Holy S

I am in awe:

Octoberfest(s) '08

Good old Tuesday. Yesterday I left work early on a count of feeling queasy --physically and mentally. Maybe I hadn't eaten in a while or something, I don't know. I was shakey and nauseated. And I was getting really upset that there's nothing for me to do at work and yet I can't really work on things that I wish I were at home working on. Then I thought I could improve my grasp of HTML (which is minimal, at best) but I couldn't find a good resource and I was just getting more and more fed up. So I left around 2. The fresh air helped.

I went home and watched an old video tape that I found when I was at home last weekend. It was the first tape I had in my video camera, which I bought when I was 18. It was very funny. My sister is so strange, and she always has been. She has always enjoyed performing impromptu songs in front of people/cameras. So some of that was documented. The other thing that was particularly amusing was the segment where I walked around high school. It made high school look like so much fun, which is not a memory that I have.
I guess that even though I always talk about how much I hated high school and hated college, I don't realize how novel it is for your life to revolve around people who are all the same age as you and who are all in the same boat as you. Come to think of it, that is what I hated about it all. Maybe it wasn't so bad. Either way, I still hope that I never say that those were the best times of my life.

I don't know how October wound up becoming so busy for me. On Saturday the 13th, Jared and I will be working at the Swap Meet at the Lehigh Valley Velodrome (which is all of a sudden called the Valley Preferred Cycling Center..?!). They have it every fall (and maybe even every Spring). Commercial and private vendors buy tables and sell their unwanted wares for shockingly low/negotiable prices. I have never been able to go because I have always been a retail peon who had to work Saturdays because she went to school during the week. So I am excited that I not only get to go this year, but I get to make money while I'm there. This should be fun.
This means that all of my October weekends are officially booked. Maybe I can even sell some earrings at the swap meet..!

T.G.I.F.F.

You can probably figure out what the extra F stands for.

I have had nothing to do all day today and yesterday, so I feel crumby and can't wait to leave. Today has been going by considerably quickly, though. Just an hour and a half left. Then I get to work at Bikesport for the weekend.

Kelly and I did get into the craft festival at the Mew Gallery. For an overview:
The craft fair is on Saturday, Oct 5 and Sunday, Oct 6 in the Italian Market. It is also sponsored by Di Bruno Brothers and The Gleaners. It should be a lot of fun. Margaux will also be representing herself there. Excitement has ensued.
Also, for more of an overview, Kelly and I are in the business of jewelry, which we make out of Shrink Paper, which is what Shrinky Dinks are made of. They are tres cool (pardon the Green Day reference). I'll be taking photos of them soon (hopefully tonight) and creating some sort of website. We've had a lot of fun making them, but we will need to make a bunch more. We just keep having so many ideas! We will also be selling our knitted goods (hopefully it's chilly out on the 5th so that we sell some g.d. scarves!) and I will undoubtedly be trying to unload some of my 1" buttons. So come out for a nice time. I will plug the event again next week!

Yesterday I received my mail from the Mail Swap. It's a fun thing to do, I recommend it to anyone who loves snail mail (and who doesn't?!). You get a name and address and you have to send that person a letter/package/whatever you want by a certain date. What I didn't realize was that that person has your name. I thought it was all scrambled. So that was kind of cool. When I realized that, I got a little nervous like maybe mine wasn't cool enough, but I think it was pretty even. I sent some office supplies, basing my letter on working in an office. I sent post-its and pens and paper clips. I received my letter yesterday and it was an assortment of postcards from different U.S. "attractions" (some of them were not so attractive, but the postcards were nice anyway). It was pretty cool and very exciting to get something in the mail that wasn't a bill or a red Netflix envelope.

I honestly couldn't say what I have spent the last 7 hours doing here at work. But before I started blogging, I was (though I have no idea why) reading the Timothy McVeigh Article on Wikpedia, which led me to articles about capital punishment in the U.S. And then I looked into the cases of capital punishment in different states, which was just horrifying. I know that Texas has it's reputation, but please take a moment to examine the following two links anyway:
List of Individuals Executed in Pennsylvania
List of Individuals Executed in Texas

--I also found it interesting that the Pennsylvania executions all took place under the governing of Tom Ridge. (THAT is why George W. chose him to be in charge of Homeland Security, isn't it?!)

OH! I forgot... the first thing that I did this morning was make a paper wallet! I found a link to these simple paper wallet-making instructions on Billy's del.icio.us Page (which is otherwise pretty boring, sorry Bill). It's from a site called Instructables.com, which turned out to be awesome). The wallet I made is pretty neat, maybe I'll try to make some of those and pawn them off on people at the craft fair, too.

No more IMDB pls!!!!!!

I keep getting stuck on IMDB and it makes me feel like such a waste-oid.
In addition to reading about countless, nameless celebrities, I also perused the New York Times, the New Yorker, and a handful of Wikipedia articles today (I don't need to hyperlink those references, do I? Just enter .com at the end of each one if you're so driven to visit the sites).
Some of the more casual writing on the New York Times site was a little too casual, I think. I mean, I'm not one for stodgy writing, but if I'm going somewhere for information (somewhere as allegedly dependable as the New York Times website), I hope for it to be professional and objective. This article, which I found out after the fact is actually a live blog from the other night's presidential candidate live debate, is a little too blog. Several of the articles on presidential candidates were like that... starting off paragraphs with "Wow!" and "Tim Russert did a great job..."

