bunny vs. fence

the other day, this lengthy stretch of fencing (branded nicely enough with so much black, white, and red to represent the construction company Sundt, whose slogan seems to be three standalone words, "Skill. Grit. Purpose.") went up all along the drive that goes between my academic office building and various parking lots between here and places off-campus.

I'm told that they'll be building a new dormitory somewhere on top of the rocky, scrub-filled gully on the other side. it'll have more student housing and more classroom space. so cool. so necessary. 

some of us in my academic office building are mildly worried that this new construction will block our most excellent west-facing views of Granite Mountain. we shall see, I guess. I remain hopeful that the slope of this gully will mean the top of the new dorm will be low enough for us to look over from our third floor offices.

as I walked back out from my office to my car last Tuesday, I noticed a little grey-brown bunny frantically searching for a way through the fence, up and down the hill in short bursts, back and forth over the blaring red curb, every so often sprinting for its life all the way across the road back to the unfenced rocks and bushes to the east.

I watched it for a solid few minutes. it hopped away in panic from my slowed footsteps, then dashed in further panic across the path of someone's big white SUV driving up past us both. 

I didn't see the bunny come back that evening. so I studied the fencing as I walked. surely one little bunny would eventually find a gap to squeeze under, I thought. (the creatures seem to squeeze through pretty tiny gaps in our back garden gate, after all.)

if the chainlink were bare of this black branded tarp, then could a little bunny more easily get through? or if the corners of each fence panel were less square and more rounded, that would surely help.

I wonder if any of the planners and facilities and maintenance people worried about the impact of this construction project would have on the non-human critters in the area. hopefully at least a little bit. probably not as much as they worried about other aspects though-- the costs of labor and fencing and other materials; the design and the blueprints and the building's whole physical footprint; and the timing and logistics and how soon they can start selling spots in the new dorm.

at the bottom of the hill, the fence merely ends,. for now. the sidewalks remain open and the parking lots in regular use. for now. if the bunnies are persistent enough, they will find their way back into their hideaways in the scrub-filled gully. 

and hopefully they will all find new hideaways once the gully is dug out and filled with a bunch of concrete and whatever else dormitories are made of.

and if not?

they're just bunnies. some of their cousins, whichever side of whichever fence they've ended up on, will replace them soon enough.

guild things

last weekend I joined a few fellow guild members to demonstrate and display various handcrafted fiber arts at the annual Prescott Highland Games  & Celtic Faire event. I did not taste any whisky, but I did buy a very hot and flaky hand pie and wander around with a spindle for some hours each of the days.

(that is my little green spinning wheel back over on the right)

you'll have to imagine the raucous drones and strains of the bagpipes and fiddles in the air while all the Irish and Scottish and Welsh flags fly against the bluest sky. it was a very very sunny and warm fall day, but thankfully there was a decent breeze.

there was a little bit of knitting too, among the spinning adventures. I'm working on (and have been for like a year now) this two-color shawl from the Lyrical Knits collection. very slow progress.

in other guild news, we also have a ton of our work on display at the local library for October. five of these items are mine-- 4 little tapestry hoop weavings and 1 knitted cowl knit from handspun local merino wool.

next month we'll have our big holiday show and sale. my goal has been to have at least 400 yards of yarn made from the same fiber all done and ready for the ocassion-- and we'll see if I get that done. most likely the 2 skeins of wine-colored merino will get me there. much plying to do in the next 4 weeks...

 

soaps

I've been planning this all month long (but still managed to wait til almost midnight to write the actual review here)-- it is a simple ode to my lovely sister Marianne and her lovely soap business. 

today is the last day of my review-writing, and also sister's birthday! it also happens to be the day on which Oscar Wilde died, way back in 1900, but that is only relevant in a sideways jokey sort of not-really way. 

dear sister started her Etsy soap shop a year or so ago. I still remember eagerly ordering a few bars in the name of being supportive family-member. and I still remember getting my hands on an orange-scented bar that had my shower suddenly smelling so delicious and orangey I couldn't believe it.

I have loved this soap ever since. especially the orange-scented stuff. 

