Let’s do a Friday favorite!  Favorite tree.

This one was easy, because I passionately hate having a big weedy yard, but the ONE thing about our yard that I love is the Satomi Dogwood tree right outside the front picture window.  I love the short and wide shape of it, how it’s all twiggy and bare in the winter, and, of course, the pink flowers in the spring!  It changes every year, I assume depending on the specifics of the weather - this year it got super leafy but not so many flowers, but that’s okay I still love it.  We actually have 2 of these in the front yard, but the second one is hidden over on the other side where I ignore the weedy chaos so it doesn’t get the love.  Sorry, second dogwood.

I also love a forest full of Douglas Firs, thanks to living in the Pacific Northwest, and Agent Dale Cooper!  ”They’re really something.”  And there are actually lots of other types of trees that I really love the look of and stuff, but I decided to go for a personal life type favorite here to keep it easier.

And speaking of forests… I’m sadly deciding to pass on the other week 8 favorite, woodland creature.  I’ve been thinking about it in the back of my head for weeks and I just don’t have one.  Whenever I watch things like Planet Earth and learn neat things about animals, I love every animal, but then I always forget all the cool things I learned, or who does what, etc.  There are so many animals with really incredible traits and I just don’t know enough (or retain knowledge well enough) to label any one animal as a favorite.  So I’m releasing myself of the pressure of this favorite hanging over my head and passing on it, sorry about that.

{Part of a Friday series with Vivian, Alex, and Star that celebrates our power to discern, discriminate, decide and declare. Please join us in the comments or on your own site if you have a few favorites, too.}

Just now, I finally watched this Amanda Palmer TED Talk I’d been hearing about for months (from Kim and others), and yes, like everyone has already said, you must watch it (especially if you create for a living).  I paused it to get something halfway through, and that image just happened to be the pause screen, so I snapped a screenshot.  Anyway…

I wanted to just write some stream-of-consciousness thoughts I had right now, while it’s fresh.  As I watched, I kept thinking how it did, or did not, or could, relate to me (not in a self-obsessed way, just in an inspiring TED Talk way, you know) and my thoughts went something like… Wow, that’s all cool for her, being the type of person who can do things like make prolonged eye contact and sleep on strangers’ couches, and ask fans for favors, but I, awkward introvert that I am, would pretty much rather sleep in a car than on a stranger’s couch (no offense to strangers or to couch-surfers, but that’s just me and my introversion, you know) so her stories aren’t really connecting with me on a personal level, though they are fun and inspiring on a conceptual level… And then on to the internet part, and the kickstarter campaign, and I’m thinking… That’s so awesome and inspiring, maybe I should do a kickstarter for my next big project idea and this is now more relatable to me personally, now that she’s talking about connecting over the internet, as opposed to connecting literally (although her internet connecting did result in her fans drawing on her literal naked body… again, admirable and impressive that she can connect that completely with her fans, but not relatable to me)… Then right at the end, it hit me!  This isn’t just relatable in an “oh she’s so inspiring, she’s making me want to try doing a kickstarter and try to connect with people more” kind of way, she’s already talking about EXACTLY what I do!  In case you haven’t watched the video, I’ll first tell you that the whole thing is about trust, between her and her fans, each trusting each other, her giving them her art, and asking them for help when she needs it, and them giving their help, in return for the art she’s given them.  So hey, these pattern collections I do, they are exactly what she’s talking about!  I put out a collection for pre-order, hoping that I’ve built up enough trust in a few of you over the years of design work I’ve put out there that you’ll see 1 design with 2 or 3 or more unknown future designs on their way, and you’ll trust me that those un-seen designs will be interesting and you’ll like them.  And on my end, I make these big plans for this long-term project, I have a hard time getting by, paying the bills and whatnot, and can’t just sit hidden making this collection for two months (or more) - I need your help to make it happen.  So I ask you for help by releasing the pre-order, and I trust you that enough of you will pre-order to help me get through the time it takes to complete the collection.  Totally two-way trust just like Amanda talked about, my pre-order releases are exactly like her asking for help, and every single sale I get is an amazing sign of trust which is so great and wonderful I can’t even tell you how much it means to me that I can even do collections the way I do them and it works.  When I sell a finished pattern, that’s great, but it’s a sale sale; when I sell a pre-order, that’s different, that’s trust, that’s asking and receiving, and connecting.  So, thank you from the bottom of my heart to anyone who has ever pre-ordered a collection from me, you’ve helped me when I needed it, and thank you Amanda, for helping me look at it all in a slightly different way.

