treasure hunting

so as some of you know early summer has been designated time for "loft improvement." nearly two years of ghastly, dirty rental white paint and a broken tile countertop held together with duct tape just had to go. there was no ghettofabulousness, it was just plain hideous. the last few weeks i went on a painting spree - but of course in the hottest early june on record, gotta love extremes!

i am not a coupon cutter, i will NEVER send in a rebate - why? because i am in fact that lazy. but i do relish going to thrift stores and stumbling upon closing sales full of treasures...to me that is fun, and that three letter word is something i most certainly live for. as much as i loathe those evil corporate "big box" stores, sometimes they do have their place...like for example, when they want to give me $330 worth of natural slate tile for $16. so much can be gained with a smile. ;) it was the exact amount i needed, they saw no use for that little. perhaps there is something to being born under the lucky fire dragon...



hopefully this will get grouted over the next few days before i break any of it. it is far too rough and textured for a proper countertop and i know there will be a fair amount of resultant launched and broken stemware from the little plateaus on the surface, but i really don't care, this satisfies my obsession with sensuous textured things.

and while we are on sensuous textured things, last week i also came into posession (and for a song, at that) some old 2'x4' tin ceiling panels from a (hopefully demolished and not just content raped) detroit building:



on one hand i LOVE seeing the cracked layers of paint, the passage of time through fashion of paint-color, the implicit history behind it like growth rings in wood...but they're just so filthy i will probably end up stripping them down to the bare metal. we shall see. i'm having a hard time figuring out what to do with them because i'm just so fascinated with them as objects themselves. it doesn't help in the back of my head knowing that there are at least 15 more matching ones back at the little junk shop. i fear i may end up living in a textured tin box...

and finally the next circuitbending project:



this is the little brother to the casio bass-beast of doom that i currently use in my set. i am VERY happy to be dissecting something similar. oh how do i love 1985 and its many legged sounds chips to mess with!