thesis party

No photos, but I've been doing a whole lot of sewing this week. I'm slowly, slowly working my way through the entire ridiculous mountain of fabric that I've accumulated over the past year. I've been on a self-imposed thrifting moratorium (partly because I really do have a mountain of fabric cluttering my sewing room and partly because I am so, so broke), and I'm getting tired of it! I want to go dig through some bins of clothing and maybe find some new glassware. I am dying to start a vintage/thrifting resale shop, but I need far more merchandise, but I can't buy anything new until I reuse and/or sell what I have.

So! In order to make some space and also some money, I have been making so many things. Craftacular is in about two weeks, and I am actually on track to have quite a bit of things to sell. I've been cutting and sewing assembly-line style, so I don't actually have many completed items, but I will soon. Working this way is ultimately going to be good, as it saves time and allows me to keep my prices low, but it's a tiny bit of a downer to sew for six hours and not actually 'finish' anything. Of course, the feeling of finishing 20 bags in one day will likely outweigh that, so that's something to look forward to.

Okay, actually, I should go do schoolwork. Realized this week that the final project for my summer class is due the same day as Craftacular. Awesome!

FLOWERING

I am trying to live in the moment more. I don't know what that has to do with these flowers, really. Something about paying attention to my surroundings or something? I don't know. Kind of an okay photo, though I wish I had paid more attention to the floorboards when taking it. As it is, it makes me a little dizzy. That 'live in the moment' thing though, that's really something I've been thinking about a lot lately, or consciously attempting to think about & incorporate into my life. I've been doing yoga nearly everyday, which is quite nice. I've been trying to focus more on enjoying the process of things like reading for school, cleaning, and grading. It's quite difficult to enjoy the process of grading, I've found. I wish I could say that I've been working on enjoying the process of sewing (or any kind of crafting), but that would be a dirty lie. Maybe this weekend? I need to get my Janome serviced, so I'm thinking I might mess around with my vintage Singer. Anyway, yes, I am trying to live in the moment, but also paradoxically pay more attention to the long-term. I feel like the past six months or so have been heavily structured around getting through the day rather than any kind of long-term planning or preparation, and I am a bit tired of that.

Okay. Anyway. Back to enjoying [...] the process of reading & writing.

hmm

I reread a bunch of my recent posts, and holy shit this blog has gotten boring/lame. Sorry?

racism is still a thing

So my first week of school is almost over--just one more class tonight. I'm done with teaching for the week, and I'm going to continue to act on the assumption that talking about work on the internet is a bad thing, but I will say that I am pretty excited about both the class that I'm teaching and the students who are taking it.

I am really really not excited about the temperature right now. The forecast this morning was something like "high of 8, but with windchill it'll feel like -20." What?! Plus it's ridiculously sunny, which is an endlessly confusing, late-January/early-February thing that I love/hate about Wisconsin winters. (Does that sentence make sense?)

The only thing that has put a bit of a damper on the week is that I haven't had time to sew anything at all. I'll probably have time this weekend, so probably I should wait a week or two to let things settle, but I am definitely hoping that teaching isn't going to take over my life in the same way it did last semester. I guess my own classes could be time-consuming too, but it's a lot easier to make my own schoolwork fit whatever time is available.

Anyway, things are good. How are you?

hi hi HELLO

Wow, why am I so bad at this? I used to have to stop myself from writing more than twice a day. Oh, that's right, that's when I had a Livejournal and no friends or life. Ugh, damn friends, getting in the way of my blogging.

Well, that's not really true, I haven't seen my friends in weeks, at least my non-UWM friends. Grad school is consuming my life! Weird. I think I would be less annoyed if I were being challenged; mostly though, everything is just so damn time-consuming.

I did make time to go to Craftacular though. More on that later; I don't have photos, but I do have many things to say about the experience. It was definitely positive overall, though mostly it was a learning experience more than it was a super profitable experience.

Oh, and also, Thanksgiving happened. My mom and I made a ridiculous amount of food, and there were like 20 or 30 people at my parents' house over the course of the day. It was so, so fun; I'm a big fan of our family and friends. I have two super-adorable... second cousins? What do you call your cousins' kids? Whatever, they are adorable, and they looooove me. I already made a quilt for Noah (photo on this blog somewhere, I'm too lazy to find it right now), and now I need to make one for Jase. Who knows my name! And asks for me! And is probably the smartest, best 2 year old EVER! Holy shit, I'm glad other people are having kids, because they are so much fun to hang out with for the day.

