I should've left earlier than I did yesterday--my own sentiment and Sharon (who generally comes in at the same time I do, and left an hour and a half earlier yesterday afternoon) agrees. Maybe if I had, getting home wouldn't have been such an ordeal.
By 3 o'clock, the trains weren't running between Kenmore and Washington due to electricity problems.
Instead, there were green line shuttle buses carrying sardine-can-squashed passengers from stop to stop in between. I splashed across Comm. Ave. at the last minute--through a foot of sludge--in order to get on one of these shuttles; and, in spite of there being other people behind me who would've liked to get on the bus too, the driver shut the doors and drove away without them.
And when he let us off at Washington to wait for the T to Boston College, the driver parked the bus in front of another slush puddle. Yay.
By the time I got home, my shoes and socks were soaked through and the cuffs of my khakis were filthy and wet. My extremities were basically frozen.
I changed into pajamas right away when I got in the door and spent the rest of the afternoon and into evening thawing.
No. I didn't vacuum.
But I did help Michelle take apart the lego couch and then put it out on the curb for trash-pickers or garbage-men to take away. And then we moved the futon from her room to the living room. So that was something productive for the evening.
--in addition to chibi-Strife's pants.
I didn't work on them during lunch yesterday--I just kept getting distracted by looking out my window at the snow and sleet coming down. So I had to finish sewing the front panels; cut out, pin, and sew the back panels; and then sew the front and back together. actually, I left the upper seams opem to make it easier to fit the waist. I have it safety-pinned on both sides right now, and I basically know what I'm going to do with it.
Getting him into those pants wasn't as difficult as I'd thought it might be. But I didn't over-stuff his legs, so they're pretty squeezable and will fit just about anywhere with careful handling.
I was split between starting his boots or his gloves today, but I think I'm going to go with gloves. After the 12-piece pants, I'm just not ready to deal with the boot/shin-guard-process yet. But then, those gloves are supposed to be kind of patchy too. Maybe I'll just hem the shirt and pant cuffs today.
Blah. I'll decide what I'm doing by lunchtime.
15 February 2007
I pick things up; I am a collector. And things, well, things--they tend to accumulate.
13 February 2007
part-time cutter
contemplating Dilbert
Scott knows. I'm not sure why he knows--probably from some horrible experience of his own, but one doesn't usually imagine these kinds of awkward situations between two men. Well, not outside the realm of Steve Martin comedy anyway--if that makes sense. It might not. It's early. I don't have coffee yet.
This strip made me giggle a lot. Most days Scott Adams is a ho-hum experience for me, but the theme of yesterday's strip into today's has struck a chord. (Click the little strip for full disclosure.)
It was probably because of that peculiar man in 99, and then reading about Christina's experience with "Paul who wouldn't go away" and the IRA man in Belfast. And, you know, being reminded of every other time some strange person got too much into my personal space or shared too much information in too short a span of time.
It's like that. And when it happens to me or my friends, it's creepy; but having it happen to Dilbert, and to such an absurd extreme, is hilarious.
Schadenfreude? Vielleicht.
the tax refund and a brief lament for yesterday's coffee
I keep checking my ING account for my direct deposit from Federal and Massachusetts.
Federal says it should get there by the 23 February (though, with a tiny-font post-script that "cannot guarantee the actual date"), but Massachusetts isn't making any promises at all.
Oh, well. I'll keep watching. [Edit 1125: It figures that the State refund would get there before Federal. Not that I'm complaining. It's a good refund. It's just kind of odd that the people giving me no sense of waiting time should get my money to me quickest. End edit.]
I want coffee sooooo bad right now. Hopefully it will be better than my sour-milk experience of yesterday. Ugh, that was horrible.
movies movies movies:
Having had some coffee (yes, a great improvement on yesterday's), I'll now write on upcoming entertainment.
First, this. I'm sorry, what?
WHAT?!?
John Travolta is NOT Edna Turnblad. At all. Ever. The end!
It's not even so much that they're re-making Hairspray that bothers me. That actually doesn't bother me at all. It's the Divine versus John Travolta thing that irks me.
