Labor Day Roundup of Things

First up, if you live in the Seattle area you should come down to MOHAI on Thursday and enjoy all the free fashion-related stuff we've got going on. Read about it here. And vote for your favorite shoe here. (Those two thoughts relate, I promise)

Last Saturday my friends Curt and Jong had a housewarming party for their new place, and asked people to dress up in something with a hot or cold theme. After much closet-related soul searching, Olivia and I came up with the very abstract idea of "The cooling down of tensions at the end of the Cold War"--which basically meant that Olivia dressed up like someone young in the 1980s and I dressed vaguely like an old Russian lady. In other words: we killed it.

We couldn't decide which of us was Glasnost and which was Perestroika 

On Monday we had an all staff retreat (which technically wasn't a retreat because we just met in the conference rooms at the museum) which kicked off with the facilitators asking us to write our name on a big piece of paper and then decorate the paper with non-work things that we were passionate about. I had a hard time with this assignment because 1) Many of my passions are work related, 2) those that aren't work related sound lame when summarized on paper, and 3) I don't appreciate mandatory craft time at 8:30 in the morning.

(A note about #2: Just about everyone in Seattle is "outdoorsy." They go camping, hiking, canoeing, biking, skiing, and probably hybrids like canoe camping and ski biking. So most people decorated their vision boards with mountains and water and sporting equipment. And while I am totally comfortable with my current life choices to spend most of my downtime watching old DVDs of Law and Order: Criminal Intent with my roommate, it is difficult to draw that on a poster and not look like the saddest person.)

Nobody Understands

I ended up writing three things on my paper, accompanied by half-assed drawings: singing, spending time with friends (illustrated with a TV and a beer), and the slightly work-related but totally honest "Shopping for clothes/ wearing clothes/ thinking about clothes."

In my mind, the prize for the best poster went to my friend Amanda who didn't totally hear the whole assignment and just wrote her name and drew an arrow pointing to it. I saw it and I thought, Yes, Awesome. You know what I'm passionate about? Me. Because me doesn't force me to make cheesy posters.