actually, it wouldn’t be so bad if i could stop coughing. it’s that cough where, once you start, you can’t stop. so i just don’t allow myself to start. yesterday, i couldn’t swallow, day before that, i could hardly breathe, so i don’t know if you want to consider today an improvement, but at least i made it to work today. my poor nose is so red and swollen from constant blowing. on a related note, the wikipedia article on noses really sucks. i need anatomical charts, people, not giant pictures of dog snouts. in other news, the rest of my life seems to be going not hideously for the moment. i don’t wanna brag, just in case, you know, but all in all, i might even be inclined to use the word “nicely” to describe the current trajectory of my life. (^_^) i’m signing papers for a shiny new apartment on friday (zomg, the day after tomorrow!) and this weekend begins the Great Paint-a-thon (actually only about a room and a half, but we’ve only got a day and a half in which to do it) and then a week of moving boxes over, one tiny car-load at a time, after hours (since i /really/ can’t spare any more time now) and then on the 12er (only 9 days from now??? what!!!???) I’LL MOVE IN!!! ohmigawd i’m so excited just thinking about it~ i’m not gonna have everything i’d wanted, but i’ve got (almost) everything i need, so i’ll just have to get over it. the only “necessity” i’m missing is a vaccuum cleaner, but i can borrow my mom’s that first weekend and then i’ll buy one in a month or so. i don’t have the car payment that i thought i would have by now, so i’ll have a bit of extra cashes with which to vaccuum my shiny new abode. also on the docket is purchasing (or perhaps building, if i can find an excuse to splurge) a media pc. i have a pre-built model already picked out, which isn’t fancy to the point of hysteria, but which would serve perfectly well w/ the addition of a frilly graphics card. i also have the components for a notuboc-built model, so to speak, weighing down my newegg shopping cart. (^^;) the pc that would result in a moderately fancy gaming pc, provided i can live w/ putting windows on it. otherwise, i shall end up with a massively overpowered ubuntu box that could play games provided any good ones could run on wine. … okay, well, upon browsing through the wine app database and i see that things have improved, but i also see that media money is still unusably slow, and that lightroom suffers from the same problems. really, these are the only two barriers for a windows-free me– oh wait, let me check out steam + audiosurf… hm. a mixed bag it seems. well, guess i can’t yet go totally windows-free, but i have hope~ frankly, it’s not like i do a crapload of pc gaming. i’m mostly a console girl in that respect. actually, i’m mostly a handheld girl in that respect, although i have been all about the headshots lately (read: borderlands ftw, hands down). i suppose in the end, i’ll probably just deal without a proper dvd player for a minute, while i save up for the notuboc-built version. (^_^) i’ve got an xbox and a netflix subscription in the meanwhile, so i can deal. for a little while. i guess. (^_^) .

that’s right, i’m maaad! actually, i’m terribly happy~ (^_^) i have an appointment on tuesday morning (or wednesday, if i can switch it) to pick out… MY BRAND NEW APARTMENT!!!11!! (^_^) so a march 5th move-in date might not be shockingly out of the question after all. March Madness is ON! i was (and still am, honestly) a little concerned that finances won’t come together, but i think overall, everything’s going well, and i’m psyched up about my chances for a medal on the 5th… oh wait, sorry. too much olympics. (^_^) in fact, i’m such an olympics junkie that i rifled through my parents’ bills last night so i could find their cable tv account number so i could sign in to watch the’lympics online. and this, just for curling. (women’s, UK v JAP, by the way JAP taught some UK girls how it’s done~) … actually, it seems curling and hockey is about all that’s on the online things at the moment. huh. what i’d really like is for all olympic coverage to be online. although after i move out, since i won’t be paying for cable, i therefore won’t be able to watch online next time. dummies. stoopic nbc. seriously, having to log on to watch olympic coverage? i guess olympic spirit does not involve encouraging others in their desire to support our team by watching them, only by paying to watch them. i guess i’ll still have the regular network channel to watch, but that’s only the most popular stuff. figure skating is nice, especially the ice dancing non-compulsory stuff, and i’ll watch snowboarding anything, but in the summer olympics, they put the cool stuff like judo and fencing online, and i won’t be able to see that stuff in 2 years. (T_T) in other shocking news, i went to the paper store today. ^^; what’s truly shocking here is that i bought some paper with a specific plan, and then came straight home and cut out the text block for those planned books. i know. crazy talk. actually, i didn’t do it straight away. i came home and filled up my (superflat and still out of alignment) tire, and then went back out and got my hairs cut! before: and then after: actually in that shot, i look kind of like the new doctor, but i swear it’s not like that in person. (^_^) there is one little piece of hair that’s not quite long enough to go properly behind my ear, and so keeps getting right in my face, but give me a week, i’m sure it’ll be fine. my hair grows like a pubescent red-headed stepchild. (^_^) anyhow, back to bookbinding for me~ this post brought to you, actually, by my love of fact-verification. (^_^) .

