Instructor:  “And i hope you find the class interesting.  I’m never quite sure of everyone’s reasons for taking the class, and i just hope they find something that interests them.”

Me:  “I’m really interested in the tensions of how societies and cultures contact and conflict, and i think looking at how language responds to that is very interesting.”

Instructor:  “Yes, yes, that’s exactly what draws me to studying pidgins and creoles, too!”

Me:  [bursts into a million sunshine sparkles]

Sometimes, the best thing to do on a day that’s cold and rainy, when the clouds are dark grey and hang so very close to the Earth, is to spend bit of time hanging Christmas tree lights out on the deck¹:

And then come inside where Andy’s making miso soup and there are promises of a fire in the fireplace if you want one.

1. Even Andy was pleased with the amount of light the lights gave off when turned on once it got fully dark (and he hates Christmas lights used as ambiance/lighting).  They’ll give a nicer light out there than the actual overhead light, which is more like a searchlight than anything.  One more reason to look forward to balcony season.  Plus i put them on a remote-controlled outlet plug, so i can actually turn them on from inside and across the living room.  So nice! [↩]

Hooray! The bento supplies i ordered have finally arrived!

These 3 things are onigiri boxes. So excited!

Big find at Goodwill!

Saturday edit:  This post was made as an experiment in how well i could post pics using the WordPress app on my phone.  The answer was … it’s okay?  But i still wanted to go in to my WordPress dashboard via browser to tweak a few things.  It should be sufficient to keep posting pics from my phone now and again (which i used to do via Flickr but would rather do via my blog).  I’ve missed keeping a photoblog, so i’m glad to have something that will more-or-less work to do what i want.

The rest of the story about these tools (which i was too lazy to type up via my phone’s tiny keyboard) is that it was actually Andy who found these.  He held them up in that way he does that says, “Cool, but do we really need them now??“  But my answer to that question is always, “We know we’ll want X soon-ish / eventually, so we might as well grab this deal right now.”  What are we going to use these for?  I talked about that with  laceblade in the comments on this post!

For various reasons i’ve been not displaying my Portland Zine Symposium poster collection.  The long wall in our study has long had nothing on it because i’ve been mentally decorating it with my letterpress and PZS stuff.  The letterpress stuff finally went up back in august when i bought my press.  Today, the zine symposium posters finally went up.

And i am really, really happy that i finally put them all up.  As Andy noted, the colors brighten up the room immensely.

From the left:

-  Blue/white block of 3 posters:  Symposium 2002.  This was the 2nd year of the Symposium and the 1st year i went.  It is not an exaggeration to say that this weekend changed my life.  The posters that year were a set of 4 where each poster was designed by a different artist.  I am still missing one.  Contact me if you have a spare!!

-  Red/white poster:  Symposium 2003.  I love the red on the poster, and the typewriter.

-  Green/black/white poster:  Symposium 2004.  It was a sort of summer camp theme that year.  We should have had a s’more-making workshop!

-  Gold/black/white vertical poster below the 2004 poster:  Symposium 2006.  I skipped 2005.  For some reason i was just not at all in the mood for the Symposium the whole summer/week leading up to it.  Then, middle of the afternoon on saturday, i suddenly knew i’d made a horrible decision and that i should have been there.  I suppose we could have hopped into the Jeep and gone down, but we didn’t.

-  Orange/black/white:  Symposium 2007.  The awesome poster with the giraffes!!

-  Blue/white/black:  Symposium 2008.  Another awesome poster with a sort of M. C. Escher effect going on.

After that, the Symposium didn’t have any posters for sale at the merch table.  Or i was too slow to grab any.  Which, in the long run, is fine since i have the perfect amount to fill out my wall.  ;D

-  Brown/green/white:  This is from the ZAPP fundraiser in 2010.

The thing next to that is a Tibetan-style papermaking frame which i made myself during a papermaking class the other year.  The stuff on the right, above the file cabinet and the press, is my collection of letterpress-related posters.

The big blank spot will eventually hold my poster from Short Run 2011.  I haven’t put it up yet because i have tentative plans to attend Canzine West in 2 weeks and, who knows?, i might get a poster there!

Oh, and in the middle of everything is my very awesome clock.  It says “It’s a fine time to read!”  It’s a clock from Cornish College of the Arts and was decommissioned when Cornish moved from its old Capitol Hill location to its new downtown location.  The clock means a lot to me because i was working at Cornish (my 1st job in Seattle!) in the summer of 2002 when i attended that 1st Zine Symposium.  Working at a creative place (albeit in a non-creative job), attending a creative weekend, spending the rest of the summer reading everything i could get my hands on about zines — it was a really wonderful, formative time for me.

I just wish the damned clock still worked.  Anyone have a retailer they could suggest where i could get a new movement for it??

mise en place of ‘studying for linguistics midterm’

To the sounds of incessant barking from the apartment below (poor dog).  Yay.  Just hope the midterm itself goes better than the preparation.