Wow, that was indeed some stream-of-consciousness rambling there, I didn’t even know where I was going when I started, but there I went!  Also, you should read Kim’s post about the video too because it’s good stuff.  Okay, I’m done, for reals now.

Belated Friday Favorite, week 7: bogus swear word (when in mixed company).

(Yeah, I feel behind again, oops.) I’m going with crazypants. As in, this week has been crazypants, or that dude is crazypants.

I googled image searched and that was my favorite picture out of the first couple rows of results - it came from here.

Bogus swear words I use often include boring ones like shoot and freakin’… I’m always hearing/reading words or phrases and saying “I’ve got to remember to start saying that!” and I always forget them. Mostly, I’m talking to Pete or my cat so there’s no need to use the bogus versions ;)

{Part of a Friday series with Vivian, Alex, and Star that celebrates our power to discern, discriminate, decide and declare. Please join us in the comments or on your own site if you have a few favorites, too.}

Some outtakes (bloopers?) from my recent photoshoot, for your entertainment.  And a peek at my upcoming cabled shawl design!  (It’ll be released in about 10 days, it’s pre-order-able here.)

Friday favorite, week 7:  ecological sin (being things that are deleterious to our planet’s resources but that you enjoy anyway)

Like Star pointed out, simply living is deleterious to our planet’s resources… So instead of choosing something that is basically a part of being alive in this country and living the kind of life I live (using computers, owning a car, even if I do drive it very little, having electricity and heat, etc), I’ve chosen something that I could relatively easily go on living without, but I choose not too.

For some unfortunate reason, my lips are badly addicted to ChapStick brand lip balm, with all of its petroleum jelly badness.  I have a huge collection of all-natural lip balms which I buy regularly, ranging from standard Burt’s Bees to craft-fair homemade stuff, but every single one leaves my lips feeling dry and annoyed to some extent a short while later.  Now, I know it wouldn’t take long to wean myself off of the bad stuff and move on with my life, but I just keep going back to it.  So, it’s not my pick for favorite because I love it, but more because it’s something I use constantly, have with me always, must buy when I run out, and I know it’s not good.  Guilty favorite, but it’s a guilty category.

By the way, I’m blogging the actual week 7 favorite on the actual Friday, good on me!  I’ll do the part 2 of this week’s favorites later though…

{Part of a Friday series with Vivian, Alex, and Star that celebrates our power to discern, discriminate, decide and declare. Please join us in the comments or on your own site if you have a few favorites, too.}

Friday favorites week 6 (final catch-up!):  favorite children’s book

This one has been tough… If you asked third grade Lee her favorite book, she definitely would have said Sideways Stories from Wayside School.  She also loved Wayside School is Falling Down and Someday Angeline, also by Louis Sachar.

If you asked kid Lee another time, she might have said Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein, or another Shel Silverstein book…

Kid Lee at some point also superloved A Wrinkle in Time, Tuck Everlasting, Bridge to Terabithia, Roald Dahl books, Encyclopedia Brown books, and Baby-sitters Club books…

Most of these, I haven’t read since I was a kid, so I can’t really rank them now since my memory is crap, but I’m pretty sure I’d still like Shel Silverstein stuff today.

I did re-read Matilda as an adult, and I still loved it, so that’s the book that first popped into my head when I saw this category, an almost-favorite I think, I’ll call it my second place pick.

For my actual number one favorite, I’m going to answer as present-day Lee instead of as kid Lee, and choose a book (series) that didn’t yet exist when I was a kid.  I’ve read the first three books in the Lemony Snicket A Series of Unfortunate Events series and I really liked them a lot - I think if the books were around when I was 11 or so (I don’t know, whatever age is okay for kids to read kind of disturbing things), I would have totally loved them.  So, I’m channeling my current inner child to answer this one, instead of trying to access foggy memories of youth - A Series of Unfortunate Events is my answer, and I guess if I have to choose one specific book, I think The Wide Window was my favorite out of the three I’ve read.  Now that I’m thinking about them though, I’m going to have to read some more!

