April 13, 2002. Loved my book making class today. This is the first artsy thing I've done in a while where I immediately get a thousand ideas of things I could do. See updates on my all-new crafts page. The magnets I made for Meredith's birthday are also on the crafts page.

Also new: two new cat photos.

April 11, 2002. Three cheers! We finally finished our taxes! I think. Assuming we did them correctly. The most astounding thing was that Maine makes you pay a "use tax," which is essentially a tax on all the things you bought that came from outside of Maine, but that you used in Maine. So, for instance, the brown sugar body polish I ordered online. Or my beloved Timbuk 2 bag. The whole Use Tax paragraph made me go all screechy and start sputtering about how I didn't know I was supposed to be keeping track of my non-Maine purchases. Luckily they provide you with a formula, which Dave pointed out to me, and we only ended up owing $34 in Use Tax. Still. Completely threw me off track.

I am so completely excited about the Basic Bookmaking class I'm taking this weekend at MECA. It's all about creating handbound, handmade books. I can't wait! My own handmade books! Between this and knitting, I've certainly got all future gifts taken care of. (Cut to December, and an image of me, sobbing, in some dark room, surrounded by hanks of yarn, knitting needles sticking out of my hair, and cardboard and heavy fabric scattered about the floor, my fingers sticky with binder's glue.)


April 10, 2002. Guitar lesson for today: hammer-on and pull-off. It's where you pluck the string once, and then make two notes by either pressing (or "hammering") your left hand down on the string, or pulling your left hand off the string ("pull-off"). It's so cool sounding. Except when I do it. My notes sort of swallow themselves when I do it. In some ways I love this type of thing, when I really want to learn a new skill, and I know why I want to learn it (e.g., sounds cool) but I know I'm going to have to keep doggedly trying to do it until I get it. So far this seems to be one of those things that's much easier to do when I don't think about it so much.

April 9, 2002. I saw a huge rainbow on the way home from work today. I can't remember the last time I saw a rainbow. I was driving in my car, grinning like an idiot because the rainbow was so pretty.

On a completely unrelated note, I have had Cyndi Lauper's She's So Unusual in heavy rotation on the turntable for months now, and I just have to take a minute to say that it has completely withstood the test of time, and, frankly, rocks. If you own this album, I urge you to dig it out and listen to it. It's even better than you remember it being. And it really makes me wish I could sing.
April 8, 2002. I went to look at a duplex that was for sale (Dave was out of town, so I went by myself to check it out) and the tenant who was there was an Elvis impersonator. It was very odd seeing an Elvis impersonator in his own environment (an environment, as you might expect, stuffed with Elvis memorabilia). He had the pompadour, the giant sideburns, and even the huge plastic Elvis glasses. To round out the picture, he had out a griddle and was frying up 1/2-inch-thick slices of canned ham (or, as Dave tells me it's also called, "tube ham"...yick). The whole concept of someone being so much of an Elvis impersonator that he looks like Elvis when he's at home is just fascinating to me.

April 7, 2002. My horoscope yesterday said to try a new sport, and since I try to follow my horoscope when it's that specific, I tried racquetball. My original intention was to try swimming, which is not completely new to me, but is something I'm not very good at. I can swim well enough not to drown, but I don't really know how to swim laps. Well, actually, that's wrong, I know how to swim laps, in theory, I've just never really successfully tried the whole breathe-to-the-side thing. But when we got to the Y, they were just about to start kids' swimming lessons in the pool, and I decided that, while figuring out how to swim laps in front of a pool full of adults would be its own special kind of humiliation, learning in front of a pool full of kids was too scary to even contemplate.

So, racquetball. I had no idea how unbelievably fun it was going to be. Dave and I didn't play with rules at all, just tried to hit the ball. So sometimes one of us would hit the ball five times in a row, and sometimes the ball would bounce 12 times as we were getting to it. But it was great! I loved bouncing around, and jumping to get the ball, and getting the racquet just right so the ball actually went hard and fast and in a straight line. Not that that happened very often, but it was so darn fun when it did, that it made up for all the times that the ball went straight up toward the ceiling. Can't wait to play again! Oh, and, um, to actually learn the rules.

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