You’ve seen my collection of security envelope patterns, and my found cards collection. Now, behold my collection of novelty paperclips. Look how cute!!!
The dachshund, the flamingo, and the teeny tiny clip with the adorable little smiling face (the one both arrows are pointing toward) are my favorites.
I’m sorry to say I don’t have sources to link. Many of them came in kits from a line of scrapbooking products that no longer exists (RIP), and the others have been in my collection for so long that I don’t remember where they came from. I’m sorry, too, for the photo quality. We’ve officially entered the season of unpredictable lighting, and I no longer have a proper lighting setup. iPhone photos and some adjusting of brightness, contrast, saturation, and/or shadows will have to do for the next several months.
Not pictured: A giant hand-shaped paperclip that I forgot to photograph because I actively use it to hold open my small weekly calendar and therefore it’s not stored with the rest of the collection. Oops! It looks exactly like this one (I bought mine a few years ago from a local store I love (Cargo) and have no clue how much I paid for it). (This is the only paperclip in the collection that I actively use. The others sit in a cute dish on my desk for my viewing pleasure.)
After getting back the photos from the roll of film I had developed the other week, I knew I couldn’t let this year go by without a single hike. So, I decided to hike Angel’s Rest—my trusty first-hike-of-the-season trail—and I brought lil MJ along for the adventure.
Because I like to hike alone and it doesn’t get light until later now, I started several hours later than I usually do—at the time I began this hike I’m usually on my way home or all the way back home. The plus side to this is, I got in a full session at the gym before setting out for the hike.
I was worried about starting later because it was a Friday, perfect weather, this trail is close to the city and very popular, I didn’t want to hike a crowded trail, and also I wanted to be able to park at the trailhead. I was also worried about starting earlier because I’m a woman who hikes alone, it’s dark dark at the times I usually begin hiking under full daylight in the height of summer, the trail is close enough to the city for a weirdo to quickly and easily access it for nefarious purposes if they wanted to, and also: cougars. Anyway. There was plenty of parking when I got there (and none when I left), the trail didn’t begin to get crowded until I was halfway back down, and I didn’t get got by any weirdos or cougars or, notably, my own brain. Success!
This was my fourth time hiking this trail (not counting a fifth attempt late last summer that was cut short by an encounter with a cougar), and my first on this side of summer. My first time hiking it, in 2021, was about a month before summer officially began, and it was cold and barren. The next two times I hiked it, I did so during the height of summer; it was warm (hot, even) and everything was in full bloom. I wasn’t sure what to expect this time. Summer didn’t end that long ago, so I knew it wouldn’t be barren. Still, I didn’t know whether to expect summer or fall colors.
The colors were beautiful!! So vibrant!!
On our way to the summit we of course stopped at the large boulder the size of a small boulder for photos. I wish I’d stopped on the way back, after the sun was a little higher in the sky, to get better-lit photos of Michael. Next time.
We hit the boulder a little under an hour from the time we set out, and hit the false summit five minutes later.
Once you clear the false summit and are back on trail and covered by tree canopy, the summit is only a few minutes away. We spent about 20 minutes at the summit—an extremely long time for me—eating snacks and soaking up the sun. The weather was truly perfect. I thought it would feel colder up there, with the wind and the water and all. I considered continuing on to complete the loop. I decided against it because I hadn’t planned for it and didn’t have much more water or snacks with me.
By the time we reached the summit, the sun was in the south sky, which made it difficult to get good photos of the southern parts of the 360-degree view. You will simply have to trust me that it was gorgeous.
By the time we finished, Michael was exhausted, this being his first hike and all. Before heading home, we sat in the back of my car and ate some more snacks (snacks are one of the best parts of hiking).
All in all, a beautiful morning. I’m glad I didn’t let the season pass without at least one hike.
Note that this trailhead now requires either an Oregon State Parks annual parking permit or a $10 day-use fee to park at. The day-use fee can be paid only via QR code; no cash, card, or tap to pay. Because many trailheads have spotty or nonexistent cell service, it’s recommended to buy your pass in advance.
