We wandered around downtown this Saturday. I came across this manatee bracelet in a local thrift/curiosities store and couldn’t leave without it.
The weather is rainy but nice. The yard is crazy overgrown. My mental landscape is strange. I saw Alice in Wonderland with Edhy today and was actually impressed; it helped that she told me beforehand the reviews were bad. Expectations change everything.
We lost trivia at a local pub tonight (by 3 points out of 300+). So close!

A sandwich at a local coffee shop and a walk around the neighborhood. The weather is (briefly) wonderful… rainy days coming this weekend.

It’s time to revisit this blog and readdress my life. Big changes and small have happened. This will be my place to reflect and explore.

Continuing the tradition of the original Museum Carissapoda, I’ve move operations to Tumblr. Please visit the museum’s new location at ‘onion of infinite leaf’.

These are images taken and uploaded from my mobile phone without titles or descriptions – just moments in time through my eyes.

Our house was recently featured by the blog Rearranged Design; thank you, Ana!

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I know I haven’t posted in a while, I need to revisit my motivation and direction here and get going again.

Yesterday the mail was backed up for Veteran’s Day, so today the timing was right and I received a whole slew of great things. Two Orla Kiely bags I bought from different sources online arrived at once (one from England!), along with my two first postcards from Postcrossing, one from Illinois and one from England as well.

When I said before that I had a small obsession with Orla’s stuff I was probably being too modest. I currently own 12 of her bags. It’s my vice, damnit, everyone’s allowed at least one! (I pride myself on finding amazing prices on these bags though – I got these for basically 70% less than retail. I could definitely not feed my habit otherwise.)

Thanks to Craigslist and a really cool older guy in Niles, IL, we are now the proud owner of a set of four amazing Eames Herman Miller fiberglass arm shell chairs in seafoam green. (!!) (click the image above for more pictures)
They are from 1957, with metal glides on zinc H-bases. Two of them still have the foil label from that year. The maker’s mark looks to be the double triangles/mountains from Summit Plastics in Kalamazoo. I am in awe of these chairs, and our luck in finding them. We saw found them the day before we left for Florida and called the person selling them, who was awesome enough to hold them for us for a whole week until we could drive up there (it’s near Elgin, so we spent the night at my parents’ and hand an insane sushi orgy furnished by materials from Mitsuwa – more on that later).
Thank you, Craigslist. Oh man.

I won this book on eBay tonight – it was published in 1961, and illustrated by Charley Harper. Probably the coolest biology book ever, aesthetically; very excited to get it! It’s in slightly rough shape but considering its age (and the deal I got on it) I’m quite happy. All pages are complete and intact.

Read more about the book here.
First two images courtesy of the above link.

We’re headed to Florida for 6 days starting this Sunday; my month has been super busy work-wise but generally nice with fantastic weather and a great trip to Elgin around the beginning of this month. We visited the flea market again and I scored a vintage Nelson bubble lamp in the small spherical shape. I’ll post pictures soon once I get this place straightened up and actually take some. Mr. Clean Magic Eraser really is magical, by the way, because it is fantastic at cleaning up vintage pieces like fiberglass chairs and our bubble lamp; the thing was completely filthy but looks new after some work with one of those. I wholeheartedly endorse them.
I also found two original Rorschach ink blot test cards; each is double-sided with an ink blot image and numbered. I still need to look up my specific blots.
Finally, as I’m hopelessly bag-addicted and there’s no help for it, I bought two Lug bags to do my traveling with and I’m really happy with them so far. I got the Skipper in grass green and the Taxi Full Tote in ocean blue, below. The texture, weight, construction and color of these bags is fantastic, can’t wait to haul them around some airports (and Disney World).

Dustin’s uncle bought this house recently; the interior needs significant renovation (the previous owners wanted a ‘Tuscan villa’ look and totally ruined all of the flooring, walls and woodwork), but it looks great from the outside at least. It’s huge, over 4000 sq. feet, with two stories and some great built-in features and brickwork. Also, the multi-level yard! Wow. It will take a long time to refurbish it, but I’m excited to eventually see it looking more like its original incarnation again.