Life is Good, with pictures

I just had the most fabulous day! And I caught a lot of it on camera. I thought yesterday was good with the partnered up glassblowing and all, but today was better. I slept in late after staying up having a crazy saturday evening doing killer sudoku. I made fresh valencia orange juice with my neighbor's oranges and my new juicer, then went out to pick up the glass pumpkins I made yesterday with my new glass blowing partner.

Even the traffic was amazingly fun today. We were going at a reasonable clip even though it was fairly crowded. The driving was all very fluid, with people moving in and out to maintain speed, getting out of the way and going around the slowpokes instead of building up in a mass behind them. People even went fast down the hills, which is rarer than you'd think. It's the kind of day that probably tweaks timid drivers, but it was big fun for me. Loved it.

Here are the pumpkins as I picked them up on the studio. They're sitting on the steel table called a "marver" which can be used to shape the hot glass. I suppose it could also be used to shape cold glass, but only if the shape you're looking for is "broken".


I also got some closeups. This is purple with a metallic stem. I really like this stem. Perhaps you can also see the metallic gold bits (there's some real gold in the color) included in small amounts in the body colors.



The orange and green aren't so shabby either (well, one is, but this one is a good one).


And here's where I realized that I really need to acquire more portable lights if I want to take photos in my cave-like-condo.



Next, I stopped in to visit a friend at UCLA and snitched an avocado off the tree in the backyard. Then I tooled merrily along Sunset Boulevard, which is lovely and windy and lined with trees and places to buy "Maps to the Stars $10".

Eventually, I found my way over to the Book Fair by the West Hollywood Library. I hadn't realized it was there until I read Jeanine's post this morning and I'm SO glad I went. I had a great time chatting up people. I found Stephanie Vaughn right away, although I had to remember that name instead of Jeanine. Here she is signing some books for moi.



While I hadn't planned to go and spend money today, I found a $100 gift check in my purse, so despite the little issue with my NetBank account being "read only", I still had money. And I decided to burn it here. This is the stash of books and swag I came home with.

Now I have to put this all somewhere! EEEK!

In the mix here is some stuff I have no idea about. Well actually most of it is, but these people were all very nice to me even when I was gauche and were enthusiastic about their work, so I went a little nuts. One writer was a nice Puerto Rican gay man who used to live in the same town as I did near Boston. And it's his first published book, so how could I not get it? Naturally I bought Stephanie's stuff, and a funky collaborative novel by a couple of ladies who used to work in the makeup industry called "The Immaculate Complexion" which sounded fun and has a great cover so I got that too. And the blue bags in the lower right are stuffed full of books on CD that I got for a steal, without actually stealing them.

Here are some of the spicier books, zoomed in a bit. Lemme know if you want a book report.


Later, I went back to show Jeanine my pop-up book of Elvis's Graceland, because really, when it comes to Elvis, there is no such thing as too tacky. I have a tongue in cheek appreciation for Elvis and I've been lured by the siren call of pop-up books before, but this time I bit. I love this book. It's open to the round bed pop-up in the picture of my haul. I found J/SV with a fruity pineapple drink. The sun was less fiery and intense so we got a picture with minimal squinting to prove I really went there and had a good time.


After wandering off to find the pineapple drinks for myself, I stopped off to chat with (cute!) graphic artists. All the ones I talked to are working collaboratively also, and I've had such fun reading about the Jenny Crusie/ Bob Mayer collaboration that I had to chat them up about their process. Plus, they were cute and nice to me.

These guys all do animation for famous shows.


They've written a comic called "Hot Mexican Love" which made me laugh (tee hee!) and which they were selling for not too much money. So I told them I'd buy some. But it turns out I only had $8 left. They let me have a discount and still signed the books with some of my favorite Futurama characters. It may not be true, but the one guy said Bender was really a Mexican named Señor Bender B Rodriguez, and I think that's fun, and hey, truth is not really necessary when talking about cartoons I suppose. Look on the right of this pic for the goods.



To round out the day, I also got to chat with a friend (who couldn't make it to the book fair), another friend who I'll see next weekend, and my brother. My brother told me about his cichlid fish who gets all testy and changes color when my brother rearranges the aquarium gravel and levels out his/her "sex hole" that he/she spent hours arranging but which my brother claims is unsightly. That boy cracks me up.

Now to figure out where everything goes. Anyone who is good at organizing want to come visit?