Rachel

I'm going to library school; I had my orientation session today at Simmons, and will be starting classes June 19th.  I'll be going not-quite-full time, aiming to graduate May 2014, still freelancing while I'm in school.

And I'm Arisia 2013 con treasurer.  Which on the one hand seems a pretty strange and overwhelming idea, but on the other hand it's a way to pull my weight in (a part of) my community while working with people I like.

 And Snert has entered the stage of her life in which we are SO EMBARRASSING OMG <eyeroll>  <heavy sigh>.  Still my wonderful girl, but sometimes this bit is difficult.

Y'know how sometimes when you look something up in Google, you get links from answers.com?  And usually the content there is, how you say, dumb?  And also wrong?  So today, when I was looking for wood to use for long-stitch book spines, I blundered across an answer.com answer that claimed that paper is thin sheets of wood, along with an inviting "Improve answer" link.  I have spent most of the evening correcting that and other stupid "answers" about paper, knitting, currency, and genetics.  And there's a seemingly infinite supply of more wrongness to fix!

It would be more productive, and less like emptying the ocean with a teaspoon, to do this in wikipedia rather than answers.com, since they've got a more structured answer space and more not-wrongness there to build on.  But it's like popcorn!  Kant ficks iust won!

I'm teaching an intro bookbinding class at Artisan's Asylum in Somerville Saturday afternoons in February and the first week in March.    Sign ups close 5pm Wednesday; I think we have enough students to run the class, but there is definitely room for more.  We're doing a coptic journal, an accordion book, and a long-stitch through a reinforced wrapper, with the possibility of more structures if time allows.  I've taught all of these before.  They're satisfying things to make, and the finished books work well as well as being pretty.

http://introbookbinding.eventbrite.com/  Come take my class it'll be fun!

On Saturday afternoons in February and the first week in March, I'm running an introductory bookbinding class at Artisan's Asylum in Somerville.  If you're interested and it fits your schedule, please come!  If you know anyone who wants to learn basic bookbinding techniques, pass it on!  http://introbookbinding.eventbrite.com/?ref=ecal

Our plan for the afternoon/evening went like so:  Snert, Classmate, and Classmate's Sister come to our place after school, equipped for trick-or-treat.  They hang out and do homework and such until 5:30-ish, eat pizza, go trick-or-treating.  Classmate and Sister go home by 8.

All went as planned until a little before 5.  I order the pizza slightly later than I meant to; the first place I call says they can't send us pizza until 6:20, so I call the place favored by our landlady.  They say 45 minutes.

5:45 passes, no pizza.  6, 6:15, no pizza.  I call, they say we're going out the door right now.  Trick-or-treaters start arriving at the door, kids get antsy.  Kids get really antsy.  6:40, I say why don't you go up and down our street and come back for pizza.

Time is now 6:50.  Pizza is still absent.

Just between typing the last sentence and actually posting, kids and pizza guy arrive simultaneously.

Guess which place I call next time?  Guess which place I never call again?

Two weeks ago Friday  I had a breakthrough in judo where I got the hang of doing forward rolls from standing (the kind where you go over one shoulder, not somersaults).  I then didn't attend for almost two weeks b/c we can't get home from judo at a reasonable hour on school nights, and the Friday was the exhibition opening.  

So this Friday we were training doing those with some momentum behind them -- run up, jump over a low barrier (traffic cones with a lightweight bar between), roll on crash mat.  Thems as could handle it were using another crash mat with a progressively higher series of barriers, and the line for the beginner mat was pretty short, so we were cycling through a lot of jumps in a short time.  *Most* of the time I was rolling OK, but I'd get out of breath and start messing up, and some of the ones I messed up I landed really badly -- like coming to a stop resting on neck and shoulder badly.  Fortunately, I didn't injure myself, and I started sitting out a few rounds when I got out of breath so that I wouldn't screw up so much.  But now, man oh man are all the muscles in my arms, neck, and shoulders sore.  Dang.

One of my bindings is in the New England Guild of Book Workers' exhibition "deFINEd Bindings: 26 Bindings of the Pictorial Webster's Dictionary".  This exhibition will be on display October 5-29 at the Bromfield Gallery in Boston's South End: http://www.bromfieldgallery.com/exhibitions.html and the opening will be Friday, October 7, from 6:30 to 8:30 PM.  The images I've seen of other books in this exhibition look fabulous.  If you're local and interested in the book arts, please come!

if you think I misspelled my search term, show me a link to the search you think I meant, and the results of the search I actually asked for ... NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND.  Because if I made a mistake, needing to look at that message and click through is fair, but if I searched for something distinctive that should have gotten me very precise results, a pile of generic things will just piss me off.

(This message brought to you by a search for "ralphbat.gif" that got helpfully corrected to "alphabet.gif".)

Had a lovely session of Froofy Drinks at Think Tank today with ron_newman , hammercock , xander, a brief appearance of trowa_barton , and thespian tending bar.  I had a Pyrate Punch, which is a rum and pineapple thing with some apricot liqueur and vanilla-anise simple syrup, IIRC.  Yummy, totally a fruity girl drink.  Ron and I both had Pomegranite Lime Rickeys, which were very tasty with a definite edge to the flavor from the gin; Ron found his hit surprisingly hard.  I had some peanut noodles, which were spicy and sesame-ful and just what I needed.  Xander slept in his baby bucket, which was set up on the bar up against the mirrored wall, and thespian took a goofy picture of the rest of us wearing freebie sunglasses.

Next time I call Froofy Drinks, I'll do it at a less weird time (and with more notice if I'm brave enough), but I'm calling this one a success.

http://stasty.com/?p=1329



(Image description: cubical white-frosted cake on a plate, one side sliced. A scrambled rubik's cube in the background. The cut side of the cake reveals nine brightly-colored squares of sponge cake, resembling a face of a scrambled rubik's cube. Two other slices of cake sit on small plates nearby, each having a different arrangement of brightly-colored squares.)