Tuesday, May 17, 2016

In lieu...



It's Monday so I didn't want to leave you with NOTHING.
I stayed late at work and needed a decompress so the majority of the column directly under the red flower is what happened in lieu of a blog post today. 

I regret nothing!


Actually that reminds me, in mid June I will be starting the NYS Summer Run Series races (strong suspicion I'm going to regret *that*) so my Mondays are going to be WELL accounted for. 


I have however enjoyed the exercise of reflecting back on my week each week so I will see what works out for a new Bat time on this here Bat channel.

Monday, May 9, 2016

Where the %^&*^$ did Monday Monday go?

I finally started binge listening to the Blackstar album by David Bowie so "Girl Loves Me" has been circling around my head for days (hence the title).


Busy season at my job has hit in spades so I plan to spend a bit more time relaxing and a bit less blogging about what I'm doing to relax, but I will try not to forget about you all.

Lets see,

Dracula in Real Time is rolling and we're only about a week in so if you're interested now is the time to get into it. There are, as previously mentioned, fully automated Twitter and Facebook pages.


I'm doing a daily pic project on my Instagram called #365Halloween
It is a pic a day series focused on all of the Halloween things which flavor my personal environment.

On a related note I got a new vanity license plate. I wont be sharing it here because that seems dumb, but I will say it's fairly ridiculous and Halloween themed.


I'm merrily chugging along on my current cross stitch piece - HAED's Garden of Delight by William Morris. I found one thankfully small mistake (look for the small spray of pink spots shown on the left but not on the right) and figured out a small tweak to parking method which has made a big difference in how easy it is for me to keep track of my stitches.

After some discussion I think I will be making my own "how to park" post but that will take some real work as I will have to mock up a piece to use as an example since it kind of necessitates showing your pattern and that ain't strictly legal when its a paid pattern.

Heaven And Earth Designs "Zen" Countess and threader set
I've also started using stitch marking pins and am waiting for a really nice set from HAED to arrive (seriously, I've been eyeing them for months and there was a really good sale).


Oh! I also made Q snap grime guards! I took a bunch of pics during the construction process so that will be its own post as well. I already replaced the elastic on the smaller one and will be doing so on the larger as the elastic I had in there was really kind of sprung and it doesn't have the right tension to it. Matching project bags are in the planning stages.

Monday, May 2, 2016

Monday Monday - the Bygone Bloodsucker Edition

I'm co-opting Monday Monday to talk about a side project I've been doing on and off since 2011. It's actually been the majority of what I've been doing for the last several days so I say it counts.

In the fall of 2006 I stumbled on a community online called Dracula1897 which presented Bram Stoker's Novel Dracula in a way I had never considered before; in real-time!

Dracula was written in a form called the epistolary novel, where the prose is presented as a series of documents. These documents are all date stamped, and so they used these stamps to separate out the novel into a sort of serial, making semi-daily posts following the chronology of the story spanning the six month period in which the book takes place.

I will be reproducing this experience (in my own way) at Dracula in Real Time over the next six months. I have done this a couple of times before and am relaunching tomorrow. 



If you (like me) are not good at regularly checking a blog you can follow along with automated posts via
Facebook - RealTimeDracula
Atom RSS feed

There is also an associated Facebook group (to discuss and handle administrative questions).

If you would like to see how this works in practice check out the (six months delayed) sister feed - Dracula on the Off Season which will be wrapping up the end of the book within the next week.