A few days ago I received the scans, negatives, and prints from a disposable camera I dropped off a few weeks ago. The camera was nearly a decade old—it had a “process by” date of June 2019 printed on its packaging—and I wasn’t sure how the photos would turn out, or if they would at all. I’m pleased to report that my $40 was not for naught: 19 and a half of the 27 exposures, which span five hikes from last summer and my first visit to the dahlia festival this summer, came out fine enough. Photos from three of those hikes and from the dahlia festival are below. You can see similarly composed iPhone photos from each occasion in its linked post.
I love how these photos turned out, the softness and grittiness and nostalgia of them. Digital cameras could never!! I have two more of these nearly decade old disposable cameras in my desk drawer and while I’m not thrilled to fork over $40 PER CAMERA for them to be developed, I am pretty stoked to take photos with them. If it didn’t cost so much to have film developed, or if I had more, uh, disposable income, I would love to (1) take way more photos using disposable cameras, à la a fellow Portlander and his incredible project (extremely my shit), and (2) learn to properly shoot film using a proper film camera.
Last week, to the very genuine surprise of everyone who knows me, including me, I decided that this year, we’re doing Christmas. And not just doing. Capital “d” Doing. I also decided last week that I’m open to documenting the holiday season in its own album, separate from my regular yearly pocket pages (Project Life) album. To that end, I’ve been scouring Pinterest and Instagram and old memorykeeping blogs that are miraculously still up for inspiration.
Currently, my main source of inspiration is CJ over at @ink.paper.photo). I love how simplified, clean, and well-designed all of her memorykeeping projects are, and her December Daily projects are no different. I find myself returning to her past pages for inspiration often. As of this post, you need an account to view her blog; her Instagram is public.
Love the idea of including a year-in-review layout. Love that this one folds out and flips up, and LOVE the mismatched stamped letters. Very old school letterpress.
The process video OP linked in her caption goes here. Unfortunately, she doesn’t talk in the video about how she made this spread. You can see a clip of it in action in this video.
You can never go wrong with a bold print or pattern paired with journaling on white.
If I do indeed keep a separate holiday album, I don’t plan to purchase any official December Daily supplies, workshops, or classes. Nor do I plan to do the “daily” part of December Daily. If I go this route, I’m not dead-set on the album being strictly chronological, and I plan to continue adding to my regular yearly pocket pages album, which means there will be some overlap between the two albums.
BALKING at the price to develop a single roll of film: $39.84. THIRTY-NINE DOLL HAIRS AND EIGHTY-FOUR CENTS!!!! FOR ONE COPY EACH OF 27 EXPOSURES!!!! AND A TWO-WEEK TURNAROUND TIME!!! AT A PLACE THITY MINUTES AWAY!!!! EXCUSE ME WHAT HELLO???? Since fucking when!!! Remember when you could get two prints of every exposure on a single roll of film developed in an hour at any neighborhood drug store for like $8.00???? What in the hell.
BINGING Bret Easton Ellis’s new show The Shards. It’s so good, you guys. The colors, the clothes, the set design, the blocking, the casting (my eye is particularly drawn to how well groomed and manicured everyone’s hands and nails are). I love everything about it. And Kaia Gerber looks and moves and sounds so muchlike her mom it’s wild.
BRAINSTORMING ideas for several memorykeeping projects, including a possible mini album documenting Michael’s Belated Birthday Week of Whimsy, and a possible holiday-themed album.
ENJOYING the coziness of early fall. Sweats! Fuzzy socks! Blankets! Candles!
HYPERFIXATING on the Donner Party Dizazz. It all started with a historical novel (When Winter Comes by V.A. Andrews, a recommendation I heard on a recent-ish episode of My Favorite Murder and that I extend to you) and has progressed me through several books, a documentary, and a thousand different, interconnected rabbit holes. It also has me wanting to section hike as much of their route as possible.
KEEPING an eye out for fun neon window signs to photograph during my walks.
LISTENING to and loving the Eating History podcast. It’s a husband/wife team—he’s an historian, she’s a chef—and the entire first season is about the history of pizza. Big recommend.
