Maybe a new presidential candidate would cheer you up. Take your pick.
I’ve been wearing a “Cthulhu for President ‘08″ t-shirt since early summer. But I think Han Solo and Chewie wouldn’t be bad, either.
Ze Frank is one of the most creative and interesting people I’ve ever come across. I first came across his website in 2000, I think, when this creation of his swept across the Internet.
He has all sorts of projects on his page. (This one and this one are two of my favorites.) Last month he wrote:
Laura wrote to ask if i could write a song to remind her to chill out when she got anxious. I asked people to sing along to a basic track and send me the results as audio files. After I had about 20 in total I mixed the results together to create the chorus of the tune (special thanks to everyone that sent in audio)
Here’s what he came up with.
It’s been a busy weekend here.
On Friday, we celebrated our nation’s birthday by taking a trip to our nation’s first zoo. The Philadelphia Zoo doesn’t hold a candle to the zoo I grew up going to—both in terms of animal habitats and entrance fees (the St. Louis Zoo is free, whereas the Philly one is a whopping $18 for adults and $15 for kids 2-11)—but it’s what we’ve got. And Sylvia loves it, so there you go.
Yesterday morning my brother arrived for a two-day visit. He lives in Greenwich Village and almost always brings us a dozen fresh bagels that he picks up at the shop around the corner from him on his way to Penn Station. We’re so grateful for this gift, because even though it’s possible to get decent bagels where we live, nothing compares to New York bagels. (Seriously. They’re standing on the summit of Mount Everest, with all other bagels in the world stuck in the Mariana Trench. They’re that good. The other bagels aren’t jealous, though, because they’re in so much awe of New York bagels that they can’t help but admire them.)
This time, in addition to bagels, he brought a special treat that I’d asked him to find: vegan marshmallows. (Real marshmallows contain gelatin, which is made from animal bones and pig and cow skin.)* A few days earlier, I’d told him that Whole Foods stores in NYC carry them (but not any stores in my area), and because they need to be refrigerated it’s very expensive to get them by mail-order during the summer. “Don’t go to any trouble, but if you can find some, that would be great,” I told him. He took it as his personal mission to find these for us, and after visiting a few stores, scored two boxes of them (each holding about a dozen marshmallows for $7, if you can believe it). Thanks to her uncle’s efforts, Sylvia got to enjoy her first backyard s’mores yesterday evening. Which she loved, of course!
Once Sylvia was in bed for the evening, a few friends came over for some serious geeking out. Nine of us played a board game until 2 a.m. Yeah, I’d say we had a good time.
I also managed to get a lot of knitting done. Last night I finished knitting one new piece, and this morning I seamed it; it just needs a few more embellishments. Right now, I’m blocking Sylvia’s new sweater and hope to finish it up (finally!) this evening. A more detailed knitting update—with pictures—will be forthcoming later this week (I hope!).
I hope all of you, too, had a great weekend!
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*A few years ago, the excrement hit the fan in the vegetarian world when it was revealed the Emes Kosher Jel, which had marketed itself as a vegetarian gelatin substitute, actually contained animal gelatin. (CNBC did a story about this: part 1, part 2.) The few companies that made vegetarian marshmallows using Emes products went out of business, and since then only a handful of companies in the world have figured out how to make vegan marshmallows.
Today is Super Tuesday. It’s very likely that after today we’ll know who the parties’ candidates will be or at least have a pretty good idea of what the ballots will look like.
Via Franklin at the Panopticon, Dolores has announced her own candidacy and platform—which, as you might expect, is very knitting-oriented.
I have nothing against pro-yarn proposals, but I do expect a bit more depth from any politicians I choose to endorse. So I was pleased to see, at the Park Bench, a political platform I like. To paraphrase William Shatner, “I can get behind that!”*
My favorite points are “Mary McDonnell will be named Secretary of Education…just in case” (BSG, anyone?) and “We all will be issued jet packs and robots.”
I mean, really—who couldn’t use a jet pack and a robot? I’m convinced that if everyone had them, the world would be a much better place.
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*If you’re looking for a music recommendation, I can say that Shatner’s Has Been
The very excellent Mei has named me a Rockin’ Girl Blogger, and now it’s my solemn duty to pass it on to five other people.
(Do you see a theme here? I am very lucky to know so many really nice people!)
Okay, okay, so I’ve listed nine people, not five. Math was never my strong suit. Besides, since I rock (on toast) I should be able to make up my own rules.
(The toast reference? It’s something very geeky that Jan and I say when we really want to emphasize the awesomeness of something. Example: Sylvia has just gone to sleep for the night, and we’re feeling all mushy-lovey about her. “Sylvia rocks…on toast.” Rockin’ without toast is pretty good. But rockin’ with toast is even better.)
It’s been a busy week here, with preparations for Sylvia’s second birthday underway. Her Opa (Jan’s father) arrived from the Netherlands a little over a week ago, and my parents arrived from Illinois two days ago, so we have a full house.
