flip & tumble

Perhaps my coolest Christmas present: a bag made by these people. My mom gave it to me. It's a reusable bag that squishes up really small in a stretchy pouchy thing. It's a cute bag (mine is lime/sky) and so far seems to be very good at carrying things. It's carried shelf brackets and tea towels from IKEA, clementines, and a ceramic cookie jar (not all at the same time).

perplexing pajamas

Have you noticed the funding announcements on public radio for PajamaGram? There are so many things that perplex me about this. Funders are normally really big companies. How big can this company be? They sell mail-order pajamas. Isn't getting your name read every hour on public radio really expensive? And who would go to a company named PajamaGram to buy pajamas? Wouldn't you buy them from a place that you know makes pajamas you like? Is it that great to get their fancy gift bag? Why not just go to Target, buy some PJs, and slap 'em in an envelope with the gift receipt?

yarn porn

This knitting world, it's crazy. The other day I went to the fabric store to pick up a bunch of pink yarns (so I could make this hat for myself) and the check-out lady was all excited about how I got needles and a bunch of yarn for under $10. There was a sale, woo, and they also carry Lion Brand yarn, which isn't very expensive. And the checkout lady said, ooh, have you signed up for the Lion Brand mailing list? And I said, no. And she told me all about how they have a ton of free patterns and got the catalog out of her purse to show me. She may have used the phrase "yarn porn." Multiple times.

Yes, of *course* I went home and signed up. Lookie, there's even a Lion Brand blog. I'm excited about posts like this one - she tells you basically how to make a hat, so you can mess with the pattern and make it up as you go along.

chicago: the lazy wrap-up blog post

Yeah, I never got around to telling the rest of my Chicago stories, then this weekend I went to Oregon and now I'm just totally behind. So here, I'm finishing off Chicago with one big post.


On Saturday we went to the Field Museum. They've got a real big dinosaur there.


A highlight of the visit: Chicago's Fluevog store isn't far from Grrrbear's house. It's in an old movie theater. I bought boots. They needed stretching (the guy almost pulled me off the chair getting the left boot off my foot) so I'm actually receiving them tomorrow - Grrrbear picked them up last week and shipped them to my office.


Clockwise from top left: Grrbear's girlfriend, Grrrbear, me.

Saturday night I went to former colleague S.Ball's wedding, the reason for my trip to Chicago. It was in a former billboard factory that now houses some guy's collection of sports cars. The guy also rents it out for events. The ceremony was on the top level, where they painted the billboards (so it had really high ceilings and natural light). Like how I cleverly made this photograph anonymous by shaking the camera? Totally on purpose. Nothing at all to do with the low light.


I wore my awesomest pair of shoes. In fact, I planned everything else I wore around the shoes. The other shoes in this picture belong to two very excellent people from my former employer.

I maxed out on wedding partying at about 11:30 and caught a cab back to Grrrbear's. I got in a little before midnight and was like, hey, sweet, I'm in time for Weekend Update! Stupid central time. Saturday Night Live was just ending.

And that is all. It was a quick trip but good fun.

bloom of youth

The cashiers at the grocery store by Miss Shirley's house never card me when I buy wine. I'm insulted. It's right there on my last receipt - "Customer ID Verified - Visual Approval." I assume that means "looks old." (Even if it means the dude lied about checking my ID - that still means "looks old.")

netflix tv thing

How bout that netflix player box thing? It's 100 bucks to buy the box, then as long as you have a Netflix subscription with unlimited discs (like the three-at-a-time plan I have) you can watch their "watch it now" stuff on your TV. I'm kind of tempted - hey, it's cheaper than cable - but I think my internet might not be fast enough.

The obvious solution is that someone else should get one and then let me borrow it and try it on my TV. Sound good? Who's on board?

public service announcement

This popcorn is really good. I've only had the blue one ("Kailey's Kernels") so far but I'm hoping my parents will pick up one or both of the others while they're in Colorado. Although I suppose I could mail-order it. But that seems kind of excessive somehow. On the other hand, it *is* really good popcorn....

twice in one weekend? what are the chances?

Theme week: We're old.


Teenage boy working at the farmer's market: What does "TMBG" stand for?
Me: They Might Be Giants.
Him: [puzzled] Oh.
Me: It's a band.

(Also in this picture: garlic scapes, my new favorite thing.)

craigslist economics

I've mentioned before that I have a saved search on Craiglist where I look for furniture in my neighborhood. I don't even need any more furniture - I kind of just keep checking it out of habit. So when you check every day or two, you start to notice the same items coming back over and over. Like these chairs:


The owner has been trying to sell them for *months*. They pop up once a week or more at $60 for four chairs or $40 for two. And nobody's buying. Seriously, have you seen uglier chairs? Why would you want those in your house? And how on earth can it be worth it for that person to keep posting the ad? Seriously. Dude. Give them away. Or at least take a less ugly picture.

shopping cart technology of awesomeness

The grocery store near S.Ev's is on two levels, and the way you get to the basement is down a moving walkway ramp thing. The first time I went there I stood at the top for like two minutes unable to figure out what I was supposed to do. Turns out, when you put the cart on the ramp, it sets a brake of some kind so your cart doesn't get away from you.


Excellent, right?

public shoe store

Saturday afternoon I went to the coolest shoe store around. It's been in Clarendon, a neighborhood in Arlington, Virginia, since 1938. This is a picture of the guy; his store is mentioned at the end of this article. He's a podiatrist and he knows what shoes will make your feet not hurt. Also, he was able to tell me that the pain in the ball of my foot is probably not caused by a cracked bone, which it hadn't even occurred to me to worry about.

