• a variety of fine pickles •

seriously, what are the chances?

one of the perks of making sterling silver jewelry is that i'm never left wanting for something that i fancy. i don't wear a lot of jewelry, regularly... for about the last 8 months i've been wearing the same pair of carved horn spiral earrings and a single sterling silver chain with a handmade sterling silver tag that dangles from it. i stamped "non omnis moriar" into it - latin for "not all of me will die". [digression alert] hopefully, some of the silver jewelry i've made will be passed down to another generation someday... maybe that's the legacy i'll leave. i'd like to think that pieces like this one or this one or these will enjoy a long, beautiful life and, pretentious as it might seem, i would really like to think that someday the people that currently love and cherish these things that i have made with my hands will see fit to pass them along to someone else they love. i want them to outlive me. that's the legacy i want to leave: my jewelry will still be around long after my name has been forgotten. [end of digression] 

maybe i was a little untruthful when i said "i don't wear a lot of jewelry regularly"... from the neck up, i suppose it's truthful. from the wrists down, not so much. i wear 18 rings on my hands: 11 on my left and 7 on my right. there are no stones; just thin silver rings, 10 of which i made myself. (i wear 6 teeny-tiny skinny little rings on one finger on my left hand, much like these.) only my pinkie fingers aren't adorned with sterling silver. the ring on my left thumb is a james avery band that i've worn nearly twenty years; the ring on my right thumb is one that i handmade for myself last year. it's one of my favorite rings. after i made this ring, i polished it to a high shine with several grades of jeweler's sanding cloths and then, for reasons still unclear, i decided to hammer two tiny little notches into it. honestly - i don't know what came over me or why i did it... i just did it. 

one afternoon about 4 months ago, i looked down at my hand at the kitchen sink and realized that something was missing... it took me a second to figure out that it was my right thumb that was somehow different from the rest of my fingers: it was naked. my thumbring was missing. last time i could remember, it was still there (or so i thought to myself)... but these rings...these rings have become little extensions of my hands. i fiddle with them while i'm on the phone at work. i turn them when i'm talking to friends. some people cross their arms or clasp their hands; i fidget with my rings. they're ever-present but completely unimposing. i wondered how long it had been since i'd actually seen my thumbring and searched for it in all the places in my house that i thought it could be, but to no avail. after a short time, i just resolved to make myself another, but i never did. i'm not sure if i was just lazy about making another ring or if i was holding out to find the original... but i never forgot about it. that ring was conspicuously missing from my thumb, which felt bare and, well, weird without it. 

about six weeks later, i'd gotten sidetracked putting out some sort of fire with one of my accounts and missed my break, so i left my desk and went to break when i was finished, about thirty minutes later than my regular time. i saw my friend nicki, so i joined her. we have different breaktimes, so we very rarely see each other anymore. though we still work in the same group, our desks are nowhere near each other's, so when i sat down with her, we started catching up. we were chatting and giggling like a couple of teenagers when i realized she was fiddling with something on her finger...

what happened next i can only describe as unbelievable, at least to me. i made a comment about the lovely sterling silver ring she was wearing and mentioned that i used to have one just like it. she told me that she'd found the ring on the floor in one of the stalls in the ladies' room there at work. i think i was saying something like "no way - cool!" as she extended her hand to show it to me. i was inspecting its very familiar slightly hammered surface when i turned it over and saw the two tiny little notches...

i must have squealed when i saw those two little marks that made this ring undeniably my own. i couldn't believe it. i explained it to nicki in excited, jolting words that this was the ring i'd lost and "look! the notches! i put those there!" nicki was laughing the entire time - the sort of laughter that actually says "god! okay! calm down!" nicki very gladly took the ring off and handed it to me, most likely out of fear that i would rip her finger off of her hand out of sheer excitement if she didn't. i thanked her profusely over and over... in retrospect, i'm sure my excitement was something of an overreaction more appropriate for that of a parent being reunited with a long lost child... but really, honestly, that's sort of the way i felt. corny, i know, but i just can't explain it any better than that. and seriously - what are the chances? it was a series of coincidences that led me to find my ring, but to me it felt like kismet. 

