Fear and Loathing in Los Angeles

Moving right along....

2009-06-22T16:46:00.000-07:00

I'm moving this blog! Come find me at blog.lyssakaehler.net. I'll have it unpacked and prettied up soon, but all the posts and archives are there already, sitting around in boxes in the front room.

Tight

2009-06-17T14:09:00.000-07:00

We're halfway through the month and I've spent my whole budget already...well, not quite, but $17 for two weeks isn't much. Sigh. The only thing I miss about my "real job" is the regular infusions of money. Given the choice, I wouldn't trade it back, but it is difficult saying no to things, especially in this ad-driven feel-good market industry that says you deserve new shoes, a latte, a night out, etc.

Did I mention that this $17 also has to cover any groceries we might need? Yeah. New shoes, I don't need them.

Now, I could just spend a little more...pull a little out of savings, tell myself I'll make it up next month...but you know you never do. Next month has its own surprises and temptations. If there are any real emergencies, there is money to cover them - that's not what I'm trying to work on here. What I'm trying to fix is my pattern of running over budget every single month for no good reason.

I know that I'll need more milk before the end of the month. Other than that, the pantry, fridge and freezer are well stocked, the chickens are laying lots of eggs, I have all the art supplies I need, and the cats have plenty of kibble. We have lots of projects to work on, netflix to enjoy, some tickets to events already purchased, and enough alcoholic beverages to get through a return of prohibition. It isn't like we're going to suffer.

It will feel pretty good to get to the end and still have ten bucks in my pocket. Don't tempt me, please.

Chicken Butt

2009-06-11T15:34:00.001-07:00

Some days, the creative process begins with a good chicken chase. By which I mean they chase me looking for handouts.

Lucy and Greta are very demanding and sociable. Maud is a bit more reserved...always has been.

After their closeups, I went through and picked out my three favorites, cropped them to a good size, and made line drawings.

Line drawings got converted to linocuts, and linocuts get printed on kraft paper cards.

I'm putting up a whole whack of stationary in my Etsy store tomorrow, so if that's your thing, come get some!

The girls appreciate your support of the arts, and also want you to know that they would like more cracked corn now please.

2009-06-08T10:55:00.000-07:00

The folks who owned this house before us did some strange things...but one of the strangest was definitely our weird little garage bathroom. See, someone had decided that it would be a great idea to convert the garage to a studio apartment...so they built a bathroom in one corner, added a sink and a bit of counter space, and profit!

Or not, because they lost the house anyway. Anyway...

The bathroom was built on a raised brick and concrete pedestal, so that the dodgy sewer drain would actually drain. This makes the ceiling in there around 6.5 feet...not so good. The showerhead sticks out of the wall at my shoulder level, and I'm not that tall. Worst of all, the whole structure was built in the front corner of the garage, blocking the garage door rails and keeping the door from rolling up more than six inches (which is just enough to let feral cats come in and raid your koi food, but not enough for anything useful.

When the husband came home from work Friday night, I was swinging a sledgehammer at it. He's a good sport, so he grabbed a crowbar and we went to town. By the time the dust settled, the garage door was wide open and all that was left was the dodgy platform and its lonely toilet (we're leaving that for now, strange as it is. Soon we will be remodeling the bathroom and will be very happy for its existence).

In the end, we had to move around most everything in the garage, including a full rearrangement of my studio...but look! Now it's so clean and pretty.

Plus, without that giant aluminum shield interfering with my router, I now have speedy speedy internet out here! I'd better put it to good use and get back to work :)

Baycon

2009-05-28T09:20:00.000-07:00

And lo, they did go unto Baycon, and there they did party.

And boy, did we party.

(photo shamelessly stolen from tsgeisel's flickr set; I was too busy bartending to take any pictures of my own. None of these people are me either...I'm in the back of the room where the eerie purple glow is)

This year, for the first time, we got a room on the Party Floor and threw parties every night. There is something really awesome about looking out over your room and seeing cylons, klingons, steampunks, mad scientists, and punks of all other kinds all dancing together to Juno Reactor, then drinking whiskey until sunrise.

