Making Dresses and Watching Movies

Is anything worse than these dark photos? It's as if I intentionally stood in the only shadow in the world.

You can still kind of make out the dress.



What would Tyra and the Jays say about this pose, if I were on America's Next Top Model? "Girl, what is wrong with your crazy feet?"


This weekend I had a Wes Anderson movie fest (The Royal Tenenbaums, The Darjeeling Limited, and The Life Aquatic) and I made this dress. It's been several years since I've sewn with a pattern, and it took me forever.





One thing that really would have saved time is carefully reading the directions BEFORE doing each step. I only skimmed them, and twice it really sucked that I had to undo something and then do it again properly.

Also, I struggled with getting the shoulder straps to lie down nicely. I had to shorten them by about 2.5 inches!

Now that I've gotten some refreshers, I'm working on a second dress (with a different pattern) and so far I'm successfully reading all the instructions AND copying the markings from the pattern onto the fabric like I'm supposed to. Perhaps I will be able to finish my marathon and watch Bottle Rocket and Rushmore while I finish it.

If that goes well, I want to make a dress that looks like this one, but with different fabric, by altering the pattern from the first dress. It will just need a different treatment at the neckline, and I believe I can do it.

Book 47: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

So, Seth Grahame-Smith took Jane Austin's Pride and Prejudice and added this premise: England has been overrun by flesh-eating zombies for 55 years. The Bennett daughters need to marry well, just like in Austin's novel, but they are also trained killers of the unmentionables.

Passages like this abound: "[Elizabeth found herself] capable of considering the last half-hour as one of the happiest she had ever spent without spilling a drop of blood."

and: "[...] they set off together, armed only with their ankle daggers. Muskets and Katana swords were a more effective means of protecting one's self, but they were considered unladylike; and, having no saddle in which to conceal them, the three sisters yielded to modesty."

This is a really fun read, especially if you've read any Austen before. All the societal manners and the misunderstandings due to unwillingness to risk embarrassment remain. Plus there are all the zombies feasting and roaming and rising and stinking. Plus there are all the jokes about the girls' obsession with balls. Plus there are several line drawings depicting Elizabeth fighting zombies and ninjas and Darcy.

Books 45 & 46: Sookie Stackhouse # 8 & 9

These books are so addictive! In book 9, I even think the writing was a little more subtle and trouble-free. Harris tends to Tell rather than Show, but you don't read these for nice writing; you read them for fun stories and fun characters in weird situations.

Out Back at the Lefthand Brewery

 

And in the cooler:

Fashion?

 

Jason really admired these girls' looks. Now that I've got my inspiration, I just need a best friend here so we can dress similarly, but with different color schemes.

Reading Buddy

 

Sometimes Francis insists on helping me read.

Taco Shop "Burrito"

 


There's this little fast food restaurant in Hays, Kansas that all the locals are addicted to. They love it! I don't get it. They serve American-Mexican food, but it is shockingly unlike any Mexican food anywhere else in the Americas.

This burrito, for example, tasted like mozzarella cheese and marinara sauce. It's just not right.

Book 44: In Watermelon Sugar

In Watermelon Sugar by Richard Brautigan is a short novel narrated by a man with no name. A bunch of people seemingly live in a commune in a post-apocalyptic world. Nearby is the Forgotten Works, which is full of things that used to be used, including thousands of books that are used for making fires! by the commune-dwellers. They are mostly entertained by making stuff out of watermelon sugar and trout.

There are other people outside the commune, including those who live near or in the Forgotten Works, freaking out the commune-dwellers.

It's a weird world, inside and outside the commune, both at present and in the past. There's a lot of room for interpretation and for finding symbolism.

Books 37 - 43: Sookie Stackhouse Novels

By Charlaine Harris

37: Dead Until Dark
38: Living Dead in Dallas
39: Club Dead
40: Dead to the World
41: Dead as a Doornail
42: Definitely Dead
43: All Together Dead



These are the kind of novels you want to read on the beach or some other time when you just want to be entertained. The characters are interesting and Harris puts new little twists on the classic Vampire and Werewolf stories.

Alan Ball's HBO show, "True Blood," is somewhat based on these novels. I'll talk about the books all together so I don't ruin the plots for you. I don't know if the show will continue to loosely follow the books or go completely in its own way. By the way, the second season starts in June!

The writing is generally what you might expect from this type of genre novel: not impressive. It's adequate.

