people of zee world... relax!

As I mentioned earlier in the week, I started my spring break with a weekend trip to Austin TX. I had an awesome time soaking in the Texas sun, and catching up on some reading during my flights that has been of late, pushed to the side for the more academic flavor. I also had a chance to try out my iphone app, the HIPSTAMATIC. I, being the sucker for any type of camera especially the HOLGA-esque, LOVE this application that brings back the look, feel, unpredictable beauty, and fun of plastic toy cameras. The hipstamatic lets you switch between lens, film, and even flashes to get that perfect instant image.

To see more images visit my flickr site.
Post title comes from, Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates, the Tom Robbins book that I am currently reading… it seemed appropriate.
ps. its a good one!

SPRING! Stick around awhile, please!

It instantly turned into spring here in Richmond this past weekend, and I hope it sticks around. The winter days were so dreary, and I begged them to pass rapidly, now I want time to virtually stand still, I'm trying desperately hard to soak in every single ounce of spring sunlight that I can. Isn't it strange how there are so many ways that you can literally feel spring. One of my favorite reminders is every morning when I leave our apartment, although still a little chilly, it just smells different... also reminds me that my b-day is right around the corner, kinda.

Before moving to Richmond, I started looking around and thinking about the possibility of making my primary mode of transportation a scooter. Upon moving here, I found that there is a HUGE scooter community fueled by the best scooter store in the country SCOOT RICHMOND, a great store, owned and operated by an amazing woman, and scooter fanatic, Chelsea. So I bought one in December, a Buddy 125 (in white), and I fell instantly in love. Needless to say the scooter days have been far and in between considering the rough winter we had this year, although I did get in some 30 degree rides. Since then Kyle has also become an addict to the feeling of riding a scooter, and 2 months ago purchased a used Vespa ET4, which he just picked up last weekend! Needless to say that is what we have been doing since spring arrived 4 days ago, with many scooter perfect days in front of us, there is no slowing us down now!


I took this photo of our scooter family with a new iphone app called HIPSTAMATIC! which I actually paid for. For any camera fanatic this is a must! You are able to switch between film, lenses, and flashes!
ps. I never paid for app but this one was TOTALLY worth it.

dizzy

1315 floyd, second floor, front bathroom tile

red

This little tree is what has been coloring my neighborhood as of late, and it seems to be one of the last to change. I think it's a Japanese Maple, adorable.

Happy Thanksgiving all!

what can I say...

I am my mother's daughter.
hey, everyone has their vices. Today, this is mine!

yellow

I have never...

experienced anything quite like this...

photos taken with this awesome app, outside my sudio and our apt., here in richmond va.

reverie

–noun
1. a state of dreamy meditation or fanciful musing.
2. a daydream.
3. a fantastic, visionary, or impractical idea: reveries that will never come to fruition.
4. Music. an instrumental composition of a vague and dreamy character.

That is my word for the day, and now I will use it in a sentence:

Yesterday I was lost in reverie while walking, with the thoughts of how different clouds must have appeared 100... 500... 1,000 years ago. They had to be different, with a changing environment and ozone and earth temperatures... 

When I left the building after my workday, I was greeted by these guys. These have to be year 2009 clouds... they seem somehow, digitized.

Thank you iphone for helping me again document the sky.

  

confession/obsession
its that time of year when the fruit & veggies at the grocery store start looking and tasting awesome! My personal favorites so far, white peaches and red grapes.

I have a method for eating most things.  

With the grapes I really like to peel the skin off with my teeth, just half of the skin though, then I obsess over the beautiful paring of the contrasting colors; the red of the skin and the pale green of the fruit. when it has been sufficiently admired, I pop it in my mouth, and enjoy the texture of the peeled grape on my tongue.

Stay tuned, and maybe tomorrow i'll describe how I eat a peach, or better yet... ice cream. btw, written sarcasm is not my forte, I am much better at the tone-of-voice sarcasm which is not as clearly detected thru this medium.

a cloud appreciator I am...

if you are too... you'll LOVE this: cloud appreciation society

photos taken on my iphone around my work place, as I was wondering...

oh and also...my band, the Diamond Center, was interviewed by Break Thru Radio, and featured as the artist of the week this week! If you would like to know a little bit more about us you can read it HERE! There is one little inaccuracy at the very beginning... my name is not Brandi Harris... don't want to send anyone into a state of shock :)

... and while your at it, check this out, our website just got a facelift by our good buddies over at elemental blend!

in exactly 3 months...

we will be spending our fist day as Virginians, (I can't believe it's that close) one of the things that I'm going to miss most is being able to go to my parents house for the weekend, especially times like mothers day. These are a couple of images from our road trip from Lubbock to Ft. Worth this past weekend. I've been making this drive all together now for over 10 years, and it never ceases to amaze me. Almost every trip we see some kind of amazing sunset, or crazy awesome clouds. I will start out taking pics of it with my iphone and K will say, "do you think we should stop for this one?" I always answer "no" but then quickly digress and we pull over so I can get my "big camera" and get a better shot. 

