Highlight at The High
I fell completely in love with this piece at The High. Can't you just feel the texture? I really wanted to lick it. But I didn't.
you HAVE to be kidding me...
(identical post on madeleines written with light)
So yeah. Remember that goal I set? I was going to blog the past six months of travel before Labor Day. Um, about that.
At least this time it's not my fault. I set aside the time, even went out of my way to create time in my schedule to knock this project out. I prepped massive amounts of photos. I was ready to rock n' roll.
Then blogger freaked out.
I haven't been able to post photos for weeks now. Weeks. In Blog Time, that's like 17 years. I get the same annoying error message each time and I've tried absolutely everything I can to work around it. No luck. I finally gave up and visited the blogger help site. As it turns out, not so helpful. It's a cool concept, but no dice. It's a community site, with users answering each other's questions and the occasional blogger staffer jumping in. I was basically shouting into the void.
Along came twitter.
I tweeted my frustration into what I thought was another void, but at least I could direct my comments @blogger #help #likenow. A helpful woman named Siobhan chimed in with all sorts of suggestions (many I had already tried, but she obviously knew her stuff so I went with it). I found out later she's actually a blogger staffer who tweets and she picked up on the @blogger I threw out into the tweetsphere. She took it as far as she could then passed me off to a rock star named Brett. Brett and I tweaked and troubleshooted and are now tweaking some more. With no luck.
The Picasa team has been called in.
Honestly. I'm such a small fish in the blogging universe. I just wanna post a few photos. The epicness of the situation is getting old. I know Brett is working on the issue from his end and I hope there are some crafty Picasa techs attacking it as well. At any rate, epic or not, I sincerely appreciate the help. I'm so grateful to be off the community help site and in the capable hands of actual geeks.
And so we wait.
Hotlanta
Waaaay back in January I took a trip to Atlanta, Georgia. The trip was split evenly between business and pleasure. The business bit does not make for enticing blog fodder - conducted workshops, trainings, and other assorted consulting stuff at three different community colleges in the greater metro-region - but the pleasure bit is blog worthy.
In addition to exciting professional strides, I have my three-year consulting project to thank for some of my favorite friends. Sean and Jeff live in Atlanta, Jennifer lives in Portland (Oregon), and I live in Salt Lake City; but for the past three years we've been all over the country together. In January, Sean invited Jennifer and I to his institution to do consulting blahblah work...so we of course added vacation days onto our trip. This also means we crashed Sean and Jeff's living room. That means I literally had to be restrained from rolling around on the painted cement floors and licking the exposed brick walls. Oh my, how I love lofts. At any rate, there was a lot of Rock Band, a lot of amazing food, and a lot of amazing art. I wish I could tell you there were a lot of amazing photographs, but I wasn't quite on my photo game this trip. But here are a few I enjoy:
Atlanta is most definitely a foodie paradise (and no, I'm not referring to the ginormous KFC used purely for directional purposes). Unfortunately, as previously confessed, I wasn't as good about taking food photos as I usually am. Alas, I can't share with you the orgasmic truffle mac n' cheese that lives on only in memory. I can't begin to describe the pork that fell off the bone onto my plate in the Two urban licks revamped warehouse (yup, I ate pork....it was THAT good!). And I can't induce fits of sloppy screen-licking with photos of my brunch at The Flying Biscuit (shout out to fellow Indigo Girls fanatics!). However, I can offer a glance at the signage. Now come on, that's an awesome consolation prize, am I right?
In addition to eating ourselves into a coma, we indulged our artsy side. We poked around in an awesome artist collective called Donna Van Gogh's. I purchased a piece by local folk artist Kirk Stansbury that now hangs in my hallway and brings me smiles every day. Someday I'll remember to post a photo of it here. In short: it's a painting on recycled plywood of an upright acoustic guitar, "Make ya own music" scribbled across the top of the board. It's joyful...as is the DVG facade.
We also visited The High Museum of Art. It was fortunate happenstance that we were there at the same time as China's Terracotta Army (hyperlink leads to great article and informative video...I'm saying it's worth clicking, in other words). Reading about these soldiers in Art History texts or loosely studying them in a Philosophy of War course does not begin to do justice to the experience of seeing them live. It was incredible. The detail on these life-size carvings is staggering. As I understand it, there are a certain number of molds for the bodies, but each and every head/face is uniquely hand-cast. Unreal...particularly when you consider the sheer number of soldiers!
No, this is not my photo. I stole it from a Google image search, actually lifted it off a blog that also stole it from some unknown primary source. Sorry...shhhhh. This shows a teeny tiny fraction of the soldiers unearthed in China. Amazing.
In addition to exciting professional strides, I have my three-year consulting project to thank for some of my favorite friends. Sean and Jeff live in Atlanta, Jennifer lives in Portland (Oregon), and I live in Salt Lake City; but for the past three years we've been all over the country together. In January, Sean invited Jennifer and I to his institution to do consulting blahblah work...so we of course added vacation days onto our trip. This also means we crashed Sean and Jeff's living room. That means I literally had to be restrained from rolling around on the painted cement floors and licking the exposed brick walls. Oh my, how I love lofts. At any rate, there was a lot of Rock Band, a lot of amazing food, and a lot of amazing art. I wish I could tell you there were a lot of amazing photographs, but I wasn't quite on my photo game this trip. But here are a few I enjoy:
Turn left at The Big Chicken. Just down the street from The Big Chicken. Around the corner from The Big Chicken. Meet me at The Big Chicken. You get the idea: This campy landmark was our Marietta touchstone.
