funniest thing i've seen in months

http://indexed.blogspot.com/this one is titled, "Dress the Part"
there are a whole SERIES of these. check 'em out.

new work

"jesus is just all right with me" is the song currently in my head. which is really a good contrast to the nelly furtado i was listening to this morning. i'm going on no sleep again - i was sleeping in the 'burbs last night and no siren lullabyes like i get in the city. no orange glow lights, just the peace and quiet that makes me unreasonably paranoid. drinking lots of cold water to stay alert. drove to work today. faxed in my Design Camp registration! speaking of design:

start of a web site. his awesome comments (paraphrased):
- the ambiance is perfect.
- can you take my picture out? and focus on the logo instead.
- i'm excited to pay you in concert tickets.
- "this doesn't need to move and blink and all that s**t."

this may be one of those perfect client relationships...

air and water show

is it so wrong that these planes are freaking me out?

improving

so i had five hours of sleep last night and two the night before, so it's getting better. but i was taking out my contacts at 11pm last night and thinking, "I. Am. Not. Tired." and meaning it! and feeling odd about that - this sudden shortage kind of makes me feel tough. like, i can maintain all sense of normalcy and focus while on so little sleep and it makes me wonder how little i really need.

i don't like waking up tired, though, so i'm not pushing it. but the physiology is really facinating... like the legend of Da Vinci sleeping 20 minutes every four hours. i just googled it and apparently it's a legitimate idea called Polyphasic Sleep.

one serious side effect for me on this nutty schedule is that it makes me feel seriously nostalgic and empathetic. i've been moved by stupid commercials, on and off glued to BBC news, and devouring Mike Doughty's blog. Mike Doughty is totally my new celebrity crush. the list is maybe five men long, but he's just reached the ranks. Click here to check out the blog. Scroll down and check out his links to his writing from Ethiopia, it's worth it. in a very narcisstic way it makes me think of some of my writing from other countries. i posted a few of them on my new portfolio site (click here). the rest of them will come probably this weekend.

Mike quotes one of his many tour guides:
"Eritrea think you can make a country with blood and iron," Genanew says, "but Ethiopia know you can make a country only with loving."

beautiful. one of my sisters is very anti-online anything, which at this point in my career and general life is antithetical to my every- day- experience. mike doughty's blog is exactly what the value of blogs is: people read it, people get it, people receive a window into another experience that they would never otherwise know. if well written, it's the same as reading a magazine or novel. for example, brahm stoker's dracula could have been a blog - a huge part of that book is comprised of diary entries. same. exact. idea. except doughty hasn't encountered any vampires that i've read about.

i heart mike doughty.

CAN'T. SLEEP.

therefore, began uploading the new website. not much content yet. at all. but that links page, boy is that fun...
http://www.flambegraphics.com

happy birthday aimee!!!

this picture is of aimee and shonda, two of my best girls in the city. unfortunately for me, my girls have gotten bigger and crazier jobs that will do things like take them out to Virginia. who will i have dinner with then? (aimee is on the right)

we went to Andalous Moroccan on clark street for aimee's birthday / yay new jobs party. this place is phenomonal, the food is authentic and tasty, but it's definitely the kind of joint where you get to wait 90 minutes before your food is brought to the table. so you chatter, you drink some wine, have some hummus, some peppers and pita bread. they DO have a kickass patio, let's be serious here - murals and lanterns. (this is mel)

for sure a three-hour affair... and totally a great time

reflection

when Chicago feels like florida:taken from the top of the Drake Hotel on Michigan Ave. Met my parents there for breakfast and pretended i was somewhere equally exotic.

which kind of happened later. i found the farmer's market on division (three blocks from my apartment) and it was almost as amazing as the Des Moines farmer's market! i've been lusting for my old Des Moines treasure trove of flowers, baked goods, omish treats, wicker baskets, and musicians... the division market is about 1/8 the size and has about 1/100th of the goods, but i found some tomatoes, acorn squash, flowers, and PEOPLE. it was really fun to wander through and i'm planning on making it a habit to tide me over until i get back to Des Moines.


plus, let's point out the best deal in town:

new client alert

redoing the web presence of St James Inc

including, but not limited to: site, e-postcards, banners, myspace.
payment in concert tickets, gratitude, and high-fives.

also known as
"from one broke and dreaming twenty-something to another."

bigger photos

starting with the pictures below, i'm going to be linking to bigger photos. so click on the pictures and you'll see them even better than before.

