new swappy post, dr. watson

my new post is up at swapatorium.



this month we took the pepsi challenge to see if anyone could tell the difference between a retro recipe and a semi homemade one.

wed was wonderful, my little jalapeño poppers! i joined leff on his morning trip to ballard so i could pick up some library books and, guess what! there was one pain au chocolat still left at verite/royale! and it was miiiiiiiine!!



deeeeelicious!!!

other than spending a lot of my day laughing hysterically at things that are not worth discussing, i read melissa bank's new to me the wonder spot in its entirety. i enjoyed it just as much as the girl's guide to hunting and fishing.

thursday night was, of course, the james watson lecture at pacsci with m and n.



what an awful photo! why exactly was he backlit?

anyway, i was unable to hear a lot of what was said because of the poor audio but seattlest has a nice little recap that's worth reading.

in all honesty, i was also distracted by the free container of brownie bites from metro market that was in my bag.



the whole time i kept thinking "i have a container full of brownie bites in my bag at a james watson lecture!" and it was almost as bad as the pez incident on "seinfeld".

anyway, it was a great night at the museum



which was followed by dinner at mcmenamins.

today i'm still debating about the gruff rhys show at the croc but the rest of the weekend seems to be chock full of busy. highlights at eleven, etc. see you monday!

LEFF GOT ANOTHER JOB!@##!@@!# plus some assorted other things

lots of things have been in flux at casa rakkaleff but it aaaaaaall pales when compared to this: leff FINALLY got his wish!



if you couldn't tell by the title of this post, the reason that he filled in the second eye of his daruma is because HE GOT A NEW JOB!!!! HOOORAY!#@@#!!#@ FIREWORKS!! SPLOSION!!!

we're both BEYOND happy. now he can put the happy, funtime place of joy and eternal gratification startup job behind him.

sorry, a. that's as much of a rant as you're gonna' get. i don't have time to waste any more energy on that disneyland, sugar rush, paradise, manna from heaven, golly-gee-whilikers euphoric gumdrop of a "company".

ANYway, nowhere near as exciting is this dalek shirt that i made for leff's early bday /congrats on leaving present.



i based it on this dalek drawing and used the freezer paper method. in fact, it took two freezer paper stencils (one for the dalek body, another for the details) but leff's worth it.

plus it goes well with the tardis shirt of yore that i made him in december.

let's see, what else...oh yes! n is happy!



why? because i got us tickets for the james watson lecture at pacsci on thursday night!



also, safeway has new signage.



i only care because i've been involved in a major signage changeover before (bp) and i know what a logistical nightmare it can become when it's on a national level.

right, i've got more celebrating to do. (this new job has been a long time in the making.) have two more photos for the road and i'll see you on friday.

things about the weekend

i don't feel up to writing very much this morning. here's the down and dirty from this weekend.

the 1980's called leff and said that they wanted their food back.



we saw the imperial teens' kick drum but had to leave before they started because of scheduling conflict.



that conflict being the swappy party with a, c&c.

saturday i was hung over due to the naughty girl scouts. but i managed to get to lucky 7 to get my hair dyed. s gave us (me and leff) a mighty o donut to help with blood sugar levels.



later that night, it was delicious dinner at m and n's.

sunday was roald dahl's chicken and dumplings (which i'm also eating for breakfast) and lotsa' dvds.

and i finished loop by koji suzuki. although i wish i hadn't bothered with it since i realized what was going to happen 200 pages before it did.

oh hey! here's a boring video from friday night!

mecca, smokin' wiener

the past two days? i've felt like doing this.



honk to the shu!

last night, we (leff + me), n and m were gonna' catch the second anime bento but poor m had car trouble and couldn't make it. (i hope it was just the battery, m!! we'll catch the "lupin" movie next week!)

so instead of watching "full metal alchemist", leff and i had dinner at mecca



and watched some more of hitchcock week. i'm seriously hooked.

