The Lisa Chronicles

While I was in Chicago recently for a few work conferences that were back to back, conversations with girlfriends and boyfriends often turned to DIY and the crafting movement. All the cool kids are doing it, it seems. Now I’m no stranger to the DIY/crafting world as I’ve been dabbling on and off for a few years, including but not limited to the following: knitting caligraphy Excessively Diverting1 photography But the one that seems to be all the rage in my circles is cross-stitch. I can name half a dozen people off the top of my head who currently…

I knew it was time to take a break after working steadily on cleaning my office for a few hours when I put the carbon copy of a check in the envelope and sealed it without thinking. And my brain has been throbbing for half that time. UFYH rules say you should take breaks every so often to keep your focus up and your mind engaged, brain fatigue is painful when attempting to accomplish something, and when finding the simplest of tasks become too mountainous, it’s time to rest. (But am I not superwoman, who can do everything?) I noticed…

It is the witching hour here and magic is awakening for its nightly crawl across our world. It seeping out of the never, into our peripheral vision, those flutters of something that we cannot not quite capture in full sight. Magic is easy to ignore in the daylight for we can blame the light for whatever mysteries have seeped over in this realm, but we cannot ignore its rightful place in the night. For what we think we saw and that is gone, what we think we hear and is not repeated, and what we think we feel but do not…

Bagged & Boarded: The Best American Comics 2011

The Best American Comics 2011 (anthology) | 3/5 Quick Summary: Collection of sequential art works by upcoming and established artists, edited by Alison Bechdel tl;dr Summary: The book merits a “meh” and is recommended to buy used or to get from the library but not something you want to necessarily keep in your collection, even for reference. The Best American series and I have an interesting relationship. Something compels me to think I have to read the damn things, thus year after year I buy copy after copy of titles in the series, used/new/eBook, on the premise that I’m going…

For some time now, Kristin has been collecting Sheik romance novels, as a sub-collection for her Arab representation in popular fiction collection at her library. What’s made this particular collection development fun is that she’s crowd sourcing many of her acquisitions, from people such as myself, who pick them up for used/new as we find them to donate.1 Thanks to people like me, she has almost 200 titles in the Sheik romance genre alone. In the wake of a conversation held the other day between Alice and Kristin, Alice mentions she has some Sheik books for me to mule back to…

I fear I am going insane. The last couple of weeks, I have become an emotional hot mess. My mind, and my dreams, has been everywhere and nowhere at once, shifting the lines of reality and maybe madness. My thoughts have not been racing, as they were wont to do in the past, but I am having trouble focusing on any particular thing longer than a few seconds. I’ve come out of a dead sleep several times in the last month or two when I’ve thought I’ve seen or felt things in the dark, only to discover they weren’t there….

[If you've been following me on Twitter lately, you know that I've really gotten into comics in the last six or so months for personal reading as well as I've also been collecting graphic novels for work. Starting today, and every Wednesday, I'll be reviewing comics and graphic novels that I've recently read. Some will be new stuff, some will be old, others will be about the theory and practice of sequential art, with the goal to not only learn more myself but to help other comic virgins navigate this world.] House of Night (5 book miniseries) | 3.5/5 Quick…

I turn 40 in a couple of months. WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN?!, I yell while shaking angry fists to the sky. And there is no answer. At least not one that I can audibly hear.

[Update: 19:21] Seems like I caught and found most of the errant pixels driving me batty, but everything is not perfect. If you or someone you know is a web developer, comfortable with WordPress & CSS, contact me ASAP. I’ve hacked the fuck out the CSS for this theme but my fixing the themes mistakes keeps breaking it! I know it’ll take 2-3 hours to fix the CSS (at max). The framework could also be tweaked as well to clean it up. Currently tweaking the blog’s theme, which is causing it to morph in and out of various themes for…