Okay, shit, I have a 15-20 page paper to finish today, so I should get moving. More later! Must save something for tomorrow, right?

give me money i want money

I've been putting off updating this here bloggg until I had time [read: energy and/or motivation] to upload some photos to Flickr. Well, woops, should've uploaded them before today, as my Flickr pro account expired! And while you can get a year of membership for the low, low price of $25, that is roughly $525 more than I can afford right now. Does that make sense? Did you catch the implied message that I could really use $500 right about now? Ugh. I am 98% sure that we're going to be able to pay rent next week; I am less sure of my ability to pay my credit card minimum payments the following week. I keep changing my mind about the "best part" of my Bank of America story [the one where they raised my interest rate from 9.9% to 24.9%, did I not tell that here? Because I have forced everyone I know in real life to listen to my epic tale of woe], but I think it might be that they nearly tripled my interest rate because my debt to income ratio was too high [thanks Sallie Mae!!!], which also means that my minimum payment doubled, which means my debt to income ratio is now even worse. Geniuses, I tell you, there are bona fide fucking geniuses running that bank.

Oh god, this is so boring! I think that is my least favorite part of being broke--the fact that the only thing I have to talk about is how broke I am and how completely fucking evil Bank of America and Sallie Mae are. Actually, Sallie Mae is not so bad. They have been nearly human in our interactions, and I owe them way more money than those fuckers at BofA, so they're the ones who actually have reason to worry about my ability to pay them back.

Okay, you know what, no more talk about money. I just deleted a whole mess of boring words, because whatever! I am temporarily broke, but I will be solvent by September at the latest, so on to more important things. Namely, I have been sewing up a storm. I bought another day of advertising on Etsy for Monday, and I am determined to have at least 5 new bags and possibly a whole mess of new pocket zip purses. I came up with an entirely new way to make them, which is just incredibly exciting to me. I wish I had a photo of either of the two that I've made so far, but basically it is a zip purse that's constructed like an interior zippered pocket in a handbag. Does that make sense? The zipper is on the front, but unlike the other front-zip purses I've made, the front side is made entirely out of one piece of fabric.

Oh, whatever, I will post a photo once I've listed a few in my shop. The point that I really want to get at here is that I've been sewing almost non-stop for the past few days, and it has been amazing. I've been attempting to sew my bags assembly-line style, which is going to be a much more efficient method once I get used to it. So far, I can't get through any one step without realizing I forgot to cut fabric for a pocket/lining/strap/etc from one of the bags. Still, it has been kind of relaxing to just take my time on each component without worrying about finishing immediately. I did get a bit antsy tonight though--sewing for three days without finishing something is weird--so I put together an entire bag, and it looks awesome. I changed my method for making straps, and I think it's pretty awesome. Also, I am a little in love with my walking foot. It makes my stitching look just a bit more polished and handmade rather than homemade.

Wow, holy shit, this is all just really boring, isn't it? Money and obtuse descriptions of things that I have sewn and/or things I've used to sew. I am going to go finish my glass of wine (just opened the bottle I got for my birthday, will have to make it last for weeks! Or just drink it all tonight!!) and get some sleep and then I will sew all day tomorrow!

and the office isn't even new this week

Sometimes my day job is just mind-numbingly frustrating. I will be busy with it for the next week straight. None of it will be that hard, and I'm not dreading it, I just don't want to do it.

And I'm complaining. I know I'm complaining. Things aren't even that bad. I sold that purse that I listed to raise money for Wildlife Victoria. And, okay, probably it sold because some kind-hearted person wanted to donate money, and I won't actually get any money from it, but I am still really kind of psyched that someone paid cash money for something that I made. That's pretty sweet.

So that's a good thing. I made a few regular zippered purses last night, and it went really well. I feel much better about my sewing skills lately. Sewing skillzzzz. I can notice real improvement.

Dammit. Not only is The Office a rerun, Grey's Anatomy (which I certainly never watch ever unless there's nothing else on and maybe also other times) is not just a rerun, it's a rerun with fucking Denny and that fucking annoying English woman. Today is kind of annoying me. I'm going to go sew.

impatient

Presentation in 2.5 hours; I just want it to be over.

Related: First real snow today, or last night I guess. Woke up to stupid, stupid snow.

In conclusion: after a detailed* analysis of my site statistics, I have determined that I get more traffic when I'm not posting. What could that mean?

*obvious exaggeration

I am exhausted

but I do not feel like I'm about to have a nervous breakdown. It's all about the small victories.

In other news you can use, Sarah Palin is a fucking moron. In case you hadn't heard. What else? Oh, apparently there are rumors Putin is going to marry a Russian rhythmic gymnast half his age, except he hasn't announced a separation (much less a divorce) from his current wife. Hilarious! Also, I bought a table and 4 matching chairs from Ikea for $129. Score! Nathan said he'd put them together for me today, after he goes grocery shopping, so I'll be eating dinner at a table tonight. Double score!

