Earlier this week I put on Napoleon Dynamite to keep me company and rearranged our bookshelves in rainbow order. I thought about doing this ever since the Adobe Bookstore in San Francisco let artist Chris Cobb do it in 2004.

I was never going to mention it (beyond a tweet) because it’s controversial. When it’s featured on Apartment Therapy, the comments section goes trollish with people squawking about how aesthetics are killing the Dewey Decimal system … or something.

Then, this morning, Justin Hackworth posted photos Gabrielle Blair and her husband Ben Blair, and in the background, lo and behold.

And I thought, if it’s good enough for Gabby Blair, it’s good enough for me.

Haterz gonna hate.

Would you do this? Have you arranged anything else in your house by color?

Image of the Adobe Bookstore from here
Image of the Blairs from here

Remember my Secret Pizza Word from October of 2009? Basically, there is a secret word only I know, and if you say it in front of me I owe you a cheese pizza. The guy who gave me the idea had the rule that you had to immediately stop whatever it was that you were doing and buy the sayer-of-the-word a pizza right there and then, but since that might not always be feasible, I made a coupon out of an index card. It’s also fun to see exactly how long the word has been in effect.  You can see it’s pretty road weary – I’m writing the next one in pen.

Anyway, sitting around my living room on Friday night, Allison from Robicellis mentioned that she used to play Cranium, and I gasped.  She raised an eyebrow while I dug into my wallet and pulled out the well-worn, totally goofy coupon I had made a year and a half ago.

My secret word was cranium!  It was well after midnight, but the pizza place was still open (I love New York), and since there were a few of us, I ordered two.  It had been my secret alone until about two weeks ago when I spilled the beans to Jen about what it was and how I was sad it was so obscure.  My next word is much more common. You still get no hints.

(Sorry about the crappy iPhone photos. Actually, they’re probably fine, but vanity dictates I tell you I snapped them with my phone.)

I got this wooden calendar from Jen‘s mom.  They had one in their kitchen when we were in high school that I really liked, so when I got married she managed to find one for me.  The note said I could paint over the awful design on top, which has a screen print of a hand painted rooster surrounded by roses.  I never did get around to painting over it, but I had a photo taped over it that looked a little awkward.  It stayed there all this time until a few weeks ago when Rob found this owl for me at the Brooklyn Flea.  I can’t remember the vendor who sells them, but they’ve got a whole crate set up every week with a sign that says, “Made by my grandma!” and I love that we have someone’s grandma-made owl in our house.  It turns out he’s just the right size to sit on top of the ugly art and not get in the way of the calendar function.  We haven’t named him yet.  Any suggestions?

Rob and I heading out to the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear. We are going to celebrate being one of the vast majority of Americans who do not have extreme political ideas. We’ll talk about how the President isn’t a secret Muslim, how he was born in the United States, how 9/11 was an outside job and how people we disagree politically with are not “like Hitler”. It should be a good time.

Are you going? Text me +1-4242-AMBER-8 and maybe we can meet up and high five.

Monday evening was the Sixth Annual Brooklyn Casserole Crazy Competition, hosted by Emily Farris. Rob and I came in third (out of 44) with our insane creation and we were SO excited! Our secret is that we stuffed every delicious thing we could think of into one Pyrex dish and baked it at 350 for 25 minutes.

You know I love the URDB – they were there documenting “Most Casseroles in a Room”. Then Emily called for someone to do the record, “Most Casseroles Tasted in One Minute”. The first guy to attempt it went with a spoon in one hand and a set of chopsticks, giving him points for style and creativity, but he was easily beaten by Rob and his two-spoon stuff-into-mouth-like-a-caveman method and got to 30.

Thank goodness there’s video.

The crowd chanting, “Rob! Rob! Rob!” made me all teary. Even better, Rob pledged a dollar to the Greenpoint Soup Kitchen for every casserole he tasted, and five people matched him.

My husband is the coolest.

