What's App?

When I got my iPhone, one of the things I was most excited about finally being able to do with a smart phone was use Instagram.  For the year that I've had it now, I have come to love taking pictures with my phone more and more.  I think it's actually kind of amazing how good the pictures can be, and using your phone just couldn't be more convenient (as a result, I take more pictures, but use my actual camera less.)

Anyway, this is a totally random post, but I occasionally get questions about what apps I use or how I edit my photos, and since I recently downloaded a few new apps that I am currently infatuated with, I thought I'd share.  They are all free or under a couple of bucks. 

Instagram is my fave.  (That's my feed over there on the right.)  I usually take my pics in another app and edit them first before I post.  For taking pictures, I have mostly used Camera Plus for a long time, but just discovered Camera Awesome, which I think I like more.  

For editing, I use a few different apps that I really like.  Snapseed and AfterLight both let you do a lot of tweaking of things like brightness, exposure, saturation, sharpness, and they also have their own gorgeous pre-set filters with adjustable intensity.  I use "coral", "olive", and "lume" in AfterLight a lot.  I don't really have a consistent method or my own style - I just play around with my pictures until I get to a look that I like, one that sort of captures the mood I'm going for with that shot.  Sometimes the edited version ends up darker, more saturated, more intense and defined, and sometimes it ends up being more muted or lighter and airier.  But that's part of what makes iPhone photography fun for me - quick, easy, user-friendly, low-commitment, cool results. 

     

On the more gimmicky side, DeluxeFX has fun overlays like a few different bokehs and others.  Repix lets you add cool effects using your fingertip as a paintbrush.  Glaze turns your photos into paintings.  PicFrame lets you stitch together collages and also has a feature that lets you add labels to it, which is why I like it more than other collage apps.

bokehs, DeluxeFX

ocean painting, Glaze

Sometimes, if I'm feeling really ambitious (or bored) I edit pics in multiple apps to get the effect I want.

            

 Other fun recent discoveries are Photolettering and ComicBook (great way to pass some time at the dog park while your furry buddies are entertaining themselves). 

That's all I got tonight.  What are your favorite apps and iPhone photography tricks??

Make it Sweet

Messenger

My work is loving the world.
Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird —
equal seekers of sweetness.
Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.
Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.

Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?
Am I no longer young, and still not half-perfect? Let me
keep my mind on what matters,
which is my work,

which is mostly standing still and learning to be
astonished.
The phoebe, the delphinium.
The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture.
Which is mostly rejoicing, since all ingredients are here,

which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart
and these body-clothes,
a mouth with which to give shouts of joy
to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam,
telling them all, over and over, how it is
that we live forever.

~ Mary Oliver ~

Some friends and I decided to buy tickets to go to a yoga class at the top of a very swanky midtown hotel this past weekend, which included a live DJ, great views of the city, and a couple of ridiculously delicious ginger margaritas after the class.

Mary Oliver has been coming up a lot in our house recently, for various reasons.  So it was delightfully apropos when on Saturday, at the end of a phenomenal yoga class, the instructor read this poem during savasana (for the non-yogis: that is the part at the very end of the class where you get to lie still on your back with your eyes closed and gather all the benefits and effects of your practice to take with you before you leave.  Or just rest and relax after the workout, depending on how you prefer to think about it.  I almost always fall asleep into the world's shortest, most delicious naps.  Regardless, savasana is the definitely one of the best things about doing yoga.)

There were probably about 150 women in the room.  And about four men - I counted.

I have written before about how wonderful, how healing, how spiritual, how restorative yoga can sometimes be for me.  This class was one of those - and it could not have come at a better time.  I have been studying for Step 2 of our medical boards for the past few weeks... and although I have found that medical school induces a rather constant need for this kind of replenishment, there are times when the need is especially severe.  Like now.  I even considered for a split second not going - I had forgotten about the class until my friend reminded me of our plans the night before, and it felt like I couldn't sacrifice the couple of hours it would take out of my study schedule.  (I mean, med school is just totally crazy like that - I cannot believe I have become the kind of person who would ever think something like that.  But evidently I have.)  Fortunately, fortunately, though, I fought off the crazy and went.  And of course it turned out to be exactly what I was needing, both for my body and for my life.  I think that when you need to hear it, it is suddenly apparent that you are not just working on physical poses in yoga.