so i totally forgot to talk about last week

i'm a creepy person on myspace and will sometimes find people who i haven't talked to in years, or never really did. one such person of the latter category got an email from me that basically read, "i'm not pretending we ever hung out or anything, but i found your myspace from the new trier alum myspace, and i really dig your music. very cool. have a great day."

so austin emailed me back, we wrote back and forth a couple of times, and eventually he invited me to a chicago show (he now lives in austin. i think the band should be called Austin from Austin but it's called St James Inc). this was one of my first forays into Subterreanean in Bucktown, and i LOVED it. what a cool venue. the room with the stage is tall and narrow, so there's a standing room and you can go upstairs, where the bar up there is a U-shaped balcony so you can see more from above.

being me, though, i was front and center despite being there by myself :) that's just how i roll. if i'm doing something, i might as well rock it for all it's worth, you know? picts of austin:


and two suprise bonuses for me!!! the first: the kid in the brown shirt on stage with St James is Andrew, another high school person who i liked, but never hung out with. turns out he just got out of Rhode Island School of Design (it's a big deal in DesignLand) and did St James' CDs. and he's a part-time rapper. and now i have concrete evidence that he's every bit as cool as i ever thought he was (there was ample... maybe a better word is rampant evidence that austin was that cool back in the day, so he's confirmed awesome as opposed to revealed to be awesome). so Andrew is bonus #1.

bonus #2: the base player below:

#2 is Jeff, the guy on the left. huge fan of him - always was. we had a couple of classes together in high school and i'm, like, facinated by this kid. plus i tried to look him up probably six months ago because i had a need for a cello player, and he's a classically trained cellist. i googled him, emailed a band looking for him, and a girl writes me back saying she thinks he's playing somewhere in Europe. so i had assumed i'd never see him again. then to have him happen to be in Todd Carey's band, to go to the show for Austin and WHOA! on stage next is jeff.


Todd Carey's pretty great, too. not sure if i actually know him, but i like him a lot. this all went down last thursday, i was out until about 2am till i cabbed it home feeling wired and excited, signs of a great show. it was fun to see the guys, kind of re-introduce myself, but there were a bunch of people like that in the crowd, people i know but never knew. and most of them were pretty darn friendly. i didn't expect anyone to remember me, seeing as i had my own friends back in the day, but somehow the friendly chatter was sincerely friendly :)

then friday i went to the dentist.
not as exciting, but my dentist said i'm a rockstar.
saturday - uneventful. got a lot done for my new portfolio site.
sunday - sleepy and good. went to church and ambled around afterwards through Wrigleyville with shonda.

which brings us back to the present, almost :)

major tragedy

and i thought i was having a good day.
here's the catch-22 of it: i don't trust the media, i don't trust the uninformed opinions of my peers. i don't trust the agenda of the government because i don't believe they're working with any agenda i actually have access to knowing; i don't trust anyone, anywhere, about anything. i don't trust myself. what do i know?

case in point: i have seen two examples of manipulated media today that make me physically sick. if i saw the people who created these right in front of me, i would kick them in the shins and call their mothers.

#1: Qana - the director's cut. Click here.

#2: Reuters Doctoring Photos from Beirut. Click here.

but it leaves me to wonder: both of these reports came from blogs (run by Blogger, just like THIS BLOG), the former claiming "To discuss issues related to the UK's position in Europe and the world." WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE? why should i trust them, either?

it's almost enough to make me renounce everything, sell all my worldly posessions and become a biochemical engineer. i could really use some facts right now.

minor tragedy

my favorite boss, one of my most favorite bosses ever, who i called "hot boss" to my family and friends, has unexpectedly quit to go somewhere else. he came by today to tell me tomorrow's his last day.

this means our group is one smaller (now we're at eight), and my fears have been confirmed that literally every person on deck will jump ship at the first good chance.

that being said, i've been recruited by a headhunter (very exciting) and had an interview last week that went very well. i'm expecting to know soon. but hot boss just HAD to go and steal all my thunder. i'm kidding. i'm very happy for him - i just explained it to someone as saying he's much bigger and smarter than his job here allows him to be. if this new gig allows him to really go crazy the way he wants to, it's going to be very exciting. no matter what... sad to not work with hot boss* anymore.

