jenn schiffer's live laugh blog

weekly retro #87: a shelf of her own

i sit here with my entire core sore after i went to aerial yoga on friday. upstairs that night was a weird ass scientology leader conference. that's life in the city, you can be doing crunches while hanging upside down in a silk hammock and just a stairwell away some old people are plotting some kind of sinister shit. anyway, welcome to my weekly retro!

this was the second week of class at sfpc. i made, like, 25 games - we worked in the style of figure drawing sessions where we'd do a game in 20 seconds, 1 minute, 2 minutes, 5 minutes, 10 minutes, and then doing a final 1 minute game. i really like the simplicity of making games with flickgame like we did this week, you can see some of them on my itch.io page. next week it looks like we're doing more text-based choose-your-own-adventure games.

a photo of one of our incredible robot karaoke regulars singing crowdsourced fears to the tune of "o fortuna"

jamie was in la (he works on the onion's info wars) and so i hosted robot karaoke solo. because the nor'easter rained out the weekend and monday morning, i think a lot of folks were super eager to get outside and so was i. we had a great turnout and lots of fun combos were sung. this is my reminder that i need to see if there's dust in my laptop's headphone jack because audio coming through both channels was kind of a struggle through the night.

a photo of a wedged ball of white clay on a table in the ceramic studio before i turn it into a thing

we started working on slab boxes in ceramics class. then i got great news: a member shelf i've been on the waitlist for finally became available. i now have my own big shelf and a lot more freedom within the studio even after this class is done. it feels great that i've stuck with classes for a whole year and i'm stoked to keep learning while being independent.

a photo of a delicate tiffany blue ceramic bowl full of candy corn

the owner of the studio gave me this beautiful porcelain bowl. did i eat an entire bag of candy corn in 24 hours? mind your business.

a photo of a white board in the hall of nyu itp, outside workshops during processing day, that says "(see Jenn)" next to a board with the workshops scheduled

on saturday i was a volunteer, helping out the organizers of processing day nyc. i'm so stoked to see so much activity in this community, it's been a long time. anyway, the event was great and i got to reconnect with so many old pals and made a lot of new pals.

a photo of my hand pulling closed a slime green shower curtain that you can see the glitter of the curtain liner coming through

today i had a lot of computer doing to do - this post, the vlog, homework, and also i've been doing weird web october. today's prompt was "plastic" so i spent part of the morning just making annoying sounds with plastic, like my shower curtain, for a plastic sound board.

things i enjoyed this week

  • my dunkin almond milk iced latte with 2 pumps of tiramisu syrup until a double-paneled turnstile in the wtc oculus closed in on me while i was exiting because the button was apparently broken and it sent my coffee flying into the stratosphere
  • watching a man have a mental breakdown after locking his keys in his very illegally parked car
  • if you can get them on sale like i did, the magic spoon protein bars are basically bougie rice krispie treats with monk fruit sweetener and no gluten. i keep them in my bag in case i need a quick bite in transit. but i would never pay the full like $9.75 for them, that's insane.
  • how to solve differential equations

i should be tired but my period ended yesterday so i'm going to be a ball of energy for like the next 72 hours. that's usually how it goes - the weeks i'm at my lowest energy are the ones where i have to go to brooklyn like every other day. this coming week i'll get to spend most of it on the more chill side of the hudson river.

xoxo jenn

this was published October 4, 2026 under living art tech weekly-retro ceramics jersey-city sick sfpc processing conferences creative-coding aerial-yoga

weekly retro #86: a paranasal nor'easter before the real one

i'm drinking a baja blast as i write this, unsponsored and unbothered after 2 nights in a row of sleeping through without waking up to heartburn and a sneeze and cough attack. pumagreg is cone-free, i am symbolically cone-free, and writing this retro has helped me remember what a crazy week i managed to function through.

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weekly retro #85: aggressively hydrated

as i write this, i'm watching pumagreg cleaning himself for the first time in a week, having just removed his cone. what a feeling that must be for him, regaining the ability to act on his animal brained instinct of cleaning his ass. i wish some of the men in my gym had that instinct for wiping the equipment they use down when they're done.

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what i made during my fifth ceramics class

welcome to the latest in my *what i made in my ceramics class* series. this class was my 2nd time taking this wheel-throwing class because the time was convenient and i really like the instructor. because there were lots of summer camps going on and a kiln malfunction, i had to wait longer than usual to get these pieces home but i finally did today.

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weekly retro #83: new month, new git meltdown

this week was the 2-year anniversary of me quitting my corporate job and i spent a significant portion of it toeing the line between calm and an absolute fucking meltdown over getting an ssh key to authorize me into one of my git repos. for a moment it felt like literally nothing changed, but ultimately so much has. welcome to da retro.

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weekly retro #81: inventing time management

this week i tried scheduling out my entire week in my calendar, down to the times i go to the gym or read. normally i wing that or have it scheduled in my mind, but i had a busy weekend and i wanted to make it to and through it without dropping the ball on my routines. who would have thought that time management would help one better manage their time. what helped is going in knowing that i will have to move things around or skip things and that's just life, not failure.

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weekly retro #80: hematomas and hope

we've finally reached the halfway point through august, where "back to school" signs make a lot more sense to see and i check the weather app every day to see if the temperatures are starting to trend downward. right now it is a *cooler* 80F just in time for this 80TH weekly retro.

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weekly retro #79: just an italian girl from new york

my doctor told me to get bloodwork done on the second day of my period and i scheduled it for tomorrow in hopes it would work out so i wouldn't have to miss ceramics class on tuesday, and can you believe that my period *started today just in time*. it's important to call out and celebrate one's wins and also add a disclaimer that the following was written and edited throughout a series of cramps. ciao amici, and welcome to the weekly retro.

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