Divine ... (Let that sink in.) ... Travolta? Eh?
Maybe it's not as ridiculous to somebody who's seen the stage production, but that seems really miscast to me. Other arguments are quite welcome.
So why did I hear about this? Because I've been checking the release calendar on IMDb to see how much the movies are going to set me back this summer. So far I have six must-see movies on my list:
*Harry Potter Part V (which is bumping up against the release of Deathly Hallows)
*Live Free or Die Hard (yes, it's probably going to be awful--and I don't see how they can top Bruce Willis and Sam L. Jackson running around NYC mouthing off at one another--but I'm faithful to this franchise, so I'm going to see it)
*Ocean's 13 (I've really enjoyed the last two, in spite of the fact that I went into them feeling dubious; I'll go into this one just as dubious, and hopefully be pleasantly surprised again)
*Pirates of the Caribbean: At Worlds End (Hi. It's Johnny Depp. And Orlando Bloom. And PIRATES. Short of the theatre catching fire, nothing is going to keep me away ... and, in case of fire, I'll be running into the cinema to save the precious reels ... my preciousssss)
*Spiderman 3 (Peter. Parker. The end.)
*Transformers (Hey, it's a remnant of my childhood being made larger than life--I'd probably go see a movie about The Smurfs if they CGI'd it to death)
phone and television technology:
I'll just keep adding things as they come to me rather than creating a whole new entry; that way, people won't have to read any of the extras if they don't want to. Well, not that they have to read the original entry or any of my entries, but there it is.
My phone has now lost the ability to take a charge for more than thirty minutes. If it's not plugged into the wall, it'll die within half an hour. I don't know why. The battery is brand new (since November). My only guess is that the phone is going bad and sucking the power out of the battery at a quicker than normal rate.
It's frustrating. I never know what time it is (yeah, I should just wear a watch; but I never needed [and, so, do not own] a watch when my phone was working).
I think my parents have talked me into sticking with Sprint (it gets us a family rate and, I think, free phone calls between us), but they understand my desire for a new phone and are offering to get me said phone.
They won't tell me what they're considering, so I have no idea what to expect.
My dad is talking about getting a new phone too. Oh, and a new television. They have four televisions, three of them are ridiculously huge and really nice. the fourth is old, but it works. actually, they all work. And that's not including the 19" Sony in "my room" in the Durham house.
He needs an HD television, because "soon anything that isn't HD will be obsolete, and won't be able to receive the cable feed" ... so, what he's basically telling me is that ALL cable companies EVERYWHERE are going to expect ALL their customers to buy a $1000s+ television set.
For some reason, his logic doesn't fly with me. Cable companies and their advertisers want to be able to reach the lowest common denominator in society, because even poor people have television; and whatever little money they can save, you can be sure that big companies will want the chance to take it back through consumer spending--which happens most successfully if and when people are bombarded with advertisements. So I doubt that television is going to become HD-only any time soon; not unless HD becomes more affordable for the masses.
Also, you don't like your current televisions? Would you mind sending one to us? Because we'd LOVE to have a nice television for our living room. Thanks.
chores left unfinished:
*laundry
*vacuuming
And crafting too, but that's hardly a chore, is it? I swear that I'll at least make the effort to not go home and collapse today. I'll do a load of laundry and vacuum the floor by my wardrobe. There. Now I must do it.
12 February 2007
chibi-Strife and George the orc?
He has hair, facial features, and basic clothes. I could stop now and be perfectly satisfied with him.
No, that's a lie. I really do want to finish his clothes and other accessories. It's just taking so damn long ...
I was watching Lord of the Rings: Return of the King last night, just to watch the part with "George" the orc. No, his real character name is not George but something more fittingly Middle Earth-ish. And his IMDb title is 'Orc Lieutenant 1' ... he's best seen in the extended cut of RotK, but you can find him in the regular release during the scene where the orcs catapult the heads of the Gondor warriors over the wall. He's identifiable by the skull that he wears as a hat.
Yeah. That's Joel Tobeck again. Not that you can really tell it's him under all the orc costume, but it's the thought that counts.
But I fell asleep before that scene, and woke up again when Frodo and Gollum are fighting for the Ring over the fiery chasm and Gollum bites off Frodo's finger. That was a hell of a thing to wake up to.
06 February 2007
another photo representation of progress
My last blogspot entry, about a week ago, featured the assembly of a muslin prototype plush person. I've been working on the velour version of that prototype, and this entry features the up-to-date progress of chibi-Strife.
Since I'd already photographed the body assembly with the first version, I didn't bother to do so with this one too. Instead, we jump right to the finished body, 31 January:
The head gave me more grief than with the first version, but I think it turned out better. I also stuffed it from a top-side seam this time around, so the lower region of the face is much smoother than with the muslin rendition.
Two additions to the velour version's body base: his ears, hand-sewn to the head during my lunch break on 1 February.
The first article of clothing I created for chibi-Strife was a simple half-circle cloak, cut and sewn on 2 February:
The pattern for the cloak is extremely basic and may be found here. I merely adjusted the measurements for chibi-Strife's proportions.
On Saturday, after a trip to Michael's for Art Wear iron transfer sheets, I worked on designs for his eyes, chose one that I liked, and fused them to chibi-Strife's head. Very carefully.
Sunday night, I sewed a pair of long underwear from remnants of old black jersey material. Really, very much belonging to the "remnants" category--it involved a lot of seam-ripping and removal of very old elastic (which tends to disintegrate and fall apart in its old age).
The waist-band of the pants is kind of ... iffy. They fall down. He has plumber's crack (except that it's cute on chibi-Strife, rather than horrifying and gross).
But it's okay, because yesterday I made him a tunic that sort of compensates for the tendency of the pants to fall down by being over-long.
And today? Yeah, I don't know yet. We'll see. Maybe he'll get a mouth.
Maybe.
30 January 2007
a gradual process
I've already posted images of this in my LiveJournal, but then today I realized I'd never updated blogger with any of it. So this morning's entry is a backtrack of last week's plush endeavors.
The body fabric is a natural-tone muslin, the eyes and mouth are black thread. This week I'm in the process of making a nicer version of the body out of velour fabric. I cut all the pieces on Sunday night with a few minor differences from the original (thumbs on the hands, a slightly different dart for the front of the head), sewed and stuffed the body yesterday, and today I'll hopefully finish the head.
Well, maybe finish the head. I'm thinking of purchasing some flat-black buttons for the eyes rather than messing around with the satin-stitch again; because it was hard enough to make an even satin-stitch on muslin, never mind piled fabric.
I also still need to make ears (the first prototype didn't have any). And, for this particular plushie, ears will be necessary, since a major part of his defining accessories is wearing funky earrings.
After I'm done with the body, the real tricky part will begin--hair, clothing, accessories. My experience with making doll clothes is so limited, it could be written on the back of a postage stamp in its entirety.
And Strife's clothes are kind of detail-oriented: the boots and gauntlets, fingerless gloves (good thing the new plushie has thumbs), and a nonsensically pieced-together [leather or pleather?] jump-suit with tiny metal rings and belts and such. For a better explanation of what I mean, I include photos:
Yeah, he's a skinny god. I don't care. He's going to make an adorable plushie.
But I get the sinking feeling I'll be hand-sewing Strife into his complicated getup.
29 January 2007
pure morning
Oh, this past weekend ... ~_~
And now for a more-detailed account of the weekend's events, adventures in Providence, and terrorists on skis.
Friday afternoon I left work and headed inbound, stopping at Park Street to browse through the Borders at Downtown Crossing (and apparently there's another Borders on Boylston St. now, too?). I was looking for books on doll-making (big surprise, that is) and drawing super-deformed characters (chibi!), since the human dolls I'm interested in making are of the chibi/SD variety. All around, that was a very discouraging stop, since there was really nothing I could use in stock.
Art dolls are ... interesting, but they give me the creeps. I'm not talking about sock creatures or weird animals or patch-work creations--but rather dolls like this. I recognize their art value; I can even understand why some people would want to collect and create them; but I wouldn't deal well with having one in my room. I would have Puppet Master nightmares (except that the nightmares would actually be scary rather than stupidly funny, like those movies).
