Sky Rockets In Flight...

This was the sky when I resurfaced from my mom's house after the world almost ended in a mini-hurricane yesterday:

Gotta love that ipopple! The picture got me thinking. I take a ridiculous amount of pictures of the sky. It's a bit of an obsession, really. So, I'm deciding to share some of my favorite sky pictures because that's how I roll.

This one I took during our honeymoon in the Bahamas. It reminds me of The Simpsons.

This next one I took on the front deck of The Quack Shack--the house where we got married. This year I want to return to the Outer Banks during our two-year anniversary where I hope to see skies like this on the reg.:

I took this one in Red Rock Canyon just outside Las Vegas. I was supposed to be working but I ended up just walking around, taking pictures of the Nevada desert with my little Kodak camera.

These next two pics were taken from the balcony of our old apartment (literally a block away from this one.) I would run home when the sun was setting to take pictures like these:

Haterade

One of the things I hope to accomplish writing this blog is a bit of self improvement. That's all well and good in theory; in practice, however, it's a whole other matter. Sometimes finding out the truth about yourself, well, it kind of sucks. Let me explain.

The other day I was talking to my best good friend Scott and I was venting about how I was feeling jealous all the time for some reason or another. I was jealous of this girl in a blog I read. I was jealous of the way someone took a picture. I was jealous of someone's hair. I mean for a week there I was jealous of everything. It was freaking me out because I'm not normally like this.

So I'm telling Scott this and just letting loose when he tells me, "You're not jealous; you're just a hater." And I SO am! It was like the clouds parted and God came down just to smack me upside the head. Ick. I hate this about myself. (There I go again!)

I think there is a little bit of hater in all of us it's just unpleasant when we realize it. It's not like I'm trying to be this way. And the thing that pisses me off most is that I love my life. It's not very glamorous or exciting but it's happy and full of all the things that keep me walking on air half the time. The week of my realization, I was seeing more green than normal. I honestly wouldn't change anything about my life...well, maybe I'd have that Kitchen Aid Stand Mixer I've coveted for a while and the ability to take beautiful pictures like some of the wedding photographers I've found online, but other than that I wouldn't change a thing.

That's a lie. If I could change a thing it'd be this tick I have to hate on myself. I'll tell you, I don't give myself a break. It's always something. I know that we are our toughest critics but when do we take some of the love that we send out and aim it inward? One of the reasons why I started to write my Morning Pages religiously was because I wanted to focus on the things that make me happy and keep me stress-free (a struggle in and of itself.) Constantly giving yourself a hard time can be exhausting. I know that I've mentioned before how I want to change my whole approach to my physical fitness. Consider this quest no. 2. I want to be a little nicer and not hate so much, whether is be other people or myself. It seems easy enough but I know it's a habit I have to develop. We don't normally give ourselves the benefit of the doubt, but I'm about to start.

What about you? Hate much? What kinds of things about yourself do you want to change for the better? Leave your thoughts in the comments...all two of you who read this.

Hell, I Still Love You New York

Over the summer, Mike and I went back to the place that started it all. I wanted nothing more than to walk around the streets of Manhattan and take pictures. That's exactly what I was able to do. Here are some of them.

Read, Baby, Read.

When I first saw the movie Gone Baby Gone (directed by Ben Affleck and starring his brother Casey Affleck), I went online. See, when I really like something, I research the crap out of it. Through my perusing, I found out that the movie was an adaptation of a novel by the same author who wrote Mystic River and that Gone Baby Gone is the fourth book in a five-novel detective series by author Dennis Lehane. I promptly went to my crack den (also known as Barnes & Noble) and bought the fifth book in the series because that's how great this movie was (94% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes). I wanted to know what was going to happen next and I swear to you, I couldn't put that book down. I promptly ran back to the happiest place on earth to get the first four books and started from the beginning.

I could dedicate an entire website to these books, but that would be a bit too much. Instead, I'll give a general rundown of the two main characters and the series as a whole. Here are the books in order: A Drink Before the War; Darkness Take My Hand; Sacred; Gone, Baby, Gone; and Prayers for Rain.

The series centers around the private investigating duo of Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro--two life-long friends who grew up in the same Boston neighborhood. Each book is a separate case but these memorable characters and their story arcs weave themselves through each novel. The stories explore the shadier side of life and offer an interesting persective of the culutral and racial politics of Boston's different neighborhoods.

The novels are written in the first person voice of Patrick Kenzie, who offers insightful observations of the unforgettable characters that inhabit his world. Though these novels deal with the grim, graphic and hard-to-face realities of life, they are filled with an surprising humor that make them addictive and difficult not inhale in one sitting. I found myself laughing out loud countless of times. These books center around some pretty dark stuff but it's the humor and the easy relationship between the two main characters that keep them light and make you regret you moved through them so quickly.

The darkest book, by far, is Darkness Take My Hand that deals with the "20-year string of strangely similar killings" that brings a psychotic killer a little too close to home. Here is the summary from Barnes & Noble: "Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro's latest client is a prominent Boston psychiatrist running scared from a vengeful Irish mob. The private investigators know something about cold-blooded retribution. Born and bred on the mean streets of blue-collar Dorchester, they've seen the darkness that lives in the hearts of the unfortunate. But an evil for which even they are unprepared is about to strike as secrets long-dormant erupt, setting off a chain of violent murders that will stain everything—including the truth." This is the first book I ever read that gave me chills. I felt that same adrenaline rush from watching really good suspense movies--it reminded me of the first time that I saw Seven.

My favorite one, however, is Prayers For Rain. Though I started backwards, it's the one that got me hooked and the one that I'll read over and over again. I would give you a synopsis but it'll give too much away as it's the fifth book.

Bottom line, read these books if you like a great page turner, witty banter, a little mystery and a little love thrown in for good measure.

Have you read any of these books? If so, did you love them as much as I did? Leave your thoughts in the comments.

Here's my picture of the day, because I'm in a New York state of mind: