It’s official.  I quit my job.  My next year will be spent working with infants and hipsters while I try to figure out what exactly is next.

I spent the day with the infant (aka Scout). Since I wasn’t sure what life with a 6 week old would be , I had a light schedule.  Find health insurance, research  bands for Fun^3  Fest, and develop my price list for Frock On.

Thanks to Austin Bloggy Limits, I had Spotify playlists to work with (because infants don’t care about their caregivers deadlines).  We started with the Blue Stage. I have to go back and listen to a few of the bands since Scout decided to have a few fits of rage during the day.  My picks so far include: T-bird and the Breaks (there was a little dance party to their album “Never Get out of this Funk mid-afternoon), Public Enemy (as much as I love Passion Pit, I think that they would approve of me seeing Public Enemy instead),  Dan Deacon, Spank Rock, Big Freedia, Del Tha Funky Homosapien, and Rakim.

I updated the schedule based on today’s research and my other preliminary picks.  Tomorrow I will listen to the Orange Stage.  I don’t plan on researching the Black or Yellow stages.  I plan on checking out Reggie Watts and maybe Henry Rollins on yellow.  Other than that, I plan on being glued to Orange and Blue (fingers crossed that they are next to each other again).

M and I are busy as hell these days.   Luckily the release of the Fun^3 Fest schedule coincided with my night  off.  I can get some planning done.

Here is the grid schedule for the daytime stuff.  As a dyslexic person I can’t deal when people send me lists that look like  the one that arrived in today’s email. Now that I have a grid, I can see a few conflicts.  I hope the stages aren’t spread out too much.  The perk of Waterloo Park being so small was that I could hop between stages in a minute or so (depending on the how thick the crowd was).  (more…)

So far behind on updates.  This is the last one for tonight.

M is co-hosting Spin and Tonic at the North Door tomorrow night. Gin cocktails and brilliant music.

I accepted an in store seamstress gig at Frock On Vintage.   It’s a big leap being out there in retail land.  I am used to sewing in the comfort and isolation of my work room. The drawback is that I don’t meet new people and my art has a limited audience.  Come check out the space during the Grand Opening Party.  If you can’t make it then, I will be at the shop on Fridays and Saturdays.

Frock On Vintage will be teaming up with Slacker magazine, Arr Squeeze and KVRX to bring you food, drinks and music!

Complimentary alcoholic beverages will be provided for the 21 and up crowd compliments of Treaty Oak Rum. There will also be tasty bites, a photo booth and discounts and giveaways to boot! You will also have a chance to win one of four $50 gift cards from yours truly just for “liking” the event on Do512.

The party will go from 11am-7pm with music starting at two. Grab a drink and look through some clothes while rocking out to Guache, Starma, Young Girls, She Sir or The Ugly Beats with DJ Czech One on the 1s and 2s between sets. How fun does that sound? Don’t forget to “like” Frock On Vintage on Facebook for updates and discounts.

You can check out the stuff I am working on for the store on my Flickr.  I know you are dying to see what I did with this dress.

In the last year I have toyed with the idea of returning to teaching.  Not just sewing, but domestic arts or home economics.  As someone who cooks, sews, and can tackle most basic home repair situations I am a freak of nature among many of my friends.

So, over the next few months I plan on doing some serious research on this topic.  In times of economic crisis people are going to have to buckle down and do for themselves (well at least the little things).  These days people can barely sew on a button let alone cook a pot of rice.

I admit, I did have a bit of an advantage. My mom was (and still is) an amazing stay-at-home mom.  My dad wasn’t around much so we fended for ourselves quite a bit.  Mom’s best lesson was that if you can read, you can do just about anything (cooking, sewing, plumbing, electrical work, etc…).  Not everyone gets this lesson.  Instead of trying and possibly failing people would rather have someone else do it.

My question for you readers, can you do for yourself or do you have others do it for you?  What’s holding you back from doing it yourself?  It is time?  Is it skill?  Is it fear of failure?

In the last few days I went to a fashion show, a documentary screening, and the ballet.  Most of which was free or at a discount.

The fashion show- Wednesday I took time out of my evening to check out the Fabricker pre-sale event and  Savanahred’s fashion show.   I had to set an alarm to make sure I left on time but it was definitely worth it to support a local designer and the glimmer of hope that is a new fabric store in Austin.

The documentary- It has been a while since I went to an AFS screening. Thursday night I went to see Thunder Soul.  It played SXSW a few years ago but I missed it.  Jamie Foxx picked up the project so hopefully it will see a decent nationwide run.   I treated myself to dinner and a movie.

The ballet-  I heard about Ballet Austin’s Mozart project on the radio yesterday and completely dropped the ball on procuring tickets. I lucked out as a surfed Facebook this afternoon.  Someone had an extra matinee ticket.   The project involved 3 acts: Classical, Updated, and Remixed.  Graham Reynold’s section was my favorite, musically.  But the DJ Spooky remix section was a multi-media explosion.