*hot boss does not mean i think he's attractive.
it means he's nice and smart and has a lot of great boss-qualities.

i just wanted a ride

so this morning i had a creepy agressive cab driver, which happens about half the time. it drives me crazy when these people are like "you don't know how it is in chicago, have you even been to the south side?" and because i worked on the west side and because yes, i have gone south to music venues or last weeked for owen's glass fiasco, i have seen these places and i am not immune or ignorant to them. displace your assumptions elsewhere, taxi man.

he tried to convince me that chicago "sucks" because the south side isn't developed when it was here first, dammit! and i couldn't help myself from pointing out that well, the rich people live up north, and if you think rich people controlling things is just something that happens in chicago you've got another thing coming.

it's like i'm asked to prove myself to these cabbies. this guy wouldn't relent until i told him i'd lived in southy (i was in hyde park, which is not as bad as southy - but not, you know, white collar either). THEN i had some credit. great. either i prove i've been slumming, or i'm another useless aristocrat. what's up with that?

there's an owen on my porch!

so owen came back to town last weekend! it was like, the best of times and the worst of times. we were both reasonably exhausted, i've been working 50 hour weeks lately and he had school, summer school, audio workshop, and literally hasn't been home in eight months at this point. but before going back to philly, we had some more quality time.

thursday: i got home from work, owen showed up an hour later after driving six hours from ohio. we found an AMAZING italian joint for dinner that's ONE BLOCK from my apartment! very cool. then came home and went right to sleep.

friday: i got home from work and we hung out on the balcony until it was time for my kid sister's birthday dinner at scoozi's, a family favorite. then we tried to see Clerks II, but hey, when you show up at 9:50 to a 9:20 movie, they barely let you in and then you realize you're 30 min late when you thought you were only 10 min late and then you know what you do? you go home and watch The Count of Monte Christo and talk about politics instead.

oh, the balcony. we were outside for a little over an hour, just chatting and playing Can Lisa Name That Song, No She Can't. i am without rival when it's CD or radio, but when it's just one guitar i can barely catch Eye of the Tiger for the love of pete.

so saturday: tragedy struck. we fed the meter at owen's car, went to get milk for cereal, went to feed the meter again at 11am, and in that time someone had broken into Owen's car and STOLE HIS GUITAR. it was that bad. they took nothing but the guitar, left behind his J Crew shirts, iPod, etc and took the one most valuable thing in there. i burst into tears. owen handled it better. we called the cops, his parents, a few glass companies, i blew my nose and we headed out to the south side to get the window repaired. it was way south, like past Comiskey Park south, like i'd been down that far twice before and did NOT want to hang out.

anyway, aside from the guitar being gone it was all fixed and taken care of soon after.

i felt terrible, so bad that i think it effected me the rest of the weekend. i had expected owen to get mad or regret coming so i was paranoid and super nice to the point that i was probably being annoying and then being paranoid about whether i was being annoying. so the natural solution, of course, is to bring in more people and heighten the possibility of annoying the snot out of my friend. i took owen to my sisters' new place and he somehow managed to hang out with my affectionately overwhelming family and survive intact and enjoying himself! saturday night: just hung out. it had been a rough day, to say the least. while hanging out i made owen a present, a CD cover:

if you know anything about photoshop, you'd know this is a really easy trick, but it looks cool and i did the whole thing in about twenty minutes :) AND if you know photoshop, you'll know the pretty fantastic feeling you get when you reveal your computer monitor to the person in the frame and they see themselves in a previously unimagined setting. owen was shocked, in a good way, in the best way. i almost redeemed myself...

finally, sunday: slept in. saw Thank You For Smoking. walked around. got Owen a haircut (badly needed. you can't see those muttonchop sideburns like i could see them) (glorious). we kept walking. went back to the italian place for late lunch / early dinner. hung out on the balcony. sent him off around 7pm. by the time we had hugged goodbye three times, everything had evened out and we were back where we started, makeshift siblings who somehow will just always be absolutely fine. i still feel very mixed about the tone of the weekend - we were both tired and overwhelmed - but i saw some strength in our friendship that i knew was there.

edison park church

when i was growing up i had a neighbor who was like a second mother. then we moved, we moved again, we moved again, and i ended up only really seeing her one week a year when i was over at Long Grove Church Camp, then when she wasn't a counselor at camp i really only saw her a couple times a year, graduation parties, that kind of thing.

then Kathy went back to school and became Pastor Karch. she ended up at Edison Park Community Church and now has her own congregation! and low and behold, someone needed a website. and they knew a girl who had become a designer.

