This Crystal Sphere

the longest day of the year

thiscrystalsphere — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 21:46:03 +0000

Spent all day Sunday at Sunset Nursery in Silverlake and then in the garden, tearing out some old, dried-up succulents to put in a full vegetable garden. Also put together this arrangement of Queen Anne’s lace, bells of Ireland, white delphinium, and lemon leaves. The Queen Anne’s lace is droopy and decadent and makes me think of a bog in Louisiana.

My birthday is coming up soon and I’m thinking of trading up the iPhone camera for some low-end digital SLR? Any recommendations?

I’ll post pictures of the veggie garden soon…

valley of the moons

thiscrystalsphere — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 01:25:27 +0000

and these are a few of my favorite things

thiscrystalsphere — Wed, 19 May 2010 19:11:57 +0000

I have a new bird feeder strung up right outside the window by my bed. I’ve no need for an alarm anymore with the sparrows arguing over who gets a perch. There’s a yellow-ish guy and a red-bellied one that are the most frequent visitors, and boy they are getting fat! Do birds know when to stop eating?

Had a full weekend with a small gathering at my house Friday (a second house-warming of sorts to celebrate new houseplants and the fact that I finally got some art on the walls…moving in has been a slow process); Saturday was square-dancing under a bridge on the outskirts of downtown.

Farmlab hosts the LA Old Time Festival once a year, with hootenannies, square-dancing and calling (which, as a friend pointed out, are misnomers for what are more appropriately called contra dancing/calling), and workshops set in the midst of their thriving city vegetable garden. Work is keeping me through the summer this year, so this was a nice slice of the country in place of the real thing. But what I wouldn’t give for a weekend back home: aimless walks around downtown and drives to the coast, and one of those backyard summer parties my mother’s known to throw — our house bursting with family friends new and old, mom’s folk musician friends jamming in the living room, the kids, cousins, and animals hiding out in the garage “poolhouse,” a big tin bucket full of beer and ginger ale, and the potluck leftovers we nosh on for days…

dreamy

thiscrystalsphere — Tue, 18 May 2010 01:19:11 +0000

My new favorite blog – http://nomadicway.tumblr.com/

Thank you Wendy Garrett. This photo makes me want to be in Big Sur so much.

gummipede

thiscrystalsphere — Sat, 15 May 2010 00:47:56 +0000

This is what I get from my coworkers for expressing my complete distaste for the Human Centipede movie.

Toothpick-conjoined gummi bears. Nasty girls.

shut the front door!

thiscrystalsphere — Tue, 04 May 2010 23:59:54 +0000

I know I said I wouldn’t keep posting house porn (or shelter porn, as I’ve heard it called), but this is so lovely.

It has everything I love — white with blonde wood, a barn-like interior, Dutch modern furnishings, a few well-placed pops of color…if it were mine, I would cozy it up with a few more rugs and antique pieces, and load the place with potted trees and hanging plants. Like these Woolly Pockets, which I am obsessed with and coveting for my patio/indoor area…

Pocket technology allows you to create a living wall anywhere in your house, without fear of leakage...I kinda sound like their spokesperson, I know. I think this is the coolest thing.

While we’re at it, my friend Risa sent me this amazing bird’s nest bed. Obviously I am obsessed with it.

Not practical, certainly, but short of a bird’s nest, I’ll settle for a treehouse. You get the idea. I just think there is nothing wrong with wanting to live amongst a little whimsy…

ode to google image

thiscrystalsphere — Tue, 04 May 2010 20:23:34 +0000

I was searching for something in my download queue today and came across a few gems that, somewhere along the way, for whatever reason, I decided to save. I have no idea where I got these from unfortunately. I do know that my most frequent search in google image is likely “young” so-and-so…young Michael Caine, young Bill Clinton, young Shelley Duvall, young Anjelica Huston…Some of the best –

So I’m really just obsessed with Anjelica Huston. In general.

The perfect couple.

staycation

thiscrystalsphere — Tue, 04 May 2010 18:54:28 +0000

Giant t-shirt, new bed linen, leftover Thai food, Graceland on repeat. Why would I ever want to leave?

This is all I have been doing for the last month. But I finished 100 pages of my screenplay. Draft one down in one month (well, 32 days, but who’s counting?)!

Also, I have a new herb garden, thanks to Alex.

Peppers, sweet basil, mint, rosemary, cilantro, lemon thyme. Hoping to add in a few more in a couple weeks. So happy for warm weather…

i wanna do right but not right now

thiscrystalsphere — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 05:41:06 +0000

I can’t stop listening to this:

[The album version with percussion is so much better, but WordPress won't accept my file type from iTunes!]

Or looking at these:

The Times ran a nice piece today called The Joys of the Window Seat. It made the front page of the online edition, in fact — this is why I love this publication.

As a girl, I was always a window-seat-er. But since moving to LA, I fly these quick 50-minute trips between LAX and the Bay so often that I have become an aisle girl out of ease. This has got to change.

trzy kolory

thiscrystalsphere — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 23:02:30 +0000

My friend Anastasiya lives in an old apartment in Hollywood across the street from “The Magic Gas.” The building’s hallways twist and turn, going on forever; in the lobby is an aquarium full of overgrown goldfish with tumor-like growths that suggest they’ve been there for decades.

I visited Anastasiya the other night to watch Kieslowski’s Three Colors: White. I saw Red some years ago at a LACMA screening, and now I just have to see Blue — I’m seeing them in reverse order, unintentionally. I loved Red, but White really blew me away. It is a beautiful and most enjoyable film.

Ah, Julie Delpy. She is stunning.

Anastasiya is Russian-born and enjoyed comparing her native tongue to the film’s Polish. Watching the movie in that old apartment, next to her, with our stew and bratwurst, I felt much like I was in Eastern Europe. The goblet of wine also helped (next time, vodka).

I may not get a break from work this year, but I’m already beginning to feel the itch of summer the way I used to in school. I came across this summery offering outside my office the other day, tucked into a loose piece of palm:

Give me a swimming pool and a lemonade and I am 14 years old again with nothing to do but make it through the 9th grade summer reading list. Gawd, things were rough then.