i shall now proceed to sit in front of the television for the next 16 days. well, less than that now, since this is day three or something, but yeah. don’t expect too much activity from this particular sphere until march. (^_^) not that i don’t have things to do… (T_T) in fact, what i’ve been spending an inordinate amount of time doing lately, is playing video games. i bought an xbox (+borderlands, +trusty bell, er, i mean, eternal sonata) and The Internet Boyfriend and i have been heavy into the borderlands. not that i don’t like video games, i guess, but i’ve done more gaming in the past week than i have probably in the entire three~six months before that. of course, any game where you can run people (and puppies) over w/ a rocket-launching 4-wheeler can’t be considered a waste of time (^^;) i’m just saying that some other things are getting neglected, that’s all. (^^;) for instance, i’m pretty sure i’m three entries behind on my YOUkun journal. i swear, guys, i’m not dead. i’m playing borderlands. (^_^) also neglected of late is my poor etsy shop. of course, listing is the part that i’m laziest about, no matter what, so i can’t blame that entirely on borderland (^^;) but i’d like to anyway! (^_^) but, i finally got over my laziness this afternoon AND LISTED SOMETHING! ginko bocloba, i call it~ :D in other news, i’ve been working on BUNNEH: this is BUNNEH mark III. my mom gave me BUNNEH mark I for christmas when i was little, and every time i wear her out, i just make a new one. (^_^) her name is katie, but this one is still BUNNEH until she’s done and i trade the old katie out for the new. poor girl suffered a clavicle fracture in the wash last time. (^^;) she’s just so old, the muslin ripped her head nearly clean off. i was like OH NOES! actually, it’s not horrible timing, since i’ll be moving into my own place before too much longer. this way, it’s like a complete start over. i haven’t even officially put in the application yet and i’m like, let’s move! we went to ikea the other weekend (despite the snOMG here in the midwest~) where i filled up on furniture (^_^) (got my brother a new bed for his birthday, got myself the most awesome wall mounted tv stand/dvd collection holder, and also got myself a new dresser) and then we went to old time pottery, where i got most of what i need for kitchen. the only things i need are a media pc (already picked out, just have to save up for it), a microwave, a toaster, and a vaccuum. the media pc i suppose i could technically live w/out for a while, but for preference, it’s actually a higher priority than any of the other things. (^^;) except a fire extinguisher. (^^;) .