The stories and characters are what makes these good. Sookie Stackhouse is telepathic and has always been considered a freak by the residents of her little town. One day, Vampires make an announcement of their existence on TV around the world, now that synthetic blood has been perfected and they no longer have to hunt humans to survive. One vampire walks into Sookie's bar, she can't read his mind, and she is infatuated with him and his mental silence. Then she gets more and more involved in the world of the Vampires and the Werewolves and other creatures, and all sorts of things happen.

Sookie has comically terrible fashion sense:

·banana clips
·stretch jeans that lace up the side
·long, taupe dress on a tan blonde
·red and green Christmas sweater with reindeer (she regrets that she can only wear it at Christmastime)


Something seriously fell apart in the editing process of Book 6, Definitely Dead. She must have been in a rush. Rather than telling us the story in chronological order, she started in media res and kept leaking out bits of the earlier events throughout the book. It was a mess. Further, the sentence structure and logic from one sentence to the next was missing in several sections:
“I glanced over to their table, to make sure Halleigh was sitting with her back to me. She did.”


I've been reading Dracula in installments thanks to this blog, and the difference in writing quality is striking. Dracula is a book to savor, and the Sookie books are for devouring during every spare minute you can find.

Maraka cartoon

This is a great skit from Saturday Night Live. I wanted to embed the video here, but the only one I found on YouTube was really crappo, so let's use this link to the legitimate NBC site.

Don't question it! Just do it!

Concealed Carry Class

Last Sunday, Jason and I attended a Concealed Carry Class at a gun club. We both passed, so we were eligible to apply for concealed carry licenses. If we survive the CBI background check, we'll be able to carry guns around lots of places in public, hidden in clothes or pockets or purses or cars or fanny packs. They make all kinds of dorky clothes with secret gun pockets built in! And specialized fanny packs that unzip instantly so you can get your gun in a hurry.

I had comically imagined the other students as conspiracy theory freaks, looking like Zed from Pulp Fiction or Herman from The Simpsons.


In reality, no one in the whole gun shop looked anything like them. The entire place was incredibly clean and polite. The workers were clean cut and wore red polo shirts with the gun club's name embroidered on them.

Even the women's bathroom was spotless, and with nicer toilet paper than I buy for my home.

I thought I would hear all about Obama trying to take away our guns, but I did not. I did not hear much at all about the NRA.

We mostly talked about Colorado law, especially when you can shoot someone and get away with it. I disagreed with the instructor several times, thinking that he was giving people a false sense of a RIGHT to kill people. I never practiced law, and I'm definitely no expert on gun laws, but killing someone usually means you are going to prison. It's true that sometimes you won't even be arrested if you shoot an intruder inside your Colorado house, but I wouldn't count on it!

There are just so many factors that go into it. Law is almost never simple, so you can't count on making a clear prediction of what will happen.

Yesterday, we went to the courthouse to apply for our licenses. The clerk who helped us did not act at all surprised or anything. Well, she was surprised that we had brought everything we were supposed to bring, and that we had filled out our forms correctly. Now we just have to wait up to 90 days, and we can go get fingerprinted and photographed and then maybe receive our licenses.

Two things about going to the courthouse:

We tried to get into some news camera shots. The Court had sentenced a child-killer to 16 years in prison before we got there. Three newsvans were present, and I tried to get right in the way of their cameras. No one called to tell us they saw us on TV, so I guess it didn't work.

One woman who worked in the records department was kind of frumpy looking, with a sweatshirt and jeans on (it must have been casual Friday). Then we saw her in the parking lot, putting the top down on her BMW 2-seater. Oh, Boulder! Such a mish-mash of a city.

Two things about being in Boulder:

It is so cool to be that close to the mountains. I got used to it while I was in school, but it was incredible all over again after not spending time in Boulder for about a year.

We ate dinner at a place with a view of a busy road. I've never been anywhere else where traffic contained such a high percentage of SUVs with dogs sticking their heads out the windows.

Random Memory #2

When I was in elementary school, we had sleepovers a lot. There was only one time I stayed at Annie's house, and in the morning, I was SO embarrassed for her. Her mom was still wearing her pajamas and house coat, and she tried to make us pancakes, but they were horrible! One side would be burned, and the middle was still runny.

A note of advice to parents who host sleepovers: if you don't know how to make pancakes, just buy donuts or something. Also, put clothes on.

Perhaps my expectations of pancakes were high because my dad could make perfect pancakes, even making them into shapes of stuff. AND at that time, I could also make perfect pancakes. If a kid could do it, I thought any adult should be able to do it. Jeez, they'd had all those years to learn and practice! But now that I'm an adult and I have lost the skill of making perfect pancakes, I can sympathize with Annie's mom.

