Father’s Day

I can’t help but feel a little weird about Father’s Day. It’s not that my dad and I don’t get along, it’s just that we don’t really talk much. Last year our phone conversation lasted five minutes, this year it was down to four. (That was with him ending it, not me).

It feels strange to fill out Father’s Day cards year after year gushing about how great he is, but to make me feel more honest I usually pad it with a substantial amount of how much he taught me and that sort of thing. This year I couldn’t wiggle out of it; my mom asked my sisters and I to write up notes of all the things we love about him so she could make a collage for him to wake up to.

I did it, and I wasn’t dishonest, per se, but…well, take a look for yourself.

The One Where I Sell Crafts While Being Cooked Alive

My friend Danielle over at Vintage Notions has awoken quite a craft bug in me (I’m even back on Pinterest!), and we shared a booth this weekend at Sacramento’s Second Saturday, which has music, vendors, and food. It reminded me of the farmers market in my hometown that I often went to in college and made me nostalgic.

If you look closely, you might be able to see me melting into a puddle in the background.

Unfortunately, it was also 108 degrees. I felt like I was being cooked alive, with a marinade of my own sweat.

This also meant we didn’t have many customers until 7 or 8, which was when we had to pack up so that the parking lot we were in could be used for a near by nightclub.

All told, with the six and half hours in the heat (including set up and break down time) I made…

Negative fourteen dollars. Actually if I include the parking I paid before I realized there was free parking and dinner I bought myself, it’s more like negative twenty two dollars.

Yipes.

But I’m not going to give up. Not yet. The extreme heat certainly didn’t help, so I’ll give it a couple more tries to see if less extreme weather helps. Here are a few other things learned by seeing my more experienced partner-in-craftiness:

An Excused Absence

As soon as I got home from work today, I spent my evening trying to update my Nerd Fitness six week challenge thread. In theory it should’ve been easy; throw up a couple of ‘before’ pictures and a few lines of text, and done! But I needed to resize my images, which led me first to photoshop (not working) then to Picasa (doesn’t have that functionality) until about an hour later I’d given up and was working off a thumb drive on The Geek’s computer.

As we sat down to watch the latest Game of Thrones I started trying to talk myself into being productive – “I still need to write my blog for today too!”

The Geek: “No, you don’t.”

Oh, well if I have permission I guess that’s fine. It’s like a note from your mom to get you out of school. That’s how this works, right?

Anyway, feel free to join my half-Orc ranger in my epic quest to level up my life.

Or just tune in to laugh at my failures. It’s all about the same.

I’m going to continue my evening contemplating the reality that any character I get attached to in Game of Thrones is invariably going to die. Just spare Tyrion for me, okay? Please?

“This is sitcom levels of absurdity”

As an ongoing annoyance to The Geek and my friend The Historian (previously mentioned here and here – sorry, I’m bad at recurring characters), I’m very self-deprecating, most notably about my ability at work.

As The Geek and I were on our way to a coffee date (yes, we’re officially old now), he brought it up suddenly.

The Geek: “You’ve been doing your job for two years now. You must be good at it.”

Me: “Yeah, but I feel like I have a lot more to learn.”

The Geek: “But you got a promotion, you must be good!”

Me: “That job’s mostly making materials, it actually means I get less practice one-to-one with kids.”

The Geek: *big sigh* “Rachel, I swear, if they gave you Employee of the Month you’d say you didn’t deserve it.”

I turned red and started giggling nervously, and then had to explain that after a month with the agency they’d made me Employee of the Month.

The Geek: “What?!” he yelled. “Are you kidding me? This is sitcom levels of absurdity!”

Realizing the depths of my self-deprecation, The Geek now seems to be trying to use reverse psychology on me. He recently made a joke about me being Socially Awkward Penguin, and when I responded that I’m not that bad he said, “Oh good, I thought you’d agree with me.”

Well played, my friend, well played.

Crafter’s Conundrum

So in case you haven’t noticed, I’m crafty. Also a geek. But something been making it a little tricky for me to be crafty. I’m also…

…a minimalist.

DUN DUN DUNNNN

Teasing Fate

“So what do you want for your birthday?” I asked The Geek as his twenty fourth birthday approached.

“Surprise me!”

“No.” That arrangement doesn’t ever seem to end well.

He thought for a moment, then told me the last thing I would’ve expected. “A tarot deck.” Seeing my eyes boggle, he explained, “I think it’d be interesting to understand as a cultural thing. Plus, from pop culture the only card I know of is the Death card. I wonder what other ones there are.”

Well, to each his own. About a day after he’d gotten it, I saw him fiddling with the deck and immediately asked him to do a reading on me – partially because I also didn’t know much about the cards, but also to give him a bit of a challenge.

Comedy Done Well

I almost included Hyperbole and a Half on my Liebster Award post, but I wanted to make a separate post about it. She has tons of hilarious posts, ranging from how to deal with grammatical errors by making up a new creature, an awkward social situation survival guide, and tons of stories from childhood all the way up through adulthood. I still can’t put my finger on why it’s all so funny – the hyperbole? the crazed MS paint drawings? the encapsulation of what the thought process of being a kid? – but it’s all amazing.

If you’re on the internet but haven’t read it before, you may recognize the style from this meme:

Why this blog deserves its own post is because it’s managed to take something that’s serious and touchy and somehow still made it into comedic brilliance.

The last three posts, over the course of a year and a half, have explained and also made funny…. depression.

Liebster Award Compromise

So I was recently nominated for a Liebster award, which has me feeling a bit conflicted.

On one hand, these sort of awards remind me waaaaay too much of those Facebook/MySpace notes that cycled around to everyone, and I’m still kind of embarrassed that I took part in those. I also don’t really want to do the “here’s a bunch of things about me” because a) my life is just not that interesting, and b) that’s eating up ideas that I might be able to do a post about. My creativity is limited, people.

But of course, I don’t want to be a jerk by acknowledging it happened and then not passing it on. I also like that it’s a good way to discover new blogs.

So here’s my compromise: a short anecdote and some blogs I like, regardless of size. Ready?

Frenemy

I have to admit something awkward. I have a frenemy. Or maybe I should call it former-friend-now-aquaint-enemy. But I guess that’s a little too long. I feel like a bad person for it, but I can’t help but wonder if most people have some version of this.

Seriously, Merriam-Webster dictionary, “frenemy” is in now too? First vlog, then staycation, now this? Tsk tsk. Photo by CBS news.

Let Me Just Humblebrag For a Moment Here

I’m not usually one to be all giddy bubbly happy, but can I just say that this week has been fantastic?

Photo by Happyologist

It’s just been wonderful in every sense of the word; personally, I’ve found motivation and inspiration in my workout and eating routines (until this week, I never understood how some people could possibly want to exercise), at work I finally got some time to clean out my task list almost completely, relationally I’ve gotten to send lots of time with The Geek and hang out with a few friends without feeling totally overwhelmed. Just in general, I feel fucking fantastic.

Is that braggy? Probably. But it’s not because I’m perfect, it just seems that all the facets of my life have aligned perfectly this week to cause a spike in my personal fulfillment. I’m sure it will be back to normal next week.

Until then, I’ll be over here knitting furiously away at my lace shawl and watching Babylon 5 (I’m planning on writing a post on it later, which helps me rationalize the obscene rate at which I’ve been blowing through it; “it’s research for my blog!”)

Research into what, goofy hair styles? It was the 90s ok, we all did some embarrassing things.

Happy weekend my friends. If your week was shit, next week is a new start. If it was great, well… sorry, you’ve really got nowhere to go but down. *shrug*