last week i realized that my stimulus incentive was running out for my cobra health insurance and thus my next payment would be almost $400. i applied for some individual plan health insurance sort of as a whim, not believing i’d be approved because of this bullshit problem i had a few years ago that turned out to be nothing, but mention ‘lymph node biopsy’ to an insurance company and they act like you have the plague. but lo and behold – i was approved! huzzah! i related all of this to eric which prompted him to send me this image (artist unknown):
when lindsay was in town, i admired her little otsu planner and lamented an unexpected side-effect of having an iphone – i hardly ever write with my hand and a pen anymore. i went online and bought the mini version of the planner, this cute travel diary that i plan to use on my trip to australia/new zealand in january, and a dateless calendar i’ve been wanting for awhile (just themed illustrations of gordon the fox throughout the year).
i was excited to get my new fun stuffs, but got even more excited when i saw the cute packaging – very simple, but it’s the little touches that make unboxing an order more like unwrapping a present.
brown, textured, cushy packing paper
largest to smallest, paper between to protect cover art, stiff chipboard under the calendar to protect everything else from the wire comb
On Thursday afternoon I picked up Lindsay from the Burbank airport. We went to Maria & Clayton’s and Megan and Elaine came over and we had a fantastic BBQ! After that we hung out and talked for hours. The next day, I took Lindsay to brunch at the Artisan Cheese Gallery, then to Griffith Observatory and down to the Venice canals, where we ran into Ashton Kutcher’s movie shoot. After that, Maria made a Korean food feast and Megan brought over two kinds of cheesecake.
Saturday Maria, Megan, Lindsay and I met up for breakfast at Megan’s. Then we met Elaine on the lot for a private tour of Warner Bros. We got to look around the museum and get our photos taken with the sorting hat, and then Elaine showed us around the backlot. Clayton, Maria and I took Lindsay to Santa Monica to show here the pier and we got Xooro and watched the beach bunnies and the high waves and the billows of smoke from the wildfires. On the way back to Burbank we took a detour and had budae chigae in Koreatown. Later that night we met up again, plus Meghan and Megan, for a birthday party in Silver Lake. The CoolHaus truck happened to be parked down the street so we got some awesome ice cream sandwiches! Megan and Maria rolled back to Burbank early and ran into an actor at the karaoke bar around the corner from their building.
Sunday Maria, Clayton, Lindsay, Meghan and I went to Zuma beach. The waves were high again – good for body surfing – and Lindsay and I made a sand sculpture of a rose. On the way home we hit the Polo outlet at Camarillo then got stuff to make dinner. I caught up on ‘True Blood’ and we watched the new one and the new ‘Mad Men’.
i haven’t written anything very personal on here in awhile because nothing has really changed. still no work, i travel when i can (home, sf, comic-con, caving trip in september, hopefully a road trip to new orleans this fall) and spend a lot of time thinking deep thoughts about what i Want To Do With My Life, but i haven’t really gotten far on that front, except that i should probably go back to school if i want to do anything science-y. i’m also getting more interested in photography again, which i’ve found comes in waves. generally i get really interested until i remember i need a dSLR if i want to be serious about it, then i scrap the idea because i really don’t want a dSLR. i’d never carry it with me! too big! too heavy! too many lenses. *sigh* i should probably at least get a higher-resolution point-and-shoot so i can produce larger prints. (ps: mom, maybe don’t get me the bbf camera for my birthday – can i really afford the development/printing/film? i want it, but…you’re right. not practical. i should probably ask for new brakes for my car instead or whatever.)
i was at skylight books the other day with jula and terry, and saw a neat five-year journal. each page is a day of the year, with five little areas to write a few lines about your day – you just mark in the year at the beginning of the little area. seemed like a pretty great idea since the small space is less pressure than a big blank notebook page, and you can see right there everything you’ve done on that day for the past five years. i almost bought it, but it was a nice cloth-bound one and was something crazy like $25 so eff that. but, i figured i could do something like that here, and i’ll just make an entry for each day of the year, and then add on to that entry the next year and bump it up to the top of the page, so each day of the year will be in the same entry and therefore the same sort of nostalgia/mortification/etc could occur. except publicly! (what the hell am i doing oh my god) this will not replace my normal ‘this is what happened today’ entries – if something really notable happens i’ll still write about it at length – it might just be a little compilation of the day’s tweets, who knows. we’ll see how long this experiment lasts, or whether it will even be interesting. mostly, at first, i think it will be kind of depressing/boring/infuriating for you, the reader, since..you know, no job. many entries will probably be like, “watched tv. messed around on the internet. talked to friends on IM. ate.” but bear with me! i have high hopes for this project in the long run.