The only downside to the weekend was that my cell phone was stolen by charismatic catholics at some point. I'm getting the replacement hooked up today, but if I used to have your phone number, I probably don't anymore.

Alpha Blocks

2009-05-12T15:34:00.000-07:00

From A to Z, the alphabet blocks are done. Now, what to do with them? I'd like to print up a book of them, but looking into self-publishing for art books it looks god-awful expensive. I'd also like to print onto kids' t-shirts and stuff and sell on Etsy, but I'm still conducting color-fastness tests on my inks. Ideas and feedback are most welcome! Would you buy stuff like this for your kids or your friends' kids? What would you like the most?

We has teh cute

2009-04-27T10:50:00.000-07:00

I had a squeaky kitten in my jacket,

but a little of this, then a little more...

and now I have a happy purring pocket kitten. Those little tiny claws do hurt, though.

ox n kittens

2009-04-22T10:37:00.000-07:00

Bless the internets. Did you know that, if for some reason you needed to know what an ox skeleton looked like, google image search would return 89,000 hits? This whole thing may have gotten out of hand.

Various art projects are proceeding. One of my goals for this month has been to get my websites live by the end of the month, so I'm learning how to do that as I go. It is kinda fun, but not so exciting to blog about...and if I'm bored writing about it, you all must be bored to tears to read about it! It will be nice to be able to hand out cards with a real groovy website on them, though.

Aside from that, there has been a kitten invasion! I have FIVE foster kittens right now, which is a whole lot of kitten. They're about two weeks old, need bottle feeding, and basically sleep for hours then stumble around drunkenly looking for milk for a while, purr like crazy, then go back to sleep. Three red tigers, one tortie, and one calico (we redheads have to stick together).

egg

2009-04-16T12:33:00.000-07:00

Lucy laid her first egg today, and has now decided that motherhood is her one true goal and passion in life. From the moment of that first egg she has been sitting on the nest pretty much all the time.

The fact that the first egg was a soft-shelled mess that she broke and started to nibble on is not deterring her in the slightest. Oh well. Hopefully she will get it all sorted out eventually.

In other news, Mindshare is tonight and I'm making red beans and rice, two facts which have nothing to do with each other. That is all.

Anybody need an accountant?

2009-04-13T09:57:00.000-07:00

So over the weekend I was in San Francisco, where I am to be found at least once a month. We park our car in pretty much the same spot on Van Ness where we always park, meet up with some people, walk a bit, drop off some gear in the car, have an early dinner, and go back to the car (well before dark).

Where we find one of the windows smashed and a lot of bags missing.

Now, on one level I was freaking out about all the expensive things that had been in those bags, but on another and entirely more freak-outable level, my sketchbooks were in that bag- more than a year's worth of work and documentation. The husband had similarly irreplaceable things in his.

But wait...

It turned out that the accountant working in the building this had happened in front of had seen the whole thing, ran out of his office and chased the guy for two blocks, caught him, recovered all of our gear (and ironically, liberated a bag belonging to the thief in the process...hope his ID was in there), and returned to his office, after leaving us a nice note to let us know where to find him.

If you're around SF and you need the kind of accountant who wears running shoes and fights crime, have I got the guy for you!

How to pray

2009-04-03T16:22:00.001-07:00

Last year in Japan I bought a kamiza (spirit house, or something like that) for our dojo.

The box it came in had instructions printed on the side for how to use it. Somehow I find this hysterically funny.

me and kwan yin

2009-03-30T12:10:00.000-07:00

While taking photos of my work for Etsy I managed to get in an accidental self-portrait. Silly girl.

I'll have to take the glass out to get a better picture, but lookee! Isn't it pretty? Don't you want one?

ETA: Now you can get one: OkamiPress.etsy.com. Support your local (or not so local) artists, please.

138

2009-03-26T19:10:00.000-07:00

130 is the goal, mind you. I made it this far a while ago, backslid, then got back on the wagon. Getting closer, and when I get there I will be buying this victory bikini. This one, I think. I could use a zippy blue.

This bikini is almost exactly the same color as the flowers that are blooming in my yard right now.

