still running, this time uphill

GAH

I've had one of those days that start badly and get better as it goes and then goes pear-shaped again later on.

While my printer is churning out charming little promo slips that I whisked up tonight in time for the Two Fires Festival tomorrow (speaking at 11:30am, have to drive there first) and then almost lost when my software crashed, let me tell you about just one of my tits-up moments:

Another thing I do when Best Beloved goes away is live like a gypsy. Bumblebee and I eat fast, makeshift meals, most often straight out of the saucepan. Pots and pans pile up, the floor goes unswept, and the bed unmade. The day he arrives home, I do a HUGE wash-up and a lick & spit of the house.

This morning I filled the sink with hot, bubbly water, moved around a bit to gather the dirty objects (think opening scenes from Withnail & I, with a bit less mould) and turned back to find all the washing-up water over the floor. OH NOES! The sink has lost its seal! And no time to fix it or get a plumber!

The one good thing was that cleaning up the water meant a clean kitchen floor.

Later in the day I had the bright idea of doing the washing-up in the laundry sink, so BB did end up coming home to a clean kitchen, but also to a very stressed wife, who immediately ducked out the door and up to the studio to gather things for tomorrow.

Don't get me started on heart attacks when looking out the School of Music cafe to see a parking inspector wandering dangerously close to the carpark I'd plopped into without a permit (he didn't get me, thank you Ceiling Cat).

Or the fact that we have discovered that Bumblebee now fits my shoes, and has gone off to school in my nice black Baxter boots, bringing them back all boy-scuffed. Unfortunately most of my shoe wardrobe consists of men's shoes, so I'll have to hide my favorites until he grows out of them (in about two months).

OK, printing done, time for bed.

snort du jour

Best Beloved is away for work until Friday night.

I worked until 1am last night, because I could.

Best Beloved makes me breakfast in bed every weekday, but the catch is that he brings it to me at 6:30am, something I'm normally cranky about, but the truth is that if he's not around, I forget to eat breakfast, so I must learn to stop grumbling at 6:30am.

Padge woke me up at 7:30am, walking around me in circles and banging me on my forehead with his forehead at every pass, and then I started working again, interspersed with school lunches etc. And I forgot about breakfast. So here I am in my Bookstud office, yawning with a grumbly tummy. I've just set up my work for the Art-i-Techs show:



and had a look around, and it is a really terrific show. I'll try to take some photies later in the day when the labels are up.

What was I doing with this post? Oh! Thank goodness I wrote the title first. The snort de jour isn't staying up late nor forgetting to eat nor reminding you that I'm exhibiting; it is this. Enjoy.

Running through the week

Puff! Puff! Pant!

Some weeks you feel like there's time to sleep. Other weeks whack you on a treadmill and laugh as you try to cope with running uphill on the spot at high speed. This is one of the latter.

I spent Saturday at a workshop run by American book-meister Ed Hutchins, learning really fun paper animation techniques. Not film animation, but more pop-up book methods. It was lots of fun, and I have a book of samples to show for it, but I can't show you because I took it in to the Bookstud to show my students and forgot to bring it home.

Saturday night I HAD to go to two parties. I know you won't be surprised when I tell you that I am a First Class Party Piker, especially when I've used up my daily quota of acting pleasant. But when one party is a farewell for someone going overseas and you won't see them again for ages, and the other party is the 21st of someone you've fondly watched survive adolescence, piking is just not an option. Unfortunately party 1 gave me vodka lime cocktails and party 2 gave me champagne, and when I mix grape with grain potatoes I get a terrible hangover.

So Sunday was pretty miserable, even though BB and I snuck away to a movie to find some time to hold hands instead of look at the backs of each other's heads (me on a computer, him at the stove). We went to see Dean Spanley, delightful movie, only spoiled by an old lady sitting behind us on her walker, surrounded by rustling plastic bags hung onto the handles, who made the following litany of annoying noises:

RUSTLES (chips, plastic bags, etc)
VELCRO HISSES
ZIPS (up, down, up, down, u- no, down)
CREAKS
POPS (a cork! tally ho!)
CLINKS
TUTS AND SIGHS
MOBILE PHONE (talked to someone up to instant of movie starting, and again the instant movie finished)
And -- no joke -- spent a weird period during the movie ads seemingly going through the cinema's bin.

Very odd.

