dreaming in flour

Hey Internets! I haven’t been on here at all since school started. But I have, weirdly, been up to a bunch of creative crap, despite being so busy with school I want to curl up in a tiny ball.

First, there is Nation Novel Writing Month, which I have attempted before, but have never put this much effort into. The idea is to take the month of November and write a 50,000 word novel, from start to finish. I didn’t get far at all the last time I tried this in 2007, a few pages maybe (the file has been lost to the ether that is switching computers several times, or I’d check), so I am trying this again. I’m already over 3,000 words, which isn’t much compared to how many words I SHOULD have by now (there are charts and graphs and numbers over on the site – at my current rate I will not finish until April of 2013, says the graph). But still, I haven’t written anything even this long in years, so I’m proud of myself. Maybe I’ll post the damn thing on here at the end of the month, no matter how far into it I get.

The next order of business is my mostly finished but very stalled-out album. James helped me record the majority of it over the summer, and it is mostly done, but I got burnt out around September when school started, and haven’t recorded anything since. There are a bunch of little things that need to be re-recorded or added to, and one song that still needs to be recorded in its entirety. So one or two Saturdays is probably enough to finish it on my end, I just need to stop being a disorganized, stressed out mess. Ugh.

That’s most of the interesting things I’ve been up to since… August? I should post on here more often. I should also start baking things and taking photos again. School has kind of sucked the life out of me; I’m kind of surprised I’ve done anything at all since September.

Actually, I did hang out down by the Charles a couple of days in August, and took some pictures. Most of them didn’t come out very well, but this is kind of cool:

There are these nifty pedestrian walkways to get over Storrow – I like how you’re way up in the tops of the trees. Also, this makes me miss summer.

And this is pretty cute:

I’ve been doing roller derby since May, I don’t think I mentioned that. I’ve had a tough time getting to practice the past while, for school/work/my brain hating me reasons, but I’m trying to get back into it now. Either way, Miso wants to join me.

Hopefully I will be back sooner than later.

In my endless quest to find new places to read reviews of ambient/electronic/IDM/glitch/whatever, I’ve realized something – there is a tendency to review not the music itself, but the packaging. This includes things like album art, song titles, and even quotes from the artist about their intent. I find this unspeakably odd. I was looking around for reviews of Tim Hecker’s Ravedeath – 1972 (which I do not yet own a copy of, digital or otherwise) because I’m a huge Tim Hecker fan and wanted some feedback on whether this was an album I’d be interested in, before lurking around the internet to find a copy on CD. I usually read reviews on Headphone Commute, which I adore, because they don’t do this. They tend to focus very specifically on the music itself, often on things like the weather/season the music goes well with, or the emotions and memories it evokes. This isn’t to say to say that things like song titles, album art, and intent aren’t important, but just that they’re secondary to the actual music. I would hope, anyway.  To that end, my recent desire to get music on CD instead of downloading it is, granted, based partly on wanting the packaging that was intended to be released with the music. There’s something about opening a CD and looking through everything that’s included, holding it in your hands, looking at physical photographs. But in the end, the music’s really the only thing that’s important. You can have all the best intentions and marketing and design but if the music is shitty nothing is going to fix that. This is what happens when Miso wakes me up at 8:30 on a Sunday morning and I can’t fall back asleep.

Hey all! I think I haven’t posted on here since I moved back in January. I am now living in a tiny but very nice apartment in Somerville. The new view from my bedroom window:

But the move was back in January. What the hell have I been up to since then, you may be asking? I mean, you’re probably not, but I’m going to assume you are. I moved a week into a school semester so things got really crazy really quickly. I somehow made it through the semester mostly unscathed, only to start a full time (unpaid) 6 week internship, which only ended the second week of July. Since then, I’ve been looking for a job but also finally, actually recording songs! My good friend James has been kind enough to help me record a bunch of songs in his little studio type thing (it’s in the creepy back room of his bizarre/awesome apartment) and generally listen to me whine about being nervous and help me get better at playing in front of other humans. So yay! I’m hoping to have all the recording done by the end of August and have an actual album worth of songs done and released somewhere on the internet this fall. I’ve spent the last several years writing a ton of songs that had nowhere to go – I never had the equipment or patience to record much of it, and I don’t really perform in front of people because it terrifies me (trying to work on this, see below). SO ANYWAY that is the thing I’m currently geeking out about. In the meantime, have a video of me being a dork and singing in front of a camera:

So I have been suckered into getting a tumblr, and in trying to figure out what to do with it, I did some thinking about what this blog is for exactly. Originally, it was supposed to be for writing about my baking/crafting/knitting/whatever endeavors, which has been true for the most part. But I’ve also posted a lot of random photos on here that I wasn’t sure what else to do with, with no real connection to the rest of whatever post they ended up in. This seems like a great use for said tumblr account. So in the future, photos of Miso being adorable and of clouds and other things I like will end up on there. I’ll still post photos on here that are relevant to whatever I’m writing about (baking, etc). Yay organization!

But right now: PACKING AND LOUD MUSIC. Just discovering how awesome Florence + The Machine is – a little late to the party there. Loud and confident and oddly upbeat mostly. Good packing music.

So… lemon muffins! They just happened. I’m going to actually post about something the night I make it, instead of a month later! (All photos by the lovely and talented Stacey.)

They were super easy, as the recipe promised. I do need to get a lemon zester or some other more appropriate zesting device, however. This was a little awkward.

Batter!

Wielding two spoons. Fancy.

Fast forward 22 minutes…

…muffins!

There are holes in the top that you can’t really see that are filled with delicious lemon sugar goo. Mmmm.

Next time, more lemon sugar goo. Possibly involving Limoncello. I almost got some today, but it’s expensive…

So today’s musical selection… pretty sure I’m the only person that kept listening to Happy2bHardcore after graduating from high school. But Chapter 3 was always the best one. (Don’t be afraid, take all you need from me, and we’ll be strong together…) It’s just so damn chipper. I have a hard time being miserable when listening to this. It’s also my go-to “I got two hours of sleep and I need to drive to school RIGHT NOW” remedy. Better than coffee!

Stay tuned for a post with photos from around Gloucester. Hooray summer!

Kitty photo time.

Stace and Miso are so cute. SERIOUSLY.

View from my porch.

When it’s really foggy, seagulls congregate on the field across the street. I don’t get it…

So I may not be cooking or knitting or painting, but I’m taking photos! That’s something, right? I haven’t been home enough lately to do much else…

Also, Guster concert on Saturday! I finally got their most recent album, Easy Wonderful, and it’s nifty. Catchy as all hell, and really cheerful without being annoying. There’s always been a special place in my heart for Guster. They remind me of the good parts of high school – meeting people in Boston to see them for free in Government Center, cheap concerts in college gyms. That and a whole lot of driving around central MA. “We were young, 21, all those years ago…”

Just a quick update to say I’m alive and still doing crafty things. Some knitting is in the works (finished one of two arm warmers!), and I have a batch of finished ceramics from a class I took over the summer that just need a photo shoot. I moved and started school recently, which equals not finding stuff I need and not having enough time to actually unpack.

Been listening to SomaFM again recently, the lyric appears to be from a song called Sound and Vision by a band called Sea and Cake. I don’t know a lot of what Soma plays, but it all sounds nice…