Typography... Wednesday? And more!

Hayley is sitting next to me blogging, while I am in the process of fixing my family's godforsaken computer. It's taking forever: ETA 212 minutes for my dad's iTunes library to copy to the backup drive. I haven't blogged in quite some time, and I felt like being corny, so now Hayley and I are blogging next to each other.

First things first: a belated Typography Tuesday.

Katoma Bouabane is responsible for Melting Words, a wonderful collection of photos of ice-cube-letter-things. They, to me, spell out (ha!) how temporary the feelings they express can be. I like them a lot.

from here.

Also great is fridayfonts. They share a new font every week developed by students at Academy of Visual Arts Hong Kong. None of them are incredibly utilitarian, but they're all very innovative and fun to look at.

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The wedding was great. I'm not going to go into great detail about it, because that would take forever. Suffice it to say that it was awesome and beautiful and great (and so, so stressful. I am never handling a wedding cake again, as long as I live). I'm very happy and honored to have been a part of it. It gave me a lot of inspiration for my own life: Graham and Sarah are incredibly in love with each other. If you want to read more about it, I'm sure Hayley's post will more than cover it.

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My parents are currently at a tea party. It is taking place in a public square paid for with tax dollars. My parents send their children to public school. I'm drowning in the irony. I'm actually about, as soon as this is posted, to go take some photos of it (and entrust Hayley with the computer. She doesn't want to come). I'll put those up as soon as they're ready.

EDIT: Lauren (whom I had the wonderful pleasure of meeting this weekend) took a brilliant, lovely photo of Hayley and I. It's one of the few photos of myself I actually like, and possibly the only good picture that will ever be taken of Hayley and me together. So thanks, Lauren. You kick ass.

Ye Olde Roadtrip

I slept for 12 hours last night. It's been quite the couple of days.

Saturday, Kathleen and I drove to Philadelphia to deal with Badgergate (a situation described in the previous post). I had a sudden flash of rationality on Friday and decided that it would probably not be the best idea to make the trip even longer by going to the abandoned PA turnpike; Kathleen was very relieved. The trip was fun, albeit extremely tiring. My GPS, who we have named Marta (the name of the Spanish female voice on the language selection screen), decided around halfway through Pennsylvania that, instead of staying on the turnpike -- a straight line to Philadelphia -- we should instead drive through Baltimore first. This added considerably to the length of the trip, especially because it ended up sending us directly into the bulk of the traffic for the Philly's game. Needless to say, there was much cursing and some violence inflicted upon the device.

After we got Graham, there weren't any more obstacles, and we made it back home fine, after about 14 hours of driving. I got to sleep at 4am. And then woke up at 7am for Medieval Faire. We all had a great time at the faire. I wish I could have dressed up for it, but there just wasn't time/money. Not much of note really happened -- we watched comedy acts, walked around, ate overpriced food, checked out the shops. The best part of the day was buying the best pickle I've ever eaten (it was the size of my head) for $1.

So, then I slept a bunch, and here I am now. I did some work on my tempera painting that I haven't touched for a long time. It's almost done -- tomorrow or the next day, probably.

Ariel's busy, so I'll see you tomorrow for Typography Tuesday.

Baby's First Vlog

As many of you probably know, Hayley is a member of the youtube channel fiveawesomegirls. This week, their boyfriends are making videos in their places. Miss Thursday is Hayley, so today was my turn. Hayley is a goddam saint: she edited 4GB of rambling, "um"s, and general annoyance into this. I hope you like it; however, Hayley probably deserves more credit than I for anything good about it. My undying gratitude also goes out to Kathleen, who thought of pretty much every funny thing in the video.

A friend, Graham, is getting married on the 15th of this month. He's currently in NYC, and he and his fiancée were planning to fly back to Ohio on Saturday in order to make sure everything is ready for the wedding, which will be here. Then Graham was pickpocketed, and his ID and Social Security card were stolen. And now, in a remarkable feat of bureaucracy, Graham cannot fly home. You see, one cannot fly on a plane without ID, and one cannot be issued ID without a Social Security card. A birth certificate is needed to be issued a Social Security card -- his is in Ohio. I'm calling it Badgergate, because his last name is Badger and, well, this is scandalous. I'm the lucky one who gets to drive to pick him up this weekend. Kathleen is coming too, to help with the driving. We only have to drive to Philadelphia, because he's taking a bus to meet us there. But that's still about seven hours, each way.

About five of those hours will be spent on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. The PA Turnpike and I don't really have the best relationship. Once, when I was on the Obama campaign, there was a crash, and I was stuck in literally the same spot for two and a half hours. People were walking their dogs on the freeway. The carfull of businessmen in front of me took out cigars and started smoking them, and then popped the trunk to have a couple of beers. It. Took. Forever.

Anyway. The reason I'm telling you this is because there is a chance I'll be able to visit the abandoned stretch of the turnpike on the way to Philly. I'm very excited about this, and I hope Kathleen agrees to it, because it's in the middle of nowhere in central Pennsylvania. And (no offense), all I ever want to do when I'm in central PA is to leave central PA. This time, however, I think I'll have the willpower to make myself stop and check it out.

In other news, I have some Sculpey and no idea what to do with it. If anyone has any cool, unconventional ideas, please leave them in the comments.