so the website isn't anything to write home about, but it's fun and simple, functional. while i was working at the architecture firm last year we had half-day fridays year round... and back when i had a car and drove to work (!) (unthinkable to pull off now) i would spend friday afternoons being impacted by a wise, wonderful, nurturing woman who is still like a second mother.

then i moved again. this was THE move of last year, the LA / Boston moves and Pastor Karch was one of the people who i tended to, shall we say, neglect while i was gone. but i'm back now, and even though i'm sans-vehicle, i still manage to stay invested in the Edison Park Community Church :) we had a very entertaining event, a guy called the church who was a guitar player / songwriter and was just like, uh, hey, can i play? and Edison Park Church answered, well sure. Come on over. Pastor Karch is seated (with her husband) closest to the camera, in the black outfit:


there was a full house, which is great for Edison Park Church. the vast majority of the congregation is over 70 years old, and they sang along with the familiar hymns.

the church offered coffee, lemonade, and a picnic-style dinnner.

we also had a raffle winner who, when she won, thought she was being yelled at for talking during the show :) she was pretty adorable.

you know, it's like... the last time i saw state radio in town Chad thanked me for helping so much with Elias Fund, and i got very "aw, shucks" and was like, "i got into this to help people." and i'm nervous i came across as being, "well, everyone needs a website," and less "i think you're so amazing i'm willing to support anything you do, even if it's not easy for me to do." and that's how i feel about Kathy, my amazing friend who has seriously impacted me for the better all along.

Rorshach dreams

1. i was cooking and started a grease fire. it was blue, not very hot, but destructive and kept spreading. i tried to stomp it out barefoot, which only spread the fire and ended up with me stomping on my own feet.

2. i was on grey's anatomy but it was real instead of a show, and i was helping two of the interns sedate a woman who was having a psychotic episode, she was attacking me and i held her off by doing that airplane ride thing you do with three year olds where you lift them into the air over you by balancing their stomach on your feet. i was trying so hard to not hurt her, trying to balance this screaming woman, and her face kept changing, the features kept expanding until her mouth was open as wide as a salad plate. i woke up scared out of my mind that she was some kind of ghost that would be floating above me once i was awake. didn't open my eyes for several minutes.

3. there was a bright room and an object floating in front of me over a white table that kept changing form. it became among other things a jackrabbit, a baby, the jack of spades, a teapot, a pear, a spider, and a rattle.

Drive me/you up a nuts, To

the origin of cliches.
my new toy: cliche site.com

Rivera: Less fast food in New York

Click here to read the full article

My favorite quote out of this:
"There are too many fast food restaurants in New York, and our kids don't want to eat at home. It's very, very bad - it's killing us with the diabetes and high blood-pressure.... Shut them down and train the kids how to cook, if they don't know how to cook - put up a cooking school!"

that seems like it could be a groundbreaking idea. the way kids have after-school sports, art classes, etc; i wonder if opening culinary schools around the city would be appealing to families. i'm picturing the YMCA working with low-income families who would be letting their kids learn how to cook – the kids would learn something sustainable plus get a better meal than they might get at home.

wheels... spinning................

best. concert. ever.

i didn't bring my camera because i was feeling a little cynical about live music, even though i was going to see my favorite band of all time. sometimes i'm in no mood for crowds, for arrogant door people, for six dollar heinekens, for little fourteen year old tweakers sparking a bowl within four inches of me. BUT.

it was State Radio.
that show was one of the best shows i've ever been to. it started as awkwardly as i'd anticipated, i was surrounded by a bunch of high schoolers and yes, there were a couple of those potheads in the crew. but then i ran into three boys that ran the merch booth when we did the Dispatch movie premiere, and they pulled me up front with them two songs before SR took the stage.

i didn't know there were going to be four bands on stage tonight... SR was third, and blew the top off the building. the energy was visceral, rugged, palpable. they opened with my favorite song (Mr. Larkin) and all 200 of us in the crowd started jumping and didn't stop until the set was over. the room was so full of people and sweat that the Beat Kitchen opened all the emergency exit doors and the cooler air breezed in over the top of us. i was shoved around, i was burnt with a lighter, but through it all i was ten feet from a huge speaker and i got lost in the pro-revolutionary reggae funk. Chad Urmston is brilliant.

after SR made way for RX Bandits, i decided i'd had my fill and went outside to say hello to the band. i've gotten to know chad and his bandmates and his girlfriend a little because Chad is one of our Elias Fund founders, and Owen is SR's merch person when they're in Boston. so it's like we all know a lot about each other second hand, and it gets more personal every time, but i still keep it short and sweet to avoid any chance of awkward... it was great to see them. there's a lot of respect in every angle, they're very cool people.

