30 Day Photo Meme – Day 18

Day 18- Where you work/go to school

I work at home in a room directly before my bedroom. I press buttons and magnet for people and package up zines and books. Ideally it looks like this:

But mostly it is a mess. Last night, while I was finishing up some work, these three shelves fell on me spilling EVERYTHING onto me head and the floor.

There was actually more on the bottom shelf. I got really frustrated and stacked on the boxes on the floor. I’ll re-hang the brackets on another day.
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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I don’t get bored…

Yup, It’s noon and I’m STILL in bed. In my defense I have been up since 7am but working. Yesterday I did the same thing. I worked on my Etsy Site where I have changed the photos and tried to edit the text for my custom button and magnet listings. Today I was doing the same thing to my Small World Buttons site. I also edited all 160 listings in my Etsy shop with the mode of shipping in the listing text. It has been a tedious, but necessary few days. The reason I subjected myself to such a mind numbing task was not just the necessity, I’m also just trying to figure out what to do with myself now that the busy season is winding down. I even started my taxes this week!

Basically, if you ever thought about ordering some custom buttons from me or maybe one of my many button designs with hearts on them for the silly upcoming holiday now would be the time. I’d be able to get buttons done and out to you in no time flat!

That’s not to say that I’m bored. I’m never bored because there is always SOMETHING to do. I spent all yesterday afternoon cleaning and rearranging my bedroom. The idea was that if I cleaned the first place I wake up in the morning then maybe I’ll spread the rest of the clean into other parts of the house. So far today that hasn’t worked out… I’m still in bed because I quite like sitting in this clean room.

but, I’ll have to get out of bed and on with my day. I have an IPRC shift and Zine Symposium meeting today. We may be deciding the date and place of the 2010 Portland Zine Symposium FINALLY! I’m excited to get this part done and move onto the next part of planning and also to start work on the autumnal zine tour!

For a little while longer though I’m going to lounge in my robe in my bed of clean sheets with glow in the dark constellations on them and my fake down duvet to keep me warm.

The busy-ness of business

I have been super busy and also sad that I can’t find my card for my digital camera!

The contractor  finally came and poured concrete on the part of the sidewalk that they city made me replace. We thought long and hard about what to write in it. So long that it was very difficult to cut anything into the cement that wasn’t quite wet. I was going to go with “BUREAUCRACY IN ACTION” In reference to what seem like a scheme the city has set up. If you don’t fix the sidewalk they will do and it charge you an arm and a leg. On top of that they start sending your information out to other contractors who will send you a dozen letters about how they can fix your sidewalk.

Anyway, we decided to just go with “MIND THE GAP” Hoping people get the London Underground reference and not think I’m talking about the clothing store. The idea is that maybe people will take notice and not trip over the protruding 3/4 inch rise that our tree roots will end up making as years go on. One of my friends with mobility issues laughed that the city made me fix such a minor problem. Oh well, now it is done!

I am in the middle of a large button order with several small ones that I’m actually contracting Paul to do. But yesterday I followed my horoscope and put pleasure before work. My friend Sam had brought me back a fist full of real vanilla beans so I made sugar cookies with real vanilla. I made frosting with natural coloring: yello Tumeric (it was good!) brown cinnamon, purple blackberry juice from my yard and also just plain vanilla with vanilla bean.

I don’t really like sweets so when I cook them I eat one of two and then have to talk my housemates into eating them. Which is sort of a problem right now because two of our housemates are at camp, one a cook in Massachusetts and the other as a counselor here in Oregon. Which means that Paul and I have the house to ourselves. We are also looking for a new housemates for our empty room which is difficult when two of the people who will be living here can’t meet a new person. Know of anyone looking for a room?

I’m still loving my new kitchen. I am waiting for a few more things to finish it up. I have almost decided to keep the 1940’s base cabinets and get a new counter top and sink. That would make this kitchen remodel complete! Unfortunately countertops are crazy expensive. boo.

My friend James moved to Portland this week. He was one of my closest friends right before I moved to Portland 10 years ago. He was really there for me and has stayed my friend since. We have all sorts of fun discussions so I’m excited to actually live in the same town again. I feel like I’m his personal concierge answering text questions about how far it is from point A to point B and where he can get an omlette downtown. It is cute and I’m stoked that he is so excited to live here.

Ok, I need to get back to work. Here’s some stuff on the internets to look at:

I wrote this scatterbrained article about the Portland Zine Symposium for Last Hours in the UK.