{Part of a Friday series with Vivian, Alex, and Star that celebrates our power to discern, discriminate, decide and declare. Please join us in the comments or on your own site if you have a few favorites, too.}

Friday favorites catch-up week 6:  Favorite old movie (before 1965)

This favorite was an easy choice for me, the only movie I’ve loved since I was a wee little kid and I still love to this day: The Sound of Music!  I think I could watch it once a week (or, okay once a month probably) without ever tiring of it, and I regularly listen to the soundtrack (on vinyl!), always singing along…

I have confidence in sunshine
I have confidence in rain
I have confidence that spring will come again
Besides which you see I have confidence in me

Strength doesn’t lie in numbers
Strength doesn’t lie in wealth
Strength lies in nights of peaceful slumbers
When you wake up — Wake Up!

It tells me all I trust I lead my heart to
All I trust becomes my own
I have confidence in confidence alone
(Oh help!)
I have confidence in confidence alone
Besides which you see I have confidence in me!

My second place pick is The Apartment (1960), which I really love a lot.  One of my favorite movie lines of all time (made great by the context and delivery, of course): “Yes, I know. I like it that way. Makes me look the way I feel.”

I don’t have any other runners up which come to mind without thinking too hard (and I have thought a bit), but I loved a lot of old movies when I was a kid (which I’m sure wouldn’t hold up into adulthood so well):  The Parent Trap (1961), Mary Poppins (1964)… oops turns out most of my other childhood much-loved movies were post-1965, so the list ends there.

{Part of a Friday series with Vivian, Alex, and Star that celebrates our power to discern, discriminate, decide and declare. Please join us in the comments or on your own site if you have a few favorites, too.}

Friday favorites catch-up, week 5: board game / game to play with a partner or group

I go through phases with games, and for the last few months I’ve been really into this game - Bohnanza. It’s a German game, so it’s a play on words, as bohn means bean in German. So, it’s a bean-based card game… That sounds boring but it’s so not! The way you play with 2 players vs with 3 or more players is totally different, like two different games, but they’re both fun - the many-player version is best, but Pete and I play it often and it’s fun that way too. So that’s that!

I have fun playing pretty much any board game with friends; I’m often the worst player at certain types of games, but that doesn’t matter, it’s still fun. I don’t love the Lovecraft-themed cooperative games Arkham Horror and Mansions of Madness quite as much as some of my buddies, but I do always have tons of fun playing them so those two games are close runners up! I also love Dixit, and Apples to Apples is always fun.

There are a bunch that I’ve liked a lot but I’ve only played a couple times each, so I can’t rank them really since I’d want more experience to know how high they are… Those include Small World, Ticket to Ride (I’ve played the iPad version of this one a ton, it’s great!), Forbidden Island, Lords of Waterdeep, Zooloretto, I know I’m forgetting some… Oh yeah I’m a huge nerd, didn’t you know?

For non board games, I have two big favorites… The Leonard Maltin game! And pictionary, which I always tend to play the non official board game way - either with the iPad app I have (I think it’s called sketch-n-guess) or using an iPad drawing app and movie titles. I play it this way with my family during holiday gatherings - we each write like 5 movie titles on scraps of paper, put them all in a bowl, then take turns picking a movie at random and drawing it on the iPad. Super fun!

As for more all-time favorites, I’ve always loved Trivial Pursuit, especially with pop culture decks, but the newish card version is more fun (more fast paced) than the board version.  And speaking of card versions of old games, i’ve always hated Monopoly but the card game Monopoly Deal is great! I used to love Taboo but haven’t played it in years.  I think my favorite game when I was a kid was Clue.  Okay I could keep going listing games but I’ll stop now!  Enough!

{Part of a Friday series with Vivian, Alex, and Star that celebrates our power to discern, discriminate, decide and declare. Please join us in the comments or on your own site if you have a few favorites, too.}

Friday Favorites catch-up week 5:  favorite subject in school.

I loved all art classes (well, most) but I think my favorite was always photography!

I took a full year of it in high school, where it was a total slacker class; you could get away with sitting still for the maybe-hour-per-week of teacher talking, print your stuff for the week in one day, then spend the rest of the week’s class hours sitting around talking and doing nothing, which is what most of the kids did.  Oh but not me!  I was a huge nerd and I would bring in my own negatives from home (childhood snapshots, photos of my friends) and print them in the darkroom, I would take extra shots for the weekly assignments and print all the ones I liked, I would maximize my access to a darkroom!  I feel so sad when I think that so few kids will ever get to experience a real darkroom anymore :(

Then in college, I would choose to use the darkroom in the middle of the night, pulling all-nighters regularly in there, so that I’d have it all to myself.  And I’d again print lots more than just the assignments, experimenting with filters and overlapping negatives (like in the above image, totally analog film image, no photoshopping!) and whatever else I could think of to do while I had darkroom access.  Fun nerdy times!

