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.

You might be surprised to know that Mikey and I don’t hang all THAT often. Many of my photos are of him because I mostly take photos when I socialize on weekends and that’s when I see him. But we don’t see each other often during the week because of our busy schedules. Him moving in to my house will be great for that reason. I popped over to his house on Thursday after work to find him working on music stuff.

Then we walked over to the Bottom-Feeder, which is a punk house that cooks a big vegetarian meal every other thursday and serves it from their porch for sliding scale donations. You just walk in, fill up a to-go container with as much as you want, and leave money in the bucket. The food is always really good. They also set up shop at a lot of punk shows these days. Their porch is really close to Mikey’s house so we try to walk over there on Thursday’s when we remember.

The same night was the soft opening of the new Little Babies (gourmet ice cream) in West Philly. They opened last year in Fishtown and decided to open a second shop in our hood. We’re all stoked. It’s punk owned and operated, like many of the businesses in West Philly. Punks here have an entrepreneurial spirit, it seems, and I’m sure Philly being relatively cheap makes it more of an option to open weirder small businesses.

Around the house, Albert in my room.

Greens sprouting in the garden.

Vining flowers sprouting in the porch boxes.

Rover practicing his obedience outside in a distracting setting. I just started obedience classes with him two weeks ago. When I first got Rover (seven years ago!), he was a total mess. Filled with anxiety and aggression. I never had the option to enroll him in an obedience class back then because he would attack other dogs on sight. We worked on all of that stuff at home and it helped quell a lot of his anxiety. Many years later, he’s great with other dogs and I decided to enroll him in a class so he could try obedience stuff in a much more stimulating setting. He’s getting great at it.

While packaging up fundraiser drawings, I also sent an original page from my new book, Little Fish, to a silent art auction that is benefiting organizations that fight for free speech in children’s books. My publishing company (Zest Books) sent me the link and said it would be really great to donate to. I’m glad they know about cool things like that, because I’m stoked to participate.

Last week, my full-time nanny baby, Asa, was on vacation. That meant I got to spend a lot of one-on-one time with my three day a week baby, Will. Will is the only one who ever appears on this photoblog because Asa’s family prefer his photos aren’t public online. A legit concern. But I’m only with Will three days a week, when I bring Asa over to his house. It’s a nanny share. It was great to hang with this little dude and spend all day at the playground, which is usually too tough to do when juggling two babies at once.

Lastly, before heading out of town for the weekend, I rented a UHaul van and picked up this pretty couch from a vintage store downtown. It looks really great in our place! We’re slowly trying to fix up our house, one step at a time.

I headed out of town for the weekend on Friday afternoon. After a 6 hour bus ride, I landed in Pittsburgh at 9pm and made my way over to the group house of some friends of friends to crash for the weekend. Punk networks are the best.

I had never met these folks but they offered me a spare key and a spare bedroom. Someone had just moved out so they were fixing up the room, but it was nice to have a quiet place.

I was in Pittsburgh for an event called Drawing Power. It was a day of presentations and panels by comic artists, and I was asked to speak on a panel about self-publishing!

It was really nice and low-key. I learned a lot of from listening to the other panels and presentations, and met some fellow comic artists. Jude Vachon works really hard to get zines and comics represented at the Carnegie Museum. You should look her up!

Boulet, a comic artist from France.

John Porcellino. John was the only other comic artist there who I had met before. He regularly does zine fests, in addition to comic fests, so he is more in my social sphere than other professional comic artists are. I’m still a totally new face in the comics realm.

At the afterparty at Copacetic Comics. Everyone was really friendly and welcoming. It’s always interesting being in a situation all weekend where you actually don’t know anyone. That would have completely terrified me a few years ago.

After hanging out at the book store for a few hours, I walked around the corner to a show. Someone named Max, who I had met once or twice before, had booked it, so I headed over.

A few other comics folks showed up at the show so we sat in the back like nerds drawing jam comics, and then I made my way back to the house to crash.

In the morning, I took the city bus downtown to catch the megabus. Traveling with an iphone is pretty remarkable. Public transit made easy, for the first time ever. I still don’t take it for granted.

We went roller skating at Holiday in NJ two weeks ago. This is one of my favorite things I’ve done in Philly. I went once the year before. Tuesday night is adult skate and there’s an actual guy playing all the songs on an organ.

