Tour Eiffel

Three things, two bad, one good:

1. I lost my debit card and a lot of euros. Tomorrow morning starts with a treasure hunt to find said items. Pray they're where I think they are. I'm such a dumb tourist—or so Meghan keeps telling the French in French, I'm sure of it...

2. The plug converter got overwhelmed when connected with the hair straightener and died. Thus iPhone is soon to die. Treasure hunt also consists of finding technologies.

3. The Eiffel Tower at night is stunning. I nearly peed my pants when the flashing lights came on.

Also, remember my little iPhone lenses? Best purchase ever for travel photography and packing lightly. Eiffel Tower with just phone:



Eiffel Tower with fisheye lens:


Mmmm, delicious.

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Paris je t'aime

Oh what it feels like to be 24 again...

Our first full day in Paris. It seems that for most places admittance prices are cheaper if you're 18-25. So we've been vouching for our youth and claiming to be 24. The real liars say they're 25. It's better to go with 24. So I payed half price at Sainte Chapelle after luckily blurting out the right year of my "birth" and Wahli (Meghan) payed full price because she was flustered. So from now on our birth year was 1987. Muahahaha! Okay so we're dishonest, but with the euro being 1.5 dollars, we're feeling okay about it. Ps. We prayed for our salvation in the church amidst the most stunning and beautiful stained glass you've ever seen. See here:



This place was incredible. Thanks to my parents for the recommendation! Inside there was a man who's official job was shushing people. We tried to get a video of this without prevail. Oh well. Here's Wahli instead:



Since, we have been roaming the tourist filled streets around this area. We did see Notre Dame earlier but just from the outside. Beautiful. I'm trying to recall my art history classes for background info and facts to impress Wahli and other Americans but for the most part I'm failing!



We just had a nice salad and wine on a brasserie patio next to some cute boys. No luck there. We did notice though that the men around here all carry bags. And not just big manish messenger bags, but small purse-like bags. Boys of the U.S. don't be scared, you can carry a purse and still be a man. The French are so ahead of us.

Alrighty, off to the Eiffel Tower area to see it at dusk and lit up at night.

One more thing. Sooo many amazing treats here, like macarons. I had a pistachio one today.



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Location:Rue Mazarine,Paris,France

Bonjour Paris!

Great news: we made it to Paris safe and sound with no holdups. Okay, we boarded one train in the wrong direction but corrected it immediately! We're at our teeny tiny little hotel room enjoying the teeny tiny beds and the teeny tiny shower. Despite being a tall girl, I like the downsizing of everything. The U.S. has it all backwards...

Anyhoo, now we will put on our non-tourist clothes and go hit a cafe for some cafe et croissants.

Trying to stay awake...






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Location:Rue Philippe de Champagne,Paris,France

All my bags are packed, I'm ready to go...

I've had it in my head for a couple of years now that I would soon take a sabbatical from work and travel round Europe. I've saved up a bunch of pennies just for it. And well, the time has finally come. I'm astounded at how quickly time passes. I leave in about 12 hours! What?! Yes.

It's been a puzzle to figure out how to pack but I've managed to make it work. This is what I'll be carrying around for the next month:


Not bad.

I'll be attempting to update Ladders on the Side regularly, so stay tuned if you want to follow Meghan and me through our adventures. I'm taking just my iPhone and a few fun new teeny tiny lenses to spice things up, photographically speaking. Here's the cute little guys:



So we'll see what is to come! Tomorrow we head to Paris. Soon I'll be saying bon nuit!

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Dream Sampling No. 22

6.9.10

"Growing clothes out of the ground. You couldn't tell how tall they were before you picked them. You pick it, you buy it. The guy wasn't growing it, but he was a republican."

Dream Sampling No. 21

Buggar! It's been so long since I've been on here. I am going to persist! Here's a winner from the dream journal:

8.10.09

"Bill Gates was going to use a Control-Alt-Delete on his toilet. Might as well... it's pretty much the same as a PC."

decisions, decisions...

My nephew's birthday is this week so I decided to make him a drawing. His latest interest, as he's gone through so many in his short 9 years, is hunting. He's never actually been hunting, but is very into the idea. Though he also looooooves animals and wept over the death of my dog several years ago, so I get the feeling if he actually went hunting it would be a traumatizing event. Who knows really... Anyhoo, I drew him an elk and I'm trying to decide whether or not to include a target, either hanging on a chain around the elk's neck or on a stand in the background—encouraging the act of hunting (though I'm not a fan) and adding a slight bit of visual interest and humor—or to leave it out and let him appreciate the beast for the beautiful creature it is. Such a hard decision. I appreciate input...

Sometimes I get bored in meetings

Dream Sampling No. 20

11.8.09

"Julie Andrews came to live in the Rocky Mountains. I was leaving work one day and a cat walked up to me. I recognized it as the cat she could transfigure into and I said to it, "Are you Dame Julie Andrews, kitty?" It sat back on its hind legs, smiled widely and said in Julie's distinctive voice, "Why yes I am." I asked if she needed help finding her way back up to her house. She accepted the offer, but before we made our way up into the hills, I picked her up, set her in my lap and we talked for hours about our favorite things."

