doe-jo, collage and harry potter

looks like i got my dojo workin'



because i made a new collage today for scrapiteria!



it's for the topic "dance" and is titled, rather appropriately "lapdance". (*whispering* because they're dancing on lapland...geddit? *sighs audibly*)

last night d, leff and i went to see "harry potter and the goblet of fire" at the pacific science center.



no, that's not harry potter. those are the arch things outside of pacsci. silly rabbit!

i think that "goblet" is my favorite hp movie to date. i won't discuss it here on the front page in case there are people who haven't seen it (or read the book), but if you want to talk potter, meet me in the comments.

pacsci had the greatest set up for seeing the movie. it was imax and they'd decorated the entrance to the theatre with a fake stone wall and a hogwarts coat of arms! d told me that there was also a moaning myrtle in the women's restroom too which means that i'll have to see the movie again just so i can check it out!

and a quick weather update: no snow in seattle! HOORAY!!!!

wtf??!? SNOW??!? HERE?!? TONIGHT?!??!

i keep hoping that the weather people are just fucking with me when they say there could be 3-5" of snow by tomorrow morning. i mean, everyone keeps telling me "oh no, it NEVER snows in seattle."

for the sake of my converse clad feets, i'm hoping that conventional wisdom is true. otherwise, i might have to kick mother nature's ass.

oh, i'll do it.

in other news, i was one of the lucky people that got one of the limited run katamari shirts!



aaaaaaaw yeah, jerome!

also in today's mail was a fantastical mix cd from pants and another package of magazines from joyce! (my mailbox overfloweth! seriously, i had a hell of a time trying to get it open!)

pictures soon!

happy bruce lee day!

today is officially bruce lee day in seattle! (it has been since 1979!)

yesterday leff and i visited his (bruce) and brandon lee's tombs since i couldn't make the official ceremony today.



i really do love bruce lee. (and brandon too, i just had more of a bruce lee connection since padre and i used to watch his movies together.) but, i'm embarrassed to admit, i didn't realize that he was buried in seattle until yesterday morning. (i thought he was buried in l.a.! now i know better.)

i'm going to watch "fists of fury" before i head off to work. although i wish that i had a copy of "game of death". why don't i have a copy of "game of death"?

mono derail

planning on visiting seattle and riding the monorail, my lovlies? better think again! this is the closest you'll be getting to the inside of it for a while.



apparently, both trains collided last night, injuring two people.

i was wondering about the excess of sirens last night. and now i know.

also, i'm *REALLY* glad that the monorail expansion was finally shot down during the last vote. because between this crash and the seemingly constant fires on the trains (plus the fact that the new route would have gone from no where to no where with no stops in between), i just don't understand how it could have possibly been a viable form of transportation.

oh, and dear future seattle tourist? the 15 or the 18 bus will get you closer to the pike place market anyway.

anata mo watashi mo pocky!

this morning i was trying to help auntnanny find a distributor for pocky since she doesn't have a store in her area that sells it. (i was also looking for reverse pocky for me because i don't remember seeing it at uwajimaya. (although i could be wrong.))

well, i found reverse pocky and this ad for pocky decorer at jbox.

i do use my pocky as a weapon quite like the lady in the ad. i wonder if there are any other ads that show people using two sticks of pocky to become a pocky vampire? (which is also something that i do.)

nachoes, mashups, deer, pocky

happy day after thanksgiving! i hope you had plenty of antacid at hand!

just to make you hungry again, here's a photo of my thanksgiving feast.



aaaah, nachoes! aaaah, quesadillas! i give thanks for maize and laugh at that joke at the same time. (even though it tends to be an inside one with myself.)

i just got my hands on a copy of "me and this army", the remix/mashup of radiohead that's on all the internets right now. i like!! i really like! (but i superheart radiohead so i'm more than a bit biased. (oh the version of "creep"! it's so fucking special! i wish i was special!!)) i'd link to a torrent here, buuuuuuut i'm a bit afeared of the riaa these days.

