Oh YAY! for oh joy!

Stumbled on a new blog full of pretty things. It is called "oh joy!" and like all pretty thing blogs each entry is a collection of objects that may or may not relate to each other, but are visually pleasing when arranged together. One of the entries gave me a preview to Kate Spade's fall line. I can't wait to get my hands on my own Owl Bag. Ok, you're right, it looks more like the bomb bird from Angry Birds. Either way, I still want one.

Overwhelming my muggle eyes

From Me To You is a website with some of the most memorizing photos. I can't embed them into my blog so you see a few samples because there is movement involved!

Every photo has a part that moves such as hair in the wind, pouring batter, or flickering lamp. This is just so much fun. Photoshop can enhance a photo to perfection, getting rid of freckles, imperfections, change the hues, etc but this just brings the pictures to life!

I wish I could figure out how to do this, but I only know the basics of Photoshop and Final Cut Pro.

Website Reformatting

Whenever facebook.com releases updates/changes to the layout, everyone reacts with "I hate new facebook" and "bring back the old format!". Over time I have gotten used the new formats, the most current one still confuses me when I want to find photo albums. Hopefully, the site doesn't get another makeover for at least a few months so that I can get the hang of things again.

Around the time of the latest facebook upgrade, twitter decided to reformat. There was an option to revert to old twitter, which I have been using religiously up until two days ago. I accidentally hit "see new twitter" and now when I try to "return to old twitter" the site refuses to load. Guess, I don't have a choice anymore and I need to get with the times.

I accept that social networking sites will revamp every now and again. What I wasn't prepared for was Gawker, Jezebel, Lifehacker, and the like to go from familiar and easy to busy, complicated, and unfriendly. The new site was released earlier this week, maybe Tuesday, and as soon as the page loaded I immediately checked to make sure I entered the correct web address. After confirming that I didn't load jezebell.com I attempted to scroll through the posts, got overwhelmed and immediately left. I wasn't sure if I should have been scrolling through the main section or whatever that is on the right.

Today, I returned to give the site the old college try. I was able to find a post I wanted to read, but then I went to read the comments at the bottom. WTF. Could not for the life of me understand what was happening down there. Comments are my favorite part! Realistically if the article is long but the headline is catchy, I have a tendency to skip down to see what the people are talking about. Sadly, it is as if these designers hate the comment section (and their readers) - these sites are just hot messes.

Normally, I get annoyed at revamped sites purely because my habits have to change. The facebook and twitter updates don't make it harder to read/update, they just make me look in a new spot. The Gawker/Jezebel/etc sites are actually giving me a headache. Too much in too little of a space. Please designers, think about doing some revisions.

Blogger Fail

Today after work I am scheduled to retake a Economics exam. Have I mentioned I am in grad school before? I'm too lazy to check, but if we are friends in real life, you definitely know this for the following reasons:

1. I haven't been going to Redline on Thursdays on a regular basis
2. I am severely behind in reading my magazines
3. Additionally, my dvr is filling up
4. Finally, I complain about having to do homework/study/attend class
   

Anyway, I can't bring myself to pay attention to supply, demand, or elasticity. I checked out a friend's blog. At this point I need to point out that she also uses google blogger. After catching up her musings, I considered my options; study economics or play blogger roulette by clicking on "next blog".

Of course I went for the next blog. I quickly went through about eight blogs in about 15 seconds. Why? Because it turns out if you decide to be a stay at home mom these days, you are required to create a blog around your child. Eight(!) blogs that center around the daily lives of someone under 2. These blogs were not about parenting, but about daily happenings in the life of a being that cannot speak. I get scrapbooks, photo albums, and home movies. But not these websites. Save the play-by-play crawl across the room to gnaw on some plastic object for your partner. The rest of us just don't care. I know that sentence sounds cruel, but let's face it, none of those women would be reading my blog anyway.

Pretty Pretty Pictures

A friend stumbled upon a great blog that pretty much consists of a bunch of pretty pretty pictures. It is titled {this is glamorous} and they named the blog well. I think I could scroll through this blog all day, and would probably finish off the afternoon doing just that if the phones could just stop ringing.

Below is one of my favorite items featured today. And, of course, it contains the essence of a tutu :)

Short Fuse

Working in customer services has its ups and downs. One of the ups is if no one has a question at any particular moment, you get to blog at work. The big down is, if everyone has a question, you end up talking for 7 hours straight, forget to use the bathroom, and begin to hate all of mankind for being so freaking stupid.

I wrote that paragraph on Friday and could not return to this post until today (Tuesday). Oye! Yeah, I know, I shouldn't complain that I have to work non-stop with no breaks, but sometimes you just want a little breathing room. Fortunately today isn't too bad, so I anticipate that this post should be up in the early afternoon. I would try to finish it during lunch, but we have our hour lunches cut down today - barely enough time to eat and grab a breath of fresh air!

Back to the point of this post:

I saw a gchat status message of a friend of mine which was simply a link to Sneaky Spiral of Hate. (You may have seen it earlier this year if you frequent Hyperbole and a Half.) This is the first time I have been to the site, for a moment I was confused and thought I was within the oatmeal website, but nope, just similar drawing styles.

The Spiral of Hate is pretty spot on and the illustrations made me laugh out loud, for reals (which is why I didn't say lol). It made me think about my typical days, all my hate and how true this spiral is.

As I reflected about how frustration builds, I began looking through the site. My spiral of hate started going full force as I noticed she can live off her blog and I cannot -grrrrr. I mean I understand that my blog really has no focus other than me, and I have no idea what kind of merchandise I could then create...but let's go back to explaining the other aspects of my spiral.

The start of the spiral was waking up hot (as my a/c is still on the floor of my bedroom rather than in my window), stupid ass drivers on the commute in (oh I forgot that you should be in the left hand lane to make a right turn), a huge number of asinine questions ("I wanted to be sure I should follow the directions in the email you sent me"), and a phone altercation with a local government office. Yes, I might have yelled at some innocent bystander in that office, but I feel absolutely no remorse about it. If she had been nice to me, I would have felt bad about projecting my frustration with the office onto her, but she just proved that they could care less about the service they provide the community. I need to stop this post now, because just thinking about this is revving up the hate and I need to be as pleasant as possible as we have a lot of visitors today.

This photo was taken from
the Spiral of Hate Post

Don't Flash What Yo Mama Gave You

I have begun to consider the idea that crossing over to the leggings as pants fashion concept isn't as terrible as I once thought. BUT, I do feel the need to defend myself in saying that this is only after I choosing to use real leggings (not those thin ones that are really tights that are incorrectly labeled) AND I would be pairing them with a very long shirt. As much as I love my butt and am quite proud of its size and shape, there is still no need for it to be in your face. I am not a supporter of wearing a stress (a shirt being used as a dress) without making sure that my lady bits will stay covered and that there is no way that there could be an incident.

That being said, let's get to the point of this post.

Now, unfortunately, not all designers feel the same way that I do about what is a shirt and what is a dress. These really short "dresses" are also being styled minimally. Models are left barelegged, which makes a potential flash of lady bits all more likely. For the last year or so, I have noticed that Urban Outfitters will often put tunics on models with no leggings, or pants. (See slideshow)

Turns out that I am not the only one who has noticed this phenomena. Daddy Likey is a blog that has a reoccurring post entitled "Don't Show-cha Your Chocha". I think it is amazing. This is up there with the leggings are not pants blog that sadly seems to have been abandoned as the URL goes no where. I am going to add Daddy Likey to my blog watch. :)

ENTJ

No, I did not mess up TGIF, even though I am thankful that today is Friday. Instead, the title of my post lets the world know what kind of personality I had. A friend posted a link on her tumblr page after taking the test herself. I think this stuff is very interesting. To break down the letters, my personality can be summed up as Extroverted, iNtuitive, Thinking and Judging. When reading through the little report that the program spits out, I also learned that while I scored moderately in the first three areas, I am VERY Judging. Who knew? :)

Some of the resources that the results page linked me to let me know what kinds of careers best fit my personality - big shocker management in business and education was listed. Additionally, there was a link that gave a more in depth look at exactly what it means to be ENTJ or Fieldmarshals as they are more commonly known as.

I like knowing that they believe that only 2% of the overall population falls in this category which is rather impressive given there are only 16 personalities. If the population was divided evenly each personality would represent 6.25% of the group.

I also am beyond amused on how accurate some of statements are about "me".