It’s really fun!

I also bought my first pair of adult overalls. I’m really into them.

Said overalls on the day I got them. Had to show the world, of course.

That week I decided to buy my friends truck. So that should be squared away sometime within a month. I haven’t owned my own car ever. I don’t really neeeed a car. I’ve gotten by just fine without one for the past ten years, but whenever I want to use a car it’s to haul something, so I figured I can get something a little less practical for now since it won’t be for every day use. I’m stoked!

I also got to work on my back yard. I tilled this whole thing, since it was pretty much just a dirt patch anyway.

Our soil actually ended up being really nice and filled with earth worms, so I decided to plant a small shade garden, even though I didn’t intend on doing a garden this year.

It’s just a little one, and just greens. I planted grass seed over the rest of the backyard to try to make it green. We will see if it comes in.

Rover likes lying around in warm dirt, though, so he’s happy about it for now.

That weekend, Mikey had an acoustic show at his house. It was a quick matinee show, which was nice, since the weather was so nice and everyone wanted to be out and about.

Post-show, we were about to go see Spring Breakers but decided against it after driving down there because we realized we all weren’t in the mood to sit in a theater, so we got mexican food instead.

Then we went back to Mikey’s and had our first fire of the season.

Rover in the front yard the next morning.

Earlier that week, my nanny baby turned one year old! Here’s us on his birthday.

On Sunday, Mikey and I went to his birthday party.

Drinks for all.

Birthday boy Will.

His older brother, Harry.

Will and his Mom, Naomi.

Since the weather has turned over, nannying has been a lot nicer! The days go by much faster when we can hang out at a park half the day, and the warm weather is wearing the boys out so their naps are longer. It’s so much less stressful than it was last month, when one of my kids was having a really tough phase and wasn’t sleeping at all.

These are the days that make me love being a nanny.

Will!

What else is new? Rover started obedience classes with his pal, Sprocket. Rover knows a lot of basic obedience but doesn’t really focus when he’s outside or around a lot of stimulation, so I thought a group class would be good for him so he could practice his skills when a lot of other stuff is going on.

A new cat neighbor, peering in my bedroom window from their own window.

This weekend, stopping in for late night snacks.

Daytime hangouts in the neighborhood. Post brunch, we ran into the neighborhood flaneur, Omar.

We stopped by the thrift store and found that they were having a 50% off sale on furniture, so these chairs were $15 bucks.

Saturday night there was a big show at Glitoria, which is just two blocks from our house.

It was a stacked lineup. Attitude Era played first, then Swearin.

Ovlov

Black Orchid was there serving up an all-you-can-eat feast.

Waiting for Tenement to play

Sunday, my roommate Guy and I painted the living room. Then we swept and mopped the whole house.

Mikey kept us company while he got some work done.

We ended the weekend with a house dinner and meeting for the new line-up of our house. In two weeks, Tiff and Mikey move in. Super stoked!

When we got home, folks were hanging out. We don’t have folks over too often but we’re going to make our house a more social spot in the coming months, I think.

It feels nice to have things happen in our home, but winter has kept things quiet and people have been in school and busy with projects, so quiet hasn’t been a bad thing.

I’m gearing up to participate in a Bowl-a-thon. To raise more money for it, I started offering 8in x 8in drawings in exchange for a $25 donation to them Women’s Medical Fund. It’s been fun cranking out a bunch of quick little drawings for a good cause. (psssst, you can still get a drawing by donating here: http://bowlathon.nnaf.org/nnafbowl/participantpage.asp?uid=5276&fundid=1410)

I also recently became a working member at the local food co-op, so now I have a shift stocking shelves once a month. It’s pretty fun and easy, it appeals to my organized brain, and it’s a good way to be more present in my neighborhood outside of the punk circle I’m involved in.

It’s started to warm up a bit. We had our first breakfast on the porch two weekends ago. Still chilly. We were jumping the gun a bit.

St. Paddy’s day brunch (though not to celebrate that holiday, just coincidentally.) Wow, I didn’t realize how far behind I had gotten on posting photos. I think this post is three weeks worth of photos. Normally I edit photos on Sunday nights, but I’ve been away a lot of weekends recently, and then I don’t feel like doing it midweek.