From Park Street, I went to Harvard Square to visit Tokyo Kid, looking to see if they had any plushies in a discount bin; because, at a cheap enough price, I wouldn't mind buying one just to take it apart. Yes, I should've known better, really. Nothing is ever cheap at that store. Plushies of the type I was interested in were starting at $14. Yeah. No. Not for a UFO-catcher doll. Not when I've seen them on eBay for $6.
They did have how-to guides for drawing manga characters, but they weren't really what I wanted (and $20 besides); so I left without buying anything and continued on to The Coop. They were also a no-go for doll-making books, but they did have a very nice selection of manga-drawing books on the lowest shelf in their Art section. I might've bought one, but when I looked at the neverending line for the cashier, I lost my verve and opted to just go home. It was easy to do, really, since I knew I'd be spending money on Saturday. And since I went to Amazon.com, and ordered this.
And, check, spent money on Saturday. Melissa picked me up at the train station and we drove 'round to The Fabric Place and A.C. Moore. At The Fabric Place (where my head spun around and exploded upon entering--no, not really, but yikes, it's overwhelming) I bought velour in white and light gray, an evergreen suede, and a book on the basics of making soft toys. A.C. Moore had beanie babies for $4 ... yes, ashamed to say it, but I bought two: a skunk and an owl who have joined Jiji on the top of my television set. Oh! and some fat quarters in red, black, purple, and blue with different and interesting patterns.
Really, I wasn't as bad as I'd expected. The grand total could've been much worse.
After that, we went back to Melissa's to pick up Erich so we could all go to lunch. We went to The Texas Roadhouse. It's awesome. Yeah, the music is country-western, and we could all live without that, but the food ... The food is really just to-die-for. I haven't had steak in ... forever; and this was the perfect reunion for me and steak. And I ate alllll my food--and didn't really notice how full I was until it was time to get up and leave. And Mel very graciously spotted me the money for dinner again, so I really must buy her and Erich dinner next time around. I feel like a free-loader! TT_TT
Then we went back to the house for stitching and season two of Doctor Who. The six-minute segue between the end of season one and "The Christmas Invasion" (that I'd never seen before) really helps the Christmas special make more sense (so far as Rose accepting the Doctor's body-change, and how they crash). And holy crap, I love the outtakes so much. It makes me want to dress up as a cyberman and run around the Common, chasing squirrels and pigeons. Mmm. David Tennant.
And I was being productive too! I cut new arms (as I was less than pleased with my first attempt), hand-stitched them, and hand-sewed them into the torso seam, all ready to be stuffed when I got home. That doesn't seem like very much when typed out, but it took me a while to do all that. I think the biggest headache was in figuring out the placement of the arms in seams; because I wanted the seams to be perpendicular, not lined up (I like making life difficult for myself). But after they were pinned into place, it wasn't too bad.
After the Doctor Who outtakes, Mel drove me home--which was super-nice of her. And I, of course, stayed awake to stuff the doll's arms and torso, and attach the head. This was all while half-heartedly watching Icebreaker. I didn't know what the hell was happening in that movie by the time I'd finished crafting and was actually paying attention ... so I started the DVD over again from the beginning. And promptly fell asleep.
I tried to watch it again on Sunday morning. It's a really bad movie, Bruce Campbell and Sean Astin notwithstanding. A concise description of the plot idea would be "Die Hard with skis." If you think that sounds dumb, you don't know the half of it. I swear it was written by somebody (probably a former member of ski patrol) who was working at a ski resort and got bored. I can just see it:
"Oh, what if terrorists showed up?" [for no bloody reason at all] "Hmm. Yes. They need a reason to be here, don't they? ... Uhh, they've lost their nuclear weapons from Russia in a plane crash on the mountain! And the only way to get them back is to take the ski lodge hostage!" [never mind that Russia is small beans anymore, but they can't just sneak up there and get their nuclear stuff back without anybody noticing?] "No! We want this to be like Die Hard! And, instead of a cop, what if a member of the ski patrol had to save the day?" [because, you never know, it could happen] "And we can have terrorists on skis, chasing the hero down the black diamond trail!" [the terrorists know how to ski?] "Yes." [and snowboard?] "Yes!" [and shoot guns at the same time?] "YES!" [how do all the terrorists know how to ski?] "Because they do!" [and, yes, losing me ...]