I have borrowed a few beautiful, beautiful photos from the Pebble Bay Soaps instagram feed. the soap Marianne makes is not only awesome soap, it is practically art.



the shop also has a facebook page. every so often she'll post discounts and giveaways and free samples and such there.

not every scent in her catalogue is my favourite, but most of the ones I've tried are really good.

and the bath bombs! I don't often take full baths, but when I have time to do so, these bath bombs are a great excuse for it. they smell magnificent, and they make your skin feel all smooth and wonderful.


I still want to try the salt scrubs sometime. that'll be my next "supportive family-member" purchase, probably.

so happy birthday to my sister, and happy end-of-November to everyone else.

subscription snacktime

a week or so before our roadtrip to New York for 1. the Computers & Writing conference, 2. friend Fernando's wedding and 3. randomly exploring Toronto and waving at Patti's relatives inbetween 1 and 2, I tried out a subscription box of snacks from Naturebox. I figured it'd be good for roadtrip munching. I was right.

the other week I caved in and ordered a second box, just cuz. it's the busy time of the semester. snacks are good for keeping my brain awake.

these cheddar lentil loops were pretty much the most glorious crunchy thing I've eaten in all of recent memory. I loved them.

the dried peaches were almost equally wonderful. and every handful of gummy watermelon stars I rationed out for myself made me smile a bit. I wasn't so much in love with the peanut butter nom noms or the trail mix, though they were okay. the salt-and-vinegar veggie crisps were alright, but I confess I can't handle too much salt-and-vinegar after a while. it overwhelms me.

if you want to try Naturebox, here is a handy referral link for you: http://fbuy.me/eyIL_. you get free snacks, I get credit for more lentil loops and more chocolate nom noms. awesome, eh?

arts and articles

I finished reading Station Eleven thismorning. the end wound me around itself like a spring and then at the end I bounced away, eager to read the next book. what will it be? the fat copy of Les Miserables I have sitting by my bed? the half-read Metaphors We Live By that I borrowed from friend Sam last year?

we'll see. there are also next year's textbooks to get familiar with and this old food magazine to browse. one of the ads in it is going to be shoehorned into an article I'm drafting. I think. writing projects take strange directions sometimes.


but enough about books and articles. this past weekend we went down to Indianapolis for the Broad Ripple Art Fair. (does anyone else besides me want Broad Ripple to be one word? Broadripple just feels better to me. but then I also want thismorning to be one word, so I might be a little abnormal.)

as I walked over to the Indy Art Center I saw the above mural off next to the path. neat. my ipod camera refused to work after that, so I have no photographs of the art fair itself. ah well.

some of the cool artsy things we encountered there:

gorgeous leather-bound hand-made journals and notebooks. friend Beth bought one, and I am envious.

jewelry etched with patterns of microscopic organisms. looking at these was fascinating. the etchings are copies of Ernst Haeckel's diagrams, which I remember seeing in my Visual Rhetoric class

I can't find a website to link to for the awesome ceramic lamps we looked at, but they were awesome. the art fair map gives me the name of the artist--Brian Moore--but that's it. he makes cool ceramic oil lamps and other gorgeous ceramic things.

we also entered a drawing to win season tickets to the Indiana Repertory Theatre for next year. that would be cool, yeah?

I came home with a piece of lovely pottery in which to store my wooden spoons and other cooking accoutrements. the old tin cans I had them in before can be gratefully recycled now. 

twentyfive: 20% of battery remaining

online places I did not miss enough during the death-time of my laptop to go digging through my long disorienting list of passwords:

• pinterest
• tumblr
• instagram (this I still could access via the ipod, so maybe it doesn't belong on this list. ah well.)

online places I might not have missed much (it's been less than a fortnight, after all!) but felt like I could not live without anyway:

• facebook
• gmail
• pandora

full disclosure--I remember the passwords to all those places. it's not such an ordeal to get access to them from wherever.

gadgets in my apartment right this moment that regularly or always or at least when in use need to be plugged into power outlets:

• a microwave
• two lamps
• red cell phone
• half-shattered little ipod touch
• kindle (a kindle fire HD to be precise. the huge matchy anachronism of the words in that name struck me just now for the first time)
• a blender
• an electric kettle
• a toaster (I haven't used that toaster for months. it's in the cupboard taking up space)
• vacuum cleaner
• a crockpot
• rickety sewing machine
• old digital camera
• printer/scanner contraption (very dusty at the moment)
• dead and soon-to-be-gutted white macbook
• shiny borrowed macbook pro
• even shinier, brand new (to me) macbook air 

I think I might have a small iron for ironing clothes somewhere, too? why, I am not sure. 

this is too many things.

why do I have all these things? why?

three macbooks? who am I? having three of these machines in my house is making me strangely nervous and edgy.

one of them I'll return to its owners very soon. the other needs to have some surgery done, and then... maybe I'll hold a funeral? I'm not sure what to do with it, really. poor dead white macbook. will anyone want you for parts?

the new one needs a name and a case. please send case-recommendations for me if you have them.

while I composed the list above, I kept thinking of even more things to put on it. oh yeah, I own that electronic thing too. and that other one. so many!

and those are only the things that need plugging into walls. there are also all these other bits and pieces-- peripheral junk that gets plugged into other junk. mice. adapters. external harddrives. it never ends.

this talk by Frank Chimero on screens and life and design is only somewhat related, but you should read it anyway.

sechzehn: playful

for German 212 today, I gave a small presentation--auf Deutsch, of course. a few weeks back I wrote an outline for it, auf Englisch, sloppily translated it, reviewed it with Claudia, and spent the intervening days practicing a bunch. the presentation itself is all over now, and it went very well. my classmates enjoyed it and asked gute Fragen. I thought I'd remediate my script into a blogpost, mainly for the thrill of having written a thing in another language. it is not very sophisticated, but nevertheless my German-speaking friends might enjoy it. and maybe some German-speaking strangers, too? who knows.

ich werde heute über das „Spiel des Jahres” Preis schreiben. das ist ein jährliche Preis für neue Karte- und Brettspiele. jedes Jahr ist das Preis zu eine neue, innovative Spiel gegeben. hier ist eine Liste von alle preisgekrönt Spiele. habt ihr eines von dieser Spiele schon gespielt oder davon gehört? ich habe nur vier gespielt. ich will Quirkle und Scotland Yard auch spielen.

die Geschichte des „Spiels des Jahres" anfängt auf 1978. es war die Idee von Jürgen Herz. er und eine Gruppe von deutschsprachige Journalists und Spielkritikern in Deutschland, Österreich, und der Schweiz haben das Preis gegründet. im nächsten Jahr--1979--war die erste Preis gegeben.

das Preis honoriert Neuheiten in Spieldesign. es gibt vier Beurteilungskriterien:

1 - Spielbarkeit
2 - Spielregeln und Dokumentation
3 - Materialien und Arbeiterschaft
4 - das Design

ein Haupt Preis ist jedes Jahr gegeben zum besten Spiel. manchmal werden auch spezielle Preise verliehen. das “Kinderspiel des Jahres” ist fur Kinderspiele gegeben. das “Kennerspiel des Jahres” ist für mehr hochentwickelte oder spezialisierte Spiele. zeitweise gibt es Preise für Party-Spiele, literarische Spiele, geschichtliche Spiele, oder die schönsten Spiele.

das „Spiel des Jahres” ist ein Preis ohne Preisgeld. noch ist es eine große und hoche Auszeichnung. ein „Spiel des Jahres” Preis macht ein Spiel sogar noch populärer, und veranlasst mehr Verkäufe. die preisgekrönt Spiele können drei Hunderttausend zu fünf Hunderttausend Andrücke verkäufen. gegen eine Gebühr, können die preisgekrönt Spiele das „Spiel des Jahres” Logo lizenzieren. sie können das Logo auf Kartons, Websites, und andere verkaufsfördernde Materialien drucken. also, dadurch bekommen die Spiele mehr Beachtung und macht die Spiele bekannter. Menschen sagen das aufgrund des “Spiels des Jahres” Deutschland produziert viel mehr gute Spiele.

jetzt, drei Beispiele: Catan, Zug um Zug, und Dixit.

Catan--oder die Siedler von Catan--hat das „Spiel des Jahres” in 1995 gewonnen. es ist ein Spiel über Tauschhandel und Aufbau--einfach zu spielen und sehr populär. diese Spiel hat Brettspiele sehr populär gemacht.