Laura and Grace

Guy and Laura

We recently did at interview with Joseph Gervasi for Loud! Fast! Philly! He put together a documentary of Philly show footage which is premiering at the Cinedelphia Film Fest coming up. As part of it, he’s conducted hour-long interview with all sorts of folks doing different things in the Philly punk scene. He’s posting one of those interviews every day throughout April. You can listen to them here: http://cinedelphia.com/cinedelphiafilmfestival/loud-fast-philly-audio-interviews

The collective members of DIY PHL

Rover’s newest apparel item. Good for short bursts of entertainment. Not good for anything else.

I’m back into a regular routine at my gym and it feels so good. I try to hit four days a week, five would be ideal but I usually end up wth a conflict at least one weeknight every week.

A few friends joined and Mikey too, so it’s really easy now that we all have the same commitment every day after work.

Dinner one night with Jesse and Chris

Springtime sunsets

Dinner one night with Mike and Ciera

This looks so meaty! It was jackfruit.

Followed by a trip to the Franklin Fountain for ice cream sundaes

Maybe a little preemptive for ice cream, too, but spring is in the air, so whatever.

My little nanny babe, Will, turns one today and couldn’t be any cuter. He’s so fun and happy all the time. He’s also started sleeping a record 3 hours a day, so he’s really on my good side. He’s always telling baby gibberish jokes and making himself laugh. It’s the cutest.

Out with my younger nanny babe, Asa, flyering for DIY PHL, we ran into Ciera and Aiden. Asa was having fun making sounds at them. He loved the attention.

April calendars for DIY PHL, done by Leah Girardo. We have a different artist do it every month. It’s always really fun and surprising to see what people come up with.

Outerspaces playing at Wolf Cycles last week.

On Friday after work, Mikey and I drove up to Boston to visit Liz. We don’t often get time off at the same time and we always put off visits to friends as a result, so we decided just to make the long drive in a regular weekend. It was coincidentally the same weekend as Smash It Dead Fest, so we drove Greg up too.

And it meant Amy Leigh was in town from Toronto! She also stayed with Liz.

It was nice to see Liz and Kyle again and just chill out in a new place. We didn’t have any plans or destinations, so we just hung out and enjoyed the weather, ate good food, and caught up.

We were also able to meet up with two of Mikey’s Boston friends, Sheila and Roxanna.

More sunny cold weather ice cream. It’s soooo close to being spring. After this we ordered indian food pizza and watched movies.

We made breakfast in the morning, gluten free waffles with strawberries and scrambled eggs.

Fire escapin’

Wolfman

I got in late on a Thursday night and didn’t take many photos, but I headed over to Bar Deville for a buddies new wave DJ night, and then out to a goth night at a club that Daniel goes to a lot of Thursday nights. I almost never go to bars in Philly but it was a huge part of my social life in Chicago.

After a very late night out, in which I met up with a few zine friends, met and talked to a lot of strangers, and stood around awkwardly while folks danced in da club (I don’t dance because I’m a square and I’m too self-conscious.), I crashed on Daniel’s couch and awoke to this friendly face, Egon the dog.

Egon is my second favorite dog. His demeanor is so similar to Rover’s. He’s just a big sweet lump with a lot of quiet personality. And he looks like a baby hippo.

In the morning, Daniel (my best friend, who still lives in Chicago) and I headed over to the Handlebar to meet up with a whole bunch of folks who were in town for Zine Fest, including Amy and Shira from DC, Sara from Philly, Eryca and Meredith from LA, and Amy Leigh from Toronto. It’s strange how often I get to see a lot of these folks just because of the weird zine community we’re all a part of.

After brunch, we headed over for fancy coffee at Caffe Streets, my favorite coffee shop in Chicago. I had already had three cups of coffee, though, and it was only noon, so I opted for the really fancy “drinking chocolate” with the homemade marshmallow. It came highly recommended and it was so good.

With Shira, Daniel and Amy at Streets.

Then we parted ways with Daniel and headed downtown for the first zine fest event, a panel discussion on self-publishing and writing about disabilities, with Dave Roche, Miranda Dearest and Kerri Radley (from Philly!)