More bonesawing! We shot this promo for ‘Dr. Bonesaw’ during one day at the Psychic Bunny offices. Asa and Pat plan to finance the movie entirely via death purchases. That is, people (at least 30, no more than 100) will pay them money for an awesome horror movie death. Fantastic idea, right?
The shoot was a LOT of fun – lots of fake blood squirting everywhere, great gross shots…we started the day thinking the shots we were setting up were so gross, but that was before we bonesawed Laurel’s neck or Pat brought out the offal from the butcher shop.
Unfortunately I didn’t get any shots of the awesome practical titles or the hallway dolly shot with the actress, Barbara, since I was directly participating in them (either helping to position letters or pulling focus from the barrel).
After we wrapped and cleaned up (blood was EVERYWHERE. How do murderers hope to cover up ANYTHING??) we had some beers, played some foosball, and then watched the dailies. After that, we went back to Pat and Asa’s for more wrap partying, which lasted until about 5am.
awesome 12mm copper dwarven metal d20 – nice weight in the hand, and i can confirm it rolls spectacularly, as i had to chase it across the convention floor
dark horse comics
domo kun qee blind box – red! plus a part for the collect-all-6-and-make-a-clear-domo: a little foot.
super spy by matt kindt – looks really cool and fun. i’ll probably read this one first.
2 sisters by matt kindt
slave labor graphics
eating steve by j. marc schmidt
rex libris, vol. 1: i, librarian by james turner
agnes quill: an anthology of mystery by dave roman
quirk
all three of their interactive mystery books:
dracula’s heir by sam stall
the crimes of dr. watson by duane swierczynski
batman: murder at wayne manor by duane swierczynski
free sense and sensibility and sea monsters poster
drawn & quarterly
berlin, book one: city of stones by jason lutes
curses by kevin huizenga
free d&q tote bag – cute!
telltale games
sam & max promo button that is totally cute
burn notice
sdcc 2009 tshirt with giant awesome half-tone michael westen head. i gave this to mark as a thank you gift for letting me stay at his place.
psych
magic psychic ball – green magic 8 ball with such enlightening responses as, “yeppers”, “lookin’ good”, “definitely dude”, “wait for iiiit!” and “nooooooooo”
psych comic book, issue #0
24
24-branded travel clock/alarm
true blood
red tshirt that reads, “it hurts so good”
true blood-branded paperback of ‘living dead in dallas’
true blood-branded notebook
coupon for the true blood drink! totally buying some of this for our next viewing party.
true blood drawstring bag
lost
poster
fringe
the new york news – reproduction of the newspaper seen in william bell’s office during the season finale
got back home a bit ago, exhausted from the post-con traffic (and some truck trailer that apparently caught on fire) and 4 days of dealing with crowds, waiting in lines for hours, and an average of 4 hours of sleep per night. i have tons of photos of panelists, videos of most of the ‘the big bang theory’ panel, and tons of neat new books, but the high point was definitely seeing nathan fillion at his surprise signing today, just before i left. more to come – photos and videos will trickle out over the next week or so.
Thursday, July 2: fly into O’Hare at about 7:30. Take the blue line to meet Cecile and Matt at California, then we go to el Nandu for Argentine steak! Delicious steak and empanadas, plus super-dangerous sangria. Afterwards, Cecile and I hit City North for the 11pm screening of ‘Public Enemies’.
Friday, July 3: wake up early and take photos of Cecile peeling the tongue. Spend the afternoon/evening/night with good friends eating exceptional food. Cecile’s tongue pie is the best meat pie I’ve ever had! And putting red pepper flakes on the pineapple before grilling it is a fantastic idea – sweet and spicy!
We played the Battlestar Galactica game (I was finally a Cylon! I was finally on the winning team!) and then a few other board games – Crazy Cat Lady, Monster Squad – before Andy and Virgina had to go. then Jon, Cecile and I watched ‘Ghostbusters’ as a drinking game and pigged out grade-school-sleepover style on junk food.