In some cases, they simply find themselves in charge of groups, and are mystified as to how this happened.

When I was taking my intensive class in January, I had made it my goal to not be a group leader in any of the group projects as I just knew I didn't have the energy to have to be on top of people. Of course, on the day group topics were brainstormed I casually made a comment that I thought was adding to someone else's idea and the professor replied back, "wonderful concept, and you can be the team leader for how women are portrayed in animation". Awesome.

Ok, enough about me. Go take the test yourself! And I would urge you to post your results on the tumblr site!

Rainbows and Tutus. Could I ask for anything more?

Earlier this week, a friend shared a blog post (Modish) through both Google Reader and Google Buzz that centered around images consisting of vibrant colors. The post's images are all extremely captivating with their bold use of colors. This photo below made me stop scrolling for a moment as I wanted to be sure I had enough time to take it in completely.

by hakanphotography

You know, as well as I do, that the biggest reason for my pause would have been because of the rainbow tutu. The fashion statement the clothing is making is something that I wish I had the guts to say with my own wardrobe. I think I make small statements, maybe we can call them comments, with my choice in dresses and accessories. But nothing this bold. I think the biggest obstacle (besides money) would simply not having anywhere to wear something so out there. If I had a life like Lady Gaga this wouldn't be an issue, but sadly my simple life in Boston doesn't allow such bold statements.

After going to hakanphotography to grab a copy of the image, I started to poke around and must say I like this person's work. The use of color and light appeals greatly to me. I am a fan.

There was one other picture that caught my eye. I don't find the image as powerful as the one above, but wanted to share it with you anyways. My love of tattoos and body painting has to be what makes me feel that it is noteworthy. If I could be in a photographer's portfolio, I know I would love to be covered in paint (tastefully) because I love the intensity adding pigment directly to skin gives the human form.

by inspires tumblr

What is the point of hipsters if not to poke fun of them?

Websites and blogs devoted to poking fun at the hipster culture and style have been running rampant lately. We have all seen Look At This Fucking Hipster that started back in March 2009. It provided me a little amusement, but I soon stopped checking the new pictures.

Then came Unhappy Hipster. This blog focuses in on images that are found in Dwell Magazine. While the designs are minimalistic they provide ample material to create witty and comic taglines.

The debate — whether the ubiquity of suburban neo-modern developments was really an upgrade from new-money McMansions — ended in a standoff, mired by the generation gap.

(Photo: David Lauridsen, Dwell, July/August 2008)

That has to be one of my favorite entries.

But I have to say, we have found the ultimate hipster blog. Hipster puppies. We have learned that hipsters may be too cool for most things, but they are not above dressing their dogs in their own weird ass clothing. Personally, I feel this blog has some major staying power! Below is one of the newer posts. It reminds me about why, as a driver and pedestrian, I hate bicyclists.

lola bean believes “cars suck” and cyclists have a “right to the road”—but has no idea how mean and annoying she is to pedestrians

[photo via elizabeth e]

Hello 2010!

The holidays have come and gone. I was able to celebrate my birthday with so many different friends, had a great Christmas Eve and Day, flew down to Florida for some relaxation, and came back to Boston to ring in the new year. The week and half of friends and family has put me in such a great mood for this upcoming year.

I have now been blogging for about a year and think that this experience has helped me to determine where I want to go with my life. I will be taking an intensive multimedia course in January. This will hopefully help me figure out if content management and web design is where I want to go with my career. I am thinking about getting into communications and marketing, so we shall see. The intensive course will mean that this blog will probably be ignored a little more but I do have a number of things I hope to post about in the next few days before things go completely crazy. I have a few more thoughts on shoes, skirts, trends, and being the domestic goddess that I like to think I am that I would love to be able to share. :)

Thanks for sticking with me for my first year of blogging. I believe that there will be two new blogs that are going to be more focused debuted by mid-February. But we shall see.

Vampires, they are so hot right now

I tried watching a random episode of True Blood when I first got HBO at my new apartment. While the show was on, I was cleaning, blogging, and not really paying much attention. The plot didn't interest me. I figured that this was one trendy show that was just not for me.

Fast foward about 2.5 weeks ago.