visiting

Owen came to visit last weekend. below is Owen, in the green shirt:we started out the way all of my most fantastic relationships begin: we happen to meet one day, and somehow just never stop talking or moving or being together. owen was my partner in crime last summer, we would both get stuck in that big house and sneak out to go to movies, or to panera, or to a guitar shop owen found and he'd test out their Taylors while i would just poke around and pretend to have any idea what i was looking for (i didn't.).

so it's been literally almost a year since i've seen this kid, and he's in ohio right now working at an audio workshop. usually he's in pittsburgh, so since he was already that much closer he decided to drive in for a weekend... and we walked just about the whole time. saturday owen arrived around 4pm, we walked my neighborhood and then went to dinner with six of my friends (they were all looking forward to meeting this kid that i reference on a regular basis who none of them knew)... after dinner we went to see the new Pirates movie (thumbs up) and walked from [ohio + michigan] to [clark + schiller] at 2am. for those that don't know, it's close to 2 miles :) lot of drunken fools out there at 2am.

sunday we took the bus to the loop, and walked from [michigan + wacker] to [michigan + congress] and zig-zagged our way back up between michigan ave and state street. got back to my place in time to catch the italy vs france world cup game, then sent owen on his way.

that kid, i'll tell you what. he's pretty awesome. we spent a solid 24 hours together after having a phone friendship for a year after living together for a couple months. i am so amazed by these relationships that come out of nowhere, and end up being the most altering and sweet influences that remind me why i shouldn't try to control my destiny, it's evidence that God's good graces will continue to find me without my help. i love the feeling that my friends are amazing and i love how much i want them all to hang out together :)

side note

one of my many side projects is to build a media library for dispatch. the manager of the "dispatch estate" just bought me a new scanner and a 500 GB hard drive to store what's literally a suitcase full of photos i've been asked to hold on to for almost a year. i threatened to sell them off on eBay unless we got crackin.

through no fault of mister manager, the box came today:
i took a picture in case the contents were damaged - but they're not :) everything's working very well, so we're good

RETROPOST!!!

haha, i had a blog so i could tell my family about my everyday life, and now i tell them only once every couple weeks. i am LAME.

let's go back in time... two weeks... to independence day. spent it in iowa.
tuesday: i'm in a mild panic, figuring out how to gather the moxie to ask for a half-day friday.

wednesday: still haven't brought it up. recieve an email:
SNOW FORCES THE OFFICES OF WUNDERMAN CHICAGO TO CLOSE ON 6/30. SEE YOU JULY 5TH. IF YOU DO NEED TO STRAP ON YOUR SNOWSHOES, BE SURE TO TAKE ANOTHER DAY THIS SUMMER.
i will take THIS day, thank you very much mister office president. you're awesome.

thursday: work, pack, call, plan. hit the gym.

friday: errands, drive six hours, purchase bubble yum watermelon at halfway point, blow bubbles to entertain self for three hours, arrive in des moines around 6pm. stinking traffic. took an hour longer than usual.

i was staying with my friends rocky and kortney who i know from leading youth groups during college - rocky was my director - and now they've joined the ranks of my friends who are
1. young
2. married
3. residing in iowa
rocky rocked out on the grill, and we made a small feast of vegetables and wine. it was so interesting to see them in their home (i haven't been to iowa in about 1.5 years), all set up and adult. i'm still in that transition period where sleeping in a guest room is a novelty. not all of my friends are that kind of grown up, including me - i definitely live in a room without walls... but anyway, when these kids and i get together there's a serious Christian slant, and part of what i love is our tendency to get up to our ears in philosophical discussion about, hmmm, four minutes after the inital "you're here! [hug] good to see you!"

after dinner we went to downtown Des Moines for a Sister Hazel show. there's an amphitheater on a hill that faces the Des Moines River, and for $20 we found lawn seats, shared a space with only about 200 people, and had a fireworks show...
during which the band burst out into what seemed to be a spontaneous rendition of the national anthem:
after the show we went over to see our friends paul and laura, whose wedding i missed (of ALL THE DAYS IN A YEAR, i was mandy's maid of honor that day). i was really excited to meet laura for the first time, and i'm a huge fan. she's pretty awesome. sometimes you'll hear a guy say "well, she's the girl version of me" and in this case it's very accurate. they make perfect sense with each other.