there's more fawn-a at my house. i'm sure i mentioned finding a plush deery lou at uwajimaya. well, now here's photographic evidence.



oh, and here's the pocky shot i've been promising.



imho, the melon flavor is the best of the lot. but don't eat the chocky erasers. eeeew, plasticy!

and now i must brave the potential crowds at the grocery store since i'm out of soda and i neeeeeed soda. i'm hoping that all of those insane day after thanksgiving shopping people are at the mall and not at safeway. that's a safe assumption, right?

my favorite letter is "zzzzzzzzzzzzz"

hi, everyone!



it's been quite a week! as you may or not remember from a previous post, one of leff's college buddies came into town this past week. what i might not have mentioned is that our mutual friend from baltimore who now lives in st louis, was also in town the same week! eeeep!

i loved visiting with everyone but i should have heeded the magic 8 ball in this photo.



when i asked "will i get a pony for xmas?" it replied "you will be very, very tired on monday. now stop asking me questions!"

rude little magic 8 ball.

but it was right. it's now monday and i'm exhausted. why am i so exhausted? well, just keep reading and you'll see!

one of the first things that we did when stace got into town was head to twice told tales, the used bookstore in queen anne with three cats. we're all book nerds so all three of us (that's leff, me and stacie) spent about two hours perusing.

we were there so long that the cats did some catrobatics on stacie.



according to miss s, the bookstores in st. louis are shit so she bought $150 worth of used paperbacks. which is funny when you consider that she had to repack her bag. several times.

friday also saw a trip to ballard where we ate at thaiku,



(uh, that's a wooden deer head at thaiku. the food was so good that i ate it before i realized that i hadn't photographed it.)

had cupcakes at cupcake royale



(that would be a chocolate cupcake with lavender icing. mmmmm!)

and made a pitstop at cookies, a cookie supply store with every cookie cutter shape you can imagine! (there's a skull and crossbone one that i MUST go back for!)



i got a cat, a rabbit and a star. the star's not in the photo.

i told the owner of cookies that i'd found her shop through, i think, not martha and she seemed pretty happy about it. when i told her that i was going to blog her too, she gave me a sticker.

if you need a weirdly shaped cookie cutter, some cool sprinkles or anything else for cookies, go to cookies, the store. they'll have it.

and i'm not just saying that because she gave me a free sticker and changed a dollar for me so i could catch the bus. seriously, i'm not.

oh! how could i forget! we also went to archie mcphee where stacie plunked down around $200 and i got these creepy things.



they'll eat whatever's left over of your baby that the dingo didn't eat.

oh, uh, here are some at-ats.



so that was friday. and now here's saturday!

let me just start by saying that we unwittingly went to the univeristy of washington's campus on the fucking day of the apple cup

stacie's thinking about applying for jobs (she's almost finished with her phd) and i'm thinking about grad school at the udub. buuuuut the apple cup crowd changed my mind. because, you know, i'm weary of drunken undergrads. i was one myself for waaaaaay too many years and i'm quite bored with it now, thanks.

anyway, udub. it's a pretty campus! and they have a building just for mean people.



for lunch, we were going to eat at the ethopian resturant in the area. but after walking about 20 blocks (and i should mention that at about block 15 i rebroke my toe by stepping on the sidewalk the wrong way. *anger!* *pain!*) we found out that the place had closed. like, closed for good.

but we did find the vegan pizza joint that leff wanted to try and the chinese tapas place that we'd read about. plus the buffalo exchange where i got a much needed scarf. so i can't complain too much. (but my toe still hurts.)

later that night we had the "indian food debacle aught five" where every indian place we tried was closed. but not, like, closed for good. just not open. so we ended up getting thai again. this time at phucket.



yes, phucket. but you don't really pronounce it that way.

and that was saturday.

sunday was a half day for me since i had to work. we went to the international district which, of course, means uwajimaya and kinokuniya but will now alwaysalwaysalways include something from yummy house bakery.