This is what I have referred to, for most of my adult life as "my mesa." It also signifies that I am one hour from Lubbock. This formation is right outside of Post, TX and I have recently found out that it's called "flat top mountain"... whatever. 

Found this guy while exploring around an Allsups in Baird TX. 
This is Cotton staring, mystified by the white horse. Cotton has a thing for anything that's white. It could possibly be due to the fact that his fur is white? BUT he has a strong attraction to other things that are white... blankets, toys, horses, cats...? 
Road Dog.

Kyle thought that this cloud formation was actually a flying saucer, a gigantic flying saucer entering our atmosphere... who knows, stranger things have happened.

weekend round-up

Although we thought we had a pretty laid back weekend planned... it really was anything but. On Friday night we went and saw 2 one act plays at a new indie theater in town... The Limelight Theater. Both plays were amazing and I am already eagerly awaiting the next production there. On Sat. I was actually on stage 4...yes that's 4 times! My band The Diamond Center played at noon for the Blue Ribbon Rally, Kyle and I played a set of all REM songs with our friend Daniel Markham, of One Wolf fame, I sang with an old friend that I haven't seen in years, Heath Tolleson, at Bash's and then to top it off Thao, and the guys of The Get Down Stay Down invited Kyle and I up on stage for a song later that night at Bash's II! woooo....
here is Heath and Me (to the left)... I guess this is usually the reaction when you haven't seen anyone in a loooooong time?

At the Blue Ribbon Rally there were so many awesome old cars and motorcycles but my favorite had to be this ART CAR.... CAMERA VAN! Check it out more HERE


I have long had a slight obsession with Art Cars since my sister and I saw our first one at the San Diego Zoo when we were little. (BTW, small side note, Jana swears up and down that she saw that first Art Car we ever saw, the one from the Zoo, in Lubbock about a week ago?) There was a community of Art Cars in Athens and I befriended a awesome artist and art car owner Chris Hubbard ( CHUB ) when I was living there. Chris' car is called the "Heaven and Hell car" and is based on his art... or his art is based on his car... which came first the chicken or the art car? Actually the first piece of art that I purchased for myself was a CHUB piece.  

ok... so that was all kind of random. How was your weekend? Spring is here people!

who knows

I saw this while taking a walk a couple of days ago. I can't seem to figure out if the dumpster is taking in or releasing. who knows. maybe it had a st. patty's hang over?

not a cloud in the sky....

because the wind blew them all away.

plan B

I know this might be a little premature but I am already constructing my plan B, with Plan A being grad school, of course. I'm not thinking the worst, and I know the power of thinking good thoughts, and believe me I've already visioned myself sitting in college classes... I still think it's always good to have a Plan B.

I have been fantasizing about many scenarios. Maybe me and my boys could move to NYC, I've always wanted to live there, but without the prospect of some kind of way to generate cash, it's kinda scary, that and we just moved halfway across the country less than 2 years ago, and I don't know if i'm up for that big of a move again...yet.

We have thought about just straight up moving to Austin. We seem to like the place, and we have several friends there, but long past are the days that we, as full fledged, bill payin', grown-ups, are supposed to make decisions based purely on what our friends do. ( I guess )

We long considered that we could move in with my parents. They seem to like us, and they always enjoy company, but the vision of me and K sitting in their basement, sippin' on chocolate milk in our pj's, playing guitar hero, and tossing them a "high five" as they head off to work each morning... well, I think we might wear out our welcome with the speed of a festering cyst.

K has determined that Lubbock is intolerable and inhabitable, well, for us anyway. ( I know that seems a little dramatic... but just go with it for a moment) Despite that, we've already promised our house to my little brother for the fall. The truth is we are just ready for a change soooooo.... may I introduce my current apparition of Plan B.

I see this striped beauty every day when I break from work and take my afternoon stroll... and from the first time I saw it, I knew I was in LOVE. From what I can tell its a 1970's model Dodge X-plorer, van/camper, and I can already see my little family inhabiting it's quarters. The idea of living anywhere that we can drive to, and with the bobo's.... makes my little heart do backflips! The thought of traveling in a van that was built in the same decade as we were born, makes K nervous, and I should be the hesitant one. I, just finally, a year ago from next month, finished paying off a 15 passenger "band" van that didn't run for more than 2 weeks! ...and then there is THIS recent story of our Lubbock friends that made it to the New York Times! And then we still run into the "how are we going to make money" thing, for gas and all... don't worry, i'm already working on that....

