19 posts tagged “richmond”
Christmas? I guess? I think I'm done Christmas shopping, which is good, since I hate Christmas shopping. I love giving gifts, but I hate crowds and shopping and the mall, and we have no money. So, I didn't do too much buying this year. I am not yet, however, done making Christmas gifts, as that is what most people on our list are getting. And this weekend is the last chance I'm going to get to get stuff done, so the sewing machine is humming.
As usual, my niece makes out like a bandit. I made a frilly flannel Xmas dress for her, and a cape. A little red riding hood cape. Only pink and fleece, which I figure will be practical in New England.
And a fancy schmancy button...
And little arm holes....
In the meantime, I've been working my way through the black and white pictures from the Xmas burlesque show. Should have them all up soon....
This morning while trying to get ready for me to go to my Letterpress class (yes, I'm taking a six week course in learning how to do Old Skool printing. With little type blocks. And an electric press from the thirties. I'm making Christmas gifts for people. Because I have geeky literary friends who will really dig a hand set, printed on nice paper, paragraph from À la recherche du temps perdu. Which will, sadly, be in English because they do not have diacritics in their type sets. Sad clown), and while Mr. P was running around trying to load up the car to take his things to DC to be hung in the gallery for his opening next week, that some jack. bastard. tried to break into Mr. P's studio/the garage sometime in the last day and a half or so. The person in question did this by bashing the crap out of the doorknob, thereby bending the cylinder, and ensuring that the door will be frozen in place forever more. On the upside, I believe that this may have discouraged the asshat (likely some stoopid tweaker) from continuing his mission. On the downside, the door is now stuck in place and will necessitate a repair we cannot afford (unless, that is, Mr. P's show sells out. Do you hear this, universe? We need a sold out show). On the upside, the key for the lock was bent and very near breaking in half, so this was going to be on the repair agenda in any case at some point. On the downside, I'm very unhappy that some freaking tweaker was in our backyard, bashing the hell out of the doorknob to the garage, which is about fifteen feet from the backdoor of the house.
Needless to say, this is not in any way raising my somewhat anemic affection for our current home city. I lived in three different developing countries for almost five years, including one that had no rule of law, and the sum total of my encounters with crime were the loss of two cheap bicycles and a shirt stolen from a laundry line. Almost ten years in New York City and I once had someone take two subway tokens and two dollars out of the pocket of a jacket I'd left unattended on a couch at a club. Four years in Washington, D.C. and once someone broke into the building where I lived (but not my apartment) and stole cash from my landlady's purse. We've been in this house a year and a half and we've got tweakers in the backyard wielding 4x4s. Makes me long for those halcyon Phnom Penh days....
Went to the Richmond Varietease Halloween show, and fiiiiinally got the film back.
We hung out with our friend Jeffrey on Friday, and he introduced us to The Mighty Boosh, which is quite possibly the weirdest thing we've ever seen. But very very funny.
We followed that up by checking out the local burlesque scene (I'd won tickets to the Saturday show). The show was okay-- the host, Miss Magnolia, was the highlight of the show. She was funny as hell. There was also a familiar face--Mab just Mab, whom we have seen with the Cheeky Monkey Sideshow at Artomatic, was there knocking nails into her head and eating balloons and such. The acts were interesting-- I think we'd just gotten used to the scene in D.C., which is pretty active, and has a pretty different style. (Or we were spoiled by Trixie Little and the Evil Hate Monkey). The Richmond acts seem to have a very old school style, where the focus was really on getting out of their clothes, rather than on a narrative-- which was something that I remember being part of the D.C. scene.
In the meantime, I've had this song stuck in my head for three days.....
Dear Residents of Virginia,
I am writing with regards to an important matter that I would like to bring to your attention. Please allow me to introduce a feature available on your automobile with which you may yet be unacquainted. Namely, the turn signal. I realize that you have likely spent hours puzzling over that strange little lever sticking out of the left side of the steering column. I am here to tell you the wonderful, miraculous things that that little lever can do. It can prevent accidents from occurring. Did I not say that it was miraculous? Just think-- a little lever can actually help you to avoid getting caught up in a terrible traffic accident, leaving you trapped inside a crunched up hunk of metal that was once your SUV. How, you may ask, how can such a small thing do so very much? Huzzah! It is truly magical! When you move it ever so slightly up and down, it warns people around you that you are going to change lanes. This may not seem so important, and you may dismiss this the way that you dismiss the power of the Red Light, however, you would be surprised at how useful it is to those in the cars behind you to know that you really are going to suddenly drift across four lanes of traffic. Or perhaps that you plan to slot in and out of spaces in traffic only three inches larger than your automobile, as though you were playing Frogger while doing crank.
So please, give it try!
Sincerely,
That Yankee Lady
I blogged earlier about the Real Small Art League show at VCU. Well, someone was so very enamored of Richard Garrett, Jr.'s real small pieces that they couldn't risk having the pieces go out into the world in the usual RSAL way where they might lose them-- they snagged them out of the locker. Someone stole free art! It's a bummer that someone felt the need to break in an steal them, but good to know that they inspired someone to that point...
So, on Monday, we got a snow day.