on the way home, i noticed that, just perhaps, almost maybe, the pipettes are back in seattle and performing an instore at the lqa easy street!



i'll KILL to be there if i have to since i missed them last time.

what else, what else? oh yeah. i'm doing the needlework thing again.



some of you might recognize the smokin' wiener since i've been drawing him for what seems like eons now. i'm hoping to have a few more of these finished soon. although, they won't all be of flame broiled meat products.

enamor gnome, blue water taco

last week, i won enamor's boxie fawn contest. not only was the contest fun, but enamor sent me a gnome card as a prize!



how cute! thanks again, enamor!

this week has been nothing but hitchcock movies on amc punctuated by dinner at blue water with a and leff



and some busy work. mainly though, it's been a week about hitchcock. which is the best thing that amc does other than monsterfest. (warning: overuse of flash and sound).

owls and anne bonny

so, no. before you ask, i didn't go to motel. and i don't really remember what i was doing instead. maybe i was trying to make a blurry cameraphone pic of a bamboo static cling look vaguely like stained glass.



that must have been it.

this weekend felt all hunter-gathery. i mean, aside from these owls,



i acquired many of the things that i saw in shops. including a small bundle of things from utrecht and a cute little photo from the anne bonny.



i don't own this crow, however.



leff and i also went to rei on the last day of their 25% off sale. biiiig mistake. the whole fucking city was there and i'm pretty sure they were all wearing crocs. *shiver*

k, it's time i start soaking my cludgy brushes in some kohinoor pen cleaner.

fake plastic deer

the week continues to drag on. other than becoming addicted to "ugly betty", the only other thing that's happened is that a window washer cleaned all the, well, windows on our building.

i only mention it because it made me think of the "viper" episode of "g.i. joe".

oh wait! i got some plastic deer from desktopdistractions that are pretty cool.



thrilling, huh?

autumn and the king of kong

the grey is back, chitterlings. as such, i'm terribly moody. like, a fifteen year old who's just yelled "i wish i'd never been born!" moody.

this pissiness is not helped by the fact that we're rapidly approaching the autumnal equinox. also, the whole red leaf thing? it's nice on japanese maples



but, for christ's sake! can't all of you other deciduous trees on my block just fucking stay green until october??

in the midst of my seasonal angstyness, i saw "the king of kong" with leff.



it's a solid little film, esp if you like games. the casting/editing of billy mitchell, the donkey kong hi score holder since 1982, as a villain was spot on. so perfect, in fact, that the audience with which i saw "kong" clapped at the end when *spoiler alert* renton's own steve weibe beat mitchell's record. again.

ok, i need to call someone about a sunlamp so i'll see you friday.

deliciousness and other things (including wine)

it's been an odd kind of weekend, chicken tenders. that's not to say it wasn't without its magnificent highs! no way! just check out the deeeeelicious meal that we had a t and c's!



complete with desert from macrina!



there were also pics of hedgehogs and marmots. but, you know, we didn't eat those.



but we did have some awesome wine!



this weekend was also the breast cancer 3 day walk. here are a few of the fantastic ladies who participated.



i'm thinking about signing up for next year's walk. anyone want to join me?

leff and i spent some time at zeitgeist trying to avoid the football crowd.



we managed quite well, thank you. but we could hear them roaring while we were walking to uwajimaya.

did you know that you can buy pink wine in cat shaped bottles?!?



anyway, those're the highlights of the past three days. oh yeah, i set this thing up again



after having it shoved in storage for about nine years. i think that's all i'm going to say about it for now. although i do need to express a bit of gratitude to slogrl and leff for kicking my butt. thanks, guys!

lazy tuesday, i hate emp (no, tell us how you *really* feel)

the tuesday after labor day, leff and i rested. and it was good. i also took a photo of the insanely awesome ring that slogrl gave me!



i love that ring! thanks sooo much, slo!

yesterday was leff's new bag's first day at school.



his old lucent bag (acquired when he worked there during the dot com boomin' days) finally bit the dust. above is its wunderbar replacement.

seriously, kids. alchemy goods rocks. we still adore and use the bottle opener of theirs made from a seatbelt buckle that we purchased at last year's urban craft uprising. although, for the life of me, i can't find a photo of it.

ah, well. here's a blurry puppy photo instead.



so, hey! you wanna' know what really sucks? i'll tell you! emp!

not only is it in the ugliest frank gehry building in the world but...ok, hang on. i've got a laundry list.