As for a normal, required type school subject, my teenage self would not agree, and this doesn’t go for college, just high school, but I have to say math.  I always thought of myself as an artist, and in my immature kid brain math and art were like opposites, so if I was an artist then I had to hate math.  But I rocked at it, I was always at the top of the honors classes, aced the AP calculus test, and I think that’s all because I subconsciously enjoyed it.  Of course now, math and art go hand in hand in what I do with my life, so it all makes sense and I’m no longer conflicted about my identity as a nerdy mathy artist.

{Part of a Friday series with Vivian, Alex, and Star that celebrates our power to discern, discriminate, decide and declare. Please join us in the comments or on your own site if you have a few favorites, too.}

Friday favorites catch-up week 4 part 2 (part 1 was food):  favorite drink.

I love a lot of drinks for different reasons, but day to day I usually tend to drink water for thirst, lots of caffeine for energy, and often something in the adult drink category to wind down at night, so straight up taste is not normally the reason I choose to drink something… So I got thinking, what’s my favorite drink when I think about only taste, no other purpose?

And I decided my number one winner for favorite drink, for taste alone, is fresh squeezed orange juice.  I don’t drink it often, but whenever I do it’s always even yummier than I expect it to be!

As for favorite drinks that serve other purposes… I drink coffee every day, and I love a good cup of plain ol’ coffee with (unflavored!) soy milk.  My favorite coffee drink (which I only have occasionally, when I feel like spending a few bucks) is a soy latte, no sweeteners, no flavor syrups.

Runners up for caffeinated drinks are hot black tea with honey and soy milk (Tazo Organic Chai, Good Earth Sweet & Spicy, a good earl grey…) in the winter, and flavored black iced tea (no sweetener) in the summer, and I know it’s bad but I do kind of love Coke Zero.

And for adult drinks, my vague answer is microbrew beer, but I think my favorite is a somewhat recent discovery - beer brewed with peppers.  I’ll pick 2… For colder months, the darker beer, Breakside Brewery’s Aztec Ale (from the website: “an amber beer made with Dutch chocolate, cacao nibs, and habanero and serrano chilies”).  And during warmer months, the lighter beer, Burnside Brewing Company’s Sweet Heat (from the website: “a wheat ale with an addition of 200 pounds of Apricot puree, then dry hopped with imported Jamaican Scotch Bonnet peppers”) - this one might actually be my number one favorite beer ever, it’s so freaking tasty, although I wouldn’t want to drink it all the time for fear of it losing its kick to my tastebuds, it’s a special occasions only type beer.

Side note, both the photos happen to be from this Twin Peaks trip, so that’s fun!  (I didn’t have photos of my exact favorite picks.)

{Part of a Friday series with Vivian, Alex, and Star that celebrates our power to discern, discriminate, decide and declare. Please join us in the comments or on your own site if you have a few favorites, too.}

Friday Favorites catch-up week 4:  favorite food.

This really feels like it needs to be broken up into categories or something… this is gonna be a long one…

For favorite food meaning a type of food I could eat every day and never get bored with it ever I love it so much is a clear winner for me:  burritos!  It’s kind of cheating maybe since you could put anything in a big tortilla and call it a burrito, so of course I’d never get bored since I could fill it with different things every day, but whatever, I love burritos of all kinds, from totally traditional (well, as traditional as a vegetarian burrito can get) to super non-traditional (keep reading), so I’m calling “burrito” my favorite food.

As for a specific favorite burrito, it depends on my food-mood, but I’m going to say Mi Mero Mole’s Papas y Nopales (potatoes and cactus) burrito, which is a traditional Mexico City style guisado.  My non-traditional seasonal once-a-year-only favorite burrito (which I look forward to every year and it never disappoints!) is Laughing Planet’s holiday burrito (aka thanksgiving burrito) - basically an entire thanksgiving dinner stuffed into a tortilla (I sub tempeh for the turkey), including mashed potatoes and sweet potatoes, cranberry relish, broccoli, corn, and a delicious vegetarian gravy to dip it in.  Ohmygoshsoyummy.  It’s actually the burrito in this photo!  I do miss San Diego mexican food, but Portland has plenty of great choices, especially for vegetarian eaters.

