Sherman Alexie

Oh how i love his writing and talking and everything... check out my gushing review of his talk at the Roxie and his new book I wrote for SFist today. Read it here.

at the farmers market

It's no where near as glorious as the SF Ferry Plaza Farmer's Market, but still nice to see so much green in NY. Friday my sister and I went to Union Square to get some flowers for her window boxes. See you can garden in this city too.

where do i start?

I have no idea. So I'll just give you some pictures from my week here in New York... which isn't over yet. Not sure my body is ready for three more days, but here I go.
In Lotta's studio.

Purl Patchwork. Can't wait to go back when it's open.

Derek's work- Resto Leon.

And the fabulous Meng sisters.

Officer calls 911 after eating pot brownies.

Saw this posted over at amateur gourmet just now. I've been so offline this week-- maybe everyone else has already seen this, but oh my god, if you haven't, trust me this is pretty golden and so worth the 48 seconds.

Even bad pizza in New York is better than good pizza in San Francisco.

Sorry California, I love you, but New York's got you beat in the bagels and pizza category.

wish you were here.

really i do. the weather is amazing and when i haven't been in a trade show i've been walking, meeting up with old friends and enjoying the great big buzz new york always gives me. it's pretty fantastic. i'm exhausted but you know new york does this thing to you where you feel like you have so much more energy then you really do and you just keep going and going. and dang it if i don't want to move back to this coast everytime i'm here.
have i told you how much i love staying in hotels? oh how i love it. cranking the a.c., lying in a big fluffy bed and not having to do anything in you're room besides watch bad cable tv. ok and check work email. look at this bizarre photo that's hanging right outside my door. umm. yeah, that's a close up shot of someone's package super imposed behind a new york street scene. weird huh? it cracks me up everytime i walk by it.

new york

I'm leaving you my pretties! Just for a week. I fly to new york tomorrow night, mostly for work but I'll get some play time in too and I can't wait to squeeze my long-haired nephew and have a drink (or bottle) with some old friends and get taken out to dinner by my family. I'll have my computer along with me and will try my best to post while I'm there, but no promises. Here are some links to old posts, which reminded me of how much this blog has morphed since I started. I used to tell you a lot more, here's a long story about my date with an ex-con. It's two parts, you can read the first part here. and if you want to know how it ended you can go here.

my photos!

My computer's finally been fixed and I can get into iphoto again! Maybe not so exciting for you, but I haven't been able to look at these photos for over a year now. Wasted a good hour going through them all tonight. Here are some of my favorites.
Tosca with Chip and Koko threee years ago.

Nelloise playing in Dolores Park.

Jack when he was a sick little two month old kitten.

it's just like cards.

There's nothing like feeling closer to a person when their health is compromised, how quickly we put aside all the old hurts and bad feelings. I'm thinking of when my Dad was sick last year. He had to have heart surgery and I flew back East for it. I was glad I was there but it's an unsettling thing to see one of your parents sick and weak in a hospital bed. I'll be fine if I never see one of my parents like that again. I hated it. Hated the dirty hospital and the nurses that couldn't find my Dad's veins, leaving him with bruises up and down his arm. One thing I did like was playing cards with my Dad. His girlfriend had told me he was recently obsessed with Texas Hold'em and so one day I brought along a deck of cards and my dad taught me how to play. We played for hours. Because when you are sick in a hospital and there's no where to go, and you've read all the bad magazines and done all the crosswords in every paper you can find, nothing eats up time like playing cards. And it was nice, sitting there with my dad, listening to his stories. I even beat him at a few hands. I'm thinking of this because I'm feeling like I'm all in these days. It feels sort of good. It's kind of how I want to be living at this age and place I'm at. Maybe I've always lived like this. But I sort of feel like I just pushed all my chips to the center of the table -- at least this week I feel that way. And I can't really tell you why. Well I could, but I don't want to. Just know I'm all in, and I have no idea what card is coming next and I'm totally alright with that and it's not a bad place to be at all.

The fantastic photo above is from Saltygrease's flickr page.

my mama.

