Comments (1) Not sure if this is something to celebrate, but Kate and I just finished paying off our car and received the title in the mail on Wednesday. I would say it feels great to be out of debt but Kate owes something like $1 billion in student debt. Anyway, here’s to responsibility!
Browsing the web for information on thrift-store art I came across these to resource gems.
1. Some brilliant human has a passion for collecting awkward and strange art from thrift store. She/he has a mighty collection with well over 100 pieces of art from thrift stores, junk sales, garage sales, and the like. She/he has uploaded images of all his/her paintings to their website Thriftstoreart.com.
2. Another collector of the cool Bill Davenport who is also an artist and also shares his collection online at www.billdavenport.com.
3. There is also a website dedicated to crop art: art . . . that is made . . . from crops!!!! Mind blowing! Anyway, the link is www.cropart.com.
4. A museum dedicated to those brave souls whose attempts at art were, lets say, failures: The Museum of Bad Art (MOBA). This museum is amazing. I highly encourage you to look at their collections and then read about the museum on wikipedia.org.
P.S. if you know of any related art links please share them in a comment.
Empathy without judgement
This is my new mantra for 2013. Being a very process-oriented person I’ve never been much good at setting goals (don’t think I ever got that Young Women’s Personal Progress Medallion), so I thought I’d stick with a simple group of words to help me create transformation in my life.
Please feel free to download our Christmas letter for 2012. We weren’t quite organized enough to mail one out to everyone on our list (we need address updates).
Nothing can perk up a dreary finals week like a huge package of wrapped presents!
Present parade!
Especially when one of those presents is a glorious pair of red graduation boots!
Most amazing cowgirl boots ever made.
Luckily I just bought a handmade pioneer dress at Unique to go with them.
Hurrah!
These are genuine hand crafted Lucchese boots. One of the most famous and well-made boot brands… the real, authentic cowgirl deal. THANKS dad for being awesome! They will really look good strutting across that graduation stage.
Well, I made it most of the week without any TV. I was pretty good about not wasting time watching online videos or movies. My only downfall really, was when Kate and I watch the Walking Dead on Sunday night. I figure it was OK since it was a few hours from the end of the week anyway. Now the interesting thing about this experiment is that after about 2 days of not watching TV I started having vivid crazy dreams. One was about being chased around my university campus by giant spiders and then trying to kill them by throwing bricks at them from the top of the Johnson Center (the main student center at GMU).
Bronze Giant Spider by Louis Bourgeois (Photo by Nathan Strange/AP)
Also, I think I slept a little bit better mostly because I would end up going to be earlier instead of staying up to watch an episode of John Stewart or something. All-in-all, I think this was a great experiment and Kate and I are going to try and incorporate less TV watching into our weekly routine. In fact, we are going to try and save all the episodes we would normally watch during the week for the weekend.
One more thing I have discovered through this process. I do not have the willpower to tackle a new lifestyle each week. I need a break between the weeks to rethink what I am doing an prepare. So, I am going to amend my initial plan and give myself a free week between each experiment week.
Day to Day, Media
| 
media, no tv, TV
This week I am not going to watch any TV, online videos (including YouTube clips, news clips, hair clips) or movies. I want to see if I will use the time I would have spent watching TV doing more productive activities and see if I sleep better. I am giving myself 2 exceptions, 1) if a movie or video is shown in class as part of a lesson I will watch it, and 2) when I am jogging in the morning I will watch the news, but only when I am running. I will try and keep everyone updated, especially if I have some time freed by not watching TV.
UPDATE (11:05, Monday) : Shortly after posting this article I caught myself from watching a news clip online. I clicked play and before the video could buffer I realized I wasn’t supposed to watch video this week and closed the page. I think this is going to be much more difficult than I anticipated!
Day to Day
| no tv, TV
So last week I tried to go a week without spending any money. It turned out to be really hard, but for the most part I was able to do it. Planning out my meals for the week and only shopping for groceries once was actually very convenient and I am going to try and and do it every week. Actually, we went a little overboard in out planning and have not purchased groceries for two weeks now.
Well, for week 2 I am not going to watch any videos of any kind including videos on the internet or on the TV (we don’t have a TV, but we always watch it at my brother house). I was going to start this week, but have already failed – damn you Colbert! – so I have decided to postpone it to next week.
For additional reading on the effects of excessive TV watching I highly recommend reading work by research team Stan and Jan Berenstain.
So, it turns out not spending any money for an entire week is really, really hard. The first day of not shopping Kate fell ill, forcing me to buy her medicine from the CVS Pharmacy. I also had to send my brother a pair of snowshoes I had promised to mail him so that was another $12 I had to spend. The second day, I found out I was going to Kenya for Spring break and had to buy an airplane ticket online. Wednesday, I used my metro card (which was exempt from the experiment) to watch Kate argue Clinic case in front of a Federal immigration judge (she won). The time was delayed and so I could not attend, but I did get to go to lunch her her client and adviser. Today, I found out my passport expires before the Kenya trip so once again I had to pay an application & expedite fee and spend money to send it. So, it seems, even when I cut out all superfluous spending I am forced by shear circumstance to spend money.
On the bright side, I have not visited 1 shopping website the entire week. Also, planning and buying all my food over the weekend has been really nice too. I know exactly what to make for each meal and it had really simplified my decision-making process. Only a few more days, so lets see if I can keep it up.
Panorama Theme by 
Themocracy
