Obsessions, obsessoins...

ObSeSsIoN #1
I WANT A BIRD SANCTUARY!

So far I have had about 5 birds and 4 squirrels. I think I need a birdbath and to figure out some way to keep the squirrels off the bird's feeder, not that I am being a bitch and not wanting to feed the squirrels. I mean, I'd love to feed the squirrels too, but I think they are scaring my birds away. I bought finch food, and chunky nutty food for bigger birds like cardinals and woodpeckers. I saw the one squirrel hanging off the sheperd's hook by one leg, and open the top of the feeder, and start shoveling in the food. THEN I saw one who had lifted the top of the feeder and dropped inside, and just sat there, wedged into the feeder, gobbling. I can't really say I blame them. If I were hungry and here was a giant feeder filled with cheeseburgers you'd bet your ass I'd try to score me some. Anyway. I want pebbles for all around the base of the sanctuary, and a birdbath, and maybe another sheperd's hook with a different type of feeder or two. Oh, and maybe a dedicated squirrel space.

ObSeSsIoN #2
I WANT AN EMBROIDERY MACHINE!

They are so freaking cool. You can design your design ona computer and then upload the design to it, and it will embroidery it on fabric!! Damn that is so cool I can hardly contain myself. Do you even REALIZE how many aniversary gifts and potholders I could make?! And Scarves? And throws? And personalized underpants? I always thought it would be funny to make some that say sunday-monday-tuesday, and wedneday, thursday, friday... just as a joke.. you know, liek the ones with the days of the week on them,.. oh never mind...

ObSeSsIoN #3
I WANT TO HEAR EVERY JOHNNY CASH SONG EVER WRITTEN!!

I think I am well on my way. So far my favorites are "Man in Black", "Cause I love You" and "Far Side Banks of Jordan".. I don't count the old favorites I've known all my life though like "Ring of Fire" and "a Boy named Sue" because thats just a given. Johnny Cash rocked. Too bad both his kids who are trying to be musicians sound like marmots.

Zooo

The zoo was nice, but I still took pictures of waterfowl and squirrels - AND I got bit in the head by a goose. Really, nabbed twice in the side of the head. I was bending down to get a shot of one goose, and the other one ran up and bit me in the head! IT scared me so much I went flailing backwards and was all sprawled out on the lawn. No one saw me. THANK GOD. Anyway.. shot some butterflies, some snakes, a few penguins. Too bad my battery died before I got to the polar bears. Polar bears are next time I guess. It is really hard on my battery focusing at long distances, when I use my 300mm lens. Anyway, it was a pretty good trip overall. I guess I will forgive them for charging $3 for a 20 oz. diet coke.

The zoo, the zoo!

Not that sqirrels and swans are not cute, but I am getting a little sick of the wildlife available to me here in Pontiac. Today I am heading to the Detroit Zoo. I hope to get a lot of amazing pics... wish me luck!

4 Random Blatherings

1) Photography is probably one of the most inspiring and interesting things I can think of to do with my life. I love the idea of recording tiny slices of our lives. I feel this burning NEED - a need to capture events, a NEED to take photos of animal's little faces, a NEED to show the world what I see and remind them of the beauty we don't always take the time to notice. I really really really want to be someone who's job requires hiking into the mountains with 50 lbs and 10k dollars worth of camera equipment. I WANT that life. Now. How do I go about getting it? It feels so far away. I don't really even know how to use my camera. There are so many things about photography that I have to learn. I don't know much about lenses, I don't know much about aperature... How do I go about taking this from a dream into a reality? I am finding myself obsessing more and more about it... I go out on lunch breaks and search for things to take pictures of.. I look at lenses on ebay all day at work... I look at photo gallerys of people doing what I want to do. They sound so smart, so educated... I wonder if I will ever understand all that they do. I know it's up to me really, but what do I do next!!!??

2) Swimming. I forgot both of my suits at home today. Now what? I guess I could go home and get them and come back after work because the pool is open til 10. I still am digging the swimming but sometimes I feel like I am losing steam a little bit. I hate going when there are a ton of people there. I am becomming a regular and I have other regulars who want to chit chat with me. I'm not so into the chit chat. I like it better when I go later.. usually it clears out the later it gets but last night at about 9:00 there were about 20 people in there. I wonder if it's going to change as it gets closer to summer? Will it mean more people want to swim there or less? When it is hot out there are a lot more pools open around the area so that might mean less people, but on the other hand a lot of poeple only swim in the summer so that could mean more. Hmmmmmm.

