Bella the queen :)

We pug-sat for a friend a little bit ago and I just came across these pics, so I wanted to share. She ruled the nest for the few days that she was here....and our submissive Domino loved every minute of it!

"Oh hi Bella, come look at my bed! Its cool huh?!"

"Look mom, Bella is on my bed, we are friends!!"

"Its, my bed now, you silly boy!!"

Yup, Bella ruled the house for her 10 day stay!! 

Happy Earth Day!!

Happy Earth Day everyone! Lets all find a way to show our appreciation to our beautiful planet today! :)

Here are some of my favorite reminders of nature's beauty....

Mt. Rainier

Any beach at sunset is my favorite place to be!

Snoqualamie Falls

Midwest thunderstorm!

What about you, what are your favorite things about our amazing planet? How will you pay tribute to our Mother Earth today?

"A giant dog walk with a whale!"

This woman was on a marathon stand up paddle surfing expedition, 
which is quite amazing in and of itself! 

But, then a 30 foot whale came and joined her for 2 hours! How amazing is that? 

Nature continues to astonish me.....

Plus its just adorable to me that she got attached to him and named him Larry!

ps: I love that she referenced Ellen's "whale speak" its my favorite part of Nemo :)

An open letter to Cliff Notes

Dear Cliff Notes;
I have a bone to pick with you! How can you sleep at night knowing that you are reducing an amazing literary work into short meaningless synopses? How can you look at yourself in the mirror and not be ashamed at the yellow and black stripes covering the beauty of what once was a great book?

I heard someone say recently that they felt so bad for all the great writers every time that they looked at you littering the shelves at book stores. I have to say I totally agree, how about you? Do you feel bad for them as well as you are sitting next to them? How about when you are chosen off the shelf and they sit to collect dust? You have to feel a bit of regret right?

You are trying to do a good thing, I know that. Your main goal in life is to help poor high school and college students who would rather stay up all night partying than dive into a good book. So, I do apologize  because I know your intentions as good. What you don't realize though is that you really are just  harming them. You are making it way too easy on them! I know that if they were forced to actually read a novel they would appreciate it and kick themselves for ever going towards you as the easy option.

So, Cliff Notes, do us all a favor and step down. Books have you beat by leaps and bounds, you know it and we all know it. Just admit it and go on with your life, which really would be much more fulfilling as whatever you will be recycled into anyways. Just think of the possibilities.....maybe you will be made into a real book! I hope so, I know you would be much happier :)

Sincerely,
All us book lovers!

BAD!!

Awesome!!! :)

My dream house!

This house is absolutely amazing! Its right along Alki, which I have mentioned before as one of the greatest places in the Seattle area. Its off the main road a bit though which is nice, but they build a high room so they can still see the beautiful Alki view!

And the back yard is like a private spa/secret garden/oasis AND it has a specific dog area.

Plus, its just wonderfully quirky, just look at all the character it has!

The "studio" is even amazing, I would be happy as a clam with just that part!

Oh, and in case you didn't notice, its freakin' purple!! I love love love it! :)

Now if I only had a million dollars laying around.....

New music!

Ok, I just discovered, Kina Grannis and she rocks!!! ~ a big thank you to Newbo for sharing a video :)



Plus, I just love this song, I think the line "lipstick stain on the front lobe of my left side brain" is just brilliantly adorable :) Great cover! Look her up on Youtube, she has a bunch of great covers.

How freakin' cute is she?! Oh and the name of her album is "Stairwells" because she is shy and wrote her music in the secluded stairwells at college...adorable!!!!

Oh and here is an original...

Help me out blog world!

I experienced the epitome of the "rule of bad 3s" this past week! On Monday I woke up with a horrible pain in my side/back, which after being looked at by my massage therapist aunt and my physical therapist aunt, is thought to be a bruised (hopefully not cracked!) rib. That was my bad even #1
So, help topic 1; anyone have tips on how to care for that? It should be noted that, as a poor grad student, I do not have health insurance...