Despite any detourance, someday I will get up enough courage to go and knock on the door and ask how much it's selling for and, if needed, Plan B will no longer be just a walking day dream.

livin' for the weekend

I love bloggin'... but I was really bad at it last week, and after a week when I was really on top of it, and with no good excuses either, that and knowing that the weight of the world basically rests on whether I blog or not, I should be ashamed of myself. HA!

We had an awesome AWESOME long weekend and a mini-tour with some of our friends from Athens. My band, the Diamond Center played a couple of shows with Madeline and the White Flag Band, and Ham 1 in Denton, Ft. Worth & Austin.  This included the opportunity to hang out for 3 days with 8 AMAZING & interesting people, including one mr. Jim Wilson who is one of mine and Kyle's favorite people on earth... and play music, I don't think it can get much better than that. Weird fact... there were 6 people (out of 12) with names starting with the letter J with us. (Jeff, Jason, Jana, Jacob, and 2 Jim's!)

I'll have some images of our escapades later BUT here are a couple of weekend selections of random iphone gatherings. 

hold on to your skirts ladies... its a red flag day!

For those not familiar with the terminology, I think a "red flag warning"  technically has something to do with fire danger BUT, in Lubbock it means the wind is going to "blow like hell" YEA! (total sarcasm if you could not tell from the tone of the type HA!) I know the wind blows in other areas of the country but here in Lubbock along with the wind comes the blowing dirt. Beautiful! Nothing better than 50-mile-per-hour-blowing-dirt! Im sure that this is a factor in my already cantankerous mood today. 

On Tuesday K and I joined some friends on campus to hear Sarah Vowell speak. For those not familiar with Ms. Vowell she is an author, journalist, humorist, and historian that I am familiar with thru her regular contributions to a most awesome NPR show called "This American Life"  (VERY worth checking out btw). She's incredibly interesting, and as smart as she is witty. It was  a cool experience seeing someone in person after already being familiar with their voice. After her almost hour-and-a-half talk, she raised the house lights and opened up the forum for Q&A. The man sitting next to me (of whom I did not know) raised his hand and asked "How do you COPE with New York City?" Being that she is from Muskogee Oklahoma, and now residing in The Big Apple, I am guessing that he was trying to strike some, "hey were the same people being from Texas/Oklahoma area," chord, and already knew how she was going to answer the question totally annoyed with "rude Yankees," and the hustle and bustle of the city and cabs and people and bla, bla, bla. I find it interesting and semi-annoying when people in a public forum ask dumb questions in which they are looking for a specific answer. Ms. Vowell, in return, went on to talk about how she likes the buzz of the city, and how overall, people are generally kind and courteous of others. Seeing, by the look on the questioner's face that this was OBVIOUSLY NOT the answer that he was looking for, she looked directly at him and stated, "how do YOU COPE with this WIND!" 

Good call Sarah Vowell... good call.

(above is K on the left watching Sarah on the right, possibly not the best image captured with the iphone)

spring?

today on my lunch-time walk I spotted these beauties. I love spring, but dang, it snuck up on me. (isn't snuck a funny looking word?)

these images were captured by my iphone. have I mentioned the many ways it's possible to love this phone? THIS is one of them.

whirl-wind

These last two week have flown by, and between trying to finish up the album, and preparing the goods for my grad school apps, we have had time for little else. Although I did get all my christmas shopping taken care of in an extended lunch hour last week, I was a little nervous about that not getting done, but I'm in the clear. 

So this is awesome... K picked me up from work for lunch on Friday and after a delicious meal at Orlando's (one of my personal favorites, we at there 3 times last week... no kidding) he took me to best buy and got me an iphone for christmas.... I was SO surprised.... and overwhelmed... and super super excited... and I must admit that I am now in love with a phone. It might be a bit extravagant, but I am already convinced of it's wonderfull-ness in my life. I, brandi p, am a closet tech junkie, there... i said it.

Here are a couple of images from our weekend dedicated to not much more than working and eating, although the working part is not as fun to take pics of as the eating part. So starting with my first iphone self-portrait (of many I am sure), to our awesome sat morning breakfast at Montelongo's (love love LOVE coffee with chips & salsa don't knock it till ya try it). Our sunday morn Josie's breakfast with some, hotter than anything that I have ever tasted, homemade tomatillo salsa that K got at the flea market. And finally a pic by K of me playing my grandmothers pump organ on our record.

righteous.