specific day. You dig? So, because this week I don't have Tuesday and Wednesday completely free, I may not get around to doing anything spectacular.  Or maybe I will. But expect a lot of photos.

But here's something you can learn from me today:

Scheduling posts is awesome and the easiest way to blog.  

Do you wonder how those big bloggers do it? How do they write stuff every single day by 8am? Well I bet they don't. They probably wrote all that stuff two weeks ago and scheduled it to post at a specific time. It's so easy. 

I dare...nay, challenge you to try scheduling a post if you've never done it before. Just try it out.  I bet you'll like it. It's nice and relaxing, it takes all the pressure off. And then when you really feel like writing, just go for it. You're not limited to one topic, one blog post. You can write six and set them up for the entire week. 

Go forth and schedule, my friends. Go forth. And schedule.

What a little cutie!

After I snapped a couple pictures I moved this little guy off the sidewalk so he wouldn't get crunched.