Close second for food I love always is pizza, and nachos are a runner-up. (I do eat healthier meals most of the time than what I’m talking about here, but hey, favorites aren’t supposed to be the most healthy, right?)  Oh, and East Side Deli fake meat sandwich, another close runner up.

And now a couple of specific food categories, since the above is kind of dinner meal food favorites.

Favorite junk/snack food:  Trader Joe’s Baked Jalapeño Cheese Crunchies.

Favorite breakfast:  It’s a tie between Jam’s Loaded Bowl (hash browns, cheese, and an awesome vegetarian fake-sausage-based gravy) with tofu and black beans added to it, and Cadillac Cafe’s Eggs Mazatlan (pictured up there, with the guac and olives).  I occasionally like a good sweet breakfast - my favorite in that category would be Waffle Window, something with a seasonal fruit + chocolate or other sweet ingredients - but I usually will go for a savory breakfast choice.

And favorite dessert food:  Pie!  I recently was a “celebrity” judge of a pie bake-off (at a yarn shop) and learned that, when it comes to me and pie, the type/flavor of the pie doesn’t matter nearly as much as the quality of the pie, in fact the type hardly matters at all - I love all pie if it’s good pie!  My clear winner (by looking at the detailed score sheet I had to fill out) was a type of pie I never would have expected to win my vote - a strawberry rhubarb.  I’d normally think that I like a lot of pie types much more than strawberry rhubarb, but damn, that was a tasty pie!  Side note, we love pie so much, we had wedding pie instead of wedding cake!

To be specific about favorite sweets: my absolute favorite type of dessert-y treat is something that combines dark chocolate with fruit.  Possibly the best pie I ever had was a dark chocolate banana cream pie, and I always love chocolate covered strawberries, orange dark chocolate bars, etc…

Okay there lots of other foods I love, and favorites are so hard with food, since what I want to eat at any given time depends on my mood, what I’ve eaten earlier that day and the day before (I’m all about variety!), what’s in season, etc etc.  Besides all this unhealthy stuff I’ve been listing, I also love a good salad, or veggie stir-fry type meal (especially with tofu or fake meat involved)… veggies yumyumyum.  Oh and good vegetarian sushi (specifically from this place we just went to in New York)!  And a good house-made-patty veggie burger.  And pad kee mao with tofu.  And most dishes involving fake chicken (I’m one of those vegetarians that stopped eating meat because I don’t like real meat, but I love fake meat).  Okay I’ll stop now for reals!

{Part of a Friday series with Vivian, Alex, and Star that celebrates our power to discern, discriminate, decide and declare. Please join us in the comments or on your own site if you have a few favorites, too.}

Friday Favorites catch-up from week 3:  favorite love story.

For this one, I’m kind of choosing my favorite relationship/couple more so than “story”… but I have plenty of runners up for all different types of love stories.

My winner:  April Ludgate and Andy Dwyre from Parks & Recreation.  I do love how they got together in the first place - April seeming too-cool for Andy’s goofy dude-ness, and her friends teasing her for hanging out with him, to which she basically said something like fuck you, he makes me laugh and I’ll like whomever I want to like.  Mostly I love them as an ongoing couple, how they balance each others’ weirdness perfectly and make each other happy and support each other always, and don’t get in stupid sitcom-y fights all the time, and on the flip-side of that, don’t act unrealistically sappy-in-love either.  If you don’t believe me that they are the most awesomesauce couple, check out this tumblr that I just found (and am now following, of course!).  Oh, and while we’re talking about Parks & Rec, I’ll mention that I superlove Leslie + Ben as well.

Favorite love story movies:  1) Punch-Drunk Love.  2) Benny & Joon.  3) The Colin Firth + Lúcia Moniz storyline of Love, Actually (there are several storylines I dislike in this movie, but I also really like Bill Nighy + Gregor Fisher and Hugh Grant + Martine McCutcheon, and Martin Freeman + Joanna Page are adorable).

Runner up:  Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.  The only thing that keeps this from being at the top is that I can’t help being a bit cynical about it - I do so love the story of them meeting the second time (“meet me in Montauk” etc) and this scene at the end is so great, but, I feel like we already saw where it’s going to end up.  I guess I could say this is my number one favorite love story as a story, since this is my favorite movie of all the ones listed, but when I think “favorite love story” I want it to have a happy ending, and while I guess you could view this one optimistically and figure they’ve matured and they’ll learn from past mistakes and it’ll all go better the second time around, it just always feels bittersweet to me.

