hi, i'm jenn schiffer and this is my lifestyle blog

weekly retro #41: slow vs. slop

someone posted somewhere that no one blogs, then someone tagged me. the thing is, i don't blog...i write blogs. welcome to my weekly retro.

photo of an illustration of the "hey diddle diddle" poem that has a cat and a fiddle, plate and spoon, and a cow jumping over the moon

first thing on monday i had a dentist follow up. for the time being, teeth are good and no work is necessary! i love this art in the office building hallway. ai could never.

photo of a wall of a bathroom stall of wonderville. it's painted pink and with lots of computer board parts glued to it. someone wrote "eat land lord :)" and "1312" in marker

later that night we had a robot karaoke show at wonderville. kor from the first season of the rehearsal came to deliver a cameo in-person to jamie which hasn't happen before. it was a great night, shouts out to everyone who joined and sang with us. this is my last public robot karaoke show of the year. we have some exciting new features in the works for 2026.

bathroom door of my dad's nursing room that has a paper on it that says "SLOW" with each letter underlined. above is a sign telling visitors/family that the bathroom is only for patients.

SLOW means "slow", "loud", "over-pronunciate", and "wait", directions from my dad's speech therapist. he said that it should be SLOP (p for "pause") but that the therapist doesn't like having to say "slop". i literally don't care, so long as he's getting - better which he is!

photo of a white clay slab on a table with some tissue boxes off to the side

i'm getting better at clay! this week we made a slab and finished our pinch pots. next week we are working on our tissue box cover and test tiles. i cracked open some air dry clay at home today, to practice and get a sense of what my clay toolkit should be.

photo of a candle curing in a periwinkle glass on a cooling rack

i did a bunch of candle tests for the next bugs rock drop. i've also been working on a new site design for that next drop, which may drop on or around thanksgiving.

photo of me making a chipmunk face in the bathroom of my yoga studio that looks like it hasn't changed since the 90s - much like myself

this is me after an hour of aerial yoga. we're at the point where it's dark out before class even starts, where only a few weeks ago it felt like it was daylight even after it ended. i'm just happy to have all my sweaters out.

things i enjoyed this week

friend of the blog potch has a new CSS named colors poster for sale. mine is on its way!
tasha told me that my growl voice reminded her of this kexp performance by die spitz. this was such a fun performance and i love their catalog of music videos.
tom's retrospective of val.town is a very good, thought-provoking read. i especially like the part about what they learned about the users of vibe-coding tools. i need a behind the scenes retrospective of literally every company, posthaste!

i have a bit of a cold right now that i hope goes the fuck away after a good night's rest. i just need to work on the good night's rest part.

xoxo jenn

this was published November 16, 2025 under living art weekly-retro robot-karaoke dentist aerial-yoga candle-making ceramics wonderville brooklyn clay family

weekly retro #40: the week i saw canbubu

this week was so weird. i got a lot done and experienced and felt a lot, but i also did not melt a single ounce of wax. it's almost like life is more than work, ok, i guess!

weekly retro #39: hoping for a renewing november

happy november! this week brought a new month along with other new things and, after a couple of days of bad post-menstrual anxiety exacerbated by the senseless consequences of our government shutdown, i am feeling renewed and ready for november.

weekly retro #38: the heat is on

yesterday i finally caved and turned the heat on, _started_ this retro, and then abandoned it as i suddenly had the urge and momentum (the edible hit) to design some candles for the holiday season. it's just crossed over from monday morning into monday afternoon, time for some retro closure.

what someone (i) who has done aerial yoga (over) 150 times brings to class

huge news, jenn nation: i just hit 150 aerial yoga classes attended.

weekly retro #37: boston soy iced latte party

this past week felt like 3, because it started with me headed by train to boston, where the nor'easter rudely followed me.

weekly retro #36: following pumagreg's lead during the nor'easter

it's sunday evening and i shot up after nearly spending all day horizontal on the couch and realized - i need to write a retro! it's kind of incredible that i've made it to week 36, let alone remember that it was sunday. let's rock.

weekly retro #35: i'll tell YOU when it's time for spooky things

i was wondering how to intro this retro of the past week and was thinking about how it's a new month and i never went over my september goals or wrote goals for october. that's about where i'm at in relation to the ellipse of time, about a third of a radian behind.

weekly retro #34: clawing myself back into a routine-hole

happy monday. i come to you all $23.46 richer, one click away from spending it all entirely on shipping for a 10-lb bag of wax - better than spending it on some dumb shit, right? here's the weekly retro.

my "shopping" note keeps me from buying dumb shit all the time

it's been over five years since i blogged about what candles i've been burning. shortly after that post i started making my own candles, so many and so often that i was able to start giving them away to friends and coworkers. and then five years after that post, i launched bugs rock to sell them.

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