a show a few weekends ago at Golden Tea House

 

Dinner at The Mitten two weeks ago, peirogies and sauerkraut!

 

After dinner, we headed up to PhilaMOCA for the late showing of Loud! Fast! Philly! I’m not crazy about just watching show footage, but it was pretty cool. In my opinion, the coolest part of the Loud! Fast! Philly! project was really the audio interviews which form a really neat and comprehensive oral history of the philly punk scene. You can hear them here:http://cinedelphia.com/cinedelphiafilmfestival/loud-fast-philly-audio-interviews

 

The film itself was a collection of old show footage, with some talking before each clip. Cool enough, but definitely not as interesting as the stories in the interviews.

 

A week later, we all participated in the National Abortion Access Bowl-a-thon which raised money to help give healthcare access to low income women in times of need.

 

The ladies on my team, Tiff, Grace and Talia.

 

Other teams of friends waiting to use the photobooth.

 

Tiff, slam dunkin

 

Mikey and Ciera

 

Mikey turned out to secretly be a good bowler. I feel like he always pulls weird stuff like that out of the blue. He claims he didn’t know, but ended up getting a ton of strikes.

 

It’s no secret that I’m not a good bowler – average at best.

 

Thomson, on the right, was our 6th member.

 

As a team, we raised over $3100!

 

The very next morning, really early, I hopped on a flight heading out to Portland for the Stumptown Comics Fest.

 

Nicole and Liz, two comic artist buds, picked me up at the airport.

 

I got in on the late side due to delayed flights, so we just headed back to Nicoles place and hung out. Liz had just gotten tattooed earlier in the day and was nursing a raw leg.

 

In the morning, we grabbed breakfast-to-go from a coffee shop, then headed down to the convention center for the fest.

 

I’ve just started testing the waters at real deal comic fests. The biggest difference is scale and price. Comics fests generally cost between $150-300 just to have a table at the event. Zine fests cost anywhere from free to $30 at most. It’s generally risk free to table at a zine fest, money wise, which makes it easier to justify spending money to travel to them. They’re low-key, have smaller turnouts, etc. Comic fests, however, have higher stakes because you have both the travel expenses and tabling fee to think about – but also way more people come through the door and come expecting to spend money. It’s weird to have to think about this stuff when tabling an event, but it’s part of the reality of it. As for zine fests, usually I chalk them up to a good excuse for a vacation and a chance to see zinester/punk friends I haven’t seen in a while, so I don’t worry about how much money I make at all. That’s generally an after thought, which makes them more relaxed and probably more fun. It’s really interesting to see both sides of the coin and feel like I fit in at both types of events.

 

We settled in for six hours of this. It was fun getting to meet and talk to all sorts of people. I used to feel sort of awkward tabling events, but I generally look forward to it now that I’m more practiced at the awkward small talk.

 

After day one of the event, I tagged along with some other tablers that Liz is good friends with, to go out to dinner. Here’s Nicole, Claire and Alec. I love all of their work. Check it out!

 

Alec and Aron

 

Building our own smores at the table.

 

In the photobooth at the restaurant.

 

After dinner, we headed over to the Alibi where folks got down with some karaoke. Alec and Kaz did Kriss Kross.

 

Nicole did several songs

 

Sunday morning

 

Nicole keeps chickens in her backyard so I checked them out in the morning.

 

I would love to have chickens at some point! The Mitten, my friends’ house in West Philly, has several. I’m pretty jealous.

 

Nicole and Phyllis

 

Heading over to the convention center for day two of Stumptown, which I didn’t even take any photos of because all tabling photos look sort of the same.

 

Post-fest meal at Vegetarian House.

 

After a long day of traveling, back home, on a walk with Rover.

 

This buddy was not excited to see us walk by. I didn’t even realize they were there until I looked over my shoulder and they were only a foot away from us. I thought I was about to get pounced on.

 

Life at Swoon City (my house). All sorts of things are changing around there. This week our two new roommates finally moved in, Mikey and Tiff. Laura is working really hard on her final papers and just finished her thesis to graduate. Josh started a new job as kitchen manager at the restaurant he works at. We’re making all sorts of changes to the house. I’m excited for summer to roll around and have everything be settled in a new and exciting way.

 

I share a bedroom with Mikey now! Pretty weird. I keep accidentally referring to it as my room, to him. Haha.

 

This weekend I had noooo travel plans, which felt great. I had been away the previous two weekends and I needed some time at home. We spent a lot of it getting Mikey’s new room settled. He’s renting a room as his studio. That means we both have our own studios, and share a bedroom.

 

Getting ready to paint the studio. We’ve slowly been going through the house, painting it room by room. Mikey’s was one of the last rooms that needed to be painted. It looked really shitty, with tons of holes and chips in the wall. It would have been sort of depressing to keep it as it was.

 

As much as I love a freshly painted room, actually doing the painting is a drag. It always takes longer than you think, makes you sore, and is pretty boring. We tried to make it go by fast with pizza and records. It worked pretty well but we were still up til 2am painting.

 

His chosen color, hematite.

 

Albert supervised and kept us company.

 

We did the second coat in the morning and ate breakfast on the floor of the newly painted room. The color looks great! It’s a pretty small room for a bedroom but a really good size for a studio/office. We couldn’t decide if doing a really dark color in a small room with only one window would be a bad decision, but it really works for a studio/office. It feels really cozy and productive. A lot of what he’ll use the room for is writing and recording music. It’s got a good vibe for that. Next up, painting my studio! I can’t wait to make that room better, too.

 

It’s a great color on Rover, too.

 

Later that day, we both got haircuts at the same time. Doooorky. I’ve been growing my hair out for a really long time so I wanted something a little different finally. I went for an undercut on half my head. I imagine this is just the first babystep toward different hair. Immediately after I got it, I already wanted a little more of my head shaved. But I like that I can easily take my hair down and you wouldn’t know it’s there.

 

The rest of the weekend (Saturday evening/all of Sunday), was spent enjoying the weather, wandering around different thrift stores/vintage shops, more house work, drinking coffee, repotting a lot of plants, doing a little book work, and watching Arrested Development. It felt like a real weekend-y weekend, which was perfect.