Anyhoodle, in these parts, this is like Armageddon. As a result, I got the day off. wheeeeeeee! I spent the day doing crafty stuff and laundry, which was very good, as I've been home so little lately that we were out of clean clothes. Schools around here were canceled for two days-- and in some places three days. Let me repeat that-- seven inches of snow in central VA = three days of no school. In Massachusetts 7 inches wouldn't have gotten you a two hour delay. I have one word, people: WIMPS. All right, all right. I admit, part of the problem is that there are like two plows for the whole area. They never did plow our neighborhood. We have a sharp hill of a driveway, and then a hill to go up to get out of the 'hood, and we spent Monday watching idiots slipping and sliding up and down that hill, almost losing it in the lady across the street's yard more than once. Also, people around here apparently believe that the best way to deal with packed snow over ice while in a vehicle is to race over it at quickly as possible. SIGH.
Now, this is the first real winter weather we had this season. Today, this is being wiped clean with predictions of temps this afternoon in the high 70s. It's meant to hit 80 tomorrow. From 9 degrees to 79 degrees in three days. The snow is gone, all melted.
WEIRD.
I can't decide whether I should do anything in the yard or not. I almost did last weekend... and then was glad I never got around to it with the snow. Maybe I should just take a nap.
Also, I get to go back out to the boonies all next week for work. Oh, joy!
Three random things whose only connection is that I was thinking of them and am too tired/sick/busy to make three separate posts.
1) Today it snowed. Almost enough to snow like for real. In Richmond, this is like a blizzard. I was going to go grocery shopping today, but I felt like dookie, and once I saw the snow I knew there would be no milk or bread at the store, so I stayed home and worked on Artomatic stuff and took a nap. Today was my first day off in almost a month, so I know how to celebrate.
2) I read this article in the NY Times and wanted to throw up. I was particularly taken with this sentiment:
“My bonus is ‘shameful’ — but I worked hard to get it,” said John Konstantinidis, a wholesale insurance broker, lunching Friday at Harry’s at Hanover Square.
Obviously, I have misunderstood the whole thing. The bonuses are really just representative of how very, very hard the people who wrapped my retirement account in toxic assets worked to liquidate any hope I might have of retiring. Ever. Before death. And clearly, as Mr. Konstandinidis implies, the rest of us are a bunch of slackasses who don't work hard enough to get bonuses for.... doing our jobs really really badly. But working hard doing it.
You know, it does occur to me that a lot of those people who are now being laid off from all sectors of the economy might, you know, have been hard workers. Except that all they got was a pink slip. I say we take your "hard worker" bonus and dole it out to some of those people. Also, Mr. Konstantinidis? Shut up please.
3) I finished the quilt for friends Rick and Sarah's new arrival-- who shares her name with my mom! Only they don't share the pronounciation. Still, I was happy to manage to get it finished just as things got ridiculous at work, which made it impossible for me to mail the thing, and I carried it around (along with my brother's birthday present) for two weeks before managing to get to a post office. But it arrived! Which is good. :)
I've also started working on some embroidery projects, one of which (if I ever get the time) I am hoping to turn into a birthday gift for one of my oldest friends. Her birthday is a bit over a month away, but considering how things have been lately, I'm not entirely confident I'll be able to finish it..... fingers crossed.....
So I woke up this morning to this:
Yes, the lightest dusting of snow. Or, as we used to affectionately refer to this in the New England of my childhood, "the first week of October." Of course, this is Virginia, and it is the second week of December.
So I'm currently hunkering down, errands be damned, because Virginians go into complete panic mode at the sight of precipitation, and for snow launch into a pandemonic meltdown that the rest of us keep in reserve for nuclear holocaust.
P's brother was in town for the race, working with the pit crew, only to have the race called for rain (thanks Hannah!) So he got to drive a whole, long way... and then back today. Buuuut, we did take him and his GF around town a bit yesterday to check out the sites of Richmond, this being their first time here.
After a pretty full day of sightseeing (some art, some history, a bunch of fried food), I suggested that we check out the movie at the Byrd Theater. P and I have never been, though we've planned to go for a while. It was awesome. It was so awesome that his brother and GF, who had already seen the movie (the most recent Indiana Jones movie) didn't care that they'd already seen the movie-- the experience was just too good.
First of all, the theater, which was built in 1928, still has the original interior. So it's more like a theater theater, rather than the sterile, nondescript little boxes that movie theaters have become. (Here, go look at some pictures on Flickr of the place). It made going to see a third run movie feel like an event.
But wait! The Byrd Theater is the home of the Mighty Wurlizter! That's right people, Bob Gulledge plays the Mighty Wurlizter every Saturday night. (Scroll to the bottom of the page and click on the links to the audio!) First of all, the lights came up a bit, then they went down, then a spotlight appeared, and Bob and the organ keyboard rose from the orchestra pit. On an elevator. The pipes are all inside the walls of the building, so the sound was amazing. And let me tell you, that Wurlizter was mighty, and that Bob rocked the house. Seventy Six Trombones! Somewhere Over the Rainbow! Toward the end someone called out "Freebird!" And then he played it.ON THE ORGAN.. Clearly, this is why the lines for the 7 and 9:30 showings were around the block.
We had the best time. And the ticket price? Two bucks a head. Best two bucks I've spent in years. Phil wants to go every weekend. Which I think means we might see multiple movies in the theater this year (we're already over our usual once yearly quota, having now seen two movies in the theater). Which is just fine with me. I do believe that the Byrd is the very best thing Richmond has going for it.