The festivities began two days ago, on Friday, when Sylvia’s playgroup gathered here. We meet weekly, rotation among our homes and local parks, and this week’s meeting took place two days before her birthday. To celebrate the occasion–and provide some massively geeky entertainment for five toddlers–Jan and I built a castle in our backyard, using giant cardboard boxes and plastic rivets designed for this purpose. With two parents as geeky as Jan and me, Sylvia doesn’t stand a chance: geekdom is definitely in her future. Her cardboard bridge even had a drawbridge, for crying out loud.
Her actual birthday party was yesterday, since that worked out best for my brother, whose crazy work schedule gives him limited time off. We started the day by attending the annual spring festival at a local county park that’s a 300-acre historic working farm. Here’s the tenuous connection to knitting: the festival is called Sheep and Wool Day, and on this day the farm’s eight sheep lose their winter coats. Pieces of freshly shorn wool are handed out to the kids. It’s interesting to think about how this dirty, gray, ball of rough hair can be transformed into fine yarn.
Back at home, we did the presents-and-cake thing, with three grandparents, one uncle, and two close (adult) friends in attendance. Sylvia was thrilled by all of the attention, and loved the “cheetah” cake that Jan made for her. (She is really into cheetahs and sleeps with a stuffed cheetah every night.) It was a chocolate butter cake with raspberry buttercream, covered with orange-tinted marzipan and black icing “cheetah spots.” Delicious!
Today, Sylvia’s actual birthday, was fairly low-key, since we just had two days of celebration. But we did do something special today nonetheless: a trip to a local dairy farm and ice creamery, for some yummy scoops of freshly made ice cream. Ahhh!
The living room is finished. The living room is finished. Whew! As promised, here is a photo of it.
We got our paint from Sherwin-Williams. For other painting projects, we’d used Behr, but this time we decided to throw down for some really good stuff (this is, technically, the “showpiece” room of the house) and get some much-needed advice from People Who Do Know Squat About Paint. Yes, it cost a bit more than Behr, but wow, it was really worth it. This stuff went on the walls so easily and smoothly. Even our friend Gina, who has loads of experience with painting projects and helped us with this one, was impressed with it.
On the walls is Restrained Gold (probably the only color in the universe that goes with our furnishings, which are all from different color groups), in the Cashmere paint line, in a flat finish. It’s not completely flat–when you look at it from an angle, it has a slight sheen–but it’s nowhere near an eggshell finish. Unlike most flat finish paints out there, this stuff can be touched. That feature was pretty essential to us, since we don’t want to spend the next several years telling our child “Don’t touch the walls.” ‘Cause you know what? The walls will be touched. For the trim we used Alabaster (a white with a slightly reddish-gold tint, if you can imagine that), and the ceiling has plain old ceiling white on it.
The room isn’t 100% finished: we haven’t hung anything on the walls yet. We have a giant mirror (a five-dollar buy at a yard sale last spring) that will probably go above the piano after we sand and restain the wooded frame. We’re going to wait a little while before hanging any art, though, to give ourselves time to live in the room a bit and see how it feels.
So here’s a curtain question for you: what should we do with the windows? In the past, we had dark red floor-length drapes that we hated. (But they were left by the previous owners, and free is a very good price to pay for drapes–especially in a room that you’re planning to redo soon anyway.) We never closed them, though, preferring the natural light and airiness of open windows.
Let me say this up front: venetian blinds (vertical or horizontal, metal or cloth) are not options. I think wooden blinds or shutters would be too “heavy” for this room. I’m sort of inclined to go with a short curtain, something like a little longer than the windows themselves. But isn’t there some “rule” about how “formal” rooms are supposed to have floor-length curtains? I don’t have anything against floor-length curtains per se, but I think they’d end up getting stuck behind the table-chair arrangement on one side of the window. And I have two cats, so the bottom three feet of long curtains would be covered in cat hair in no time at all. So…any suggestions, anyone?
Finally, I want to point out one of the things in this room that gives me the most joy. This desk (a new IKEA purchase, as are the two glass-fronted bookcases flanking the piano) is what we’ve nicknamed “the dumping ground.” You know how you come in the door and your stuff just ends up in places–cell phones (and chargers) all over the kitchen counters, briefcases and purses and diaper bags all over the hallway? We decided to have a space dedicated to corralling this stuff. We don’t have a proper foyer, so we put this space just inside the living room, right around a short wall from the front door.
The large compartment of the secretary desk is where we put briefcases, diaper bags, and purses. The shelves above it give us extra storage for stuff we don’t need out all the time but still want accessible: camera bag, camcorder, external hard drive (back up your data regularly, people!). The bottom shelf is my favorite part: courtesy of an eight-slot surge protector, it’s the charging station for cellphones, camera batteries, wireless computer mice (yes, we are geeks), and other such gadgets. Everything has a place to go now, and when the doors are closed it’s all hidden. I love it.