Po'traits

A birthday portrait of my sister for her birthday... Why the baby deer? Cause it's random and funny, that's all.





















I've been starting to do some commissioned portraits/custom illustrations of people. If you know anyone who'd like one, let me know. You can send me a photo of the people you love (or don't love—maybe you want a drawing of your enemy, that's up to you), and I'll draw them and hook you up with the original piece or a print as well as a digital copy. They make good prezzies.

Dream Sampling No. 18

I tend to do things in my sleep. I've always been a sleep walker, talker, laugher, etc. Sometimes I'll wake up rifling through my bag, or the bookshelf, seeking out something in my dreams that doesn't exist in real life.

On this particular day I awoke with braids in my hair (having fallen asleep without) and no recollection of putting them there. Then apparently I decided to write about it and draw a picture with one eye open, my head on the pillow, next to the book. It makes for a skewed perspective, which I obviously felt necessary to point out at 6am.

1.20.10

Dream Sampling No. 19

9.10.09

"We all lived in trees and only ever ate sandwiches."

Dream Sampling No. 17

9.5.09

"Clara had a cupcake shaped like a saloon and she had to share it with Jemaine."

Dream Sampling No. 16

1.15.09

"In my mom's garden we had a big hill overflowing with wildflowers, and raspberries. I also planted some seeds that grew into a tiny elephant. I picked it out of the ground and just held it and loved it so much."

Dream Quotes

I usually write down dreams in a story format or short little bursts or thoughts. Some days I wake up with a random song in my head. Some days I'll go back and read the dream book and find quotes—literally short phrases accompanied by quote marks, and relating to nothing. Just a straight up quote. And, I usually can't remember their significance, or remember writing them for that matter. Here's a few I've come across...

"A meanie in a cloak instead of a coat."

"Be sensitive to your heart's contentment."

"...the freedom to go where I must, where I'm called, to know myself, to know the work."

"The next girl in the family shall be called McGlowdie."

"We're hearing an echo."

"We just lost our summertime. It's spring now."

"To hello joy all the rest."

"My phone's not always as pretty in the morning. It escapes."

"They've got neon copper deadlines!"

"Sometimes your life needs accompaniment. You sound better."

"We are Grandma's Herzig decorations."

Dream Sampling No. 15

Wow, this is a long one. But it intrigued me so I'm including the whole thing...

1.13.09

"Lived in some strange land over a lifetime. People got smaller as they got older. Eventually everything was on floating islands, like boats, because the world became water. My friend and I were the only survivors of an original group in this land. There were other people, but none of my kind. They were always trying to catch us. Why? I don't know what we did. Our names changed as time passed too. They got shorter and people forgot us. Eventually cars were tiny—the size of a kid's big wheel. The police were after me and my friend. The head of police was my family's old butler. Buddie was his name. He didn't really want to catch us, but knew he must. When he finally did after years of chase, we reminisced about how my little sister Olive would have loved the place where Buddie caught up with us—there were waterfalls and so many flowers. Olive had died back in the good years. It was very sad, yet I felt happy remembering her after so long. My friend and I were very agile and acrobatic, and we could get out of any situation. We each had special abilities. I could fly and she could walk through walls. Buddie though, was the only other one of our kind left in the world, and thus the only one that could catch us. I just have overwhelming feelings for the olden days, when we were all together and did extraordinary things. Then my people all disappeared and went away. We got smaller. The world got smaller. The oceans got bigger. I might be watching too much Heroes."

Dream Sampling No. 14

11.4.08

"Everybody in the world carried around sheets of music, their very own life music. Each person had a continuing song and we'd have to upkeep them, take them everywhere and sing our life songs for one another.

On an unrelated note, I had to fight off a wolf."

Dream Sampling No. 13

10.11.08

A psychotic squirrel was out to get me. I drove home to my parents' house and it climbed all over the car, waiting to attack me when I got out. I managed to escape, but it chased me to the house. I had to kick it into the bushes a few times, and the 3rd time it climbed right up the plum tree. As I reached the porch, it flew down at my face, but smacked into the glass right as I shut the door.
Take that psycho.

Dream Sampling No. 12

5.16.10














"I went skydiving again. It was different this time. I could simply hover and float above the clouds until one of the instructors came to take me down (which involved diving headfirst towards the ground and pulling my chute at the last second). While waiting for the instructor, I started playing in the clouds. They were a thin, wispy layer of fluff, like a giant sheet of soft paper floating over the world. I would drag my hand through it, making paths and strokes for the people to see on the ground below. It was my first time drawing in a cloud. It was incredible.

When I got back to the ground, they taught me how to better float, spin and dive. We ate some tomatoes off the vine and everybody took naps. I just laid in the grass and stared up at the sky, because all I wanted to do was get back up there and draw in the clouds."

Mother's Day

I got to celebrate Mother's Day today with my sister Heidi. She has two kids, represented here by freckled eggs (in reality they're much more mobile than eggs at this point). We ate food, planted flowers, raced paper airplanes, had a dance party and painted our fingernails in shades of neon. Twas a joyful day and I have felt truly grateful for all the moms in my life. Especially my own, who's unfortunately in Kansas. But hey, distance makes the heart grow fonder, eh?