On to bad event number #2! On thursday I went to turn my laptop on and it went a bit crazy on me, then popped up with what my computer friend calls, the BSOD, or blue screen of death! Slightly ominous right? So, my computer is now in the repair shop, with a not so promising future. This is a 2 year old HP laptop and is my second one in my 4 years of grad school. I promised myself the last time it crashed that I would be done with PCs if it happened again before I was out of school. So....I am now Mac browsing.
So, help topic 2; are there any Mac owners out there who can share some tips with me? Am I making the right decision to switch?!

And my 3rd bad event, on Thursday (thats right, the same day my computer pooped out on me!) my car broke down on 1-5 in the middle of rush hour traffic. So, I called roadside assisstance and waited on the side of the freeway for an hour and a half (!!) until the tow truck finally got there. While I was waiting, 2 other tow trucks stopped to see if I needed help, to which I had to painfully say no because I couldnt afford to pay anyone (thats what the damn roadside assisstance is for!) AND a tow truck drove by towing another tow truck! So, that was fun, I dont really need any help there, I just wanted to share the entire sob story.

Im going to end on a positive note though. It was my mom's 50th bday on Thursday and my grandma and 2 aunts (her sisters) came here from ND and WY for a surprise visit. It was so much fun, I miss all of my family so much! The women have always had a wonderful relationship which I always admired growing up. Now I get to be a part of that relationship that I witnessed and it is an amazing experience. Plus the surprise went perfectly, so all my planning and secrecy paid off.

So, as it turns out, my "rule of the bad 3s" wasnt even enough to ruin my week. It was pretty awesome!! :)

ps: ill add pics from my mom's bday when I figure out my computer debacle...it gives you something to come back for!!

Life!

When I discovered the Planet Earth series, I was instantly hooked. The life and landscape of our planet is so wonderfully amazing to me. Rachel bought it for me for my birthday last year, and I think I watched the entire thing in 1 weekend. So, when I heard the follow up series, Life was starting on Discovery, I was ecstatic!!
It premiered tonight, and it was absolutely breathtaking! They showed a 1 inch frog who lives on mountain tops and makes his body rigid to become a tumbling pebble to avoid prey, dolphins who make a "net" in the water to persuade fish to literally jump into their mouths, and so much more.



I find nature to be so fascinating. As I have posted before, I am far far more amazed by nature and animals than by anything our egocentric species has ever done. The strawberry dart frog is the size of a fingernail and climbs trees up to half a mile long just to find a perfect place to put each one of her tadpoles. How amazing is that?! Our species often complains about paying for childcare or cleaning up toys! I think the difference is a sense of focus and simplicity sought in life. We do a million things at once, while most animal species do one or two things at a time, and do them amazingly well. I believe that this is a very valuable lesson, and one of the many that we can take from simply observing the immense wonder that surrounds us but is so often looked over or taken for granted.

Did anyone else watch Life today or has anyone seen Planet Earth? Thoughts?

Blog award!

Thanks to "Newbo" I have my first blogger award! Awesome, thanks :)

The rules of the award are:
1. Thank the person who gave you this award.
2. Share 7 things about yourself.
3. Pass the award along to 15 bloggers who you have recently discovered and who you think are fantastic!
4. Contact the bloggers you've picked and let them know about the award.

So, Im gonna cheat a bit because I actually just did a post with 15 things about me. Also I don't know about the sharing with 15 bloggers thing, so here are 5 that I would like to share the award with;

Unlawfully Wedded Wife - her blog just makes me smile :)

Lisa's Yarns - Ive been following her for a while now (so not exactly a "recent discovery"), but she is always just so uplifting and interesting to read!

Evolution of Darwin - Because who doesnt want to see daily pictures of a big beautiful Dane?!

Mel's Way or No Way - Her posts are always interesting and often include pictures of her cute foster dogs :)

And, my "in real life" friend Rachel, who also has a blog!