3) 9 days off.! Woooah. What am I going to do with myself? Well the first two are weekend days, and I am sure we will do something nice since the house is reletivly clean and it's going to be 60 degrees!! Wow, excellent... then T will be gone on a work trip for 2 days and I will be left to my own devices. The cats and I will be scared together every time the boiler belches. Maybe I will go to my dad's on Monday and Tuesday tho.. THEN WHAT?!!?!?!??!!??! Take shit to goodwill... organize the computer room.... buy a bird feeder with my gas savings from staying home.... make nutricious homeade meals for us each night and freeze the leftovers... what else will I have time to do? Take some pictures of geese... watch oprah... figure out how to make a homemade lightbox... I can't wait!

4) My new haircut makes me feel like myself. Who was I before, you might ask? I was someone with bad jack-o-lantern hair. Big, round, cut with a flowbie, jacked up jack-o-lantern hair. Now I feel like a brand new but somehow familiar more confidant Kari. Ahhh... the freedom of short hair. It tells men that see me "No, I don't crave your big nasty dick, i have GREAT hair, I don't need nasty dick with such great hair" and it tells the women that I am self confidant and happy with myself even if I do weight 3 times what they do. I don't know.. just makes me feel better. Maybe I like my hair to tell the world that I'm not exactly like them, and it's okay. I love my new short queerbiehair.

Top 4 things on my mind...

Since my girlfriend is home sick with a 102 degree fever, and I am feeling a bit ran down and shakey myself.. it leads me to think about my own mortality a little more than I normally do. Here are the top 4 things things that are eatin' me at the moment.

1) Mercury Fillings. It will cost me $200 less to get the old school fillings put back in my teeth instead of new white resin ones after the dentist rips the old ones out. My dentist says it makes no difference, one is as good as the other, but I've heard other things. Some say the mercury slowly leaking out of our teeth cause Alzheimers, memory loss, MS, and just a ton of general cellular degradation and cellular death. When you put it that way, I think I should probably chuck out the $200 just to be on the safe side. But who to believe? I guess it doesn't really matter if she's right or not, who wouldn't rather have nice white resin teeth than ugly black mercury filled spotted teeth?

2) Sugar. Doing my research on mercury being released into my body I found an article on sugar that does not make me feel too good about my candy addiction. Aparently, sugar is a very pure form of glucose, pure meaning that everything that made it a food at one time has been stripped away and we've been left with pure fuel. At first I thought that might be a good thing... but no. It's not, because it gives us no nutrients, no vitimins, no minerals and not even enough of these natural elements to digest it's self. Our body has to rob the nutrients out of our bones and skin and other cells even to digest the shit. THis is not good! Osteoperosis sets in once your sugar need depletes your bone's calcium stores. THis isn't even talking about how it raises your blood sugar and makes you feel crazy and weepy and irritated all the time. OR how sugar consumption has been linked to cancer. Aparently cancerous cells LOOOOOVE a hit of pure glucose, and are very happy and particulary frisky when you keep a nice steady stream a comin'. You might think this is hogwash, and I would have agreed at some points in my life, but not so much now. In the end of my mom's life the thing she wanted all the time was candy and pudding and anything sweet. In fact, pudding was the last thing she ate, because thats what she wanted. I should say, that was the last thing the cancer cells wanted... :( I really have to figure out how to lay the candy down.

3) CRT radiation. CRT's as in the big ass computer monitors we all sit in front of all day and all night. Aparently they emit radiation, which in turn makes more murcury leak from your fillings. Fucking great.

4) Stress is bad.. Lack of sleep is bad. Worrying about everything is bad. Feeling stressed all the time keeps your blood pressure and adreneline sky high. I am starting to understand that the way we live our lives might have a link to how long we get to live them. I'm not ready to check out yet. I don't think I will be ready in 20 years. I wish we could go live in a treehouse, or an island, or a treehouse on an island. Ohhh I loved the Swiss Family Robinson. Why can't we live in a wonderful treehouse where you can see the stars and be rocked to sleep every night by the wind? Why can't we race zebras and ostriches? Okay.. I don't really want to do that. Racing ostriches seems inhumane. But to be rocked to sleep every night by the wind and caressed into sleep by the sounds of a rainforest all around you.. damn.. It sounds so far fetched, but I am sure there are people doing it. I wonder sometimes how our society brainwashes us all into living these lives we are living now. I mean, really, no one thinks when they are ten years old how they want to grow up and sit in front of a radiation emitting computer monitor for 10 hours a day. At ten I wanted to be a greeting card designer. In my head, that meant sitting at a big white art table on a stool and drawing pictures of baby bunnies and flowers and babies in their babtism gowns. It meant always having sharp colored pencils and thick white drawing paper, and an endless supply of kneaded rubber erasers. Today I sit in front of my mac and create ads for male escorts and life insurance salesmen. Would the ten year old me like me? No... not much, but she would like my truck and my freedom to buy as many two liters as pop as I want. She'd also like my haircut, and she'd like that I only buy shampoos and soaps not tested on animals. She'd like that I swim almost every day. I don't suppose thats doing so bad, over all...