On their way!

Well, I've gone and done it! I've made my first shoe purchase on eBay since moving here. You have to understand, when I was living in Santa Cruz, buying shoes on eBay was like a second full-time job for me. I think I actually started this blog to rant about all the shoes I wanted to/was buying on eBay. Amazingly, I had managed to control myself until tonight, but when I saw these babies at a ridiculously reasonable buy-it-now price, I crumbled.

I really haven't bought more than a couple pieces of clothing since moving here, which is another wonder. Back in Santa Cruz, I went shopping multiple times a week. Granted, it was at the Salvation Army and flea markets (and on eBay) almost exclusively, but when weighed against my sad little income, I was spending far too much. But sometimes, the only thing that could lift my worried spirits was pawing through racks of funny old things, searching for little treasures that made my heart race. Here, I've been too busy with school and work to mind, and too broke to bother anyways. But my wardrobe is feeling so stagnate, and I'm hoping to find time to get to Buffalo Exchange in the next week or so to jettison some things and come trotting home with a few more.

EDIT: Oh gosh, so, I had to edit this because I just bought these:


I have just enterred into dangerous territory indeed, and I fear there are slippery slopes ahead! But come ON, it was worth it right????

My LBD

Today as I was getting dressed, I reached for my black pinafore dress, and I realised that ever since I found it in a thrift store in Santa Cruz right around this time last year, I've probably worn it I at least twice a week, if not more. It's my immediate go-to on days when I don't have the extra brain cells to spare thinking about something clever to wear. So I decided I'd round up all the photos I have of myself wearing it, oldest to newest, coast to coast, as a sort of tribute.






Here's lookin' at me wearin' you, kid.

Redhead senorita

I honestly think that Karen Elson is one of the most beautiful women alive. I'm awfully tempted these days to go all out and dye my hair really really red. I so admire people who can pull that color off. Odds are I would look like a carrot or, more likely, a circus freak, but there's something about powerfully red hair that conjours up such sweet images of fur collars and little felt hats and snow. It's such a wonderful color to set against grey skies and skyscrapers. Of course, I'm equally tempted to go the Zooey route and try a chocolately brown, even though I know it doesn't really suit me (I've tried, believe me!)

Ah well, I suppose the grass is always greener, eh?

New (old) sweater

A few rainy days ago I struck out on a rather foolhardy expeidition to a large thrift store in West Hempstead, a sister store of which I spent many blissful hours, and dollars, in during high school back in Washington State. It paled, nay, it sagged and sulked in comparison to its West Coast cousin, BUT, I did pick up this new warm cardigan, some odds and ends, and a few things for my room, including a hilarious pillow shaped like a little hamburger-dude. So all was not lost. And any rainy day spent on trains is an ok day by me.

My Favorite Movie?

"Harold and Maude" (1971), directed by Hal Ashby and starring Bud Cort and Ruth Gordon.

I remember the first time I saw this film. It was sometime during the early part of high school, after a long summer day, the best half of which was spent swimming in icy Puget Sound seawater and recovering on beaches of dark pebbles hot as little coals. I spent the night at a friend's house, and somehow we ended up watching Harold and Maude. I had to get up early and walk home the next day in the sunshine, down dusty dirt roads under deep green fir trees, and that morning the whole world seemed like a completely magical, amazing, sad place, and I was in a daze, a Cat Stevens, funeral-going, banjo filled daze, as I did a little two-step down this path and that on my bare feet.




A few years later, on a tour of prospective Universities, I first came to the Bay Area (where the film is set). And immediately, more than anything, I knew that was where I belonged. I needed to walk along those wide, bare, grassy hills in the clear California sunlight. I saw Harold and his little hearse driving down roads draped in eucalyptus branches, ghostly in the fog. I saw the most glorious birds, and even if they were only seagulls, it made no difference. And that is where, for the most part, I spent the next four years of my life.




Oh, I could rhapsodize for hours! I can honestly say that this one of the films that has profoundly changed my life. The soundtrack, provided by a sublimely folk-rockin' Cat Stevens, the colors, the framing (I happen to know all this has also influenced one of my favorite directors, Wes Anderson, who lists it among his favorite films). But I'll save all that for a term paper. Just trust me: see it. I hope you find in it even half the beauty and wonder that I do. Keep an open mind. And, I dare you not to cry at the end. I must have seen this movie at least fifty times, and still, just hearing the opening bars to "Trouble" gets me all kinds of choked up...and I wouldn't trade that feeling for anything in the world.