pink

Pink is not my favorite color.  I don't think it ever has been (well, maybe when I was, say, 6.  But that's an increasingly long time ago).  For as long as I can remember I've liked blue and green, and, more recently, brown.  I don't hate pink; I just don't often choose it.

Thus I rarely buy pink clothing, and I have never decorated in pink.  But this last week I did both of those things, and it has been unexpectedly empowering.

My friend Beth and I began our 3x/week running regimen again, inspired by the delectable foods of the holiday season and the resulting tubbification.  Beth bought a hot pink running shirt to inspire her in this endeavor, and her choice inspired me.  So, when I was running errands last week and saw a hot pink running fleece, I knew what I had to do.  Buy it.  Wear it.  Run in it.  And do it proudly.  I like my hot pink running fleece.  It's soft.  It's bright.  It's warm.  It makes me happy--and, yes, it inspires me to get out there and run.  Go, PINK!

I also chose pink in a decorating endeavor last weekend.  Of all the rooms in our home, our downstairs bathroom is the least satisfyingly decorated (not to mention designed).  Throughout our house, beautiful bright colors warm the rooms--yellow in the living room and kitchen, green in the bedroom and study, red in the dining room.  The previous owners did a great job of painting the rooms colors Greg and I like. 

But the bathroom . . . not so much.  For one, it's painted a pale, wishy-washy blue.  I wouldn't mind a deep blue or a bright blue.  But it's just kind of blah.  Secondly, it's small.  It's doesn't have quite enough room for a standard sized tub (though Greg and I realized we could possibly take out the shelves and put in a non-standard sized tub--oh, the possibilities!!); it's not even exactly rectangular, and the angled wall makes it an even tighter space than it would be otherwise.  When we moved in, we bought a medicine cabinet and some glass shelves and a towel rack and did the best we could.  I had a dolphin shower curtain that I bought when I moved to Chicago after college, in 2002.  It has followed me from Chicago to Charlotte to Iowa to Missoula--not bad for a piece of plastic!

Lately, however, I've been wanting a change.  Perhaps this is due to not being able to do garden and yard projects this time of year.  Perhaps I just needed to do an affordable home improvement.  Either way, It Was Time.

Last week Saturday, then, Greg and I went to Ace Hardware's paint section.  I knew what I had in mind--dark brown on the lower walls and a dusky rose (all right, all right, PINK) on the upper walls.  I've appreciated the color pink more since going to Morocco, where popular colors were bright blue and a stucco/earthy pink, the colors of the sky and the earth.  As I considered various color schemes, I just couldn't get that pink out of my mind.

The helpful paint lady found just the colors I was looking for, mixed them up for me, and Greg and I went home and got to work.  After 15+ hours of clearing everything out of the bathroom, mopping the floor, cleaning the sink and toilet, washing down the walls, taping taping taping, putting on multiple coats of the deep colors I'd chosen and then touching up all the little mistakes with a tiny artist-quality paintbrush, this was the result:

How's that for making a tiny bathroom into a classy little space?  As Greg says, "It's a grown-up bathroom!"  Not bad, eh?

I have to say, that dusky rose color looks mighty fine.

goodnight, dear void

I like to think that I'm fairly up-to-date when it comes to knowing about technological advances, particularly the ones that are used daily by the average person.  But then I learn about something new, and then another something new, and I realize that I'm woefully behind and will probably never catch up.  I think I'm all right with that.  I'm more than happy NOT to have an iPhone or any kind of smart phone; more than happy NOT to have access to 1,000 TV channels, and I'll probably never use Twitter.  But I have a blog.  I use Facebook and am just getting started with Google+.  I love Netflix streaming, and I do like having a phone with a qwerty keyboard.

Sometimes when I'm having a text conversation with, say, my sister, I stop in the middle of it and think how strange it is to be sending messages back and forth using little pieces of metal and plastic that aren't visibly connected to anything.  I like that so much of this technology allows us to be better connected.  I got a text from Andrea last night that she had just seen the Nutcracker ballet, and that she thought of me during "The Waltz of the Flowers," because we spent hours dancing together to that song.  She thought of me, and, voila!, she sent a little message over the airwaves and . . . I got it. 

So the newest techie things that I've become aware of are Pinterest and Google Apps for non-profits.  The Google Apps is something that MNHC is looking into.  Our current email system, through Microsoft, is riddled with problems, spam, and ever-increasing annoyances.  Plus, it requires a bunch of electricity-sucking equipment that none of the staff has time to maintain.  The solution?  Switch our email from Microsoft exchange to Google.  Get rid of the antiquated equipment.  Put MNHC email out into the interwebs.  I just barely understand how this works, but it makes sense and seems like it'll take care of a number of our current problems as well as push us forward into a more practical and useful way of doing things.  Sweet.  Along with all this is the concept of collaboration, for example, using Google docs, and having people "go" to a central document, instead of sending out the same document twenty times via email.  That way there will be one electronic copy of it in an easy location instead of 20 electronic copies taking up hard drive space, server space, etc.  (I'm not explaining this well.  Apologies.)  At any rate, MNHC may be on the cusp of a new way of getting work done, and this new way appears to be a more efficient, not to mention sensible, way of operating.

The second cool thing I've been introduced to is Pinterest (thanks, Philip!).  It's brilliant and addicting.  How many times do we have great ideas, which we perhaps scribble down on a piece of paper or put in our journals or mention to our friends . . . and then promptly forget?  Pinterest keeps all our ideas in one place.  It's sort of like bookmarking a webpage, but having those bookmarks in a more attractive and easy-to-use format.  I've been having a great time seeing what's out there--innovative garden ideas, fun and easy crafts, ingenious ways of re-using items, etc.  It seems like such a good way of sharing our ideas with one another, a way of making our lives better, more sustainable.  It's a way of having access to everyone's brilliant notions.  (There are no doubt plenty of less-than-brilliant notions portrayed, too, but they're pretty easy to ignore.)

Most of us, myself included, find ourselves sitting in front of screens more than we'd like as it is.  But I do like to learn about cool and interesting new technologies and social networking opportunities out there.  If I can be wise in the ways I use these new resources, perhaps they'll help to simplify my life rather than complicate it.  Here's hoping.

And now, I'm off to the Holiday Pops concert by the Missoula Symphony Orchestra.  It's a lovely sunny, snowy day and Christmas is in the air!  Fa la la la la, la la la la!