Saturday, July 4: a rainy and kind of gloomy day, but we made the most of it. In the morning, Trent made breakfast for some of his friends and I got to meet some more new people who are aces with me since they let me share their food. Cecile and I left for Nora and Kate’s apartment as it was starting to sprinkle, and were very nearly there when we were sidetracked by the bargain store called ‘Pay Half’. We went in for the duration of the harder rain and came away with some dresses and cute purses – all pretty cheap.
Kate and Nora put on a great BBQ – delicious brats from Paulina Meat Market, pretzel buns, Mustard Girl spicy mustard (???), quinoa salad, cucumber salad, potato salad, sauerkraut, fresh watermelon and chili-chocolate brownies with what I think was a fleur de sel sprinkled icing. DELICIOUS! Oh, also some really good summery ales. Which we’d all had too much of, because when we sat down to play VCR Clue, we were all totally confused for about the first half hour.
The hour grew late, and I wanted to stop by Lindsay’s BBQ, so Cecile stayed to watch a movie with Nora and Kate, and I headed to the Ukrainian Village. Lindsay was throwing a cookout for her friend’s birthday so I got to see the tail end – grilled meats, dessert and present-opening. Most of the guests left for the California Clipper, and I stayed to talk some more to Lindsay. Outside, we stopped to watch some fireworks on the other side of the church across the street, and marveled at their proximity and the sheer number of fireworks displays happening in the neighborhood. As we drove around we saw they were EVERYWHERE! Every street in Chicago had a fireworks display going off – the whole city was celebrating.
Back and Cecile’s, I texted Katie to see about another BBQ and crazy fireworks display, but then started to feel the effects of three straight days of eating more food, richer food, and meatier food than I normally do, so I watched ‘Firefly’ on Hulu and did Kakuro until I fell asleep.
Sunday, July 5: Cecile left in the morning to go to Bikram yoga, and I got ready to meet Mark for breakfast. Our first choice restaurant was closed, but we went to our old standby, the Flying Saucer. Then, Mark came back to Cecile’s with me, and while I changed into kayaking clothes, visited with Lindsay who had come to pick me up.
Lindsay and I drove to Erehwon to get kayaking gloves for me, but they were closed, so we checked out the new big Whole Foods instead. Then we met Katie R. at the kayaking place and got started. We kayaked for two and a half hours and went six miles round trip. The view of the city from the river is fantastic, and we even got to hear bits of the architecture tour as those boats passed us. Kayaking is fun, but definitely work – my shoulders and hands will be complaining tomorrow, I’m sure! We also all got pretty wet, which was horrifying considering how dirty the Chicago River is. Every time a drop of water splashed into my mouth or, worse, my eye I felt a little panicky that maybe my face was going to rot off.
After kayaking we were all pretty hungry, so we went to Pockets for a quick bite. Lindsay dropped me off and I (thank god) showered and made plans for dinner. Cecile and I met Jon, Katie and one of her friends at Crust. I had a flight of two shots of their infused vodkas and they were really good, as was the arrabiata pizza and apple tart. We sat outside on the back patio and the night was perfect.
The next week I spent at home in the Quad Cities, where I went to eat at the usual places (Shanghai, La Flama) and saw a few movies. My mom and I also went to the Quad City Botanical Center. I got some great photos of the flowers and plentiful (and ginormous) bumblebees. I did the Bix at 6 and pushed myself too hard (again) but got to take a day off from activity before going to the John Deere Classic for the last two days of the tournament. Mom and I walked the course, following my Dad’s group (he’s a scorekeeper) around.
On Tuesday Mom drove me back to Chicago and I had dinner at Irazu with Lindsay and Scott, whom I hadn’t seen in years. After that I met Cecile at City North and we saw the midnight screening of Harry Potter. The next day I flew out – I good-length-ed and well-balanced vacation!
my parents usually have turkey bacon for sunday breakfast but a few weeks ago my mom fried up some real bacon she had leftover, prompting dad to say yesterday, out of the blue:
there are probably things we should carry regular bacon in the house for. …like, everything.
went kayaking today and my shoulder is going to be super sore in the morning. i already am having problems raising my arm in front of me. totally worth it though 🙂
