Monday, June 30, 2008

Hivey Dog

It's been hot here this weekend, hot enough that when the dog goes outside she gets hives. Danced like crazy on friday with yolanda, liam, kira, megan, and damon. it was a good time, though incredibly smelly on the dance floor. We also tried to play mini uno at the Bye and Bye but it was really difficult in the low light.

After this last quarter of chemistry, and the miserable failure of the ping pong table, I had to do some things to remind myself that I am good at something. So i worked on some other projects that I had been meaning to do.



First, I finished needle felting this goomba. There are a couple of NES characters that I wanted to do, specifically the Ice Climbers, and Goomba in a Kuribo shoe. The human characters like link and mario will probably look like shit needle felted, so I most likely won't do them. I did a Link, but he turned out weird. My Octorok is pretty good but not my favorite.



i also finally got around to trying out my Gocco printer. My first print was no good because the bulbs were bad and the copy was too moist (its a long explanation) but this one turned out pretty well. You can do two colors in one pass easily if they are far enough away. Supposedly you can reuse the screen but good luck washing oil based paint off of something made of cardboard. Overall though, far far easier than silkscreen, but you are limited to images that are 4x6. That's OK with me. Also the supplies are more scarce everyday as they don't make them anymore.



Also, it's strawberry season which means another batch of jam. This batch is Oregon Hood Strawberries, like last year. I am happy with this year's batch. It seems a little thinner than last year. I also don't think the berries were as good as last year. It's still tasty enough in my opinion that I ate about a half jar's worth with a spoon. This is the second year that I have made jam. I feel fortunate that I have never had any problems with the jars sealing, even though I don't have a canning pot and rack and all that expensive stuff that everybody says you need. I just invert the jars and they seal up fine (i didn't make up that technique). This year I am also going to make blackberry jam as soon as they are ready. The flowers are blossoming. Now they just need to be fruit. Liam and I found a cherry tree over on some school grounds about 3 blocks from our house and at a lot of them before I stepped in dog poo.

The Mole is on tonight. I am enjoying this season though everybody's pretty annoying so I don't really care who wins. I'm not reading the mole's blog on the website. I've managed to forget the clue that my sister posted without warning, except that it seemed to narrow it down to three people.

Thursday, June 26, 2008

Google Reader

Ben added me on goole reader, so now i can see his shared items. does anybody else use google reader? If not, why not?

PingPong is a bust

Noel, Colby and I tried to build the ping pong table I designed. Long story short it's not going to happen. Although we built it very close to my original design, my design was terrible and overlooked major flaws that I don't care to outline here. It's also INCREDIBLY heavy, so much so that Noel's arm twisted clean off like twirled clay when we tried to lift it and turn it over. Colby got sunburned. I did have a good time hanging out with the two of them and trying to get this thing done, but overall it was one sad defeat after another as more complications arose. Whatever, we tried. Sorry everybody. I am rich in 2x4's if anybody needs one. Stinking rich. Craiglist has a number of free or cheap tables available, I just thought it'd be fun to build one. I was totally wrong. I returned the paddles and net to Sports Authority by lying to them and saying that the paddles were peeling after an hour. In reality i just peeled them a bit in the car before I walked in.

Today I received in the mail the last widely published Brautigan book that I needed to have them all, June 30th, June 30th. It's short, and poetry, so it was a very quick read that I enjoyed in the backyard this evening. There are some real gems. I also went on a mini pizza tour with Kira, Alyssa (i think is her name) and Parker. We went to Bella Faccia first, but it was not nearly as good as I remembered, so we drove across town to another pizza place that had much better pizza. I also had pizza with noel last night. My last four meals have been pizza and beer, except for the leftover pizza this morning for breakfast, no beer there. I also at a banana and a plum at one point. My stomach is currently making funny noises.

Wednesday, June 18, 2008

sinclair's peeing the bushes. its

sinclair's peeing the bushes. its still light out.

Sunday, June 15, 2008

Summertime

I finished my last final on thursday, and I am not taking any classes over the summer. Suddenly I find myself with a lot of time monday thru thursday to do some things that I have been waiting to do. Time to ride around the back of a flatbed truck with refreshments:



to do (so far):
1)ping pong table
2)buy car
3)gocco prints
4)zines
5)beat zeldas
6)quit job
7)go to california academy reopening


First on the agenda: Build a ping pong table. The one at Zack's Shack, a weiner/beer place on Hawthorne, has one built of plywood that works very well. I don't know why we didn't think of this before. We've talked about investing in ping pong tables, it didn't occur to us how easy building one will be. All it has to do is be flat. I plan on getting that done this week. We have a ton of outdoor enamel paint in our garage, so the table will most likely be robin's egg blue with dark brown lines. I wanted royal blue with yellow lines, but we don't have those colors. Get ready for fun-in-the-sun.

or

or

or



Also, I plan on playing oracle of ages, oracle of seasons, and majora's mask to completion. those are the three zelda games I haven't finished, except for twilight princess, but I won't beat that one because it's boring.

I'd also like to get some use out of my gocco printer and whip up some small prints. Yolanda and I also have two new 'zines in the works. I have to review my general biology textbook because i feel like I have forgotten most of it. Our trip to the opening of the california academy of sciences is in september. School starts september 29th.
Friends turn mental mountains into molehills

* 15 June 2008

Having a friend at your side can turn a mountain into a molehill.

Simone Schnall at the University of Plymouth, UK, and her colleagues asked students to estimate the steepness of a hill by tilting a board to match its slope.

Students with a friend nearby assessed the hill at 10 to 15 per cent less steep compared with those who were alone during the test. The longer the friends had known each other and the warmer their relationship, the less steep the hill appeared.

Schnall's team also found that just thinking about a close friend or family member - as opposed to a neutral person, or someone you dislike - made the hill appear up to 20 per cent gentler (Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, DOI: 10.1016/j.jesp.2008.04.011).