I just talked to my mother for an hour. Not because it's mother's day. Well that's why I called, but we have hour long conversations all the time. She's a good friend and we can talk about most anything. I feel lucky. Amongst many other traits I get all of my craftiness from my mom. Not long ago when I was making bags out of duct tape she started her own bag business too, she lives in Jersey and makes really fancy bags that rich ladies buy. She sells them at craft fairs and brings them to stores and we can talk about what a drag it is waiting until the last minute to make a ton of bags for a sale we have in two days. Recently, when I was visiting her she brought me into her studio to pick out some bags I wanted, "It's a mess in here" she said as she turned on the light, I gasped, fabric everywhere, her supplies in no particular order, the floor barely walkable. I wasn't shocked at her mess I was shocked at how identical, I mean identical her studio looked to mine. It may look a total disastrous mess to most, but if you need a spool of red thread or that piece of fabric with horses on it she'll produce it in a second. We organize our lives the same way my mom and I. And if she's what I'm turning into than I'm not the least bit disappointed, she's been through a hell of a lot with us six kids and in her own life before we came around and never once have I heard her complain. She's of tough stock my mom, and she's funny as all hell, and isn't she pretty?


This is her in 1977 when I was 1.
And below is a picture of her in 1970, when she was visiting her family in Sicily, I'm pretty sure those are her cousins. My mom is the one all in black with the sunglasses on.

seeds of doubt

This is a little packet of seeds from one of my favorite pieces by Molly. Not long ago, when I was visiting her in her studio she handed me a handful of these seeds.
"What do I do with them?"
"Keep them in your pocket and give them to people."
"But why would I want to give little seeds of doubt to people? That's not really nice."
"Give them to people you don't like, cocky people who think they're the shit, walk up to them shake your head and say 'I don't think so' and hand them over a seed."
I could never do that, but I loved the thought of having all these little seeds with the word doubt written on them in my pocket. Well, I loved the idea of having them there, but once I started walking around with them in my pocket I hated them in there. I'd be walking to work, wondering about how something in my life might turn out and then I'd slip my hand in my pocket and feel all these little seeds full of doubt. I felt like it was a bad omen. So I started getting rid of them. I didn't feel like I could dump them all at once in one place and I guess I unconsciously made a rule for myself that I had to rid myself of them naturally, one at a time, slowly. Like if I released them each very intentionally they would never come back to me. I left one the sidewalk near my job next to a discarded piece of cardboard on which someone had written, I have a loaded gun, I'm not kidding. I left one on an empty seat on the bus one afternoon. I left one on the ledge of a building that I didn't like. Sometimes I dropped one or two out while I was walking somewhere. I handed some to a couple of people, saying, "Here, do something with this." After not too long they were all gone and I felt safe slipping my hand in my pockets again. The piece that Molly created these seeds for is all about getting rid of those negative voices in our heads -- squashing that little voice that says you're not good enough, you should be sorry for that, you should feel bad about this. I'm trying not to apologize anymore for things that don't need apologizing- trying to get rid of those little voices that tell me I should feel bad about any of my actions. Sometimes that's easy and sometimes it's not. I hated having those seeds in my pocket for weeks, but I loved the process of riding myself of them.

me, other places.

My SFist post this week is about two fun things happening this weekend. One of which I'm about to leave for soon! You can read it here.

Also maybe not as interesting, my work has a blog now and I posted on it today. You can read that here.

Happy Weekend!

art stuff.

Fecal Face has a video tour up of one of my favorite SF artists, Sam Flores. Check it out here. He shows them some pieces he's been working on for an upcoming show in LA next week. Sounds like it's kid themed stuff. That picture is of one of the pieces for the show, Flores says that little guy represents an idea and he'll be hung on a wall with a bunch of similar looking cut outs floating near each other. Love it.

It's also open studios in the Mission this weekend. For a full schedule and map go here. Friday is the opening reception night in all the studios, and if the weather stays like this you can't ask for a more perfect night-- look at art, drink some wine, walk, repeat. I'm into it.

My weekend in pictures (again).

