was telling a friend at work about my weekend in Philly; she remarked (not at all unkindly), “you had quite the hipster weekend!”

I will recount the stories of my annoying travel at a later time; it’s over, I got there and back safely, with my head intact despite a voyage on a Greyhound bus. And a BoltBus. I did both and neither experience was particularly good. At all. ANYWAY.

After arriving in Philadelphia at 10pm on Friday night, that night was spent eating and talking with my friend Sara - and her cat Gus. Here is a small photo of Gus. He’s photo-worthy, despite his more than slightly cranky-whiny demeanor. He was also uncharacteristically friendly towards me this weekend; normally, he does a sort of bipolar thing where he’s all rubbing up on your leg, seeming to say, “PET ME!” - only to turn on you and hiss the moment you pet him. NOT SO, this weekend. I got to pet Fluffy McCrankyPants several times.

Saturday morning, Sara had a haircut at American Mortals. Their motto,”Mullets, not bullets” sort of says it all. Fun cool hipster hair styling. They’re a bumble & bumble salon, so extra points from me. While Sara got her hairs cut, I sat and observed two stylists figure out how to play rummy 500 or ‘Go Fish’, debate the finer points of cribbage (Ben Franklin’s favorite card game, FYI) and we also discussed knitting, childrens’ books (”Everyone Poops”, “The Gas We Pass”). It was good times.

Then, since we were in the area (that area being the Rittenhouse area of Philly, a well-known shopping area), we decided to do some shopping and get lunch somewhere along Walnut Street. A shop that caught my eye immediately was one called Ten Thousand Villages. They’ve a few locations, but we were at the Philly location. The idea behind this store is that it’s all fair trade goods made by village artisans. I’ll post photos tomorrow, but I found a lovely aqua shawl (to replace the sweatshirt I always put on at work when I’m feeling chilly - this is a far better choice professionally) and a chunky blue/turquoise necklace. Not real turquoise, but I’m OK with that.

We stopped at a few other shops including Urban Outfitters, Anthropologie, and the farmer’s market at Rittenhouse Square. The Amish were out in full effect with beautiful flowers and produce and brown eggs. I wanted to take photos, but I was conflicted; I wasn’t going to buy any produce since we were going to be walking around for a few more hours and it would get gross and wilted. Knowing that I wouldn’t be buying anything, I felt that photographing their wares would be a bit like theft. Also, I’m just crazy.

After looking at tables and baskets and boxes of beautiful produce and flowers (white eggplant including one that looked like it had a nose, all manner of apples, daisies that looked as though they’d been splattered with red paint - but weren’t), we were pretty damn hungry. Sooo… we walked back down Walnut Street to a lunch spot that had captured our attention later - Maoz Vegetarian. Think of it as Chipotle or Qdoba, but instead of a burrito, it’s falafel on a pita. There’s a fixins’ bar where you can top off your falafel and pita with tasty veggie toppings like pickled baby eggplant, tabouli, cucumbers, tomatoes, cilantro sauce, hummus, tahini, etc. You get a side of Belgian fries (yes, served in the paper cone; yes, served with the large crunchy salt crystals; yes, covered over with foil). Delicious. I’m excited to see that they have locations in NYC.

We did some more walking and it was getting pretty hot. If you can’t stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen - or get some GELATO. In this case, gelato from artisans. That’s what the sign says, anyway. The artisans part. Not the kitchen part. Capogiro Gelato. They also have a location or two in NYC. They’ve got lovely flavors like fig, thai coconut milk, peach, blackberry, chocolate with caramelized hazelnuts, dulce de leche… incredible. I had the bolded flavors. Not all on Saturday. Nope. We went back for more on Sunday.

With our tummies full, we took the train back to Sara’s region of Philly. Here’s a shot of the Market East station. I love the color. Shellac-alicious red bench against the green tiles. Mmmmm.

That night, we went to Chestnut Hill, a slightly more yuppie shopping area in Philly. We walked around, but most of the shops were closed since it was after five. So we had dinner. Delicious dinner at a Persian restaurant—Shundeez Persian Restaurant, where I ordered Addas Polo, half of a Cornish game hen served with basmati rice, flavored with lentils, onion, raisins, dates, cinnamon and saffron. It was delicious. Absolutely delicious. Amazingly delicious. I will be working to recreate this dish using couscous. Tomorrow.

We also went to the Borders store there. Sara and I met and became friends when we were both working at a Borders store here in NJ (sigh, in our younger days). When walking out of the Borders, we started singing “Memory.” As in, “from the musical Cats“. As in, “immortalized by Miss Barbra Streisand.” We did it.

Thankfully, the streets were pretty empty and we didn’t end up with a string of alley cats following us back to the car. We went back to her apartment and talked to Gus, had some tea, and started watching Vidor’s Gilda (one of my favorite noir films and one about which I wrote a couple of papers in college film courses). But we were tired and I think Sara nodded off, and I soon thereafter. The next thing I knew, it was Sunday morning.

Speaking of Sunday, I’ll write about that tomorrow. This is a long-ass post and Sunday held magical wonders like the Reading Terminal Market and Laurel Hill Cemetery. And Target, but Target is a sort of everyday magical wonder.

And another contribution from the Harriet Carter catalog.

Oooh, I had some fun scanning products from the Harriet Carter (”distinctive gifts since 1958″) catalog that was in the junk mail pile. Here’s the one I’ve chosen to share with you tonight.

holy creepy masks, batman

The “making of” video…

…for this music video for one of my favorite Radiohead songs off of In Rainbows.

From Mother Jones:

“On the haunting “House of Cards” from last year’s In Rainbows, Thom Yorke seemed to exhort a lover to let her old life dissolve and “get swept under” with him; exploring this theme of dissolution by pointing lasers at a suburban party and using computers to reconstruct the reflected data into a surreal, pointillist 3-D image of the scene may seem a bit on the elaborate side, but remember, this is Radiohead we’re talking about.”

Ghosts of My Friends arrived today - how I love the Royal Mail! I’ve taken a few photos of the interiors, but this is my absolute favorite segment so far… it forms a clear face with arms and shoulders sort of shrugging and going, “What??”

On May 25, 1909. Almost 100 years ago. Crazy.

Here’s a link to the Picasa album where I’ve posted more photos and will continue to post them. I need some help if I’m to take better photos - just someone to hold the book open without letting his/her fingers show too much and so that I can get them in a place with better lighting.

Some of these photos suuuuck for now, but I’ll get there. I’m just too excited NOT to snap them.

I don’t have it yet, but it shipped from the UK earlier today and I will have it in my clutches soon. What is it? Well, I saw this post on design*sponge and got a little giddy.

It’s a book from the early 1900s called The Ghosts of My Friends. The concept behind the book was to provide blank pages where one would have his/her friends pen their signature along the page lengthwise and fold it in half while the ink was wet, thus creating a somewhat smudged mirror image of the signature… sort of like the project I’m sure we all did in elementary school art class where you’d create some type of Rorschach-esque inkblot design.

Here’s a shot from the design*sponge post:

I found my copy through AbeBooks (my preferred source for used/antiquarian books) and a copy has shipped to me from the village of Leamington Spa in Warwickshire (near other charmingly named villages such as Bubbenhall, Cubbington, Leek Wootton, Haseley Knob, Long Itchington and -ahem- Middlemarch).

The bookseller’s description of the copy I ordered follows:

Author: Cecil Henland
Title: The Ghosts of my Friends
Bookseller Book No.: 31352
Book Description: Hardback Green cloth gilt with illustration on front cover and as frontispiece. Unusual autograph book in which wet in forms a ghostly /Skeletal appearance when friends sign their name and the page is folded in two. About half the pages have been filled in dating from 1907 onwards. Some of the results are remarkable. Signatures are of family and friends of the Tomlinson family one of who was Mayor of Grantham. VG condition.

I am enamored of the fact that the pages are about half-filled.
I am enamored of the fact that the signatures date from 1907.
I am enamored of the fact that the family was related to the mayor of Grantham.

Now I’m faced with a large dilemma and I probably won’t have a resolution until several weeks from now when the book actually arrives: do I whip out one of my fountain pens and have some of my friends and family sign their names so that my friends and family here, in 2008, not related to the mayor of Grantham, can have their signatures alongside those of people who were friends and family of the original owner in 1907?

Considering that this was the original and sole purpose of this book, would I be OK with the idea of writing in a 100-year-old book? With anything other book, I wouldn’t think of it - never ever. I don’t have a lot of old books, but the ones I do own have stories behind them and I like to preserve them in their original state (and show them off - I should do that here, sometime). Whether it’s fascinating marginalia (a copy of The Egoist by George Meredith), great illustrations (The Encyclopedia of Modern Sewing) or a terrific concept (Tales from Shakespeare - a sort of CliffsNotes from 1919 which contained prose summaries of all the Bard’s plays), there’s a reason for each one and I don’t mark them up in any way.

But I will definitely be photographing it when it arrives and posting some results here or to my public gallery on Picasa.

This evening, I rather (uncharacteristically) went out to a bar (!) after work (!) to have drinks (!) to celebrate my work-friend’s birthday along with a bunch of people I didn’t know (!!!). I had A rum and coke, so it wasn’t like I guzzled. I don’t like beer, so visits to the bar for informal gatherings such as this are always a bit weird for me. I experience mild anxiety over drink choices and the fact that not being a beer-drinker has a bit more of a pariah-esque quality than even being a teetotaler.

ANYWAY… it was pretty fun. There was good conversation. I was glad that a good number of people showed up to celebrate friend’s birthday.

But now, I’m settled in to watch Contempt (Le Mépris) and get to bed as early as possible because I have to be up at the ass-crack of dawn (meaning 5:30 a.m., which classifies as “ass-crack” in my world) to take the 6:30 train into work to get to a hotel in Manhattan for a company meeting. Early mornings and I do not jive well.

To make things easier in the morning, I’ve already decided what I shall wear, right down to the accessories. They shall be these - adorable new earrings I got this weekend at Urban Outfitters when I went shopping with my friend Sara:

Yup. They’re awfully cute. And while I don’t wear gold as a rule, I couldn’t pass these up. Besides, it’s just a touch of gold. That is acceptable.

Please note that I do not dwell in a cave of darkness (yet); zooming in on the earrings in my hand and using the flash caused the background to drop out entirely. This is actually quite a good thing since what dwells in the background is frightening and messy and not a fair representation of me. I did give myself a quick manicure on Monday night, though. So that’s nice.

And I have devised a fantastic way of spending $400; I will use it (not anytime soon) to fund the purchase of a Sigma 17-70mm f/2.8-4.5 DC HSM Macro Lens for my Nikon D40. It’s apparently pretty good for the price and since I’m not about to spend $800 on a high-end macro lens, it will do.

I’m really enjoying macro photography and how it can make ordinary, everyday objects appear to be exciting, new and abstract, and how it captures textures. I love textures - both visual and tactile. There was a time that my friend Vin called me “Tactile Eva” since I could not walk into a store (usually a clothing store) without touching things. I like to think that a lot of people shop this way, but it seems it’s not as common as I originally thought.

Quel tragédie. Y’all are missing out.

It’s raining. I’m tired. So here are some photos from today. I suppose at least one of them could be considered mild food porn.

Image 1: The choke portions and detritus from artichokes I decided to grill. I think these discards are aesthetically pleasing in terms of color and texture. Yay for a camera that can handle macro shots.

Image 2: Kielbasa and portabella mushrooms (with balsamic vinegar) on the grill.

Image 3: A delicious Gala apple I had for dessert. It looks like something that would charm Snow White, doesn’t it?

One benefit of summer’s late sunsets is that I can work late, get home at 7:30, eat dinner, and still manage to go outside and photograph flowers in natural light.

Below is a picture of what I made from Shrinky Dinks last night.

I am not entirely crazy about how the flower came out, but I love the leaves. I might make more since I think those would look awesome as earrings - strung two or three to a small chain? Or as a drop necklace. Yeah, the ideas are brewing.

I used my lovely German colored pencils for vibrancy. They really are the best colored pencils. I got my first set of Staedtler pencils when I was visiting Poland in 1990 or ‘91 (so, uh, when I was 11 or 12?). My grandmother took me to an art/stationery store where I got a set of those pencils and some blank notebooks so I could draw and write. It was just after the fall of communism in Poland and the stores were still running on the “everything is behind the counter -you must ask to see it” model. I remember that that was really weird to me - that I had to ask to see something, and that there was a sense of expectation of long consideration from me. I would just say, “Yeah - I want it” and hand over the money.

That was still something shop clerks and people in general weren’t used to - that sort of throwing around of money. But I was some little kid from America who just knew that her dollar was worth a lot more there and got all excited when she went to exchange money. And the whole time, I was figuring out how much things cost in American money because it was like everything was on sale. I recall that the exchange rate at that time was something like 8 złoty to a dollar, and a few years later it was up (down) to 4 złoty to a dollar.

I should confirm this with a family member since it seems kind of crazy.