I did manage to get to the Lifeline Book Fair briefly on Friday afternoon for an hour (only spent $25!) and then again briefly on Sunday afternoon when I just crammed masses of nice bindings into shopping bags to be taken away and carved up to make other bindings. (The nicest unwanted bindings were in the Dutch/German/French section. Other cultures are so boring with their bindings, saving all the decoration for the paper dustjackets. The D/G/F section was full of fantastic board embossings, gold blocked decorations and painted paper quarter bindings. And many have uber-exotic font choices as well, perfect for my current collage obsession.) I didn't look for reading matter. So I didn't find any :)

Anyhoo... I am trying to meet ZILLIONS of layout deadlines for various books, journals and community groups whilst setting up my part of an exhibition --

ANNOUNCEMENT!
WEDNESDAY 25 MARCH IS NOT ONLY COLONEL AND LADY DUCK'S WEDDING ANNIVERSARY BUT ALSO THE OPENING OF THE ART-I-TECH EXHIBITION AT THE ANU SCHOOL OF ART FOYER GALLERY AT 6PM. A showcase of art works by the school's excellent [insert creative collective noun here] of Technical Officers, including myself.

-- and preparing my head for participation in this coming weekend's TWO FIRES FESTIVAL at Braidwood, NSW.

Also trying to plan the school holidays around everyone's different access needs and working schedules, and realising I have to take Bumblebee shoe-shopping in the next 3 days so that he has something besides crocs to wear at next week's SCHOOL CAMP! And do a stocktake of his clothes. He turns 12 in a couple of weeks, and he's taller than ever. PUFF! PANT! Ye gods, it's frigging APRIL next week... someone turn the treadmill off! Please!

At least I have managed to update my website about the lovely works in progress for my upcoming Books to Hold or Let Go exhibition at Craft ACT. One thing off the checklist tonight.

I have resolved to write more about the actual arty farty stuff I've been doing lately. But not tonight, Josephine, not tonight.

Comrade kitties

-- The air is crisp, like fresh spring leaves.

-- Do you know the time in Zurich?

-- It is you! no one believed you would survive.

-- We have little time, you must get these microfiche of the sub plans to Moscow




Zoe, as a reward for scanning her pics yesterday, pointed me towards Eastern Bloc lolcats with a twist. Heaven!

For real-life heavenly kitties, meet Beatrice and Harriet. Their names are as perfect as their looks.

ZOMFCC!!1!

Crazybrave Zoe is front page of the Canberra Times food supplement today! Huzzar!

-- Post From My iPhone


UPDATE: See!





(Click on photos to see them embiggened at flickr)


I think she should definitely dash down to the Canberra Times and order big glossy copies of these, and any others. Good for the Foodblogging portfolio. Definitely.

snort du jour

Today's snort was bushy's tea (home-brand black tea, stolen from the student stash, with condensed milk) up the nose and over the Bookstud keybort, when reading this post from Master of Cerebellum, Tim T.

Closely followed when mopping up by another one of Bad News Hughes' classics. Don't follow that link if you're feeling delicate. It's pretty raw in many senses of the word.

Feeling stretched thin

I've been working hard over the weekend, teaching Japanese and Coptic bookbinding at (the beautifully renovated) Megalo, so I had to pack a weekend's worth of downtime into last night's fanfic-ish Lost in Austen. Combined with a couple of stiff G&Ts, it did very well as a mini-break, apart from the fact that I spent a small amount of time before dropping off to sleep wondering if Mr Darcy would still love Amanda Price when her fake auburn hair developed a major root-line.

Today I did more Coptic binding with my art school students before traipsing them over to the Menzies Library to view some more of the Petr Herel collection of artists' books. This is an archive of many of the books and print folios made during the 20-odd years of the Graphic Investigations Workshop under the careful and philosophical Czech eye of Petr Herel. It's an under-valued and under-used little gem in the ANU library collections, and fully able to be accessed by appointment. I think I'm the only person to use it, so I try to take a group of students at least twice a year, and even if they're revisiting with me, they still come away delighted. The link above is to a poor archival website; if you'd like to browse the actual records, click here.

In other news, entries are coming in for my upcoming exhibition Books to Hold or Let Go, a group exhibition of various bindings of my latest fine press book (I'm planning to write a few things about this really soon, once I've got my slate a bit clearer). I'm trying to keep up with things on my website, and should have even more images later in the week. I can't believe we're already halfway through March; the exhibition opens on May 14, which is really not that far away...