Kansas City Design Week -- part 1

A view from my hotel window.

Well, first I'd like to extend an apology to anyone who at previous times has enjoyed reading my musings or looking through the pictures on my blog. I have been writing a ton about a ton of things, but unfortunately, it has not been on this blog.

In recent days I have written ~20 pages of my book, two short stories, drunk roughly my body weight in cinnamon tea, read a number of amazing books, and -- (and here we come to the point of this post) -- volunteered to cover a few events of Kansas City Design Week for This Big City blog.

crap from the past

I was going to try for a play on "blast from the past," but then I ended up with "crast from the past," and that's just no good. Maybe "crapst from the past." Yeah, that has a ring to it.

First, a disclaimer: I AM NOT ACTUALLY A HOARDER. I JUST HAVE ISSUES. WITH THROWING AWAY STUFF. SOMETIMES. Typically, I collect bits and pieces of things I find really interesting for a couple years, then struggle to throw it all away. . . I had a brain wave before moving back from MIT and took pictures of anything that made me sad to throw out (but was pretty sure I had no reason to keep.) Yeah, I could have scanned some of this stuff and gotten better quality pictures, but the picture-taking process leaves bonus relics of the time and the place I did it in, which at some point I suspect I will value more than what the pictures purport to be of.

The primary thing I threw out was in fact around 150 cards received while at college, from various relatives, but mainly my mom. Mom: Showing her love with seasonal cards since 2006. (actually well before that, but you get the idea.)

And now. . . a tour through the crap I no longer possess! (The image above is of the practice casts we made of various body parts in 4.302 in wax and plaster. . . so there is an unpleasant closeup of my upper lip. Damn I loved that class.)

I love Orbit gum, and I loved this packaging run. Why did you have to end it, Orbit??

graphic v. 1.1

and a few other things.

First, the graphic:

Second: Movies! I have been watching some! Namely The King's Speech and Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day. The costumes, oh they are lovely! I'll have to post some stills soon, at least from the second one. (The dialogue and acting were pretty good too, but the costumes for some reason are sticking with me.)

Right now I'm struggling through Bridget Jones' Diary and finding it less delightful. Sigh.

Third: Fun things.
Babies in Paris. A selection of photos from one of the blogs I read regularly, showing her and her twin sister right after they were born, being lugged around in various contrivances in Paris.

Perhaps an unusually lovely Swedish apartment? From Desire to Inspire. Lots of midcentury furniture mixed with minimalism and some older-period pieces. I usually have a love/hate relationship these sorts of postings -- love, they're gorgeous, I want to have a house like that someday; hate, they're totally fake, I would hate the people who actually lived like that all the time, and I never will.

This video (posted on lang-8) makes me giggle. I believe that the title is, more or less, "The Grumpy House."

Researching this for reasons I don't wish to elucidate at the moment, but there are amazing state history resources online (this one is a "Tennessee Encyclopedia." no, I'm not moving to Tennessee.)

As I had hoped, about.com has some excellent French resources (along with their excellent Spanish resources and slightly-difficult-to-wade-through Japanese resources. Here, expressions with avoir.

A very pleasant tumblr theme (though not the one I'm using currently.)

Incidentally, I discovered that to fly from Tokyo to Paris and then home at this time would cost about $1700. No reason.

Snapshot of what I'm looking at. . .

Finding the way

Finally, I have submitted my second Threadless design:

Finding the way.

The timing is somewhat inconvenient, as I will be gone without internet access for the next three days and unable to beleaguer all and sundry to go vote on it. However, I shall hope for the best and ask those who are kindly inclined toward me to check on the Threadless website again tomorrow.

Thanks muchly. . .

in my quest for financial solvency

I have submitted my first (hopefully of many) t-shirt design to Threadless.com.

It is currently still "pending approval," but when that period has ceased, I shall post much notification with much glorious trumpeting and much less glorious begging and pleading to help me out.