Our instructor for the morning led the class based around the theme of the sanscrit word Rasa- which, in one of its translations, means delight in existence.

And she was so good at bringing that to life in her class, reminding us to move because it feels good.  To delight in the movement and in what our bodies can do.  To delight in the day, and the good fortune it was to be able to be there, doing yoga, and sharing the experience with our 150 new closest friends.  She was energetic and encouraging and funny.

Hey, we could be telemarketing right now!  But we're here, doing yoga!  Delight in this!

Rasa.  It also means Nectar of the Gods, sweet nectar, bliss.

It was a long class.  It was a really fun class.  It was the kind of class that is so fun that you forget how hard you are working.  She reminded us that this is how it should be - in life, as in yoga.  Make it fun.  Do it because you like it.  Stop worrying so much about it.  Delight in it. 

Perfectionism is your biggest obstacle to happiness. You gotta let go of that shit. 

She said that she can always tell who the advanced practitioners are, because they are the ones that are smiling. 

You are alive; make it sweet.

Taken by my friend Kathy H.

Studying for the boards is making me slightly - how shall we say - cray cray.  I take a quick study break to check a favorite blog and then suddenly a certain picture of this person's babies makes my chest feel like it is constricting.  I get a NYTimes headline alert pop up on my phone that Roger Ebert has died, and I suddenly need to run for a bathroom break, now.  Because I'm all teary-eyed.  I get to the library around 8 am and leave around 5 or 6 pm and I am mostly being studious and diligent all day, and by the time I stand up to leave, I have this wild, intense sensation swimming around through every vessel in my body - it 's hard to explain, but it's like a mixture of wanting to cry and laugh hysterically and tear my hair out and go to sleep forever and run 12 miles and punch someone in the face, all at the same time.  Like every Christmas morning before you got to go see what Santa left in your stocking and every piece of bad news you've ever been given in your life, all rolled into one emotion, chased with a shot of espresso, and then run over by a Mack truck.  It feels like I want something, more than I have ever wanted anything in my entire existence - I want it so badly I feel like I might literally burst - and I don't even know what that thing IS that I want.  

Maybe it's just for this test to be over. 

I am lucky to have lots of people in this life that appreciate its sweetness, and work at finding it.  And so the studying has thankfully had lots of sweet interludes.  I have been grabbing lunch breaks with good friends and enjoying amazing ice cream with my roommates and showing up for outdoor workouts in the evenings, and it feels so good to just turn my brain off for an hour and get covered in dirt and grass and push my body as hard as I can make it go.  And I have also been buying the occasional pair of shoes that makes me happy. 

Gonna make it sweet, DAMN IT.

When our teacher read Mary Oliver's words at the end of the yoga class, this is the phrase that jumped out and seared itself into my attention:

my work

which is mostly standing still and learning to be

astonished.

Why those words? I'm not really sure. I think I love them so much because they remind me of how much sweetness and beauty and awe-someness there is in the world. We have only to learn to see it. These long, long hours in the library, with this one, seemingly all-consuming and colossally anxiety-inducing goal looming, make this difficult for me to remember, much less do. When it's not this, it's something else. Life is hard; there is always something. I need this constant reminder.

You are alive; make it sweet.

I was reminded recently of this title of an Alice Walker book of poetry:

...which I am taking seriously as my new life motto.  I just love it.  I just want it tattooed on my forehead.  Along with so many other things I need to constantly remind myself these days.  Like: 

Everything is going to be ok.

and

Life will go on.

and

My worth as a human is not going to be determined by what happens six days from now.  Or the week after that or the month after that.

and 

Delight in existence.

Maybe especially that last one.  

The new shoes.  I love them.

And, last random thing for tonight - this cover, which my sister Ellen first introduced me to and which will always and forever make me think of her.  It is awesome and funny and it just makes me smile every single time I hear it and I love singing along at the very tops of my lungs in my car or in the shower.  For some reason it has been stuck in my head tonight.

I take my boards this coming Wednesday.  If it's your thing, I would sure appreciate your prayers for the exam and for the days leading up to it.  

Sweet.

Thoughts on a Thursday

This morning it was an immediately great day when I found the little iPod that I thought I'd lost.  Okay, well, actually, it was first an immediately crappy day when my alarm went off, because it went off at the time it has to go off these days, but then it turned great when I found my nano in the pocket of some pants that I haven't worn in a couple of weeks.  And then I spilled coffee all over the inside of my bag on my way to work (from my spill-proof mug, which is exactly why I have and use a spill-proof mug for my coffee every day, because I might do something like spill it all over the inside of my bag on my way to work... le sigh.)  

So, you know, plus/minus.  But overall good because I care way more that I didn't lose my iPod after all than I do about coffee stains all over a ton of papers.  (I think.  I will probably actually continue to be really annoyed by the coffee stains on my day planner for a long time.  And yes, I still use a paper day planner.  And I write everything in it.  And I sincerely believe that this is a habit I will not ever give up as long as I live.)

I don't know, guys... stress levels are at an all-time high, I have, OH, 5 EXAMS in the next 8 days, I am freezing cold in my house because we don't have the heat on (also WHY IS IT SO COLD IN ATLANTA??  this is NOT why I moved to the south!!!!), I have not blogged in forrrrever, I have not exercised in even longer, I want to eat everything in sight, I am probably PMSing, whatever, but anyway, tonight I decided to try this Brownie-in-a-Mug recipe from Pinterest.  The fact that I did this is probably sort of gross, but see above for all the reasons that made me consider it justifiable.

Here is the recipe with step-by-step pictorial in case you are also in the mood for something this disgusting/delicious:

Mix:
1/4 c flour
1/4 c sugar
2 T cocoa
pinch salt

Add:

2 T olive oil

3 T water

Mix (use a sturdy spoon... just sayin').

 And because I am a total hedonist, I also added a few chocolate chips.

Microwave 1 min 40 seconds, top with ice cream.

It was...... you know what?  It doesn't matter.  It doesn't really matter that it was not exactly the greatest thing I've ever eaten in my life.  It was warm, chocolate, gooey, and, you know, had ice cream on it.  Which is pretty much all I want out of anything these days.

Santa Catalina

This morning, during a pause on the wards, I picked up my phone to scroll through my Instagram feed.  And suddenly, in between food pictures and friends' babies and strangers' landscapes and other scenes mundane, humorous and beautiful, appeared this shot above.  

I almost squealed out loud.  Not only is this an amazing scene and an amazing capture (seriously, I dare you to tell me it didn't make you smile instantaneously), but I also recognized it right away, because I have been there!  You know the feeling when you are watching a movie and then all of a sudden there's a scene in your hometown or your college campus or the beach that you grew up spending every summer on?  It was that feeling, except maybe even cooler, because the picture was posted by National Geographic (natgeo if you want to follow them on Instagram- they have a great feed.)  I was so excited when I clicked on the link through the picture and confirmed that it was, in fact, taken at the Monasterio de Santa Catalina, in Arequipa, Peru. 

Right before I started medical school, I spent about a month in Peru by myself, living with a family, volunteering in a clinic, traveling, and brushing up on my Spanish in anticipation of finding demand for my language skills in medicine.  The entire trip was incredible... exciting, boring, intense, lonely, hard, and FUN, as any extended time away from home, in a foreign land and culture, especially if you are on your own, tends to be.  I blogged briefly about mi vida arequipeña on one of the several short-lived travel blogs I have kept at various points from around the world, but, as usually happens overseas, the internet was frustratingly slow and access was expensive, and I was too busy doing a lot of other things, so I had given up writing updates by this point in my month in Peru.