When the panel was over, we all walked to Trader Joes to get snacks.

We snacked real hard, and then all piled into Jessica (from Milwaukee)’s van.

We headed up to the next events, the Kids reading and the Exhibitor reading, which are always programmed so well in Chicago. All the readers are so different and interesting, and it’s really cool to see middle school and high school readers included in an event like this.

Here was one of the young favorites – already an outspoken feminist. Her reading was so funny and well written.

Jenna preparing to read from one of her new comics.

Kate Larsen reading about being recently diagnosed with MS.

Following the reading, the night was closed with a game night at Quimby’s Bookstore. I always go in pretty skeptical because it  sounds cheesy, but these end up being really fun.

This year’s event was Zine, Lose or Draw, a zine-themed pictionary game.

Getting ready for my drawing turn.

Neil, the MC. He was one of the people I organized CZF with the first two years. He now organizes CAKE, the indie comics expo in Chicago. He was guest starring for this event.

Sarah Rose, one of my favorite Philly zinesters. There were a lot of us there!

Cuuuute.

My team, the Hellmouth Breathers, was victorious! We won the whole event.

The awards ceremony.

I love this knowing look between JC and Sarah.

Eryca’s photo taking face!

aaaand meanwhile, back at Daniel’s.

in the morning

With little sleep, again, I headed down on Saturday morning to table at Chicago Zine Fest. Daniel kept me company at my table.

My view for the next 7 hours.

Everyone else’s view of my table

Keeping me entertained

We snapped this Glitterguts photo before Daniel took off to get work done.

and this one. Glitterguts is a free party Photo Booth group that sets up at a lot of events in Chicago.

One of my best friends from childhood, Erin, came by with her son, Eli.

It was nice to catch up with her for a minute and really nice that she swung by!

Our Glitterguts shot.

Big crowd. It was packed most of the day and I sold out of everything I brought. I think I’m just getting good at guessing how much to bring to each event.

Neil’s new project, Chicago Alternative Comics Expo

Walking in the subway with a big group of zine folks to head to the afterparty.

Taco stop at El Charro.

Taco shops on every corner is one of the best things about Chicago.

After dinner, we finished walking up to the zine fest after party at Uncharted Books.

Following tradition, the after party was a karaoke party.

Being the no-fun, self-conscious square that I am, I just watched.

Jen singing Backstreet Boys with passion.

The Chicago Zine Fest organizers closing out the night with a medley.

Another CZF tradition is a post-fest informal brunch at Leslie’s on Sunday morning. I slept over at her place the night before and helped cook up a feast for everyone.

My phone was hijacked while I was cooking.

Sunday brunch is always the best way to wind down from zine fest activities and see everyone in a low key setting before everyone starts their travels home.

It was a really rainy day and I had reserved it just for hangs with Daniel, since most of the weekend was filled with zine events. We couldn’t decide what to do, so on a whim, we decided to get matching finger tattoos! Because what else would we do with our rainy day? First we saw Life of Pi in 3D and got some food.

a gnarly shot of an arrow and a dagger.

I also had a few lines on my lighthouse tattoo touched up because they scarred pretty badly for some reason. Post tattoos, we went to Big Star, and then got ice cream and watched a bad movie.

In the morning we went to Little Goat for brunch before I headed back to the airport. Always bittersweet being back in Chicago.

We put out a photobook and it’s selling really well. People have had a really positive reaction to it and it’s given DIY PHL a lot of new exposure. It’s really cool to see how much this project has grown over a year, and how well it’s functioning now that there are 4 people really actively working on it instead of people just paying attention to it in spurts. It’s something I’m still really excited to be working on.

I’m also getting really excited about house projects. We have two people moving out in May and the two who are replacing them are Mikey (!) and our friend Tiff. Both of them are excited to work on house projects and do things collectively, so that’ll be great for the house as a whole. I’m really excited to work on the physical house, painting rooms, decorating more, and getting our outside spaces together. Last fall I planted bulbs in the front yard and they started peeking up this week.

Last weekend Mikey and I went on a fancy date. I had a gift certificate to a restaurant but the wait ended up being too long (an hour and a half!) so we went around the corner to El Rey, whose wait was still long but not nearly as bad. It was delicious.

