bustedsneakers

This year. Let's see.

- Quit job which was solid but not well paid or managed
- Went to Poland and Scotland
- Started excellent, well-suited job
- Met someone, proceeded to nest
- Broke the ever-loving shit out of my hand and lost three to four month's working and travel time to sleeping and not doing anything much.
- Heart Machine Part Deux, Toronto Validation at Nuit Blanche
- Organized a conference
- Stopped keeping so rigorous a diary, as I noticed it just made me remember the blues

Recognized individual moments, swimming, driving, not working. I visited the House of Baba Yaga in the forest up north, watched an old spider I knew when I was eleven. I met my dad again, my sister. Took my cousin to the theatre. Noticed time speeding up. I started my application to an MA, which is useful in that it tells me what I need to actually be working on.

I did not manage to do so much art, I think, but then I see what's what on my portfolio and I revise my opinion; I did a lot this year. It was a good year, really, through the wreckage. I taught myself leather tooling. Seth is getting his tattoo. I'm scared to design my next one.

Adina organized all my friends into the nicest birthday I've ever had in my life, and managed to do this such that it took almost all my fear away. I want to remember that forever, and I am being very careful with the lasered iPad case as a consequence. I am still so grateful that she made me that, and for all the names listed, and all the ones who turned up. It was lovely.

Next Year:
- Finish maple lamp with swing arm (I rescued a tree branch what needs finishing)
- make carapace for the attack bots. Figure out mechanics and programming for wings.
- Finish application to MA for real
- Visit Adina in Berlin
- Apply to calls for entry for festivals for flame effects all over the world.
- RAINBOW GUN.
- Actually start putting the words down for those books I wanted to write, now that I work at an archive and all.
- Psychlepath. Make into actual if simple game of investigating Toronto's downtown core.
- Go skating.
- Crack and hire a housekeeper.
- Camera.

Resolution:
- Actually be the sort of person who deserves to be trusted with a kid, and who runs a house clean enough to be inviting.
- Say yes. Say yes to the dragon year, to the insane promises, and try not to be disappointed when they don't come through.
- Finish applications as they come up.
- Take the time to finish projects, toys, things that are interesting and fun, then actually pursue showing them to people other than my friends.

There's not much more than that. This year was chaotic for so many people, but not for me, I've been fine. I bought/made furniture for real - a dresser, some nice bookshelves, two coffee tables. Replaced my evil bike with a non-evil one. Expensive updates to repair holes. I'm clearing out books and clothes again, scraping the cruft off life, which is good.

This year I turn 30 and I am looking forward to it, I am looking forward to it so much.

Things Found At Family Cottage, in No Particular Order:

The spider in the bathtub has been there for, at minimum, seventeen years.
There is a third edition printing, sans dustcover, of Charles Addams' "Homebodies," source material of the Addams Family.
Every Agatha Christie book pretty much ever.
Also Wyndham.
Also Gormenghast but that was expected after even ten seconds.
A copy of a book called "The Necrophiles."
Fading but still serviceable paintings in what I think of as German/Black Forest style of Ontario wildflowers, in jewel tones on black, on every flat surface. Tables, curtain-covers, shutters, doors, and then the colours are expanded into rugs of thunderbirds. I remember quite liking the thunderbird rugs, enough to later have a mild bias towards Neil Gaiman when he wrote about them.
The bedrooms are untouchable, populated with twin beds and flickering, low-wattage bulbs which against all expectations actually do make the shadows worse. Neither myself nor my guest will go downstairs after dark. We almost instantly pull all our things into the main room.

All in all, the weekend was fine, but Sand Lake gives me the creeps. The lake is far more developed than it was when I was a child and my grandfather had given empty lots to my father and all his siblings, which ensured no-one could build anything at all. It technically sleeps ten, but in reality, I spent the night on my great-aunt's couch, superstitiously trusting her against the dark. The building is built into a hill, and it is impossible to escape the faint sense that something is about to creep up on you. A bear. Something. The book collection encourages this way of thinking, so we spent most of our time on the rock that juts into the lake, forming a beautiful natural pier.

We spent the entire time having the most intense conversations ever, but I couldn't get the smell or the lurking memories out of my head. The building is well on its way to decay - I remember the last time my grandmother painted it, when I was five or seven or something, but it was already showing signs of unwellness by the time I was eleven.

It would take hundreds of thousands of dollars to repair, and at a 4.5hr drive away, it's pretty tough to get to - close to Harvest festival, twice as surreal. I don't think I'd want to disturb it. Quite unprompted, my guest referred to it as a mausoleum, but she's not the first, and I don't think the last. It's a literal thing, a gingerbread house decorated in candy, ripped from the pages of one of the more unpleasant fairy tales. It's so strange to return somewhere and find out that you weren't making it up at all: it was true.

Lookit me, testing out my dreamwidth account. In case you're wondering, I got sick of poorly framed advertisements about my stomach fat.

Although you still can comment on my livejournal, I'd prefer it if you ask for an invite and get onto dreamwidth instead, on account of it isn't run by crazed botpirates. Bots! Horrible as programs, worse as flies!

Current Location: hacklab.TO
Current Music: Robots, Dan Mangan

( The Midwest/WisCon 33 )

We counted 16 deer carcasses on the highway back, and drove through Flint, MI to get to the border. I clinically determined that your little girl should only be named Madison if you want her to come off as pleasantly, unsettlingly artificial. American Wasteland Tour 09 - Complete!

Friends only, comment to be added.

Hello, world!

I'm more or less like everyone else you know, except perhaps I draw more. I love working with my hands and metal parts fabrication, the most recent of which was carving out a new crank for my very old bicycle. This is my private blog. My public blog is available at http://www.talesofaneoluddite.net, where you can also track projects and illustration work I have in the pipe. That's where Finished Articles go. This here is where Unfinished Articles and Personal Angst go. It's what Livejournal is for.

If I've met you Out And About and you're on livejournal, or I internet-flashed you while compromised and gave you all my contact information, please feel free to comment on this entry and I'll probably add you back. I privatized my diary after realizing people could read my mean and hugely personal book reviews, and also that I hadn't written them about dead people after all. It was all very embarrassing, mostly for me, so yes.

Comment to be added. This post gives you an idea of what reading the diary will be like.

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
				1	2	3
4	5	6	7	8	9	10
11	12	13	14	15	16	17
18	19	20	21	22	23	24
25	26	27	28	29	30	31

Recent Entries

2011 Year In Review

Black Forest

Dreamwidth move.

Travel: Midwest road trip, Madison, Wisconsin - WisCon 33

The Friends-Only Comment To Be Added Post!

Profile

December 2011

Syndicate

Most Popular Tags

Page Summary

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags