So photogenic, yet so consumed with ennui.

From the Bygone Bureau: Domestic Conflict, Explained by Stock Photos.

Conflicts are even more difficult when more than two people involved. Here, Ellen and Andrew argue about what to do with the small girl that wandered in their home.

i can be a shark

I am really enjoying the photostream of flickr user Balokov. The shark image at right caught my eye today, but really they're all good. Legos! Living in the world!

sometimes i think things

i. sometimes i think that my plants might have been planted a bit too early since they are basically already giant and i have run out of room for them under the lights again and the zucchini are taking over my basement just like they always take over the garden when you plant them outside. safe transplant date still 3 weeks away! but on the other hand, when i am at work i think about them all the time and it makes me feel like i can keep working. so, that's something.

ii. sometimes i think the universe is showing me things just because they make pretty colour combinations and for no other reason. "yellow, orange, red... you know who would appreciate that? Jocelyn." hmmm.

iii. sometimes i think maybe i don't need to have a blog anymore.

thing-a-day derailed; but here's a photo.

The new Art Gallery of Alberta building. I was there on Friday. Randall Stout is the architect. I wasn't sure how I would feel about it (after watching it being built for months and months and months) but standing inside, I was won over.

It's incomplete in this photo, but it conveys a lot of the art-gallery-ness of it.

three photos + attendant text, which will explain what I have been up to

i.
James and I got an alarm system for our house. This may seem alarmist (ha!) and in fact, I have always been a bit dismissive of those people who apparently think their stuff is so precious they need to protect it with sophisticated electronics. (Plus! What if someone STEALS YOUR ALARM SYSTEM?) And yet! Now that I am a homeowner I feel this same paranoia creeping in. Our neighbour's house was broken into a few weeks ago, and this spurred us on. Also, in the less-than-a-year we've been living in this neighbourhood, our car was broken into (just before we totalled it, so... not really a big deal, in the long run, although we did have to replace a window) and we're pretty sure someone broke into our garage and--ignoring our garden tools, appliances, leftover wedding alcohol, and German CAR--stole our bags of pop bottles to be recycled. So it's not like there's no cause for concern. Soon I may start voting Conservative. (ADDITIONALLY! Probably if we really let the Conservatives do their thing, there would be no recycling at all, and therefore less reason for people to break into our garage. So a reduction in crime might occur, unrelated to the death penalty or whatever it is they're always claiming is the Missing Conservative Ingredient for a happy society. I may have to put up some kind of sign on my lawn. Vote Conservative for no more recycling-stealing!)


ii.
The Chapters haul from the past few days. What is it with the piles of cheap books? I cannot resist them. They are my nerdy girl Kryptonite. Unavoidably, they are books that I would never otherwise buy. Well, except I kind of almost would, obviously. Since I do. The only one that was not on sale was Scarlett Fever, which I am already in the midst of reading. The Joyce Carol Oates one I bought because there was a book of hers (Foxfire) that I read as a teenager which I absolutely incorporated into my brain. Like it was religion. Anyway, these bring me up to 612, according to my trusty LibraryThing. Plus the additional 185,000 or so I have access to through work, although at least ten of those are The Secret, so it's probably more like 184,990 that I would actually want to read. [Of the three E. L. Konigsburg books in that collection, I already owned at least two and maybe all three of them, but it just broke my heart to see a stack of her books sitting there alongside books with names like Vampire Crush High or Teen Vampire Sex Party whatever. E. L. Konigsburg books should never be marked down! So really, this purchase was a political protest.]


iii.
so, this is cheezy in that cheezy way I have, but I can't help it; I planted dill, oregano and parsley seeds from the farmer's market WEEKS AGO! and they are finally sprouting. I had actually almost given up on them and then I decided to cover them with saran wrap (the working woman's greenhouse) and give them a little more time. These seedlings were just poking through the soil's surface when I left this morning and when I came home they had grown several centimetres. This suggests that if I had sat on top of the freezer, I would have been able to watch them grow, probably. I'm not saying that would have been terribly exciting, but given how excited I was to see them when I came home, perhaps I'm sad I missed it. I am lucky to live in a world such as this, Internet.


PS. Headache not gone. Mono?

A travelin' lady

I make a lot of stops, all over the world...

I'm in Washington with my family, celebrating Christmas by shopping for fabric and watching movies.



Merry quilt-mas.

How I spent my summer vacation

Or at least my day off.

Before: sorry the picture is so crappy. I never remember to take "before" pictures. I took this one with my iphone.

The saddest aspect of my card catalogue was the nasty-looking piece of unfinished wood that was screwed to the side:

This was screwed on with a gratuitous number of huge screws. When I took it off you could see its attachment had cracked the wood. At first I was very irritated, but then I remembered how obsessed my library is with safety. I'm sure someone pointed out how easy it would be for a small child to pull the tiers of drawers down on themself, and the solution that presented itself first was clumsy but effective. I can't fault the librarians of the past for their practicality and sensibleness. (Plus I'm sure it would have cost a lot more if it was in great shape.)



Emma watched this process with a sense of trepidation. Like any small animal, she dislikes disruptions to her habitat.



So I gave this whole thing a good scrubbing, including the drawer-fronts (which was a very fussy job), using regular dish soap in hot water. Then I filled the many nail- and screw-holes with wood filler, sanded that down, and did a second coat. And then I polished it with lemon oil. Oh, and cut new little inserts for the drawer pulls to hide the yucky accumulated adhesive that is inside them. There are some larger-scale repairs I'd like to make, especially fixing the cracks in the side and in one of the legs. And how does one care for bronze drawer hardware?!? But I think this must all wait for warmer weather.

