You can take your new era and shove it.

How I used to read the paper seven days a week:  a bundle of a paper was delivered to my doorstep and I read it.
How I will read the paper 3 of seven days per week:  supposedly on my tiny phone.
 
Except the stupid digital version doesn’t work on my phone.  That blue square is where the content is supposed to be.  You know, because we are calling it “content” now, not “news”.
 

Prompt writing: as the days grow longer.

This spring, I took a writing class offered through Write Around Portland.  It was called “Prompt” because each week we would meet and write for a limited amount of time–usually somewhere between 2-8 minutes–to a number of different prompts.  As the school year grinds to a start and I have less time to write, I will be featuring excerpts from my writing class in lieu of the weekly essay.

As the days grow longer, I’m vaulted into the summers of my past.  Long, languid days filled with swimming and reading and watching a bit too much TV.  Swimming lessons when young, swim team when older, pining to be old enough for a part-time job, working that part-time job and cursing the loss of the long, languid days, while simultaneously gleefully spending my paycheck on whatever I wanted.  Summer was freedom.  From school, from schedules, from most expectations, from the daily grind of the average middle class American girl.  Summer was car washes for band fundraisers, boyfriends ending relationships and so many movies watched and books read.  Every summer I would look forward to the day my feet would be tough enough to spend the entire day barefoot.

Missing the point of the qualities inherent to glass:

I see this a lot at school and it amuses me.  Since glass is transparent, another way to do this would be to stack both signs together and affix them on just one side of the glass.  By doing so, you get the following advantages:
  • the flier facing the elements is protected by the glass, yet still readable
  • four pieces of tape hold up two fliers vs. eight pieces of tape holding up two fliers
  • you need not spend time carefully aligning two posters so they match each other

Three sentence movie reviews: 2 Days in Paris

The sequel to this movie–which I watched first–was full of zany humor, and I assumed this would be the same. However, it was much less zany funny and more desperate funny, which I found enjoyable in a chuckling sort of way.  I haven’t seen Adam Goldberg in years* and spent a lot of time contemplating why, as an actor, he would get all those tattoos.

Cost:  free from library
Where watched:  at home

*I heard he has a new TV show this fall?

Colette Patterns’ Laurel. Tracing Dress pattern.

Remember how I still have two dresses to make before I finish with the uniform project?  Me too!  It’s been a while, but I did some work today.

First I checked the shirt pattern against the dress pattern and found that the dress pattern is exactly the shirt pattern, but longer.  Score.
 

Then it was a matter of taking my personal shirt pattern and marking where it hit on the dress pattern.

Then I just traced the shirt pattern and switched to the Collette Pattern original pattern for the bottom of the dress.

Prompt writing: at the water’s edge.

This spring, I took a writing class offered through Write Around Portland.  It was called “Prompt” because each week we would meet and write for a limited amount of time–usually somewhere between 2-8 minutes–to a number of different prompts.  As the school year grinds to a start and I have less time to write, I will be featuring excerpts from my writing class in lieu of the weekly essay.

She sits on the lip of the pool, her legs dangling in the tepid water.  Her hair is pulled back and summarily shoved under a swim cap and the vinyl pulls her forehead back, nearly lifting her eyebrows.  She stretches her arms above her head, arching her back, then drops them and rolls her neck a few times.  She trails her hands in the water, waiting to shift a bit.

Swimming is always hardest at the water’s edge.  Once she has submerged her body, it’s a matter of moving her limbs, breathing rhythmically–things she’s done a thousand times before.  But while on land, swimming seems incredibly hard.  Years ago, she solved this problem by diving in, but times have changed and the pool rules don’t allow it.  Too much liability.  So now she sits on the precipice, still a land mammal and not yet an aquatic one.