I really needed a workout today. It's that phase of the moon, where my energy and mood is all over the place and I am either maniacally dancing around or sobbing in the corner somewhere. Exercise balances me out tremendously...and has the side effect of actually making me crave healthy food, thus I am here blogging whilst noshing on raw carrots and celery. It's a conspiracy.

Work has been weird lately. I'm getting ready to put up a bunch of stuff for public consumption, and I'm really stressed out about it. I mean, up until now I couldn't really fail, because none of my work was for sale yet...but once it's out there, I have to deal with the reality of the whole thing (and good god, I hope stuff sells because I not having any income is its own kind of stress). Meh. Enough about that.

I got my motorcycle permit this morning, which is very very very exciting because a shiny new (to me, anyway) Honda CBR appeared in the driveway last night while I was at the gym! Yes, mom...I will be very very careful. CHP motorcycle classes at a god-awful early hour next two Sundays, and then I will be a fully licensed ninja biker.

Clean

2009-03-23T15:49:00.001-07:00

One of the best things about working from home is being able to take poledancing breaks whenever I feel like it. It's one of the best things about working from my home, anyway. Your home mileage may vary.

One of the best things about inviting people over to your house is that it motivates you to do things like clean up your living room and set up your dance pole (spontaneous pole dancing is a thing that should break out at all parties, I think). My upper body strength has definitely come a long way since I had the pole up last! I can do a lot of moves I barely dared try last time.

My studio is clean, too...at least, it's about as clean as it gets. Lots of new lighting, and I even have a computer in here so I can photograph/scan my work and get it web-ready as soon as it is finished. Yay!

Last week was pretty crazy, with ninja class, Hollywood Pagan meetup, Mindshare, I forget what on Friday, and cocktail party on Saturday...so last night I demanded a night of slacking off and watching Gundam. I have now upgraded my fangirl status from rusty to tarnished.

Excuses, excuses

2009-03-21T13:24:00.000-07:00

You might have noticed a bit of a lack of art posting the last couple of weeks...I haven't been slacking, but I have been doing some reworking of my studio. Soon it should be easier for me to photograph/scan art, something I need to be doing if I'm ever going to sell stuff to people who haven't been here in person.

There is just always so much to do, you know?

plateau (now with bonus kitchen pictures)

2009-03-18T19:07:00.000-07:00

When I lived in Santa Cruz, I used to go to this awesome gym...it had a pool, yoga classes, stretching rooms, free coffee, a book exchange...hell, the place even had a bar (which I could not use because I was too young, but hey, I still liked that it was there). The best part, though, was this really brassy redheaded Australian woman who was always there when I was. She would always burst into the dressing room calling out "Hello, Ladies!" and proceed to tell raunchy jokes and socialize naked for a while before starting her workout.

My current gym is a bit boring by comparison. No one really interesting there so far, but the equipment is nice and the place is a lot cleaner than when I used to go there a couple of years ago. I do miss the randomly-bursting-into-song lady, though.

I think I've hit a bit of a plateau with the toning and weight loss, though...so it's time to mix it up and quit slacking! I think I want to start running again, since I seem to have gotten all the benefit the elliptical trainer will give me. Time to buy one of these, since we DD girls can't take the bouncing. I swear, I spend more on sports bras than pretty much any other clothing items I buy (well, excluding the corsets. I have an expensive corset habit).

Oh yeah, here's my kitchen. Too tired to talk about it after all that exhausting workout talk.

Granite

2009-03-10T14:40:00.000-07:00

I'm listening to the granite countertop guys in the next room, hoping I didn't screw up the installation of the cabinets too badly (level planes are not my strongest point, though I did my best). Sometimes speaking Spanish while not looking like someone who speaks Spanish is fun. I am so, so, so excited about not having to wash dishes in the bathtub soon. My kitchen is going to be so pretty!

Now: why does everybody hate my sink? It is a perfectly good sink that was perfectly happy to be overmounted in the prior kitchen. Now, that doesn't seem to be good enough anymore. Sigh. It will look nice and fancy all undermounted, but damn I didn't want to spend that money.

