It was a busy day. Nothing overwhelmingly exciting. Actually, most of
my days are underwhelming in the excitement area. But they can often
be unpredictable.
This morning
I wanted to finish printing some Christmas cards I started yesterday.
I have a little machine called a Print Gocco which I got at a garage
sale a while back. You can use it to make a screen and then also use
it as a printer.
I’ve
been planning to learn how to use it for a while and this week was that
time. Anyhow, I made a very simple design for a card. Nothing innovative,
because it’s sometimes just easier not to have to think too hard
when learning how to use a new thing. Getting bogged down in design
issues just prevents me from moving forward, so I opted for simple to
just try it out. It turned out to be a fairly easy process, and it has
a lot of potential. But, I needed to get some paper to finish up, so
we ended up going out to look for it.
Going
out for us is always far more complex than it seems. There is never
any direct route right to the place. We are compelled to stop along
the way.
So, we
ended up first going to two thrift stores. One was a waste of time.
The second had a few boring items and a potential find, a Herman Miller
table and two office chairs. They looked to be from the 70’s. The
table was a bit scratched, but the chairs were yellow leather, in good
condition. We hemmed and hawed, and decided to pass for the moment until
we could go back an look them up to see if there was any money to be
made before buying the set, because they were priced a little higher
than the usual thrift item.
On to
the paper supply place, where I had to look at every damned ream of
paper, and then I finally picked something relatively ordinary, but
which would be fine for my purposes. Naturally, we could not buy just
one ream of paper and one set of envelopes. We had to also pick up this
and that which we thought we needed, but which we probably don’t.
Then,
because the big Korean market is practically next door to the paper
place, we had to drop by there. They have a huge market with lots of
Asian food stuffs, not just Korean. There is also this little no frills
restaurant tucked in the back corner which has a great cheap lunch.
You order your lunch at the counter, and wait in the booth until it’s
ready and pick it up at the other counter. I had a soup with mandoo,
and kim chee. C. had the bul go gi tray. It was really worth the trip.
After
lunch we couldn’t just leave, we had to inspect all the aisles,
buy some frozen somen, some frozen mandoo and some mirin and some kimchee.
And we also get distracted by the machine which slices up the beef into
paper thin slices for bul go gi.
It was
already starting to get dark be the time we were on the way back to
the studio. Again, we can’t make a bee line right back, because
we would be passing another thrift store and we had to check to see
if we’d missed anything since we were there just two days ago.
Turned out there was a lot of new stuff, and I found three sweaters,
and two turtlenecks. He found two sweatshirts and some books to sell.
At last,
we finally made it back to the studio and proceeded with the looking
up of the Herman Miller stuff. After some discussion we rationalize
why we should go back and buy the table and chairs if they are still
there, so out we went again. They were there, and we loaded them in
the van. By now it's late and time to go home, having accomplished very
little of anything.
But, we're
not safe yet, because on the way home, we first have to pass dangerously
close to Trader Joes.