Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloweenie!!! I love to dress up more than anything, so obviously Halloween is one of my favorite holidays! But I just found this video for Burning Man and I feel like this celebration definitely trumps Halloween in terms of creative costumes and overall ridiculousness! Definitely putting this on my bucket list!

Surf Art

Second only to the art of you know who, this Hawaiian artist, Heather Brown's is to die for!!!!  I love how colorful, whimsical and vivacious her style is and she is even a steward for the environment as well!  Her designs have become so well known around Oahu and her art has been come a staple at many of the prominent events around town.  She definitely captures the aloha spirit in each of her pieces and I just wanted to share some of her work- she pieces are simple, yet she has made a significant mark in the artistic community here in Hawaii.

http://www.heatherbrownart.com/home.php


http://www.waveridersgallery.net/catalog2/surfartist-heather-brown-c-21_79.html 

mamma-she's got some style-always room for new inspiration :)

Marcell the Shell

Guess what my skis are...toe nails from a man....  I can't believe winter is approaching again so soon!  I figure if we can't lay in bed and eat ice cream together all winter (/ski:)... we can at least share YouTube vids.  This one is from Spot.  She's growing up so fast and is now exponentially cooler than me, luckily I trained her well so she's good at finding secret treasures like this little gem...



Advanced apologies if my blogging frequency is low.  If all goes according to plan, we're headed up to San Francisco on Thursday :0 I've got a whole road trip mapped out, however it might take 4 trips to check everything off the list.  Now that I don't have my MAMA to take care of me and plan our adventures, I've taken matters into my own hands...we'll see how that goes- Stay tuned ;D

BDC

So I haven't been good about posting and I may have to slack off for the next two weeks cause Laura, my co-counselor from BDC is coming to visit!!!! I'm so pumped to have a visitor and I haven't seen her or talked to her for that matter, in sooooo long. Its nice to have friends that you feel like you don't have to keep in good touch with but they can come back into your life at any moment and its like nothing has changed....

anyway, I'm definitely going to be thinking about the good 'ol Cape Cod summer days.... here are some of my fondest summer memories....

I remember when.... I remember when....

Happy 25th Birthday Amanda!!!!!!

  Happy Birthday MAAAMMMAAAA!!!!!

Since I didn't get to sing you my traditional opera Happy Birthday over the phone, hopefully this little Happy Birthday jig will make up for it.

shoots, for some reason the video isn't working, so you will have to click the link to retrieve your birthday song

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtjCXPxhMuc

Can't believe that its been 25 years that we have known each other! I'm so lucky to have you in my life for half a century and many more years to come! I wish more than anything that I could celebrate with you on your special day, but maybe its better I'm not there after what happened last time I celebrated your birthday with you.....

Love you and miss you Mama! and hope you had a fabulous Birthday!!!!

xoxoxoxox

tsssTHABESTPART

AH October 4th. What a day.  Generally I would be getting sick on this day because of the changing seasons... and primarily October 5th birthday anxiety...BUT now that I've been alive for almost a quarter century, I've matured enough to pipe down a bit on the birthday hype.

  I usally end up being really selfish on my birthday and expect people to do things for me, haha- what a brat! This year I'm going to treat myself to do whatever I want...which is probably absolutely nothing, however I can feel good about doing nothing because I make the rules!

What a concept, I get to choose how I feel and what I do all day...sounds great, maybe I should pretend everyday is my birthday  :D

Now on to the best part: my favorite birthday YouTube video! 

Wealth is All Relative

I found this interesting website that shows your wealth compared to the rest of the world.  http://www.globalrichlist.com/  I found out that I am in the top 3.85% riches people in the world.  How crazy is that!!!  And I feel like I am barely getting by on my income!

Living in the US it is easy to get caught up in the huge amounts of money that people make and the lavish lifestyles that we aspire to have someday.  And then we find ourself comparing our meager incomes to these multi-million or even multi-billion-aires and we feel inadequate and poor in comparison.  However, if we compare our financial situation to other populations across the world we realize that we have a lot more money than some would even dream of having.

However, our cost of living is also much higher and therefore our money doesn't go as far.  Sometimes it makes me want to just save my money here and then move to a third world country and spend basically nothing to live.  Can we go back to the days of South American living when minimalism was the spice of life and every moment was an adventure...

shelter

Job

Entertainment

Transportation

Exercise

Leisure

Just the bare necessities of life...

Jams

First off I couldn't agree more on your bike policies.  I just got back from riding by bike to the local library... I forgot how excellent the library is!

Today's check out items were the following:
1) A book on starfish
2) A book on jellyfish
3) "The Boss of YOU" book on starting a small business
4) Road Trip USA- PCH101 edition (Can't believe we didn't get one of these before driving from Arizona to Rhode Island!)

I'll be so much smarter IF I read these. New Goal: get books from the library once a month AND read them  :D

Now on to more important things: Music...maybe music will motivate me to read books? Doubtful. However it will encourage me to physically DO things, like eat books... Here's my most recent motivational play list:

 ALSO big news, if you have not already been notified, there's a new Zac Brown Band CD out!!! Here's a little peek:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CDLHjvf-QU&feature=related

Biker Babe!

So we have officially entered the "rainy season" which poses a bit of a problem for my bike commute.  Tonight I went to happy hour after work and after a couple hours of rain, I realize that I couldn't wait it out any longer and I decided I had no option other than to just ride my bike home and get soaking wet.  Good thing I had a couple of beers at the bar, so it was actually kind of comical to me that I was riding in the rain.  But at the same time, I just kept thinking about how much having to bike commute in the rain SUCKS!

So tonight I'm posting some POSITIVE reasons for riding a bike as my only form of transportation!

1) Save money!!!  Basically this trumps all other reasons - saves money on car payments, gas, bus tickets, and parking.  Although I did kinda break the bank with buying a new road bike after my first beach cruiser got stolen, it definitely beats paying $60 a month for the bus or who knows how much for a car!

2)  Exercise!  its a good way to build exercise into each day.  Its great to get the blood moving on my commute to work in the morning, and if I get really ambitious, it may even turn into a hobby that will take me on bike rides that extend many miles.  Maybe even get into tri-athalons or bike races!

3)  No traffic!  well kind of... now that I have a road bike I'm still getting used to the rules of the road and for the most part I'm supposed to follow normal traffic patterns but sometimes I can run through a red light or hop onto the sidewalk and beat the terrible traffic that plagues this island.

4)  Help the environment!!!  Doing my small part to reduce emissions and decrease our dependence on oil.

5)  Looking cool!  minus the dorky helmet, I love my sweet neon pink bike!!  am I a hipster now?  I don't know if I would go that far, but I definitely turn some heads due to the bright color of my ride - maybe someday a hot biker dude will ask me to take a ride with/on him...