Zug um Zug ist ein Spiel mit--natürlich--Züge. Es gibt viele Versionen, die in Europa, USA, Asia, Nederland, Indien oder Skandinavien spielen.


Dixit ist eine kreative Ratespiel. es gibt Karten mit nur Bildern. es hat das „Spiel des Jahres” in 2010 gewonnen.


so, diese sind nur drei von allen der preisgekrönten Spiele. am 18. Mai, wird die Nominierungen fur das “Spiel des Jahres” 2015 bekanntgemacht. welche neuen Spiele worden wohl dieses Jahr das Preis gewinnen? es wird spannend sein, das herauszufinden.

das Ende.

für mehr Information:
www.spieldesjahres.de
boardgamegeek.com/wiki/page/Spiel_des_Jahres
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiel_des_Jahres

stuffed and unstuffed selves

today I will officially be moved out of and moved on from this little porch and the tiny apartment behind it. it's been practically empty since Tuesday, thanks to the muscles and work ethics of a handful of not-thanked-enough colleagues and friends.

in the meantime I've been indulging in the gooey, unsettling, intoxicating fuzz of being uncentered from almost everywhere and detached from almost everything but a suitcase.

in a few hours I will get on a plane with that suitcase and I will end up, bright and early Saturday morning, in Manchester.

what will I find there?

will I take useful, people-containing photographs of any of it, or will I be too distracted by weird-looking, random, faceless corners?

will the things I take photographs of and post photographs of and scroll backwards through photographs of next semester or next year, will those things and their places mean something more because I took time to capture the shape of them in pixels?

I read Katie King's Networked Reenactments last week, as part of my summer reading. at one point, King references the fact that we own all these devices, and we are only some of what they can do for us. the wonky-seeming direction of that be-verb strikes me. we are only some of all those networked machines. and today, when this afternoon I saw the digital soliloquizing of Aral Balkan along similar lines, I decided to put the two together and muse about technology and selfhood for a while.

Balkan says that we relate to our devices as to some kind of "extended mind." your memories are over here, in your typed-up to-do list and your instant messenger chat logs and that journal you've been writing in for more than a year.

your stuff, whether it is pixelly digital stuff or paper and ink stuff or nuts and bolts stuff, is part of how you work. you could survive without most of it, probably, but you generally don't, do you?

in the textbook I'll be teaching from this fall, there is a section about this stuff/self relationship featuring an essay by the guy behind this online ebay project from the early 2000s (friend Shara, take note: Mr. Freyer is at least superficially channeling our fictional icon of minimalism, Larry himself). interestingly, included on the sold list is the domain name itself: allmylifeforsale.com. it now belongs to a university art museum.

the fact that we can own and buy and sell things like domain names is quite fascinating, since those things boil down to so many ones and zeros connected up with a bunch of other ones and zeros. the world is made of information (or so says the current reigning metaphor), and controlling that information = power and glory and fame. maybe.

your stuff and your information = you. numbers, gadgets, memories... but how do you know which things are yours, or which things even can be yours? how do you know when it's your stuff? with a car or a sofa it's pretty easy. but do you own those instant messenger chat logs? exclusively?

in this live talk Aral Balkan gave some months ago, he speaks of a digital self, and asserts that a digital self deserves rights and privacies and legal protection (from massive corporate information-grubbing entities like the Google and the Facebook) as much as a physical self does (presumably from abusive maniacs, ruthless criminals, and/or human traffickers). upon my first watching of the talk, I really wasn't sure what the term "digital self" could really mean. I was trying to think of it as a new, separate thing. but if my digital self isn't separate at all...does that make it easier to conceptualize? maybe.

there are many, many questions hooked around all these concepts. I will keep pondering them. Balkan conveniently pointed to a relevant dissertation (from a fellow at University of Plymouth, even) titled On Why We Should Treat Data As If It Were Physical. someday I will read it and try not to wish I had written the thing.

somewhere it is written that there's no such thing as immaterial matter. no matter how intangible they seem, all these memories and fleeting experiences and unstated expectations and all the data floating around as we record and interpret it all can't exist outside some physical system of flesh and blood or screens and light to make it manifest. so it matters, and it is matter.

