If by chance you follow overflow:visible; please update your RSS reader. All posts can be found here.
Thanks so much! rayna
Category Archives: Personal
New flickr Photos
Friday in DUMBO Brooklyn was beautiful. I took full advantage and went out at lunch time with my camera. There was a perfect breeze, not too hot. I have added 7 new photos to my flickr stream, which you can see in the slide show to the right!
Hopefully, there will be more pretty days like this to make the lunchtime escape that much more enjoyable!
A New Year
My First Necklace
Not really a lot to add to the year at this point though I have some change in the works that I’m really starting to look forward to the closer it gets.
I like that it’s really cold right now. It is refreshing, especially in the mornings. Even the coldest days are welcomed, if briefly, for the relief and reprieve from the stifling morning heat that pervades our apartment.
I think January is often a very bleak month. For Christmas celebrators I think the month can be particularly dull as all the greenery, angels, golds and reds have been tucked away in their storage closets, attics or basements.
I return to work tomorrow after a week off, which is always invigorating, and I am really going to make en effort to maintain some of the creative spirit that always sprouts for me during time off. I made my first necklace, took care of some practical errands and cooked some good stuff. It’s not easy to balance life – it gets in the way of itself sometimes. So, in keeping with balance, I will also not get SO down on myself after a week of not being creative that I thwart a month of future creative endeavors. I will not be my own worst enemy. As that’s a tall order, I think it’ll be a short list this year.
Wishing you all a healthy and enjoyable new year.
What is home?
What is home? Or what feels like home? Arguably, it might be somewhere you have lived for most of your life, somewhere you are familiar. You know the weak spots in the floorboards, just how to turn the closet door handle to shut it, and where to hit certain appliances to make them work. But I don’t think that it has to necessarily be.
I am ‘home’ right now. I live in New York with my boyfriend but am currently visiting my parents for Thanksgiving in their house they bought a few years ago. They have just recently moved to West Virginia full time and it was definitely a transition for me. We are very close and I was living with them before they moved. I did not grow up in this house nor have I ever spent more than a week here and yet, it is home. It feels like I have lived here all my life.
I thought that perhaps it was simply my parents being here that made it feel that way but the last apartment we lived in did not feel like home to any of us. The floors were all tile – we like wood floors. It was a ‘modern’ apartment in that it was built in perhaps the last 30 years or so. I use modern loosely – more of a timeframe than a type of apartment. I have been to ‘modern’ apartments that are wonderful and inviting but this one was not it, at least not for us. There were no moldings around the windows or doors or any type of baseboard. The walls were flat white. We like texture and old moldings.
We left an apartment of 20 or so years because the children of the landlords, whom have passed on, sold it to a developer. It was a beautiful house, with two apartments, crystal doorknobs, thick wood molding and doors, a huge backyard and wood floors. When we moved into that ‘modern’ apartment, I don’t even think my cat was happy. It was always cold and she hardly ever finished her wet food which she lives and whines for.
The apartment my boyfriend and I live in is also a ‘modern’ apartment with no molding, no wood except for the floors and (I confess my favorite part) a stainless steel applianced kitchen. It feels more like home than did the apartment my parents and I just left though not as much as the one of 20 years. My cat is definitely happier – we live over the boiler room so the floors are always warm and she DEVOURS every last drop of wet food. While not perfect, I was sitting across from my boyfriend munching on pizza and I looked at him and I thought this almost feels like home so it seems people do have something to contribute.
This house of my parents though, it isn’t just them being here. The house is comfortable to me, inviting. It does have thick wood moldings – that have never been painted and are still the original dark stain, the floors are wood, the furnace sounds wonderful when it kicks on and it has a huge backyard. There probably are ‘things’ that feel comfortable, familiar. I don’t feel like I’m staying in someone else’s house.
A bright, sunshiny day
I was waiting at the train station in Woodside for the second cutest girl in the world. Second? So who is first? Well, according to my father I am and far be it from me to argue with my father. :) And, were her father available to call and say, hey, who is the cutest girl in the world, he would undoubtedly say, you needed to ask?
SO, Back to standing at the train station on an absolutely beautiful November Sunday watching the crowds go by. A young girl in flat knee high suede purple boots that clearly made her feel like an adult. A woman in tie-dyed stockings with bright purple sneakers. A curious baby on a father’s shoulder taking everything in with big brown eyes. A woman with verrry bright neon pink-orange (porange? orink?) sneakers. 3 good friends laughing and drinking coffee.
When all of the ill of the world appear on the pages of our daily physical and virtual newspapers it is a comfort to know that somehow normal life goes on. People find a way to continue to laugh and love and enjoy the sunshine on a particularly warm fall day. And I was among them. Sweet!
Title Change
As I have mentioned in the little ‘about’ section on the right, I am still relatively new to blogging and so am letting this blog find itself for a bit before really deciding. As such, I decided a name change was in order. The original name was Pieces of Me which was the name of a blog I held briefly on Vox. When I created this blog, I wasn’t quite sure of a name so stuck with the other until something struck me.
