I love Christmas!

what does it mean??

Watching a video of Kendra reading just made me cry! And I'm not talking about the fake crying I do all day long at work.

I'm alive!

Four years ago I had a terrible airplane experience. I was going from LA to SF, SF to Denver, then Denver to Baltimore, and there was so much turbulence I got sick and felt like I might die. After that, I never wanted to get on another airplane again. I've gotten better since then, but I still don't really like flying. So when I found out I had to fly to Denver for work twice within three weeks, and throw in a weekend trip to Austin, I was not super excited. But guess what? I was fine. I didn't even take Dramamine on my way to Austin. And if ever there was a flight where I thought I might die, it would've been my most recent flight back from Denver. It was like the Indiana Jones ride at Disneyland, but in the air. I was a little nervous, but not panicked. I thought of the time my dad told my brothers and sister and me this story of how he was flying home from Mexico City once, and the turbulence was so bad that the flight attendant went on the intercom and announced, "I'm sorry, there's nothing I can do for you! We're going down!" (My dad told us lots of tall tales.) I laughed thinking about that story. I have to go to Colorado again at the end of this month, and I think it'll be ok. I can feel myself shedding a little bit of this anxiety. It's a really good feeling.

it's done!

And it's a photo album, not a poetry book. I think I have enough book cloth and beetle paper leftover to make a smaller sized book, so maybe that's coming next.

I'm also excited about using this stamp set I got at a store on State Street in SB called Plum Goods. I know someone who will be getting a cityscape birthday card soon...

I wish there were a Baltimore cityscape stamp set. It would come with a little Washington monument, a little Waterloo apartment building, a little Dionysus...

readings and books

Last weekend, I went to see Mary Oliver read at UCSB. It was lovely. She is so different from how I imagined her - faster speaking, less hippie-ish, and funny. It was really cool to see Campbell Hall completely filled up for a poetry event. After the reading, I waited in line to have Mary Oliver sign my copy of her new book Swans (she didn't look up from her signing when I passed by), and I had a flashback to when I walked across that stage at graduation. Aaw.

Now about my book. The new one, which isn't even a book yet. I bought this neat little kit from Paper Source that is supposed to be for photo albums, but it can very easily be any other kind of book. Well, I think the one I bought is a bit too big for a 15 page book, and the paper is black, which means I can't print onto it. I tried gluing white pages onto the black ones, but it made waves in the page. (Sabrina suggested using spray adhesive.) Now I'm stuck with these beetle-papered boards, and I don't know what to do with them. Keep making a book I don't like or turn it into an actual photo album?

On the radio, someone had lost their goat

It was soo nice to go away for the weekend, drive through the winding woods with my sister, and see some long lost cousins. I told Elisa I want to move to Mendocino and be a hippie. My cousin Carl suggested a career in cheese cultivating, but I was thinking more along the lines of organic soaps and crocheted beanies?

Sabrina made the cutest thing of me and Ronit!

la vie quotidienne: Some of my peeps....