rosie thomas played a song for me

so i made some walnut ink a few weeks ago. i was too late to get the walnuts that fell here in michigan, but when i was down in louisville visiting jason i was able to snag some while on a loner bike ride where i got lost but then found the walnuts, and then found my way back to the apartment.
so i simmered them in water for about 6 hours, then cut off their now soft green outershell, and then boiled them for about an hour, then let them soak or a day or so before straining it all and putting it in a cool whip container.

i've also been working on some bottlecap magnets. i bought this liquid plastic stuff that i pour into the cap once i have set some collage material inside. it then sets and dries. i have about 15 now. some more are down here. eventually they'll be up on etsy.com to sell.
a week or so ago i had another bout of the "what am i going to do with my life" crisis. so far, i've been encouraged by lots of people to pursue a job through americorps. and after looking at their website, man, they have lots of interesting opportunities. i've also been considering this other organization called Artcorps. basically they are like peace corps but for artists. you go to one of their locations in central or south america and teach/create art which deals with social or environmental issues that the community you are placed in is dealing with. the only hitch is that you have to be fluent in spanish and i know pretty much none. but i do have a little more than a year to learn if i do decide to pursue this. we'll see. also, on a completely unrelated note, i wish i was allowed to go to cuba as it sounds really sweet there. 80% of their farms are organic and they have tons and tons of urban and roof farms as cuba as a country is so self sustaining. it's great.

so, i've gone to two shows over the last few weeks as well. last weekend i went to my brightest diamond and tim fite. it was great. i'd only heard one by my brightest diamond from the asthmatic kitty compilaition "Mews Too" and had never heard of tim fite, but they were both very good and very different, which i like when going to a show.

tim fite was crazy. my notes on his show are below.

although he ripped the beat and some other stuff from ratatat for his song "It's All Right Here" but that's okay cause it's still a hilarious song. here's some notes i took about him on a receipt after he played (you know, so i wouldn't forget everything that happened!).

"my brightest diamond really surprised me as well. i wasn't really into them on Mews Too (the song being "Riding Horses"), and it was probably because it was a compilation and i was expecting a certain type of music because it was from sufjan's label. but i ended up likeing Riding Horses much more live. anyways. they reminded me of a mix between regina spektor and mirah, mostly regina though, but more rockin'. i enjoyed it quite a bit, especially because i'm a fan of edith piaf and she did one of her songs.

tonight i went to see rosie thomas. i honestly can't remember the opener's name, he was on the FFM sampler but yeah, i wasn't really impressed, he was okay i guess. one or two good songs but overall just sounded like he was trying a bit too hard. i did like the song where he sung about rainbows though.

rosie was great, really funny and great stuff to say to all of us. i don't really want to say more than that even though there was so much more. it was just really good.

about a week ago, aaron and i went to meijer late at night to buy a new ceiling light fixture as ours broke...well, at least a month ago. anyways, we ended up getting sidetracked in the gaming center. he was playing the wii and i got stuck on the ps3 because the other wii controller was broken. BUT! little did i know, i would be sucked into the best skateboarding game EVER. hands down. it's pretty much exactly what i wanted tony hawk's games to be like. when i played those games i would set the stats really low so that things looked more realistic and were hard to do. long story short, this game is nothing like tony hawk and makes skateboarding in a video game more like it is in real life (aka hard). anyways, i was seriously considering buying a game system just so i could play this game but it doesn't come out for wii and i really don't want a ps3 or an xbox 360...or really the wii either because they are expensive and really don't fit in with my whole "get less stuff thing" i want to make a reality. anyways, here's a video clip from the game i found on youtube. if you really don't want to watch all 4 minutes of it, just skip till it says -2:10 on the right hand side and watch till at least -1:55 as that's right where my favorite trick of the video starts!.

oh yeah, and i'm sick again. it sucks. also, tomorrow i work during the santa parade (in novemeber???) what the heck grand rapids?!

p.s.- rosie thomas encouraged me