For Meagan, who loves color!

No one loves color more than my friend Meagan and me, and she wears a candy-colored necklace where each bead is a different colored fruit sour like no one else can, not to mention her black with neon colors Spank Rock tee shirt with the neck cut out 80's style.

I'm not sure where this love of the 80's came from; I think it's because we were both a little too young to enjoy it the first time it came around! I was just a kid, and while I admired all the teenagers and young adults in their 80's fashions, I was dressed in a blue plaid polyester school uniform five days a week and whatever painfully preppy play clothes my mother had me in on the weekends.

Home sick, there's not much to do; I can't even concentrate on an adolescent lit novel. Browsing online retailers is pretty much the extent of what I can handle, in between making batches of echinacea tea. I found these Betsey Johnson shoes on Zappos.com.

Meagan, these would look so good on you! (Her feet are really tiny. Not that I think wild shoes only look good on small feet, but you know what I mean.)

Sakura Souffle Pens

I went to Wondercon 2008 this past weekend, and oddly enough, I ended up with very few comics-related items. Sakura pen company, maker of Gelly Roll pens, was there promoting their Souffle pens and some Sumo wrestling tournament they sponsor.

The Souffle pen looks like a pen but has special ink inside. It goes on wet but dries to a thick, pastel, opaque shiny raised finish. You can write on metal, glass, and plastic. They were giving out these packets of outline stickers, which is the easiest way to use the Souffle pens. You put down an outline sticker and fill in the outline with the ink. The sticker makes a little raised border to hold the ink, which is pretty runny at first, in place. Scrapbookers know all about this, apparently.

I had too much fun doodling and decorating my MAC lipstick cases! After I did a few, plus my iPod shuffle, I looked around the house for more stuff to decorate. DD tried to keep this decorating urge in check by pointing out to me that I have MANY lipsticks that have not yet been decorated.

These came out awesome, in my opinion! And it helps me know which is which. I really do have twenty or so lipsticks all in the same cases.

Don't We Deserve Fiesta ware?

One of the problematic parts of my job is that although there is no office manager, many office manager-type tasks fall to me. Fast forward to my choosing some new bowls for our kitchen, because all the bowls have "gone missing."

Our kitchen at work is gross. It's beyond dirty. Everything is just kind of old and shabby and that's okay, but it's the dirty part that freaks me out. Like parts of the wall where it meets the sink where the grout is missing and mildew is growing, and linoleum that is peeling at the edges, only the edges are like four inches broad. Departments take turns cleaning it, each department getting one week, and then your turn comes around about once every six or eight weeks.

Our silverware and dishes came from the Goodwill, or they come from employees like me who donate to the kitchen. Everything is a weird mismash, which would be fine, but there's got to be some standard, and the really weird things, in my opinion, have to go, like a plastic plate that has some unicorns on it that someone literally got from Burger KIng ten years ago... or things that are chipped to the point where the material could harbor bacteria. Our old finance manager would just take herself to the local Goodwill every six months and come back with an assortment of truly depressing dishes.

She's gone now. All the bowls disappeared to the dark recesses of messy desks and the scary locker room. I ordered Fiesta ware, which is not made in sweatshops (make in the USA), has a long and interesting history, is colorful, sturdy and reasonably priced.
You would think people would be happy, but everyone had something to say. Some people told me their dire predictions: "everything will disappear". Some people reacted as though I busted out my company credit card and ordered a full set of friggin' Wedgwood fine china. The sad part is there are fewer than 100 people in the company, and about 25 of them are truck drivers who are never in the office and kitchen anyway. So there are only about 60 of the rest of us, and yet we don't think our coworkers deserve anything even somewhat decent. I've never worked with such a large proportion of people who disliked themselves so much and felt they deserved so little.

Anyway, I kind of like Fiesta ware. The colors I chose for work are a little bit too reminiscent of original Skittles for my taste (good for work but not for home.)
The colors I would collect are: Sea Mist, Persimmon, Chartreuse, Turquoise and Peacock.

Scent Free

I've worked at two "scent free" workplaces in the past five years. Scent free means you're not supposed to wear perfume or use any weird chemicals because people may have allergies or sensitivities to the scents or chemicals. While I would appreciate not having to smell perfumes, say for instance CLINIQUE HAPPY (hate!), the scent free standard just doesn't really work at all. It mostly works on the honor system. Those who don't get it or who don't want to get it will still come to work doused in their usual perfumes. And then there are those who smell like mildew and body odor. I daresay I'd rather they smell like the dreaded Clinique Happy.

I have one co-worker who is allergic to lavender scent. The interesting part, the part that evokes some skepticism, is that she's allergic to real lavender and she also freaks out if she smells fake, chemical lavender. Another person says she hates the smell of mint. She told me this because I was wiping down the kitchen with unscented, natural spray cleaner to which I had added a few drops of peppermint oil. "Do you not use mint toothpaste?" I asked her. She just repeated that she hates mint.

When "scent free" doesn't work on the honor system, or people don't honor it, the scent police at work (oh yes there are self-appointed Scent Police!) will point out that you smell like something. A passive-aggressive, "Huh. You smell like something... huh. PERFUME?" with the word perfume uttered with shock, disbelief, triumph and scorn.

I don't wear perfume to work, like I don't get the little atomizer and SPRAY myself before heading off to work, but I certainly do use soap, shampoo and hair products, and then body lotion that has some very slight fragrance to it, and deodorant. Plus I add a few drops of lemongrass oil or tangerine oil to our laundry as its drying, but that's because our detergent is completely unfragranced, so our clothes smell like nothing instead of smelling like Tide or whatever. I really don't think I smell like much. Maybe if you get close to me and whisper something to me you'll smell something. I feel like I'm being a good citizen of work by not wearing perfume or scented stuff to work, and it really annoys the hell out of me when people actually wear perfume, like they purposely sprayed it on that morning! It also really pisses me off when people smell like BO or rotting socks or when the company owner's dog pisses or poops inside the building. Or when high level managers walk by smelling like a weed dealer. That's the really annoying part of the scent-free workplace... the hypocrisy and the flagrant disregard of the rule!

Angelique Houtkamp

Dutch artist Angelique Houtkamp's work is just so awesome. I love her flapper-esque dolly faces and 1920's imagery with the nautical, arachnid, tattoo and animal themes. Check her out if you never have.

If you know the alphabet, be a poll worker!

I know the poll workers are all volunteers. And I know a lot of them are retirees. Also, where I voted, at least a few of them appeared to be middle school students... and yet, when you arrive just before 7:00 am to vote (for one presidential candidate and about three propositions) IT SHOULD NOT, EVEN UNDER ANY OF THESE CIRCUMSTANCES, TAKE TWENTY THREE MINUTES! The poll workers were just barely unpacking their boxes when I arrived. They had no clue what to do. It took them a full five minutes to find me (as well as the three people in front of me--five minutes each, totalling a fifteen minute wait before it was even my turn) on the roster. They had to open the special secret box you feed your ballots into and fiddle with it. They thought "Green Party" was the same as "Independent." They couldn't find DD's address even though he was in line right after me and we live at the same address.

Really, if you're a reasonably logical person who knows the order of letters in the alphabet and can do basic math at third grade level (isn't that when they learn addresses? Third grade?) you MUST volunteer to be a poll worker next election. I have to do it. I now consider it my civic duty to spare everyone in my voting area from a similar experience next time.

Edward Gorey's Dracula

Yesterday was my last chance to see the Dracula exhibit at San Francisco's Cartoon Art Museum, so DD and I went. The stage sets and costumes were designed by Edward Gorey in the 1970's and he won a Tony for the costumes.

The Cartoon Art Museum is more like a gallery than a "museum", if, like me, you think of a grand place when you hear the word "museum". On this particular day the Cartoon Gallery was filled with rain-wet bratty tourist children whose parents were apparently unfazed by their screaming, wrestling, whining and bumping into artwork on the walls.

Still, it was worth it to see Edward Gorey's original drawings for the Dracula sets, with all his tiny, meticulous pen strokes and his neat italic handwriting! The best parts, to me, were the real invitations to the play's openings in New York City and London.

http://www.cartoonart.org/

I HATE THE SUPERBOWL!

It's so dumb. And it's so repressed-homoerotic. I hate all the shouting. And I hated all the mom-and-daughter escapees downtown today!

How to Give Your Stuff Away for Free.

In the attempt to de-clutter my apartment I'm forever assessing my junk and giving it away. My stuff is in pretty good shape, but I'm too lazy to try to sell it, so I give it all away via the Craigslist "Free" section. I gave away all this stuff this weekend: a bunch of cheap wineglasses and water goblets that were used for large dinner parties, three decorative pillows from Crate and Barrel in colors I never really liked so they just sat in my closet for the past two years, and several handbags from when I was into vintage-y, feminine clutches. They, too have been sitting in the closets for the past 5 years and have not seen the light of day or the moonlight of evening since 2002.

At least, I'm trying to give away the handbags. The woman who is coming to get them is completely unable to follow directions and has been on the phone with DD for the past HALF HOUR trying to find our apartment. I should have known when she slowwwly asked me for my address... and I patiently told her it was on the ad and gently suggested she do a mapquest or google maps kind of thing. Then she asked me to hold on while she wrote down the address from the internet and then read me the directions from her computer.

Giving your gently-used items that you no longer want away for free is good, of course. You don't want them, they're still good, and someone else really wants them.
They don't go into the landfill (at least not for a while). But sometimes dealing with strangers you meet in the free section of a classified ads website is excruciatingly difficult! My formula (which obviously failed miserably with this handbag woman) is to take clear photos of the stuff, and include photos in the ad. This keeps people from asking questions. Then I record an outgoing message on my voice mail saying people can leave a message if they are interested in the stuff. When I have a few messages, which usually takes all of thirty seconds, I take down my ad and listen to the messages.
Then I call back the person who sounds coherent and somewhat intelligent. I dunno. I called the handbag lady because she was talking to her obviously small child in the background and I felt like I wanted the young mom to have some pretty, almost-new handbags. After talking to her about five times for a total of about 45 minutes telling her how to get here, I not only wish I'd never called her, but I judgementally think she never should have reproduced.

Rain, Day 28

It feels as though it has rained every day for a month.
Is it still winter?
Was it ever warm?

I'm sick of it!