Later: Fuck it. Had to buy a new sink...this one is sexier anyway, and I suppose it must be helping the economy. The sound of granite being cut is not helping my head. Damn it this better work. I want my kitchen done NOW.

Things grow

2009-03-09T10:45:00.000-07:00

This....

now looks more like this...

and my little chicks are looking a lot more like chickens. They still haven't laid any eggs yet, though.
Lazy broads.

Even the hot tub grew a deck! More on that later, though, since Blogger seems to be crashed and I really ought to be working. Bye!

Desert Soliloquy

2009-03-03T12:04:00.000-08:00

Ah, Arizona. When I was growing up there I wanted to leave so badly. I had lived in the same house since I was born, gone to the same high school as my dad, and even had some of the same teachers. I was on a plane to California the morning after my high school graduation, and I didn't come want to come back for years.

The desert gets to you, though. I was almost finished with college when I found myself doodling cactus and sagebrush in the margins of my psych notes and having dreams about the mountains. It was time to toss some things in the truck and hit the road.

This time, my main purpose in coming out was to visit the Renaissance festival in good company.

Daniel and Michael are both good old friends, and I spent a lovely groggy day swaggering around the fair getting into trouble with them.

We've been friends since we first met out at the fair in high school, and have managed to stay in touch most of the time since then. After fair, we slacked around, ate pizza, and watched The Thomas Crown Affair (awesome and sexy movie, I recommend it).

The drive back through the desert is always better than the drive in. It was clear and sunny, working up to a 90 degree spring day. Wildflowers everywhere, wispy clouds, cruise control, good music, and my laptop on the passenger seat charging up and snapping an occasional photo.

Back at home now, back to work. Still cannot find that blasted camera.

Some of my favorite things

2009-02-24T12:49:00.000-08:00

Some of my favorite things, right at this moment. Answers are subject to change without warning.

Book: The one Kobo Abe book I haven't read yet! I thought I had read them all and he's long dead now, so it was a treat to find that there was one more to go (The Face of Another, if you must know).

Animal: Raccoon. They're just so fun to cartoonify.

Album: Moby: Play. It is playing in my studio right now.

Chicken: Greta. Don't tell Lucy, she'll be jealous.

Domino: the double three. Not sure why.

Letter: O.

Flower: Alyssum. Smells like honey, which makes me think of mead and mead is good.

Husband: Mine, of course! That part, not so subject to change.

reading

2009-02-15T20:27:00.000-08:00

It will be no surprise to those who know me well to know that I read really, really fast. Seriously fast: I read One Hundred Years of Solitude in one five-hour bender (and boy did my head hurt) and took along War and Peace as pleasure reading on a recent Japan trip (one week of reading here and there, if you were wondering).

Sinking into a good story is intoxicating; people ask me how I can enjoy what I'm reading when doing it so fast, but I think the speed makes it better. The story swirls by at a tremendous rate and I can get completely lost in it. By contrast, I'm easily bored by movies and especially television where things seem to happen so so slowly, and mostly watch them while doing something else. The reading speed does help with subtitles, though.

There is a dark side to the force, though. Since I know it won't take me very long, I'm willing to read stuff I would never consider if it meant a more serious commitment out of my life (and I also almost never stop reading a book in the middle; even if it's pretty bad I feel like I need to know how it ends and hey, how long could it take?). Last Thursday, someone brought a copy of Twilight to my book swap club and I read it today. I'm a bit embarrassed to say I enjoyed it, though I did feel a bit dirty, like I'd been caught ogling the guys on Teen People in the grocery store checkout line. It was a good bit of escapism, though.

Now, back to more serious things. The Satanic Verses are still mocking me for having picked them up and put them down so many times. It is a good book, but one that does not do well with being picked up and put down- every time I do I have to go back a few pages and re-find my place in the convoluted story. It would be better in one long go, but I haven't had one of those kind of days in a while.

Kitchen (not Banana Yoshimoto)

2009-02-13T09:12:00.000-08:00

Hi blog! I'm still here, still working on the kitchen. Are you tired of reading about that yet? I'm certainly tired of working on it, but it is getting satisfyingly close to a finish.

Drywall? check.

Laminate floor? check.

