working, cleaning, etc

yesterday was really too boring to write about, so i'll keep this short. part of the day was spent on bookton.



another section of it cleaning. (obviously the above photo was taken before i cleaned leff's "office", i.e. the closet.)

and the remaining bit making dinner. granted, it didn't take very long. but, um, i haven't made baked chicken in eight years and i was nervous. let me tell you, if you decide to stop being vegetarian and want some baked chicken? go with that recipe. but use boneless chicken. (i'm still having a hard time eating things with bones in them.)

oh yeah, somewhere in the middle of tuesday, i merged my old skool flickr account. it made me die a little bit inside.

and that was my day. in cat news, clouseau is enjoying the new rug immensely. i think because it compliments his fur.



today i'm making a really quick cake? i think?? i'm not sure. i might be jumping the gun by making it today but i don't think that i care.

phở or foe?, in the pink, i'll tumblr for you

monday afternoon d called. "i have your whale bottle!" she said.

"whale bottle?!?" i replied not knowing what the fuck was going on because i'd just finished watching "the science of sleep" and hadn't eaten all day. also i was wearing two hoodies. (fashion forward!! hahaha!)

we eventually cleared things up when d squeezed the squirty whale section of the bottle in question into the phone and i realized (aha!!) that it was the awesome water bottle that burnt had sent me. (why can't i find a picture of that this morning?!)

anyway, it's times like these that you need to eat some cactus at the moose.

unfortunately for us, we got there right between the lunch and dinner shifts which meant that, DAMMIT!!, they were closed. so we opted for phở instead.



phở, not foe.



on the way to than bros, we passed these gorgeous trees that were blooming!



pink is the new spring! it's everywhere right now!



even on top of my babycake that i had for desert!



mmmm, babycake!

the rest of monday i spent typing things like "i like your lint strata. it's like a geology of your clothes." and then making a geology of clothes.



oh, and i also opened a tumblr account which i'm using as a link/youtube dump at the moment. (tumblr is pretty cool. it won't make sense why it exists unless you play with it so, if you're interested, you should sign up. i'm sure to be enamored of it for at least another five minutes!!)

and that's that. i mean, unless you count heading to mecca for dinner with leff. which i do, but i don't have pictures. i will say, "nice choices on the jukebox last night!" to whoever picked the combo that started with "thriller". awesome show, great job!

tuesday, of course, equals groceries. so i'm homebound again. but i'm homebound with new bird illustrations so that might be fun!

harbingers of spring, marmite vid, leff news

so what means spring more than daylight savings time? (only 13 more days left in the u.s. until we "spring forward"!! eeep!!)

um, yeah, what means spring? well, yes, flowers.



but also pink lemonade suckers



AND cadbury creme eggs!!!



that was the first creme egg of the season. this year i want to make a pie or a cake or something out of a dozen of them! (including the shells) or, hell, maybe i'll make my own!

i guess what i'm trying to say is, now that i've gotten renewed hope that the bitter, evil darkness of winter will soon be over, i feel like making things again. hooray.

anyway, shed has posted a guinness marmite challenge video on youtube. i think it's awesome. you should check it out if you have time.

in leff news, there are two fantastic things of note! the bf extraordinare has started a food blog (oh no! not another one! haha!) called common esculents which is going to be mainly about those one dollar ($, also known as "inexpensive") restaurants that no one seems to bother reviewing. (and where most people that i know eat.)

he's also started a closed alpha of bookton which he's hoping to make into the imdb of books. if you'd like to alpha test for him, here's how.

he's so cool!

anyway, that's it for now. i have to hand feed my cat some wheatgrass because he has a really awful hairball. my life, it is so thrilling.

west seattle garage sale, stellar

yesterday j, j and s were having a garage sale in west seattle.



sadly, it was a really crappy day for that sort of thing since winter had decided to hang around for a little while longer. not only was it cold but it was gloomy and rainy.



so, you know, turnout was low. this basically meant that leff, other s, j and i drank mimosas and rainier while j pulled some prints.



leff and i picked up a rug, another vacuum, sets of both the narnia and lord of the rings books (i collect narnia, leff collects lotr.), a couple of bust magazines and a cat tent (i'll post a photo of that in a minute.) because, come on, can i ever leave a garage sale without something?

you know what goes well with a champagne hangover, don't you? pizza. j, s, leff and i met up with w and his friend at stellar which, omg, was delicious.

they have a johnny cash/keith richards mashup painting,



cool booths



and a nice neon s.



i wish that they delivered because there's a pesto turkey sandwich on their menu that i want to eat.

so, yeah, that was saturday. oddly exhausting (which was probably due to the booze) but really awesome because now i have this photo.



i love my cat tent.

d'onofrio trumps aqueduct, mecca lecca high...

