Book: What If We Were… by Axelle Lenoir

Beyond adorable

What If We Were…
by Axelle Lenoir
published by Penguin Random House
2020

This is an extremely adorable graphic novel about two best friends, whose hobbies include coming up with wild, hypothetical adventures as scientists (inventing spaceships, exploring the universe, forgetting earth?), parents, mythical beings, more adult versions of themselves, giant robots…

The way the dear friends riff on each other’s ideas is like the best possible versions of improv, but for their own enjoyment rather than an audience’s. Meanwhile, they go to school and navigate being teens with all that entails, supporting and encouraging each other in the ways that best friends can.

I was almost able to resist buying this graphic novel (due to its younger target audience), but the characters each have journal entries in the volume, and they are hilarious – I starting giggling while skimming through them – and suddenly, I was at the cashier with an armful of books!

Axelle Lenoir does a lovely, charming, fun job of showing off a fun friendship, and making the characters’ bond feel healthy, happy, and real. I recommend it – if you need an excuse, buy it for a young person in your life, but make sure you get a chance to enjoy it first!

Pandemic Life: New Year

Lavender latte made with almond milk, enjoyed outdoors in January because: California

The sky is blue, the sun is low, and my home state is not on fire: it is a lovely day.

I’ve run my errands for the day, filled with the confidence that a well-fitting KF94 mask provides. The KF94s from Korea are new for me: I had been wearing lighter and lighter fabric masks (with/out layering as situations required) as the pandemic dragged on and our local risks sunk ever lower (high vaccination rates, low case numbers). The new omicron variant is more contagious, however, so we’ve been advised to step up our protection standards. KF95 is one of the recommended standards, and the masks I am wearing are quite comfortable, and hold their shape well around my face. I appreciate their stiffness in the right place, so the material doesn’t rest on my nostrils or mouth, even while wet.

Since I last wrote about the COVID 19 pandemic, the remarkable achievements of vaccine development and (uneven) global rollout have been overshadowed by more contagious variants, continued political opposition to infection prevention, and more contagious variants.

The U.S. has maintained its place as the country with the highest number of cases and deaths. I feel lucky to live in a city with great mutual respect and care, where most people are vaccinated, and most people wear masks indoors willingly. If more of the US was like this, I would have gotten on planes and traveled for fun, at least before omicron…

JHU data as of right now, Monday, January 10, 2022

A friend in another region asked me how I’m managing, and I told her that the situation continues to improve: thanks to masking and air filtration, I get out of the house regularly, ride trains and streetcars, eat in (non-crowded) restaurants where vaccine confirmation is required (YES!), have visited several museums, and have even seen a few movies in movie theaters. A comfy mask makes many fun activities possible!

Four people in my long-distance social circle currently have COVID, and at least four relatives on the East Coast contracted COVID in December. Determination to celebrate the holidays with larger numbers of people with unknown habits comes at a cost! One friend wanted to host as safely as possible, and required negative tests to attend her 12+ person event: two of the negative-testing-guests turned positive on NYE morning, and had exposed other guests unknowingly, so even those precautions weren’t enough. Another friend had just three people over (such a reasonable number!) on NYE, and she still wound up with COVID, along with all of her guests.

This is a great time NOT to see your friends! 😀 (All my pals who postponed our planned meetings over the past two months have won my automatic forgiveness.)

Sign up for a phone exposure notification system! While on my first pandemic-era, out of state trip last month, I received a notification from MassNotify (the Massachusetts version of CA Notify, which my phone asked for my consent to participate in) that I was near someone on December 20th for the threshold exposure time who subsequently tested positive for COVID. While I had no symptoms and had already home tested (negative) as a precaution, I still appreciate the alert AND the instructions on what to do. This is a clever tool, and we should all use it!

I usually post a link to some data, so I’ll share the Year In Review from Johns Hopkins:

Right now: despite the new variant of the moment, I’m optimistic. We should have high quality masks distributed to us by health authorities, and access to home tests should be easy and cheap – we need progress in those areas! The fact that masks work, that vaccination numbers continue to rise, that good cleaning practices are in place at businesses, and that new businesses are opening up now are all encouraging. We need that encouragement! (I know I really needed it.)

Life: 2021 Personal Year In Review

It’s been… a year. Since time had no meaning (due to the sameness of being at home every day during so much of this pandemic), it is hard to believe it ended, rather than continuing on in a Groundhog-Day-like fashion.

I’m TIRED. But alive, which is a victory unto itself!

Here are some of 2021 highlights from my iPhone photo blog, mobilelene.blogspot.com.

January 2021: Monotype printing

I made great progress with my acrylic monotype printing practice this year, producing hundreds of prints, and expanding from my favorite opaque colors into transparent paints.

February 2021: Leaving the house to explore SF

There are entire new parks that didn’t exist before the pandemic!

March 2021: Botany

I like plants!

