Bear Hugs, J-Law, and Digital Marathons!

I just did a 72-hr children's e-book animating marathon!

I'm going to pass out now but just wanted to shout from my digital mountain top! 

My life is one project lighter!

 (not true at all-- I still have to add text, sound, etc. -- but who the hell cares right now?!)

I turned down the car deal of a lifetime so I can get over to Europe, 

I bought a 6-pack of 'Moose Drool' from Montana, 

and I just got a surprise signed copy of one of my favorite books from Amazon! 

#thegoodlife

After I go to Europe, I'm headed to the Rockies, but I'm a bit torn between Colorado and Montana... 

I've been watching some Canadian television shows and one of my favorite is set in the Canadian Rockies. Like, wow that's beautiful (and I'm not just talking abooot their accent -- which I'm seriously manga-style starry-eyed over)! Anyways... I looked into moving up there, but the paperwork seems like a big pain in the butt.  So the idea of living on a dude ranch in the Montana Rockies has latched onto my mind. Last time I had a fever of this sort, I ended up in Alaska... the odds are ever in its favor (on another Hunger Games note, I have a serious YouTube-crush on Jennifer Lawrence)  

 But anyways... Colorado is the gem of the U.S. and my favorite state, so it's a hard choice. Any thoughts on the two? Perhaps this Moose Drool will help settle the score, though I just had a delicious Vanilla Porter from the Breckenridge Brewery and it was truly a delight for the tastebuds. 

God, my priorities must be questionable if I'm deciding where to live based on the quality of their micro-brews...  let's go for something reasonable. Whoever has the lower state tax wins my bachelorette rose and all rights to my micro-wealth. 

Anyways #3-- you can live in the U.K. for 6 months without a visa! 

If Canada is hard to move to, the U.K. is like Hogwarts when Dumbledore was alive,

so at least they throw us this Fang-sized visa bone. 

Let's end it on that happy note cause I get depressed every time I check in the with the citizen experts of Yahoo discussions for the secret to international relocation. 

Giant bear hugs, 

MK

Memorial Day

Happy Memorial Day! Many thanks to all the men and women who have and continue to protect us, who risk their lives for us, and especially to those who have made the ultimate sacrifice. You will not be forgotten. 

A special thank you to my own family members who have selflessly served this great country. 

Yours, 

MK

Summer 2013

"Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under trees on a summer's day, listening to the murmur of the water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time."

—John Lubbock

Around and Around We Go

The skies are a-burning, the heat is a-rising and we a-surfing along the cusp of the perfect in-between; hot sticky days and cold damp nights, finding their happy medium at the dusky, flamed edge of each. 

I could live quite comfortably on the road. A permanent smile etched into weathered skin and quick feet that never touched upon any land twice. Unattached to this world, except for the force of gravity forever nudging me around its axis, from one lost place to another. 

Sweet nothing-ness,

MK

Dress A Girl Around the World

The 'Dress a Girl Around the World' program is an initiative started to make sure every little girl has a dress to call her own. Made from what we take for granted as simple pillow cases, these dresses mean a lot to the wonderful girls who receive them. I was grateful to be able to help the Girl Scouts with this project and encourage you to get involved as well. Check out their website and consider having your own dress-making party. 

 Love to all the little ladies in this world, 

MK

Covered

Sam's relaunching 'The Delivery Girl' and with the new version, a new cover!

I put these together a bit quickly so they need some polishing to be sure, but you get the gist. 

Pink, fun and girly! 

Cotton candy dreams, 

MK

The Age of Stars

© NASA -- Small Magellanic Cloud galaxy

I'm a bit of an astronomy/cosmology enthusiast. Due to my sieve-like memory, I will not be able to impress you with a bunch of random facts (like that our current telescopes allow us to see back to a universe that was only 380,000 years old; that the first three elements formed were hydrogen, helium and lithium (which formed 3 seconds after the big bang); that iron is poison to stars; that in 4 billion years our galaxy will collide with the Andromeda galaxy and (according to some astronomers) our arm of the Milky Way will swing right through the heart of our galaxy and we will be so close to the massive black hole in the center that if they some how find a way for us to be immortal, I will eagerly volunteer to hop into its center for the sake of science -- check out this here blog at that time for my status report). Okay, any other day, I wouldn't be able hash out a bunch of facts, but I've been juicing on astronomy hard core this week so don't mistake this incident for a commonplace occurence. I come from a family of Alzheimer brain mush... I've long-since accepted the fact that my memory isn't going to win any medals.

© NASA; ESA; Z. Levay and R. van der Marel, STScI; T. Hallas; and A. Mellinger

With that said, one of the more profound things about the universe is how many incidents had to line up (and are still lined up) in order for us to exist. Typical discourse usually revolves around the Big Bang and how life was formed on Earth, but we gloss over the fact that a planet with Earth's conditions, seems to be a rare occurence. Though we (and by we, I mean incredibly smart astronomers who figured it out without my assistance) have discovered a few potential planets that could support life in other systems, it's a small fraction of all the planets that have been counted for (out of 885 planets that have been discovered, maybe 4 or 5 meet the conditions required). But did you also know that someday the sky will fade into darkness and that no new galaxies and stars and planets will ever form again? We live in this golden age of diamond skies, of heated gas and violent explosions but the sky continues to stretch apart and one by one the stars will go out and the universe will eventually cool into a dark nothingness.

© NASA --The Rose

We live in this Age of Stars, of life, of you and me and this brief millisecond of our existence. I've so long struggled for meaning, for purpose. I wanted to leave this permanent mark upon the world, but nothing I do, nothing anyone has ever done or will do, will last. The human race will die out and with us, all traces of our existence.

So instead of worrying about an Earthen legacy, about material possessions, about hate and anger and misery -- think instead of happiness and love and those things that will give you the energy and light to exist in an inevitable darkness; to power your own star in an infinite beyond.

With love from 2013 A.D.,
MK

P.S. Some of my favorite astronomy reads and recommendations:

       

Spring Awakening

You ever get an email on Friday or Saturday that just ruins your weekend? I feel like I get one every Friday, on the dot. It haunts my dreams, steals my smiles and weights me with dread. I really have to lighten up, huh? 

Anyways, there's nothing that de-stresses like the Michigan coast -- the land of clear skies, lush earth, sandy beaches and endless waters. 

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My Michigan favorites: 

Beach runs

Skipping stones for easily-impressed children

Sunsets and starry skies

Wireless headphones for kayaking and washing puppies

Palisades Park and summer cottages! 

Not tipping over in the kayak and dying of hypothermia! 

A wet suit is officially on my birthday wish list. 

Climbing sand dunes and rolling back down

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There's nothing like a little manual labor to get your mind off of your electronic woes. Opening cottages is never a fun task, especially when you're playing housekeeper to the winter visits of frisky rodents and cleaning up dead spider carcusses that you bug-bombed in the Arachnid War of 2013. But we trudged through-- a little sweat, a lot of dirt and cobwebs, and giant bloody blisters from raking a fall forest's worth of leaves down the dunes. Cottage 2 of 2 is officially ready for summer cocktails, late night giggling, outdoor showers, and the crisp, upbeat licks of alternative 80s music spilling out open windows for all the forest to grove along to. 

It's incredibly satisfying to not have to depend on others to get a job done. No middle men. No computers. No 21st century worries.  

Sand dust and lake smoke, 

MK

P.S. Dear Midwest -- watch out for the lime-disease infested, creepy crawlers-- a.k.a. the tick! I just pulled 25 of those nasty little, blood-sucking, egg-laying heebee-jeebees from my little puppy. 25! It's a world record for gross-ness. I'm probably exaggerating their evil powers in this blurb, but when you have that many in one go, it just makes you want to molt (I've been watching too many cicada videos at the gym this evening -- I think my fellow treadmillers were a bit put off; anyways...good luck to the Eastern states this season -- you might want to invest in some noise-cancelling headphones).  

Photos © 2013 MK

Garden of the Gods

A place very aptly referred to as the 'Garden of the Gods'... 

MK© 2013