I think I spent a grand total of $7 ($21 if you include my dinner).  Not bad at all.

I recently had the opportunity to go speed dating for free.  They were short women for the “upscale” singles event.  The first thought in my mind was this…

…a hot guy in a suit.  Ok, so it was 100 degrees and we would be on a patio but, I DON’T CARE!  Ok maybe he would  be in lightweight linen pants and a short sleeved or maybe rolled up sleeve button down shirt.

Or maybe he would be into fashion and look this guy (I am a Refinery29 addict now)…

In my head this man is definitely NOT wearing khakis.  Nor would he be wearing shorts on a Thursday evening after work (unless he was out exercising or on a boat).

What was I wearing?  A simple knit dress.  Clean cut, bat-wing sleave, v-cut hem.  The print was geometric (halston-esque).  I think I had on heels as well.  I was Jen the fashion designer.

Needless to say, this event wasn’t as classy as expected.  The ladies definitely out scored the men on the classyometer (that is now a word). This round I had zero picks.  But to be fair there were four repeats from last time.

Yes, we grumbled about the move to Auditorium Shores.  Yes, we are concerned about the expansion and potential diluting of the brand. But did that stop us for buying early bird tickets?  No! Did it stop us from buying Friday early-bird passes? No! (Well M and 2.0 passed on those because they are being responsible tax payers and going to work that day.  I have decided to take a well earned day off).

Now that the preliminary grumbles are over, I can focus on the awesome.  1. Auditorium shores is much closer to my place.  I can bike there. 2. Friday’s list of bands is AWESOME! Passion Pit, CYHSY, Heartless Bastards, Public Enemy, Spank Rock, Big Freedia (I hope she is better by then), Franki Chan, and  Reggie Watts.  Dear Scheduling Gods,  Please do not put all of these bands on at the same time.

What’s on tap for Saturday and Sunday?  Girls, Ra Ra Riot, Joy Formidable, Neon Indian, Dan Deacon, Rakim,  Donald Glover, Architecture in Helsinki, Mates of State, We Were Promised Jetpacks, Diplo, Del the Funky Homosapien, and Henry Rollins.  I should also make plans to unglue myself from the stages to check out the amenities.

As we get closer I will put the grid schedule together and give you a list of essential things to pack.

Moon by E. Lim

I wrote that for a friend who is going through an ocean of  problems.  My life issues are a mere kiddie pool in comparison. I had been thinking back to needs and wants lately.  I’ve prevented myself from wanting the moon because of the pain related from never getting it.

There I’ve said it.  I want things.  I realize I can’t have all of them in this lifetime, but I would like to snatch up as many as I can.

So the other day I drunk impulse bought a registration for speed dating.    I’ve done it once before and  based on my year long failure of acquiring a date on OkCupid  (more on this later) I decided to take a chance.

I wasn’t feeling awesome.  I was actually running a low grade fever.  I tossed on a black jersey dress, red shoes, and a belt and headed for the Highball.  I walked in, grabbed a soda water with lime and slapped on my name tag.

“Hi, my name is Jen. I am a seamstress and I work in vintage restoration and reproduction. ”

Why talk about the gov’t job that I don’t like?  Besides, I was going for less intimidating.   Over the course of my 13 mini dates I discovered at least 3  more people living dual lives.  Most of them were musicians.  Not bad.

I am not going to discuss each “date” in detail.  My notes weren’t as detailed as last time.  If you want more details, well maybe you should pay for me to attend another one.  I can say that there are two guys  I would actually go out with.  There were two more that I would consider just hanging out with as friends.

What I would like to discuss, is how poorly the event was run.  This was the first time I used this service.  I probably would have reconsidered based on the poor web interface. But alas, I was drunk when I signed up.  They promised snacks and drink specials, what I saw was a sad tray of crackers and after surveying a few attendees the drink specials were few and far between.

If you haven’t been to speed dating before, it goes like this. You put on your name tag.  They hand you a sheet of paper to make notes on (they don’t give you enough so bring your own).  They seat you and your “date” at a table and you get anywhere from 6-10 minutes (this time it was 6) to find out as much as possible about the other person.  They ring a bell when the time is up and they make one gender rotate (this time males rotated).  Usually they give you a little time to write down notes or they tell you when the bathroom breaks are.  Not this time.  To make matters worse, we started out minus 3 ladies, this meant the guys had extra chill time.

After the event, you are supposed to log back in to the horrible website and click on the people that you are interested in contacting. If by some chance they want to contact you as well you will get their contact info.  The site has no personal information to aid in your judgement.  It would be nice if I could find out if either of the people I selected were smokers.  That is a deal breaker.

If anyone at the Highball is listening.  You should run your own speed dating event or “dating game”.  Nerd Night does it.  Get the action pack to run it.