fact 70 – the good, the bad,

and the pathetically depressing. today was my choir director’s last day. we had ice cream and cake and showered her with presents, one of which was a copy of Ray’s Practical Arithmatic or some such hideously titled thing that i ripped the text block out of and inserted a blank one into, in order to reduce the overall stress on the universe caused by the existance of such esoteric word problems. apparently, she’s heard of the book before, and had some unpleasant memories of her time with it in her younger days. she greeted the sight of the book w/ a face normally reserved for the taste of particularly stale lemons, and when i handed it to her, i felt compelled to open the book for her, lest she think i was aiming to further her studies or something. (^_^) then she regaled us w/ tales from her childhood whilst we devoured nearly an entire ice cream cake. it was quite wonderful, actually. to tell you the truth, i’ve been quite depressed about her leaving us, especially under such lame circumstances. this is a church, for christ’s sake (ahahah), shouldn’t we be able to work things out? of course, not knowing all the details, not particularly interested in knowing all the details, i’m pretty much default in sarita’s corner, but to be perfectly frank w/ you, internets, i’m sick of talking about it. what i’d really like to talk about is that book. i didn’t finish it in time to get any good pictures of it, so i had to rely on my camera phone.

i was able to save quite a lot from the original book. the book block itself came out pretty easily, considering that the way the thing was glued together, it seemed like the creators wanted to make sure that they were discussing how to reduce fractions right alongside oil prices in the Thunderdome. i had to make my own bookblock about a time and a half, since the first time, i made it too thick and it only barely fit in the case. after i took a sledgehammer to it (yes, they do let me have things like that here. i like it here!) it behaved well enough. and i set carolyn’s lead/steel/whatever block on it. that thing’s HEAVY. anyhow, after that, it was quite well-behaved, and so i set about gluing it back into the casing. i had to destroy the end papers when i took the original block out, which pissed me off since the endpapers on my first tear-out-the-original-and-put-in-your-own expirement (coming soon to an etsy store near YOU!) stayed intact like THEY wanted to be what was discussed in the Thunderdome.

the really fun part of this book, though, was the pocket. frankly, i’ve never made a pocket for a book before, and i wasn’t exactly sure how to go about it. a couple of test runs w/ my trusty moleskine for a template, though, and it soon whipped itself into shape. i used a couple of pages from the book itself to form the pocket (“you’ll be happy to know i tore the book apart” i told sarita) and although it’s not an exact replica for the moleskines (their pockets are glued behind the endpapers, for those of you keeping tabs. i didn’t have the presence of mind to check whether they were or not before gluing the endpapers down.) it looks pretty damn good if i do say so myself. it’s about five inches tall, so it’ll hold little notes and stuff, and it’s expandable, at least at the top, so it can hold a couple of layers worth of stuff. i may have to put one in my above-mentioned first trial, although it is a bit smaller.

also, i have re-re-re-designed notubóc.com. and not a moment too soon, either. sarita was all like, “You should sell these things!” (which, frankly, she says every time i bring a book to choir, but it cracks me up every single time, coz i’m like, girl, you’ve even written down my URL before, i know you’re busy, but maybe the lack of sleep is beginning to effect your brain?) and i was like, “i do!” and i gave her my card (and then gave the rest of the choir my card, since everybody asked for one) so i came home and went straight to work on the new site. the old one had some picture issues, and i was looking for something a little more analogue-revolution-y. it didn’t quite turn out how i wanted, but i don’t know enough Flash yet to fully realize my Vision! (^_^) i wanted a bunch of gears and more Victorian Flair, but i’m also not an artist (and woe is me, seriously) so i’ll have to work on that a little more. eventually, i’d like to have the whole thing in flash, with shiny gears and an RSS feed from my etsy store and an integrated blog and the whole works, but for now, at least it’s functional and moderately attractive. i did make an animated banner…

…edited blog template to follow…

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