Atlanta is most definitely a foodie paradise (and no, I'm not referring to the ginormous KFC used purely for directional purposes). Unfortunately, as previously confessed, I wasn't as good about taking food photos as I usually am. Alas, I can't share with you the orgasmic truffle mac n' cheese that lives on only in memory. I can't begin to describe the pork that fell off the bone onto my plate in the Two urban licks revamped warehouse (yup, I ate pork....it was THAT good!). And I can't induce fits of sloppy screen-licking with photos of my brunch at The Flying Biscuit (shout out to fellow Indigo Girls fanatics!). However, I can offer a glance at the signage. Now come on, that's an awesome consolation prize, am I right?
In addition to eating ourselves into a coma, we indulged our artsy side. We poked around in an awesome artist collective called Donna Van Gogh's. I purchased a piece by local folk artist Kirk Stansbury that now hangs in my hallway and brings me smiles every day. Someday I'll remember to post a photo of it here. In short: it's a painting on recycled plywood of an upright acoustic guitar, "Make ya own music" scribbled across the top of the board. It's joyful...as is the DVG facade.
We also visited The High Museum of Art. It was fortunate happenstance that we were there at the same time as China's Terracotta Army (hyperlink leads to great article and informative video...I'm saying it's worth clicking, in other words). Reading about these soldiers in Art History texts or loosely studying them in a Philosophy of War course does not begin to do justice to the experience of seeing them live. It was incredible. The detail on these life-size carvings is staggering. As I understand it, there are a certain number of molds for the bodies, but each and every head/face is uniquely hand-cast. Unreal...particularly when you consider the sheer number of soldiers!
No, this is not my photo. I stole it from a Google image search, actually lifted it off a blog that also stole it from some unknown primary source. Sorry...shhhhh. This shows a teeny tiny fraction of the soldiers unearthed in China. Amazing.
Master of Arts in Community Leadership
It has been over seven years since I graduated with my BA in English from Westminster College. I've missed the brick, ivy, and small classes from the moment I left. I've built a great career in higher-ed in the meantime - and life has been non-stop work momentum since I graduated - but I've always wanted to go back to school. Westminster didn't have a graduate program that was right for my field however and so I've flirted off and on with a number of grad school options over the years. I found a few potential programs, but was never able to take a breather from work long enough to give it any real thought.
Well, this spring a number of factors came together to form the perfect storm. 1) My consulting gig (ie: the cause of my constant travel) just wrapped in July; and 2) Westminster announced the creation of a new grad program that just so happens to be the perfect fit for my field: Master of Arts in Community Leadership (MACL). Long story short: I went through the motions of debating it (because I knew it was perfect for me and it was all but a done deal), I went for it, was accepted, enrolled, signed my student loan papers with my sweet red blood, and I begin the next chapter of my life on 24 August.The genius concept behind the MACL program is that it is entirely interdisciplinary. In addition to taking Community Leadership courses, I'll also take MBA courses, as well as courses in the MA Professional Communication program. I could take courses in the MA Public Health program if I felt so inclined, but it's not my focus.
I would love to do nothing with my life but focus on school, but alas, that was a rare privilege known exclusively to my residential undergrad life. I'll still have my full-time job...I'll just replace my consulting travel with full-time enrollment in grad school. If all goes as planned I'll be done Spring 2011.
So in reference to my previous post, I hope to wrap up posts about my January - June travels soon because I have a feeling that what little spare time I have now will soon be a distant memory. It's a welcome, long overdue change, however. Just think, now I have an excuse to shop to for new office supplies and tech goodies! Say hel-lo to a new MacBook Pro...!
I know. Even I'm sick of reading it.
So far 2009, as far as blogging is concerned, has been flat out pathetic. In the past six months I've jumped on here a few times to share a link or two, but mostly I've only profered broken record excuses. I logged in today with the intent to blog (still have that intent) and ended up redesigning my site/header/template instead. Go figure. So I have that going for me, at least, a new look for my neglected blog. If you're in a third-party RSS reader, clickety click over to the original post and check out the new site.
Design distractions aside, it's my intention to blog the last six months of travel within the next six weeks. My consulting gig is wrapped and thus my insane travel schedule is wrapped. I'll still travel and attend conferences and such, but nothing like the volume of the past three years.
I never did finish posting about my California trip, but since that takes us back to December 2008, we'll just call it sixes. Since January I've been to:
Why the rush? Well...I'm finally starting grad school! New post...
Design distractions aside, it's my intention to blog the last six months of travel within the next six weeks. My consulting gig is wrapped and thus my insane travel schedule is wrapped. I'll still travel and attend conferences and such, but nothing like the volume of the past three years.I never did finish posting about my California trip, but since that takes us back to December 2008, we'll just call it sixes. Since January I've been to:
- Marietta/Atlanta, Georgia
- Seattle, Washington
- Seattle, Washington (again, two weeks later)
- Phoenix/Scottsdale, Arizona
- Oberlin/Elyria, Ohio
- Alamosa/Trinidad, Colorado
- Castine, Maine
Why the rush? Well...I'm finally starting grad school! New post...
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