It's a Hairy Situation

The Zine Librarian (un)conference was awesome. I met a lot of people and learned a lot. The zine reading that accompanied was wonderful. I was blown away by the writing, especially a guy from Tumwater, who writes Funwater Awesome. I recommend it to everyone ;) Even got Dr. T to read one of the zines I bought that night. I also got a bunch of free zines for my collection at the library and a few special zines from my new friends for myself. One friend gave me a rad zine that talks about having a partner with diabetes and blindness and the challenges of having a child, called Worry Stone. It is really well written with lots of facts and heart wringing tales.

Things have been "meh" the last few days. So I cut my hair. Yes, my own hair. By myself. It didn't turn out too bad--I actually like it quite a bit, although it could probably use some cleaning up by someone who knows what they are doing.


Not the best picture in the world, and it has been a long day, but there you go.

I just put 50 million books on cd on hold for our ROAD TRIP next week. We leave a week from Monday to see my sis in Nevada and plan to make a couple of stops along the way to see friends. Reminds me that I need to call Yoga Mary back, but I don't think she would appreciate a call at 12:15am, even if it is a Friday night...

My First Podcast

I was interviewed at the YALSA Happy Hour for the YALSA podcast. It seems a little unorganized to me. The first topic jumped into the second without any introduction, but then gets into zines. I barely recognized my own voice and there are a couple of things that I said where I really wonder where I got that. Teens are more open to controversial content, where adults aren't? That is such an over generalization, and not a blanket statement that I should have made. Everything else sounded good though, pretty professional.

PODCAST

Whidbey Helps a Zine

The vacation was good.



Diva and I stayed at The Yoga Lodge on Whidbey Island during the week.

It was really relaxing, and I was in a good place mentally to be without TV, radio and cell phone for 3.5 days. Other times in my life, this would have made me bat sh*t insane, but right now it was exactly what I needed. Langley was very dead--I felt sorry for the shop owners. But in reality, they had very little that I wanted. On the way home we stopped in La Conner which had some really cool art and such. Affordable even, although still outside of my price range at the moment. The gas for this trip and my weekend trip to Spokane totally put me over budget :( Someday I will be a grownup and have money to spend...

Today I had a totally cool program, which almost no one came to. It was so sad! But I had such a great time, I didn't really care. My zine-savvy co-worker/friend gave a demonstration of a one page zine (link goes to a flickr tutorial). I found a cool old Royal typewriter at the thrift store in Freeland while on vacation, so we had that to play with, along with several of Zine-savvy's type writers. I was amazed that the ribbon on mine worked--along with everything else. It needs to be cleaned up a bit and oiled, but otherwise it is in fine shape. Anyhow, I ended up making a zine to advertise our new zine collection at the library. It was really cool. I will take a picture later to post.

On first Friday there is a zine program at the Frye Museum. Unfortunately, this is also craft night and I want to figure out a way to do both. R. Crumb is the exhibit and I would also love to see that. I plan to bring my new zine to trade :) I made my manager jealous today with all of our zine creativity, so he said he was going to make one tonight. I am looking forward to seeing it. Heck, I want to make another one right now.

SAD Daze

Well, I was happy to see that the graffiti on the back of the Alterations & Reweaving Center is still there. Now I want to stop in and see if they commissioned the painting.

I have been planning Spring and Summer programing for my branches. It seems early, but amazingly it is right around the corner. We have some pretty ambitious programing coming up, both for teens and adults. I already wrote a bit about the writing program (twice actually, oops) and I am sure you will hear about it again after we get the funding approved. I have a series of computer classes this summer, zine open hours every other week, providing materials and resources for people creating zines, and some book making classes towards the end of summer. There will also be a gaming tournament in conjunction with the children's program. This has been a lot of fun to plan, and should be even more fun to execute.

I have been feeling SAD lately. Daily headaches, sort of fuzzy at the edges, tired all the time. The sun today definitely helped my mood, but didn't cure my headache. I shall be seeing the doctor in mid March to see if there is anything else I can do. By then it will probably disappear...

What'cha Mean, What's a Zine?

Planning for my next big project is underway. Zines 101! I just put in the calendar request, so I will link to that later. The event will be held March 22nd and will be the kick off to our spring teen writing program. Teens and adults are welcome to attend this event, and there will also be an adult writing program extending through April and May. More info to come!

There will also be gaming at the Wallingford Library on March 5th. Here is a link to the calendar. School gets out early that day, so kids getting out of Garfield and Hamilton should be able to walk over after school and play games. I get to play Wii again! My efforts at procuring the gaming system for myself have been thwarted so far.