- - - - - - - - - - - - -

yesterday afternoon when i got back to my desk from break, my friend leah told me nicki had come by my desk looking for me. i sent her a message on our office instant messaging system and she said she'd be right over. she walked up to my desk chair from behind and warpped her arms around my neck in a hug. she's always been a hugger... "how sweet", i thought to myself, wondering if nicki just sensed that i sort of needed a hug after what had been a long, arduous, non-stop sort of morning in the office...

then she slowly extended her right arm in front of me and there it was: my ring, the same one, on her right thumb.

she'd found it on the floor in one of the stalls in the ladies' room there at work. same stall, actually.

i hadn't even noticed that it was missing... 

i've decided to make nicki a sterling silver thumbring as thanks. 

well, screw it.

so i've been fighting with this whole "catching up" thing... admittedly, i felt pretty inarticulate yesterday and just didn't see myself trying to put words to the last 6 months, and i figured "who freakin' cares what i've been doing the last 6 months, anyway?" i wondered just how curious the 3 people who read this blog actually were about my absence... 

then i started exploring the new typepad dashboard. they've upgraded and added a bunch of new cranks, knobs and levers to the dash to make it easier to navigate - and i have to say they accomplished what they set out to do, and beautifully so. it's not only a lot more aesthetically pleasing, now it's actually... easier.

one of the new features (well, new to me - it might have been there all along and i just never found it... the old typepad dashboard sometimes felt something like a hedge maze) is the nifty "overview" - it's a hit counter and a spiffy chart that shows how many unique views your blog has had, when it was hit, where the referral came from, etc... cool, right? not that i would really care, what with the THREE people that read this blog - and that was when i was keeping it up on a regular basis.

somehow, i had 282 hits since midnight last night. huh? are you kidding? what the... huh? i pored over the data for several minutes early this morning trying to make sense of what i was seeing (pre-coffee and then post-coffee, just for good measure) and unless the good people at typepad are jerkin' my chain, it just might have... actually happened. honestly not sure how, but still...

so...

somebody gives a crap, i guess. friends? maybe. family? possibly. stalker? could be. whoever it is reading my dorky little blog, thanks... and here are those bullet points i sort of said i wasn't going to be bothering with for a while... this is my last 6 months in a nutshell and crap that i probably would have written about:

• let me just start by saying that looking back on the last 6 months, it feels like it might have been sort of rough, but i made it through. and it did have a few high spots. 
• i was in my tent on a camping trip when a tornado came through our campsite and collapsed my tent. my best friend mary saved my life by pulling me out of my tent - even after the tornado literally ripped all of her clothes off of her. 
• i went to los angeles to visit my friend amos and to see my aunt & uncle in hollywood
• i drank a lot while i was there. a lot. it was a pretty darn good time.
• i had kidney stones. i don't recommend them. 
• i found out that my very first real crush, brian palazetti, was killed in a motorcycle accident just after highschool
• i spent a great weekend in austin with my best friends on a pretty snazzy girls' weekend
• i got to sing at the bugle boy in la grange 
• i had cocktails with my first "we've never actually met but we know each other on facebook" friend
• i actually journaled so much that i filled a journal from beginning to end with actual... words
• i took down a few walls that i'd spent years constructing and fortifying... and then i built a couple more...
• i wasted valuable time - that i'll never get back - on the craziest person i've ever met. seriously - he was nuts... like, "needs-locking-up-crazy-out-of-his-damn-mind-gorilla-shit" nuts. he's a very talented photographer, but that's where the not-crazy ends. he was also something of an asshole.
• i learned to actually like my job, most of the time
• i bought a new car
• i developed a huge crush on seth rogen
• i painted my dining room orange, my foyer & kitchen a lovely buttery yellow, and handpainted wallwords in my bedroom
• i turned 38
• i discovered exactly what i'm not looking for in a man
• i learned that a few of my friends are a LOT crazier than i am
• i lost a couple of friends that turned out to be complete assholes... so no real loss, actually.
• i tried to cure my best friend shannon's hiccups by screaming and gave her a righteous, honest-to-god anxiety attack and made her wet her pants. really... still seriously sorry, shannon...
• i reconnected with my oldest running-buddy girlfriends from the 4th grade
• i had a photo published to schmap from my trip to los angeles
• i created a pretty stunning set of sterling silver wedding bands for some friends in NYC 
• i didn't get ANY new tattoos (well, within the last 6 months anyway)
• i ate and enjoyed pecans for the first time in my entire life - and yes, i'm a texan...
• i discovered it's never a good idea to pluck your eyebrows in the dark
• i learned that some people, no matter how old they get, still have the same maturity level that they had when you knew them in highschool
• i found out that the asshole that cheated on me and broke my heart 6 years ago actually married the woman he cheated on me with... and she's really, really unattractive. 
• i learned that it's not a good decision to set your phone on top of a full cup of coffee, even for a minute
• i found out that wounds heal slowly, but they do heal...

i have a feeling i'll add more to this list at some point in the near future, but for now, that's a pretty decent rundown of the last 6 months... it wasn't all pretty, but i learned quite a bit and i suppose that's what's really important... right? that's what they say, anyway. 

on a completely different note, it rained here in temple yesterday for the first time in almost 3 months... 3 long months of temperatures in the triple digits - as high as 107 degrees. anybody that knows me knows what a perpetually crappy mood i'm in during summers in texas, especially during a drought. yesterday saw me in the best mood i've been in since sometime in april. here's to hoping it starts raining sometime around 6pm this evening and doesn't stop until around 6am on monday morning.