Rob and I adore having overnight guests but we don’t do guest towels. I feel that if there’s a towel in our bathroom that’s not good enough for a guest, it’s certainly not good enough for our family. So, since all of our towels are identical, there are minimal used-towel hanging spots around our not-so-big apartment, and life is way too short to give any brain space to remembering which door or piece of furniture you flung your damp towel over 24 hours ago, mix-ups are easy.

This week, though, Rob came up with an awesomely simple way to mark everyone’s towels – write their name on a clothespin with a Sharpie and clip it on. Like, duh! He did it earlier this week when the Pyes were here, and it was a total “Why didn’t we think of this before?!” moment.

Plus, coming across “Dan” and “Kim” clothespins while doing the laundry is going to make me really happy for a long time.

Lemme just say, a taco truck is one of the raddest things you can have at a party. Truck food is fun, and it’s even more fun to order it and then just wander away without paying. Also, truck light makes pretty photos.

{Allison, Kelly and Roxanna} photo by Zan

{Elizabeth} photo by Zan

{Danielle}

{Senor taco truck guy}

We dined and danced by the light of paper bag luminaries.

photo by Zan

The next morning dawned rainy, so lunch in the redwood forest turned into lunch in a wine cave.

photo by Zan

Cool, right?!

This where we had one of the more moving parts of the weekend. While we were eating, we had to pick five things from our Life List that we wanted to accomplish in the next 365 days and write them down. Then we stood up and shared so that we could ask the group for help and possibly team up to get accomplishy.

{Heather Spohr} photo by Zan

{Maile Wilson} photo by Zan

{Allison Czarnecki} photo by Zan

{Margaret Gould Stewart} photo by Zan

A lot of women expressed a desire to learn how to sew, and Mena, who had been wowing us every day her homemade wardrobe, quickly added “teach 20 women to sew” to her List. There were big goals and little goals; we applauded Heather Armstrong and Heather Spohr’s noble foundation-starting dreams, and chuckled when Laura stated that she really wanted to knit a blue hat (which Danielle taught her mere hours later). I’m pretty sure I agreed to go sit in a hot tub in Alaska and watch the Northern Lights with some people.

Then we came back to the hotel and gussied up for a fancy dinner which we traveled to in pure luxury.

See?  PURE LUXURY people.

{Heather Armstrong} photo by Zan

The table was elegant.

The ladies were elegant.

{Erin Lochner}

{Helen Jane Hearn} photo by Zan

{Nicole Balch}

{Liz Stanley}

And the food was divine.

We started with this amazing tomato salad.  It turns out that California tomatoes kick the ass of all other tomatoes.

Helen Jane is one of the three ladies behind the event.  She picked out the amazing prix fixe menu.

Maggie presented us all with necklaces that have five tiny gold bands around them and explained that they would serve as a reminder of the five things we had picked to accomplish this year.

It takes a fab, fab dresser to pull off a turban.

There was a lot of the good crying and hand squeezing and encouraging talk, and I fell in love a zillion times.

The next morning we said our goodbyes and I flew home, having all been inspired to go forth and kick some ass.  I was sad to leave all of my new friends, but I missed my family more.  When I saw this, I started to cry.

“I can see my house from here!”

This is a pretty good photo to sum up the weekend: wine and technology.

So I land in San Francisco and breeze off the plane and into my brand new on-loan-for-the-weekend 2011 Honda Insight hybrid. Oh, hello, pretty car with new car smell. Off I go to pick up Liz at her house.

“Are you one of those people who lands in San Francisco and immediately wants to go to In-N-Out?” she asked.

“I am, actually!” I said, “but I was too shy to say so.”

She laughed. “Oh no! We have to go now!”

I will love her forever for that.

After our diet busting meal we arrived at Boon hotel + spa and immediately started in with the cocktails, hugging, and mingling. Then the sun went down and there were the s’mores on a campfire and cozy blankets.

photo by Zan

Photo of Liz and Danielle by Zan.