April 2021: Botany and Murals

There are murals I’d never seen before out there, and they’re great.

May 2021: Architecture, Monotypes, and Playing with Instax Cameras

Instax cameras are fun! Yes, I have THREE Instax-compatible cameras, one for each size of film, PLUS A PRINTER that uses the mini size. Judge me, while I have fun with my tiny little prints.

June 2021: SF Exploration, continued (and medium format photos)

I will not admit how many photos I have of this building. On multiple cameras.

July 2021: Mostly Murals

This month starts to look like me: all my interests are reflected, and I was taking more photos because I sprained my right arm and couldn’t write or draw.

August 2021: Museums, Duochrome, and Sunshine

Have I made the book I planned to make of these? No. Did I produce another photo book mock up which I’m not sharing? Yes.

September 2021: I LOVE SF (architecture, sailboats, contemporary art, and phone photo filters)

The photo I wanted to show is cropped too hilariously to post here.

October 2021: Art experience in the park

It was the most fun I’ve had being enveloped in smoke in forever.

November 2021: Sunsets, Plants, and Murals

By this point, you realize how conventional my phone photos are, and how much I LOVE LOVE LOVE San Francisco.

December 2021: Holiday lights, holiday projections, Boston, and textile arts

I really do love this town. 🙂 And I’m completely predictable in the photographic ways I express that love, and THAT IS OKAY.

Life: First Visit to Boston and Cambridge

For reasons that I may/not eventually disclose, I visited Boston and Cambridge in Massachusetts this month. I wanted to get a feel for what life is like there, so I bought some new “base layers” for winter weather (!), and headed out of the Bay Area for the first time since the COVID 19 pandemic began.

Boston and Cambridge each made a good impression on me. As a happy San Franciscan heavily integrated into the fabric of my multicultural, open-minded, caffeinated City, I wasn’t sure that Boston would feel comfortable. Happily, the diverse population, reliable subway system, and great vegan food won me over!

Both towns were walkable. The subway system made sense, and my Charlie Card (their version of Clipper) made travel easy.

Each time I ate in restaurants within earshot of others, other patrons were chatting at their tables about trying to get their research funded. (A good sign!)

Yes, many of the Freedom Trail sites were closed due to the pandemic, but I found other things to do. Yes, it got down to 20 degrees Fahrenheit (-6.6 Celsius?), but I was dressed very carefully (lightweight yet insulating base layers!), and I could handle it. It snowed gently, and that was kind of fun. Puddles froze and never thawed, and I caught other tourists trying to break one, which was hilarious (adults playing with puddles like children!).

I did not fill my suitcase with art books. I did not go out to take photos at night when it was below freezing. These were good decisions.

My masks were comfortable in all indoor settings, and I learned that masks are very cozy when it is snowing.

Boston and Cambridge are both booming, filled with new construction of businesses, housing, streetcar stations, and more. Infrastructure matters, and they are clearly planning for growth.

I had a good time and a positive experience.

There is an awkward/funny postscript. I was there before the omicron variant of COVID was well understood. I participate in CA Notify, which is my home state’s bluetooth exposure tracking system. While I was in Boston, my phone asked me if I want to participate in MassNotify, and I agreed.

MassNotify sent me a COVID proximity/exposure warning 8 days after my return home (and three days after my negative home test). Someone with the right combination of proximity + duration on the day before I flew home subsequently tested positive for COVID. The instructions were clear, and since I’m both vaccinated and boosted, quarantine was never required – vigilant masking is enough. I’m impressed that the system worked, even though I was just visiting! Yaay, technology!

Food: Thanksgiving 2021

As a former food blogger who is always adjusting recipes and planning to write cookbooks, I am usually pretty good about posting what I prepared and enjoyed for the holidays, if only to remind myself later when looking for inspiration! (Yes, I do use my own webpages, including my old recipe collections, while I cook.)

This year, Thanksgiving feasting almost didn’t happen: my parents agreed to come the Sunday before, after I’d already put in my grocery order for the week. My Cousin and his partner are core guests, but my Cousin RSVP’d with a photo of his partner’s positive COVID test, which occurred days before the gathering, requiring them to spend Thanksgiving in quarantine. That was enough of a scare to tempt me to cancel it all.

Luckily, I had more than enough food for a feast, and got to take it relatively easy because my friend M joined at the last moment, and she cooked as well! My parents’ drive to the City was smooth and easy, I got to try some great new-to-me dishes, and everything looked gorgeous and tasted even better! (M has similar dietary preferences, I can completely trust anything she makes, AND she is a fantastic cook!)

This year, the feast included:

  • sides/snacks: green olives, Kalamata olives, marinated bean salad, cherry tomatoes
  • harira soup
  • M’s mushrooms with wild rice
  • M’s kale, apple, and pecan salad
  • mashed potatoes with olive oil and chives
  • spaghetti squash with roasted red peppers, capers, and parsley
  • beverages: almond nog, sparkling water, herb tea
  • desserts: apple-cranberry pie and pumpkin pie (both homemade)

And EVERYTHING was fully vegan and gluten-free.