no, not the basketball kind. the moving out in the month of march kind. that’s right! meredeth is moving out! finally kissing goodbye and goodspeed to the parents’ basement rooms and hola hello and aloha to my own apartment! could i be a little excited? maybe? anyway, i went out this past weekend to buy towels, coz i felt domestic. actually, coz i got a gift card from kmart for graduation, from a delightful mother/son team who knew exactly what i would use it for, and guestimated, nearly to the dollar, how much i would need to accomplish my task. (^_^) thus we arrive at the following: the first official box of moving! this currently contains towels, some nifty green and taupe striped ones, the ones i bought. i still have to fill it up w/ other bath things, like soap dishes: and bath mats: and shower curtains: as soon as i get my dollars back from the federal and state governments, we’re going on a weekend trip to Ikea to pick me up some furniture. after much (and i do mean /much/) debate, i have decided upon the following: a klippan loveseat (coz a full-on probably won’t fit): a malm dresser (or two): and maybe a chair (if i think it’ll fit in my apartment, which isn’t looking good at this point): i haven’t decided on a color scheme for my living room yet (i’m vascillating between blue, green and grey) so if i haven’t decided on one by the time ikea comes along, i’ll just buy white covers and dye them or something. well, i’m sure i’ll have more on the apartment search later, but for now, i shall leave you w/ the website of the apartment complex that tops my list: the reserve at sharon woods. mine would be The Forest. ~meredeth. -can’t wait! .

ok, did the month of january simply disappear into the ether? i’m seriously like, where did it go? i remember new year, i remember that. dick clark, the ball glowing, i remember that. on skype w/ teh internets bf all night (^_^) i remember that, but then suddenly it was the 24th, and i’m wondering what, precisely, happened to the two weeks in the middle? i haven’t listed much on my etsy shop, coz i haven’t been in the linux half of my computer of my computer (where the database for my shop items is) in about two weeks, coz my skype doesn’t really work on ubuntu, or at least, it doesn’t want too work w/ my FANCY NEW BLUETOOTH HEADSET! i got a motorola h385 (which you can see here at amazon) and it turns out to work perfectly w/ both my t-mobile g1 and windows xp/skype! (^_^) times infinity! coz previously, i was like, cord-welded to my laptop whenever i wanted to talk to anybody on skype. my netbook’s mic is fine, but the speaker’s “quality” meant that i had to put on my headphones if i wanted to hear anybody. then we discovered that an external microphone vastly increases sound quality (yeah, shockers, i know) so then i had even more cords and accessories snaking out of the sides of my little netbook. it looked like Lain or something. so i decided that enough was enough! i went to staples and looked at their bluetooth headsets. i completely failed to find anything i liked. most of them reminded me of the stuff i have to wear all day at work, so that was a moral fail, i guess. then i saw a dude at gamestop with a fancy bluetooth headset, and i was like, hey! of course, when i got to target and found that same headset, i found right above it a $70 price tag, so that idea was quickly shot down. (^^;) but this utilitarian motorola thing on the shelf just below the fancy one, and after a quick internet search assured me that it didn’t suck horribly, i took the plunge. and now here i am, talking to someone (teh internet bf, point of fact) WIRELESSLY! i know the rest of you may have discovered this about 500 years ago, but i, meredeth, your humble blog narrator, have just discovered the wonder that is a functional bluetooth headset. the other thing i did this afternoon is make my first official NEW APARTMENT PURCHASE! that’s right, i WILL be moving out this spring! i’ve already looked at one apartment (the reserve at sharon woods) which looks more and more to be our winner, but i do have two others i’d like to at least look at before i make my decision firm. but i figure there are some things i’m going to need no matter where i end up, so i’ve gotten together a list of things i’ll need to have on hand before i move in, and this list includes such things as towels, and so i went out and bought some this afternoon. i got a $25 gift card for KMart for graduation this past december, and as soon as i saw it, i was like, “housewares!” (^_^) so i bought some nice fuzzy towels and some handtowels and some wash cloths, and all for what amounted to $3.94 out of my pocket! (^_^) they have dark green, light green, and sort of taupe stripes of different sizes, and they’ll look perfect in whichever apartment bathroom i end up in. i didn’t get a shower curtain, but i saw many many cool ones, so i just have to decide on one. of course, with my mother being a tailor/seamstress/etc, i can always have her make me one out of whatever i want, so the options are literally endless. which is probably why i can’t make a decision. (^^;) ok, i’m sure i had other things to write here, but since roku-san is cracking me up so much, i really can’t concentrate, so i guess we’re gonna have to end it here. perhaps i’ll be more sensible at a later date. … but i doubt it. .