their pastries are to die for!! and they're reeeeeeally inexpensive! just don't forget to bus your table when you're finished.



should i mention how much stacie spent at kinokuniya? *cough* $155 *cough* have i mentioned that she had to repack her bag? several times?

leff and i got lots of stuff at both places, most notably the aforepictured catbus shirt, a plush deery lou and some fantastic pocky!! but i don't have photos of the pocky and deery lou yet, so you'll just have to live with some shots from inside uwajimaya.





this shrimp's kung fu is better than yours.



stacie and leff went to capitol hill that afternoon and it sounded like lots of fun. but i'll let leff tell you about that since he was there.

oh! and a friend of mine let us tour the children's museum after it was closed. they had a painting of a deer.



it's all staggy and stuff.

stacie left at 3:45 am today (monday) and now i'm utterly exhausted. so i'm going to take a nap (after i clean the dishes and make dinner and buy cat food and pick up some books from the library and move the car again and figure out the thanksgiving menu and...man, i need to hire a personal assistant!)

i ramble like a house on fire

seattle is a busy place.

this week one of leff's old college buddies came into town from new mexico. (i thought that he was going to be here last month but i was wrong.) his wonderful sister lives here and we've all been hanging out. (i'll probably continue to hang out with d as she has a weekly "america's next top model" bashing and drink-a-thon and is, in fact, quite a crafty and wonderful person!) (that's not to say that m isn't cool too, because he is! he just doesn't live in seattle.)

sunday night we went to the hideaway for general booze and talking. it was quite fun.



the hideaway serves cocktails but cock is part of cocktails so i took a picture to illustrate that fact. because i am twelve.

tuesday night d and i went to see juliette and the licks (warning: lots of unwanted music on site. click at your own risk.) at easy street records.



aw, it's juliette lewis.

the licks aren't half bad. i'd recommend catching their live show. (i originally only went to get the milk king an autographed cd for his birthday (he luuuuuuuuurves juliette lewis) but i ended up liking the band. hooray for me!)

afterwards, there was more drinking and talking at casa rakkaleff. it took me a day to recover because, as i'm discovering, i'm old and cannot imbibe as i used to. *sadness*

tonight stace-o-rama gets in from st. louis. i know she won't like them, but i'm going to talk her into seeing the clorox girls at easy street. because, frankly? i'm addicted to e.s. in store shows now.

stace being in town means lots and lots of seattle sightseeing. so, you know, stay tuned for that. if you want.

what else is new? hmmm...well, i just bought a print gocco and i'm hella excited since it's like silkscreening only without the pain in the ass of exposing a screen with a light bulb.

and i got a copy of the new wolf parade cd. it is muy, muy wonderbar!

and joyce sent me some back issues of giant robot and some kick ass atcs and the greatest dvd ever! (i'll have to take a photo. soon, i promise!)

and li hua gave me a TON of rice paper (which, you know, is a LOT of rice paper considering how light it is!) including a roll that used to belong to her grandmother! oh, it's so wonderful because now i have a lot of paper to use with my new gocco! *intense, glowy happiness!*

and, and, and....well, i'm sure there's a lot more but i'm in the middle of doing laundry and making a pot of cream of jerusalem artichoke soup and roasting some peppers. so i think i'll just /end here.

uh..../end.

geek like me

you would've thought that i'd realized it by now. i mean, maybe the fact that i make video game cakes and jack o'lanterns would've tipped me off. but no, i was all delusional thinking that those things and sketching out a level of frogger for a friend's baby quilt were really quite normal.

it wasn't until this morning when i became obsessed with how to destroy rfid chips in u.s. passports that it dawned on me.

i....am a geek.

but this isn't a bad thing. in fact, there's a call for submissions on that very topic. (that topic being women and geekery) (link via boingboing)

so, you know, if you're a geek like me and, also like me, of the female persuasion, go ahead and submit your 3,000-6,000 well honed words. the deadline's jan 15th, 2006.

