So.

There are time tested hallowed traditions one must follow while a Core Fellow. As per these traditions, I have moved out of my studio and bedroom at Penland to make way for a new group of Core Fellows, and left huge piles of crap in my wake.

I don't really like saying goodbye. It's hard and yucky and awkward and sometimes you have to do it twice or three times which is even worse. But it has to be done. So.

Goodbye studio.

Goodbye witty light switch.

And goodbye dearest, sweetest nerds. I will miss you all so much.

bwahahahaaa

Printing was just murder today... HA! I did print a whole bunch of new cards that I'll be taking pictures of soon. Feathers, wrens, hellos, congrats, thank you''s, more robocops! Lots of new things.

My boyfriend and I also got the stomach flu, luckily offset by two days so there was no competition for bathroom territory. This was an experience I wish on no one. No one. I spent most of Thursday night curled up on the bathroom floor reading Nintendo Power, which is perfect reading material for coming in and out of consciousness. Tough questions, real answers.

Like this one,

Q: If you could play your Nintendo anywhere, where would it be?

A: I would play it on a mountain of money so then I could buy more Nintendo games after!

Awesome! Thank goodness we're both feeling great now. So great...why...It makes me want to SING!

(thank you, Henry, for this video)

Storm of the Century!

Well I had an interesting week. Thanks to Gizmodo. So let's start at the beginning. Way back, in the time machine to last week.

Serval Cat Cards in progress

It was my last full week to work in the letterpress studio before I move. I reprinted some serval cat thank you cards in new color combinations. Halftones are not the easiest thing to print on a Vandercook. You have the have just the right amount of ink and just the right amount of pressure. Otherwise, the tiny raised dots that make up the image will overflow and fill up and you have to clean the plate and start over.

And then Mike, Mark, and I drove to Delaware. In the snow storm of the century, during a state of emergency. It took 19 hours (normally it's a 10 hour drive) to get to Wilmington. It was rough. We ate Tastykakes in the car.

There was a great deal of snow.

So back to Gizmodo. We got to Delaware at midnight, a little shaken, had some scotch, and fell asleep. The next morning, I checked my email and I had many messages of congratulations and many orders, many many orders for Robocop Valentines. So I checked a link and found this!

A blurb!

Apparently read by many men. Many men who wanted Robocop Valentines for their girlfriends. I promptly sold out of everything. And enlisted the help of my dear roommate, Jessica, to help me send off the rest of my stock. Thank you Jessica! And thank you Gizmodo, you just bought me a board shear.

While all that was going on, we went for a walk in Rockford Park, where there is a giant stone water tower that strangely happened to be unlocked that day (it's not supposed to be). So we walked up to see the view.

Pretty nice.

This is where we'll go if there's a zombie attack.

So now we are in Wilmington at my parents house. Waiting out another snow storm by watching Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations and I am reading The Scar, by China Mieville. Mike is reading Lives of the Artists by Calvin Tomkins. The cat is sleeping.