Sun is dangerous...

for the people of Washintonia. Conditioned to live with minimal sunlight for most of the year, the sudden appearance (and longer exposure to it) during the brief summer months can lead to euphoria, and the unfortunate belief that anything and everything is possible.

I seriously feel like Superman breaking out of a room of Red Sunlight. I want to do everything ever right now including but not limited to: volunteering at 826 seattle, joining a choir, riding my bike, playing pool at the Seafairer, designing and making a somewhat realistic looking doll of a woman preferably about 6 to 8 inches, push ups, making baba yaga's chicken leg house out of legos, finishing this fucking novel, drawing my own Sala-esque detective comic and reading all of the books on my to-read list.

Erik's making the future interior of the Dorf out of legos.

Also I bought a baseball mit because mine was either lost to the ages, or I never actually had one that would fit an adult sized hand. Not even my little stunted finger adult sized hand.

Speaking of stunted fingers, I'm going to make those wonderful orange and green gloves from Coraline and fit them correctly so I will finally for once have a glove that fits like a glove. This will happen... eventually. After Erik's gloves.

Projects

My mom and dad cleaned out their garage and found uh... probably everything that's been missing for the past ten years. Except my baseball glove. I just finished Chabon's Summerland and I really want to play baseball.

But anyway, along with a pie carrier, an album of family photographs from the turn of the last century, and the telescope I thought was sold when we moved, she found a bunch of my Great Grandma Eleanore's knitting needles. We knew they were hers because the container was covered in contact paper. Amazingly most of them were in complete sets, and she had some really teeny thin needles perfect for knitting in miniature. Which I've been wanting to attempt since I saw Coraline.

My Grandma Eleanor was for me, that relative that everyone seems to have who once ran the iditerod, or climed everest. She may not have done those things, but she did just about everything else, including making her own shoes for three years just because she didn't like the style of the ones she found in the stores. I admire that contrarian streak. She also ran the library because she owned the only house large enough for a library in cathlamet. And I get to inherit her knitting needles. Awesome.

Grandma Eleanor is also the reason I have a red paper mache donkey from mexico in my house.



Oh by the way does anyone else want to play baseball? I seriously want to play some baseball.

Snow Boarding Part Four

I finally decided to do the smart thing and buy a brace for the knee that decides a front and center kneecap is just so cliche, and attempts a three sixty on me from time to time. This, of course, doesn't work, and causes tremendous amounts of pain. So I was all set for a super fun day at the mountain! I even got off the lift succesfully the first time! And completed a perfect changeover from my front edge to my back edge without falling! Oh man, it actually felt like (dare I say it) Improvement!

Then I biffed it right where the hill flattens out and requires all snow boarders who aren't sufficiently speedy to do the shuffle of shame. I hate that shuffle. You have to unbind one foot, and sort of push yourself along at this awkward pose that looks a little like a cross between a baby turtle and a retard. You also have to make sure the board doesn't go off down one side of the mountain while you're still trying to glide the opposite direction toward the ski lift. You can imagine my hate for those damn skiers and their clever poles. Yeah, I could get there easy too if I were a Cheat!

Anyway I failed the shuffle, and while my board went one way and my free foot went the other to stop it, the damn knee brace shifted my knee cap in a completely different direction and I dropped like a sack of potatoes. I could barely walk to the second lift. But I really didn't want to be rescued by ski patrol. Oh the shame. Also, Erik's sister was telling me about being taken down the mountain on a gurney through double black diamond runs and I was a little scared of being strapped to a board at the mercy of whoever picked up the handles. Eventually common sense won out though, and Erik asked the guy at the lift to call ski patrol for me. Because being unable to walk without wincing really isn't conducive to riding a stupid plank with straps down steep snow covered hills.

Actually, once I got over the claustrophobia, it was actually a lot of fun to go down the mountain like that. Kind of like luge, if you giggle continously through luge and are occasionally sprayed in the face with powder.

However, there are few things more mind numbing than sitting in a ski lodge for five and a half hours while the hits of the eighties play overhead.

comic con was fun and I need to be not so shy about talking to people who are awesome. Blurting out random things just makes me sound crazy. Like "Holy shit I've been waiting for that game to be developed I wanna play that SO HARD." at mr. dresden codak.

Also fun was the visit to Fantagraphics. I have obtained and read so much Richard Sala I've got spiders in my brains. And Peculia is my new hero. I can't tell if this is worse or better than wanting to be Robin, the boy wonder.