saturday: my four buddies had to go to a wedding in omaha, and i instead found some other peeps. i reconnected with some friends from the beginning of college who for some reason or another our friendships had slowed over the years. i learned that jason and i still love each other like siblings, he's just not a good phone person! and libby and i had lunch for FOUR HOURS. for the first time since college, i had to tear myself away from Des Moines. the trips back so far had been up and down, but this trip was absolutely, positively up. got back to chi-town around 10pm. crashed.

sunday: yay church!

monday: yay MIKE DOUGHTY, TASTE OF CHICAGO, FIREWORKS!

tuesday: family day. spent it in my parent's backyard grilling, playing bocce, drinking wine, harassing my nana's dog. nice way to chill. got back to my place after an extremely full weekend and watched the city fireworks along the west horizon:
don't know if you can tell, but every little spark along the top of the buildings is another fireworks display...
click here and you can see them better on my flickr site...

because i got here at 6:03am

my left eye has officially started twitching.
i've had enough butterball.com for one day, i feel.

massive post coming later - pictures and everything...

two new obsessions

1. my brand spanking new Dan McCarthy poster.
IT GLOWS IN THE DARK.
if i had the scratch lying around, there are at least a dozen of his posters i would buy and coat my apartment walls in mccarthy love. his work deals with cycles of life and death, detail and big picture, dinosaurs and roots, skeletons and love. There are also ghost buddies.

2. a huge crush on Javier Bardem, star of 2004's The Sea Inside.
The Sea Inside is a depressing but sublime film about a man who has a diving accident (i think he's 19 when it happens?); basically the character shows off for a girl and breaks his neck diving. we enter the story later, while he's fighting for the right to end his own life. you would think that would be all to the plot, but it's only a vehicle for the actual meat of the story. there's no predicting it.

knowing the power of the actor - javier is not in any way a feeble guy - to watch him play an aging quadriplegic / former athlete is disturbing and beautiful in just the right way. there's an underlying delicacy to the movie that keeps it all together, it's like you might try to imagine writing a scene in which a sister-in-law feeds her husband's brother lunch, but what do you even say? i can't even picture what my relationship would be like if i were tied to someone like that for years, and they succeed in making it live. below is a picture of his character painting with the character's nephew:


other reasons i'm obsessed: he's going to star in Love in the Time of Cholera, a book by my favorite author Gabriel Garcia Marquez; he's also going to be in Guerilla, with Benecio del Toro playing Che. between Che, Benecio, and Javier, i might just lose it. i might be outside in a sleeping bag the night before the movie opens, i'm just suggesting that as a possibility. i doubt i'll have much company, but any is welcome :)

this also makes me laugh because i've had this picture torn out of a Vanity Fair magazine and in a binder called "design stuff i like" for years:
and never realized it's the same guy until i googled him for a picture to include here. in my "stuff" binder, this picture is in a spread facing a new york playright who has a strikingly similar pose and a similarly annoyed / cynical expression, but the playright is standing on a bed and wearing a sweater. basically looks like the same person, but with antithetical backgrounds. just thought it was a funny juxtaposition, and today learn that old picture is one of my new favorites.

good night moon

good morning oregano

identity theory fundraiser

so one of my part-time gigs is being the visuals editor of Identity Theory. it's really a bunch of dedicated people across the country that work to promote unknown talented people. the site's been around for about six years, i've been involved for four, and there is actually a point on the horizon where we see this getting bigger. just a little bigger. not much. but bigger in that we want more people to know about the site, we want more submissions, more artists, MORE I SAY!

so we're gonna raise a little money.
ever heard of fundable.org? basically, you start a group and get some interest started, people can pledge as much or little as they want. no one pays unless you reach your goal, so if you DON'T reach your goal no one loses any scratch. it's a neat system, and we're gonna play it for all it's worth...

so check out the site: www.identitytheory.com
and if you would like to show some support, check out our fundraiser:
https://www.fundable.org/groupactions/idt.raffle.706/

quote of the day

from my boss after i solved a problem:
"lisa, you're a walking swiss-army knife."

finally catching up

been doing that thing again with the blog where i've passed over a few things that are very, very important in my life but haven't addressed them because, well, the way the world turns is that the next thing comes before your current thing is done. you know what i mean, i know you do.

so in the past, oh, month.