I did other things besides go to the hospital this weekend. Here are some pictures to prove it to you. Pardon the blur, I should probably be ashamed with all those fancy, sharp pictures most bloggers post-- sometimes the blurr in my photos is to protect the innocent (see below) sometimes I'm just moving to fast to focus (or care). Up there is an adorable sign I saw at the Farmers Market on Saturday, I was in a rush to get to the Derby Party so I didn't even really investigate what was being sold. Can anyone read this?

Yes I said Derby party. Every year CS gets all us non-Kentucky folk excited to watch a race that lasts one minute and 30 seconds, he bribes us with his delicious mint juleps. That middle bottle is full of the simple syrup he made for them. Sadly my antibiotics prevented me from imbibing (well OK I had half of one).


And there was some riding of bikes on BART.


And a very blurry picture of earrings I made my mom for Mother's Day. It's amazing how much energy and focus I have when I don't drink on the weekends. I also made three pairs of my birdy earrings and started a project from Lotta's Simple Sewing book.

See I did a lot more than sit in a dirty hospital waiting room.

my very last birthday present

Believe it or not I had one last birthday present last week. Adam & CR had promised me a nice birthday dinner and drinks. I was going to scan the card here, because I haven't laughed that hard at a card ever -- but I left it at home, so maybe I'll add it in later. CR is on his way out of town so I finally got my gift. They made me a fantastic dinner, my favorite part was this chilled asparagus and hearts of palm salad. Yum. I only had my cell phone on me to take pictures that night, it's blurry but you get the idea.


Adam lives in a great big loft with a nice view on the roof, there was a full moon that night, which maybe explains Adam's horrible singing in the cab ride to the bar and the way the night just sort of deteriorated there at the end. Come to think of it, maybe it was this night that sent me to the hospital. That and some other things. It was worth it, a good meal made especially for me and a great birthday treat a full month after my actual birthday. Thanks boys. Now, I think I can safely say my birthday is officially over. Although, you know, if anyone else has any more presents for me I certainly won't turn them down.

at the hospital.

I’m so glad I’m done with Grey's Anatomy. You know when you watch too much of something and it starts to bleed into your reality? Well, none of the doctors in the hospital tonight looked anything like McDreamy, Alex or even George. A very unpleasant woman with short choppy blond hair and mismatched scrubs took my temperature and blood pressure. She didn't smile. She did say "thanks hon" after I gave her that little cup back with my pee in it. That sort of made me feel better. The wait wasn't really that bad and knowing what I had and that I just needed antibiotics I wasn't really all that scared or worried. I just couldn't get a doctors appointment so late on a Friday. It was the most casual Emergency room visit I've ever had, I met JJ after work and we rode the bus to the hospital, I brought a book for JJ and some trashy magazines for us both. But I hate hospitals and I hated this one even more because there was not one thing that resembled that show I've been obsessed with lately. I know I should be writing or crafting or doing something else with my time- and I am. Actually I finished the last disc in the second series over a week ago. Maybe two. So I’m not even obsessed anymore. But this was no Seattle Grace. The staff looked hard and tired and the person checking me in needed a magnifying glass to read my insurance card. I don't like being around so many sick people. I don't like waiting in a cold room with nothing on but a ratty little robe that doesn't really tie right, I can never close those things up in the back. I guess it wasn't all bad, JJ and I had a good laugh when we heard some other people in the waiting room talking, asking how long they had been waiting. One girl was holding her hand funny, her finger was bloody and her nail was half off. She said something about how she couldn't pull it off without getting it infected as if on cue the girl she was talking to said "Well at least you knocked the bitch out" JJ and I laughed out loud at that and the girls looked over at us and laughed back, it was kind of a sweet moment really and then I thought about how it could quickly turn bad and they could ask us why we were laughing at them and then kick our asses. But that didn't happen. We watched a cute little kid run around the waiting room and almost slip on a magazine that was lying in the middle of the floor that for some reason no one was picking up. I thought about it but then I think my name was called. The doctor was nice enough. I heard him speak spanish to the woman on the other side of the curtain who was puking and alone. I'm glad JJ was there, even if it was only something I need antibiotics for. She's a good friend like that, exposing herself to all those sick people, waiting for hours in a dirty hospital with no Dr.McDreamy's walking around.