Finally done

Since the semester has finally come to an end I can finish all the little things I had started that just stayed lying around the house. It feels good.

Ta da:This board has been mailed to my brother and his wife as a sort of happy birthday/belated housewarming gift.

I got the lattice border from Micheal's (it was easy to cut with a thin knife) and painted it to (sort of) match the ribbon. i drilled two holes, 4 and 6 inches in from the border for symmetry and hung it with a sweet little messy bow. i love this one and might make another for myself. They just take SO long to get a decent variety of corks for. Never throw your corks away!

To commence shortly: a quilt, another corkboard, the organization of my life. But first, a trip. Nine days until I leave for London. Hurray. :)

April was full of showers - Hello May

A month has come and gone since my last post and I'd be lying if I said I feel genuinely sad or sorry about it. What I do feel sad about is the fact that I haven't blogged because I haven't had time. My life is pretty non-stop. All of my creative projects have come to a halt; maybe summer will be more fruitful? I'm grading today, and next week is the most downtime I've had all semester since my students will be compiling their work for a final portfolio. Then it will be back to grading around this time next weekend. I am just shocked exam week is so near. Where did this semester even go? Working two jobs is exhausting, but you never realize how quickly that time seems to fly.

Current non-work related news: I am finally reading the Harry Potter series. I can't believe the first book is twelve years old, or that there are still three movies to be released. I really missed out when I was younger. I would have been eleven or twelve when this whole thing started, but I guess I thought I was too cool if I ever heard them mentioned before the movies. I saw the first movie my freshman year of college. I lived with 4 or 5 really "cool" dudes (at least they considered themselves to be) and they loved this DVD. It was weird (for lack of articulation today - I'm tired, be kind). I was sucked in too, but couldn't really put my finger on why. The movie was already three years old and I was just an old enough that I wasn't really the intended audience.

Something about getting to start over, to having a secret world to be incredible in, even if you aren't incredible day-to-day with your family or school, must be the huge appeal here.

Speaking of incredible: 3 and 1/2 weeks until I leave for the U.K. I must give the due amount of praise to my travel guru (the other Lauren) for teaching me about TripAdvisor.com. If you've yet to use it I am recommending it to you now, so there's no excuse for not knowing. It consists of forums to ask trip related questions, and hotel/hostel reviews from people who've stayed there. These reviews are anywhere from 1-5 stars, with descriptions of the good, bad or ugly, and members upload photos from their stays at the place, sometimes of the gorgeous views, lobbies or beds, and sometimes of the dirty bathroom, broken windows and... well, the ugly I mentioned before. I think the real testament to this site is that you can see over time if a place has become rundown, or if they've made a change in the last few months since the comments are listed chronologically. This one place we booked in Piccadilly Circus has been having an issue really recently with people leaving with rashes or bug bites - needless to say, we canceled our reservations and found a new/better/slightly more expensive place. It's good to have that sort of reassurance. I'll pay more to avoid bedbugs and I'm glad people took the time to make those comments. You'd think a site like this would only be hotel bashing (as if only the disgruntled leave comment cards) but people are quick to praise too, if they believe it's worth it. I think when I get back I'll leave comments on all of the places we stay. It's only fair considering how much the site has helped me.

I also have a new fondness for travel books and guides. This mysterious system of recommendation and ranking is very readable and interesting, but how do they claim such-and-such is THE thing worth seeing, when there always seems to be so much? I'll just have to see when I get each place if I think Frommer's or those "Unofficial Guides" were right.

Wish me luck surviving these weeks until.

Day Trip to Pittsburgh 2

3-20
Tanger Outlet Mall (new this year)
-worried other Lauren-Giving me bunny ears isn't cool.Indulging ourselves at the milkshake and chocolate store in Southside.A late Saint Patrick's Day. One lonely Guinness at Fat Heads.
And THIS guy, who had the largest gauges I've ever seen (that weren't hollow). It's like he had hockey pucks in his ears.Overall, we were stoked to be there. I bought rain boots, a bag and two new pairs of pants at the Gap. Best of all, we ended the day at Ikea where I picked up some seriously exciting stuff: new rugs, some baskets, votives, and a hanger thing for belts (that of course I have always needed, I just didn't know). <3
-L

Day Trip to Pittsburgh

Problem worth complaining about: having money makes me feel more comfortable spending money. After two days in Pittsburgh this Spring Break, I'm aware I need to go back to feeling poor.

