April 13th does not exist.
We had a comically terrible day when we stopped over in Manchester. Everything went wrong and awful things kept happening around us, until during the worst dinner in memory we just started laughing and couldn't stop. Eventually we took a couple of Dramamine apiece just to be able to go to sleep at 9pm so we could get the hell out of town at 7 the next morning. Does not exist.
So for the month of April..
I last posted on the 2nd of April, and we got married on the 3rd! There are a ton of pictures on Bill's site, such as
AIR GUITAR oh god.
We left for our honeymoon in the UK on the 6th. We stayed in London for six days, did a night in Manchester, and moved on to Edinburgh We were only supposed to be in Edinburgh for about three days, but we got trapped by the Icelandic Smoke Monster, and had an extra five and a half days tacked on. Various tourist photos and whatnot can also be found on Bill's site. We got home finally on the 21st. It was the longest vacation I've had probably ever!
What It Is, part one.
I may have mentioned before how much I love Lynda Barry's recent book called What It Is. I purchased it a few months after its release in 2008, read the whole thing, and carried it around with me for a while. Now I am revisiting the instructional part with the intention of doing the exercises, instead of just thinking about it. So with the aid of a pad of paper bestowed upon me at a recent meeting, I am armed to engage.
The very first parts involved thinking about cars in your childhood, and having grown up on a car lot, making a list of ten was quite easy. From there you pick one, and move through some memory rendering, and so on. This is a seven-minute writing spree in the present tense about a trip in the Honeybee motorhome we took camping (click for big):
Rereading it a few days later made me feel sort of crazy.
Today I stopped at B&N for a silly purpose (and I know: little bookstores! but little bookstores might not have carried the silly thing I needed), and stopped in the cafe for a little while to sit and draw somewhere outside of my house. So I scrawled out the camper.
I haven't seen the thing - or even a picture of it - in several years (until I did a GIS). meeemmmorriiiieeeessss
Wool Felt
I've just ordered quite a bit of legit wool felt from Purl.. All the felt I have is either from my coveted stash from National Nonwovens, craptastic craft store acrylic, or of the felted-wool variety (where it was woven and then felted). The last type would be all right but I only have scraps in a few colors, and it's a little floppier than I would like.
I have plenty of the acrylic type but it's just.. of such quality that I know it'll pill up and get nasty in a short period of time. I should know: I used it to make about a thousand tiny stuffed cats when I was in middle school.
ahhhh
My day job is moving locations this week. I spent nine hours at work today trying to do my regular stuff AND pack (my normal day is six hours). Tomorrow the movers come. I think five of us are in the office to help; everyone else works from home. It's going to be another long day. Gonna bring the Han Katten water bottle and some Dr. Scholl's inserts.
quick machine sketch &c.
The killer whale was my favorite animal for most of my life. I had lots of stuffed ones and I would arrange all of them - plus stuffed dolphins, penguins, and sea lions - around my one-speaker tape player and listen to my Shamu and Friends tape, pretending they were singing all the songs.
When I was a little bit older, my grandparents ordered a kit from the Orca Adoption Program and let me choose one to adopt for my birthday. I picked a female named Jelly Roll from the L-pod; she was number L-43 and her story said she'd been orphaned as a youngster. I got updates and a newsletter all year. It was awesome.
In my nostalgic googling I came across a news item that says she and two others disappeared in September of 2006 and were presumed dead. The orcas of Puget Sound don't appear to be thriving and need all the help they can get. As of 2006, the National Marine Fisheries Services added the resident population to the endangered species list.
One year of symbolic adoption is $35. I'm having trouble picking which one I want to adopt..
wah wah, missed two days
I slept 35 out of 48 hours. I think this entitles me to some kind of prize. Actually I got a prize - Bill (who is also stuck in the throes of illness!) had to go out today, and he bought me Oreos. I haven't had those in a long time.
Today I watched an episode of NOVA about epigenetics. It was super cool, and maybe I shouldn't eat those Oreos.
oh no, I really am getting sick
THIS IS TERRIBLE!
It's enough of a cold-type-thing to make me not want to do anything, but NOT enough of an illness for me to justify it. Soldier on. Bill has it too, but I think his is worse (or he is not into soldiering on).
Made noodles and broth, and relished eating the crap out of them, and now perhaps a nap..
Thirty days
I am pretty guilty of blog/website neglect, so when someone on a board I read suggested a thirty day challenge for the month of September, I decided I would spend it making posts every day. (This, instead of something truly self-improving, such as "I'm going to exercise for thirty minutes every day!" which others have made their admirable goal! I know that I am lazy, so I shoot low..)
So now we're past the three week mark, and I've managed to keep up, which is super cool. Doing this has also been an impetus to keep my makin' stuff muscles flexed - although I had a few months' worth of images squirreled away in my subdirectories, they would not be enough to fill the whole thirty days. I've always used this space as a show-off-pictures kind of deal, not a GLURGH LISTEN WHAT I DID TODAY deal, but I'm not sure how long that separation will last (I am also a LiveJournal neglector extraordinaire). So maybe I'll just see how long I can keep this post streak going, even if it means getting a little wordy sometimes. (CAUTION: NOT A GREAT WRITER.)
Anyway, I woke up with a sore throat today which is NOT AWESOME, but here is the first day's progress on a felty project:
Body, legs, and a pink brain!