Have fun ladies!

Its a dangerous thing....

....when I get obsessed with an animal! I have had a soft spot for French Bulldogs for quite some time, they are just so quirkly (yup, made that word up!) cute and they have the best personalities of any small dogs. Im generally a "the bigger the dog, the better!" kind of girl.

Well, we were at a friend's house this weekend and another friend had one there, plus their neighbor has one. Its torture! Luckily, they are very rarely found in rescue organizations. Im counting on my strong convictions to never get a dog who is not a rescue to save us from adding to the zoo! :)

my favorite new family members!

Just come out already girls, your both cute as a button!!!

Kristen Stewart (aka: Bella Swan and Joan Jett!)

I love love Ellen Page!! She is adorably quirky and freakin hilarious!...plus she plays two of my favorite new characters; Juno and Bliss :)

I love that we are entering a generation where people are saying, "come on girls, just come out" rather than "oh, she just needs to find a good guy, hook her up with that boy who plays the vampire!"

Virus?! (update: not anymore!)

I may have a virus, so don't come to my site now. But, if you know what to do; email me crystalkaymarie@gmail.com!!!!! -thanks

Update: ok, no more virus yay! apparently it was just a "common cold" not a virus, but still annoying. But...now I need a new "safe" hit counter, any suggestions?!

Castle!

We really don't watch very much tv, but there are a few shows that we watch on a fairly consistent basis. I posted already about Modern Family, which is one of the funniest shows I have ever seen. Well, our other favorite is Castle. Apparently though, we are the only 2 people who watch it because everyone I ask replies with the same "ive never heard of it" response. Seriously though, it is awesome. It is another crime show, but it has humor added in. There is an author who is following around the detective as a muse for his novel series. Its a really good twist on the typical overdone crime show. You should really check it out. Mainly because I want it to get a better time slot, Mondays at 10 are just too hard on my sleep schedule!! :)

What is social networking doing to our society?!

Hi all, so this may be a venting session...just an fyi!

I didn't join myspace when all the craze was going on for quite some time because....well I like to stay out of the craze! Finally I decided to join when my best friend who lives back home in ND got pregnant. Yeah, I caved in for the pictures :) Well, I did the same thing with Facebook, but caved again because I really missed the connection to all my friends back in ND. Ok, that is what these sites are supposed to be for in my mind. Its a great way to catch up with friends who so often live far away in our increasingly mobile and distancing society.

So what are they not supposed to be for? Drama! Why does this happen? I have talked with classmates about the ways that facebook comes up in therapy and it is astounding to me. It has made our society collectively passive aggressive! If you don't like someone, in my mind you have 2 choices; 1) don't have them be a part of your life or 2) talk it through and figure out how to either fix it or make a compromise. Now though, we have option 3) post a "cleverly" disguised hate comment on your facebook status in an attempt at being "sneaky" (please note the sarcasm!) and attempt to start a war of statuses!!!

I don't get it! These are adults doing this, not just teenagers. I know you all know of someone who made a fake profile to stalk an ex, or posts these annoyingly vague yet blatent status messages as a childish dig, or posts pictures with the sole purpose of pissing someone off.

What are your thoughts on this? It really saddens me because this is obviously affecting our society. I don't want future generations to think this is ok, what will that mean for the future of interpersonal conflict resolution and relationships in general? Cant we go back to the days of hand written letters and corded phones that the whole family shares? How do us facebookers who really just want to keep in contact with friends, shield ourselves from the "other side" of facebook?

ps: in case you are wondering, yes someone did post something (not-so)cleverly vague as a dig towards me. It is something that is pretty much out of my control and they did it after I tried to choose option #2. Im writing here about how much the whole concept of facebook interpersonal drama saddens me rather than joining in on the facebook war. The blog fits its name, this is my catharsis....

Brandi's new video

I love this song, I think its a very brave song to put out there. Its emotional and strong, at the same time. The video just came out and it is beautiful also. Good job Brandi! :)