keepin yous guyses on da edge of your seatz

today, my dad yelled up from the basement "Sonia! I want yeh to come take a look at my well engineered package!"

he of course was referring to the packaging he put together to mail my sisters Christmas presents. I didn't have the heart to tell the engineer that the comment was slightly uncomfortable. Nevertheless, he was right. The package was well engineered...as always.

He is an engineer...but an inventor at heart. There have been many interesting devices found on the Malmquist homestead in the past. One of my favorites was a car cooling system that involved a large funnel and tube that you would aim at yourself while driving to cool you down. Functional, yet not very safe.

He was the talk of the graduation party circuit when he came up with a keg-cooling device. We got lots of calls from jealous dad's wanting to rent it for their kids' fete. "You can borrow it, and I'll give yeh da blueprints for it too." So generous.

Hands down, best chas invention would have to be...well, you'll just have to wait for that post. i need to have some sort of leverage with you.

harry potter saved my year

a very inspiring person told me that creativity is my job. that i need to work at it like it were the career that pays me bucksdelux. that i can't neglect it because i'm not feeling "inspired". that everyday i need to do a little bit--weather it's my seemingly silly blog, one of my 10 unfinished paintings or a brief 10 minutes on the piano or learning a new song.

i am a creative being. a creature of plight.

it's hard to do what you love sometimes.

i gave up coffee. that was hard too. well, i didn't give it up...i am abstaining...most of the time. I went from 3 cups a day to 1 cup in 5 days. it has been slight torture, but my adreanal system will thank me later.

i also gave up sugar. i feel a little guilty unwrapping a reeses as i write, but i'm trying to be honest. i don't know what my sugar intake was "back then"...but im pretty sure i've gone from 10 future cavities to only 3 or 4.

im sitting here at a booth at a coffee shop. when i came in, it was empty. now it is full. now i am getting evil eyes from groups of 2 wanting the booth from the 1 girl eating a reeses. i feel a little bad, but not really.

if you're looking for a great book, i must recommend Ann Lemont's Traveling Mercies: thoughts on faith. really, truly. i wouldn't say so if it wasn't awesome. boys and girls will enjoy. cynics too. i trust anything written by a woman with dreadlocks.

its almost my year long anniversary of the worst year of my life. but it's getting better. maybe it wasn't even really the worst year of my life. maybe it was just a really weird, hard, awkward year. yeah, that's it. there were good things in it, too. i mean, i went to harry potter world.