Misc

When spring comes to the University of Chicago campus, there are two annual events that inject a certain whimsical randomness into my work week: Scav Hunt and FOTA (Festival of the Arts). In the last few years, these events have occurred one after the other-- an ordering that helps people like myself who found a kindred spirit in the author of the blog post I'm Sick of Pretending: I Don't "Get" Art.

When packing up my apartment, I stumbled across all the issues of I.E. (which stood for, among other things, "Insolence is Excellence") I ever owned.

Translation Party (which takes an English phrase, translates it into Japanese, then back into English, then back into Japanese until an equilibrium is reached) had its 15 minutes of fame some months ago, but only today did the thought occur to apply it to excerpts from my husband's dissertation.

Regrettably, the following sentence won't ever achieve equilibrium:

Last week was miserably cold in Chicago, so over the weekend I set about making a winter hat. I had some bright green fleece lying around, so it turned into an Android head. From start to finish, it didn't take more than an hour and a half.

I recently decided to make beet salad, but managed to forget to pick up every single ingredient in the recipe, save sliced beets. What I did have on hand was a lot of produce that had previously been bought and forgotten.

This summer, after I had amassed a delightful collection of geeky t-shirts, I was promoted to a managerial position where I couldn't really wear them to work. My solution? Design geeky fabric, print it at Spoonflower, and sew it into button-down shirts.

After seeing a call for artwork for Ubuntu 10.10 wallpapers on OMG! Ubuntu, I submitted a handful of photos to the Ubuntu Artwork pool on Flickr, just for kicks. Not long after, I discovered that two of my photos-- the feather and the happy cinnamon-- made the final 17 chosen for inclusion in the Maverick release. It's an honor, and a geeky dream come true.