You know that's how it went. Sean Astin should've known to stay away from terrorist movies after Toy Soldiers. Oh, well. In spite of its being a really dumb movie (actually, maybe because it's a really dumb movie), I did kind of enjoy it. But then I enjoyed Toy Soldiers too, and that's equally absurd.
Oh, yeah. A little after ten o'clock the doorbell rang. It was the USPS carrier. On Sunday. My package from Aranzi Aronzo had arrived--less than a week after ordering it. From Japan. And on a Sunday. The EMS packaging boasts: "fastest International delivery." I think they've earned that boast. I really didn't expect it to arrive that fast.
The book is beautiful and chock full of visual instructions that make it really easy to follow along. And the fact that I can read katakana helps a bit too.
On the invoice somebody wrote a small note in very neat (and somewhat broken) English. But it was just so nice. And personalized. And it definitely made me go: "Awwwwww!"
It might be a generalization of their culture, but it's a good one--and so, hopefully, forgiveable--but ... Japanese people are so damn nice.
24 January 2007
for my next trick
I think I'm going to make an owl. There's a very simple pattern for one that I copied from Craftster that has very few pieces, and I don't think it should take me too long to put it all together.
More of a long-term goal is come up with my own concept for a general plushie form (kind of like the UFO-catcher plushies, but probably not anime characters).
My feeling is that the head is going to be the biggest nightmare to figure out, since I want it to have more than the two-dimensional shape that two sides sewn together would provide. I want there to be a definite point where the nose is located, and I want the back of the head to have some dimension too. Suffice to say, I think that this is going to involve a lot of trial and error (and, during those trials, the cheapest broadcloth I can find).
Once I have a plushie design that I like, I'm going to make a Strife plushie (and break some sort of commandment in which I don't really believe, I'm sure). No, not Cloud Strife. Strife-Strife. My LiveJournal icon's Strife. Leather metal-ringed costume and all (though, more likely to be pleather). I'd like to make him a little cloak too, just for the hell of it.
Other idea--a Captain Jack Harkness plushie, complete with great coat, vest, and bracers.
You can see I'm really warming up to this concept.
23 January 2007
nuigurumi, continued
I finished making Farsil the Cat last night.
I'm not sure what I'll turn out next, but I really like making plushies, so probably another one of those (though, not likely to be another cat--not for a while anyway).
22 January 2007
tableware you know you want to use
The title, you'll soon understand, is sarcastic.
I was browsing Aranzi.net, a Japanese store featuring products with different animal characters (and some that aren't animals at all), and found these in the Tableware category:
"Poisoned drink" and "poisoned food" (respectively). It's like Hello Kitty from Hell. Awesome.
nuigurumi
This past weekend I rewarded the leaps and bounds I had made in organizing my desk by finally pulling out my sewing machine and using it (after a hibernation period of how long?), temporarily relocating the laptop to my bed. I also cleared out a nook for the sewing machine on one of the lower shelves of the desk for when I'm not using it; having it there will make it easier to take out whenever I want.
Friday afternoon, I had found a fairly simple pattern for a stuffed cat on Craftster, and on Saturday morning I decided to give it a try. My first attempts were, I now see, doomed. The pattern was too small for the fabric I had chosen (remember the black faux fur-like remnant from The Children's Museum? no, I hadn't either--until I found it lumped in with my other sewing odds and ends); it was shedding and thick and pretty impossible stuff to work with, and not at all a good idea for a "first stab" at a stuffed animal.
So I took a break for lunch, popped a couple ibuprofen, and began to watch the third season of Arrested Development, which had just arrived in the mail. And at some point during the show, I started sorting through the other kinds of fabric--they were still spread out on my bed since I'd not put them away. I decided to make life simpler, enlarged the pattern, chose two kinds of cotton (from the various fat quarters I've collected over the years), and started afresh.