Random Memory #1

Do you remember that girl on an old season of MTV's "The Real World" who had her jaw wired shut so she couldn't eat solid food and would lose weight?

Oh Mah Gah! I thought it was horrifying at the time, and it just popped into my head today and re-horrified me.

How do you even think of that as an option?

What kind of doctor or dentist would do that as a weight-loss tactic?

Wouldn't you freak out one day and drink chocolate shakes?

I think it would make me feel something like claustrophobia and I would buy wire cutters and remove the wires myself. Not that I would EVER consider doing that.

Book 36: The Catcher in the Rye

The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger



Last Christmas, we were in Jason’s hometown, and one of his friends told me that he was reading this. He did not like it and he felt like nothing was happening in the story. He then even questioned whether or not it deserved to be called “A Classic.”

I hadn’t read this since high school, so I could only remember an impression of Holden Caulfied as a sensitive, troubled guy with high standards for human behavior. I was excited to see if I still liked it. Maybe I’m too old now. Maybe it only really speaks to teenagers, who are full of angst and disappointment in the world.

Nope. I loved it from the beginning. Oh, Holden’s narration! He’s so sarcastic and self-aware. He’s 16 and just got kicked out of another boarding school. He decides to spend a few days in NYC before going home and facing his parents.

Some exciting things do happen, including two fist fights and hiring a prostitute, but they’re all told by Holden as if they weren’t that big a deal. So I guess that’s why it could seem like nothing was happening – most of the events are reported in kind of a blasé style. He does get pretty worked up at the end, but I won’t ruin it for you.

The verdict: Jason's hometown friend is nuts when it comes to literature.

A Cool Link to Check Out

Check out The Memory Palace for short audio posts (around 3-5 minutes) of historical factoids and trivia of a melancholy, morbid, or grotesque nature.

Book 35: What Was Lost

What Was Lost by Catherine O’Flynn.

This won some prizes, and rightly so. HIGHLY recommended.

The first part is focused on a little girl, Kate, who fancies herself a detective. I use the word “fancies” because it’s a British novel, and the British say things like, “fancies.”

It’s kind of a modern Harriet the Spy, which was a childhood favorite of mine. Like Harriet, Kate keeps a journal detailing her investigations. O’Flynn gets the voice just right. Spot on.

One day, Kate disappears.

The second part is 20 years later, and now we read the perspective of a woman whose brother had been friends with Kate, and that of a man who works as a security guard in the mall. They both live kind of disappointed lives, but finally meet and see how life might be a little better.

The third part is about Kate's childhood girlfriend. Even 20 years later, this friend is still affected by Kate's brief participation in her life. Some people have a long-lasting impact.

Some of my favorite bits of writing:

On working in a music store:
“’Save me looking’ was something she heard several times a day, and she couldn’t understand what the big effort was in visual reception. She was unsure if it was acute laziness that led someone to ask someone else to use their eyes for them, or some belief that vision was a finite resource they didn’t want to wear out.”

Thinking about buying a nice, bourgeois apartment:
“Lisa stood out on the small balcony looking down at a suitcase floating on the oily surface of the canal. It was unspeakably sinister.”

Book 34: I Know This Much Is True

I Know This Much Is True, by Wally Lamb, is a 900-page monster of a novel! I was able to read most of it in the car, riding back and forth to Kansas. I'd periodically tell Jason what was going on, and his response was, "Isn't that way too much to be happening in ONE story?"

Well… only barely too much. I think that if the protagonist’s girlfriend had only had normal problems, it would have been the right amount of trouble and disfunction for 900 pages.

Lamb handled the complicated, multi-generational story well. It would have been a complete mess in less skilled hands. It contains:

* a set of adult twins (one is schizophrenic and our protagonist is not)
* their mother, a mousy victim of bullying men
* her father, a self-aggrandizing bully
* her husband, a fatherless "I'll make men out of you yet, twins!” bully
* the non-schizophrenic twin's ex-wife and his incredibly messed up girlfriend (who doesn't mind being bullied)

The main character is Dominick, the twin who is not schizophrenic. He is trying to help his brother, Thomas, who believes he has been assigned by God to stop the Iraqi war from occurring. To get President Bush's attention, he cuts off his right hand ("if your right hand offends you, cut it off," says the Bible). Then Thomas has to live in a max security institution, which sets Dominick on a mission to save him.