My friend Zach takes neat pictures and he took these one of me up at the Riverhouse last week. We used to work together and he also used to live 2 houses away so we saw eachother a lot. good time. I think we would hang out more I would jsut actually look at my phone every now and then and called back. I really hate the phone.

long post about the past two weeks…

It has been a hectic two weeks leading up to the Portland Zine Symposium and the aftermath workload has stretched me to my limit but I think I’m just about caught up. Currently I’m house/dog/car sitting for my sister at her house up in Kenton. I have had a bunch of buttons orders to take care of and I’e been chilling in the ait conditioning with her dogs.

Here’s a small recap of my past 2 weeks. Tuesday the 28th was my housemate marc’s birthday. He and my Paul, Lisa and other paul are in a band called The Tagalongs. Marc wanted to play a show on his birthday so they decided to play in other Paul’s basement for their very first show.

It was fun! I really like them. Afterwards I sat in a hammock on the back porch and we realized that Shawn Granton is the connection between everything! We also decided that the Tagalongs would be my “backing band” durring the IPRC benefit show. I thought I would have other people reading from zine but it turned out that it was just bands and DJs and that made me feel a little weird so I thought I would add a band to my alloted set.

So the Tagalongs second show was at Holocene. They played well.

I was late getting to the Holcene show because I was freaking out at the IPRC trying to place people at tables for the symposium. We made it way too difficult for ourselve and we didn’t even realize it until Thursday. here is why:

1) we offered tables per day so we had people who had 1, 2, or 3 days that we had to seat.

2) we limited the full tables to 30 which left 120 half tables to place people with 3 days each table. There were a ridiculous amount of possibilities.

3) There were over 250 tablers that all had to be corresponded with including about 15 cancelations mostly due to economic reasons.

4) I had the bright idea to put the names and locations of the tablers in the program this year. I think it was a  great idea but it was way too much work.

After the IPRC show a bunch of us headed back to the IPRC and started making copies of the program, stapling and folding. I got home around 1:30am and got up at 5 to start working on things. My throat stated hurting and needless to say I was a bit sleep deprived but I had work to do.

I forgot to take a lot of photos and most of the symposium was a blur. I filled two cars with zine symposium crap like workshop supplies, old symposium merch,  donated food. Just lots of stuff that had to be hauled.

Most of this stuff stays in my basement for most of the year. How did the Portland Zine Symposium acquite so much crap?!

I think I spent more time making coffee than actually sitting at my table. I think things wenpretty smoothly. We had a lot of food donations and lots of coffee. Friday was pretty chill but I was beat by the end of it and headed home to crash.

Saturday was rad. I helped with a workshop about the Cascadia Zine Coaliting, an idea that came out of the zine librarian “(un)Conference. The idea is to promote zines in the pacific northwest. It was really rad to get everyone together and as soon as I’m back home with and all the symposium stuff is finally packed away I’m going to start some work on it.

I didn’t take too many photos but this one is a bit odd. I have never taken this shot at the symposium. Basically, if you walk out of the ballroom with all the tables and take a left this is what you see. From here you can take a skybridge to the Cramer building which is where all of our workshops are.

hallway to Cramer

The Multnomah County Library always brings a huge library card to events and has people get pictures taken with it.

Androo Robinson and Paul Burke

Me with the library card.

My walking brainstorm of a friend Rustin and his chapbooks including one full of poetry about staplers.

That’s about all the photos I took. The symposium breezed by and next thing I knew it was time to pack up all the stuff and head home again. We only ended up with one houseguest out of 3 we were supposed to have which was weird. I now how a huge pile of symposium supplies in my livingroom that I didn’t have time to put away.

Monday was spent tying up a couple of loose ends and Tuesday morning Paul and I headed to the airport to catch a plane to Oakland and BART to San Francisco to see Jarvis Cocker. We flew in on Tuesday and got to our hotel in Japantown that was on the corner of the hotel with a neat veiw out two windows. It was between 90 and 105 degrees in Portland and we were in San Francisco wearing sweathshirts wishing I had brought some leggings. weird.

Chase in the corner of our cozy room with nice screens for the windows.

view from one of our windows

We walked around about 5 miles and found the San Francisco Bewery which was alright. One the way back to our htel we stopped at BevMo! for our first BevMo! experience and loaded up on neat beers and a rad bottle opener that looks like a key but has a bottle opener cut into it.

At the Filmore we had the most expensive beer we have ever drank. Our mouths dropped at the $24 price tag for 2 beers! Holy Crap! good thinkg we had some beers before we left!

Jarvis put on an absolutely amazing show. I knew it would be. Were really close and to the left of the stage. I didn’t bring my camera so here are some photos from my phone.

i think this was either during Fat Children on Black Magic

On the way back to the BART station after eating at Herbivore we walked by that stupid Full House Park and the Full House House. There were tons of people standing around taking photos of the house. We thought it was hilarious!