It should be noted that this particular pattern is in Japanese. I don't know Japanese (well, not entirely true--I know very little, and cannot read kanji), so I basically followed my intuition with the process. Most of it worked out well; some of it could've gone better. Like the arms. I stuffed the arms before machine-sewing them into the seam of the torso. And if I ever do that again, I'll probably sew them with their seams perpendicular, rather than parallel. Because they're kind of floppy, in a way that would be arm-breaking on a real creature.
I think I had just finished the machine-sewing part when the first disc of Arrested Development ended. I plugged the iPod into the television to watched The Illusionist (which is kind of weird to watch after Gob's magic nonsense on AD), and stuffed the separate body parts (head, body, and tail) with destroyed pieces of the black fur material (because what else am I going to do with that stuff?).
Some of the way through the stuffing process, I realized that I had no hand-sewing needles. I rummaged through my disorganized bags of sewing stuff, and no. Nothing with which to sew the pieces together.
So, Saturday night concluded with my project looking like this:
Sunday I took the trip from South Station out to Framingham. I had about half an hour to wait for my train, so I stopped at one of the food stalls in the station for a sandwich. There's a new one called Cosi, and I recommend it to anyone who happens to wind up in South Station. Their melts are awesome.
My purpose of the day was to visit The Fabric Place and get whatever I needed to finish my project--and browse too, since it is, according to their advertisements, the biggest Fabric Place in New England. I bought more than I needed to: a 50-pack of hand-sewing needles, more fat quarters from the quilting department, felt squares, poly-fill (no more lumpy stuffed creatures), and poly pellets (no more top-heavy stuffed creatures either).
I arrived home around twilight, and finished sewing the cat's pieces together before dinner arrived while watching the second (and last) disc of Arrested Development, season three. He still needs a face (as I'm using pins to mark where I'm thinking it should go), but this is what he looks like now:
Somewhere between Framingham and South Station, on the trip home from The Fabric Place, I decided that his name is Farsil Redleaf. The "Redleaf" part is fairly understandable (the maple pattern fabric that makes up his front, tail, and inner-ears); but don't ask me about "Farsil," because I don't know or remember why I arrived at that. I was always bad at naming pets. I'm equally bad at naming stuffed animals.
Other changes I would consider making to the process:
1. Perhaps determine a more stable way of attaching the head to the body (or, indeed, a way of attaching all pieces to the body before stuffing). I just feel like the hand-sewing bits were the least uniform, and maybe the whole design could be machine sewn if slightly altered. Maybe the tail, like the arms, could be pre-stuffed and sewn into the seam.
* In lieu of that, do some trial-stitching on spare fabric and try to recall that old secret of "the hidden stitch."
2. Stitch the face (with whatever) before sewing the head together, because I can already tell that any attempt at satin-stitching the face is going to be rather difficult.
3. Make use of the poly-pellets in the bottom (and maybe the feet too) so that it's not so top-heavy. Otherwise, it really can't sit up by itself.
18 January 2007
Tarzan, much?
There are certain notions that I would tend to immediately dismiss as fiction. This was one of them:
'Wild Cambodia jungle-girl' found
A Cambodian girl who disappeared aged eight has been found after reportedly living wild in the jungle for 19 years.
So this girl is 27, has been surviving in the jungle for almost two decades, and speaks no discernible language? I call that a movie plot waiting to happen.
Honestly, it's like The Jungle Book or Tarzan or George of the Jungle. Crazy.
pride cometh before ...
I've got a memory like an elephant... that's lost its memory.
... a nasty fall up the front steps in the freezing cold. Or something to that effect. I could blame it on pride or my over-large slippers that I happened to be wearing at the time, and in which I have a hard enough time while walking on level surfaces, never mind brick stairs.
The pride being due to the happiness I was feeling from the completion (or near-completion) of various chores around the flat. I'd done my laundry, all the little scraps of useless paper from my desk-side bookshelf had been thrown into empty shopping bags, and the trash-full shopping bags had been placed in trash bags.
And before cracking down on the havoc that is my desk, I decided to take out the two full trash bags I'd already assembled. On my way back in, I was thinking of vacuuming my floor as well.