1) the labels are very poorly placed. i really want to know if the white leather outfit belonged to kurtis blow. i reeeeeally do. help me out with that, please. don't make me LOOK for the fucking identifying tag! it should be right there, on the right.

2) given the size of the building, it's slim pickings in there. yes, i enjoyed the nirvana demo tape, run's addidas from the raisin' hell tour, the prototype flying v gibson, the screaming tree's guitar with a tad sticker on it and, oddly enough, a bird from disney's tiki room. but, come on. people aren't kidding around when they call it "paul allen's closet". and NO i don't count the fucking kiosks. to me, a plethora of information kiosks screams "we didn't have enough material to fill the required space."

3) no photography. um, is a guitar really that light sensitive? how about a "no flash photography" rule. i can live with that.

this is the only photo that i managed because there were museum staff lurking everywhere.



4) having to listen to retread (did i mean retread and not retard? i'm not sure.) live blues while walking through the museum. ok, i get it. live music. whoopiee. can there please be some sound buffering put in so i'm not forced to listen to it echo through the cavernous space? ick.

so, yeah. in summation, even though it was gratis last night, i do not like emp. i do not like it on a train, in a box, in the rain, etc. destructo, if you're reading this, if you ever come up from memphis, you're on your own with that one.

*deep breath*

have i mentioned how much i love the henry? i'm kicking myself for not getting there during the free summer thing.

labor day with slogrl, flatstock 14 recap

labor day was madame slo's last day in seattle. we thought we'd saved the best for last (and by that i mean mcphee) but it would turn out not to be the case. hang on, i'm getting ahead of myself.

the morning started at cupcake royale. it's been a long time since i've had one of their full sized cupcakes so i really enjoyed my chocolate peppermint patty!



after coffee made us human, we bussed to the locks. you didn't think we'd let slogrl leave seattle without seeing them, did you?





it was a great time to be there since it was deserted. yes, everything was fine until we tried to go to portlock for salmon and it was closed for labor day.

guess what else was closed...yeah, archie mcphee. sigh...



in fact, almost everything that i thought might be interesting store wise was closed. cafe sweet posie, for example. they've been open, like, two weeks. are they allowed to take a holiday yet?!



thankfully, sticker people don't go on vacation.





not all was lost, however, since vera's was open. so hooray for that!



we got back to lqa kinda' early since packing and such needed to be done. also, you know, everything was fucking closed. sigh...

we loved having slogrl here! in fact, we felt like we were missing an appendage when she left! (i mean that in a very good way!) come back slogrl!!! we miss you!!

before i let you go, how about a recap of the silkscreens that leff and i purchased at flatstock 14. once again, here's gigart's "tough chick". this time it's in situ so that makes it different.



we also got a pack of sasah barr's prints. here are seven of them. well, except for the larger print that looks like jigen. that one's by guy burwell.







here's mike klay's "northwest elk".



and yet another gigart. like we're going to pass up a black cat anything.



finally, here's rick from seattle show posters modified version of "poison the well".



honestly, it works extremely well as both a band poster and an art print. i beelined for his table when i saw it hanging. n got one too!

and that was our bumberloot for 2007. oh hey! before i forget! here's readymade's photo of my needlework in their booth! so, yea for that! hopefully, it'll be the last time i mention it because i'm sure you're getting tired of me nattering on about it.