I’m off to Ohio where I’ll be desperately trying not to melt, I’ll leave you with this – Octodogs’ Frankfurter Converter

via (she’s back) going jesus

I had forgotten all about the Tacky Living site until GirlHacker pointed to it yesterday. I love the Make Your Own Abandoned Car Garden.

Despite my usual anti-moisturizer stance, I’m find that this summer my skin is drier. Leave it to my skin to ignore the seasons. So I got the sister to my favorite facial sunscreen – DDF Moisturizing Photo-Age Protection SPF 30 and it doesn’t suck.

I’m curious what kind of wax does it take to make fake icing like on the birthday cake candle half way down this page? (Next to the cupcakes.) It would be neat to make a customized message.

Matt talked about this map of open wireless points in San Francisco, I need to find one for the ‘burbs of Cleveland. We’re headed to Lakewood next weekend for a wedding, this is the second one in two months. Last visit we had some time to kill the morning before the ceremony, so we grabbed some Starbucks (there was no other coffee in site, except Dennys), the iBook, and our rental car and did a little WAR driving around some office buildings. It was much more exciting than I was expecting, and we finally found a good signal in the back of a real estate office near the delivery doors. This was Sunday so we were unable to go back the next day without looking too conspicuous. However this upcoming trip is short so unless the hotel has wireless I think we’re going to, eeep!, go computerless for a few days.

Speaking of weddings, for the one last month I waited until the last minute to get a wrap and spent the day before the flight running from store to store looking for a plain black stole. Of course, all I could find were beaded or embroidered and way more than I could reasonably pay for something I was likely going to use twice this year. So, I hauled out my serger, bought a few yards of inexpensive but drapey rayon something or other, and used a very narrow lingerie edge on a rectangle which was 36″ x 76″. Folded in half horizontally it’s wide enough to cover the upper arms, unfolded it could potentially save me from unexpected cold.

Of course, I cut the fabric along the wrong line the first time I tried and so have a matching scarf which is only half as wide.

Two places I went this weekend had sangria, so delicious. I was searching around for recipes and found one here on FoodNetwork.com, but linked to the page with all the summer cocktails I hope to perfect in the upcoming months. (This will require evening after evening of taste testing.) Doing a search on FoodNetwork.com turns up a bunch of recipes for sangria. Do you have a recipe? I’d love it if you’d share!

And, of course, I cannot allow a post about summer cocktails go by without mentioning how much I continue to adore the Jasmine, with many thanks to MetaGrrrl for introducing it to me.

I didn’t plan on buying the new Harry Potter book yet, however they were selling them at Fry’s when we went there today to get a computer game. The book was only $10, yay!

Anna has an interesting question – Is it possible to dye a flokati rug bright pink?

a few recipes for the pan galactic gargle blaster

via the morning news

Is it just me or are ads getting stupider? We have this terrible Hormel attempt at lifestyle “It’s a day for napping in a hammock, a day playing tag with the dog, a day for fully pre-cooked Hormel pork loin…” And we’re expected to believe the people at Hanes are genius because they finally got rid of thier scratchy tags. Don’t tell me, it’s always been like this, I’m just now starting to notice.

Oh man. I am this woman (6.16) in reverse. I bitch if they pile coins on top of bills, it all but paralyzes me. And yes, if someone puts the coins in my hand first, then hands me the bills, I thank them sincerely. When I was schilling popcorn I always gave coins first, I thought everyone preferred that way.

Saturday we had an unexpected dinner at Moss Beach Distillery (no ghosts were spotted) and dessert at Krispy Kreme, and yesterday we did some Spring cleaning, all of my empty Bonny Doon wine bottles had the labels photographed and then were sent to recycling. It is so nice to have shelf space again.

I love public radio*, and I’m pee in my pants thrilled to live somewhere which has two public radio stations I can flip between. So I was bursting with excitement when I was driving along a while back and heard that a friend of mine, Kevin Smokler, was going to be on a show called Invisible Ink Radio A Radio Zine, to which he contributes. This show is cool the way I only wish I could be. I rarely catch weekend radio, but have been making a point to listen to this show. If you’re not within earshot of KALW, you can listen online. A huge thanks to Roman for making the shows available online, and, you know, making the shows.

* My dorky story: My mother was working in the offices of the fledgling National Public Radio while she was pregnant with me, so technically I’ve been listening to public radio longer than I’ve been alive.

The Venus Zine redesign is super cool, and take a look at the DIY stuff. And they linked to Not Martha! I’m bursting! Now then, how come I cannot, not matter how hard I look, find the new issue anywhere around here? (Last I checked Tower still had the old issue.)