elephantine

happy october

Beautifool Type.

alarming

Some nice work from koolgirlposse (via simplesong).

A few minutes ago, the fire alarms in our apartment building went off, which was about as loud as handing a screaming baby a megaphone and then positioning your face a quarter of an inch away. When it happened, Rufus the cat beelined directly into the bedroom and onto the scale. I guess there's no better time than when an alarm is falsely tripped to see if you've been nibbling on too many kitty treats.

click.

Just in case your fridge needs a little tech-enhancement: GUImagnets.

Happy Friday!

finally, subsided heat

Wasara has the most gorgeous paper tableware.

It was unbearably hot today. To sum up my day, materialistically: I finished reading The Other and started McSweeney's Issue 27; watched It's Pat and From Hell; bought cat food, plums, and liquor; received a 798-page Vogue in the mail and ripped out the only half dozen pages that I liked. I have a feeling I won't be renewing my subscription.

And, dutifully, here's my weekly novel update: 8,000 words. To put that into perspective, that's about 20 formatted pages. My goal this weekend is to hit the 10,000 mark and maybe start revising the first chapter.

Have a splendid Saturday night!

it's not every day...

A few things that surprised me today: transformer shoes and the keyboard napkin.

I started reading Prep today. I have a soft spot for awkward coming-of-age novels, but this one seems to be trying a little too hard in some ways. Anyway, now when I read something so-so, it's actually helpful, because I make mental notes on what to avoid for my own book. Speaking of which, quick update: last week I hit the 28-page mark on the outline and suddenly got the urge to actually start writing it. So far I've written about 1,600 words. So, um, one percent of the desired total word count. Somehow, that is both daunting (can I do it 99 times over?) and encouraging (no longer zero percent!).

that warm humming

Cristal Carafe and Pen Clip from Charles & Marie.

It was a few evenings ago, while I was splayed across the sage green sofa, feet in mis-matched socks and propped up on lumpy pillows, that I heard the clarinet. Twelve months into our lease and this was the first time I had caught wind of any sort of live instrument. Its reedy, honeyed intonation played half a song I didn't recognize, patiently, cunningly, without error. The highlight of listening to a clarinet (or any of its woodwind cousins) is more than just its pitch, just its melody. There's a talkative quality to it, a breathiness that carries the notes. Warm breath-inflated notes ran up the scale, jumped down, tickled the high octaves, dove deep into the low ones.

Follow along with me, imagining the impassioned musician: fingers taut and academic, back arched, eyes shielded by wrinkled lids and cheeks puffed into a necessary reserve, one end of the instrument held firmly by strained lips, the other end pointed dramatically away from the body. This is what I pictured as soon as the clarinet began its numbed solo, but at the same time, I pictured our upstairs neighbors, where the music was clearly emitting from. Even though they'd lived in the building almost as long as we had, I knew them only in passing: checking their mail, knocking on our door in seek of a phone book, walking their dachshund. And to put the two together – this image of the fervid musician (fingers flying intensely down the instrument, striking a Kenny G pose) with the image of the standard couple (the husband impatiently waiting for his dog to do his business outside, the wife laughing on the balcony with intermittent clinking of glasses) – seemed both wonderfully amusing and disparately creepy.

swedening

I love Ikea too much for my own good. We did a quick trip this morning because I was getting my seasonal itch to decorate and they were having a Memorial Day tax-free weekend. Mostly I purchased candle holders, a few kitchen things, and some pillows for the sofas ($3 each, and they aren't that lumpy, and I didn't mind having to buy the casing separately). The one semi-big purchase was a new coffee table. We've been using a hand-me-down from Stefan's mom, which was trusty but didn't quite fit in with the rest of the room. Bonus, and newly learned: paying with your debit card = getting a voucher back worth one percent of your total for the next shopping trip.

The day I have a full-blown Ikeaized closet will be the day I will be utterly content.

One more Swedish thing – saw King of Ping Pong last night via SIFF. I'd file it under the Good But I Probably Won't Watch It A Second Time category. The language really is lovely to listen to, though. And Wild Strawberries (yes, also Swedish) is sitting about five feet away from me right now, begging to be fed to the DVD player. I'm already a fan of Ingmar Bergman, but this is the clip of this particular film that solidified my desire to watch it.

that feeling of finishing the last page

Marimekko Spring 2008.

I can feel myself slipping into the summer mentality: drinking iced mochas in cafes beside strangers and oversized fans; wandering through unfamiliar neighborhoods, dodging the sun under shivering shadows; endlessly reading paperbacks and thumbing through spines at used bookstores; lighting candles and incense in the evening; drinking pinot grigio out of cheap wine glasses; shelving somber rock for warmer, slower variations; escaping to cool movie theaters in relief of the mid-afternoon scorch; meditatively potting flowers and herbs and replacing them with new ones when they die three weeks later from neglect.

I finished The Namesake about an hour ago (and can now put the film on our Netflix... I don't know why, but I kind of have a thing for Kal Penn, despite cringing at the history of roles he's had.) I still like Lahiri's other book more – the writing, the descriptions, felt more richly crafted – but this one has a more substantial plot and character development. It reminds me that I shouldn't feel the need to find something distant to write fiction about, that maybe the best thing is what's right in front of me, what I know best, with a bit of imagination injected, alterations made.

Am also relieved that she frequently writes about the food that the characters cook, eat, have conversations over. I'm well aware that I write about food repeatedly and was in need of validation.

In keeping with that, two quick things:

1. Stefan's gerbil (not mentioned until now, I think?) has developed a disliking for any kind of food except for plain, sliced almonds. I offered one to him today and he held it with both hands, gnawing on it appropriately, the piece as big as a pancake to him. He's in his senior citizen years now, with ruffled, gray tinged hair.

2. I cleaned out our snack cupboard this afternoon and to my dismay discovered an uncanny amount of empty, expired cracker boxes. There were six, maybe seven, empty boxes, just taking up much needed space, fake like those hallow televisions placed methodically in furniture stores.

no, the smaller drawer

Design by Takeshi Miyakawa (via Boing Boing).

Tonight I will be watching The Hills season finale, but not without plenty of shame. I think I only ever started watching it because there was a free episode download in the iTunes Store a year or so ago. And then this awful, somehow addictive show sucked me into its over-privileged cat-fight quicksand and I ended up buying all of the other episodes, $1.99 at a time, giddily impatient as the download bar sluggishly chugged along.

One thing I know for sure is that you will never ever catch me watching the upcoming Living Lohan. I would rather sell our tv than succumb to sitting through that.

cute omens

Nice design work by MadeThought. Probably the coolest tea packages I've seen in a while.

So this afternoon I'm heading over to my new dentist's office for a filling - a bit on edge because even though most of my upper molars are plated with guilty silver, it's been a couple years since I've had any new ones and I keep thinking about that huge needle piercing and sliding into my cheek. I'm in the elevator, watching the numbers jump until they reach 17, and then rush out and around the hallway corner, about thirty seconds away from being late. And there it is. A black cat, just sitting in the middle of the hallway.

It's looks like a sweety, is smiling innocently at me, but the only thought I have is, "Great, walking right into a cliché."

But it goes okay. The worse part is the sensation of numbness spilling down the side of my face, at that at its worse is just odd, not painful. My new dentist is slightly on the older side, a gentle disposition, bright eyes. She was, I'm deciding, a good choice.