In conclusion, never ever rent a car from Budget car rental. Ever.

two book reviews

My mom bought me two books for my birthday.



This is the one she bought me when she went to the bookstore and said "hey, I'm looking for this book about an archivist, it just came out in paperback this month." It is... not terrible, but I hated it. I just, I don't know how to describe why I hated it without giving away huge, key plot points, and that would be wrong. It's not a bad book, but I hated the characters, and as a future archivist, the ending made me so angry. Ugh! But hey, it was not necessarily poorly written, it was just not written for me.


This is the book my mom actually meant to get me. Two books about archivists came out in paperback in June; how awesome is that? This book made me much less angry. First, it was set in communist Russia, probably one of my top five favorite settings for a novel. The characters were not constantly blabbing about religion, and Holland covered the whole "tough decisions have to be made" thing in a way that did not make me want to stab myself or him.

So, in conclusion, of the two books about archivists that came out in paperback in June, The Archivist's Story by Travis Holland is far superior to The Archivist by Martha Cooley.

Oh, also, Travis Holland had the author of The Historian blurb his book. How apropos!

balsamic

Finally really going back to Milwaukee tomorrow. I think--I've said that 4 times this summer, but this time I really believe Amtrak is going to take me from Minneapolis to Milwaukee. I really might be in Milwaukee by tomorrow afternoon. I really miss my bed. Also, my friends and my awesome internship and all that shit. I won't see Nathan for at least 10 days, which seems endless; weird since we used to see each other once or twice a month. Oh, but you don't want this to turn into that kind of blog, and neither do I.

I'm pretty excited about getting back to my life in Milwaukee. I like being home, I love my family and friends, but I want to go home. Ha, I didn't even realize I did that! Called both Milwaukee and here "home!" Whoa!!

I'm sorry; I'm kind of exhausted. Time to pack! Or take a nap and pack later!

because i know you are wondering

So here is where I am at right now.

I'm taking those two classes--Legal Issues in Library & Information Centers and an Independent Study for History. It's much harder than I expected to concentrate on school during the summer; not having to go to an actual class isn't helping.

I'm trying to turn the whole sewing thing into a real live business, rather than an excuse to buy more fabric than I can afford. Nothing happens as fast I want it too. I'm not as good at sewing as I want to be, and I have a hard time promoting myself. I've been spending more time on the forums at Etsy, trying to meet people and get involved in the community, which is humbling. There are a lot of people on Etsy who are much more talented and creative than I am.

I'm working on a website for this lovely woman. I'm fast realizing that I'm not talented enough to make the website that she wants. I'll figure something out, I guess.

I'm preparing myself for going back to Milwaukee next week. I'll start at my internship right away when I get back. I'm going to give myself a day off once I'm actually back, then I'll start the interning. I'm thinking I'll do that two or three days a week. It's hard to believe that I'll actually get to go, but apparently Amtrak has a detour route worked out.

I'm going to start looking for a new apartment when I get back to Milwaukee. Nathan's coming down in mid-July; hopefully we'll find something then. I'm really very excited about moving in with Nathan. This past month has been the longest time we've spent in the same place since we started dating, and it has been awesome.

And I think I've made it sound like everything else isn't awesome, which isn't fair. I'm a bit stressed out right now; I've over-committed myself again, and I'm not sure how I'm going to get everything done. But hey, I got a lot done today, and I will probably get more done tomorrow, and life will go on. I am stressed out, but life is awesome.

How many times can I say awesome? This is so long. I'm sorry if you're reading this on Jeb's LJ friend page, or any RSS feed I guess. I can't figure out how to separate a part of a post so that it's shorter on RSS feeds, and I'm planning to switch to Wordpress sometime soon, so I can't be bothered to figure it out on blogspot. But hey, now I'm just adding even more words, and they're not even that interesting! I am going to go watch TV and enjoy my parents' TiVo while I can. Two days until I turn 24.

oh that's right I'm back

I guess if I'm back, that means I have to keep posting, doesn't it?

I'm still up north. I was supposed to take the train back on Thursday (after I postponed from Wednesday), but the tracks are still flooded. It's been raining non-stop in Wisconsin for the past couple weeks. I canceled my ticket when they canceled the Thursday train. Somehow I decided to stay the weekend instead of taking the bus. Father's Day and all that.