And a couple more:  Dirty Dancing because I loved it when I was 13 and I still love it, even if you laugh at me for it!  And Buffy + Spike because what other love story involves someone voluntarily enduring torture to earn a soul to get the girl and then also saving the world?  C’mon that had to be on this list.

{Part of a Friday series with Vivian, Alex, and Star that celebrates our power to discern, discriminate, decide and declare. Please join us in the comments or on your own site if you have a few favorites, too.}

Okay that favorite-a-day plan died when I hit a brick wall with the next one and spent the whole week thinking about it (and re-watching like seven animated movies), but I’m back today at least…

Friday favorite for week 3 (as I catch up): favorite animated movie.

This was a tough one.  I have this terrible movie memory that makes it so I’ll remember loving a movie when I saw it, but I’ll barely actually remember the movie (until I’ve seen it 2 or more times, then it starts to stick)… when I started thinking about animated movies that I’ve loved, I realized most of them were in my head this way.  I saw them when they first came out, loved them at the time, but had no idea how to rank them since they were all so foggy in my head.  So after re-watching several (but not all) of them that I was considering, here are my results.

First favorite:  A Scanner Darkly.  Love the movie, love the animation style.

Second place if I absolutely must rank, but basically tied for first I think:  Mary and Max (on netflix instant if you haven’t seen it). Beautiful, sad but kind of happy at the same time, thoughtful, great movie.

Runners up for different reasons…

Fantastic Mr. Fox:  While re-watching this the other night, I was fully set on naming it as number one for awhile, until I realized by the end that it totally doesn’t pass the Bechdel test, which, while merely frustrating-as-hell with grown up movies, is infuriating and inexcusable to me with a movie for kids.  C’mon Wes, this would be such a great film if only there were a teensy bit more female presence beyond the supportive wife.  Seriously.

Coraline:  This doesn’t have an official ranking because I haven’t had a chance to re-watch it yet, and my memory from having seen it once, years ago in 3D in the theater, is super foggy.  I remember liking it a ton, and I remember the 3D being incredible, so I’m not sure how much I’ll like it at home - I expect to like it a lot, so maybe it would be my third place, but yeah, I just don’t know.

Walle:  This is a weird one… when I saw it in the theater, I absolutely loved it, so I thought it might be my number one pick, but upon re-watching at home (while knitting, as I always watch things at home), it just wasn’t the same.  This film really deserves, and kind of requires, full 100% attention, or else it’s just so-so, at least that’s how it was to me during my re-watch. So, if you haven’t yet seen it and you plan to, I highly recommend leaving the knitting behind, turning off all the lights, and pretending you’re in the theater, no distractions.

Lastly, just to throw in a more traditional pick - when I was a kid, my favorite animated movie was Beauty and the Beast, which I still like a lot since Belle is a big nerd and the townspeople all think she’s a total weirdo for liking books!  Books?!  A Disney princess?  Those things don’t go together!  Yay, Belle!

So, that’s that, a week in the making… I re-watched a few others also that didn’t make the cut.  And, in reading Vivian’s and Star’s posts for this favorite, I remembered that I really need to see more Miyazaki movies!  I’ve seen The Secret World of Arrietty, which I liked a lot and would have been one of the next movies to go onto my list if I had kept going, and Ponyo, which was also great, but I need to see all the ones Vivian and Star named as their favorites - My Neighbor Totoro, Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, and Kiki’s Delivery Service.  Added to my mental queue!

{Part of a Friday series with Vivian, Alex, and Star that celebrates our power to discern, discriminate, decide and declare. Please join us in the comments or on your own site if you have a few favorites, too.}

Belated week 2 Friday Favorite as I play catch up:  favorite modern convenience.

I know it looks like I’m copying Alex, but this is the answer I immediately thought of when I first read the list… it’s got to be the internet.  My life and career would be totally different if there was no internet, and I really love my job as it is, and I also love all the silly, fun, and nerdy things like tumblr and pinterest and twitter and streaming video and wikipedia, so there you go, I say the internet.

{Part of a Friday series with Vivian, Alex, and Star that celebrates our power to discern, discriminate, decide and declare. Please join us in the comments or on your own site if you have a few favorites, too.}