as i'm sure you've guessed, i didn't get to the aqueduct show at easy street. you wanna know why? two words: vincent d'onofrio.



le sigh...

at least while i was watching "law and order: ci", i did my taxes.



it still didn't stop leff from laughing at me every time he thought about it though.

shortly after the second "law and order" started, leff and a arrived (dammit! hee hee!) and it was off to mecca otherwise known as my second home.



a still doesn't like having his photo taken. mwah-haaa!



no photos of food because i got the hot turkey sammich (which i'm going to start calling the "hot girky sammich". sorry, inside joke.) and that's pretty much all carbs and gravy.

in other words, it's embarrassing...

today i think i have to go to a yard sale? i don't know. and i'll try to make it to vera. i kinda' want to see these arms are snakes and akimbo. but i probably won't be able to have leff tag along because he has very different musical tastes than mine. (ie--his music sucks. hahaha! i'm kidding, leff dear.)

ok, time to mail off the tax form and patiently await my return.

the big news!

hola, mes amis! since it's finally the 23rd, i can tell you the big news that i've been promising! i'm now writing the retro food column on swapatorium! (many thanks to swappy herself!!!)

so, you know, head on over and read about the potato salad pie that i made yesterday, if you so desire. it was disgusting! even peel wouldn't eat it and she likes mayo!



so yeah, that was thursday. today i'm trying to figure out what i'm supposed to be doing besides going to the vera project's opening night at the center. oh yeah! aqueduct at easy street!

ballard = library, high life and cookies

wednesday (although the whole day i swore that it was thursday.) was a ballard day. but only for a few hours. i did the library thing since i had, like, seven overdue books and two books on hold. one of which was *trumpets, fanfare* the end.



it was good. oh, yes was it ever good. definitely worth the wait.

i also met up with leff and a for lunch at the hi-life.



my favorite turkey sammich is off the menu! oh noes! the salad was good though.

leff had some ice.



which made his meal complete and balanced.

after lunch, i made a quick stop at cookies where i got this hammer shaped cutter.



do you know how hard it was for me to not say "here comes the hammer!" while i was walking to the register? do you?!

did i mention that it was sunny yesterday?



anyway, that was all of the "active" stuff that i did yesterday. the rest of wed. was spent reading and procrastinating.

today, i'm putting the finishing touches on what i get to tell you about tomorrow! eeep! i can't wait!

scooby science video

here's the link to the scooby science video that we made last saturday. you know, the one based on the theory that one can cobble together straws and use them to drink out of other people's glasses while they're drinking out of their own? kinda' like this?



yeah, it doesn't work and the video is short and really silly. sorry it took so long to post it.

the shins and insomnia, these things are compatible

what keeps me awake at night? the correct answer would probably be "that nap that i took at 7:30" but it's funnier to say "obsessing over why netflix doesn't have "lovejoy"."

and, no, netflix. "love's abiding joy" is *not* an acceptable substitute. sheesh!

i mean, pip understands this even if netflix doesn't. he is, after all, part of tinker's posse.



(original here)

while i'm talking about my brit geek crew, i need to thank shed for sending the link to radio free shed which is, in fact, keeping me company as i type. thanks, shedhead!

so what band goes well with insomnia? yes, the shins. (although i would have accepted whatever answer you gave because i grade on a curve.) (what?!?)

said shins have played several sold out shows at the paramount this week. they also played a free instore at easy street yesterday at noon. as you can imagine, it was pretty crowded.



i got there really late (11:54?) so, of course, i was in the back. but it was still a good show even if my photo turned out all blurry and far away.



optical zoom is a bitch without a tripod, i'm telling you.

and that was tuesday. i did not pass go nor collect $200. today will probably be spent photoshopping and doing other assorted things that i can't tell you about until friday. sorry, but them's the brakes.

georgetown, tacoma, olympia and a hell of a lot of rain

happy president's day, one day late. that is, if you happen to celebrate the combined birthday of washingtonlincoln. if not, i hope that you had a nicer than normal monday.

me? oh yeah, i had a pretty great pres. day. thanks for asking! leff, j and i got out of town for a while which was nice!

i mean, don't get me wrong, i love seattle and all. but sometimes you have to get out of the city or you'll smack the fuck out of somebody.

it's true.

anyway, our day started at sbucks hq.



i know, it doesn't seem to be the most fortuitous of beginnings but when you're coming by bus from lqa and are meeting someone arriving from west seattle with your end result being georgetown? well, uh, sbucks hq has a really big parking lot and its own bus stop.

ok, so georgetown. i think that i might move there. it has barbed wire



and smartypants.



which, in turn, has turkey sammiches.



this is all that i need to survive. ok, a multivitamin but other than that i'm set.

