Hello friends! I hope you had a good week. My week wasn’t too bad. Some things are slowing down a little – after my orchestra concerts next weekend, I will be on break with rehearsals until August. My semester ended (though I need to write four pieces for the summer residency – eep). I finally finished this gargatuan work assignment that had been weighing on me (it didn’t have a hard deadline, so it kept getting bumped for other projects that did). And now I have two permit renewals to prep, so that will be my May and June.

Where does time go?

Some pictures from this week.

Yesterday was a lot of fun. The Austin Public Library hosted its first annual Greater Austin Book Fest at its central location downtown. The library was renovated right before we moved away, so yesterday was my first chance to visit since its renovation. It’s incredible! There are six floors with an outdoor atrium at the top, which overlooks Town Lake. There’s a short story generator – you tell it what story length you want (1, 3, or 5 minutes) and it prints a short story for you. It even has a gift shop!

I took Husband with me to expore the festival. I skipped the craft panels, but we checked out booths with local authors and took a bookmaking workshop! I’ve been wanting to take classes with the Austin Book Arts Center for quite awhile, so was excited to take this free class. I’ll admit that I nearly left because the classes were running behind and I was getting impatient. BUT I’m really glad that we stayed to make a book. I tried to take process photos but the lighting was terrible.

After we finished our books, we grabbed some delicious Venezuelan food at the Fareground and went to one of our favorite coffee shops to work on a crossword puzzle.

This morning I decided to take a photo of the free stickers and goodies I’d picked up at the Fest, along with my completed book and a postcard that I’d purchased from the Library gift shop. (I really wanted to buy the t-shirt with the grackle print on it, but not for almost $40). Miss Moon Pie decided that she should join me for the photo shoot and mess with the pins.

I think today is going to be pretty chill. It’s pretty cloudy and cozy, and we might get some storms. I might actually stay home today? What?

Before I go, a couple of random things from this week:

• Obsessed with Zendaya’s look and Galliano gown from the Met Gala. I don’t follow the Met Gala very closely, but have been rolling my eyes with all the pearl clutching that it isn’t chic and classy anymore. The world is a dumpster fire and sometimes we all need something frivolous and fun to engage in.
• I watched May December this week. I usually have a really hard time watching a movie without doing a craft project or keeping myself occupied, but I made myself watch the film without doing anything else. I really enjoyed it. The film is grainy and atmospheric was a good psychological…thriller? That’s too strong of a word for it, but it has Black Swan vibes. I usually have a hard time finding Natalie Portman believable but I thought she did a good job in the film. It did very heavily lift from the Mary Kay Letourneau story (to the point where the film was recreating some famous photoshoots of Letourneau, her victim, and their child, which…was a choice).
• This week I’ve been listening to songs with groovy bass riffs. This David Bowie song from The Man Who Sold the World album is an old favorite. I was also inspired to check out more of Leon Bridges’ and Khruangbin’s collaboration after the ACL lineup was released this week (the lineup definitely had a mixed reception. I’ll probably still get a day pass, but we’ll see). I was obsessed with “Texas Sun” when it was first released, because I was living in Indiana then and was homesick as hell. But I hadn’t heard much of their other material, so took a deep dive this week.
  
  

This song was on repeat ALL week…so good.

Ok, I need to get up off the couch and do something (indoors? Maybe?) I hope you all have a great Sunday.