Monday, May 28, 2007
I have developed a severe case of moving envy. While my desire to move is not particularly new (for the past several months, whenever one of the roommates has done something particularly baffling or taken control of the tv or kitchen when I've wanted to use them, I've been consoling myself by poring intently over online apartment and condo listings), it is more acute because it seems that everyone I know is moving all of a sudden. On Saturday I helped Joanna and her husband move into the most fantastic apartment, with built-in shelving everywhere, entertaining nooks and crannies, huge windows, a garden like a jungle, a kitchen fully twice the size of mine ("Well, it's smaller than our old kitchen," she said. "Cry me a river!" I admonished while I drooled over the counter space), a screened porch (which has a door with stained glass in it), funny little closets everywhere, including one with a door in the back of it which we declared a "door to Narnia" (sadly, it leads to the back stairs, not Narnia after all.) Another friend is moving to her own apartment next weekend, which she excitedly diagrammed for me on a piece of paper a few weeks ago, and which also sounds adorable. I am conspiring with one of her childhood friends to forcibly housewarm for her the instant she is moved in so we can see the place. And my sister recently got a job in this cute seaside town way the hell up the North Shore, like practically New Hampshire, and it's one of those places where probably every single building is charming, and historic, and filled with stained glass and built-in shelving and mystery doors that lead to worlds where there are unicorns and talking horses, and I fully expect to be extremely envious once she signs a lease on an apartment up there, too (which will happen in the next couple weeks).
Partially this is out of a desire to fill up new spaces, to sit down with graph paper and explore the possibilities for furniture arrangement, to decorate, to nest. But partially it's just that there is such a long list in my mind of things that I will do when I have my own place, a list that I recite to myself on a daily basis as I walk around this apartment. When I have my own place I won't have to play a complex game of refrigerator Tetris to find space for all my food, because I won't be sharing my refrigerator with two other people. When I have my own place, the microwave popcorn will not live in the spice rack. When I have my own place all my laundry and ironing stuff will fit in the linen closet instead of taking up valuable space in my clothes closet. When I have my own place, the gerbils will sleep in a different room from me, so they can run around crazy-like in the middle of the night all they want and I will not notice or care. When I have my own place, my computer will be in the same room with the tv, so that I can watch baseball and IM Sarah to complain that Wily Mo Pena has no range whatsoever in the outfield, without having to run to the other room. When I have my own place, dishes will not have food bits on them after they are washed, because I will WASH THEM PROPERLY. When I have my own place, I can hang out in the living room and watch tv and I won't have to make conversation with anybody, if I'm feeling antisocial, which I often am. When I have my own place I will be able to have friends over to visit for a few days without worrying that I am offending someone by having their stuff strewn about the living room. And so on.
It's not that I've forgotten that this is actually a pretty sweet setup that I have here right now. I do remember living in a college house with eleven other people, half of whom seemed to believe that because they were an eighth-level mage in some other world, they were entitled to not do their dishes in this one. I do remember the fratboys across the street throwing a veritable banquet of foodstuffs at our home one fine spring weekend, and the egg oozing down the front of the house for a week. I remember being charged money by the university for kitchen damages and thievery that I was not responsible for (and yes, I am still very, very grumpy about that.) I am lucky to live where I do, with the people I do. But I'm so close to finally getting my own place that I can taste it, and I can't stop thinking about it and imagining what it'll be like.
Partially this is out of a desire to fill up new spaces, to sit down with graph paper and explore the possibilities for furniture arrangement, to decorate, to nest. But partially it's just that there is such a long list in my mind of things that I will do when I have my own place, a list that I recite to myself on a daily basis as I walk around this apartment. When I have my own place I won't have to play a complex game of refrigerator Tetris to find space for all my food, because I won't be sharing my refrigerator with two other people. When I have my own place, the microwave popcorn will not live in the spice rack. When I have my own place all my laundry and ironing stuff will fit in the linen closet instead of taking up valuable space in my clothes closet. When I have my own place, the gerbils will sleep in a different room from me, so they can run around crazy-like in the middle of the night all they want and I will not notice or care. When I have my own place, my computer will be in the same room with the tv, so that I can watch baseball and IM Sarah to complain that Wily Mo Pena has no range whatsoever in the outfield, without having to run to the other room. When I have my own place, dishes will not have food bits on them after they are washed, because I will WASH THEM PROPERLY. When I have my own place, I can hang out in the living room and watch tv and I won't have to make conversation with anybody, if I'm feeling antisocial, which I often am. When I have my own place I will be able to have friends over to visit for a few days without worrying that I am offending someone by having their stuff strewn about the living room. And so on.