Zeal is randomly punished.
I misstepped and fell up the brick stairs that lead to the vistibule of our apartment, managing to smash both left knee and left ankle. It's been a while since my clumsiness has led me to fall up the stairs (or down the stairs, for that matter), and I'd forgotten how falling on my knee seems to drain the energy out of the rest of me, my arms especially.
Hobbling back inside, I collapsed on my bed for a minute to groan and let the wave of nausea pass. Then, after a few minutes I shuffled to the kitchen, emptied what was left of an ice tray into a ziploc bag, shuffled back to my room, and crumbled again--only, this time, with a bag of ice to transfer from my knee to ankle and back again.
Thus was my work ethic was fairly well squashed for the evening. After an hour or so of icing my knee-cap I decided to have a shower. I spent it wondering how and when the other shoe is going to drop; clumsiness for me isn't a case of "a little here and there." No, it comes in batches, and there's bound to be something else around the corner.
Natalie Dee knows my pain.
In the end, I managed to put brooding aside by way of entertainment, and fell asleep watching more Netflix deliveries: Series Three of The Vicar of Dibley.
On another note completely, I wonder if an ibrik is entirely necessary to the physics involved in the creation of Turkish coffee--or if, indeed, a small pan would do the job just as well. I get the feeling that the almost Erlenmeyer shape serves a particular purpose, and probably something to do with restricting the surface area of the brew exposed to air.
I was reading several tutorials yesterday about coffee, and came upon instructions for brewing Turkish coffee, a process that involves pulverizing coffee beans beyond even the fine-grind typical of espresso. You also apparently require an ibrik (a very small pan, the shape of which reminds me of an Erlenmeyer flask). The whole business sounds easy enough in theory--though I've been reading the several possibilities of disaster--and I kind of want to try it myself.
What is Turkish coffee like? I've only ever had it once, to be honest. I could say it's like espresso, but that's really not doing it justice, because its flavour is much stronger than any espresso. I suppose it would be like finding an espresso concentrate in a syrup-like form and drinking that straight, hot, and usually with sugar.
16 January 2007
snow!?
I was just checking on weather.com, and read this:
I know it seems like nothing if you don't live in the Boston area, but we've not had proper snow since ... November? December? And even then it wasn't anything that actually stuck to horizontal surfaces.
It's been a sad, sad winter season for Boston.
digging for the truth
It's a slogan that The History Channel has pasted all over the MBTA Green Line trains (I can't speak for the other lines, as I don't see them very often). It's a sentiment that would seem to express serious scholastic interest, but none of the accompanying images really match up.
"Digging for the truth" apparently means taking part in adventure sport--hang-gliding over lost civilizations that bear a striking resemblance to scenery from King Kong and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, rock-climbing the face of large old statues (that, amazingly, aren't so old that they crumble or self-destruct under the stress and pressure of human weight), and base-jumping (or perhaps sky-diving, I couldn't tell) out of helicopters. ... But no actual "digging," no, not as such.
I had a lot of time to contemplate these advertisements over the three-day weekend (because I work at a university, and Martin Luther King Jr. received his doctorate here--if we didn't celebrate Martin Luther King Day as a proper holiday, what would people think?).
Saturday I spent indoors, watching DVDs from Netflix and some episodes of Psych that I had downloaded from iTunes. I also began to rearrange and tidy up my book-shelves, trying to give the madness a recognizable method--important since there are things I can't find that I really wish I could.
Like my sketch books or my votive candles. I had a whole bag of votives, and now I have no idea where they are. I really hope they're not in my closet (a whole other barrel of worms--yes, a barrel), but the fact that I dread even attempting to search there probably means that that's exactly where they are.
But speaking of Psych, the long mid-season pause (a pause of several months, as the last new episode was back in August) is nearly over; there's going to be a new episode airing this Friday. I'm looking forward to the continuation and hope that the series is picked up for another season. Blasphemy, but I like it better than Monk.