Looking pretty disheveled. I specifically remember thinking when Mikey took this photo, “I probably should have showered before going on a fancy date. Whoops.” Not that Mikey cares, but you know.

Afterward, I showed Mikey the glory that is Yogorino. That pistachio sauce is all I ever want to eat. I learned about a lot of spots around Rittenhouse when I nannied around there last year. I would just walk around all day popping in and out of different boutiques and restaurants to kill time. I have a lot of Center City favorites as a result, but rarely go to them anymore since I don’t work down there now.

The March DIY PHL calendar came out last week, which is always exciting. It had 66 shows on it, which is just absurd. How does Philly sustain that many diy shows?!

Bruises from the barbell at crossfit. I went too heavy on power cleans one day last week and ended up with sloppy form by the end of the workout, which means hitting my collar bone on a lot of reps. Yow. But at my original crossfit gym in Chicago, they talked about using the body as a tool and how people just aren’t used to bumps and scrapes and bruises and callouses anymore because so many of us work in offices at computers instead of on a farm or in a factory. I always think of that when I get Crossfit related marks on my body. It’s OKAY to get scrapes and bruises from working hard. My old crossfit coach was a construction worker and I think he was a little annoyed by how precious a lot of people felt.

Rover, one night, giving me the saddest look because I was eating in front of him.

Rover as pillow.

On Friday night, Waxahatchee had a record release show at Golden Tea House.

My roommate Laura showed up looking totally L.A. (which is where she’s from).

When we came out of the show, Grace discovered that her front wheel had been stolen off her bike while it was locked up outside. Pretty big bummer for the end of the night. But she ended up crashing at our place, and we went to Mikey’s in the morning to make a big brunch.

We ended up laying around doing nothing for a big chunk of the day. Mikey played us some Taylor Swift covers. We sent a lot of snap chats. We were lazy and hid under blankets in Mikey’s freezing house. It was fun.

Then I left to spend the night babysitting a five year old, and spent all of my Saturday night putting together puzzles and getting paid for it. It was great.

On Sunday, Mikey and I met Carol for brunch, and then I hung around at home and made a cake for fun and hung out with Laura while she did homework.

In the afternoon, we headed out for a birthday party for Davidson.

We all went to an indoor waterpark which wasn’t quite as cool as any of us wanted it to be. The slides were coooold, but fun, there was a warming tub, which we all wanted to be a hot tub, but it wasn’t, and there were kids eeeeeeverywhere.

but still, it doesn’t really matter when you’re with a big group of friends.

Leigh shreddin some waves.

Can’t wait for warmer weather and more group hangs.

Here’s a catch-up post which isn’t tooo unreasonably long considering it covers three weeks.

At the end of January, we celebrated my roommate Craig’s birthday with pizza and cake.

In the beginning of February, I also started up at my Crossfit gym again. It feels so good to be back, and Max and Jenna joined too! It’ll be nice to have some folks from my immediate social group there.

I got back to eating really well too! Between not having the stress of the book anymore, eating well, and being back at the gym, my mood and energy level have improved tenfold. It rules!

That same week, I went to a show at Golden Tea House and saw Ambrose, who is one of my favorites.

Jesse too.

That Sunday was a celebration for my friend Mike’s birthday. I was really pushing for my deadline, so I brought my computer and edited pages while everyone played games. I’m glad I was able to go, but wasn’t the best company.

For most of the next week I just did my book and that’s about it. I even had my birthday that week but didn’t do anything for it.

Daniel sent me a card and record in the mail, though, and I got takeout, watched LOST, and took a break from my book on my actual birthday with Mikey. So it was nice. Not to mention all the nice birthday messages I received.

I’ll make a post just about my book soon.

I did make this sneak peak preview zine of it too, which will be available at zine fests this spring!

For Valentine’s Day, my house went out to a group dinner with dates.

dapper gents

When we all got home, Rover was being really funny and hyper.

For Valentine’s day, Mikey recorded me a cover of a song I really like, When You Sleep by My Bloody Valentine. Mikey is the best.

Last weekend I flew out to LA for the LA Zine Fest. It was my first time in LA and I stayed with Eryca, one of the fest hosts and former Chicago resident.