3-14-09
Enrico Biscotti Company
If you lived above Enrico's, your apartment would smell delicious all day long.Fun truck some Rasta man was selling his woven goods out of.
Some memorable seafood place:
Where do they think they're going?Of course I loved this wine store. They were full of all sorts of accessories too. BUT, they had one "cork"board and they didn't cut the corks in half. Several had come unglued and were missing. This is tacky, don't do this; they are too heavy that way.Spices, mmmmm.Next we went to the famous Roxanne's Dried Flowers. It smelt incredible and I wanted one of everything. There were so many visually stimulating fabrics, bags, jars and crafty tabletop cluttering thing-a-ma-jigs. I mainly took photos of the labels so I could remember the lovely words, but this is what's worth sharing:
Mural. Train.
And last, but certainly not least, why not a photo of Big Mama's House of Soul? (next to the, apparently not defunk, Club 1601. Oh yes, people party there...)
<3
- L

In the little free time I have...

Working two jobs is a drag - but the good news is I have access to more corks then I would have if I simply saved my own. I am inspired to work on new cork projects.

This first is a wreath. I'm only using those corks that aren't really made of cork - you know the ones, they're like spongy plastic - and I am screwing eyelet screws into each of them and using the same wire I use for the wine bottle lamps to string them circularly (since I know that will definately hold its shape). That was probably not worded as well as it should have been , let's hope pictures ARE worth a thousand words. I'll add more soon. The problem with this project is simple though: it takes forever! Even getting ten or so corks a week it is becoming such a slow process. The wreath is tiny with fifty or so already strung, and my apartment is so small it just sits there on my desk, mocking me.

The second project is a new corkboard. This one is going to be a little different than the last one I showed you though. The board is the same rectangular shape (because I REALLY like it), but the border or "framing" will be done differently. Instead of just staining something decorative, I've chosen a lace-like pattern, one with large carvings, and I will paint the board green behind the stained border, in order to give it a little more contrast. Since this border is wider than the first, I'll just use it on the shorter sides and have the corks go to the edge on the long ends. I'm not saying length-wise and width-wise because I'm hoping this will look great both ways.

This one is a house-warming present for my brother and his wife. They're moving and I felt that merited the time and effort that go in to making another one of these. It's time-consuming too.

K, I'm done talking about THIS now. <3 Take care.

Corkboard Update

FYI: I had to use rubber cement to make the corkboard stronger; it was becoming a little rickety. And I think it's because hot glue guns suck (as I'm finding out). The glue comes out in lines that cool too quickly, while rubber cement fills the cracks better. If I make another one I'll probably try rubber cement first.

Plus, the hot glue was the culprit for the falling photo, so I haven't had the best year with it.

Everything I do in a week (- like a giant to-do life of life)

My list - in a week I:

Wake up 7 times
Go to sleep 7 times
(Those are both lies of course, because I love to nap - in my not so distance past, before I added a second job, I totally napped all the time. Now I only get to when I'm sick)

Read about 4 books on average for classes
Grade about 40 papers
Plan for three classes
Write at least one paper
Write one decent poem and twenty terrible ones
Start at least one project I don't finish
I'm waiting tables now, so, five long shifts doing that
(You're right, I don't have time to do all these things I say I am doing; understand my life now?)

Feed the piggies - at least 14 times
Change their paper - once
Sit with them at random to groom and love on them

Trim my nails
Paint them occasionally
Other grooming acts at random

Take my recycling up to the hill
Check my mail - six times
Go to the post office - once
Look at things on-line I can't afford - eight times
Grab some groceries - once or twice
Take out the trash - twice
Laundry x's three (at least)
Organize books and desktop clutter - four times

Procrastinate, procrastinate, procrastinate.
Daydream about my trip in May - like 36 times

Drink - maybe once
Eat six bowls of cereal
Eat four bowls of pasta
Drink 21 bottles of water (I refill them, although I hear there are negative to this, too)
Eat ice cream - three times
Shower - ten times
Dry hair - four or five times

Rant about my vacuum cleaner not working -three times
Fret about bills - quite a few times more than I'd like
Dust - once
Think about dust - substantially more times than that

Sing out loud something I don't know the words to - 18 times
Wonder why I even bother texting - like twenty times
Watch a movie on TV I later wish I had not gotten wrapped in to - three times
Try to blog - once or twice
Consider deleting MySpace
Consider deleting Facebook
End up wasting time on Facebook and forgetting I wanted to delete it earlier that day
Hope it doesn't snow - three times
Check my bank account every five minutes to watch it dwindle away...

Hope you're all doing well. I am in the middle of so much right now I can't really blog, but I doubt anyone minds it.

-L