So, we stopped and took a photo of people taking photos of the Full House house. Paul actually took a photo of me taking a photo of people taking photos of the Full House house. I don't have that one though.

and to round out this wacky post here is a cute home improvement cat

hi OJ!

And one of our blooming artichokes that Paul's friend was amazed by.

Tonight is our last night with the dogs and my sister’s air conditioning then it is back to my messy and hot house. Time for some serious cleaning and sorting.

New printer, discount codes for custom buttons

Please excuse the camera phone picture but this is my fancy new color laser printer. I did a bunch of research and found that this was going to be the best one in my price range, saw some print out and went for it. I thought I set it up with our network the other day but then had problems with it last night. grr. I fiddled around with all sorts of computer things including looking for a new Cat5 network cable because I thought maybe the connection was messed up. Then I had to bust in on Paul’s band practice with our housemate Marc and other awesome folks to find that the router plug behind Paul’s drumset was unplugged! Problem solved!

The new printer doesn't have a name yet, but it should soon enough.

So, now I’m all up and running again and offering new printer discounts for orders of 100 custom buttons. Check out my Etsy shop for the 100 1.25″ custom buttons and 100 custom  1″ button prices. Or check out Small World Buttons and use discount code “printer” for 20% off your order!

Mostly just a list of things

My parent’s 35th wedding anniversary was celebrated on Saturday. I went up to the Riverhouse to see them and a lot of their friend who still live in this area to be told how much I look like my mom. My aunt came down from Gig harbor. My grandmother passed away last summer and my aunt is taking it really hard. Since my divorce a few I have become a lot closer to my family and since my grandmother’s death. I keep thinking that I really should spent more time with all of them.

One of my friends from Utah was in town for a job interview yesterday. he had a tiny window of time to hang out before another interview so I spent a few hours hanging out with him. It was good to see him. I hope he gets the job because it would be nice to have old friends in town. Paul has a few now and one of them is even subletting in our house right now.

I had a zine symposium meeting last that went pretty well. things are winding down and getting hammered out. We have been getting some crap from people for our strict 51% zines and books on your table rule. We are really trying to exclude the craft tables who just use zine events as a place to sell things because the tables are a lot cheaper than craft fairs. I think that because of the longevity that preserving the zine integrity of our event is really important. If people don’t get that then they don’t understand what a zine event is about.

Did I mention the review of Brainscan I got in the Library Journal? I think it is pretty cool.

Do you know what else is cool? Somehow there are still tickets left to see Jarvis in San Francisco. I think Paul and I are going to fly down just to see the show. Paul missed seeing Pulp in Denver in 1996 because Jarvis was sick so we can’t miss this chance! It is right after the portland zine symposium, talk about a hectic week.

Oh ya, I finally bought a new color laser printer. My old printer wouldn’t network and couldn’t run on Vista and then it ran out of yellow toner. I could have bought a new yellow toner cartridge for $100 or just get a new printer. I now I have a nice but older color laser printer if anyone wants to buy it for $200 OBO.  I’m also going to have a sale on buttons soon in celebration of my new printer!

But, right now I have to clean my office and finish my coffee.

Trains! Travel! zines! Our podcast rules!

It has been a busy few days of orders. I have no idea where they all came from but I’m just about caught up… so I’m taking some time to write here.

I finally, after much annoyance, got my train tickets from London to Poitiers for the La Fanzinothèque 20th birthday! The envelope came with a buch of  information for ignorant American tourists that made me laugh.

Last night I had an IPRC staff meeting and made a bunch of copies of Brainscan 21 for Cindy Ovenracks’s Doris Distro. Not many people showed up for the staff meeting but Marc and Lillymonster and I got our tickets for us and our bikes to go to Seattle for the Zine Librarian Un-Conference. We aren’t exactly sure where we are staying but we will have bikes and I’m thinking of bring my tent jsut in case… and a flask. I think that might be fun… and travel Scrabble even though Marc would kick our ass.

I’m imagining all three of us in a 2 person tent playing travel scrabble by bike light. we are such nerds.

Did I mention that we chose the artwork for the 2009 Portland zine Symposium? We did! and we lovingly refer to the design as “disco cats” You’ll understand when you see the art. We are hoping to have table registration up by the end of the month.

Nobody Cares about Your Stupid Zine Podcast has had 90 listeners so far! Search for it on itunes and leave us a review!  Also, we are hoping to record a new one this weekend but we’ll have to see. We want to start a Q&A section so if you have any questions for Marc or I about zines or ourselves you can leave a comment here. I should have an e-mail set up soon.

Ok, back to making buttons.