The weather was beautiful in LA but overall, that place wasn’t my cup o tea. It just took way too long to get anywhere and was so spread out. I got so many recommendations from people for cool things to do or good food to eat, but any time I mapped it, it literally would take an hour and a half or more to get to any of the places. My first night there, we did go down to see Artnoose and Rad Dad read from their zines (and yes, it took us a full two hours to get there, we were even a little late to the reading).

Traveling by myself is a pretty different thing but kind of nice. I get to set my own schedule, don’t have to wait for people, and can eat what I want – which in this case, was exactly the same as what I eat at home.

Wandering around in a tank top all weekend. It was 80 degrees during the day!

I was blown away by all the plant life.

Fortunately, one of the things that came highly recommended was within walking distance of Eryca’s house – the Museum of Jurassic Technology. It was a really neat oddities museum, and apparently half of it is true and half is fictional, but it’s all presented the same so you don’t know the difference. I ended up spending like two and a half hours there.

They had a garden on the roof and a tea room.

Afterward, I went to the iconic In N Out, just to say that I did, and also because it was right by the museum. I got a grilled cheese, animal style.

Then I met up with Eryca and we made the long bus trip up to the Getty Museum.

We took the city bus, and then you take a tram up to the top, because the Getty is up a mountain.

Even though it was winter and the garden’s were mostly dormant, it was still so beautiful.

and the light and architecture were incredible.

We met our Chicago zine friend, Jonas, there.

We had a picnic on the lawn with Jonas and his wife, and his sister and brother in law. It was a pretty night!

After it got dark, we all headed down to a reading and show an hour or so away. It was a zine fest event. There were ten readers. It was pretty fun.

The following day, we woke up and headed down for the day of tabling for the LA Zine Fest. This is only the second year the event has happened and it was packed all day!

My wares, including the sneak peak zine of my new book, Little Fish!

They were actually at capacity for most of the day with a line out of the door of people waiting for their turn to get in.

Sales were great and I met and talked to all sorts of people. The day flew by.

The LA Zine Fest organizers. Thanks for all your hard work! I’ll be back next year.

Swoon City has two rooms available starting May 1! Located at 49 & Walnut. One room avail. for $320, one for $350.

We’re seeking people to fill two bedrooms in our house. The house is three floors with a usable basement (currently housing a drum set, Guy’s art studio, tools, storage stuff, and a washer and dryer), 7 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, and a big front porch. The rooms available are the two smaller rooms on the third floor, and rent is cheaper as a result. Ramsey’s room and studio, and a bathroom are also on the third floor.

We’re all clean and organized and are looking for someone who is the same. We’re most interested in people who are engaged in their own shit, personal projects, school, bands, community projects, etc. We keep a pretty quiet, but active household. We range in age from 22-30 but are seeking people on the higher end of that range.

Guy is a special needs therapist, artist, and musician. Josh works in a vegan restaurant, plays in a band and likes snobby films. Laura is just finishing undergrad at Bryn Mawr and works for (and loves) Girls Rock Philly. She’s a creative writer. Ramsey is a nanny and comic book artist who spends a lot of time holed up in her studio (she has the 7th bedroom as a studio). She also likes to work on house projects, and does DIY PHL. Guy and Laura are a couple.

We’re capped out on animals, so we can’t live with anyone who has any more – and obviously you need to be friendly with animals. We currently have three cats, Pippa, Lucy and Albert. Mostly they stick around the 2nd floor but Albert will be all up in your stuff if you leave your door open. Rover the dog also lives there, and comes with shedding, but is otherwise one of the best roommates you’ll ever have.

We are open to all genders and gender identities, are queer friendly, etc. We’re all cis. We’re currently half vegetarian, and half straightedge and are cool with all variations of that stuff. We wouldn’t be down with smoking in the house, though.
We have a monthly house meeting/dinner and a chore chart, so ideally we are looking for folks who are into organized living and open communication. We’re not hippies, or activists or anything, really. We just think it’s easier to keep our big house functioning well that way. That makes us sound a lot more communal than we are.

If you’re interested, get in touch with someone who lives there or email ramseybeyer@gmail.com.

We started out the week with a house dinner/meeting.

During the middle of our first real snow storm this winter.

As silly as house meetings seem sometimes (it’s so easy to be bitter or make fun of stuff like that), our meetings have actually been really productive and good for the dynamic of the house.