Another site I've been visiting lately (this week) is VegWeb.com. I've been cooking a lot, but I have recently been attracted to casseroles. Casseroles are great for when you want Sunday night's dinner to last as leftovers (lunch and dinner) through Friday. So VegWeb has served me well. Last night was something called "Rick[']s Casserole," which could have easily been called "Make Pasta and then Bake it" but it was really good regardless of the name.
ALSO
I made tofu for the first time. I found a simple Baked Tofu recipe and researched how to Press it. I rolled it around in bread crumbs and spices and it came out looking like mozzarella sticks, but without the cheese. and the moisture. They were a little dry. Most of them went into the freezer. I plan on frying them tonight. Hopefully that will help.

If you're interested in humor writing, here are the two funniest things I've read (so far) this week:
From McSweeney's - TROUBLE REPORT FROM THE GUSSSSB(GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED STATES SECRET SMITHSONIAN STORAGE BUILDING)
From The New Yorker's Shouts and Murmer's Section - Greenspan and Simpson: On Writing

Oo-de-lally!

Movies I watched last week while knitting/preparing for the arts/music festival that happened on Sunday:
-The Pianist
-The Royal Tennenbaums
-Bottle Rocket
-The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
-Robin Hood (the Disney cartoon)
-Year of the Dog
-Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle
-The Graduate
-Blade Runner
-Rushmore
-Ordinary People

That's all. I don't know why I watched all the Wes Anderson movies, but I did. Maybe in preparation for The Darjeeling Limited. I'm excited for that. Last week, also, Jared and I saw Across the Universe, which I would give 4/5 stars, although I think Jared might lean toward 3. During the movie, the fire alarm went off for a minute, so we all got free tickets. So. We'll see The Darjeeling Limited in two weeks when it comes out.

Lately, the topic of religious affiliation has come up more than once within my group of friends, so I've been trying to pick mine. I'm not quite sure, but I have decided that I am against people saying that they are "spiritual." The more I thought about it, the more I realized that I didn't really know what "spiritual" even meant. So I looked it up, and Merriam Webster defines it as:

1 : of, relating to, consisting of, or affecting the spirit : INCORPOREAL
2 a : of or relating to sacred matters b : ecclesiastical rather than lay or temporal
3 : concerned with religious values
4 : related or joined in spirit
5 a : of or relating to supernatural beings or phenomena b : of, relating to, or involving spiritualism

So the definition pertaining to my query would be "concerned with religious values." Having learned this, I hate the word even more. The only people that I could take seriously as spiritual people, I think, are Native Americans.
They seem pretty spiritual.
During one of these conversations, Kelly reminded me of a previous conversation that we had in which she asked me, "Do you believe in God?" and I replied, "I believe in Science."
So there's that.

Anyway, we had this festival thing on Sunday, and I don't think that it was what we expected, but we sold five pairs of earrings, which was nice. We're trying to get into this craft fair thing on October 5, which is held by the Mew Gallery. That would be great.. right in the Italian Market. Anyway, here's hoping.

"Ooh, look at me. I'm off with my way cool friends to sniff floor wax."

Sometimes PMS just feels like being a teenager, except the upside is that I look a lot better than i did as a teenager, even on my bad days. Maybe I just feel that way because Jared and I watched a few episodes of My So Called Life, which always makes me feel introverted and existential and angsty. --In a good way.
In other news, my job is back on. Through the end of the year. That's reassuring. And a huge relief considering that I owe various people/corporations a total of >$750/month. And the months just keep piling up.
This also means I'll be blogging through the rest of 2007. This will really be the Year of the Blog for me.
Maybe I should acquire some readership.
Somehow I re-stumbled across the art of Shag (shown to the right). We always had Shag stuff at AIA, and I've always sort of love/hated it, but I think I really like it as a collection, not so much as individual pieces.
Last night I watched Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle, which was terrible. I really don't like Jennifer Jason Leigh at all. But it reignited my interest in The New Yorker, which may or may not be a good thing. I have spent the morning reading Shouts & Murmers.
Today I had to check the voicemail messages on the shared phone line here at work and the first one was some girl like "Hey i can't believe you have the community college as your voicemail... you're funny! You better come out to Michelle's party tonight, you know everyone's gonna be there. Okay, call me back!"
And an update on the bathroom report: Yesterday, there were dozens of dried beans in the sink/trough. ..?!

When work feels overwhelming, remind yourself that you're going to die.

It would be wrong for me to not blog about these ecards. I've been sending them for weeks now. And people like them, unlike every other ecard that exists. you can browse and send your own at someecards.com. you'll probably wind up reading every single one.
In other news, I've been applying for a lot of jobs. So if anyone has one for me, please let me know a.s.a.p, as i will be jobless (and therefore without any money) in exactly two weeks.
Also, Kelly and I will be representing ourselves next Sunday, September 23rd at the Deer Park Music Benefit. We will be selling our wares, which include shrinky dink earrings (pics to come soon), knitted scarves, hats, etc, and 1" buttons. The festival is in New Hope. It should be fun. I'm excited. We've been shrinky dink-ing our little hearts out this week.
Here's a challenge: Kelly and I need to figure out how to display the earrings without actually buying displays. AND I happen to have 20+ empty Vitamin Water bottles that need to be put to use (since Philadelphia doesn't recycle plastic). Channel your hidden talents as an engineer and construct diplays for earrings out of the bottles PLS!
That's all for now. I'll be awaiting display ideas!