Both twins, and their bully grandfather, have ideas of themselves as being chosen for a special purpose. Dominick feels on some level that he could have saved his brother in the past, and he's trying to make up for it now. Thomas thinks he can instigate world peace. Grandpa believed he was an example for his brothers, his village, his neighborhood in America, even all Italian immigrants.

Dominick struggles against any sort of vulnerability. Like his grandfather and his step-father, he thinks that being caring or sweet or thoughtful, or showing any emotion other than anger is shameful. Thomas was always sweet and kind and willing to display vulnerability, and Dominick hated that about him, thinking it made him a target for bullying.

Some major questions arise:

* Why did schizophrenia happen to Thomas and not Dominick? Why are any of us “chosen” as victims or winners or saviors?
* Can we ever make up for our past misdeeds?
* Are we doomed by our families’ legacies or can we choose to be different?




Also, this book mentions In Watermelon Sugar by Richard Brautigan, which I read in high school,loaned to me by my friend Chelsea and her mom. I've never heard mention of it anywhere else, though I understand that he was quite famous as The Last of the Beat Writers.

A good old '60s trippy counterculture novel, if I remember correctly. Hm. I may have to put it on my to-read-again list. I really like it when one books leads to another.

Dracula day by day

This blog is posting the novel Dracula, following the dates in the book. The whole book is written in the form of journal entries and letters, and they are all dated, from May 3rd until November 6th. You can read along, day by day, for the next six months. Pretty cool.

Day 2 of Jogging

Day 2 successfully completed. Here is what plan I'm following: Couch-to-5K

* Running is harder than it seems like it should be. I can do much harder cardio workouts for over an hour and not get so out of breath. I know that I will adapt and it will get easier, but DANG!

* It's really nice to be outside, trotting around the lake, enjoying the view of the Rockie Mountains.

* I feel silly jogging. It seems like an incredibly silly thing to do.

* I feel a sense of community with the other joggers. They give me knowing looks, like we're on the same wavelength. It's kind of nice.

* So far my worst pains have been high up in my quads and in my low, low shins. How nice to give my hip flexors a break! I think hip flexor pain was what killed my last running attempt. How doubly nice that my knees aren't killing me. My knees have hurt almost every day for the last 20 years, so when they don't hurt, it's awesome.


So, I know I owe you some book reviews, and they're coming. I am feeling resistance to (against?) writing them now. I don't know why, maybe just to rebel against my own, totally voluntary commitment? Maybe laziness. Maybe I don't want to revisit those books since I'm already in the middle of three more. What does YOUR pop psychology tell you about my behavior?

Books, books, books

Well, I've finished three more books:

34: I Know This Much Is True by Wally Lamb

35: What Was Lost by Catherine O'Flynn

36: The Catcher In The Rye by J.D. Salinger

but I just don't feel like writing about them. I have a draft prepared for #34, but it's not done yet. I'll get them all done, but probably not today.

In short, all three are really good. Is that enough?

Great Monday

First of all, I decided to start jogging again. Okay, trying to jog. I'm using Couch to 5K, a plan to get non-runners in shape to run 3.1 miles in a row. Today was Day 1, and it went very well. I believe that I am in the best shape of my whole life right now, today.

I could still lose 10 pounds, and am slowly working on it, but I am so strong and have the most cardio capacity that I can remember. Ask me how my legs feel tomorrow, and I might tell you a different story. :)

Anyway, on the way home, I was jogging past these huge rocks that were dumped in a field next to a mini power plant or something. The something is unmarked, so I can't tell you what it really is. And I didn't take my camera, so I can't show you, either. The important thing is that upon those rocks, guess what was growing! MOSS!!!

I don't know if you remember my dream for my terrariums of having the ground covered in moss, but that dream had been stymied for 4 or 5 months. I had bought moss spores and planted them, and they never really took off and then they turned brown. I looked for moss around the lake, but I never found any.

Good thing I took that detour today to try to get all my running in without having to go around the lake twice!
I could only carry one clump home with me while I was jogging, but a couple hours later, I was still thinking about that moss and how great it would be to have more, more, more! I had planted the clump in my terrariums and it looked okay, but I kept imagining what it could look like with MORE moss.

 

So I got a messenger bag, lined it with a plastic bag with a wet paper towel inside it, and walked right back over. It was really the mother lode of moss, friends. Here's how it looks in the terrariums.

 


There are two different kinds, one lighter and one darker. The pictures will get bigger if you click on them.

Now I just hope I can keep it alive!