The passage of California’s Prop 8 made me mad, made me frustrated, but most importantly broke my heart.  In a world torn by injustice, corporate greed, and war I cannot think of any reason to stop, limit, or deny love.  Keith Olbermann says it even more eloquently than I can.

I don’t much about the world, but I do believe love is the answer.

Countdown: Special Comment on Prop 8

Hi all. So I made a secret deal to blog more, and then haven’t been too disciplined.  I’m trying to find work, Ken is helping me build a website, and of course — Ken and I made a giant Halloween decoration that took us all weekend to get up (pics to follow soon).

However, in the meantime, I wanted to mention a fantastic blog and book that I’ve been reading lately.  The blog is Carrie and Danielle, two women who own a style consulting company in Vancouver Canada.  The book is called Style Statement.  Basically you survey all aspects of your life to find two words that define your style.  Of course they mean fashion and interior design, but also what you need to create and inspire yourself.  I’m only half way through the book, so I can’t tell you my words yet.  However, it has been a great exercise as I am working on personal branding for my consulting work.

One cool aspect of their blog is their “Daily Question”.   A few times a week I go over and ask myself some of the old questions to try and focus my work and intention.  So I thought I would share some Q&A for fun. . .

Q:  IN THIS VERY MOMENT, WHAT ARE YOU GRATEFUL FOR? (IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER OF THANKS. . .)

A:  In no particular order:

1. Ken — a boyfriend who makes me laugh, and dives into crazy adventures with me!
2. My family — I’ve been missing my parents, grandpa, cousins and sister like crazy, and can’t wait until the holidays.  But my sister in particular is being super brave and moving to Chicago.  It is an inspiration to see her move toward joy.
3. My cats - Lola and Blackjack.  For their companion ship and they keep reminding me to take it easy - a nap fixes everything.
4. My friends. I’ve got a lot of friends who don’t live here in Seattle and I think of them often!
5. Creativity.  I’m trying to view my life with creative energy and building a giant useless 15 ft ghoul to put on the house for Halloween is a good start.  To some it might be a waste of time, but when you hear kids giggle as they go by — it’s all worth it!
6. Lofthouse Cookies - From the supermarket bakery area.  Pure Frosted Goodness.

Q: IN WHAT WAY ARE YOU DELIGHTFULLY CONVENTIONAL?

A: I have a lot of masculine/non-traditional energy in my life.  I’m competitive; I like to lead; and a few times a week I feel the need to physically wrestle with Ken to relieve tension. However, there are true parts of my personality that are terribly conventional.  I love chivalry and romance.  I adore when Ken opens the car door for me, he has to call to order take-out food for us, and I still want him to think I’m pretty.

Q: WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE THING TO WATCH ON TV?

A:  I love TV.  So I have quite a few favorites, but some current favs –  Project Runway, The Office, Inside the Actor’s Studio, So You Think You Can Dance (or any dance show for that matter — even junkie ones with celebrities), and political news.

So, as I mentioned yesterday, Ken is helping me build a little website to highlight my consulting work in an effort to get new clients.  It’s a slow process for me, because I hate the writing part of it.  I find it impossible to compile my work into a few key points or even worse — into a work philosophy.  However, I also think that is the most important part of a consultant client relationship — work style and intention.  So I’ve been noodling around with words and most likely it will evolve for several weeks until I either find the right words, or I get distracted by a new project and have to let it  go.  

So, a few weeks ago I bought laurawilliams.org (don’t worry about looking at it, nothing there yet).  But in the process of buying this domain name I realized there are a lot of Laura Williams’ in the world, and some of them are living a life much cooler than my own.  So I figure since we have the same name I can live vicariously through them. . .

My favorite Laura Williams is the model who has been on a ton of Romance Novel covers.  Maybe in the next life she and I can trade places.  Some of my favorite covers:

Other Laura Williams that I could be. . .

• Laura Williams Musings: A Christian Homeschooling Mom of Seven. Laura enjoy reading, scrapbooking, cooking, gardening in Tennessee.
• Laura Williams Photo: She take photography of musicians — so cool.
• Laura Williams Illustrator: Patterns and Textures — oh to live the artist life.
• Laura Williams Music: Hear me sing some great Holiday Carols.
• Laura Williams, Wiki: ”Laura J. Williams was a woman who disguised herself as a man and used the alias Lt. Henry Benford in order to raise and lead a company of Confederate Texans during the American Civil War. She and the company participated in Battle of Shiloh.”

It’s been a long time since I’ve posted to Bathing Suit.  I sort of took the summer off – so to speak.  After a lot of work with Seeds and several months of being tied to my blackberry and laptop I had to take a break.  So I did just that.  Ken and I have had a great relaxing summer. 

A few of the highlights:

• Rented a house in Long Beach, WA with Dave (ken’s brother)
• Camping at the Gorge in Eastern, WA and saw Elvis Costello & The Police for Ken’s birthday
• A quick weekend down to Portland to visit Ken’s family and my dear friends Rob & Marin who had just arrived from a trip cross country
• One final camping trip out to Lake Chelan with wine tasting and floating on the raft in crystal clear water

Besides that, it has been peppered with some nice dinners, good shows, headed home to see family in Vermont, and general summer laziness.  Honestly, I’ve loved it.  Now that I have finally had the opportunity to unwind I’m discovering I have no interest in winding myself back up ;-)!