(^_^) there is only one of you who will get that (well, maybe two or three) and you know who you are. (^_^) also in the “hypothetical” category at the moment is a new website design. i’ve got the images all set to go, and i’ve been changing a few of my pages around, (as anyone who’s tried to click the contact link above has already discovered. i promise, i’ll take care of that soon.) but i haven’t got anything coded yet. i was going to do it this weekend, but then i (apparently) decided that being out of school means taking on eight hundred projects, so i spent the weekend adding another one to the list that i outlined last time. (^^;) on the other hand, i did take pictures of, edited pictures for, and data entried in prep for listing of some 19 or 20 books. the shocking part is actually the photographing of. i hate taking pictures of my books. it’s kind of lame, and the pictures never come out as good as i’d like them to, despite my having read basically every tutorial on the internet. i guess the pictures aren’t hideous, but still. what i’d really like to do is go around and just have people fondle my books. everyone who holds one is like, “wow, nice!” so i feel like, if i could just get people to put their grubby mits on my books, and then convince them that books are just really cool things, just like iPods or tvs, but more user-friendly, then everybody’d want one! so, yeah. i’ll get right on that. (^^;) actually, i do have a few teaser shots for those of you who are interested in what i’ve been spending my day photographing: this is one that’s i’ve had most of done for a long while. i was waiting till i could find some crystals or rhinestones or something to put in the fish’s tail and crown. i ended up having to order some fancy shmancy swarovsky rhinestones online. when they got here, they were so small (1.9 mm small!) that i had to bust out the tweezers just to put them in place. i’ve still got one of these fishes left in my Box of Fancy Things, so i may do something similar in the future, but for now, this one’s cool enough. (^_^) this is one that i did while i was in florida! i bought the paper a rather long time ago, and i always knew exactly what i would do with it, but this really turned out great. the paper is kind of sparkly and shiny, and the way that the spine fits so perfectly in the trip from white to black! ah! faint~ yeah. actually, there are a couple of books that i’m even more enamoured of. the one on the left appeared mysteriously out of the wild blue yonder one day. it’s super hefty, too. 300 pages of hefty! the black bookcloth on the spine was the very last of that i had, so i guess if i want to make any more of these (for instance, for my personal use~) i’ll have to go buy some more. alas, woe is… um. yeah. the one on the right is one that i’ve also had the paper for kicking around for a long while. i found the wheat paper at my local fancy paper store randomly one afternoon, and i had 100% no idea what i was going to do with it. (^_^) but after i made another book in this same binding style yesterday (it’s called belgian eyelet binding, despite the absence of eyelets in the versions i make) i knew what i had to do! i kind of don’t want to list this one, either. it’s more practical for me than the giant yellow one, i guess, but it doesn’t match my favorite car! .

well well well, we’ve all made it to 2010, have we? or at least, most of us have. the (great?) MJ and the (actually great) peter jennings notwithstanding, most of us seem to have woken up ready for the aughts to end and the teens to begin. (^_^) my new year brought with it the validity of my vendor’s license and the joy of tax-exempt sales! i taped it up to my wall right above my bookbinding goods. so i can feel special, that’s why! apparently it worked, since i’ve made two books so far today. i went to the store and made my first tax-exempt sale, so i felt all kinds of special. (^_^) the new year brought my brother a bit of fancy as well. that, my friends, is one of those fancy YUDU machines. now, i’ve heard that a few hardcore screen printers are getting their panties all in a bunch because it doesn’t require a super committment to utilize, brings their tidy little craft to the masses, etc whatever. just the way i feel about that silly letterpress gadget. and just like that silly letterpress machine, i think The Masses will find that it does not bring mass production of fine quality goods into their kitchens or living rooms or whatever. the letterpress thing has plates that crack, a relatively small press area, and does indeed take a bit of practice on in order to pull good prints off of. same with the YUDU. in fact, michael and i are still on a learning curve with the whole