I nearly stayed indoors again on Sunday, but outside forces were at work that would change my mind midway through the day. Numerous instant messages overnight from my mother guilted me into inspired me to call my parents. My mother was happy to find that I'd been making use of the iTunes gift card they'd given me for Christmas (those television episodes). She also wanted to know my extended weekend plans, which had basically been put on the shelf due to inclement weather, and I said as much.
Then my father got on the phone and gave me a pep-talk--you know the kind. Don't let bad weather discourage you, get out there with an umbrella and enjoy the time, etc. It's a very easy pep-talk to give when your own weather is not shit (they live in North Carolina, and enjoyed a sunny and mild weekend). So I said in a very noncommittal way that I would get out of my apartment, and he seemed nonetheless satisfied with that unenthusiastic response.
They rung off, and I surprised even myself by actually doing what I said I would. I ate a quick lunch and left the house, North Station my destination--and arrived there at about 1:45 PM. I bought a round-trip ticket at the booth, and took the Rockport train out of Boston at 2:15 PM, which is how I ended up spending a rainy afternoon in Salem, MA.
While there, I [finally] bought Christmas presents for my flat-mates at a shop on Derby St. called Witch Ways: a sun-and-moon themed wind-chime for Michelle and an opalescent "witch ball" for Stephanie (they call it that because it's meant to protect a home from malevolent forces, but to me it looks like a pretty glass-blown Christmas ornament). After that, I went farther down to Ye Olde Pepper Candy Companie, the oldest candy company in America (open since 1806), and bought truffles--because I really like their truffles and thought they would be nice to accompany the gifts.
Christmas crises over with, I walked back toward Pickering Wharf, and stopped in at Cafe Jaho for a cappuccino and some writing--and, though I hadn't really expected much of myself, I got a fair amount of writing done. It needs editing, as the characterization of my main character is a little off for the scene (though I haven't dealt with him in 50,000 words, so that's not very surprising); but I like what I've done with the secondary character, so it wasn't a wasted or fruitless effort.
I didn't leave Salem until nearly 6:00 PM, and walked around taking pictures in the dark until the next inbound train was due to arrive.
Some of them turned out better than others.
Yesterday morning, as I was getting ready to go out into the rain again, the doorbell rang. It was the postman with my purchases from Amazon.co.uk--the three new books based on the Torchwood series. I unwrapped them, enjoyed the sight of them for a few minutes (when you line up the three separate book spines they make a picture of the whole team), and put Another Life in my bag for T reading material.
I spent the afternoon at the CambridgeSide Galleria, and bought a new protective case for my iPod (a black and red leather folio that I saw at the Apple Store in Raleigh, NC over Christmas break and had been coveting ever since, regardless of the U2-connection).
Shopping confession two, I feel, requires preamble to justify the purchase--one that the majority of my friends will still feel is not an adequate justification; but if they're really my friends they'll forgive the rather "preppy" vanity involved. I don't generally shop at Abercrombie & Fitch; it's usually out of my price range, and, quite frankly, most of the clothing is poorly crafted and overpriced for its quality (or lack thereof). I've only shopped their clearance, because that's when I feel that the clothing is actual worth what you're paying.
All that being said, I really like the way Abercrombie & Fitch clothing smells--you know, before the first time you wash it. And, while looking for clothing deals with my mother in the post-Christmas madness, we went into an Abercrombie & Fitch. I ended up buying a sweater and a pair of greenish-gray khakis; and again, I was struck by the fragrance on all of the clothes.
Waiting in line, there was a table beside the check-out counter with bottles of multiple scents, and I picked up the test-bottle of "Classic" on a hunch and spritzed it on a test-strip. Sure enough, "Classic" is what all their clothes smell like. And I wanted it, but I didn't buy it; it seemed like overkill at the time (and I'm sure still seems like overkill to you, dear readers, now).
With that long introduction to the fact, the shorter story is that I went and bought a bottle yesterday at the Galleria. Because I was there, and alone, and had no one in tow to give me judgmental glares about the silliness of such a purchase (you know who you are--yes, all of you, most likely). No, I'm only leaving myself open to criticism after the fact by mentioning it in my blog; but at least this way no one can attempt to talk me out of it.
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