Anyway. A tree fell in our front yard yesterday--it was gigantic, and it barely missed hitting the house. Luckily it fell after my parents had both left for work. In the words of my mom, "good thing we don't have to tell the insurance company a tree fell on the Jeep again." I took a bunch of photos, but I'm pissed off at Flickr so I'm not uploading anything at the moment. I got to use a chainsaw! I cut up a branch of the tree, and it was awesome! Then my arm hurt, so I stopped. Exciting!

back from that unscheduled break

So. Okay. I am back.

I don't know why I left; I guess I was just busy. I went to Milwaukee for approximately two and a half days. I took Megabus there (three hours late), met with a professor, met with someone about an internship, and went to therapy. Then I had another hellish Megabus ride back to Minneapolis, which was only two and a half hours late. I hate Megabus.

I came back up here to house-sit for my parents. They were gone for 10 days; I got to hang out at their house and drive my mom's car and enjoy 10 days of constant rain. Oh, and I sort of played house with Nathan. Did I mention he's moving to Milwaukee in September? Since we'll be living together in two months, it seemed like it might be good to see if we could spend a week together and still like each other. Verdict--we can. September is going to be awesome.

I sewed a lot. I learned how to sew zippers--definitely not as hard as I thought it would be. I made a bunch of zippered coin purses, and I bought 52 zippers at the barn, so there will be many more to come. I haven't added anything to my Etsy shop in a month, but I'm working on a bunch of stuff this week so I'll have a nice backlog before I start regular updates again next week.

I haven't gotten much work done. Homework, I mean. Summer classes are weird; it's nice not having to go to class every week, but it's strange having to be self-disciplined. I'm not doing too badly, and it should be much easier to concentrate once I'm back in Milwaukee. I'm planning on spending mornings at my internship and afternoons at the library. And evenings in front of my sewing machine--awesome fun time!

Oh, and I'm working on a website. Let me rephrase--I am getting paid cash money to make a website for a very nice friend of a friend. Money money money! Once I get everything done and get paid in full, it will cover my June rent, plus a little extra for beer and candy. Or my security deposit at the new apartment, probably.

Other things have happened too. I still haven't written anything about New York. Nathan had a show; he has another one at the Triple Rock in a couple weeks. You should check out his band's Myspace and also go to their show, if you're in the Minneapolis area. I guarantee you will have an awesome time. Oh, and Dear Astronaut, my other favorite band, has a really big huge show this weekend at Mad Planet. You should really, really go; this is a huge deal for them.

As long as I'm telling you to do things, you should really check out Kinni Coffee next time you're in Northern Wisconsin. It's possibly my favorite coffee shop ever, and I have been to a lot of coffee shops in my time. They have great (fair-trade) coffee, and sometimes they have music, and they have gigantic tables which makes it an awesome place to do homework. Also, the owners are awesome, awesome people, totally the kind of people you should support with your coffee purchases.

Alright. That is probably enough for now. More soon, I think, and get ready--I'm thinking of moving my blog again. I want to design a WordPress theme from scratch and set up my blog on my own domain. I have no idea when I'll have time to do that, but hopefully that will happen this summer. After I finish redesigning dearastronaut.com! Jeb, I have not forgotten about you, for serious.

validation

Sometimes I think to myself "self, you have been keeping a blog in some form for, like, six years." My inner voice says "like" a lot. Anyway, sometimes it is hard for me to justify this whole "blog" thing, but then Kira calls me and tell me she was reading it and laughing, and that is all that matters, you know? Making Kira laugh.

In other news, I sent in registration to participate in a craft fair at a Catholic church near my house. I'm really into making rosaries (...I don't know), so I figure "hey, I should make a few rosaries, if anyone is going to buy one it's someone at a Catholic church's craft fair." Man, you are hearing so much from my inner voice today. So anyway, I decided to try a new technique, and I finished the main section, and knotted it and glued it and was about to see how it looked with the rosary center and crucifix that I bought in December, and then I figured "hey, maybe I should check the decades before I actually finish this," and I did, and one of the decades had 11 beads. It's supposed to be 10 (hence "decade"). How embarrassing would that have been?

Oh wow, you don't care at all, do you? My mom thought it was a funny story, but she went to mass every day until eighth grade. Catholic school, you know.

Ugh. I'm going to the library.

time flies

...when you're wasting your life.

It was raining when I woke up this morning, which derailed my only plan for the day, i.e. do laundry as soon as I woke up. It eventually stopped raining, sort of, so I walked to the laundromat (Soapie's, awesome name, almost as good as Miss Bubble's on Amsterdam back in Harlem) and did a load of laundry. I mostly washed my t-shirts and the one pair of pants I wear all the time now (um, I should really go shopping). I did my laundry in pink tights and a black skirt and my job-interview sweater, because I dress nicer and nicer as it gets closer and closer to laundry day. Because I am a scrub.