my youngest sister graduated college

we got to meet anne's guy

hang out with his family (they're pretty awesome)

was home for a few days, had dinner with katie and found out i know more jazz musicians than i thought i did... the guy in the very center of this pict below, with the reddish shirt, we went to high school together; he was in from new york and was playing keyboard with his jazz band.

then to celebrate three out of three daughters being done with college, we decided to leap off into the yonder, across the pond

and spend a few days in barcelona

then paris and luxembourg... but those picts are to come...
in the meantime, you can see the rest of the barcelona pictures that i have up by clicking here.

so that might explain my lonely feelings from the other day - re-entry is always tough. but today is a new day, new crazy things are happening and new pictures will go up tonight. a ton of freelance work is coming in. i like going to the gym and maybe will have time to tonight. i feel relaxed and i'm going to lunch... sweet.

lack of motivation

it's feeling awful lonely today.
today is one of those days where my program quits and i lose an hour of work. i have absolutely no desire to be here. why don't i just go learn some flash and do the work i want? because there is still life going on. ten hours a day on the computer at work doesn't make me rearing to go back to the laptop when i get home. it takes years to learn a new program, and i desperately want it to take a week.

i love being social, but every day this week i have something totally planned and i'd like to hit the gym at least twice. then the week's over - what about saturday? when do i get to see my grandparents? my cousins' children? sunday is church, more social fun that unfolds for the duration of sunday. i love it, but when is there really time for flash?

i want to get to the point where i can build a website in eight hours of hard work. where i can incorporate streaming music, clean graphics, maybe even a message board. i want to, before i'm thirty, be able to survive off of my own creative skills. maybe that's my realistic goal. i have musician friends right now who need what i want to be able to do, but if i'm patient enough i'll realize there will be new bands in five years, and the people i want to help now will need updating by then. i feel frantic when i don't really need to and it's amplified by my frustration at this machine that quits when i want it to save. thanks for nothing, OmniGraffle. thanks for feeding my lame karma this morning!

i'm totally surprised by the intensity of these feelings right now. i talked to an ex-boyfriend the other day, one of those wierd late night "just to say hi" calls that is made only to feel the other person out, but for the love of pete i can see right through it. so he asks how everything is going, and i very sincerely answer, "good. everything right now is just... really, really good." and it is.

but still. onward and upward.
Christ. (shortest prayer i ever uttered)

email from work

SEND THIS EMAIL TO AS MANY PEOPLE AS YOU CAN AND AS QUICKLY AS YOU CAN! TOMORROW IS THE BIG DAY!!!!!!

----- Forwarded by Chad Rupp/NA/WWGroup on 05/18/06 09:45 AM -----
Subject: Blackout day

IT HAS BEEN CALCULATED THAT IF EVERYONE IN THE UNITED STATES DID NOT PURCHASE A DROP OF GASOLINE FOR ONE DAY AND ALL AT THE SAME TIME, THE OIL COMPANIES WOULD CHOKE ON THEIR STOCKPILES.

AT THE SAME TIME IT WOULD HIT THE ENTIRE INDUSTRY WITH A NET LOSS OF OVER 4.6 BILLION DOLLARS WHICH AFFECTS THE BOTTOM LINES OF THE OIL COMPANIES.

THEREFORE MAY 19TH HAS BEEN FORMALLY DECLARED "STICK IT TO THEM" DAY AND THE PEOPLE OF THIS NATION SHOULD NOT BUY A SINGLE DROP OF GASOLINE THAT DAY.

THE ONLY WAY THIS CAN BE DONE IS IF YOU FORWARD THIS E-MAIL TO AS MANY PEOPLE AS YOU CAN AND AS QUICKLY AS YOU CAN TO GET THE WORD OUT.

WAITING ON THIS ADMINISTRATION TO STEP IN AND CONTROL THE PRICES IS NOT GOING TO HAPPEN. WHAT HAPPENED TO THE REDUCTION AND CONTROL IN PRICES THAT THE ARAB NATIONS PROMISED TWO WEEKS AGO?

REMEMBER ONE THING, NOT ONLY IS THE PRICE OF GASOLINE GOING UP BUT AT THE SAME TIME AIRLINES ARE FORCED TO RAISE THEIR PRICES, TRUCKING COMPANIES ARE FORCED TO RAISE THEIR PRICES WHICH EFFECTS PRICES ON EVERYTHING THAT IS SHIPPED. THINGS LIKE FOOD, CLOTHING, BUILDING MATERIALS, MEDICAL SUPPLIES ETC. WHO PAYS IN THE END? WE DO!