My intern has been talking about True Blood since he first came back for the fall semester. Raving about it. I thought to myself, why not, let's try it out one more time, but this time I will start from the beginning. I have been watching it through sidereel.net.

After the first episode, I was hooked. I can't help but trying to watch episodes when ever I am home and have some downtime. I am about three quarters of the way done with the second season now. I can't wait to finish because not only do I want to know how things are going to end but because I miss blogging and my apartment is getting really messy.

The vampires are seductive. This is set at a time where vampires have finally given rights in the US. What I like but also have issues with are that there are tons of other creatures/super powered people. We meet shape shifters, the devil (?), telepathics and hear references to werewolves. I like that there are more than just vampires, because it would be silly to think there would only be one other type of "life" beyond humans, but at the same time I don't like having to keep track of all of the others.

Each episode keep me hooked, and I think I would love to meet a vampire if they were real. It would be like how I would love to meet a drag queen. But I would like to think that as much as I would love to meet them, I would not be interested in becoming a fang-banger.

While I still go out, play kickball, cook and apply for new jobs, but blogging has fallen to the way side. I felt like it was important to point out that every time I went to start a post this past week I would get about 2 sentences in and decide that I would rather watch an episode or two online. But, like I said, I am almost done with the second season, so I can get back to this and post more regularly.

I Overheard This!!

I was on a submitting spree a few months ago and submitted quotes and what not to textsfromlastnight, overheardintheoffice and passiveagressivenotes. Today my google reader listed one of my submissions!

...And Don't Give Me the Old "Global Warming" Argument Again!

Pretty excited that something I thought was funny (and didn't personally blog about) actually made it onto the web.

Contest Time

I have ignored highheelsshortskirt.blogspot.com for too long and I apologize. The main reason was that I was preparing, cooking and then enjoying jello shots that were made for a friends wedding party. I call it a wedding party as they got married at City Hall on Friday at 11:15 am (they got a $40 discount for being on time) and we had party subs, cheesecake and beer on Saturday afternoon/evening to celebrate. I brought 49 jello shots per the request of the lovely bride. One of the types is a margarita jello shot that I attempted for the first time and was quite a success.

This new shot inspired a fantastic idea. That I create a new blog, in addition this one of course, that is devoted to my jello shot skills. I have been trying to think of a great name for such a blog and have been opening up to my friends via twitter, gchat, kickball aftergame parties and now my blog. If any one has any suggestions for a catchy url (_____.blogspot.com) or blog title, please let me know. Currently the only thing that has been even reasonably interesting was "Lots Lots of Jello Shots", and really, who wants to read that blog. :P

Thanks!

Awkward.

Glamour published their last magazine with a very small photo of a nude woman who is definitely not your average model...


I guess a lot of women noticed the small picture because letters started to pour into the office exclaiming how refreshing it was to see a regular woman in the magazine. Those letters inspired on of the editors to write this blog post. Like any big time blog there are of course tons of comments. Possibly more comments than I have posts (which equals A TON of comments). Well they are all a handful of woman who end up bickering back and forth about whether this size 12 (plus size model) woman is OBESE or not.

OBESE?????

She has a little tummy pudge. But otherwise she is about as perfect as the next woman. And the pudge is normal and nothing to run away from...for crying out loud people.

These woman end up having a huge argument - via posting - about if she is really as healthy as she claims. I got hook into reading their comments because I would love to see these people in real life, they sound like they belong on Jerry Springer. Particularly I would like to meet the woman and her husband that claim they would loose - yes that is how she wrote it - their lunch after looking at the woman's stomach and thunder thighs. I don't see the thunder either.

The conversation, if you can call it that, was awkward. If I were to be honest with myself, I would have to agree that I do very much like looking at these "perfect" women in the magazines. If the women looked more like me I think I would develop serious image issues. Why? Because I would start wondering why I couldn't be a model. I know why I am not one now. I am not perfect, I have a disproportioned quirky body that I am extremely comfortable in.

Totally not looking to open the what is healthy/what is obese/what is beautiful debate. Merely saying that any time a magazine tries to do something slightly different people blow it up.

Gone for a few days

I'm off for a weekend in New York City. It'll be a blast, so I will catch up next week!

ENJOY YOUR WEEKEND :)

Tempting. Very Tempting

My kickball captain sent me a link to The Uniform Project. She said when she saw it, she thought of me. :) I totally dig that.

