friday night at home

i still haven't gotten the T key fixed on his laptop - it takes extra care to make sure it engages and makes the letter. i think i will not bother with that right now.

the last two weeks have been a bit of a lost tailspin for my schedule. i don't feel like anything has been actually finished or accomplished at work. bits of things get done, or worked on, but i haven't really been able to cross anything off my to-do list with certainty. i think this is linked to this gap in the blog, but i don't know if the chicken or the egg came first.

today i was at the shop alone most of the day - my dad came in for a while to do some mail orders, briefly - and i editioned the recyclery prints. lots of emails, but i have so many yet to answer. i committed to some 'my morning jacket' posters, and turned down doing some 'yonder mountain string band' work. also took on some 'the new year' prints, which i'm looking forward to.

i loaded the five new prints onto the site, where they will remain staged until i kick them live on tuesday. hopefully we will have another burst of mail order insanity then.

this week we received a five foot tall pile of 1800 lbs of paper, and 33 gallons of ink. we received 17 cases of mailing tubes. we are stocked. stacked. something. our shelves are laden with optimism.

yesterday, thursday, yann legendre came into the shop to make prints, with his brother julian, who is visiting from paris. they both had line drawings in hand when seth and i picked them up from sara's apartment in evanston. we got coffee, and headed to kinkos to make films. they are both quite professional poster designers, but they waned to run through making prints by hand at a screenprint shop. from kinkos, we went to TBM, i spliced their key plates together, and got them started cutting rubylith. sara came in and pretty much kicked butt all day, staying one step ahead of us on everything. we set up yann's first screen, printed fifty pieces, and moved to julian's print. we alternated between pieces for the day, breaking in the middle to have thai food with di. by 5pm, both guys had finished their prints, and hey both were staggeringly good in their own way.

dianogah has been practicing again, as much as possible - sunday and wednesday nights at our new space, which is a vast improvement from the old space. tuesday (5/21) we went to play at mark greenberg's studio, to practice with him. we played fine, but all on borrowed instruments, so the sound was *crazy*. the songs were almost new, in some ways. jasom and i stayed long after practice, talking with mark on his driveway.

last saturday (5/17), jason's boys had their fourth birthday party at the new house. di and i rode our bikes, ate a bunch of mini sandwiches, and generally had a great time.

the next day we took a break from painting our bedroom to go to the chandler center for jesse's second birthday party, because when *we* party, it's generally with three- and four-year olds. this weekend proves it.

friday (5/9), i worked alone at the shop until about 3pm, when i took the train down to the gene siskel film center to see sara's fiancé's film release. simon is finishing up at SAIC. the five films were good, but simon's film stood out to me, along with a humorous and scathing semi-personal documentary about american intervention in the cocao trade in colombia.

these screenings ended at 6pm, and i hoofed it down to 1104 s. wabash to see a new documentary by laura zinger about amos paul kennedy, jr, a personal/political letterpress postermaker in alabama, called "proceed and be bold". the film was very well done, and it was a pleasure to meet mr. kennedy, and to see ryan nole.

monday (5/19), om stack came intot he shop to print with sara, and i spent a couple hours getting flinchy set up as a business with the state, the IRS, and he government. formed a partnership, etc. and got our paperwork notarized.

wednesday (5/14) i got an email from poster designer tyler stout, who's printer had mistakenly shipped tyler's copies of some flight of the conchords prints to the band, who were playing in chicago on his night. tyler asked if i could go pick the prints up from the band, which i did, wih some amount of hassle, much to the merch lady's chagrin. from there, i went to reckless and myopic and got the new death cab, and a couple books. met jason for pizza slices, then hit quimby's, where we talked to chris ware for a while before starting to watch chip kidd read from his new book. sadly, jason and i soon had to leave to get to practice.

at this point, between the yard and the shop, we have planted these vegetables this year:
five types of tomato
sweet peppers
corn
broccoli
sting beans
sunflowers (large seed)
snap peas
leeks
lettuce (variety)
basil
cilantro
apple tree
cantoloupe
acorn squash

and more ferns and may apples and hens & chicks than one would consider shaking any sort of stick at.

we've been tending our compost pile carefully, hoping it would make the jump from 'cold compost' to shit-hot. turns out i found hot compost working just fine in our yard waste tote, where the lawn dudes put our grass clippings, so i moved as many clippings (and black decomposing pudding) as i could into the compost bin, but it didn't stay warm. when he yard dudes came on wednesday, i got them to unload the mower into the bin, and was delighted to find a steamy pile of quickly decomposing compost cooking itsself right up when i checked later. i appears our soil is all low in nitrogen, so this compost will go to immediate good use.

onight, di and i watched *lost* online, and then di jumped up and decided she was going for a bike ride, so we rode to the beach in the dark, and sat near the base of the light house for a while. it was just the break we needed.

i have to sleep now.