It's not that I've forgotten that this is actually a pretty sweet setup that I have here right now. I do remember living in a college house with eleven other people, half of whom seemed to believe that because they were an eighth-level mage in some other world, they were entitled to not do their dishes in this one. I do remember the fratboys across the street throwing a veritable banquet of foodstuffs at our home one fine spring weekend, and the egg oozing down the front of the house for a week. I remember being charged money by the university for kitchen damages and thievery that I was not responsible for (and yes, I am still very, very grumpy about that.) I am lucky to live where I do, with the people I do. But I'm so close to finally getting my own place that I can taste it, and I can't stop thinking about it and imagining what it'll be like.
Sunday, May 27, 2007
Okay, I need to write something else so that we can stop looking at the centipede already. Get down farther on the page, Captain Toomanylegs! Down I say!
So I've been reading more lately, and what I've realized is that I have not, as I once feared, lost my ability to immerse myself in books. What I have lost is the desire to completely immerse myself. Even when I'm doing reading that I find less than riveting (a dry history of German-Americans, a recap in the newspaper of a ballgame that I watched last night) in the breakroom at work, it's disturbingly easy to look up and find that the co-workers I was breaking with have gone back to work, and I didn't even notice. Or when I'm watching a ballgame and reading at the same time, with the intention to read a couple paragraphs while the pitcher takes his sweet time contemplating the hitter, all of a sudden I look up and an inning has passed and the score is different and I wonder how I didn't hear Don Orsillo raising his voice in excitement as the runs scored. And when these things happen something in the back of my brain goes "AAAHH! I didn't think any time had passed, but it DID, CLEARLY, because THINGS HAVE HAPPENED and I missed them somehow, and I am stuck in some kind of CRAZY TIME WARP!" like a groggy patient waking up after anesthesia.
(For the record, when I had surgery I didn't do that at all. I had been forewarned that I may feel distressed upon waking up, and that many people either laugh hysterically or burst into tears, and my father had said something about how when he had this surgery, he had totally gone on and on to his mother about his intentions to marry my mother when he was groggy and in recovery afterwards, if I am remembering that story correctly, and I was all worried that my DEEP DARK ADOLESCENT SECRETS were not going to be safe, but, stoic little teenager that I was, I convinced myself that I was not going to (a) cry, (b) laugh hysterically, or (c) babble, and apparently it worked, because I was cool as a freaking cucumber, at least as far as I remember, which is good enough for me, but I do recall being kind of startled by how it seemed like no time at all had gone by between being knocked out and waking up, and thinking, huh, I bet that's why people get all freaked out afterwards.)
(I'd just like to point out here that I find it vaguely disturbing that I can link back to events that happened more than five years ago. Also, disclaimer, please do not judge me based on my seventeen-year-old self. Thank you.)
So, the point is, while I do feel inclined to get lots of reading done these days, I feel less inclined to totally lose myself in books. If I can remember to look up every few minutes, eat some trail mix, see how the game is going, and feel time going by, I will be much happier about the whole process. (And also, maybe my arm will fall asleep less often.) There are so many books to read in the world, that if I let myself get sucked into them, I could accidentally miss my entire life that way.
So I've been reading more lately, and what I've realized is that I have not, as I once feared, lost my ability to immerse myself in books. What I have lost is the desire to completely immerse myself. Even when I'm doing reading that I find less than riveting (a dry history of German-Americans, a recap in the newspaper of a ballgame that I watched last night) in the breakroom at work, it's disturbingly easy to look up and find that the co-workers I was breaking with have gone back to work, and I didn't even notice. Or when I'm watching a ballgame and reading at the same time, with the intention to read a couple paragraphs while the pitcher takes his sweet time contemplating the hitter, all of a sudden I look up and an inning has passed and the score is different and I wonder how I didn't hear Don Orsillo raising his voice in excitement as the runs scored. And when these things happen something in the back of my brain goes "AAAHH! I didn't think any time had passed, but it DID, CLEARLY, because THINGS HAVE HAPPENED and I missed them somehow, and I am stuck in some kind of CRAZY TIME WARP!" like a groggy patient waking up after anesthesia.
(For the record, when I had surgery I didn't do that at all. I had been forewarned that I may feel distressed upon waking up, and that many people either laugh hysterically or burst into tears, and my father had said something about how when he had this surgery, he had totally gone on and on to his mother about his intentions to marry my mother when he was groggy and in recovery afterwards, if I am remembering that story correctly, and I was all worried that my DEEP DARK ADOLESCENT SECRETS were not going to be safe, but, stoic little teenager that I was, I convinced myself that I was not going to (a) cry, (b) laugh hysterically, or (c) babble, and apparently it worked, because I was cool as a freaking cucumber, at least as far as I remember, which is good enough for me, but I do recall being kind of startled by how it seemed like no time at all had gone by between being knocked out and waking up, and thinking, huh, I bet that's why people get all freaked out afterwards.)
(I'd just like to point out here that I find it vaguely disturbing that I can link back to events that happened more than five years ago. Also, disclaimer, please do not judge me based on my seventeen-year-old self. Thank you.)
So, the point is, while I do feel inclined to get lots of reading done these days, I feel less inclined to totally lose myself in books. If I can remember to look up every few minutes, eat some trail mix, see how the game is going, and feel time going by, I will be much happier about the whole process. (And also, maybe my arm will fall asleep less often.) There are so many books to read in the world, that if I let myself get sucked into them, I could accidentally miss my entire life that way.
Saturday, May 26, 2007
So I didn't think I had anything interesting to say today, but then I found this on my wall:
Now, I am not generally squeamish about insects (see: removed bee from pants and felt affectionate towards it later.) But you have to admit, that thing is kind of creepy as all hell. So I backed away slowly. I grabbed my camera and proceeded to take several closeup shots of it. Then I backed away slowly yet again. Then I had to figure out what to do about the damn thing.
You see, giant creepy insects are the kind I am least comfortable sharing space with. Unfortunately, giant creepy insects are also the kind that I am least comfortable squishing. Because then you have giant creepy insect remains, splattered all over your living area. LOTS of remains. Like you might as well buy a damn coffin already.
To stall while I decided what to do, I went to What's That Bug, as recommended by P1xie, to figure out what it was. As a librarian, I fancy myself pretty good at doing web searches for things. Searching for things that you would largely recognize visually is a tricky business, but I have gotten to be a pro, as I identified the giant creepy caterpillars on my mom's tomato plants last summer (tomato hornworms) as well as the funny little bugs that were living in their house around Christmas (leaf-footed bugs). I was even kind of fond of the leaf-footed bugs. As I sat by the window with one perched nearby looking at me, I started to say, "You know, I sort of like these bugs. They're actually--"
"Oh god," said my sister. "You're going to say they're cute, aren't you?"
"Well... yes. But they ARE! They're cute!" I could almost hear her rolling her eyes.
This time, however, I did not have the presence of mind to systematically search the internet for the bug. I stared at the search box on What's That Bug, paralyzed, trying to figure out if a search for "OMG so many legs!!" was likely to yield any useful results. Then I began to scroll idly down the page and, luckily for me, found a picture of the exact thing that was lurking on my wall. A house centipede.
Which brought me back to the problem at hand, namely, that THERE WAS A HOUSE CENTIPEDE ON MY WALL. Probably a HUNGRY house centipede that was just dying to munch on some delicious fresh gerbil flesh. Okay, maybe not, but it is so much nicer to justify irrational fear by pretending that the creature is a murderous beast, rather than just a bug sitting harmlessly on the wall, being all centipedey.
So rather than squish it and clean up its remains, or leave it there to run free and crawl on me (and my gerbils) while we slept, I decided that I'd be clever and catch and release it using the old tupperware-and-sheet-of-paper trick. Putting the tupperware over it was easy. The thing hadn't moved since I'd seen it. But it was clearly trying to lull me into a false sense of security, because as soon as i touched it with the paper, it went BATSHIT INSANE and started running around wildly inside its tupperware prison. I yelped in surprise and then realized that if I had a quatrillion legs, I'd probably be really fast too. Sadly, I do not, so instead I just miss a lot of buses.
But it was still in its tupperware, on top of paper, against the wall, and when it settled down again I took a deep breath and lifted the contraption away from the wall, holding the paper on as firmly as I could. Which of course made it start running around crazily again, and since it was moving at roughly the speed of sound it quickly found a gap between the paper and the tupperware, ran out, ran all over my hand, which made me yelp some extremely unladylike things while shaking it off, and then ran under my desk, where I had the presence of mind to toss the tupperware over it again so that it could not lurk around my room and make me afraid to walk anywhere.
