30 Day Photo Meme – day 12

Day 12- Your mode of transportation

Here's my bike because I already posted a photo of my shoes. I guess I could have put my shoes in the shot with my Zipcar card and a Max ticket ,but I did not. This s my bike. Her name is Story. She is a tiny Terry Symetry and I love her. We've been to half a dozen states together

Day 13- Something you don’t leave the house without
Day 14- Something that makes you happy
Day 15- An old photo of you
Day 16- The view out your front door
Day 17- What’s in your bag/purse/pockets
Day 18- Where you work/go to school
Day 19- Something you love
Day 20- Your mailbox
Day 21- A photo you are proud of
Day 22- Something you cooked
Day 23- Your desk or work area
Day 24- Something important to you
Day 25- Graffiti you have seen
Day 26- Something you do everyday
Day 27- Your favorite place
Day 28- A favorite piece of clothing
Day 29- Something you like
Day 30- A photo of you today

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international Zine Month Day 17 &18

So, over the weekend I participated in the Portland Zine Symposium’s 24 Hour Zine Challenge, AND I FINISHED! That means that all 8 of you (only 8, really?) sponsors need to get your money in so I can send you my new zine. I printed 20 and gave a few away to participants so I’m not sure if there will be any left or if I will reprint them. I need to get my brain back and clear my head. I slept 2 hours in 28. Even after a full night’s rest  I still feel a little off. here’s the order of events:

spent about a hour trying to figure out how I was going to get my zine making stuff plus symposium coffee and snacks and stuff to the IPRC. Finally loaded it all on my bike.

 

Doug took this photo of me diligently working with laptop AND typewriter.

 

International zine month day 17: sleep deprived and still wearing the shirt from the day before...but I finished my zine!

 

The cover is so-not my style at all- but I do like it. The new copier at the IPRC does color copies at a reasonalbe price. I cut all these irises out of an old iris catlalog from the 60s. I'm not used to working in color so this was fun. The insert is also in color.

The theme, following my packing for the event, was "it's complcated" so, I answered complicated questions like "what do you do?"

...and "how long have you and Paul been together?"

with a fold out time line of 20 years showing how long we have known eachother.

Then I went home and slept for two hours and then woke up for a few more hours, enough to watch the new Torchwood and hang out with Paul and then fall asleep again. I need a shower.

International Zine Month day 18 shirt: 2010 Portland Zine Symposium

 

Our first bike trip to the Riverhouse!

We got home this afternoon from the Riverhouse. We left on Wednesday content to make it the 30 miles armed with our bikes and waking directions from  GoogleMaps. The maps served us well and we didn’t hit too many hills.

I my snazzy new cycling jacket!

We saw so really weird signs but I only took a photo of one of them.

Good thing it was the Positive sort of way?

I also saw the “Memory Memorial Cemetery” Don’t you think the “Memory” was a bit redundant? It also said it was a “Freedom of Choice cemetery” I didn’t think you’d have too many choices when you’re dead. We also saw “Secluded Apartment Homes” “Hidden Village” and “Secret Valley” I made a joke that the next sign would say “where to bury the body”… That’s when I saw the Memory Memorial and decided that my joke wasn’t funny.

We took a break at some place that advertised itself as a "Cowboy Church" I wanted to show you the set up Paul made for his Guitar. Rad hu? He jsut strapped it to the side of his bike rack like a pannier and with the help of a bungie chord it worked like a charm.

Mt. Saint Helens blown top showed its head about 3/4 of our way there.

We made it to Battle Ground and got provisions of food a beer then rode the last 7 miles which we knew would be the most grueling but it wouldn’t have been so bad if we hadn’t gotten so much in Battle Ground. We got to the Riverhouse in 4 hours including a stop for a picnic, a stop at the grocery store, a few backtracks and direction settling, and a short stop at the coffee shop that my parents’ neighbor owns. It wasn’t so bad for our first trip! We had a celebratory beer on the back porch.

Pauled wanted these two photos to be posted together.

The next day we went on a beer run to the Heisson Store. Then we worked on my reading for Powell's. I'm going to read stories while Paul plays music, sings one part of a song and then we are going to sing a song. I haven't sang in public in a looooong time. This should be interesting.

I woke up this morning to a flat tire, which seemed weird since I had ridden over 35 miles and now that I was all comfy at the Riverhouse THEN I got a flat! Instead of patching it I just slipped a new tube in and away we went!

On the ride up to the Riverhouse Paul and I saw soooo many cute animals. My favorite was the stubby burros with shaggy winter fur! We also saw chickens, sheep, goats, horses, llamas, and puppies! I’m bummed that I didn’t get photos of them on the way up but here are some from the way back!