emulsion process. (^^;) it /is/ fun, though. our first several attempts super failed, but after narrowing down the problem to a screen that wasn’t totally dry and a faucet that does not generate cool water (the water it /does/ generate is so hot it was melting the emulsion right off the screen) we seem to have gotten a general hold on things. (^_^) in other news, i realized the other day that it had only been two weeks since my graduation ceremony. i believe i may have mentioned this? well yesterday i got to make it official. i was filling out a survey for the army of women thing (a breast cancer research thing, for those unacquainted among us) and there was a question asking what my highest level of completed schooling was: I GOT TO CLICK THE COLLEGE GRADUATE BUTTON!!! OH yeah! (^_^) i was so happy, i took the above screenshot. there was a trending topic on twitter (ttttttt) for new years about what we were all doing #10yearsago, and i realized that exactly 10 years ago, i had just finished my very first quarter of college. this year, i have just finished my very last quarter of college. that? makes me damn happy. (^_^) every time i think about this stuff, i grin like an idiot. (^_^) if i put one more smiley emoticon in this post, it may explode. (^_^) huh. guess not. (^_^) the other thing i’m doing with my time this year is writing. i mean, a lot. over on dA, i’ve joined the #LITplease group, and they’re running a tri-part contest to celebrate their opening, so i definitely have to enter that (theme: HELP WANTED). then i heard about this rockin’ fiction forum called the rookery and i thought, with a name like that it’s gotta be awesome! so i joined that, and now i’m about to fall off the cliff into their january challenge (theme: uh, actually no theme, but we’ve been paired up for a collaborative experience). and then i caught wind of this thing called the Art House Co-op. they’re running… well, actually, they’ve got a bunch of projects all going on at once, but the one i’ve signed up for is the Fiction Project, where they send you a moleskine cahier, you fill it up with Story, and then you send it back to them. the subsequent collection gets put on the shelves at the brooklyn art library, as well as a gallery hop or two. i was like, yes please! so i signed up for that, too. so, that’s two (hopefully short) stories due before the end of this month, and one that’s due not too long after that. yikes! … okay, seriously, when i write it out like that, it’s kind of scary! good thing one of those This Month stories is with somebody else. in fact, i’ve got to go reply to that Somebody Else’s forum PM! the post where they paired us up was… um, slightly odd? so i’m hopeful. this is gonna be awesome! ~meredeth. -is contemplating a new website design. .

from christmas, mostly, but i would like to recommend, for those of you contemplating a purchase of wii sports resort, that you consult your physician before undertaking any exercise regime. (^^;) seriously. my wrist hurts, my knee hurts, my elbow is only now on the mend. all this, thanks to Swordplay. also, please allow me to recommend the little plastic remote jacket to you. is it silly looking? yes. does it kind of feel gross? definitely. will it prevent injuries sustained after gripping the thing waaay too tightly during the kendo/swordplay you vs the horde mode? i certainly hope so. in other news, i’m writing thank you notes from graduation today. i get to bust out my happy (nominally vintage) esterbrook fountain pen to write them with. and my fancy japanese paper. (^_^) i realized yesterday that’s it was two weeks exactly since the ceremony. two weeks! only two weeks! feels like two months, or two years. the other day, my sister’s computer broke down, and after we (sort of) fixed it, she was like, “at least it was fixed before january 4th.” i was like, “why? what happens on the 4th?” she gave me this look like, duh~ “class starts on january 4th.” I HAD NO IDEA! i instantly degraded into a Stupid Grin. (^_^) since graduation, i’ve been… well, mostly, i’ve been preoccupied with christmas. we here at the beckett household were pretty darn broke this year, thanks in part to 1x dead furnace and 1x dead job (T_T) but we still managed to have a nice holiday. (^_^) i bought the wii a present, the above-mentioned injury-inducing sport sim, and so we all proceeded to injure yourselves. (^_^) and then we went to the movies, as my clan is wont to do on christmas day. we saw sherlock holmes! it was… meh, it was okay. in a way, it was really good. jude law makes a fine dr watson, and there were some little homages to the novels/short stories that i liked. and of course there was the big reveal at the end, where holmes got to tell