Karen tried her first and declared it her last.

“You’ve never had a s’more before?” We were all incredulous.

“We don’t do this in Trinidad!” she exclaimed, shaking her curls.

We had no idea who our roommates (and bedmates!) were going to be until we got there, but I had my fingers crossed for a few people. One of them was Meg, and I did a happy dance when I found out we were together, since we’d been chatting on Twitter for a while and I really dig her.

Maggie said she paired us up because we have “the same enthusiasm for life”. Meg’s wedding blog bypasses the typical favors-dresses-napkins talk, and focuses on the emotions and stories of getting married and being a wife. It is so, so good, especially for me in my married-and-not-a-mom state.

The next morning we had non-pretentious wine education with sommelier Erin Sullivan, and now I can say things like “nose” and “boquet” without blinking.  Here she is breaking it down for us.

Isn’t she lovely?

Here are Danielle and Kelly giggling at our wine education.  I keep seeing photos of these two and thinking they are me.

Next we had tours of Arista Vineyards and Moshin Vineyards, where we had lunch.

Uh oh, Meg!  Almost out!

MORE PLEASE!  photo by Zan

Cheers, Leah!

Ellen Gerstein, the marketing director for Wiley Publishing, read everyone’s Life List and selected two “For Dummies” books for everyone based on them. I got Digital Portrait Photography and a set of CDs to learn Spanish. This was the first of several times I got teary-eyed over the weekend. So, so thoughtful and well done. Bravo, Ellen, and thank you.

Here’s something you don’t know: I have a sentimental spot for the “For Dummies” line. I have bought one at every single major turn in my life, ever since my family bought 1995′s “Macintosh Performa 630 For Dummies”. It was cool to have a brand I’ve grown up with show us some love.

Babies on tour!

{That’s Nicole Balch from Making it Lovely and Andrea Scher from Superhero Journal}

The rest of the afternoon was spent lounging around and then we had a fiesta dinner, complete with taco truck, where we discovered that Maggie’s husband Bryan makes a mean margarita. The favors were gigantic head flowers in various colors, and we quickly turned into looking like exotic plants having dinner together.

{Cecily, Meg, Liz, Maggie, Laura and Heather}

I picked a red one.

Hey, listen, when you’re taking a self-portrait with a real camera, it’s hard to get the focus right, ok?  Enjoy gazing at the crisply in-focus cinnamon colored freckles on my nose.

Part two tomorrow!

These are our pretty faces.  photo via

Hi!

I’m not almost-but-not-quite back from Mighty Summit 2010 (this is my first blog post from an airplane!) and my brain is BUZZING AND CHURNING with the wonderfulness of it all. Not to mention my CF card is busting with photos of beautiful wine country and beautiful women.

I’d been debating doing one big post or several smaller ones about, and I think I’m going to break it down for you in bits this coming week, because you need to hear about all of the awesome, thoughtful details that Helen Jane, Maggie and Laura stuffed into the weekend.

I haven’t felt this blessed or inspired in a long, long time.

For years TheAmberShow.com has been owned by some guy in Utah.  It’s been a giant, ugly, blinking “Coming Soon!” sign, but of course nothing ever came.  I tried to contact the Who Is number a bunch of times to see about buying it and never heard back.

It expired eventually and when wasn’t renewed back in June, I sat on my hands as the few companies it filtered through tried to sell it to me for a hundred bucks, fifty bucks…

Finally, it went up for sale at the open market price, $10, and Rob snapped it up for me one day when I’d all but forgotten about it.

Go ahead, type it into your browser.  You’ll get redirected to TheAmberShow.net!  After years and years, it’s MINE BITCHES!

Happy weekend indeed!

p.s. Where’s Earl?  It’s 1:30 pm and still looking gorgeous. I was honestly hoping for a gigantic rain storm so I could hunker down with some movies, popcorn, and beer. Should it start pouring, hurricane party at my house, ok?  I’ll make cookies, too.