The project revolves around the idea of wearing the same basic dress every day for 365 days straight and jazzing it up with accessories and layers. (the girl has seven copies of the dress so it doesn't get gross) She takes a picture each day and allows for viewers to rate her style. I find that viewing the month of outfits really helps you get a sense of the project.

It sounds like it would a really fun idea. The nice thing is that you outfit is partially planned for you. Lately, I have had such a problem trying to get dressed in the morning. Part of this has to do with the weather, part with the fact that I needed to do laundry, then I did laundry but didn't bother to put stuff away right away, and then there is the appropriate for work vs what is comfortable. Once I can get the base of the outfit down, I have a blast adding the extras, but lately I haven't been able to really think about the extras as I have been racing out the door to get to work on time. Yeah, so, this would really help.

But, unfortunately, there is no way I could pull it off. No matter much I love the funky extras, I think I would crave the ability to really just wear something completely different. I have too many favorite pieces and while I don't really care if I match regularly, I do need to feel that I look decent, ya know?

Wellm I raise my glass to this girl. GOOD LUCK!

AMAZING comparison

This blogger made the best comparison regarding 30 Rock and the Muppet Show. This entry is insightful and amazing. I may have to agree with him in that Tina Fey has ripped off Jim Henson big time. He does make reference to the 30 Rock segment Sesame Street did recently (aka Jim Henson stealing back)



But seriously, I suggest you reading the comparison. Tina Fey is Kermit, Jenny is Miss Piggy and Kenneth is Scooter.

Enjoy!

Breaking News!

Ashton Kutcher is first to reach 1 million followers in Twitter contest with CNN. (I thought the picture above would pair wonderfully with the headline)

I know you all feel more relaxed to know this. I had this breaking news delivered to me via my CNN email subscription. Generally, I get notifications of political deaths, war, tragedies, causality counts, etc. Major news points that most people would find useful to know. How did this make my breaking news???

Since the subject of Twitter was broached, I feel like I should remind you all of the article that the Daily Mail put out about how studies found that services such as Twitter (and even facebook) are making our population immoral. The studies used explain how the abundance of information that is throw at an individual who uses these networks is so large and so fast that the person does not have the proper time to react emotionally.

A great example is reading through the main page on facebook and making quick note of people's statuses. These are examples from Wednesday morning that I saw myself

A.'s status of R.I.P. Gramma funeral
which was followed up with
R's status of fudging up natzi zombies, on world of war call of duty, i love my x box lol. PEACE!

A person doesn't have time to react to A's loss before reading R's random personal fact. It doesn't help matters that 8 hours later A updated her status to say "thankful I have a computer once again" minimizing any impact her previous statement may have hoped to have given that it was quickly replaced with a materialistic statement.

Well, whether or not the studies are true, they do make for an interesting discussion. A follow up article was written online and posted on walletpop.com claiming the Daily Mail's was not based on science...this appears to be someone's blog while the Daily Mail is a UK publication, but I am not arguing which side would be more accurate by any means.

Whoops...

Easter evening I stopped at my cousin's condo to have a short visit on my way back from RI. My aunt and uncle were in town and haven't seen them for quite some time so I figured it was a good idea to stop by. While there, I mentioned my blog and my aunt was really excited to read it. I told her I had no problem with her looking at it, and always enjoyed getting a new fan. She asked what my mom thought of it, and I said she didn't really read it. I thought nothing of this conversation. I mean, I only write things that I am comfortable with the world seeing so it's not like this would be embarrassing...

I did not count on my aunt calling my mom and telling her that she enjoyed High Heels Short Skirt. My mom felt a little guilty about how her sister was reading my work and she hadn't found the time to read it herself. So she did.

Well, if you recall a few days ago I wrote about getting to church on Easter morning and how my dad and sister didn't exactly make there with me. We never told my mum that I was the only one who went and let her think she was the only bad Catholic in the family...

Well she read the post, then told my father he was busted. She had read it late at night and almost woke him up to bust him immediately. Fortunately she did hold off till morning before breaking the news. But now he is now referring to me as "the rat"! I honestly didn't think she would ever read the post. Oooops. Just a friendly reminder that one should always be care about what one puts out there...