It was a great meal, a fun afternoon, and a delight.

Writing: First Novel’s Second Draft Completed on December 2nd

This version clocks in at 65,484 words!

It looks hefty, printed out on regular office paper in a 12 point font. It’s 151 pages long.

I have a sense of accomplishment… And I don’t want to downplay what I’ve achieved while trying to juggle so many other things… but still need to get to version 2.1, which will have all the weird auto-correct typos taken out of it!

(My other three novellas are sitting in binders on a shelf behind me, quietly waiting for their turn.)

I’m very glad I did edited and updated my first novel, and hope to soon have it ready to USE.

Culture: 900 Days of Duolingo

I continue to recommend this app/website/team for your language practice adventures.

Most of my Duolingo practice days have been devoted to refreshing my German, but I have also been using the Japanese course (which I’ve already gushed about).

One thing I especially need is writing practice, so my Japanese notes will be more legible. For this, I’ve recently started using the downloadable writing practice sheets at japanese-lesson.com. I also have a brush pen, which should help with some of the subtle points, curves, and flourishes on the characters, if I ever get good enough to include them!

The site includes writing practice sheets for Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji. (I’m providing a link to the Hiragana page, but you can easily navigate to the others.)

Studying a language for fun at your own pace is a great thing. It’s great that it is possible, and that so many people are working hard to make studying fun!

Life: Vivid Friday

I didn’t do any shopping of any kind, but got in some exercise and natural beauty. It was a GOOD day.

I have lots of post fragments waiting, and I’ll consider getting to them over the weekend… Maybe.

Pandemic News: Another Treatment Candidate

This is preliminary data from a combined Phase 2/3 clinical trial, so they are still confirming the dosing along with the tolerance, but the preliminary results from this Pfizer trial are even better than those from the Merck drug. Which suggests that COVID may soon be something that is survive-able for more people!

An 89% reduction is AMAZING, and it will be good to see what the final analysis shows.

This warms my heart. We could all use some more hope for better outcomes with this terrible pandemic.

Art: Art Supply Rabbit Hole

I have been on an acrylic monotype bender this year, but I hope to return to watercolor painting again. I do it in flurries, and I’m overdue for a return.

I use transparent Japanese, Holbein brand tube watercolors (primarily: I also like a French brand); Swiss watercolor pencils and crayons; and I have a German travel set of watercolors I bought at a museum in Switzerland on one of my last trips there, but haven’t used much since. I also have a tiny mixing set of Holbein’s opaque gouache, which I love, and can mix just about any color I need from. I’ve gone through multiple tubes of it, and love its dense color.

I have enough supplies. Probably. I’m always missing a shade of green or blue that can’t be mixed, but I surely have enough.

Anyway, there’s a type of Japanese watercolor that I (somehow) do not have. It had escaped me, because we call several things “watercolor” in English, but they have different names there.

The paint is called gansai. It is often mineral based, opaque, and generally not vegetarian in composition, commonly using animal skin binders. I wanted to know more about it, to see if a vegetarian version is available, and to know if it offers colors I don’t already have in the only big set of paints I’ve ever bought, which is a set of Holbein’s “antique” Japanese colors.

Does Holbein offer a gansai range? Yes! But only in Japan: the product isn’t available through their US distributor. Also, they don’t address my animal ingredient concern, so I may need to ask.

Is it similar in color range to Holbein Irodori Antique Watercolors? Well, this was a hard question, because that set is no longer listed on the Holbein sites. Why? It has been replaced with a full line of Holbein Irodori GOUACHES!

[insert sound of me, a gouache lover, losing my mind]

Oh oh oh oh oh… I need to know more about this, and found an Irodori fan who runs her own art supply shop in Hanoi to share her insights:

Knowing that I already love gouache complicates my research into gansai… Though it’s not like a huge box of tubes and all the related equipment is very portable, and I was looking for something portable in this instance. (During my business travels, I used the portable tools and got satisfactory results. While I’m at home, the bulky tube paints give me better results, but require more space and equipment. Since I created work while traveling to justify that purchase, this means I can justify having both! 😀 )

So, setting aside how gorgeous the gouache looks (though there are only a few colors that I feel I can’t go on without in that new line), I chose to go back to research gansai.

Is there a vegetarian Gansai: YES! My local supplier, Jet Pens, offers Kuretake Gansai Tambi Watercolors, and specifically notes that they contain no animal products. Hooray!

Did I see other magical things during this research? Oh, goodness yes. Tons of tours of various art supply shops in Japan, plus this gem on one VERY SPECIAL art supply store:

My mind is filled with colorful paint fantasies now… I’ll try not to talk about paint again until I show you something I’ve made with it.