Then I went to watch some baseball and eat some pie, because I needed some time to recover. The pie was delicious.
Then I went back to figure out how to remove Captain Toomanylegs from my room, and because I am brilliant, I figured out that if I use aluminum foil instead of paper, then once it is under the unsuspecting (or more likely, extremely suspicious but helpless) bug, I could crumple the foil around the edges of the tupperware so there would be NO ESCAPING on my way downstairs. It worked remarkably well. I regret to inform you, however, that I am a very bad person, because before taking it outside I did consider whether I should release it near my roommate's bedroom door, just to see what would happen. Or perhaps leave the whole container outside the door of the apartment below us, the one with the people who pump their bass at all hours of the night. But I did not do either of those things, because I am the epitome of self-restraint. I let the centipede go in the garden, where he can run around crazily as much as he pleases. Then I came back upstairs and tried to pretend that I was enormously clever instead of a giant scaredy-cat. That didn't work terribly well, so I wrote this post instead.
The end.
Now, I am not generally squeamish about insects (see: removed bee from pants and felt affectionate towards it later.) But you have to admit, that thing is kind of creepy as all hell. So I backed away slowly. I grabbed my camera and proceeded to take several closeup shots of it. Then I backed away slowly yet again. Then I had to figure out what to do about the damn thing.
You see, giant creepy insects are the kind I am least comfortable sharing space with. Unfortunately, giant creepy insects are also the kind that I am least comfortable squishing. Because then you have giant creepy insect remains, splattered all over your living area. LOTS of remains. Like you might as well buy a damn coffin already.
To stall while I decided what to do, I went to What's That Bug, as recommended by P1xie, to figure out what it was. As a librarian, I fancy myself pretty good at doing web searches for things. Searching for things that you would largely recognize visually is a tricky business, but I have gotten to be a pro, as I identified the giant creepy caterpillars on my mom's tomato plants last summer (tomato hornworms) as well as the funny little bugs that were living in their house around Christmas (leaf-footed bugs). I was even kind of fond of the leaf-footed bugs. As I sat by the window with one perched nearby looking at me, I started to say, "You know, I sort of like these bugs. They're actually--"
"Oh god," said my sister. "You're going to say they're cute, aren't you?"
"Well... yes. But they ARE! They're cute!" I could almost hear her rolling her eyes.
This time, however, I did not have the presence of mind to systematically search the internet for the bug. I stared at the search box on What's That Bug, paralyzed, trying to figure out if a search for "OMG so many legs!!" was likely to yield any useful results. Then I began to scroll idly down the page and, luckily for me, found a picture of the exact thing that was lurking on my wall. A house centipede.
Which brought me back to the problem at hand, namely, that THERE WAS A HOUSE CENTIPEDE ON MY WALL. Probably a HUNGRY house centipede that was just dying to munch on some delicious fresh gerbil flesh. Okay, maybe not, but it is so much nicer to justify irrational fear by pretending that the creature is a murderous beast, rather than just a bug sitting harmlessly on the wall, being all centipedey.
So rather than squish it and clean up its remains, or leave it there to run free and crawl on me (and my gerbils) while we slept, I decided that I'd be clever and catch and release it using the old tupperware-and-sheet-of-paper trick. Putting the tupperware over it was easy. The thing hadn't moved since I'd seen it. But it was clearly trying to lull me into a false sense of security, because as soon as i touched it with the paper, it went BATSHIT INSANE and started running around wildly inside its tupperware prison. I yelped in surprise and then realized that if I had a quatrillion legs, I'd probably be really fast too. Sadly, I do not, so instead I just miss a lot of buses.
But it was still in its tupperware, on top of paper, against the wall, and when it settled down again I took a deep breath and lifted the contraption away from the wall, holding the paper on as firmly as I could. Which of course made it start running around crazily again, and since it was moving at roughly the speed of sound it quickly found a gap between the paper and the tupperware, ran out, ran all over my hand, which made me yelp some extremely unladylike things while shaking it off, and then ran under my desk, where I had the presence of mind to toss the tupperware over it again so that it could not lurk around my room and make me afraid to walk anywhere.
Then I went to watch some baseball and eat some pie, because I needed some time to recover. The pie was delicious.
Then I went back to figure out how to remove Captain Toomanylegs from my room, and because I am brilliant, I figured out that if I use aluminum foil instead of paper, then once it is under the unsuspecting (or more likely, extremely suspicious but helpless) bug, I could crumple the foil around the edges of the tupperware so there would be NO ESCAPING on my way downstairs. It worked remarkably well. I regret to inform you, however, that I am a very bad person, because before taking it outside I did consider whether I should release it near my roommate's bedroom door, just to see what would happen. Or perhaps leave the whole container outside the door of the apartment below us, the one with the people who pump their bass at all hours of the night. But I did not do either of those things, because I am the epitome of self-restraint. I let the centipede go in the garden, where he can run around crazily as much as he pleases. Then I came back upstairs and tried to pretend that I was enormously clever instead of a giant scaredy-cat. That didn't work terribly well, so I wrote this post instead.
The end.
Friday, May 25, 2007
Hi, sorry, it seems I've slacked off on the blogging lately. But I am still here. Obviously, since despite the lack of actual content, I keep joining more things (flickr, allconsuming, etc.) and adding them to my sidebar.
The following things have happened:
1. I finished my final semester of school.
2. I got to learn some exciting new things at work, which may lead to a new job.
3. Some of my most fantastic friends came to visit from the faraway land of Pittsburgh and the slightly less faraway land of Amherst.
4. I graduated and now have a master's degree in library science.
So yes, those are my excuses for not writing. There will be more on many of these topics later.
I have an extravagantly long list of things that I want to do now that I am not required to do schoolwork all the time. These include:
1. Knitting
I have decided that what I really need to learn to make is SOCKS. Because, I don't know if my big toes are just unnaturally large or something, but I seem to put holes in my socks all the time, and so I constantly need new ones. And having something especially soft and fuzzy on your feet is something you can appreciate ALL DAY, whenever you are wearing them. However, I am aware that these are too advanced for me right now, and in the meanwhile I am making a scarf with many types of stitches in it, which I will probably be ashamed to wear out of the house later, but which will be good practice nonetheless.
2. Sewing
I was going to make a dress for graduation, but didn't finish it in time for a variety of reasons, which is just as well because the weather was so terrible and cold that I would not have been able to wear the planned dress anyway. So I need to finish it, and then hope that I have an occasion to wear a nice-ish dress at some point this summer. Also, I want to make a skirt that I bought fabric for ages ago. Also also, the zipper on the last skirt I made came out so distressingly terrible that I feel compelled to do it over. Also also also, there is a coat that I picked up from the dollar-a-pound even longer ago that needs its buttonholes restitched. I have been trying to cajole my sewing machine to do that for me, but we have a hard time agreeing on things like the length of the buttonhole and whether it's really possible to fit puffy coat material under the presser foot. Time will tell if we reach a truce or if I'm forced to hand-stitch the darn things.
3. Reading
Even though I've been edjumacated within an inch of my life, I still don't feel very well-read. One of my co-workers asked me a couple weeks ago what sort of things I like to read, and I really didn't have an answer for her. This is largely because ever since I've been in college I've felt guilty whenever I've done pleasure reading, because the required reading was NEVER EVER DONE. Which is not to say that by avoiding pleasure reading, I did all my required reading. Instead, I played a lot of spider solitaire and DX-Ball and still didn't do all the reading I was supposed to, because for some reason this made me feel less guilty? I have no idea. Point is, I'm done with school and free from these odd compulsions. My current and intended reading lists are on allconsuming, and I welcome any suggestions you all may have.
4. Bookbinding
I took a workshop on non-adhesive bookbinding this spring, and at the beginning of last summer I learned cloth-case bookbinding, and I'd really like to keep my skills in shape. The main thing that is holding me up right now is that I need to buy a paper cutter, and then buy paper which can fit on the paper cutter. The paper cutter should not be a huge problem. The paper, oddly enough, might be, because while they sell paper everywhere (CVS? Staples?), your average run-of-the-(paper)-mill 8.5"x11" paper does not have the grain running in the right direction for bookbinding. Why? I don't know. Does anyone care except me? Maybe not, but every now and then I have these nightmares that I bring in books for a portfolio presentation at a job interview and my interviewers look at them at say "THE GRAIN IS GOING THE WRONG WAY!! SO YOU THINK GRAIN ISN'T IMPORTANT, DO YOU? YOU WILL PAY FOR YOUR INSOLENCE, WENCH, YESSS, YOU WILL!!" and then they cut me in half with a board shear. Okay, actually, I have never ever had a nightmare like that (THANK GOD!), but really, do I look like the model of mental stability who ought to be messing with established standards of grain direction? No, I didn't think so.