us how he did it, which was fun, as usual. the problem was, the makers felt they had to change the style to attract those modern, short attention span audiences. they turned holmes into an action flick. or at least a half action flick. not that holmes was by any means a pacifist. he was, after all, constantly telling watson to bring his revolver. and plenty of holmes-ian villians use the fear of the masses and play on the emotions of their victims (w/out giving away the whole movie…). i guess it’s mostly that i’m so used to the jeremy brett holmes that the robert downey jr holmes felt a little wtf to me. (^^;) actually, like many people, my biggest problem with the movie had nothing to do w/ holmes, watson, nor even the action-ing up of the entire holmes world. i, like a growing number of people who have seen and reviewed this film, feel an intense dislike for what they have done to the venerable irene adler. even ignoring the fact that in all 56 short stories and 4 holmes novels, irene is the only woman holmes shows even the slightest interest in, and then only because she’s the one who manages to outwit him, even ignoring the fake/half-assed romantic subplot that the movie writers tried to shoe-horn in to a freakin’ HOLMES movie, adler’s character simply isn’t internally consistet w/in the movie’s own stated world. she’s introduced, and rightly so, as the woman who outsmarted holmes. she then proceeds to spend the rest of the movie being outclassed by holmes in nearly every way. there’s even a damsel in distress scene in which holmes has to rescue her from a meat chopping table saw, complete with valves and flames and handcuffs. i mean seriously. a) the real irene adler would never allow herself to be put in such a situation, b) the real holmes would never allow HIMself to be put in such a situation, and c) if the movie adler is supposed to be so damn clever, how’d SHE get in such a situation? in short, if you loved jeremy brett’s holmes and would slap your own mother for some more, this movie is not for you. if you ignore “irene adler” altogether and keep in mind that this is the era of movie making that has produced not one, but TWO “live action” alvin and the chipmunks movies, you should manage to enjoy yourself. in still other news, i’m applying for my vendor’s license as i type, so eventually, i swear, there will be some new stuff in the shop. i used some of my graduation money to get some organizational things for the shop, as i mentioned earlier, so at least the studio looks good. and i do have 50+ books that i have made that i have yet to even photograph, let alone list, a fact which causes me much shame. especially when you consider that i’ve spent at least $150 dollars at the local paper store just in the past 6 weeks. how do i know? the paper store has a free offer thing where you get 50 free shutterfly prints for every $50 you spend there, and i just received my third one. yup, i’m addicted. (^_^) .

yesterday was the great pocky party, held in celebration of all things thin, pretzly and dipped in chocolate! actually, held in celebration of the piece of paper you saw in the previous entry, but things that are thin, pretzly and dipped in chocolate did make their presence felt. (^_^) just a little bit. (^_^) we didn’t eat all of it, but we came pretty close. everybody who came was a little hesitant at first, but everybody liked it.. coz pocky will RULE THE WORLD! (^_^) and for those of you who aren’t into five hundred pounds of chocolate, we have a forest of shrimp! and then we had some cake! because it can’t be a celebration without cake! my mommeh had a cake made just like my book! yay! one day, i promise, i’ll get that thing proofed and up for sale. (and i swear i am going to STAB this freaking media library! it simply will NOT upload my cake picture. fine, we’ll use flickr. that’s what it’s there for, after all. http://www.flickr.com/photos/notuboc/4204652259/) i got some pans, and some gift cards, and of course, some dollars, which i have already put towards the studio, as i have begun calling it. i bought some organizational lovelies, and subsequently ORganized. i’d get a picture up about it, but studio notuboc now occupies two walls of the dining room, a little chunk of the kitchen, as well as a few boxes of shipping supplies in the garage, so it might be a little difficult to fit it all into one frame. (^_^) i discovered things lurking in my pile of papers that i had 100% forgotten about, and about five tons of little ephemera. in the coming weeks, these things will find their way into book-shaped objects, and one day i’ll stop being so lazy and take some pictures of these book shaped objects and get them listed on etsy. i promise… ~meredeth. .