Blue Grapefruit Press

home from traveling and back to university

2010-09-06T22:54:00.000-07:00

Back from Oregon and California. The whole trip was too short but especially the California part. *smiffle* But even for a little while it was awesome to see Stephie and Lynne. At least the three of us had some fun times chillin' at the Rainforest Cafe, and Stephie and I braved the heat the next day to go poke around Chinatown and Little Tokyo as well as a Japanese history museum. Miss you both, my dears!

To continue the jetlag/tiredness though, I spent a not-so-fun wait in Ontario Airport (those chairs were not meant for sleeping in. O__o), but it was worth it. Portland was really a lovely thing to behold! Very green with lots of bookstores and tasty Asian restaurants (mostly Thai and Japanese). I also got a few incredible iced chai teas at Tea Chai Te as well as some cupcakes at Saint Cupcake. (And I don't even like most cupcakes, but these were really something else!)

The Portland Zine Symposium itself was also epic. My table neighbors, Mark and Skylaar, were both quite friendly. Mark even had another Bible project: trying to condense each book of the Bible into one page or less. He had a sort of WIP preview copy for sale, and it was pretty damn impressive all the research he's put into this thing. I'm keeping my ear to the ground for when the full book comes out. *grin* Hmm, I imagine we may have been the only two people there with Bible-centric zines so it was pretty funny that we wound up right next to each other.

For my table, I brought Sagittarius Manifesto (issue 1), I Wipe My Butt with the Bible, and Womyn's Club's Femizine (issue 1). All in all, I only sold about a couple dozen zines, but I traded A LOT. The trading was great, and some people at the symposium seemed super interested in the zines, especially the Bible one, which was flattering. One woman who bought Sagittarius Manifesto no. 1 even wanted me to sign it. :D

I also got a travel offer from Andria (We'll Never Have Paris). She's going to the Richmond, VA zinefest in October and suggested that if I could get myself down to NYC, she'd be willing to drive myself and any other interested zinesters down to Richmond. If I can scrape together enough cash for the bus ticket and food expenses, I may take her up on her offer.

Good times, definitely. Next year though, I will plan to fly out the day after the Symposium. Trying to get it together and leave a few hours after was too crazy. Not that I had a choice though since I needed to be back to school, but still something to consider.

And school... My flight arrived in Boston early afternoon on August 30th so I missed my morning classes, but I was able to make it back to my university in New Hampshire for the evening one. Everything was going pretty well except for the weather. I came back from nippy dry 60s/70s Oregon to upper 90s-and-humid New Hampshire.

Lame weather aside, I'm happy to be starting my final undergraduate year of school. :D

Go West!

2010-08-23T19:31:00.000-07:00

Leaving for California and Oregon in a few hours. My zines are all nicely packed, and I'm so excited!

PZS registration and Etsy registration

2010-06-15T07:39:00.000-07:00

I'm going! My table registration for PZS is all set so for Saturday and Sunday during the symposium, I'll be chillin' at my 2' x 3' half of a table selling and trading zines. Now I'll just need to get some more zines and comics finished so that my table won't be bare. :D

I also signed up at Etsy.com as theBlueGrapefruit. I'll need to whip up some graphics for the shop, and I should probably come up with something for here too while I'm at it.

ETA: And I'll be visiting some friends in California too before the Symposium! Double awesome!

Portland Zine Symposium

2010-06-14T18:03:00.000-07:00

Just yesterday I was in Boston for a feminist anti-porn conference, and I've barely been back from Germany for a week, and already the urge to travel rages hard in me. I think it's my job. No, I know it is. Nothing incites my urge to travel quite like being stuck in a corporate cubicle.

Enter Portland, OR. Or, more accurately, the 10th Annual Portland Zine Symposium (August 28th and 29th 2010). I heard about earlier this year (or maybe the end of '09?), but though interested, I wrote it off as a no go. I was already barely managing to fund a trip to Berlin--I wouldn't have the money to, y'know, fly across the country. That was the end of it I thought.

Fast forward to this afternoon: it's my lunch break, and I'm surfing the 'Net. Now deeper into zines and after having contributed to one for the first time, I remembered PZS. It's wicked tempting. Obviously I want to go. Surely I can find cheap digs or something to offset the flight cost? Maybe sell some zines at the symposium; even a hundred dollars would help sooo much.

Damn, it's gotta be worth looking into.

I am such a Sagittarius when it comes to travel. The ol' suitcase is perpetually packed...

intro post

2010-06-07T19:56:00.001-07:00

Well, I'm fresh off the plane and back in the USA after a two-week class in Berlin, Germany. The jetlag is manageable, and it's about time I started this blog.

The Blue Grapefruit Press (get it? grapefruit...press, lol.) will be the organization name under which I make/print zines, comics, bookmarks, sculptures made with old RAM sticks, etc. Kidding about that last one, haha...or maybe not; I do have a lot of old computer parts knockin' around. But I digress...

Anyway this blog will be for announcements, BGP stuff, maybe some book/zine/music reviews (?), and whatever else strikes my fancy.

This entry is really just a test to see how the blog looks, and so far, so good.