5. Writing
I always told myself that once I was out of school I was going to set aside time each day to write. Have I done that? Well, not yet, but give me a break, it's only been a couple weeks. Summer poetry workshop starts in a month, and it would be nice if I had a few things prepared to bring. I have a number of ideas which keep fluttering about wildly like moths and simply won't set themselves down on paper. (For actual moths, once they set themselves on paper, I crush them and throw out their remains. For poems, I nurture and poke them until they resemble something meaningful. So much for that metaphor.) And in the writing category falls BLOGGING, which you'd think I'd be able to do on a regular basis at this point. I do have a few post topics lined up, and hopefully you'll actually get to read about them soon.
6. Cooking
And especially, baking, because I have a very large Hershey bar sitting in my fridge which needs to be made into something. Probably chocolate chunk cookies. Or PEANUT BUTTER CHOCOLATE CHUNK COOKIES. I am a genius. And if I bake things, I can bring them to the aforementioned poetry workshop. Also, it has crossed my mind that maybe with all this free time of mine I should eat fewer frozen prepared meals and more stuff I made from scratch. My main problem while in school was that if I bought any kind of produce, I had to finish that produce before it went bad, and I couldn't commit to making that many meals in a row out of fresh food. Now I should be able to manage that, one would think. No doubt this plan will go south in the middle of the summer when I have no intention of turning on any food-heating device in the kitchen, but in the meanwhile, it's about time I came up with a good recipe for vegetarian stuffed peppers, right? Right!
7... Video games
The aforementioned fantastic friends got me a Gameboy Advance SP for graduation, which conveniently plays the games for my oldskool original Gameboy in addition to its smaller and more advanced cartridges. This is fantastic because, while I had several games for the old Gameboy that I hadn't finished yet, the prospect of squinting at a non-backlit green-and-black screen for hours in order to get through them was not terribly inspiring. This new device opens like a flip phone (which I find disturbingly pleasing: open! close! open! close!), has a color backlit screen, and its battery pack/power cord are not oriented in such a way that when I squeeze the device wildly due to my intense anxiety about Link's imminent demise, it resets itself and forces me to start again from the beginning. So I think my point is, my first six tasks have been hopelessly derailed by the wonder that is video game technology less than a decade old. In case you were curious, the current obsession is Link's Awakening, because the past three years have rendered me a hopeless Zelda fan, and after that I expect to begin Metroid: Zero Mission.
Okay, more soon. For serious.
The following things have happened:
1. I finished my final semester of school.
2. I got to learn some exciting new things at work, which may lead to a new job.
3. Some of my most fantastic friends came to visit from the faraway land of Pittsburgh and the slightly less faraway land of Amherst.
4. I graduated and now have a master's degree in library science.
So yes, those are my excuses for not writing. There will be more on many of these topics later.
I have an extravagantly long list of things that I want to do now that I am not required to do schoolwork all the time. These include:
1. Knitting
I have decided that what I really need to learn to make is SOCKS. Because, I don't know if my big toes are just unnaturally large or something, but I seem to put holes in my socks all the time, and so I constantly need new ones. And having something especially soft and fuzzy on your feet is something you can appreciate ALL DAY, whenever you are wearing them. However, I am aware that these are too advanced for me right now, and in the meanwhile I am making a scarf with many types of stitches in it, which I will probably be ashamed to wear out of the house later, but which will be good practice nonetheless.
2. Sewing
I was going to make a dress for graduation, but didn't finish it in time for a variety of reasons, which is just as well because the weather was so terrible and cold that I would not have been able to wear the planned dress anyway. So I need to finish it, and then hope that I have an occasion to wear a nice-ish dress at some point this summer. Also, I want to make a skirt that I bought fabric for ages ago. Also also, the zipper on the last skirt I made came out so distressingly terrible that I feel compelled to do it over. Also also also, there is a coat that I picked up from the dollar-a-pound even longer ago that needs its buttonholes restitched. I have been trying to cajole my sewing machine to do that for me, but we have a hard time agreeing on things like the length of the buttonhole and whether it's really possible to fit puffy coat material under the presser foot. Time will tell if we reach a truce or if I'm forced to hand-stitch the darn things.