It took is a little under 2 hours to get to Vancouver! SO much faster than the way up there! I think we could do the whole ride in 2.5 hours. Paul busted a spoke about half way home but we still made it back. We stopped in Vancouver at the Salmon Creek brewery, had a beer and continued on our way. We crossed over the I-5 bridge into Oregon and I took this Photo of Mt. Hood. It has always been an iconic image to me ever since my childhood summers in Oregon.

And, now I’m home and a bit sore but, I know that I can make the ride and I’ll do it again!

I have a birthday this week!

I turn 32 on Friday!

I’m sort of over celebrating my birthday too much. I think that Paul and I are going to go to Portobello vegan Trattoria Friday night. I’ll have to remember to leave room for a fancy vegan dessert too! maybe we’ll have to go on Thursday to avoid the crowds of Friday nights.

Paul wants to get me a nice set of kitchen knives. I have a knife block but after years of housemates a few of them have walked away and they weren’t that great to begin with. Paul wants to get me a fancy new set and I’m stoked! We were going to go knife shopping yesterday but he seemed to be glamoured by the muses as I found him in bed with several piles of lyrics, a guitar, notebooks, and his tape recorder. How can I complain? I’m the same way about zines when the muse finds me. I made some breakfast burritos and then went on with my day including a trip to the post office and a Portland Zine Symposium meeting.

I just gotta say that I LOVE everyone working on the sympsoium this year. There were only 4 of us at the meeting but everyone was great. Then I rode home with Blue and Doug. I really like riding bikes in packs of people. On my way downtown my bike odometer hit 100 miles since I got back from the UK and France. That makes about 4 1/2 miles a day since I have gotten back. That’s pretty good. I need to keep that up this summer. Last year I was too distracted to ride enough but 2009 has continued to rule as much as I expected so I should keep up with riding more.

Time for some coffee and then waking Paul up for knife shopping and maybe a picnic if the day stays nice. I also need to take more pictures of my yard since new things are blooming these days.

Funeral Potatoes, record organization, playing bike mechanic…

So, I veganazied Funeral Potatoes the other night. Funeral Potatoes is a Mormon casserole that I guess they make for funerals. My friend Mox taught me out to make them but they are dairy overload lots of sour cream, cheese, milk and cream of mushroom soup. ugh. Not to mention the corn flakes on top which just sort of makes casseroles creepy.

I got to portabella mushroom soup, a half tub of better than cream cheese, a red onion, some vegan mozzerella and a ton of frozen hashbrowns. I get a certain perverse pleasure in veganizing things sometimes. It didn’t taste the greatest and let’s be honest? How can you really photograph a casserole and make it look awesome? But it was edible and filling.

hooray for casseroles.... and stuff.no, really horray for casseroles and stuff

Zine Librarian (un)Conference Day 2

I woke a bit past 9 and brushed my teeth, cleaned my face and stared at a map of Seattle for awhile, charted by route back up Capitol Hill, and chatted with Wrdnrd a bit. She was headed to CORFLU, the other zine thing going on in Seattle. It is a sci-fi/fantasy fanzine convention. It’s like our zines and their zines live in parallel universes… maybe someone should write a story about that?!
I walked my weighed down bike up half of Capitol Hill. I’m getting old and I’m also not as in shape as I used to be but still, Seattle hills suck. I got to the event as they were discussing topics and in the main room and breaking up what workshops would happen. I could spot Jenna from Barnard on stage with Alycia who I had met in Madison, Milo from QZAP, Jerianne from Zine World and Zine Wiki, Clint from Salt lake’s alternative press library, my traveling companions and several other familiar faces from other zine events.

The first session I attended was on Ethics of zine archiving where zine writers and librarians were to discuss ethics. Some topics were what to do if a zine writer requests to have their zine removed, how we feel about digital documentations, and a bunch of other stuff but I don’t have notes for but there should be some up on the site soon. The idea that came out of this session was to draft some sort of document type letter for writers and archivists to agree upon adding zine to libraries, a sort of code of ethics. Towards the end of the session I asked librarians what could zine writers do to  make their job easier.

These are some of the things they mentioned: Put a publication date on your zine, allow subscriptions… even if they won’t see the zine in 5 years it is just easier for the bureaucracy of the library institution to work that way, somehow note if your zine is a serial or one shot, your copyright preferences, and maybe what category you would like your zine in.