LOOKINGforward to watching Primetime later this week. (My favorite blurb for it so far comes from a local weekly: “In Lance Oppenheim’s fiction feature debut, Robert Pattinson gets to do his most favorite thing in the world: talk in a weird voice.” Even if I didn’t know anything about the premise of the movie, this sentence alone would be enough to sell me on it.)
PREPARING to order another custom puzzle from a photo I took. The holdup: deciding which company to go with.
READING, what else, another book about the Donner Party: The Best Land Under Heaven: The Donner Party in the Age of Manifest Destiny by Michael Wallis. I’m almost done and I really enjoy how detailed it is, with each short chapter broken into a day-by-day account of the caravan’s journey. I don’t want the book to end!! Big recommend.
REWATCHING a handful of shows from the early aughts and early 2010s that I loved and that are now on Hulu: The Americans, Body of Proof, Criminal Minds, Lie to Me, and The Mentalist. I miss when TV shows lasted longer than one or two seasons, and when seasons had more than six to 10 episodes, and when episodes lasted longer than 25 minutes.
WORKING on my 2026 pocket pages (Project Life) album. After starting the year off strong I fell all the way off and have been working to get back on track and caught up. I’m so close!
Last week was one of the busiest, goofiest, and most ridiculous and fun of my life and I am constitutionally incapable of shutting up about it. Let’s get into.
Shortly after Michael was released in April, I began seeing people tweet photos of mini Michael Jackson dolls and the adventures they took them on. I was instantly obsessed. The dolls are so ridiculous and janky and cute, and the adventures fans took him on were so fun to follow. I considered buying one (all of them), but every time I sat down to, my Childhood Trauma—my father’s ridicule, directed at literally anything I showed even the slightest interest in, especially if was “childish,” which was the worst thing a thing, or person (A CHILD!!), could be)—talked me out of it.
After my trip to the dahlia festival on Michael’s Birthday Eve, I decided I needed to buy at least one, childhood trauma be damned. And so I went home, spent several hours stressing over which to buy, ordered three (a Thriller era, a Bad era, and a History era), and hoped to Michael they’d arrive before September 12, so I could him with me to an event I’d been looking forward to for weeks and weeks and weeks.
The dolls arrived earlier that week and immediately I decided to give Michael a Belated Birthday Week of Whimsy. We kicked things off with a trip to the Swan Island Dahlia Festival, for a proper photo shoot of Michael with the varietals named for him.
He also took photos in a couple of the photo stand-ins, and at a fountain that I didn’t notice during my first visit a few weeks ago. When I heard the water, I hoped hard that there would be a spot to easily pose Michael for a photo—it was just too perfect (iykyk (if ydk, now you do))—and fully died inside when I realized there was and saw the inscription on the bottom rock. Devastating.
On our slow drive out of the dahlia fields, we saw two deer. The first—a piebald!!—meandered out of the rows of flowers, pausing briefly in the road while looking straight at my oncoming vehicle. Once it crossed into the fruit farm next door, a fawn followed. Both deer seemed very calm and unbothered—not at all skittish—and the larger, more protective one held eye contact with me until I broke it.
There’s a strong association in the fandom between Michael and deer, and many fans interpret random deer sightings as visits from Michael. When I saw the deer walk right in front of my car I gasped, exclaimed MICHAEL! as I turned to my right to look at my three Michael dolls on the passenger seat, and promptly began crying. I 10,000% believe that first deer—the one who wouldn’t break eye contact with me; the one with the calm, protective demeanor; the one with the rare genetic condition that gave them white patches among their normal brown coats—was a visit from Michael. I wish I’d gotten a photo. My phone was within reach and my window was down; I could’ve gotten a great shot. But I was so entranced, and anyway there were other vehicles behind me. I drove away stunned.
After the dahlia festival, we stopped at The End of the Oregon Trail Museum. Everyone who knows anything about Michael knows that he loves history and to learn, and my current hyperfixation on the Donner Party Dizazz has me curious about everything even remotely related to their journey, both in general and in specific. Stopping at the museum was a no-brainer.
