finally! a post!

hello hello!  so, every time i’ve tried to post for a long time now, my computer has completely shut down as soon as i start to type in the subject line.  very weird.  anyway, i’m on matt’s computer, since he’s home sick and i have nowhere i need to be yet.

news:  we bid on an apartment saturday.  and yesterday, someone put in a bid that we can’t possibly match.  or we could, but we’d be screwed when anything happened that needed repairing.  so we had to let it go.  bummer.  it was gorgeous.  the top floor of 3 buildings, on prinseneiland.  it had everything we wanted, including a full downstairs atelier for matt’s papermaking, which he plans to get pretty big and messy with as soon as he has adequate space to do it in. 

oh well.  there will be others.

saturday night, which was matt’s birthday, we drove to waregem, belgium for a concert:  alien sex fiend!  i’m glad we went… i’ve wanted to see them for years, and we met lots of people there, but the show was actually pretty disappointing.  oh well.  it was still a great night.

espresso cart planning still moves along.  slowly.  i may have found a builder.  but i need to get a few more pieces of information for him.  and i’m going crazy trying to do espresso stuff and housing stuff at the same time.  i just need some downtime.  ugh.  wouldn’t i love another one of those stupid beach vacations like annemette and i took last january!  ha!  no time for one this year.  anyway, i have little more to say right now… just happy to have a chance to say it.

going to maastricht for the weekend.  things to do there. 

21 comments

    1. with a blender. and old paper. and sometimes new paper, which makes me grumpy. and various things… sometimes fibers or plant bits. you should email him separately if you want more information. i created a monster when i came home from one of my 2nd graders’ field trips and showed him the paper we made. 🙂 he’s been obsessed ever since.

      1. that’s what i wanted to know – the using a kitchen blender is what’s always dissuaded me from papermaking, as the appliance isn’t made for the task and the motor will burn out relatively quickly from grinding up the fibers. seems like a waste to me, and i’ve been looking for a substitute more suited to the job.

      2. matt uses a kitchen blender. no problems. first you soak the ripped up scrap paper to soften it. again, you can ask him for more details.

      3. If you are starting from plant fibers, then your kitchen blender isn’t going to do a good job. But when you are just using recycled papers (torn up small, soaked) it’s okay.

        Sadly, my blender only has one speed – FAST! This means that my paper isn’t very high strength, the fibers end up chopped up too small. It’s okay for writing, but I wouldn’t use it for a high-stress project like book-binding. I hear that it is better to use a slower speed – while you want to break the paper down into pulp (instead of keeping chunks), you want that pulp to have ‘long fibers’ which you can get with a slower beating action… my fast mixer chops the fibers very small.

        And your blender motor should survive okay, as long as you don’t push it too hard. Make sure you’ve got a lot of water in with the paper pulp, so the blender isn’t just trying to cut through a solid mass of paper. My guess, 3/4 water, 1/4 paper is a good mix.

        (although my motor is still okay, my cheap blender has started to suffer in other ways – not because it’s used too HARD, just used a LOT)

        eh, there’s a lot to learn by experimentation. Let me know if you really get into it and we’ll compare notes.

      5. I like to use office paper as a base for writing-type paper – either cut off the white edges without printing, or even just use the whole page. If you use the page with printing, you will end up with tiny grey specks and even sometimes chunks of words and flowcharts on your page, which can be a cool effect.

        Then blend up other stuff for texture, examples: wrapping paper (some works, some doesn’t), crepe paper. I like roughly blending paper with colored printing on it (like the paper that flower boquets come wrapped in). I haven’t had good luck with magazine paper or getting strong colors.

  2. Sorry to hear you missed out on the appartment. Better luck next time, I hope.

    btw : you left your gloves at my place. I’ll bring them along next time. Are you going to see Feindflug ?

    1. ha! i wondered where i left them. i figured i probably left them at the same place matt left his bag. anyway, yeah, i’m hoping to go to feindflug. i haven’t bought tix yet, though.

      2. I was going to say the same thing 🙂

        (I’ll take the gloves with me anyway, just in case. Let’s see, so that’s tickets, gloves, money, keys, hell…I need a pair of trousers with bigger pockets…. ;-)…)

      3. you could just attach pockets to thigh holsters. i’ve been working on some of those myself. using stretch pvc. 🙂 good idea, huh?

      5. sure… let me take one out on a trial run, so i see if it stays up all night and doesn’t make me crazy, before i make any promises.

  3. Great to hear from you and that you’re still alive. I’m glad to hear that you’re still working on that coffee project although I had always thought it was a shop you had been looking into. Was there a change and I missed it? Whatever. Doesn’t matter so long as you keep going for it.

    It’s too bad that Alien Sex Fiend weren’t that good. That situation always sucks. Of course, its been…what…four years since my last life show so what the hell do I know. 😉

    It sounds like you’ve really hit your groove over there, have made many friends and what not. I honestly didn’t think you, of all people, would have a problem making friends but you never know. I always imagine what it’d be like living not only in a different country but in a different culture as well and having a difficult time meeting people. You, now that I think about it, could probably find a way to meet people and have fun at an insurance seminar, or even an anime convention.

    1. doofus..
      i think it would be much easier at an anime convention. after all, they’ve got CUTEY HONEY!!!!

      i recommend drugs for an insurance seminar. or a severe hangover.

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