Painted Ladies

click on the photos to enlarge them.

"Strangers talk, careful what you feel. There's something there, I told ya, I'm not done with you." - Van She, Strangers

April Music

See? Sometimes I listen to bands you already know, too.

AFI - Medicate
Astrid Williamson - Eve
Audio Bullys - Only Man (Reset Remix)
Basia Bulat - Heart Of My Own
Bishop Allen - I Get Along
Brand New - You Won't Know
Chevelle - Letter From A Thief
Controller.Controller - The Raw No
Corb Lund - The Truth Comes Out
Depswa - From The Inside
Eskimo Joe - Foreign Land
Fray - Heartless (Swinghouse Session Radio Edit)
Gyroscope - Snakeskin
Howling Bells - Cities Burning Down
International Karate - A Night Without Sleep
Jack Coxon - Not Caught Up
Jana Hunter - Sleep
Land Of Talk - May You Never
Loney, Dear - Airport Surroundings
Loney, Dear - I Got Lost
Lupe Fiasco - Solar Midnite
Manchester Orchestra - I Can Barely Breathe
Muse - Uprising I decided after hearing it as a themesong for months, I kind of like it...even though I prefer their sound from Showbiz
Mute Math - Noticed
Oasis - Falling Down remember how we loved them in the 90s, then they dropped off the map?
Paper Tongues - Ride To California
Pendulum - The Other Side
Plants and Animals - Tom Cruz
Puddle of Mudd - Spaceship also about Tom Cruise. what?
Sick Puppies - You're Going Down
Slipknot - Snuff
The Blank Tapes – This Is What’s Inside
The Gutter Twins - Each to Each hmm. to bold or not. I've long been in love with Greg Dulli's voice and know Mark Lanegan's other stuff, so...
The National - About Today
Tupelo Honey - Because Of You
Yeasayer - Love Me Girl

As usual:
Bold = I have other songs by them in my mp3/cd collection
Italic = I'd heard but didn't like other songs by them
Neither = never heard of them before


"Falling in and out of love, something sweet to throw away. I want something good to die for, to make it beautiful to live" - Queens of the Stone Age, Go With The Flow

Threatening Love Letters

This blog is what, eleven months old? and it occurred to me recently that I never explained what the name means. It's pretty simple, really:

I work with one of my mother's friends, and she likes to tease me a bit, just like my mom does. Days before I started this blog, I was outlining a scene of a story during break and as she was walking by she noticed I was writing. "What are you writing?" she quipped. "Love letters?"

"No," I shot back. "Threatening letters."

She laughed and went on her way, and I became intrigued by the idea of letters that were both love letters and threatening at the same time - kind of like the one in the banner. I googled the term, and got almost no hits that weren't "...threatening. Love letters..." you know, as the end of one thought and the beginning of the next, not a cohesive phrase.

My brand new blog needed a name a few days later, so...


"Your words are pictures in my head." - The Papertiger Sound, Magnetic North

Knock it off, Brain

Very funny, Brain. We spend two days thinking about all the reasons why someone is totally off limits (this time), and then you make me dream about him? Jesus. I suppose I should be grateful that everyone remained fully dressed in the dream.

No more of this, Brain. You won't convince me to take that path again. It only leads to heartache later on.

Update: May 21st, 2010
So...I dreamed about him again this week, but in this second dream I ran away from him. Yes, literally. That's more like it! And I dreamed about someone else instead last night, so that's better too :)


"She dreams in digital, cause it's better then nothing, now that control is gone." - Orgy, Fiction (Dreams in Digital)

Just when you think you're out...

I thought I was going to have this week off from work, but it didn't turn out that way. The project from hell wasn't even over 24 hours before I got called in to proof read some training materials, and the week got weirder from there. Weirder in one regard than I can really cope with in a mature manner (near total avoidance isn't mature), and one in much nicer way.

So, this is what I would have done if I'd actually had the week off...

* worked really hard on my pansy garden. Last Thursday, when I still thought I had time off, I bought a dozen six packs of pansies to add to the ones I already had, and the plan was to plant them all and put in mulch. So far I've planted 2/3rds of them and the mulch is still in the basement. I don't even particularly like the color pink, but I still find myself looking for ones that look like this to contrast the purples, wine reds, yellows and oranges I've already got.

* indulged in an Andrew-Lee Potts marathon. You probably don't even know who he is, but a few months ago I fell in love with the characters he played in Alice and Primeval. I've watched everything with him in it that I can get my hands on. And I've seen Alice five times since it first aired on syfy in December. Don't judge me!

* maybe have gotten some writing done on Pull - that novel about bringing people back from the afterlife - and/or various short stories. Maybe not, it's hard to say. I've been too drained to do much lately, and it's kind of frustrating...there's a flash fiction contest this weekend that I want to do, and maybe that'll help me get back in the right mindset.

* actually played the new version of Dance Dance Revolution I bought last week.

* gotten around to this month's music post.

* possibly have found something else to take pictures of, because I look at pictures I've taken like the ones below and remember that photography is fun. I don't want to think too much about that though, or else my lust for a digital SLR camera might bubble up. Someday I'll be able to afford to spend $700 on a camera, right? haha.

Oh well. Like everyone else, I could use the money, so it hasn't been all bad.

"You say we're friends so I'll just guard this heart. If I don't you might tear me apart." - Bowling For Soup, Guard My Heart