Monday, April 30, 2007

Weekend!! Wrappup! (now with 200% more parentheses)

Want to know what fun excitement I got up to this weekend? FUN FUN FUN!!

I went to see a documentary about a font. Oh yes, a font. Not just any typeface, mind you, but Helvetica himself (I assign maleness to Helvetica. It just seems like a he to me.)

It was actually quite interesting and unexpectedly funny. The movie is lots of interviews with graphic designers, interspersed with shots of public graphic design and the ubiquity and history of Helvetica. I'd recommend it if you're even vaguely interested in graphic design. The way a typeface can manipulate and suggest and connote fascinates me.

The rest of the weekend? There is an (GRRR, SLOWLY) ever-growing pile of silk lace, yes, with beads. I worry constantly that it's striping in an ugly way. I am too far and too close to deadline to rip back. K the love monkey says the striping makes it more interesting. I live in dread.

How big is it? I've made it through all of Murder on the Orient Express and have started Island of Dr. Moreau. On tape, since I have yet to master lace charts + knitting + reading at the same time. My literature choices? Um, they consist of "whatever looks good on the Recorded Books shelves in the library." I was never fond of mysteries much, but I figured I should break out of my current sci-fi/fantasy rut and old stuff is always fun because everything wasn't clichéed yet. The Agatha Christie was great, I'm going to have to borrow more of her stuff. The H.G. Wells is appropriately creeping me out and he's always good for a great plot and climax. It's weird, because I can't watch suspenseful horror movies at all. Not. At. All.

Also! I made myself go out and mow the lawn on Saturday. Not just me either, by Sunday we had a RARE 3-adjacent neighbors mowed-lawn extravaganza! Except I was lazy and didn't edge ours, so we're the only ones with messy edges, somewhat spoiling the effect.

I hate taking care of grass. I like to walk on it, but that's about it. I dream of ripping the sucker out and putting in drought-tolerant, low-upkeep perennials, and I'd have done so if I weren't lazy and the neighbor kids didn't weren't avid ballplayers. Our front yard is center outfield. My parents, on the other hand, would kill for this lawn. They live in New Mexico, where they continue to mostly deny they live in the middle of a desert. They finally exchanged their front, sloped lawn for a "kitty litter lawn" (rock & cacti) a few years ago. The back lawn they carefully water and complain bitterly about the water bills, and that Kentucky bluegrass slowly roasts from the lack of humidity. Me, I'm just so glad when the lawn here dies down for the summer. And it really does die, we tried to keep it alive by watering it 3x a week last summer so it'd look nice for the visitors, but it still died, just in a awful pimpley patchy way.

Where is K in all of this, the darling husband? K has been working, in the vernacular of our peculiar profession, a Death March for the last few months. I'm getting mighty damn tired of the 60+ hour workweeks. He didn't get any day off this last week, worked the whole weekend. Grump.

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