there's also this circuit board thing that j so kindly modeled for us



which is on the way to fantagraphics.

and, yes, before you ask, i DID get to see the love and rockets artwork. lookit!! here's a photo!!!!



tooooo awesome, i'm tellin' you!!

but let's keep going. there are two cities to mention. first up? tacoma. until yesterday, the only thing that i new about tacoma was "tacoma dome". but now i know about union station, the tacoma museum of art and the glass museum with its bridge.



oh, look! a detail!



i wanted to be wearing an eye patch all chihuly style while i was walking across the bridge but, alas, it was not to be.

after spending some time in the glass museum gift shop (it was raining, we were cold and i wasn't paying admission to the museum. sorry, but $10 per seemed a little steep yesterday.) we drug j away from the bird section (why was there a bird section in the glass museum shop?) and it was on to bob's java jive!!



cool innit? it also has an owl!



i wasn't afraid though.

there was also an ambitious career woman sticker.



whoever makes those gets around! for reals! they're in sea and tac!

sadly, bob's wasn't open. (not much in tacoma was yesterday.) so j thought that we should head to olympia. on the way, we decided that we'd try to find kill rock stars.



more about that in a minute. (and, yes, my handwriting is bad. i know this.) first though, it's the sleater-kinney exit!! eeeep!!



we didn't need to drive down sleater-kinney but j took the exit so i could get a closer picture of the sign. isn't he a sweetie? (thanks, j!)

ok, so back to the kill rock stars debacle. we never have maps at hand. and, even though j had been to olympia a few times and we were equipped with both a web enabled phone and my willingness to ask directions from people, we still somehow never found it.

since returning home, i've researched a bit. i read that krs is relocating to portland and new york. is that true? have they done it already? is that why we couldn't find it? or were we just too tired and clueless?

my vote is for tired and clueless. i know that i was tired.



leff fell asleep on the way back, so it's a safe bet to say that he was exhausted. and j was driving through a what passes for a torrential downpour in the pacific northwest. combine that with the traffic



and i'd say he was also pretty tired as well.

eh, there's always next time. and now, i have a map!

and that, pudding pops, was pres. day. i'm still tired from it.

today is the shins in store at easy street. other than that, i guess i'll be homebound until the groceries arrive.

sundays are always uneventful

as usual, sunday was filled with nothing but movies and four hours of "law and order: criminal intent". (vincent d'onofrio, i heart you!)

well, ok, i had lunch at mecca.



but other than that, not much else happened.

no, i'm lying. i got my username and password for a new site that i'm going to be alpha testing. that is exciting and promises to be waaaaay better than the site that i alpha/betaed for last year. i bet my buck fifty on it.



(actually, i'd bet a lot more but it's kinda hard to make puns about money involving only one deer equal much more than $1.00 usd.)

anyhow, yeah, sunday was the same old same old. today, however, i might be getting out of town! it's super appealing to me since i've only left the city once since we moved here. (we went to the san juans to go whale watching.)

oh! before i leave! d found the video of the new rat city roller girls commercial! thanks, d!

ain't no party like a kidult party 'cause a kidult party don't stop

when i started writing this it was 4:04 in the morning. and that's no error. (har to the har)

why can't i sleep? well, it might be because of all the sugar that i ate yesterday. fruity pebbles,



apple jacks,



chocolate chip pancakes with lingonberry jam



and some mimosas for good measure.



it was, after all, saturday. and saturday means cartoons!



(leff and i are kidults. although, um, we're not really middle aged. yet.)

anyway, j dropped by with his mismatched socks (which are *awesome*, btw.)



and his multitasking abilities.



and i tried some scooby doo science.



you see, there's an episode where scooby uses a long straw to drink out of both his and shaggy's glasses at the same time. in real life? it doesn't work. but you probably knew that already. (leff'll soon have video of this. i'll give you a link when it's available.)

i thought that i was going to build a tent out of blankets and pillows buuut, well, i got too comfortable and lazy so this is the only tent that i built.



seriously lame.

after an episode of "count duckula" (which i still love) and many hours of scooby, leff had a major sugar crash.



and that was the kidult party. you see, it's all fun and games until someone becomes diabetic.

today i'll be scrounging at value village. it'll be the first time that i've been thrifting since i moved to seattle. (what's the deal with that?!?) i'm looking for things that are directly related to the awesome news that i get to tell you about on friday! i really can't wait for that!

but, for now, i'm either going to go for a walk around the 'hood (haha! lower queen anne is *so* not a 'hood.) or i'm going to watch "donnie darko". it's the perfect movie for the lenten season. (ok, look, frank's a rabbit and there's that whole rabbit = easter thing. i made eggs once, remember?)

anyway, time for action, not typing.