Especially since our schedules are all different and our house is big enough that sometimes we don’t all see each other for a good while.

This was honestly an extremely tough nanny week. That, compounded with the fact that my book deadline for edits is next week, and that we were scrambling to get a photobook made for DIYPHL, made me completely exhausted and stressed out by Friday.

On Thursday night we dropped by the Black Orchid porch, which is a punk house that cooks big meals every other week and leaves it on their porch with to-go containers. You leave 6 bucks in a bucket and take as much as you want in a container. They also serve up food at a lot of punk shows these days.

Mikey was going on a little weekend tour this weekend with David (Spoonboy), so they practiced together all of Thursday night while I worked on my book.

Friday night was the show, at The Great Indoors. Pat Graham played first.

Then Sam.

Then Mikey, with accompaniment by David, and vice versa. It was a fun way to spend a snowy night.

After the show we hung out at Mikey’s, ate Lucky’s and watched the Simpsons.

On Saturday morning, Mikey and I squared up the rest of the photobook before he left for his next show that night in Connecticut.

I think it’s gonna look so good.

On Sunday, Mikey’s roommate Sara hosted a lady punk brunch.
It was really fun and much needed. There are so many rad ladies in Philly and it felt great to see a bunch of them in one room.

Cynthia

Maddy and Grace

Kerri

Me!

Brandi, who I had never met before

Meesh

Ciera

Sara

Lots of other folks were there too. It was super fun and something we’re going to try to do once a month.

and, of course, Sprocket, the ultimate lady punk.

Of course, right when we got back, I got the edits in on my book, so I’ve been racing to get as many of those done before the deadline. We’re also coming up on the one year anniversary of a Philly show calendar that I helped start with a few other people, and we decided, pretty last minute, to put together a 2012 show photobook. It has come together surprisingly quickly, and we should have it out by DIY PHL’s birthday next month. (http://www.diyphl.com). No Big Project 2013 will start after February maybe.

The weekend immediately following our return from Moon, we had a DIYPHL meeting to start planning on the photobook. It devolved into a late night pizza sesh.

Sprocket was there too.

I also set to work finally building our kitchen table. I had bought this old barn door a week or so before Christmas, and then ordered some fancy steel legs online, but they take a little while to get fabricated. So they arrived once we were back from Moon. Once I had it all together, I just lightly sanded this guy down and put on two coats of polyurethane.

It came together really easily and turned out exactly how I had imagined. I have a lot of ideas for our house but it will take a long time to implement them all, especially since our house is so big and has so many spaces. One little thing at a time.

Aside from little house stuff and DIYPHL, I also returned to work full-time.

and got back to working long hours on the book, which is closing in.

Stopping on a bike commute home to revel in the fact that it was nearly 5:30 and still a little light out.

Another late night with an ignorant amount of pizza, the 28in party pizza from Allegro’s.

Rover and Sprocket reunited after a long break for the holidays. They were very happy to see each other.

Sufi, one of Mikey’s roommate’s cat.

Brad with a freshly broken wrist from a bike accident.

The Ambulars played in the middle of last week. They’re one of my favorite bands, not because my friends are in it. It’s just exactly the type of mid-tempo indie pop punk stuff that I like. http://theambulars.bandcamp.com  You can download their album there for free.

On Friday night, we had the layout meeting for the photobook. It’s really awesome and surprising how many photo submissions we got! It gave us the ability to really curate the selection, which was fun.

Right now, DIY PHL is Me, Max, Mikey and Grace.

Jen came over to hang out for a while toward the end of our meeting, since she wouldn’t be in town much longer.

Sprocket and Rover cuddled some more. Or, I guess really, Sprocket cuddled on Rover some more.

They’ve gotten real cute.

The following morning, before The Ambulars left for some weekend shows in other cities.

Back at home, with Rover and some bright light. I don’t get to be home often to enjoy the light in my bedroom when it’s at its best. Just on weekends.

I proceeded to spend the entire rest of the weekend working on book edits. This was my view for most of it, with the exception of an hour or two when I got to meet up with Adam and Joe who were in town from NYC. I watched almost the whole season of Once Upon A Time. No shame… (okay, a little shame.)