most of my stuff--sofa, shelves, and notebooks galore--is sitting for now in a few Lafayette spaces that I won't see or touch for a whole four weeks. I'm about to unplug and power off this little macbook for the day, too. I'll be separated from those sections of my self for a while, which sort of means that being in two or three places at once isn't as impossible as it sounds.

sixth and wall

I bought my meager bits of furniture from some of the nicest people. they delivered all of it to my house. they were friendly and sent good vibes in the direction of my future crazy life. the people who sold me the nice sofa even invited me to their church down on 4th street, Sundays, nine o'clock a.m. I may go check that out sometime, though I told them nine o'clock a.m. seemed very early for a Sunday.

this is my scuffed little kitchen table. I took these photos before I started piling books and notebooks and papers and pens and bottles and various other knick-knacks upon its surface. today it is quite cluttered, and will probably remain that way unless I decide to throw a dinner party. which would be very cool.

classes started yesterday. it's kind of thrilling, all these navigation of new people, new responsibilities, new space, and new furniture. nothing is perfect. but all the scuffs give it great character, don't you think?

grease and potassium

hey, you. whenever and wherever it is that you're reading this--have you had breakfast yet?

because if not...

and if you've got any of these:

and some of this:

then you can make bacon and banana sandwiches.

yes. bacon + bananas + toasted-in-a-tiny-bit-of-the-bacon-grease-toast. it's marvelous. go on. just try it.

slice up the banana. some people like to slice it the long way, and it doesn't really matter.

you're going to smash (gently!) your sliced banana onto a slice of toast, in one nice layer.

and then you're going to add the bacon, in another lovely layer.

and then, the other bit of toast.

and there you go. cut it in half. eat it. sit down with one hand holding your Visual Rhetoric textbook, and if that isn't one of the most amazing breakfasts ever, feel free to complain that I ruined your morning. or whatever time of day it is.

if you love it, feel free to thank me for introducing it to your life. oh, and add some cheese if you're a cheese person. (I'm not a cheese person. but if you are, that is okay, and you might like it with cheese. I didn't. but you might. let me know.)

happy breakfast. or whatever time of day it is.

i win

last week I received this plain little envelope in the mail:

it contained a scruffy, taped shut CD case, which contained a game, which was my very random prize from these semi-crazy people, which I won by virtue of having posted a simple little comment at the bottom of this article, which was lovingly and thoughtfully crafted by friend Chris, who probably rigged the whole contest just for a lark.

of my simple little comment (so far the first and only of mine to grace their little gaming website), the editors at RobotGeek said:

"Amelia’s comment appears to be the longest and most genuine comment to date to win Comment of the Week."

mhm.

they don't get many comments, it seems.

since I am not likely to ever, ever play this silly skateboarding videogame, I inquired among my acquaintances for someone who might own a Playstation 2, and then yesterday bequeathed the game to friend Shelley. she and her husband are nostalgic enough to want the old thing. and she promised me chocolate in exchange. perfect trade-off, I say.

another someday or two

I need a bicycle. I need a bicycle so that once it quits raining, I can bike to work. and to the library. and everywhere else.

I want a clock made out of an old bicycle. Liz Dickey makes these and sells them on Etsy. how awesome is that?

this reminds me of an idea I had last year, to blog about my dad's garage full of awesome things you could make clocks out of, provided you had all the fiddly clock-bits with which to do it.

someday. yes, someday, I will.

seam rippers and magic

my very clever sister taught me how to ride a bike and how to draw a nice-looking fish. once upon a time we found a reason to fight over almost anything, except for that one day we scribbled life-size portraits of ourselves on the wall in red colored pencil.

today our creative work doesn't overlap so much as it did then... but I did get to make-over her little blog, and put together a banner and business cards for her brand new etsy shop.

the process went through a few phases. Kara had a name picked out already: whitecarnation. she asked me, the geek that I am, to help her make it look cool. working with nothing but a name and a few rather unexciting stock photos, I threw together these:

not bad... but not very evocative either. she used the green one for a while before throwing it out and putting up a nice gray and white banner of her own making. and that was cool too... but then she wanted to get really serious. so over Christmas, she dug through her scraps and arranged a few lace flowers among a field of miscellaneous fabric pieces. many, many pictures were taken.