3. Reading
Even though I've been edjumacated within an inch of my life, I still don't feel very well-read. One of my co-workers asked me a couple weeks ago what sort of things I like to read, and I really didn't have an answer for her. This is largely because ever since I've been in college I've felt guilty whenever I've done pleasure reading, because the required reading was NEVER EVER DONE. Which is not to say that by avoiding pleasure reading, I did all my required reading. Instead, I played a lot of spider solitaire and DX-Ball and still didn't do all the reading I was supposed to, because for some reason this made me feel less guilty? I have no idea. Point is, I'm done with school and free from these odd compulsions. My current and intended reading lists are on allconsuming, and I welcome any suggestions you all may have.
4. Bookbinding
I took a workshop on non-adhesive bookbinding this spring, and at the beginning of last summer I learned cloth-case bookbinding, and I'd really like to keep my skills in shape. The main thing that is holding me up right now is that I need to buy a paper cutter, and then buy paper which can fit on the paper cutter. The paper cutter should not be a huge problem. The paper, oddly enough, might be, because while they sell paper everywhere (CVS? Staples?), your average run-of-the-(paper)-mill 8.5"x11" paper does not have the grain running in the right direction for bookbinding. Why? I don't know. Does anyone care except me? Maybe not, but every now and then I have these nightmares that I bring in books for a portfolio presentation at a job interview and my interviewers look at them at say "THE GRAIN IS GOING THE WRONG WAY!! SO YOU THINK GRAIN ISN'T IMPORTANT, DO YOU? YOU WILL PAY FOR YOUR INSOLENCE, WENCH, YESSS, YOU WILL!!" and then they cut me in half with a board shear. Okay, actually, I have never ever had a nightmare like that (THANK GOD!), but really, do I look like the model of mental stability who ought to be messing with established standards of grain direction? No, I didn't think so.
5. Writing
I always told myself that once I was out of school I was going to set aside time each day to write. Have I done that? Well, not yet, but give me a break, it's only been a couple weeks. Summer poetry workshop starts in a month, and it would be nice if I had a few things prepared to bring. I have a number of ideas which keep fluttering about wildly like moths and simply won't set themselves down on paper. (For actual moths, once they set themselves on paper, I crush them and throw out their remains. For poems, I nurture and poke them until they resemble something meaningful. So much for that metaphor.) And in the writing category falls BLOGGING, which you'd think I'd be able to do on a regular basis at this point. I do have a few post topics lined up, and hopefully you'll actually get to read about them soon.
6. Cooking
And especially, baking, because I have a very large Hershey bar sitting in my fridge which needs to be made into something. Probably chocolate chunk cookies. Or PEANUT BUTTER CHOCOLATE CHUNK COOKIES. I am a genius. And if I bake things, I can bring them to the aforementioned poetry workshop. Also, it has crossed my mind that maybe with all this free time of mine I should eat fewer frozen prepared meals and more stuff I made from scratch. My main problem while in school was that if I bought any kind of produce, I had to finish that produce before it went bad, and I couldn't commit to making that many meals in a row out of fresh food. Now I should be able to manage that, one would think. No doubt this plan will go south in the middle of the summer when I have no intention of turning on any food-heating device in the kitchen, but in the meanwhile, it's about time I came up with a good recipe for vegetarian stuffed peppers, right? Right!
7... Video games
The aforementioned fantastic friends got me a Gameboy Advance SP for graduation, which conveniently plays the games for my oldskool original Gameboy in addition to its smaller and more advanced cartridges. This is fantastic because, while I had several games for the old Gameboy that I hadn't finished yet, the prospect of squinting at a non-backlit green-and-black screen for hours in order to get through them was not terribly inspiring. This new device opens like a flip phone (which I find disturbingly pleasing: open! close! open! close!), has a color backlit screen, and its battery pack/power cord are not oriented in such a way that when I squeeze the device wildly due to my intense anxiety about Link's imminent demise, it resets itself and forces me to start again from the beginning. So I think my point is, my first six tasks have been hopelessly derailed by the wonder that is video game technology less than a decade old. In case you were curious, the current obsession is Link's Awakening, because the past three years have rendered me a hopeless Zelda fan, and after that I expect to begin Metroid: Zero Mission.
Okay, more soon. For serious.