I took the yellow pill (it's Lemonheads, I'm addicted to those things)
Recent art journal finishes:
"Fix your hearts or die" is from Twin Peaks: The Return. It's something Gordon Cole (played by David Lynch hisself) yells at FBI agents who are being dicks about Agent Denise Bryson, a trans woman.
Dieselpunk > Steampunk
Sample page from the astrology art journal
Sagittarius is my sun sign.
Thanks to everyone who has had nice things to say about these, and my other collage adventures. I love doing these tiny pages because it's like a little bite-sized bit of creativity. I can make one while watching an hour or two of television and not feel like I'm just passively consuming something someone else created.
I'll start another cross stitch soon, but I'm waiting to find something I really want to do. The last one I tried was a pattern from the same creator who made the plague doctor pattern that I stitched while on vacation in Alabama, it was based on those bejeweled saint's skeletons in central and eastern Europe. But there were too many symbols that looked almost identical, representing reds and blues that were also almost identical; I ripped out almost as many stitches as I made and I was making no progress. Eventually I just got frustrated enough with it to quit altogether, something I almost never do. But I do cross stitch and embroidery to have fun and relax, and I was accomplishing neither with that pattern.
~~~~~~~~~~
I've had my Echo Pop for a couple of weeks and I'm pretty satisfied with it now, after a few days of being really disappointed in it and wishing I hadn't spent the money. Initially, whenever I tried using it to play music via Spotify, it would stop playing 2 or 3 times an album. This was intensely aggravating, but after some troubleshooting I realized the problem was probably that I'd connected it to the 2.4 GHz channel of our wifi router instead of the 5 GHz one. Problem fixed.
I've also discovered a lot more ways to use it. The sticky note feature allows me to make a note of anything that pops into my head without having to get out a notebook or even open my phone; Sleep Jar plays a variety of white noises all night without running down my phone's battery; the smart bulb has like 2 dozen different colors (my favorite is salmon, which is warmer than just pink), including 5 different shades of white. I'm also getting used to asking things like "Alexa, when was the Battle of Culloden?" instead of Googling it. At first I felt kind of dumb talking to thin air, but hey, I bought the thing, might as well get all the use out of it.
~~~~~~~~~~~
One of the things I've been talking to Lori about is the wellness to QAnon pipeline, which she's lost some friends to over the past few years. It hadn't even occurred to me to worry about her, but Lori believes in a lot of stuff I would classify as "woo woo"--I mean really believes, and isn't just dabbling out of some combination of aesthetics, family/cultural tradition, and ritualized anxiety controls. *points at self* But Lori has always followed politics (like most of the people in my family) and what's happening in the world, which is probably what kept her from going over that cliff. One thing all these Yoga Moms who are now using "protect the children" hashtags on Instagram seem to have in common is they all define themselves pre-pandemic as being "not political". Most of them are middle class suburban white ladies who rarely concerned themselves with things outside of their own families and immediate communities.
Lori also despises Donald Trump on such an intensely visceral level that I'd be shocked if she ever got on board a movement that treats him like some combination of Gandhi, Rambo, and Abe Lincoln.
"Fix your hearts or die" is from Twin Peaks: The Return. It's something Gordon Cole (played by David Lynch hisself) yells at FBI agents who are being dicks about Agent Denise Bryson, a trans woman.
Dieselpunk > Steampunk
Sample page from the astrology art journal
Sagittarius is my sun sign.
Thanks to everyone who has had nice things to say about these, and my other collage adventures. I love doing these tiny pages because it's like a little bite-sized bit of creativity. I can make one while watching an hour or two of television and not feel like I'm just passively consuming something someone else created.
I'll start another cross stitch soon, but I'm waiting to find something I really want to do. The last one I tried was a pattern from the same creator who made the plague doctor pattern that I stitched while on vacation in Alabama, it was based on those bejeweled saint's skeletons in central and eastern Europe. But there were too many symbols that looked almost identical, representing reds and blues that were also almost identical; I ripped out almost as many stitches as I made and I was making no progress. Eventually I just got frustrated enough with it to quit altogether, something I almost never do. But I do cross stitch and embroidery to have fun and relax, and I was accomplishing neither with that pattern.
~~~~~~~~~~
I've had my Echo Pop for a couple of weeks and I'm pretty satisfied with it now, after a few days of being really disappointed in it and wishing I hadn't spent the money. Initially, whenever I tried using it to play music via Spotify, it would stop playing 2 or 3 times an album. This was intensely aggravating, but after some troubleshooting I realized the problem was probably that I'd connected it to the 2.4 GHz channel of our wifi router instead of the 5 GHz one. Problem fixed.
I've also discovered a lot more ways to use it. The sticky note feature allows me to make a note of anything that pops into my head without having to get out a notebook or even open my phone; Sleep Jar plays a variety of white noises all night without running down my phone's battery; the smart bulb has like 2 dozen different colors (my favorite is salmon, which is warmer than just pink), including 5 different shades of white. I'm also getting used to asking things like "Alexa, when was the Battle of Culloden?" instead of Googling it. At first I felt kind of dumb talking to thin air, but hey, I bought the thing, might as well get all the use out of it.
~~~~~~~~~~~
One of the things I've been talking to Lori about is the wellness to QAnon pipeline, which she's lost some friends to over the past few years. It hadn't even occurred to me to worry about her, but Lori believes in a lot of stuff I would classify as "woo woo"--I mean really believes, and isn't just dabbling out of some combination of aesthetics, family/cultural tradition, and ritualized anxiety controls. *points at self* But Lori has always followed politics (like most of the people in my family) and what's happening in the world, which is probably what kept her from going over that cliff. One thing all these Yoga Moms who are now using "protect the children" hashtags on Instagram seem to have in common is they all define themselves pre-pandemic as being "not political". Most of them are middle class suburban white ladies who rarely concerned themselves with things outside of their own families and immediate communities.
Lori also despises Donald Trump on such an intensely visceral level that I'd be shocked if she ever got on board a movement that treats him like some combination of Gandhi, Rambo, and Abe Lincoln.