I am a web designer and kind of liked the idea of something web related. I had thought display:inline; might be all right but this piece of code lines things up neatly in a row, particularly for the list tag <li>. I then thought of overflow:visible; which allows content that is wider or longer than a particular space is coded for to be seen. In thinking about this I thought this sounded kind of like a journal or blog because it allows that which is inside of you that needs to come out, that is bigger than your insides are coded for, to spill over and be seen. It may sound a little cheesy or something, but I kind of like it so I guess that is one piece of blog evolution done. 
NY Needs a Rest too!
The New York skyline is beautiful. There are so many images of it on postcards and websites – everyone recognizes it. But what I really love about New York is what you don’t see posted everywhere. Nestled in between the tall skyscrapers and slick retail stores are little escapes. Little niches carved out that offer respite and serenity from the hustle and bustle. That may sound cliched but having lived up here for here for over 20 years, hustle and bustle still seems appropriate.
The next time you see that magnificent skyline remember – even New Yorkers need breathing room!
 |
 |
 |
|
Perfection Confinement
I have been a web designer for four years, a writer since high school and a crafter since who knows when. But in the past few weeks I feel like I just learned how to write and craft for the first time.
I have this perfection issue. I think that when I write or make something it has to come out “right” the first time. This doesn’t really happen to me during working hours with web design because our websites go through rounds. It is expected that there will be layout modifications especially since there are usually more than three people involved. It’s not often but every once in a great while, a sketch will be approved on the first round. (This always leaves me with an eyebrow-raised, suspicious feeling.)
Most of my personal work stalls from paralysis. I don’t know how to move forward or where to start and I can never see the middle steps. I just see the blank screen/paper/canvas in front of me and the end. Or what I hope the end will look like.
I bought a magazine on a whim recently. (Let me note here that I buy magazines on whims quite frequently. QUITE frequently) It was published by Writer’s Digest. They must know something. The magazine was Writing Basics and it actually helped. The advice I followed was from the article "Rough Up Your First Draft" by Elizabeth Sims. It was this simple: just start writing. Anything – write whatever comes to your mind. You can even write the same sentence three difference ways if it comes to you in three different ways; sort it out later! And wouldn’t you know it? I wrote five pages in two days while on the bus to work. That’s probably more than I have written in two years! I felt liberated from the confinements of perfection! Now comes the hard part: keep writing because the secret to writing is apparently… to write! Yes, really. It’s that “simple”.
The other break-through was in the craft department. I wanted to create a mini scrapbook album for my friend’s baby shower. Another magazine buying whim turned out to be just what I needed. It was called “mini albums”, published by scrapbook TRENDS. I didn’t even realize there was a whole mini-album trend in the scrapbooking world (I don’t scrapbook). So this little magazine featured a template drawn up by a Jennifer Gallacher that she uses for most of her mini albums. A sketched out template. I had never thought of that. I really felt very silly. There it was, staring me down again. My need for perfection, to do it right the first time without thinking it through or having a plan. So I thank you very much oh scrapbooking trends and Ms. Gallacher for saving me from my perfection confinement. I now have a solid plan for the mini album and have sketched out each page of it to boot! woo hoo!
Doors that Intrigue
My first love and I recently got back in touch via another ex – always a strange moment! I was excited to see him and glad to have him back in my life as he introduced me to some great stuff including Queen, Pink Floyd and writing poetry. He has become an avid photographer, as am I, and it turns out we have very similar photographic sensibilities. (his stuff is here if you’re curious). He shares much more than I do – I’m a little stingy when it comes to sharing creative stuff – but a recent post of his about doors has inspired me to do a little door posting of my own. (My photos are not high res – they are cell phone photos and not nearly as clear as his).
I took this one a week or so before his post, mostly because it was run down and so forth. I figured I could use it for a digital collage at some point. I recently took another photo of a door after his post and I have to agree – doors are intriguing. I like them older and worn. What lies behind them? In a dusty old shop – are there any remnants in the debris of what the shop was? Who owned it? What kind of people shopped there?
There is one door that has held my attention for years. While waiting on the M train platform at Chambers Street, there is a dirty, brown, padlocked, cross-hatched double door just after the platform ends and the tunnel begins. I cannot tell you how often I have stared at that door and imagined what lies behind. Sure – storage for the MTA but are there any relics of transportation past? Is it still used (sure doesn’t look like it!) Does it lead to a whole other network of tunnels or cross stations? And then there are the stories I have written in my head while waiting (…and waited some more). Abandoned cities and families living in tunnels; networks for the aliens; escape routes for convicts. I guess doors are wonderful conduits for creativity!
After a seminar |
On the way to a birthday dinner |
Spam Comments. Really?
I would like to voice my disgust at spam. It was not enough to spam every email account I own attempting to taunt me with pills to “amorous my bedroom” or “make the girls to please”. Besides the wonderfully horrible grammar that abounds in these emails – I’m afraid you are attempting to entice the wrong gender! But the Inbox world was not enough. No. Your endless stream of useless bytes of information has decided to go after blogs. Really. Retain some dignity for yourselves and refrain from spam commenting. No, REALLY. Keep it to yourself. You weren’t looking all day for an article like that or for wonderful advice (ps – I haven’t given any on my blog) so leave my blog alone. Really.