During lunch Marc. Lilly and I walked over to a coffee shop to get sandwiches and soups. There were 4 vegan sandwiches. two were circular and two were diamond shaped. We ordered them by shape. They only took cash but let Marc and I eat our food before we went to the ATM… that was strangely located in the lobby of a police station. weird. After that Marc and I sat down with Jerianne and interviewed her about zinewiki, zine world and 90’s zine. There is some seriously hilarious stuff. I edited the interview on the train on the way home and had to to try hard not to laugh out loud. I also interviewed a few ZAPP volunteers as well. They will eventually be in an episode of Nobody Cares About Your Stupid Zine Podcast.

Since there were 3 IPRC folks we worked out ways to have at least one of us at every session. The next session I went to with Marc. It was about sustainability and it turned out to be us, from the IPRC and 5 volunteers from ZAPP. We discussed outreach, bringing people into the centers, fundraising, and to put it nicely: The cultural disconnect between administration and the people who actually do the work. Meaning that working with a Board of Directors that are pretty clueless to what you are doing day to day can be difficult. We also discussed to coming economic situation and how that might effect our organizations.

After that session Marc and I headed out with a a former ZAPP volunteer to hear the dirt on why they closed a few years ago. I’m not going to discuss details here. But, I did learn that they were closed before the flooded basement.

Marc and I headed across town to the U-District for the zine reading. It was sort of weird to me that my name was the only name on the flier. Shane was there with Amy. I have known them since I was 16 and met them at church youth group things. I don’t think they had ever seen me in my zine element but knew me when I started making zines in Utah.

Milo was the Emcee for the event and decided to go with names starting at the beginning of the alphabet and switch to the end and back and forth so I read first. I read the story about Robert and his wife in New York from my newest zine. Funny cause Shane and Amy knew Robert and seemed amused by it. Next was a guy name Zack and I’m kicking myself for not trading zines with him because his writing was fantastic and his delivery was hilarious. He read a story about going to barber school and painted these ridiculously elaborate fantasy images of expecting the school to be like walking into a musical! good times.

After the reading a bunch of folks went to find Kareoke. Wrdnrd and her partner, Shane and Amy and I went to Big times brewery and had some beers and hung out. We talked and had a good time. Shane and Amy had to leave and we soon left to go back to wrdnrd’s and also pick up some beer. We stayed up drinking  and talking about zines and sci-fi until 2am.  The second day of the conference started at 11 so I needed to get to sleep.

For more info go to the site for links to photos and notes from the workshop sessions.

Seattle Zine Librarian (un)Conference part 1

I met Lilly and Marc at the Portland train station with our bikes. We were taking theAmtrak Cascade so that we could just put our bikes on the hangers on the train. We got one of the sets of four seats where they are facing eachother. Amtrak put some random guy in the 4th seat as we yammered on about zines. At one point he asked us what zines were and where we were going.  I pulled a bunch of them out of my bag. He actually read Doris 26 on the ride.

We didn’t really have much of a plan for when we got into Seattle. Lilly’s friend was out of town and she was going to stay with a a friend of a friend… who was in the middle of finals week. I could stay with my friend Shane but he lived like, across some water and on the other side of some mountains and Marc had no idea where he was staying but was going to meet with a friend.

We got into Seattle and decided to at least find the Richard Hugo House where ZAPP is located. Well, it’s on top of Capitol Hill and for some reason my pannier weighed down bike was having issues with skipping gears. annoying and making me lag behind everyone. We got to Hugo House to find that ZAPP was closed so we headed out to get some food and beer. Well, we rode down a huge hill knowing that we were going the wrong direction and had to ride back up the hill.

We parked ourselves at the Red Wood where we bought several pitchers of beer (Hogaarden pitchers for only $13!) because they wouldn’t take food orders because they were busy. I sent a text to Wrdnrd to see if I could stay with her if it was just me and not our wacky bike entourage. She and her partner obliged which was awesome because she is totally someone I have wanted to spend more time with. They showed up during our 3rd pitcher and Marc’s friend showed up. Lilly had to take off to her host’s house. Marc insisted on singing Kareoke so we set our looking for a kareoke bar.

Found the bar and I drank another beer and stood outside with Wrdnrd talking zine geekery… and just regular geekery. Some dudes came up asking us what time it was stalling us just long enough to tell us what American Indian tribe or tribes made up their lineage pulling huge strands of what they called Flax, which I knew wasn’t really American flax. I knew where this was gong. One guy gave Wrdnrd a stylized rose made of of it with a braid and a knot. The proceeded to show us how they are made. The inevitable asking for money came next so I gave them some change.

"Flax Rose"

We took the bus back to Wrdnrd’s and I crashed seeing as I had been up sice 5 and it was past midnight. I had a whole day of zine librarian to deal with the next day.