welcome to the talent show

the grass is always greener on the other side, so they say.  do you ever think about the one or two things that you wish you could do, but can't (or at least can't do right now)?  of course you do.  and so do i.

mike's talent: comedy and impersonations.  there's something that's in him that allows him to read situations and people so well.  and he loves to make people laugh.  he can pull lines out of nowhere and get the crowd rolling.  i, on the other hand, am only funny sometimes and it's usually unintentional.  and i can't tell a story worth anything.  i may start telling a story and get halfway through and realize that no one will think it's funny or the story will just kind of drop off without a proper climactic ending--which reminds me of one of the best movie lines ever from dumb & dumber where lloyd is at the 7/11 and says to the guys standing outside, "cool, big gulps!.....(long pause)......well, see you later!"  this is exactly what i want to say at the end of most of my stories.  

but there are two things that i wish i could do, that i can't right now.  one, i'll never be able to do because it doesn't come naturally--and that's to sing (and sing well).  which is why i LOVE american idol.  when people have great voices i get goosebumps and it's just amazing how a song can move you like that.  i wish i could sing.  of course, i can still sing whenever i feel the inspiration!  it just won't be very pretty.

the other thing that i wish i could do was take cool photographs.  i never took a photography class (except for a short lesson in college where a columbian photographer came to help us work on a semester-long project...only problem, he only spoke spanish...it's difficult to figure out how to properly use the manual settings on a 35mm camera when your professor is using vocabulary like 'la apertura' and 'la exposicion' and speaking a million miles a minute).  i see so many great photos and wish that i could produce some myself using depth and light to create interesting images.  

i bring this up because on my drive home from work today, the moon was beginning to rise over the east and it was shining through some patchy clouds.  the moon looked bigger than i'd seen it in a while and the clouds gave the sky around it a very cool effect.  being the semi-aspiring photographer that i am, i wanted to take a cool photo of it when i got home.  and maybe it's the fact that i own a fairly standard point-and-shoot digital camera which doesn't allow me to create the effects that i want.  i played and played around with the camera's settings, but all i could come up with are the following photos.  all blurry and all look like there are multiple moons.  nice, kirstin.  

maybe one day, i'll actually take a class to relearn the basics and actually spend the money to get a nice camera.  but for now, you won't be seeing any of my images in any galleries selling for far too much money.  here's to hoping, though!

election on my mind

etiquette says: never ask someone their age, how much money they make, or what their political affiliation is.

and there's good reason for it too. it gets everyone all riled up and people end up with hurt spirits. i have never been huge into politics, but i still wanted to at least bring up the subject because this is such a major voting year. we may have the first black president and there are some very heated debates on both sides over certain ballot measures--specifically proposition 8.

(beginning of rant.)

if there is one thing i've learned since moving to san clemente, it's that orange county is much more conservative than i thought. overall i think of california as much more liberal than the rest of the country and there are reasons for that. even though the governator is republican, we still voted a former movie star to be our governor. i don't think many other states would do that (and two of my previous roommates in san francisco were from ohio and they said that everyone from their hometown was in awe and almost found it funny when we voted him into office).

anyway, i just have to say that i don't care what political party you are affiliated with or whether you voted for obama or mccain, there is no reason that prop 8 should have been on the ballot at all. but since it was on the ballot, i can't seem to see why someone would vote to limit the rights of a certain group of people. why shouldn't gay people be allowed to get married? it should be their right. end of story. over the past few weeks there have been innumerable amounts of 'yes on 8' signs propped up in the median as i drive the short 2 miles to work. i smile on days when i know someone has taken down many of the signs i saw the previous day. and i am frustrated the next day when i see 200 new ones that have been put up. and when i say 200 signs in 2 miles, i'm serious. those signs were posted within feet of each other--one right after the next. and i don't know where all this manpower is coming from to post all those signs.

i can understand that there is an older generation that is set in their ways and may never change their point of view, but it's so difficult for me to fathom that there are members of the younger generation who are out on the street corner holding up 'yes on 8' signs. the intolerance is just incredible. it just makes me wonder why they care so much. they say they are protecting the 'traditional' marriage, but i see it as hate. how is someone in their 20s really going to be affected by allowing gay people to get married? the younger generation is supposed to see the bigger picture. we read history books about the civil rights movement and were supposed to have learned from previous mistakes. but the same thing is happening all over again. prop 8 would limit the rights of gay people and we're supposed to be a nation based on equality? how does that work?

to me marriage is not about a man and a woman. marriage is about a partnership and commitment to another person. if people claim to be protecting marriage they should be out on the street corners of las vegas campaigning to stop all the drunk people from getting married via drive through. when i was living in san francisco and mayor gavin newsom allowed gay marriages, you would read about these stories of gay couples who have been together for 20, 30, 40 years. and they will still be together for years to come whether or not prop 8 passes. but these individuals are committed to each other and should be able to call themselves spouse and spouse.

if you can't already tell, i voted no on prop 8. i apologize for the ranting, but you probably won't hear it from me again for at least another 4 years. and that's only if there's another issue like this.

(end of rant.)

halloween

well.  halloween was fairly uneventful for these harveys.  there was debate about what we wanted to do to celebrate the festivities.  but truth be told, halloween is not as fun if you don't plan WAY in advance.  i think this is because i try to cut costs and make the costume myself because the prepackaged outfits are at least forty buck a pop!!  AND most of the ones for the girls are the "sexy" versions and i don't like to show off my legs that much.  so i end up with very little time to put together my outfit.

anyway, i ended up running around the few days before halloween to try to figure out what i was going to wear.  i had had this idea a couple years ago for mike and i to be 'thing 1 and thing 2' from the cat in the hat--super easy to make and kind of a his and hers ensemble.  the only problem is that mike wasn't sure that he wanted to be the other half of my outfit.  so i went ahead and made my own 'thing 1' costume and sewed the felt onto my red shirt.  mike tried looking for something else to be, but most of the halloween places around here were low on inventory.  he ended up with a grumpy old man mask and i ended up as 'thing 1 minus thing 2.'  

mike's on a new schedule for work that keeps him awake until the wee hours of the morning so he was pretty wiped out and didn't want to spend the energy going to a party.  so we chose the mellower version of halloween and ended up just going to my parents house to hand out candy, while mike had fun trying to scare the kids by jumping out from behind the door with his mask on.  

i guess we better start planning now for halloween 2009...

halloween at work.  it was one of those things that because i'm new there was going to be some sort of joke on the new girl where they convince her that everyone is going to dress up, but no one actually does.  luckily there were a few other that got dressed up.  this is our marketing manager laura (lead singer of weezer), our marketing director matt (scary clown), and me (thing 1).