{ random fact: that's my very favourite brown skirt, down at the bottom there. }

once I got all the pictures off the camera onto my as-of-yet nameless macbook, I went to work tweaking the saturation until we got just the right look. lots of texture, just a little bit faded. smooth a bit of Museo Light on top and you've got something pretty amazing.

and maybe it's just because she's my sister, or maybe it's because I was in a good mood that day, but I think I'll nominate her for the best client ever award. it's always wonderful when we're impressed with each other. and when we can be in the same room and see just what's happening. and when it's clear that we really love what we do. maybe all clients seem awesome when those things happen...

anyway, it's worked out that Kara gets a day or so of graphic design from me, I get free alterations on all the clothes that don't fit me anymore from her. it's perfect.

suspended in citrus

have I mentioned lululemon?

I discovered them in Canada at the bottom of the closet in the basement of 47 Laval Boulevard, Lethbridge, Alberta. there was a red bag there, beneath the rack of dresses and skirts. all over this bag were plastered the words of what I later came to know as the lululemon athletica manifesto (see image to the right; there's a text version over here somewhere).

months after this first random discovery, I had the chance to wander one wednesday into the physical lululemon store in Calgary's southcentre mall. their lowercase title impressed me. their branding, their attitude impressed me. every little cardboard tag hanging from each piece of merchandise impressed me.

they are like that gorgeous, happy, perfectly toned girl who sits so gracefully in the second row in your history class. you're almost afraid to be friends with her, she's so intense, so obviously driven and dedicated to something very different. but she's not afraid to be friends with you.

I am not a devoted athlete by any means. I will not, any time in the foreseeable future, be planning to spend $98.00 on flawlessly tailored yoga pants. that's just ridiculous, isn't it? do you really need that kind of fancy apparel to do yoga?

nevertheless, it's hard not to love this place. their website is slow, but it's got character. their stuff is crazy expensive, but the tags on it explain to you exactly, "why we made this." they might be hard-core and intense to the point of making the rest of us feel guilty about sitting behind a desk for so long, but they have good advice, no?

{ image borrowed from lululemon.com }

whatever you say

a few things I have recently figured out:

• just as genius brother says, jquery is indeed pretty awesome
• php is not nearly as hard as it looks
• wordpress does not seem to be as cool as it looks.
  
• with google, all things are possible.

I cannot and may not ever be able to call myself a programmer. at this point, even webdesigner is a tortuous stretch of description. there are so many ways this new website could be better than it is.

here are my thanks to Bekah for the chance to pick through all this once-forgotten and unknown mess of knowledge among the piles of junk in the dark corners of my brain and in the not-so-dark corners of the world wide web. may I humbly present to you the completed Sugarbee Cookies website.
programming is such a mysterious thing. tiny little bits, very basic concepts and such, are collecting like lint in my pockets--but it's so vastly more complicated and powerful than lint, this stuff. you can do anything you want. anything. just say it in the right words and magically... things happen. you can say this = that and pull things out of everywhere and put it somewhere else entirely.

for helping me endure this round of beating the code into submission, I am indebted to the following tutorials: this one, by Mr. Vaswani and this one, by Mr. Dhandhania (if those are indeed their real names.)

ahead of me is a long road, shadowed and precarious and crowded and messy. I can still turn back. but what if the road is just as long and precarious in the other direction?

good tidings of free stuff

I've mentioned Card Observer here before, I think. I finally got around to subscribing to their lovely RSS feed, and that's how I discovered this:

they're having a business card giveaway.

though I've mused about it often since back in February, I still haven't designed myself a 2 x 3.5 inch piece of anything. but I did do a few for a photographer friend.

if by any chance I win this little drawing, I may donate the thousand printed cards to Cassanndre, since she's got a design already and I do not.

anyone else need business cards? I love them. such a simple medium but so flexible too. and doing these helped me get my head around the craziness that is ubuntu's GIMP, which is good. I need all the excuses to learn that I can get my hands on.