Monday, April 20, 2009

The Bugs Are Back In Town

There is a moth in my kitchen so big I thought it was a bird. Congratulate me for not screaming as it flapped around especially because my first thought when I see great big moths is of Silence of the Lambs. Now it's just sitting on the light and I'm waiting for Ashley to come home and deal with it. Since it's not flying around now I'm just afraid it will poop on my head.

Oh, and the ants are back too! At least this batch has the sense to run for their lives when the killings begin. That's a quality I really like in a bug. It's their only hope for mercy. I killed some and then I started an experiment called Nothing To See in which I let them run around a clean, dry counter then go home and tell their little buddies we suck. I don't know if I've ever tried this before or if it worked, and they were probably born yesterday so they don't know either. Anyway, Ashley didn't know about the experiment and he put out poison, putting both the ants and me out of our misery.

Sunday, April 12, 2009

Everything I Know About Life I Learned From My Sewing Machine

Or, a lot of things...

- Fix a problem completely- even if it means getting out a phillips head screwdriver - instead of doing little fixes. It's faster to take something apart once than to keep getting interrupted, and interrupted, and interrupted.

- If there are instructions, read them.

- Just like in the movies, that scary sound is probably foreshadowing - take heed.

Sunday, April 05, 2009

Odds and Ends


It's funny when crafting takes you out of your comfort zone and into a gun shop. I'm trying to make some leather steel shot weights so I've been doing a lot of web searches for local gun shops and reloading supplies while telling everyone I know that I'm trying to make weights in case my computer is confiscated and my web searches become evidence. Ash went with me to the one store I've actually stepped foot into but they didn't have what we wanted and that's when Ashley taught me the term "reloading" which I have never in my life needed to know.




This last week was really nice at work. Ozge and I had a researcher here from England - she's actually from Chicago. She's a textile conservator looking at ways to replace loss by digitally printing on fabrics. While Ozge and I both do some textile conservation there's so much we don't know so it was great to see pictures of other labs and tools and techniques. Also our visitor was very cute and funny, so much so that I forgot I'm over 40 now and not one of the kids.



Anyway... last night Ash and I went to see our friend Michael's play, The Projectionist, at the Kirk Douglas Theater in Culver City. So funny, great cast, superb acting. The whole thing takes place in the lobby of a movie theater and it was hard to believe he wrote the play before ever seeing the venue. The chairs were set up in the lobby and the front wall is all glass doors so you could see the ticket booth outside, which was miked, and part of the action. It was funny too to see people walking by outside looking in.


Michael - photo from the Los Angeles Times review




TV: killing time yesterday Ash and I watched a show called something like When Animals Go Bad. Horrifying. I didn't see the whole thing but I did see some guy get his thumb bit off when he tried to feed a moray eel a hotdog, and another guy who had an octopus stuck to his face. What was most amazing to me was that neither guy expressed any anger at the cameramen for not helping. Instead, the eel guy was just happy that the doctors were able to replace his thumb with one of his big toes and vowed never to feed hotdogs to eels again, which seems like a good enough motto to me.