I am, as always, stressed about my work life.  I love being a freelance consultant.  It is brilliant work – interesting clients and passionate projects – however, when you move from one project to another, it feels like you are always looking for work.  That is the one drawback.  I hate looking for work.  So I’ve been spending the last few weeks trying to get my freelance work up-to-date.  You can now find me on Linkedin, Facebook, and soon on laurawilliams.org (once Ken and I finish building it!)

Also, congrats to my sister Jen and her boyfriend Pat – who are moving to Chicago.  I look forward to the deep-dish pizza and I already put my ticket request in for Oprah! 

My list gets longer and longer with “good blog ideas”, but they never seem to turn into actual posts.  So I thought I would just do a quick recap.  We are great.  Our cats, Blackjack and Lola, have become expert hunters and brought into the house a couple of mice, birds, and a couple of thousand moths (their favorite gift).  So our little Seattle family is doing great.  I hope to write more often, but I won’t hold my breath.   

When Lapster and I started this blog in 2006, I was concerned about sharing my personal information online.  I was hoping to share my innermost thoughts and I was embarrassed about people knowing who I really am behind the blog.  Besides I used to do political work and felt that my blog might be “used against me” in the conspiracy theory in my mind.  I think I underestimated how difficult it is to have a successful blog, and came to the harsh conclusion — that I, in fact, do not want to do the work to create a popular blog.

It may seem like a small deal to you, but to me this is a significant change for me to use our actual names.  When I talked to Lapster about it — he just said, “well, it’s about time.” But there is a nakedness that comes from writing your life experience and using your actual name.  I know my family will be happy since they read the blog and were often confused by our superhero identities!! It is a lot easier hiding under an alias regardless of how superficial it is.

But it is my small way of reclaiming the blog — so here is the quiet truth of it.  My name is Laura.  I was born in Vermont State (a.k.a. Vtgirl).  I live in Seattle with my partner Ken (a.k.a. Lapster).  We have two cats named Lola and Black and are surrounded by insane bliss.

We initially started this blog two years ago as a place for fun gadgets, tech news, etc.  However, slowly but surely it has become a more personal account of what we are up to.  So the theme of Bathing Suit Places is changing a little bit.  We will continue to write about our life here in Seattle, what we are working on, and celebrate our shiny future — but the gadgets and gizmos will move to our other blog mynewfavorite.com.

Thanks to our small but committed reading audience.

Today, is August 8th — 8/8/08. Since the Olympics are starting today (and I’m crazy about the Olympics) in Beijing, I’ve learned that 8 is an auspicious number in Chinese culture. So this morning at 8:08am, I made a wish to the universe. I’ll let you know if anything comes from it

Make sure to take a minute while you are watching the opening ceremonies tonight at 8:08pm to send your requests out at a lucky moment!

So I’m an IKEA fanatic, but Lapster and I always laugh about the names of their furniture - always very Swedish!  Blogadilla has a good IKEA Name Generator that may give us a sneak peak into the process. . .

For me a perfect morning, is my computer and blog reading, my boyfriend close by, the Today Show playing in the background and most importantly a great cup of coffee!!

This week, I treated myself not to the gourmet hippy Seattle brands we are used to buying, but to a time-honored old favorite — DUNKIN DONUTS is now selling coffee in my supermarket!

In my small town growing up the D&D was a mecca for teen gatherings and their delicious coffee was often part of that right of passage.  So I’m reliving my childhood and getting a quick caffeine hit before dance class. However, I also learned a random tidbit (Coffee Makes You Gullible?) about coffee this morning — my passion and affection remains unchanged!! Have a great day.

What is wordle?

Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends.

There is nothing better than being stranded in your own city for a few hours sometimes. Lapster was working on Sunday, and I was “wasting a few hours” downtown in Seattle. I stumbled through a few boutiques looking at dresses I would never wear (but I do have fantasies that I might wear them). However, I ended up, where I always end up — in the bookstore. I bought a series of odds and ends, but also picked up 180 Poems, A Turning Back to Poetry by Billy Collins.

Billy Collins was the former poet laureate, and although some feel he is a bit of poetry sellout — I have to be honest, I actually enjoy a lot of his work. I thumbed through the book seeing it was a collection of modern poets. I am a casual follower of poetry. The problem is, it can be really hard to find modern poets that you like. I’ve always thought that poetry is a lot like photography — you have to take tons of shots to find one that captures you.

180 Poems is designed to make it easy for high school students to hear or read a poem on each of the 180 days of the school year. The poems are collected with this audience in mind including poems about the Birthdays, Football, and Summer, but also just beautiful words and stories of human existence. In the introduction to the book Billy Collins requests:

Whether the poems are read over a PA system or at the end of a school assembly, students can hear poetry on a daily basis without feeling any pressure to respond. I wanted teachers to refrain from commenting on the poems or asking students “literary” questions about them. No discussion, no explanation, no quiz, no midterm, no seven-page paper — just listen to a poem every morning and off you go to your first class.

So regardless, of how old you are this is a great little collection, and a good opportunity to get an introduction to some of the best modern poets of our time. You can see the entire collection online at Poetry 180. The magic of poetry is it can be as simple or as complicated as you care to make it. A good poem is one that you like. That’s it.

Introduction to Poetry by Billy Collins

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem’s room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author’s name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.