Actual fun fact: This wagon that Michael’s sitting on has been carbon dated to the 1850s. The hoops and the canvas cover are new, the rest of it is in its original Oregon Trail condition.
The most fun part of the museum: the candle-making station, which Michael took full advantage of and made himself a birthday candle for his birthday treat.
The second-best part: a free honey stick from the gift shop, a reward for completing the scavenger hunt and collecting all the stamps throughout the museum.
For Michael’s birthday treat, we went to Voodoo Doughnut, where they gave him a free doughnut, and where, of course, he had a photo shoot in the photo booth.
On Thursday, we went to the Practical Magic 2 premiere at a local theater.
At the end of the week, we indulged in some self-care: fresh manicures and a massage. We also got in a solid gym session.
When my kids were super young, we began a tradition called Ice Cream for Dinner: Once a month we went to Sweet Frog, a self-serve frozen yogurt shop, and let the kids literally have ice cream (well, frozen yogurt, whatever, it’s spiritually the same thing) for dinner. The tradition ended in 2020 when we began dispersing around the U.S. Last year, my middle child, who lives with me, re-established the tradition. This month’s (pre-scheduled!!) froyo day happened to fall on the Saturday of Michael’s Belated Birthday Week of Whimsy.
His order: cake batter, watermelon sorbet, and milk chocolate frozen yogurt topped with crushed Oreos, mini marshmallows, M&Ms, and sour peach rings.
Saturday evening we both got dressed up to attend the final event of our whimsical week of belated birthday adventures and celebration: a candlelight tribute to Michael’s music and legacy, performed by a local string quartet.
The event was held at The Old Church Concert Hall. I’d never been before. It’s gorgeous! Especially when lit by candlelight (even if the candles are flameless).
The quartet performed 15 songs—14 as part of the main program and one as an encore, following a resounding standing ovation:
Bad
Rock With You
Human Nature
Billie Jean
Say Say Say
We Are the World
Man in the Mirror
Smooth Criminal
Black or White
Heal the World
Remember the Time
Earth Song
They Don’t Care About Us
Thriller
Beat It
There were two other songs on the program that they didn’t end up playing: I Want You Back and The Way You Make Me Feel. My guess is because of time (they sat us late, so the program started late, because one of the musicians was caught in traffic and arrived late). An absolute shame the only Jackson 5 song on the list didn’t get played.
I’m pleased to report everyone I encountered at the show was charmed by Michael and after I took the below photo, many (many!!) people asked me to leave Michael in place so they could take photos with him. Like, to the point that the venue staff asked us all to leave because we were taking too long and they needed to seat the audience for the next show, lol. What did they expect with THEE celebrity in the building!!!!
Honestly, I was worried all week about how people would react to a fully grown woman carrying around mini Michael Jackson dolls. Everyone was so great and seemed to genuinely enjoy playing along, strangers and my friends alike. Truly, the week was so ridiculous and goofy and fun. I’m so so happy I finally ordered these janky little dolls, and that I let myself have this week of whimsy. My inner child is still delighted.
Huge shout out to my friends for letting me spam the fuck out of their inboxes all week.
I made the crowns—quickly!—out of thin glitter card stock from Michaels the morning of our first adventure. The thinness was key. Thicker card stock wouldn’t have been as easy to work with. The two white glitter ones aren’t lined. The gold one is lined with the white glitter card stock. I used Mod Podge as glue for the lined crown. I cut the peaks of the crowns by eye. To avoid damage, I carried them around with us in a small plastic food storage container and took them out only when Michael was posing for photos.
In mid-August, I decided to prioritize doing, buying, and supporting things and people and causes I see advertised on street flyers around town over habitually googling “things to do in Portland this week/end” every few days while couchrotting in my living room. Naturally, I’m making a little project of it. Because I love when people share a peek behind the curtain, I’ve decided to document the process here on the blog.
My first idea was to commemorate all of these side quests by publishing a series of blog posts in which I’d share about the doing and buying and supporting of the things and people and causes I see on street flyers, along with a photo of each flyer. The thing is, as always, I want something that I can hold in my hands. The solution: a mini album.
For this project, there are five main decisions to make:
Album format
Album size and dimensions
Cover page and front matter
Main spread layout and design
Back cover
So far, I’ve made the first four decisions.
Album format
This was not a difficult decision. In fact, it wasn’t really a decision at all: I went into this project certain I wanted to use one of the acrylic albums I have in my stash. It didn’t even occur to me until I sat down to write this post there are other formats I could use for this project, like making a pocket pages mini album, or having a photo book professionally printed.
The acyclic albums appeal to me for four main reasons:
I can add to the album over time, unlike with a professionally printed photo book
they’re forgivable and I can easily remove or replace or otherwise edit or change something I don’t like, unlike with a professionally printed album
there are minimal supplies involved—even fewer than are needed for a pocket pages album!
they feel limiting in a way that pocket page albums and professionally printed photo books don’t. Sometimes I need tight boundaries on a project so that I don’t get bogged down in the details, which, on account of the autism, I’m hardwired to do
Album size and dimensions
Of the acrylic albums in my stash, I considered three for this project: a transparent 5×7 album, a frosted purple 4×5.5 album, and a frosted black 3×8 album (the others are too small (they’re this size) and don’t make sense for this project).
The black 3×8 album was my first choice. It always is. I’ve been dying to use it for a project since I bought it several years ago. So far, nothing’s felt right, including this project (the dimensions don’t work well). Sad!
I decided to go with the 5×7 album. While the dimensions of both the 5×7 and 4×5.5 albums work well for what I’m envisioning, the 5×7 album offers more room to work with, which is important to me when it comes to the right-side page of each spread, where I plan to include handwritten journaling to accompany the photo on the facing page (more below). The larger size makes the most sense: I’m wordy, and handwriting takes up more space than does typed text.
Cover page and front matter
I knew I wanted to use a full-page photo for the cover, and I knew exactly which photo I wanted to use. I also knew I wanted at least one spread of front matter, to both set the scene and ease the viewer’s experience into the album.
Right now, I plan to have three spreads of front matter: The first will have a blank page, likely of textured white card stock, on the left and a short write-up about the project on the right. The second will have a full-bleed map of my and adjacent neighborhoods, which is where I see all these flyers. The third will have a blank page on the left and a section title page on the right. I’ve not yet mocked up any of these spreads.
Right now, I plan to section the album by month and year. This could change. Maybe it becomes seasonal. Or annual. Maybe I decide to arrange the album by category (events, products, causes, etc.). Who knows. The ability to change how the album is organized is one of the reasons I chose to use a set of acrylic covers, held together by adjustable binder rings.
Main spread layout and design
I had the most ideas for this section of the album, and the toughest time making a decision.
As is often the case, I wanted each spread to follow a template. I like a cohesive look, and I also like having a set formula to follow. Once the initial decisions are made about the template layout and design, there are few, if any, decisions to make along the way—it’s plug and play.
I brainstormed several possible spread layouts. In each scenario, the left-hand page of the spread includes a photo and the right-hand page is home to journaling that accompanies said photo. Below, I outline my ideas for only the left-hand page layout and design.
Option 1: A 3×4 photo of the flyer in question in the wild (affixed to a utility pole), centered on a 5×7 sheet of patterned scrapbook paper or solid-colored, textured card stock. I pulled some paper and card stock from my stash that I thought might work well (pictured), and also made some mock-ups in Photoshop Elements using digital scrapbooking papers (not pictured).
Option 1
Option 2: Same as option 1 above, with the photo centered on a 5×7 photo of scraps of flyers on a utility pole.
Option 2
Option 3: Same as option 2 above, with a 5×7 sheet of vellum between the 5×7 photo of scraps of flyers on a utility pole and the 3×4 photo of the flyer in question.
Option 3
Option 4: Same as option 2 above, with a scan or tightly cropped photo of the flyer in question.
Option 4
Option 5: Same as option 3 above (vellum), with a scan of the flyer in question. I didn’t take any photos of this option.
Option 6: A full-page, 5×7 photo of the flyer in question in the wild (affixed to a utility pole).
Option 6
Option 6 is the winner. It’s also the last option I thought of, days (days!!) after all the others. It seems so obvious this would be the top contender, I’m still baffled I didn’t think of it sooner.
A note: From the moment the idea for this project popped into my head, I began taking photos of any and every street flyer that advertises something I’m even remotely interested in attending or buying or otherwise supporting. So that I can quickly and easily reference them, I add all of those photos to an album on my phone (“I saw it on a street flyer”). For visual continuity, I take a vertical photo from about the same distance. Sometimes this is challenging because of where flyers are affixed to the poles, or surrounding objects that obstruct access. In these instances, I try to get a wider shot, which I can crop. When I can’t, I take the photo I can get and move on. It doesn’t have to be perfect, and I don’t spend a ton of time framing a shot, only a few seconds at most.
Back cover
I’m not yet sure what I want to do here. If I had to make a decision today, I would go with another full-page photo of a utility pole covered in flyers, just like with the front cover. I don’t have to make a decision today, though, so this is still up for grabs.
* * *
To get an idea for how the ideas in my head will translate onto the page, I printed out some of the photos I plan to use on the card stock and photo paper I use in my Project Life albums. In keeping with tradition, I’ll have the photos I end up using in the album printed by Persnickety Prints, which means the color will be more vibrant and the pages will be studier.
The grid paper is from one of my Mnemosyne notebooks. For these mock-ups, I removed a sheet from one of my A5 grid notebooks and trimmed it to size. The grid is printed on only one side and the paper is buttery soft. For the project, I plan to use sheets from my A4 grid notebook, which will give me two 5×7 pages per sheet.
To round the corners of my pages so that they match the acrylic album covers, I used this corner rounder punch (the 4mm option).
My next steps are to order my first set of photos from Persnickety, gather supplies for and create the front matter, and begin the journaling that will accompany each flyer photo. I’ll be back with an update when I’ve completed at least two of those three tasks.
Dixie, my new dictionary. Nearly a month later and I’m still so in love with her. 15/10 purchase.
Tiny containers. Most days, I go back home after the gym, where I imbibe in my post-workout powders and potions. Often enough, though, I don’t. For those days, I bought these cutie little containers to bring said powders and potions with me so I can stop carrying them around in tiny ziplock bags like a drug dealer. (Pictured below: chia seeds and fiber.)
Finishing this fuckass puzzle. At the beginning of the year I had this puzzle made from a photo I took during a 2015 a trip to the fair. I knew it would be challenging. It was WAY more challenging than I expected. I began it in January. By February, I was beyond annoyed with it and shoved it under my TV stand to save for later. I began working on it again in July and finally finished it in mid-August. By comparison, I usually complete a 1,000-piece puzzle in one to three days (it’s the autism).
I used puzzleYOU and I’m mostly happy with my decision. The quality of the pieces and the box are much better than that of Portland Puzzle Company. My one complaint—and it’s a big one—is the dullness of the colors. The colors are what really make the image pop. Compared to the original photo (below), the puzzle’s colors are so muted, which I think dulls the vibe of the puzzle and the satisfaction of completing the thing.
Trying on all my Before Times work clothes. I haven’t had to get dressed for real in…years. Which, on the one hand, I really love. Not having a dry cleaning bill and being super comfortable all day every day is the dream, especially as an autistic who finds most clothing extremely-to-unbearably uncomfortable for a variety of sensory reasons. For the last year or so, though, I’ve begun to miss feeling put together. So the other day I tried on literally every single piece of workwear from my pre-COVID, DC era. It was so, so fun and made me feel human and like a member of society again—and inspired me to get dressed for real for my recent visits to the Portland Art Museum and the Swan Island Dahlia Festival.
Backing this Kickstarter. I cannot wait for my phone to have this very cute and stationary home.
Street art. Flyers, posters, sidewalk stencils, stickers, murals, THIS ADORABLE-ASS TINY CERAMIC VASE HELLO??? The version of autism I have is the one that’s hyper-attuned to little things on utility poles and street signs and the ground and man does it keep paying dividends.
Washing my car. The other weekend I borrowed my friend’s parents’ driveway and hose to give my car the detailed wash she so desperately needed and deserved. She’s so shiny now!
Air-drying my laundry. Since April, I’ve been air-drying all of my laundry. Does this save me a noticeable amount of money? No. Do I have the space to do this? Also no. Does this save me time? Absolutely not. Does it bring me an immense sense of peace, calm, and contentment? Yes. It brings me so much joy to stand on my building’s little stoop and arrange everything on my drying rack, to putz around and check on its progress and rotate the rack throughout the day with the sun, and to fold it all and put it away at the end of the day once it’s dry. I love it so much.
The IPRC. I was first introduced to the Independent Publishing Resource Center a few years ago when I was invited to participate in an art build being held there. It’s such a cool place and I’m very grateful to have access to a creative workspace filled with so many useful tools (enormous scanners, InDesign and Illustrator, a laminator, book binding machines and tools, button making machines, a zine library (!!), a letterpress studio (where I took a letterpress workshop last summer), riso printers, a screen printing studio, etc.) and so much inspiration. Lately, I’ve been visiting a few times a week to work on a project that I’m both super excited about and not yet ready to share.
The Swan Island Dahlia Festival. After years of wanting and planning to, I finally went for the first time the other week. Beautiful, stunning, gorgeous, etc. I spent two and a half hours there and easily could’ve spent longer if I hadn’t needed to leave to make it to an appointment.
Gym progress. It’s been a long time since I’ve hit a lifting PR. Given my age and how long I’ve been lifting, those PRs will continue to become more and more rare. The good news is, the amount of weight on the bar isn’t the only type of PR you can hit in the gym. Some non-lifting progress I’ve made recently:
Improved (lower) resting heart rate, which has translated to higher RPMs with less effort during Zone 2 sessions on the ergs
Holding right around (and sometimes above!!) 70 RPMs on the Assault Bikeduring workouts, under fatigue, for multiple rounds. This is a huge achievement for me. I’m curious to see how it translates to the Echo Bike, which is even more of a beast than the Assault Bike
Improved pace on the ski erg. Of the ergs, this is the one I struggle with the most. It’s very exciting every time I see my new and improved pace holding steady, or even creeping down by a second or two every few weeks, on the screen
Having the gym to myself. Earlier this year I joined a different gym in part because of their hours, which align better with my schedule, and which means I often have the gym entirely to myself for a good portion of my workout. A dream.
The first signs of fall. I’m shocking myself by saying: I’m excited—and ready—for fall. Or, more precisely, I’m excited and ready for early fall, when it’s still warm enough to have the windows open and also cool enough to wear sleeves and burn a spice-scented candle (this one is my favorite); when the leaves begin to turn in vibrant shades of reds, oranges, and yellows and are still crunchy instead of brown and wet and extremely slippery; and when golden hour looks and feels extra golden.
Here are the scraps of ephemera I saved in August.
Top row
Packaging from new hair ties
Packaging from my latest Rogue order (chalk (theirs is the best and it lasts forever)
Packaging from the Legally Blonde edition of ICE Sparkling Water, which I decided to try because it’s pink and sparkly (it was okay, no strong opinion either way)
Second row
Pre-workout sampler packaging
Label from a set of Container Store hanging folders (they’re my favorite; I love the color options, how thick the folders are, and how they feel to the touch)
Packaging from a small bottle of the Target brand Excedrin I bought for the migraine kit I keep in my car
Packaging from a bag of the dark chocolate Lindt LINDOR chocolates
Wrapper from a Dum-Dums
Bottom row
Ink cartridge packaging
Packaging from the small containers I bought to carry my various powders and potions to the gym with me so I can stop carrying them around in tiny ziplock bags like a drug dealer. THEY’RE SO CUTE!!!
Caution tape that was strung across the entrance to my apartment complex’s parking lot after being repaved and re-striped
