the thing itself and not the myth

I’ve been busy over on Confessions of an amateur cineaste, but I haven’t forgotten about this space!

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SIFF did keep me a little busy though. After 13 years I finally decided to try volunteering and the Secret festival, and both were awesome. A++ will volunteer & secret again.

After the festival, I did a load of laundry and went to New York. Pictures from that after the jump. (more…)

Last week, my friend Chris visited from New York. One of the awesome things about having company is that I get to do all of the Seattle things I wouldn’t do otherwise. After the jump probably way too many crappy pictures of Seattle & a few of Portland. (more…)

I walked home from the movies one day mostly so I could get a picture of this Obama Lincoln mural…

…and took the opportunity to get pictures of a few other signs too, including these two:

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More February after the jump. (more…)

…went up to Canada for New Year’s. (This is a bit of a tradition now, and this year was particularly great because I wound up having a five day weekend, and thus a nice long visit. It also snowed every single day I was there, which was pretty ace so far as the puppy was concerned.)

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…got a new camera and had to test it out. Much more after the jump. (more…)

In mid-November, friends came out & we drove down to Portland for WFTDA Nationals, which was basically awesome. We got to see scads of fantastic roller derby (even if my hometown ladies got creamed right out of the gate), and a bit of Portland as well (including Powell’s & yarn shops) all after the jump.

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I am at knitting and no one else is here, so I am going to blog. Here comes a few entries of stuff I keep forgetting to post about.

First, in late October I went up to BC for a roller derby Halloween party. I went as Kaylee. (From Firefly. Obviously.) The most exciting part of my costume was my trousers. I got a pair of cargo pants on clearance & painted the sides of the legs. Clearly I prefer ‘evocative’ costumes to ‘effective’. Heh.

While I was up, we went to White Rock. Amazingly, I had never been in all the ten bazillion times I’ve been up to the Vancouver-Abbotsford-etc area. It was very pretty, a fact which I will prove after the jump. (more…)

Where did we leave off? Rice pudding & teleportation, I think. So Sunday was lunch & roller derby practice (go Bronx!) & then the rain stopped so we could go out to 5 Pointz. YAY. It’s a converted warehouse full of artist lofts, which is awesome already, but then the outside of the building is street art central. You can only paint by permit (which makes sense and is also very strange), and I took ten million pictures. Well, 79 in my Flickr set. Follow me after the jump for some favorites, and the rest of my time in New York. (more…)

The first day in NYC I apparently didn’t take any pictures at all, even though we did lots of stuff. I got to see my friend’s office & one of her volunteer sites, and we went to improv at the UCB theater, and we walked enough that my shoe exploded and I developed a blister on the bottom of my foot. Hot!

I didn’t take any pictures the second day either, when we procured a new pair of shoes and amazing gelato, and went to knitting in Astoria.

The third day… wow. This is getting to be a theme. The third day I didn’t take any pictures until the evening. I was kidnapped by a friend in time for breakfast at a tea shop (which had clearly stolen my ipod, as they were playing Spring Awakening, Rufus Wainright, and Elliott Smith), then off to sight see, particularly to the Morgan Library & Museum, which was very cool! We got lunch at Risotteria (gluten free pizza for the win, as well as v tasty risotto, and my first black-and-white cookie). Nom!

I apparently didn’t take pictures until the We’re About 9 show, so let’s continue with that after the jump. (more…)

So! Earlier this month I visited friends on the east coast. I flew into NYC & took the train to Springfield, MA. The train, by the way, was basically the best idea ever. So much more comfortable than the bus. And prettier! And with legroom! And food! Basically, it was awesome.

In Massachusetts we did lots of outdoorsy things. After the jump, more pictures than you could possibly ever want to see. As always, click through to Flickr to embiggen. (more…)

Then we were off to London. Eventually. It took a crazy amount of time to get out of Oxford, and we wound up completely reorganizing the plan for the day thanks to transit in general hating us, but it worked out okay because I got to do two things I had failed at when I was in London in July. Plus one bonus thing.

First off, in July for some reason, the portrait of Richard III was not on display at the National Portrait Gallery. I do not know why. I suspected it was just to torture me, as I had gone to said Gallery solely to visit him. I attempted it again this trip and there he was, precisely where he was supposed to be! It was amazing. I have been a bit obsessed with him ever since I read Shakespeare’s take on him, but it was only heightened when I read The Daughter of Time, in which the main character is inspired to research him based on this portrait.

Perhaps the best part of visiting him was that there was a tour going around, and I got to hear the tour guide say that they probably knew Richard best from Shakespeare, and that said play was “high propaganda”. Oh my heart! I bought a postcard of Richard down in the gift shop. How could I not?

Also in July, I failed to find the marker for 84 Charing Cross Road. This is apparently because I am an idiot. I found it this time, no problem, though it was mightily depressing to see it on the side of an irritatingly trendy restaurant. Click through to read the text.

Finally, I had really hoped to see The History Boys when I was in London. They were only selling matinée tickets at the half-price booth, but I had my heart set on it, so we stopped by the theater box office, and since I was going alone I got a seat in the SECOND ROW OH MY GOD AMAZING. Happy birthday to me! I had an issue with the casting for Posner (too old, played it way too camp), but I think I actually liked this Dakin better, and though Irwin & Scripps had a lot to live up to, I rather loved them.

Other London things after the jump… (more…)