After:



My living room is so great, you would need a wide-awesome lens to capture it.



Oh, except all my art is inevitably crooked. And we still don't own a proper rug. This isn't design*sponge, people.

----------------
Now playing: Tom Waits - Falling Down (Paris - 07/25/08)
via FoxyTunes

When James is not home

photo.jpg, originally uploaded by jocelynb.

Emma likes to sit/sleep in his chair. My theory is that she has executive ambitions. That, or some kind of weird masochistic love of leather.

Day off project

What is this? (Besides a blurry, crappy photo)


Hmmm...


Yeah. It's a little sleeping bag/pocket for my dog. Jorge Garcia's dog has one so it's only fair, since Emma loves burrowing under soft layers more than any other animal I have ever met. I made it today with fleece and quilt batting and some leftover fabric and VELCRO!

Next step: I am going to put those adhesive grippy things for the bottom of the shower on the bottom. Then she can ride in it in the car and she won't slide around on the leather seats.

Blurg

Hey, blog-boyfriend.

I should probably be doing one of a thousand work things but instead I just drew a little picture of how to build a sort of FrankenIKEA shelf that I think will meet James' and my clothing storage needs. It involves more EXPEDIT. Our house is basically just an EXPEDIT warehouse that also happens to accommodate a couple of people and fifty computers and a dog.

I returned last Thursday from Monterey, California, where I was at a conference. It looked like this:

And more importantly I saw this:



Those are harbour seals, I think. They are basically living my dream by sleeping on a platform in the ocean in an "actual pile." HOW DID THE HIGH ONES GET UP THERE? I waited around for awhile hoping they would show me, but no dice.

At this moment I have a firefox window open with the Wikipedia article on codeine, which I needed for a reference question earlier today. I'm leaving it there in case someone is looking over my shoulder. I want to create an aura of mystery around myself. Although the sad thing about working in a library is that my co-workers will probably just assume that I needed it to answer a reference question.

Geez, I'm boring. Sorry. When I opened this Notepad window I really thought I had something to say.

Come on, iPhone! To the Chargingmobile!

Oh, coworkers. You are such jokers.

Backstory: Yesterday or the day before someone sent out an email to all the staff of my library saying that there was an old pole in the hallway, which someone could have if they wanted it. Apparently it was removed from the parking lot for some reason. Anyway, that is not important. When I walked by it today I saw this:


The top note is from someone indicating that they would like to have the pole. The second note, undoubtedly added by another co-worker, is a helpful suggested reference work:



But the most important question is: do we have it in our collection? No we do not. In fact a quick search turned up not a single result on the subject.

you do care about all the minutiae of my life, right? internet?

i grew these zucchini. with my own HANDS AND BLOOD. i love these squash so much i could squash them!

Because I don't care if you find me obnoxious

Here are all the things I made for my wedding.

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

Getting married on Saturday

And it's making me grumpy. Albeit sort of comically grumpy. And with hair like a superhero.

New dawg

This is our new dog. She sits nobly on James's lap. We find her intriguing. She has this look on her face all the time: I'm watching you. We won't get away with anything as long as she's around.

file under: things i almost invented

it is a scarf with a hood attached. It wraps around many times. It is made out of fleece and a sweatshirty cotton, so it's actually very warm. I say "almost invented" because i think i saw it on a craft site somewhere, but a really long time ago, and then when I remembered it, it was as if I were actually inventing it. (Although you can get them from urban outfitters so really how original can it be right?)


it has a zippered pocket for my ipod because i need to be able to ffwd songs without removing my mittens.


bonus picture: depiction of my inability to follow directions of any kind

fat quarters in the mail

fat quarters in the mail, originally uploaded by jocelynb.

Designer fabric is one of my favourite things, but I really can't afford it--or find it in Edmonton for that matter. Solution: fat quarters! Relatively cheap and small, but still quality-of-life-enhancing. (Also: it is fun to say "fat quarters" because it sounds like a made-up thing but it is real. They are quarter-yards of fabric which are mainly used by quilters)

L to R: Aviary by Joel Dewberry, 2 by Valori Wells, Pop Daisy by Heather Bailey, 2 by Alexander Henry, and 2 by Tina Givens.

I have instructed iTunes to play only Tori Amos until I give it new instructions. This is because today is not a day I can take chances with music. I had a project for the afternoon (a work-project, not a fun project) but I finished it (I know, right?!? What are the chances?) so now I'm looking apprehensively at the next two-and-a-half hours, giving them a little squinty-eye, making sure we understand each other.

I'm almost finished my Christmas shopping, because I'm crazy like that; and yesterday James and my sister came over and we decorated our tree. Isn't it fine?

James sang a little song about its decorations coming from IKEA, and Kristen and I corrected him in unison: "And Winners!" The little pink disco balls come from Winners. Yep. We also watched The Nightmare Before Christmas because we're good at staying on-theme.

Now the box the Christmas tree came in is sitting in front of my couch, and I'm pretending it's an occasional table so I don't have to find a place to store it in my apartment. I may put some decorative candles on it later, or a table runner with pointsettas on it. This is a very clever approach, one I suggest for anyone living in a small space. I also pretend that the empty Land's End box holding up the tree is a tree stand, and that the pile of dishes on my kitchen counter is one of those little temperature-contolled wine fridges.

festive

I wrapped my first Christmas present tonight, because I'm just insane like that. It's how I roll.