happy monday

my sweet friends, happy week could not have arrived sooner! I am so excited to see and read about all the exquisiteness that brings joy to your lives. there's a blogroll on the sidebar to direct you all to your cohorts in this endeavor (please let me know in comments if I left someone out or if you'd like to play along...as far as I'm concerned, it's never too late to play.)

if you're anything like me, mondays can be rough, so I decided to frontload the happiness here in a giant fireball of one of my favorite things: anticipation.

I have to say that I am an expert at anticipation. in fact, I do better at anticipation than the actual experience. when I am excited about an upcoming event: a trip, a class, a visit, a project, I tend to play the imagined experience over and over again in my head. each time the details become more and more clear, my senses become engaged, then my emotions. there is dialogue, an unexpected twist here and there, handsome strangers, intrigue. and the whole imagined thing ends nicely tucked in the file "good memories". quite often, once I'm in the middle of the real thing, I'm somewhat disappointed. as I've grown older, I find myself actually cancelling upcoming events because I've really already done it in my head. sometimes this is good and sometimes not.

nevertheless, I don't give up hope that reality will pony up. today, I have much to be happily anticipating:

• autumn: I'm done with summer and ready for my favorite time of year.
• squam: it's my first time and I haven't anticipated something like this for a long, long time.
• U2: it will be my sixth time and while they never disappoint musically, the whole experience doesn't quite match the one in my head (I'll let you fill in the blanks here; hint: it involves a backstage pass...). and I am so happy to see that muse is the opening act. love.
• during my clothing shopping hiatus, I saved some money (not an easy thing for me) and am looking to upgrade my camera to the canon 50d. the excitement I feel here is a bit mixed with some pressure that I will actually have to produce better photos.
• mondo beyondo: I'm hoping this course helps me narrow the gap between what's in my head and what's happening in my life.

real or imagined, we have much to be grateful for. happy monday beauties. oh, and I'm posting an additional photo because my hair looks better in this one and cute hair makes me very happy indeed.