Happy new paint? check.

Wall cabinets? check. (and yes Roxie, I hung them by myself).

Base cabinets? check.

Wall shelf? Check.

Plywood counter underlay? check.

Now that I have the cabinets finished and the plywood on the counter, we can begin putting all our kitchen junk away. Um, we have a lot of kitchen junk. I have everything we have accumulated in the last 2.5 years here in LA, as well as all the recently rescued boxes of things we put away "for a couple of months" when we moved down here. Lots of duplicates in there that need purging. Anyone around Los Angeles need some kitchen gak?

After I get all the junk put away, next step is to do some finish carpentry on the spice racks, wine racks, and trim, then we are having snazzy granite countertops put in. We decided to go ahead and splurge on those, because, well, there just isn't that much countertop to begin with and we wanted something nice. It will be fantastically exciting to have a sink in there again, too.

Anyway, I promise a photo-journalistic wrapup later. Time for me to engage in that time honored Virgo activity of sorting and organizing small objects into little compartments.

Things found in walls

2009-02-05T19:00:00.001-08:00

Yesterday I learned to do electrical work (a first for me, surprisingly). Here's my first wired in outlet. Isn't he cute? After that, I went on to wire up the rest of the kitchen outlets, including switched plugs for garbage disposals, wiring hookups for the dishwasher, and all that good stuff. Fun times.

Today: drywall. Let me tell you, drywall is heavy. Moving 4x8 sheets of it around by yourself is not fun, but I did it anyway because I'm stubborn like that. Installing it has not been fun, especially with my shoulder acting up again (I'm blaming the rain...it couldn't possibly be due to lugging around heavy-ass sheets of drywall). Even though the job itself sucks, it is rewarding to see the kitchen transforming into a habitable space again so drastically. I don't think it is going to get done tonight, since I shouldn't push my shoulder too hard, but I should be able to wrap it up tomorrow morning and start laying the new laminate floor.

We found some odds and ends in the wall when we opened it up:

I love this bulb chart! I think it is going to become a bit of kitchen art when all is done.

And Martha, I hope it all worked out for you. I'm putting this clipping back in the wall, since it seems to belong there.

For our part, we left a lot of scribbled notes on the inside of the wall and Jordan classed it up with some raunchy graffiti during a margarita-heavy demolition session.

Tonight was supposed to be a Pagan coffee night, but I think I'll be curling up with some tea and movies instead, while the rain continues. Here's a bonus garden shot, from before the storming started today.

plumber girls are sexy

2009-02-03T18:16:00.000-08:00

I may be sick of Home Depot and I may have developed a completely unhealthy relationship with 7-eleven taquitos, but work on the kitchen progresses.

Here's where we started out last week:

And here's how things are looking at the moment:

Over the last few days I have gotten pretty intimate with the innards of the house. Meet the soil stack, which was ever bit as disgusting as you might imagine the main sewage line of a 60+ year old house could be.

This is a cross section of the drywall we removed, showing the several layers of drywall, plaster, and mud the walls were coated with.

I am a crawlspace dwelling house wrecking ninja. I can even install telephones.

Tomorrow: I learn to do electrical wiring and level the floor!

Nitemare Hippy Girl

2009-01-28T10:19:00.000-08:00

Thanks for the well-wishes; the shoulder is feeling better after a day of enforced idleness (I recommend Lain for enforcing idleness on yourself...it's good!) and I'm gently working back into it. I got a recommendation for a chiropractor from my gym's owner...so hopefully that will work out better than the last chiropractor I went to. She was sweet, but most of her clients were old people and whenever I'd say something like "I was doing a dance performance and tweaked my back doing a backbend like this" or "Last night in ninja class I did a total diving faceplant and my neck hurts a little" she sort of looked at me like I just got off an airship.

Today I'm cooking salad for breakfast with some leafy red lettuce and green onions from my garden. The lettuce is a little bitter, but those of you who know my Campari habit should know that's not a problem for me. In a few minutes a magic chariot will arrive to whisk me off to Northern California for a couple of days of geekyness, and I will come home rested, inspired, and ready to smash up some kitchen.