one is silver, the other gold: part one

Tuesday, jul. 22, 2008   |   0 comments

As I said during my panel this past weekend, sometimes life serves up so many great experiences all at once, and my head gets so full of words that I want to use to describe it all, that I get overwhelmed and wind up watching Ghostbusters on TNT instead of writing it all down the way I so want to.

But this has been such a fun week, so packed with people I admire and love—from some of my oldest and dearest friends to spanking-new meets whom I’ve only just had the opportunity to greet after long admiring their writing, websites, and art, and things—that I refuse to let my bad habits swallow these experiences into the void of my non-written-down memories. I will not! My apologies in advanced, however, if this reads like a catalog for a summer daycamp for adults, which is actually very much what it felt like. Starting with…

Last-last Thursday: Art and edible doglets!
I’d say this lucky string of events I’ve been enjoying started on Thursday last, when I hit the Rare Device opening for the most excellent Julia Rothman/Caitlin Keegan (such intimate, fun, funny paintings and drawings!). The opening turned out to be a hot-house hotbed of women whose websites I’ve clicked all up and over, women I’ve always, always hoped to meet in the face one day. Happy in-the-flesh surprises included Elizabeth of a Browner Brown, Victoria of sfgirlbybay, and even out-of-towner Grace of Design*Sponge.

When I met Grace, I actually struggled for a minute to come up with her human name—I’m convinced my brain is filled with a finite number of slots, one name per person, and once a domain name gets in there, it’s forever difficult for me to put another name to that face. And embarrassingly enough, I think actually referred to Grace as Design*Sponge in that same way Buster on Arrested Development talks about “Army,” like an all-powerful entity with no softening “the” before it? Like, “Design*Sponge is so pocket-sized pretty and friendsome!” (Though now that I’m letting this out of the confines of my head, I’m realizing that the Buster analogy doesn’t make much sense at all…really, adding a “the” before “Design*Sponge” would have so much more dehumanizing and worse?) In anyway, Grace was very nice and chatted with me about a whole number of different topics until I noticed that I’d had her cornered for like ten minutes and I stuttered off to get myself a drink and give her leave to snap her amazing photos of the show in peace.

Meanwhile I got in some quality time with my true and great friends Maggie and Annie, and even the Judith (an URL no longer!), whom I’d met once before way back at the Web99 conference? Or maybe it was Web98? Ten years ago? TEN YEARS. (As you read those words, know that I was saying them out loud in an ominous zombie voice as I typed them.)

That’s me, chewing on Lisa‘s magical mystery dog, Wilfredo. In a world where such a perfect dog can live and breathe, how could crime and sadness and rotten milk even exist, I wonder?

Elizabeth, Grace, and Maggie, oh my!

Afterward, Annie rode me on the back of her motor bike to Chow (a ride that earned me a totally authentic exhaust-pipe calf burn), where we met up with Marco and I had myself some delicious chicken-and-steak-and-peanut noodles with ginger cake and pumpkin ice cream on clean-up, the perfect sponge-meal for my many servings of art-opening wine, whew.

Friday: Condo-warming floor party!
Inger just landed herself her very own condo! From the 1920s! With cute built-ins and vintage octagonal bathroom tile and everything! To celebrate this celebratory event, her friends (all people from Marco’s side of the friend family, whom I’m so happy to have in my life now, too) gathered on the day of the official key hand-off for the traditional pizza-and-champagne-on-the-empty-floor ceremonies. Loud, echo-y fun was had by all!

Saturday: Renegade Craft Fair and BBQ and, what the hell, Hell Boy
The fair was an overwhelming parade of greatness, which is why we (Marco and the Mellos) immediately had to hunker down for some giant hotdog fortification before we dove in, despite the fact that we had a BBQ on our horizon. Filled with frankfurter, we were finally able to face all the ingenious and cute and satisfying wares, and I bought all kinds of stuff, from earrings to giant stuffed logs. My log purchase led to a long-hoped-for meeting with the amazing Erika of My Imaginary Boyfriend, the creator of my beloved felt robot ornament and whose felt rock valentines I profiled during my stint filling in and Mighty Goods.

Erika and me and my new log!

The log in action.

After the fair, we went to good friends Peter and Laura’s for face-stuffing of all kinds (including Lisa’s homemade apricot tortelets, holy god), and then ten of us scampered off to the very loud and just-okay but still fun as an overall experience Hell Boy—not nearly as funny as the first one, I’m not sure what happened there. And yet…popcorn! Coke! Marco’s hand to mash!

Sunday: Another BBQ, what?
This time the grill was grilling out on Yerba Buena island, the halfway body of land that splits the Bay Bridge…of all places. Mapquest gave me the most awful directions, causing me to get immediately lost and panicky (you wouldn’t think there was enough room to get lost and panicky on that isle, and yet). After driving around and around, and getting pulled over (by two whole cop cars!) for lurching over a bump-encrusted double-yellow line (no ticket, thank the law, but lots and lots of disappointed head-shaking), I finally found the party. I quickly fell to with the chicken-eating and beer sipping, and nuzzled up with some of my oldest and dearest friends: Sunny (and her cute mom all the way out from Florida!), Leisa, Cash, Caroleen, Scott, Liz, Heidi, wow. In short: lots of laughing and screaming and angel food cake.

Monday: Rest day
Work. Home. Cereal. Sleep.

…Wow, this is getting really long. And my fingers are so hot and sweaty and full of complaint! So I think I’m going to stop the story right here and pick up where I left off (key parties! confidence wigs! liverpudlian! BLOGHER!) tomorrow. Tune in, turn on, and stay cute.