The store looks like it's been there since 1938 - there's hand-lettered signs in the window, shoe boxes lining all the walls, terrible overhead fluorescent lighting, and you sit in chairs with mustard-yellow velvet upholstery. You tell the guy what you want, he looks at your feet and comes back with the perfect shoe. Perfect in comfort, if not always in appearance.

I told him about my nasty plantar fasciitis and he brought me a new pair of Etonics that make my feet want to cry for joy but are entirely unsuitable for nice clothes. After offering me a few pairs of black orthopedic shoes, he dug up a pair of SoftWalks and grudgingly agreed to let me buy them for work. (He also put some arch supports in my Norwegian dance shoes but only after I promised to wear the Etonics whenever I walk. So I think I'm going to be a pretty obvious tourist as I march through the streets of Berlin. Sigh.)

Public Shoe Store, people. Go while you can. (He's in his 70s - this can't go on forever.)

cousins on facebook

One of the unexpected bonuses of Facebook: reconnecting with distant family members. My cousin (actually my dad's cousin's kid, so whatever that makes her to me) M.Dav lives in Kansas, which means I see her once every, oh, 5 to 20 years. But we're buddies on Facebook, so she let me know she was coming to town for a conference, and today we got together for brunch 'n' scrabble. (Actual, real-life scrabble, rather than the usual scrabulous.)

I had what I think was my best scrabble game of all time. Not only did I play all my tiles twice, I also played a wide range of other outstanding plays. End score was Towwas, 483; M.Dav, 225. If only I could've made 15 more points, it would have been truly awesome. (I had two points in my hand when I went out.) This is M.Dav pretending to look depressed over the final board:


We also went shoe shopping at a comfort shoe store in My Little Town (which is the kind of little town that has independently-run comfort shoe stores that also stock a lot of local-made jewelry and guatemalan handcrafts) and, because M.Dav has the same family foot issues I do, she was able to recommend some excellent shoes. My feet are very excited.

squid!

Yesterday J.Chu and I sold stuff at a craft fair. It was fun, and I sold about a dozen scarves - two to a Christmas show friend, one to J.Chu's grandmother, and the rest to complete strangers. And, more importantly, I spent less than I took in. Woo! The main thing I couldn't resist was these squid:
It's a squid...dressed as a cat! For Halloween! See many more squid products at the squid lady's etsy site. They're all totally cute. I also bought a squid tote bag with this on the side:

anthology

Hey! You know how one of my stories got picked to be in an anthology? Well, I just checked and it's out! Or appears to be. The release date is still in the future (are release dates for real? I have no idea), but Amazon claims to have it in stock. So go buy a copy! Yeah, I don't get royalties or anything - 500 bucks, that's the grand spankin' total, and I haven't seen the check yet - but it'd be good for my ego if you bought one, so do it, ok? I'll totally sign autographs.

Oh. Right. You don't know what anthology it is. Send me an e-mail and I'll tell ya.

craigslist

I have a search saved for furniture on craigslist in a certain geographic area. The entertaining thing about this is, I keep seeing the same items coming back at lower and lower prices. Take this picture. It was originally $30 or $40, and today it's down to $10. The person posting it has a terrible photo and says nothing in the text that makes you want to buy it. Is it just me, or does this seem like not a very good strategy for selling things?

Another funny craigslist story: when Chatty helped me move my TV stand from my car to my house a month or two ago, she said it looked like the TV stand she used to have. Since it's IKEA, this was not surprising. But then Saturday night at her birthday party we realized the people I'd bought it from (on craigslist) were her former landlords. So it really *was* her TV stand. It's a small, small town.

furniture desire

I want this chair. Maybe in...orange wool? Too bad it costs $2,129. First person to give me a reason why I should buy it anyway (and to send me two thousand bucks) wins. Alternatively, I could go for this chair. Which costs even more. They have these chairs at my favorite design store and they're both sooooo comfortable. Sometimes I go visit them.

i can has merchandise?

Want! Ok, strictly speaking, I have enough stuff to last me several lifetimes. But I still kind of want the little buttons.

this alternative

You know how Amazon has all these helpful tools to find you stuff you want, including the one that tells you what other people buy after they look at an item you looked at? Well, look what people bought after viewing the paperback edition of The Perfect Storm:


Yeah. That's right, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. I have a feeling that, pretty much no matter what people have looked at recently on Amazon, they've gone ahead and bought Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

I was looking at The Perfect Storm because originally it was going to be on this list, but I decided that I didn't feel as strongly about it as I feel about the others. Still, it's a darn good book and Dahvay recommends it.

shoe redemption

I hope these brown suede ballet flats, which arrived today from Lands' End, can make up for the ugliness of my other recent shoe purchase. Yes? Is it working? Will you speak to me now?

crocs r us

J.Bro doesn't know what crocs are [UPDATE: this is not true]. And him this big-time fashion blogger [UPDATE: this is still true]. Mine will be arriving at an REI store near me in two weeks. I discovered this weekend that if you order stuff on rei.com, you can get it shipped to a store for free. I also discovered that REI is having a sale, and that they're giving away coupons all over the place (A 20% off coupon during the sale if you're a member and a 15% off coupon if you sign up for gear e-mails.)

Anyway, crocs are the ugliest shoes ever, but they're soooo comfyyyyyy.

CORRECTION, 5/09: Omg! I'm an idiot! It wasn't .Bro, it was .Po! I take it back! I'm dumb! It makes much more sense to me now! This whole J.Po/J.Bro thing keeps messing me up, now that the Po-ster has returned to blogging (and hooray for that). It's just a good thing Jennifer Lopez doesn't blog, or I'd be confusing people all OVER the place.