I finally visited the Monasterio during my last week in Arequipa.  It is on the city's must-see list, but between riding crazy local taxi-buses all over the city, hanging out at my volunteer sites and working on grammar and medical terminology with my tutor during the week, and traveling during the weekends, I hadn't found time to make it there.

So one morning I played hooky from clinic and caught a cab to the city center.

It was breathtakingly beautiful, and nearly empty, with just a handful of other tourists and a couple of locals exploring the extensive buildings and grounds.

I joined a small guided tour, and then, after it was over, wandered around by myself for hours, totally taken in by the beauty of the place, luxuriating in the perfect morning high-altitude sunlight, walking slowly, meandering down every tiny alleyway and up every winding path I could find, taking hundreds of pictures.  My surroundings drenched me.  The architecture, the colors, the textures, the stone- and wood-work, the combined Spanish and Andean influences, the cobblestones, the stark rise of volcanoes in the distance.  I let my imagination run with the history there, the furniture left in rooms, arranged as they were when daughters of wealthy families were sent to the convent with enormous dowries and their own servants to stay with them there for the rest of their lives as nuns (by tradition, the second sons and second daughters of every family were expected to devote their lives to the church... and the rich paid huge sums so that their daughters could live in convents like this one.)

Cloistered from Arequipa's congested streets, the monastery was peaceful and still inside its ancient white stone walls, a calm island in the very center of the frenetic city.  It was romantic, almost magical.

There was a very attractive man about my age wandering around Santa Catalina this particular morning, as well.  I had noticed him when I entered that morning- I had been right behind him in the short line to pay the entrance fee.  We each bought our passes and then I didn't see him again until later, after my tour was over.  We kept bumping into each other around corners and passing each other in narrow stone-lined corridors, each carrying our cameras and lost in our own worlds.  Finally, after about the sixth time crossing paths, we both paused, smiling, and leaned up against a rust-red wall next to each other, taking off sunglasses and introducing ourselves.

He was an Army ranger, enjoying paid vacation during his last weeks in the service before his contract was up and traveling his way through South America.  I was just days away from Air Force officer training and a move to Georgia to start medical school after that.

We sat in an enclosed, white-washed, sundrenched courtyard, sipping café con leche and passing the nuns' renowned homemade pastries and a piece of pie between us.  We shared stories from our respective travels and adventures in South America, told each other about our families and our backgrounds; we talked about our relationships with our siblings and reminisced about things from home that we were starting to miss; we talked politics and 30 Rock and The Daily Show.  We bantered about our favorite Peruvian dishes and discussed languages and education and religion.  

Hours passed.  The sun moved through the bright blue sky, burning through the thin atmosphere and turning our cheeks and noses pink.  Lunch in Peru was served in the early afternoon; the whole family went home for a big, delicious meal with no fewer than three courses every day.  Lucy would be worried if I didn't come home.  I was acutely torn between this surreal, exquisite experience... the setting, the perfect weather, the companionship, the conversation, the man... and my serious sense of guilt over worrying my protective Peruvian adoptive mother, who had taken such hospitable care of me in her home for a month.  With regret, I excused myself from our café-soaked reverie on the small patio and left the peaceful otherworldliness of the monastery to flag a taxi and head home.  

Travel romance is really the best, isn't it?  It doesn't even have to be a real romance, or last longer than a couple of hours.  I can still remember the exact feeling of that day- small, textured details jumping to life in my mind.  It was so immensely satisfying and so horribly unsatisfying at the same time.  I never saw him again, but thinking about that experience now still makes me smile.  It is one of my most vivid memories of Peru, and one I'm sure I'll have for the rest of my life.