This is what I am doing Wednesday. The first open planning meeting for the 2011 Portland Zine Symposium at the IPRC and then the Tagalongs shows at Backspace. You are invited to both.

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Italian Prune Plum cake and playing Connect Four at 4am

Again, I forgot to take photos of my food! Last nights’ roasted veggies and gluten roast was great. The Tagalongs practiced in the basement and we hung out for awhile afterwards as they argued about what color they want their demo tape to be. That’s right, tape. They want to stay off the internets I guess. It’s a shame though cause I’d love to share them with you.

Somehow Marc and I stayed up talking about I have no idea what. At 4am he insisted we play Scrabble but came back with Connect Four instead which was much more at the speed of my brain last night. We were up until 6 when Paul got up for work and then I crashed out and woe up at noon. I’m really glad I all caught up yesterday because today has been a total wash.

However, I did pick some of the Italian Prune Plums that hang over the fence into my yard and made a vegan version of this plum cake. I didn’t have every ingredient so I sort of had to wing it with Apricot jam and Sherry instead of Brandy and I just used extra of the vanilla extract I made instead of almond. I used egg replacer and Earth Balance too.

4 split vanilla beans in vodka. This is after about 3 weeks. it smells sooooo good!

I love how orange these plums are on the inside

Simmered in a skillet with Sherry and apricot jam

baked for almost an hour and it tasted delicious!

I have been baking a lot more sweets than usual lately but I think it has to do with all the fresh fruit around here. This cake was so good. It wasn’t too sweet and there was a nice tartness to the plums. I really like the almonds in the cake too. I should have just used some of the almond meal I had instead of chopping up whole ones but oh well.

So today has sort of been a bust but I think I deserved the vacation!

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.