Weekend notes: weird connections
Oct. 26th, 2008 04:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gayathriI havent been feeling so great - fighting off an infection, so took it TOTALLY easy this weekend.
Friday night, over at![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
byronium 's with the array and a TON of thai food - I shouldnt order when I'm hungry. Played Rock Band and fell over fairly early. Breakfast at Liberties involving poached eggs... Up to help byronium unpack by mostly again laying around on the couch and looking.. you know, adorable. I'm running a slight fever, so really, it was sort of nice to be warm and in the sun.
I did find my old passport, and have to start the rush order to get a new one - the thought process of why I havent gotten a new passport _already_ is really more about not losing the one thing that identified me as a US Citizen until I had a solid job, or needed to get one - expedited passports dont leave your hands for more than 2 or 3 days, vs the _weeks_ its been taking to get them normally. (This week, expedited passport and more shots for the trip)
The one thing that rocked was getting to hang some of his art - I was stoked, I'd never seen some of it. basmati and jong came over, and broke in his oven by baking pumpkin pie and playing castlecrashers until I seriously could go an eternity without ever seeing or hearing it again. I worked on my knitting, but screwed something up, have to look at the videos again. For some reason jumping from a knit to a purl causes some issues for me.
I've been sort of whining about web 2.0 products, like myspace or facebook, but this weekend, another thing happened both on Facebook and on Linked-in - TWO more folks from high school that I'd like to get in touch with got in touch with me! Now, I shouldnt be surprised - my 20th HS reunion is apparently this November. You know, when I'm flying to India. We'll ignore the _20_ years that I've been out of HIGH SCHOOL. dear gods, I dont feel that old.
Anyway, eating pie, and looking at art wasnt really a bad way to spend a saturday night. Sleep was great. Up to more pie and art for breakfast! With teh amazing coffee! The only part that made me sad was No Scones. Its been _weeks_. I _need_ some of those amazing scones. byronium apparently doesnt have a pastry cutter, which is srsly something that must get resolved this week.
Then off to a short stint at visitingxthread 's place for brunch, which involved some bits of bacon, waffles, lame bagels (one cannot find anything but lame bagels outside of Bagel and Pizza Mecca that is NYC) and good salmon...
Now what was cool was meetingblue_estro !! what a weird small world...
I completely let my mouth get away from me at brunch at one point tho - one of the women was talking about how she is not having much luck selling or making custom jewelery in this market. One of the guys starts on about how one should 'just go to india' for custom jewelery because it was so cheap. This hit a nerve for me - its _cheap_ because most people there live in poverty and the artisans are paid nothing for their labor - the cost of my jewelry is the cost of the gold in it, not the work, sometimes done by children.
In 'this economy', amongst so called liberals, I'm appalled at the utter self centeredness of that sort of comment - 'buy overseas, its cheaper,' which takes away jobs from this country as well, as well as continues to exploit labor in other countries. Maybe I ought to ask my brother for a more reasoned thought process on this. (Who frrom the UAW was fine with union labor moving overseas if they were all paid what American automakers were paid? how would that have leveled the playing field upwards?)
So I said something to the effect of, "Gold still costs what it costs, its just that artisanship is not valued at all," jingling the bracelets my mother got for me and he agrees, like this is a _good_ thing. (the jewelry maker is standing there, btw) and I said, "sure, if you are ok with child labor making your custom jewelery," (I DID indeed sneer at this point. *sigh* such little self control.) to which he looked a little stunned and I walked away.
Anyway, after leaving the brunch after making such a great impression, we headed to Body Manipulations! Surprisingly, Chris was there, and helped me out for Diwali by stretching my ear down to an 8 gauge, and adding two permanent earings to my left ear -- I had the holes already, but needed some earrings. But ow!byronium was awesome and held my hand, Chris was awesome, and helped me through it.
W00T! Tho sadly I didnt ask where the rings were made. :) I know, horrid.
My lo grade fever isnt getting better. Its time to call the doc tomorrow and see them. Now, am keeping warm, drinking lots of liquids and waiting on indian food!
Friday night, over at
byronium 's with the array and a TON of thai food - I shouldnt order when I'm hungry. Played Rock Band and fell over fairly early. Breakfast at Liberties involving poached eggs... Up to help byronium unpack by mostly again laying around on the couch and looking.. you know, adorable. I'm running a slight fever, so really, it was sort of nice to be warm and in the sun.I did find my old passport, and have to start the rush order to get a new one - the thought process of why I havent gotten a new passport _already_ is really more about not losing the one thing that identified me as a US Citizen until I had a solid job, or needed to get one - expedited passports dont leave your hands for more than 2 or 3 days, vs the _weeks_ its been taking to get them normally. (This week, expedited passport and more shots for the trip)
The one thing that rocked was getting to hang some of his art - I was stoked, I'd never seen some of it. basmati and jong came over, and broke in his oven by baking pumpkin pie and playing castlecrashers until I seriously could go an eternity without ever seeing or hearing it again. I worked on my knitting, but screwed something up, have to look at the videos again. For some reason jumping from a knit to a purl causes some issues for me.
I've been sort of whining about web 2.0 products, like myspace or facebook, but this weekend, another thing happened both on Facebook and on Linked-in - TWO more folks from high school that I'd like to get in touch with got in touch with me! Now, I shouldnt be surprised - my 20th HS reunion is apparently this November. You know, when I'm flying to India. We'll ignore the _20_ years that I've been out of HIGH SCHOOL. dear gods, I dont feel that old.
Anyway, eating pie, and looking at art wasnt really a bad way to spend a saturday night. Sleep was great. Up to more pie and art for breakfast! With teh amazing coffee! The only part that made me sad was No Scones. Its been _weeks_. I _need_ some of those amazing scones. byronium apparently doesnt have a pastry cutter, which is srsly something that must get resolved this week.
Then off to a short stint at visiting
xthread 's place for brunch, which involved some bits of bacon, waffles, lame bagels (one cannot find anything but lame bagels outside of Bagel and Pizza Mecca that is NYC) and good salmon... Now what was cool was meeting
blue_estro !! what a weird small world... I completely let my mouth get away from me at brunch at one point tho - one of the women was talking about how she is not having much luck selling or making custom jewelery in this market. One of the guys starts on about how one should 'just go to india' for custom jewelery because it was so cheap. This hit a nerve for me - its _cheap_ because most people there live in poverty and the artisans are paid nothing for their labor - the cost of my jewelry is the cost of the gold in it, not the work, sometimes done by children.
In 'this economy', amongst so called liberals, I'm appalled at the utter self centeredness of that sort of comment - 'buy overseas, its cheaper,' which takes away jobs from this country as well, as well as continues to exploit labor in other countries. Maybe I ought to ask my brother for a more reasoned thought process on this. (Who frrom the UAW was fine with union labor moving overseas if they were all paid what American automakers were paid? how would that have leveled the playing field upwards?)
So I said something to the effect of, "Gold still costs what it costs, its just that artisanship is not valued at all," jingling the bracelets my mother got for me and he agrees, like this is a _good_ thing. (the jewelry maker is standing there, btw) and I said, "sure, if you are ok with child labor making your custom jewelery," (I DID indeed sneer at this point. *sigh* such little self control.) to which he looked a little stunned and I walked away.
Anyway, after leaving the brunch after making such a great impression, we headed to Body Manipulations! Surprisingly, Chris was there, and helped me out for Diwali by stretching my ear down to an 8 gauge, and adding two permanent earings to my left ear -- I had the holes already, but needed some earrings. But ow!
byronium was awesome and held my hand, Chris was awesome, and helped me through it. W00T! Tho sadly I didnt ask where the rings were made. :) I know, horrid.
My lo grade fever isnt getting better. Its time to call the doc tomorrow and see them. Now, am keeping warm, drinking lots of liquids and waiting on indian food!