 

elements of an opry

the power of carrot cake

it's been a while since i last sat down and wrote a good, meaty blog entry. i blame it partially on my lack of two good working hands for the last several weeks since my surgery. my hand and arm are getting better though it still takes me a bit longer to type than it used to. it's coming along nicely despite my many attempts to set it back (read: i keep smacking it and falling on it). still, no matter how long this takes to type, i have a story i want to tell.

yesterday i recieved an email message telling me i had a new comment on my blog entry picking apples in a rain storm. i opened the email and found the most mysterious, cryptic comment i've yet to recieve:

"That pie looks amazing...
Many years ago, you baked carrot cake for me, for my birthday. It was my first carrot cake, it was the perfect carrot cake. It was an akward birthday for me, and we were not even close friends, but you had this extra special detail that made my day. I remember that carrot cake every year for my birthday. Your friends are very lucky.
Do you know who I am?"

well, needless to say, my curiosity was piqued. i emailed my friend sara immediately and sent her a copy of the comment and asked frantically (as frantically as email will allow) "who could this be???" she had no idea either, but was smart enough to figure out that the email address ending in .es looked like spain. but i don't know anybody in spain, do i? i didn't know it at the time, but i guess i do. i tried and tried to remember anybody that i'd baked a carrot cake for, and couldn't come up with a thing, although i did vaguely remember having baked a carrot cake for someone... once... but i couldn't remember when, and i couldn't remember for whom. i was officially stumped. this had become a bona fide mystery. all sorts of horrifying thoughts swam through my head as to whom it could be... that stalker ex-boyfriend? someone i used to work with at the police department? no bells were going off. i told sara i wondered if the email that was used to send the message was a ruse; i could easily find out by emailing that address to see if i got a mailer daemon message back or not.

i emailed the address at 9:26 am. i didn't get an error message back.

i did get an email back at 11:12 am.

the mysterious comment had been submitted by someone i haven't spoken to since 1988, when i was a junior at trinity high school in euless, texas. it was my friend sylvia! she had gone to my high school for one year as a foreign exchange student from paris, france. immediately i remembered her, and instantly i was thrilled. (also relieved that it wasn't the stalker ex-boyfriend or any one of a handful of exes that i want nothing to do with ever again.)

sylvia was a petite, shy parisian that i met through our theatre department my junior year. i thought she was wonderful; sweet and charming, very continental and tres parisienne. i loved her french accent and the fact that she spoke french so effortlessly (the fact that it was her native tongue didn't seem to quell how impressed i was at her ease and mastery of the french language) and had seen so much of the world that i'd never seen. she was quiet, mostly, around all these loud, rude americans, but warmed up a bit as time went by. still, she was somehow just like me, and just like the rest of our friends. she was a teenaged girl, just displaced from her home so far away. i remember we spent many of our lunch breaks together sitting with the rest of our friends "at nature", where we used to eat and hang out. "at nature", as sara will also remember, was a grassy hill with a tree, overlooking the fine arts building's drama and speech entrance. it was higher ground than the fine arts building, having been built up and surrounded by a brick wall. it's where sara fell on her face that day, her hair spread out like rays of the sun, her arms and legs splayed out in four different directions... and there i sat, up on nature, laughing my ass off instead of going to help her back to her feet. everybody that knew me was horrified that i sat there, doubled over, laughing at sara, instead of rushing to see if she was alright. i'm humiliated to say it today. but sara knows the truth; it was so damn funny i had no choice but to laugh until i cried and just about wet my pants, and had it been me that had fallen instead of her, she'd have reacted the same way. still, i am SO SORRY sara...

i digress.

within seconds of recieving sylvia's email yesterday, memories came flooding back to me; memories that haven't had a visit in many, many years. i remember how heartbroken i was when she had to leave and go back home to paris. i remembered a party we had at dusty's house where we all made a tape of our "goodbyes" to sylvia. i remembered sylvia coming over to my house one time, and sitting on the sofas in my family's living room, we talked and talked for what seemed like hours. i think this was just before she left the states. but mostly, i remember sylvia just being a wonderful person that i knew my junior year in high school, someone i always wished i'd gotten to know better in the short time she was living here in texas. she was sweet and funny, she had a great laugh and a great smile... and apparently she really liked that carrot cake.

