die-a-grams....

A pizza diagram. A map of pizza toppings. A guide to better understand a triangle shape piece of bread, cheese, and tomato sauce. This is one of my favorite diagrams. It is simple, easy to understand and color coded. I would have never thought of a piece of pizza as a diagram. Usually I just it and never stop to think that there part of a pizza that can be diagrammed and defined. Most of the other diagrams I see are in science textbooks and involve intense memorization. One I am currently working on is the plant cell. It has all sorts of parts and complex functions. Luckily a diagram just names the parts and not all the functions and purposes of each individual part. Whew. When I was a child I loved to assemble different lego figures and put things together like a barbie picnic set or a barbie Jacuzzi. My brother and I would split our allowance money and go to target to buy a lego kit. We would rush home and carefully empty the box of all the legos and open the instructions manual. My favorite part was matching the pieces and formations to those in the instruction booklet. Then as the different pieces and parts were put to together the entire lego spaceship would start looking like the flashy picture on the box. The end product would be carefully placed on the floor and admired for the next couple of days. Eventually the lego spaceship would crash in a lego star wars galactic war or pieces would be taken for another creation. Sometimes the diagram and instruction booklet would be found and the legos would be put back together again. Those were the good times--when diagrams made sense and they were not for memorizing and science oriented. (Unless, of course, the lego spaceship was modified into a spaceship/boat/car super hero vehicle.)

stranded old school style....

I would prefer to be stuck at the bottom of a dried up well as to avoid sand and intense sunlight. I would prefer to have with me more than five cassette tapes, but if that's all I get I will take it over nothing. The five albums I would choose would be: Under the Blacklight, Challengers, Begin to Hope, Wet From Birth, and The Information. (This was a very difficult choice. As I wheeled through my ipod I was torn between a few other albums, but those that were not selected are for the next time I get stranded in a dried up well.) Under the Blacklight is one of my absolute favorite albums by Rilo Kiley. I love the sound of Jenny Lewis's voice. (You can tell she is a redhead when she sings.) I also like the variety of sound from song to song in the album. It goes from hard rock to somewhat folky to soft/chill music. The New Pornographers who wrote Challengers, is a band I just discovered this year. I like how voices fit together and the music is easy listening. I can be in any kind of mood and enjoy listening to The New Pornographers. Regina Spektor is one of my all time favorite female artists. Her album, Begin to Hope was gift from my best friend. I fell in love with the first song, Fidelity, and as the songs kept playing they got better and better. Not only is Regina a talented artist, but her music is fun to sing to. Ah, The Faint. It was hard to pick my favorite Faint album, but I ended up choosing Wet from Birth. Their other albums have a theme of death, sex, and birth. I choose the birth album because if I was stranded in a dried up well, I would choose the more upbeat album. As for The Information by Beck, I had to go with one of the best artists in my ipod.

thrifting...

I like to be thrifty. My mother says I am frugal. I like to be practical. So, when it comes to buying clothes, I like them cheap. Not the dirty or less quality kind of cheap, but the worn in and well used kind of cheap. That’s why I sometimes, well most times, shop at goodwill, the Salvation Army, or the thrift stores in downtown Omaha. This kind of shopping is tricky. It requires going through racks and racks of acid wash mommy jeans, musty sweaters, and floppy t-shirts. I love it. In the mean time there is a frantic search for that one unique item, for less than five dollars of course. It gets tiring pushing the clothes aside and looking at the tag for size and price. However, when I am with friends it makes that search all the more enjoyable. The really ugly and revolting 1980’s blazers or formal dresses are pulled off the rack and commented on, tried on, and brought back to life. I or one of my friends will come out of the dressing room enacting the clothing. A neon-colored swish suit would require a silly workout routine and an impression of Richard Simons. A gaudy eighties formal dress, with an excess of poof sleeves, would be considered the next gown for prom or just to accompany plastic jewelry or tidal wave bangs. Most of the ugly or extremely unfashionable items found are eventually put back on the rack. Then there comes the time that all the hard work pays off when I find the thrifty deal between the compressed racks of clothing. It usually ends up being a pair of designer jeans that fit perfectly for five dollars or a sweater for ninety-nine cents. Whatever the item, the hunt and pursuit of these thrifty items are always an unpredictable adventure. You never know what you can find between the racks.