but now on to more important things. can any of you tell me if i can microwave a passport without setting it on fire?

frost bites and bizarres

i'm making progress on the frost bites cd!



please note, however, that the cover drawing may change.

in other news, i may or may not be involved in some crafty bazaars, or as they are actually called "bizarres", very soon. i'll let you know dates and times if you'd like to drop by and say hello.

also, my etsy store should be up this week? i hope. and i'll probably have another site for you to visit that's straight up artwork and none of this rambling crap that you read here. (but it's a different artwork site than the other one i've mentioned.)

soonish. tres soonish.

frost bites!

the rockin' mr. austin, a.k.a. kitchen knife, a.k.a. he of many blogs (hee hee!) has suggested a new cd exchange a la the summer burn experience that many of us participated in earlier this year.

i, being the wit that i am, (i'm being sacastic. go ahead, scratch and sniff. you can smell the sarcasm if you try.) have suggested calling it "frost bites" since i like the seasonal type theme and i really and truly hate winter.

i've just finished working on my mix and i must say that it's not really about winter. it's more a "goddamnit-i-hope-i-survive-another-thanxmaskwanzikah-without-shooting-someone" mix. and by that i mean, they're songs that either crack me up or make me shake my bootay or both. i think that kknife might be including some seasonal type music on his mix. either way, if you'd like to participate, make a mix that you like. the theme is really open ended and you can swap with whomever you want.

if you'd like to trade with me, i'm contactable here in comments, via email @ rakkadeer [at] gmail [dot] com or in the flickr photo comments under the photo of my mix when it's posted.

c'mon, kittens! we all love a good mix. and mine's got wolf parade, herb alpert, half handed cloud and much, much more. (although not in that order).

oh yeah, i'll swap internationally too.

don't stop the rock.

hearts,
rakka d (not as tenacious as the other d, but i'm tryin')

easy street records

note to self: easy street records, you know that record store that you walk past pretty much every day, it has really great prices on cee dees. and, like, eighty billion in store apperances.

get thee to easy street for the diamond nights in store tonight, rakkadeer. do it. what else are you going to do? watch rick steves?

/end note to self.

no means no

i heart thanxgiving

as a recovering (methodist) minister's daughter and full time athiest, i feel that i should be exempt from having to do the holiday thing. apparently no one else thinks that's a good idea. today at work i had to help deck the halls, as it were. not quite with boughs of holly but i can assure you, it was tra-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-lame.

normally decorating puts me in a foul mood until after new years when i've had a chance to get seriously blotto and forget the hell that is thanxmawanzanakah*fireworks**fakesnow*. this year, however, the baubles haven't irked me quite so much. probably because i'm reeeeeeally looking forward to thanxgiving. (the "x" stands for "xtra special" BWAH-HAA-HAAA!) because thanxgiving means lots and lots of mexican food! like this!



leff and i add a new tradition every year. so besides the food, horror movies and the start of dvd season (we avoid regular television like the plague during the holidays), aught diggity five will have pumpkin beer and carved melons a la t eh shed and maybe festive legwarmers for the cats.

nah, i'm kidding about that last part. (or am i? mwah-haaa-haaa!)

and now a moment of silence for the brave avocados that will be giving their lives so that we may enjoy the festive thanXgiving grocamole.



bless you little avos. bless you each and every one.

i KNEW it!

i just effing knew it! padre gave my email address to my relative that may or may not technically be related to me. (no one can ever keep it straight. sigh, the story of ma famile.)

and guess what, she forwards shit. tons and tons of shit. from, like, eight years ago.