sylvia lives in barcelona, spain now with her husband and her OH-SO-ADORABLE little boy alex and has told me she is very happy in her life. i'm happy that she's happy. she deserves happiness in her life. she has told me that she's been reading my blog for some time now, keeping up with me and some of the things in my life, but didn't quite know how or when to ask if i remembered her, then she read my blog entry about baking an apple pie and decided, thankfully, that this was the place to make her entrance...

i'm so glad she did! there is a very short list of the people i went to high school with that i care anything about keeping in touch with, and sylvia is definitely on that list.

thank you sylvia, for reaching out and getting in touch with me after all this time!

***UPDATE***

after scouring through scrapbooks, i finally found the picture i knew i had somewhere...

a picture taken at a going away party for dusty. from left to right: sayra and her glasses of large awesomeness, dusty, craig jenest in his big gay les miserables shirt (a second appearance of said shirt here on the blog!), suzie woodrow (i never liked her), me with the scratched-out face (i can remember doing that in 1990 or something during a fit of incredibly high self-esteem) and SYLVIA!

birthday parties ROCK with photo goodness

my very dear friends bob & mary threw a birthday party for me last night (my birthday is monday, so friday just seemed a natural for a party) and a great time was had by all, and i had a little too much to drink. yay, me!

bob got some amazingly attractive photos of me (sarcasm) looking like an escapee from some sort of institution. seriously, i have a knack for just looking completely nuts in candid photos. but he did get some photos that my mom wouldn't balk at.

big thanks to everybody who attended my party last night, and for all the goodies! thanks to kata, john, erica & ellie, steven & becca, joe (and the conspicuously absent and terribly missed lynn), monique (thanks for the picadillo!), jaz & nico, mariah, aislyn & ian, mark, and bob & laurie in absentia. and a humongous, ginormous thank you to bob & mary (the cake was gorgeous and delish!) for such a great time.

fuzzy navels are awesome. candles that don't go out even on the 5th try suck.

bob was kind enough to snap like a mad man during the party last night, and then give me permission to use them on my blog. here are some of the highlights, and a few lowlights:

mary made me a birthday cake!!!

good lord, somebody call the fire department.

wish made: check.

wait a minute... are these those wacky re-lighting candles?

yeah, i guess they are. you people suck.

alright, i'll play along.

okay, are you kidding with this? what the...

okay, one more time.

oh COME ON. I'M NOT GETTIN' ANY YOUNGER HERE.



mary tried to stab me but i was able to talk her out of it.

sometimes opening presents makes me giggle!

and sometimes it makes me look nuts.

i like to pose in an adorable fashion with new gifties.

i like to smell my presents.

and sometimes i like to smell my friends.



sometimes, i channel the spirit of peewee herman.

i get really excited about ceiling fans for my tent!

my favorite little evil faerie! really.   

i had such a good time. thanks again to all of you for making my birthday so special.

if you live in NYC!

for my friends, bloggers & readers in the big apple - this is for you!

my friend sara at lightbulb oven & bawk! is having a culinary salon... tres swanky!

if you're in NYC in any of the 5 boroughs, you have plenty of advance notice and NO EXCUSE not to go! but hurry - the clock's a'tickin'!

~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *

It's light-bulb oven!

Please join me on Saturday, February 17 for an historical event: the first-ever light-bulb oven dinner!

It's a culinary salon, a cooperative dinner party, an underground restaurant... what our friends in Cuba call a paladar: one person cooks and everyone else chips in to cover groceries.

It's 35 bucks (a deal!). You'll meet new people and eat four courses of fantastic food.

It's in prospect heights, Brooklyn (3 blocks from the 2 and 3 trains; also near the N/Q/R/4/5 trains; address divulged upon purchase of ticket)

Visit the website for more information, past menus, fun facts about yours truly, and because it's pretty:

http://lightbulboven.com/home.html 

Go here to see the menu and buy your ticket!

