This past week or so has been very busy. We spent much of Labor Day weekend (Thursday afternoon to Monday) making our way up and down I-5 between here and Oregon. It was great to see friends from graduate school and Evan’s family, but the all the driving, especially our trip home last night when we were stuck in a back-up due to construction north of Redding for what felt like an eternity, made me feel a little batty. At one point I threw the sock I was working on (for my brother’s belated birthday gift) into the back seat in frustration (and I am typically not one to throw things) when, after completing a new style of toe, I realized it was much too big for his feet. Somehow it fit Evan’s foot perfectly, so I’ve decided that Evan will get another set of socks and I’ll begin again for my brother. Bah.
Last week, before our trip, I did a number of exciting things. We went to the Palo Alto arts festival, where people draw these incredible images on the street with pastels and there is tons of artwork and metal sculptures to admire. Here are my two favorites (you can see a few more in my flickr account):
On Monday, we attended Revenge of the Book Eaters, a benefit for 826 Valencia. This is a great charity that runs volunteer-based writing programs for young people of all ages. The theme for the night was “Which is Better, music or words?” I would have a difficult time choosing as both were incredible.
A couple weird things about the event:
- Despite being a charity to promote writing, there were a huge number of grammar errors in the program. Whoops.
- The woman sitting next to Evan did not even break a smile during ANY part of the program. This included beautiful music by Jonathan Richman, a great story about the cartographer, Charles Preuss (written by Sarah Vowell), as well as the antics of Patton Oswalt. Weird.
- The couple sitting next to me seemed to be on maybe a first or second date. He starts talking about his tattoos. When she gets interested and starts asking for more details, he tries to change the topic, saying that the content/locations of his tattoos are too personal. She makes the argument that he brought them up and thus should be willing to talk about them and if he didn’t want to talk about them, he shouldn’t have brought them up in conversation. He finally says that he had some of them removed. This further intrigues her and she continues to press for details. Eventually it comes out that “he is not really a tattoo sort of guy” and the tattoos that he spoke of were actually henna tattoos. Lame.
Next up, I’ll write about my current knitting, my trip to Oregon, and post Elise‘s book meme.
Poor, poor tatooed fool. The artwork you showed looks great, and the benefit and the program it supports sounds very worthwhile.
~firefly
That little pig is too cute