*bashes head against wall* *marks relative who may or may not technically be related as spam*

pdx supercrafty

last night b and i went to queen anne books for the pdx supercrafty shrinky dink demo and book signing. (wow, i just read that and it sounds like hyacinth bucket and her "waterside picnic with riparian entertainment" hee hee!)



i love their superhero illustration!

anway, it was a lot of fun! and the pdx women are sooooo freakin' wonderful and nice!! (i now own an autographed copy of their new book! it's terrific with a capitol "t" even though i didn't capitolize the word when i wrote it! trust me, get a copy.)

b made a set of elephant earrings and a matching necklace. i, since i had only been awake for about 30 minutes by the time we got there, made a pink elephant keychain.



it's kind of lame. i want some shrinky dink paper so i can make something better!

and so ends craft week, er, two days! such fun! and i'm itching to make some more things of my own now. pass the calamine lotion, please!

oh! before i go! i have to tell you the funniest thing. i was walking home from work and i heard this chaperone yelling at her charges. she said, and i quote, "dakota! cody! alexis! zoe! voices off!"

i died laughing right on the spot because of those names! god, to be in a group with a dakota must be bad enough but to also have a cody, an alexis and a zoe? HAHAHAHA!!! *wiping tears from eyes!*

happy birthday to glitter pissing!

happy first birthday to this tiny, little blog! (a day late but it's not that big of a deal.)

i think i'll take another nap to celebrate!

urban craft uprising and i heart rummage

i'm a bit too exhausted to write a comprehensive overview of both urban craft uprising and i heart rummage today. (you would be too if you made it to both of them!) let's just say that they were both superb! although ucu was a bit too crowded. (when we got to the building, there was a line for about a block and a half! crazy!!)

i got some great stuff and many, many business cards so i can buy more things later. here's the shot of today's craft booty!



that's a deer patch from copacetique, two paintings from artghost and a stuffed sushi from sticky wicket crafts.

now it's time for that nap i've been promising myself.

craft week or so

today begins craft week...ok, craft two days, but week sounds better.

first up is urban craft uprising followed by i heart rummage. pdx super crafty will be at both *AND* tomorrow they'll be at queen anne books doing a demo and book signing! (all craft info via not martha.)

and to kick off the two day craftsplosion, i got a wonderful red deer card from crunchcandy! (aka 'milla of madebymilla)!



isn't it lovely?!?

i'll try to get a bunch of photos from ucu and rummmage today! so, you know, don't touch that dial!

will rogers

thanks to mefi, i now know that today is will rogers' birthday. so, happy birthday to will rogers! (even though you're dead.)

i'm supposed to be a distant relative of his (through one of the cherokee great greats of mine) but i don't know for sure. i have the same corny sense of humor, so the rumor just might be true. haha!

hipster tshirt generator

ah, the fun you can have at the wooden robot! the hipster tee shirt generator is random and oh, so silly!

some shirts that i generated? "my other messenger bag is a car", "i like gentlemens" and "rock like a shlockstar".(found via mefi)

still hectic

it's still hectic at casa rakkaleff. so i'll keep this short and listlike. which means, things i have found out this week.

* we are scientists aren't half bad. scroll down a bit and watch the videos (particularly the great escape). you don't really have much choice as most song links on the page are broken.

* if you accidentally swallow a tiny amount of diluted hydrogen peroxide, you will not die. (*eyeroll at self*)

* herbal essances citrus lift actually works. hooray for not having to use pantene goopy spray!!

* my new coat rocks eight ways til tuesday. (you read that right. i bought a coat! and i'm getting a scarf next week!)

* when there is a large concert at key arena, your neighborhood will be inundated by people waiting for the show to start. these people will not know how to properly walk on a sidewalk. you will want to kill them.

additionally, rolling stones fans seem to fall into two categories-- 1) hopelessly clueless old people 2) hopelessly clueless teenagers

additonally, additionally, i am not looking forward to the paul mccartney concert at the key.


* we love katamari is good!

* gamefly's fast return system rocks!

* i love mochi green tea ice cream treats!


* long text posts always need a picture!



* i love persimmons!

* i can't wait for my, now, seven day headache to stop!

ok, time to hike up to upper queen anne. maybe something interesting will happen and i'll have time to write about it!

huh

well lookit that. i got boing boinged with the 8 bit mario pumpkin. thanks to t eh shed for pointing it out to me!