~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *

good morning

big day for melissa today.

i'm going ROLLER SKATING with my friend mary! we're going for her daughter's birthday party, and we'll be two of only four grown-ups (and i use that phrase with some hesitation) on wheels at the party. i haven't been roller skating since... well, since i had my 29th birthday party. we went roller skating. if memory serves me, i skated something like i imagine a cave man might have (no offense to any caveman. i've seen the geico commercials and i don't need a lawsuit.) and spent more time on my ass than on my wheels. i don't get it. when i was a kid, it was like i was born with wheels on my feet. suddenly i can't remain upright now that i'm an adult? well, maybe not so suddenly.

what is the current etiquette for grown-ups when rollerskating? presumably, the management and parents of small, impressionable children wouldn't take any too kindly to a grown woman shouting expletives and profanities whilst crashing into a 6 year old. i'm gonna have to watch my language. not that i have the mouth of a sailor, mind you. but i have been known, from time to time, to express myself without having given thought to my surroundings, damn it.

case in point (but without profanity):

my friend sara & i were at a bank drive-thru in dallas, and we'd been there for what seemed like most of our young adult lives, waiting on the transaction to be completed. tired of waiting, i shouted from the passenger side "what's the HOLD UP!??"

yelling any sentence ending in "HOLD UP" at a bank is inadvisable. and that's how i know for certain that i don't always think before i speak. 

after roller skating, i'm heading right to the show in copperas cove. rehearsal at 4, then the performance at 7. hopefully i won't be singing with a sling on my arm or a cast on my leg. or with any teeth missing. i've sung in worse shape than that, but i'm not in the mindset to do it tonight.

if i break anything, i can't be held responsible for my language.

*i finished my first roll of 120 film last night! i'll be dropping it off for processing this afternoon. shortly, i'll (hopefully) be processing my own black & white film myself. unfortunately, the 4 rolls 120 black & white film i ordered that arrived day before yesterday are C-41, so i can't process those myself. i know the right film to order now, though!

okay. i kept my promise.

i promised i would shut my fat yapper about my new holga until it arrived.

it's here!!!

i can't stand it. i want it to be daylight so i can go outside and take a whole roll of pictures.

i've got it loaded with a roll of HP5+ 120 film and a modified 6x6 mask. it's got velcro holding the back on (thank you SO much randy - you're a freakin' genius, i swear to god.), randy smith's custom cable release, randy's custom bulb modification, custom tripod mount, interior flocking so it won't reflect light, and the lens cap is IN MY JUNK DRAWER, just as randy prescribes. not throwing it away, just putting it away to avoid shooting a whole roll of film with the lens cap on. this ain't digital.

i am giddy like a school girl and i can't quit grinning.

i said it before, but i'll say it again because it certainly bears repeating, again and again...

if you're going to buy a holga, please do yourself a favor and spend your hard-earned money as wisely as you can, with randy smith at www.holgamods.com

i have never in my nearly 36 years experienced the level of customer service that randy has given me within the last several days. i'll be purchasing more holgas in the future, and i'll be buying them from randy, and no one else. nobody else. ever.

i've spent the time since i got home from work this evening loading film, attaching velcro, running around like a 4 year old, taping up the back of my camera to avoid light leaks, laughing uncontrollably, and taking 2 pictures in the brightest light possible. i took the obligatory "picture of myself holding my new camera reflected in the mirror" in the brightest of my 2 bathrooms, and then i went into my studio and lit it with studio lights and took a photo of those terribly cute, terribly terrible necco valentine's sweethearts (the ones with the messages on them) that nobody ever actually eats because they taste like flavored chalk.

i took a picture of them last valentine's day as well, in color, in digital:

but this one was black & white, and it was with a HOLGA!!! no telling how it's going to turn out, or even if it's going to turn out... but i don't care.

i may not sleep at all tonight!

one last thing about the holga...

then, i PROMISE i'll shut up about it. until it arrives, that is.

i mentioned before that i purchased a custom modified holga from randy at www.holgamods.com and i just have to take a moment to scream it as loud as i can that i have never, as long as i can remember, had such a wonderful customer service experience than i have had with randy.

to the best of my knowledge, holgamods.com isn't a huge corporate machine. as far as i know, it's randy, modifying holga cameras by himself, and that may be all.

after several years of making online purchases with a machine, recieving a reciept from a robot, and a few days later getting a box or envelope in the mail, that's what i've become used to: no interaction whatsoever. randy changed all that. he's a real person. he's a real nice person.

i not only bought a holga, i made a friend. i have honestly never had customer service like he has provided before. maybe not even in person. he's just a decent, nice guy. there's a very short list of that type of person left, especialy when you're talking about the online marketplace.

here's another little "something" - randy emailed me this morning with the head's up that his interview in JPG magazine was published. you can see it here. it's on page 40, and although you can "flip through" the pages of the magazine from the website, i suggest you download the PDF of the magazine - MUCH easier to read... you can actually make out the words that way. besides that, there are some great photos and articles and they're worth the read. but especially the article on randy.

my friend, randy.

thanks again randy. i wish i knew more words to say how appreciative i am.

i feel pretty!

turn up the sound - and click here !