Oh, someone is cranky! I just cannot believe that it's 8 o'clock at night and the only things I've accomplished today are doing a load of laundry and reading about 40 pages of words about history. Also, I watched some News Radio and made stir-fry. And... that is it. UGH. I need to go write a novel or clean my room or something.

back

We got to Milwaukee about an hour ago. I slept nearly the entire way, and I'm still tired.

I wanted to post a few pictures of my grandma and grandpa from right around the time they got married, but my parents have dial-up, and it is so, so slow. My grandma sorted out all of her pictures at some point in the past few years, and I want to find a way to scan most if not all of them. Of course, they're up north and I'm in Milwaukee, so... I don't know.

Anyway, back in Milwaukee. School starts on Tuesday; I guess I'm ready. My parents are going to drive me around tomorrow so I can buy bookshelves and possibly also a filing cabinet. And possibly we will go to Costco! Exciting. Right now, I should go to sleep.

goodbye NYU

[Edited many months later: Who are all of you people that are searching for the NYU Bobcat? Do you just want to see what it looks like? Are you using this photo for something? I'm totally okay with that, though I'd prefer you told me about what you're using it for and didn't use it for anything commercial without my permission. Are you applying to NYU and looking to see what you're getting into? Tell me! Leave a comment or email me! This post is responsible for half the traffic to my site; I am so curious about why.]

This is the NYU bobcat. Ridiculous, right? Half of our sports teams (possibly the club teams?) are still the Fighting (Fightin'?) Violets, but for some reason, the other half call themselves the Bobcats (possibly the DIII teams?). According to Wikipedia, our school mascot is "Violet D. Bobcat," which sounds just about right. The best part? The school named the new mascot after the library's search engine, which is called Bobcat (for 'Bobst Catalogue'?), but sadly not "Violet D. Bobcat."

Funny, this is all coming together now. The ridiculousness, the library connection, my soon-to-be outdated use of the possessive 'our' when referring to NYU. Today is my last day of work, which is also my last day at NYU, and so far, I find it to be a little anti-climactic. I've spent five years as part of this "community," which is a loaded word at NYU for reasons too boring to expand upon, and I'm not really sure how I feel about leaving it. I'm going to miss a lot of individual parts of NYU, but on the whole, I really dislike NYU for a lot of reasons, most of which are more than tangentially related to my six-figure student loan debt. However, and beware because this is going to be a little cheesy, I've changed a lot in the past five years, almost entirely for the better (I hope). NYU is the place where I became an adult, the place where I became a person that I actually like, and the place where I met most of the important people in my life. So much as I am ambivalent towards the institution, I'm still sad to leave it.

At the same time, I can still honestly say that most NYU students are complete morons, and I'm really ready to not dodge tourists and film crews on my way to work anymore. I've spent the past five years walking around the same streets, which I've watched become increasingly generic and gentrified, and I'm ready to move on. Sometimes I feel like I haven't really graduated (surprising, right? Since I'm working at my undergraduate school, in the same job that I had for two years as a student), and I think it's time to move on and do something new.

Which doesn't change the fact that I've been sitting in Bobst for the past two hours, because the library is the only place that I'll actually physically miss. Which really shouldn't surprise you since my new life goal is to get paid to hang out in libraries. And that life goal is going to be a lot harder if I don't get into library school, so I'm going to go work on my UWM application.

i hate thinking of titles

1. I made Tofu Tikka Masala tonight, and it was actually sort of good. Seriously, I sort of enjoyed eating tofu. Weird.

2. What is with this fucking numbered list thing? Oh, that's right, I can't pay attention to anything long enough to come up with a coherent transition between thoughts.

3. Dogma was better than I expected and surprisingly deep for a Kevin Smith movie.

4. Packing sucks. Which is weird, because the Packers are so awesome.

5. Haha I made a funny!

6. Not that I did that much packing today; mostly it was throwing things away in preparation for packing later.

7. Things are happening behind the scenes, and I can't really talk about it, but said things seem to be looking up, sort of kind of maybe.

8. Is it just me or is it getting really annoying that 90% of what I talk about here is how I can't talk about anything here? Perhaps I need to rethink this whole blog.

9. Time to watch Kill Bill II!!!

NOTICE TO ALL

Never grow up. Being an adult is lame-o.

My parents were here for what seemed like five minutes. I'm consoling myself with the thought that I'll be home in two and a half weeks.

I am currently stalled, devoid of motivation to do anything other than listen to music and print photos. Even the printing thing is a stretch. Please tell me that I'm being ridiculous.

My cats shed more than any cat I've ever had. Also, they poop way too much.