Crafts & Beer

There have been two rather divergent themes going on in my life recently: 1) I've turned into a craft-aholic, and 2) I've been drinking too much pumpkin beer on the weekends.

First, my craft issue. On Friday night, as I was diligently bent over a pile of construction paper with a glitter stick, Lindsey (who I was chatting with on the phone) re-registered her shock that I ever survived in the military for four years. She basically asked: "How can you go from shooting a 9mm handgun in a battlefield simulation to wielding a glue gun over colorful crafts?" The answer: I'm really just a crafty bastard at heart.

Here are a couple of my latest projects...

In addition to making chocolate-frosted, chocolate buttermilk chocolate chip cookies and a homemade cheesecake for my Iraqi Arabic class recently, I also went a little maniacal last weekend making Halloween sugar cookies (all from scratch)...

The decorations are a bit rudimentary, but most of my equipment is in storage in DC so I was working with bare bones supplies.

I made about 4 dozen of them...

I sent a bunch of them to Miguel and gave a few away to friends. I ate the rest.

My other big recent project is my bottle cap magnet work. I'm making about 100 of them to give away as gifts and possibly to sell at a Tucson art-craft show or at an art consignment store here.

This is the stack of supplies on my kitchen counter (no where else to put the crap in my tiny abode)...

I'll take more pictures as I get more finished... next weekend I'm going to start experimenting with resin as a finisher.

And moving on to my other side of life (non-craftster), I spent Friday night eating popcorn on my couch while enjoying a Curb Your Enthusiasm Season Two marathon. I watched all ten episodes in one sitting. I'd seen most of them before, but the show is so great that I could watch it all again right now. I seriously was laughing so hard that I was afraid I was disturbing my neighbors.


Larry David is my hero.

Here are a few clips if you've never seen it:
Clip One
Clip Two
Clip Three

Then Saturday night, I went to a history department Halloween party with my friend Gerry, who is here for a year writing his dissertation on Tucson's commercial community in the 20th century...

He was Biff the Ivy League Asshole, and I was a flapper, although someone thought I was a 1950s housewife. Some people thought we were characters from The Great Gatsby, and I thought that was pretty cool since it was unintentional.

I didn't know anyone there except for one Egyptian guy who got his master's from my department, and is now working on his PhD in history. But I met a number of new and interesting people...

Like this couple...

He was a Republican fundraiser.

And this guy dressed as St. Exupery's Little Prince...

... and his zapatista sidekick.

All in all a good night, although I didn't get home until 3 am, and I had a crapload of homework today. Ahhh... I never thought I'd relive the days of undergrad again... what a joy.