sorry for my absence, but i made you a gif(t)!

make animated gifs like this at MakeAGif

sorry for my absence this past week -- i've been in vermont for my friend's graduation, and then subsequently on a roadtrip from vermont to arizona.

but that means i have tons of blog posts in the works. and they'll be extra pretty because i just bought a canon rebel sl1!

meanwhile, i hope you enjoy this fun little gif i made of her graduation. 

a new orleans wedding!

have you ever been to a place that just can't be described and no pictures can do it justice?

for as long as i can remember i've wanted to visit new orleans. i've heard such amazing things about the city -- the music, the wild parties, the history, the architecture, and the people. unfortunately, as soon as i was old enough to appreciate all that new orleans had to offer (mardi gras, bourbon street, hurricane daiquiris, etc.) it was devastated by hurricane katrina. and then life got in the way and i never had an opportunity to visit. but last weekend we were invited to a wedding there and we jumped at the chance to go. rcg used to live in new orleans so he was especially excited to return and show me around. 

congratulations! 

after the ceremony we had some time before the reception, so we walked up and down bourbon street, taking in the sights, sounds, and smells. and because the french quarter festival was going on, the streets were closed off to cars, so we were able to roam freely. it was here that i realized that nothing i could ever write would be able to describe new orleans. it's a place so full of life and music, and the smells are so distinct that even as i was standing in amongst it all, i could hardly believe it.

i tried to prepare for it all by reading a confederacy of dunces by john kennedy toole, an amazing book that actually does a pretty good job of describing new orleans, but even then i wasn't ready for the craziness and awesomeness of the city. 

  

 

 

   

looking off the balcony at pat o'briens // pat o'brien's hurricane // pat o'brien statue // looking the other way off the balcony down bourbon street

 

i think the thing i enjoyed the most about new orleans was the music. just walking down bourbon street you can hear all types of music -- drums, jazz, brass bands, bluegrass, etc. -- and all of it's amazing. it just makes me want to dance. the video above is a quick snippet of some of the awesome stuff we got to listen to this weekend. 

what's your favorite part of new orleans?

my new favorite app: vine

how often do you get half way through a video and get bored? i mean, in theory we want to see the entire video, but, ugh, how boring. at the same time, watching tiny clips of videos is just as annoying. vine is a new app that tries to be the best of both worlds.

the way it works: you take 6 seconds of video and then vine puts it all together and loops it. you build your video, or "film", by touching your finger to the screen, taking it on and off, as you film different things. then you can share your video via twitter or facebook.

my complaints: you can share your videos on facebook, but you can't find out if your facebook friends are on vine. annoying. i realize that there's a huge war going on between the different social media platforms, but everyone's social media accounts are totally integrated, not allowing us to benefit from that is rude. my other complaint is that i can't even find friends in my phone's address book. maybe i don't have any friends who have vine -- it is still pretty new -- but it seems unlikely because some of my friends are pretty techy.

complaints aside, this may be the coolest thing i've found since instagram. i kind of want to use it all the time.

do you have vine?

(what's your name? i want to follow you!)

(follow me on vine: vmboda)