WE CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE. IF THEY DON'T GET THE MESSAGE AFTER ONE DAY, WE WILL DO IT AGAIN AND AGAIN.

SO DO YOUR PART AND SPREAD THE WORD. FORWARD THIS EMAIL TO EVERYONE YOU KNOW. MARK YOUR CALENDARS AND MAKE MAY 19TH A DAY THAT THE CITIZENS OF THE UNITED STATES SAY "ENOUGH IS ENOUGH"

FPO

FPO in industry-land stands for "for position only."
it's what you say when you have a placeholder.

this post will be replaced tomorrow morning with news of anne's graduation, quality time in Ohio (sorry i didn't swing by again steve, someday i'll come knockin), and a jazz band i saw last monday.

the FPO is a waste of time, but it's just that i've had the pictures and have been working too much to want to come home and spend more time on my computer. i've HAD the picts, they're SO CLOSE and i just can't stand it anymore!!

so this FPO will be replaced tomorrow. when i get to go home. two 50 hour weeks in a row is really getting on my nerves.

interlude

i'm taking a minor break after getting some agua, i'm doing that thing again that i do sometimes where i'm asleep by eleven, up at five and at my desk by 6am, putting in a solid three hours of freelance work before officially starting my day. somehow this routine keeps me energized, instead of the 7am wake up call that has me slumping around my apartment before dragging myself to work in time to be turning on my computer at 9. getting up earlier saves me from the midday lulls, and i'm not sure how. i don't have those sleepy periods at 10am and 3pm that i've come to expect and hate.

it's so amazing to be up that early in a place with as many people as Chicago. to see Michigan Avenue dead quiet, empty like Stephen King's "The Stand" quiet, like the beginning of "Vanilla Sky" quiet, not even a cab driving by. Go upstairs - the people at Starbucks are there, illusion shattered - but up in the office it's the same thing. And I don't know where the light switches are. I'm alone in the twilight morning with my little laptop, whittling away at small projects before I step it up to my day job and turn to the desktop sitting next to me.

more updates

the dispatch movie came and went. it was fantastic.
the weekend was a ton of fun. started out by going to Muse Cafe thursday night to see Pete Francis and Craig Dreyer:

and then friday night was THE MOVIE i've been promoting for two months. two or three nights a week at the Doubledoor, Vic, or Metro, the Aragon and UIC Pavilion all got fliers. We showed the film at Park West Theater on Armitage to about 400 people... i went straight over after work to deliver the merchadise for sale, tee shirts and CDs. after setting up and getting a tour of the venue, picked up dinner for everyone and we munched up in the green room. we had some time to chill, Craig played some Tom Waits-inspired tunes for me on the guitar.

then the doors opened at 7, we had an opening band called *6:

after they warmed up the crowd, the movie showed at 8. afterwards, Pete & Craig played a short set, five songs if i remember correctly.

the show had a great vibe to it, a lot of people have been really excited to see the flick. and most of the audience were fans, so they got the jokes and were laughing at the right places, singing along and clapping. when Pete & Craig took the stage, half the audience rushed up to get a closer look.

afterwards, the crowd dwindled down until it was down to the original team: me, the producers, pete, craig, pete's manager, and the former Dispatch manager. it felt a little like the end of Ocean's Eleven when they all part ways without much decorum, a wink and a smile, a nod and it's over. i'm officially done promoting Dispatch.

of course, after everything else i slipped Craig my cellphone number and the guys called around midnight looking for pizza. my buddy jessica and i took them out to Duo on Ontario where we introduced them to some nice Chicago style deep dish until around 1:30, at which point the guys went home to bed, jessica went home to sleep, and i went to other undisclosed locations until around 5am. what can i say? i was pretty riled up. it was a good night.

updates

i've been in the apartment for five weeks. two IKEA journeys, one Affordable Portables trip, several Bed, Bath & Beyond excursions, and one jaunt to Target later the place is looking good in my little humble opinion.

i painted and put up bookshelves. i think that's what i'm most proud of - the painting happened after work, a couple hours every night for a week:

i've got my design books on the left, my other books & electronics on the right, pictures and stuff on both. the TV and laptop share the table in the middle (the screens are the same size) (which makes both the computer feel big and the TV feel small). i have creature speakers, which are definitely powerful enough to rattle the windows of this studio.

i love having all my photo frames and nick-nacks (sp?) in one place.
there are other favorites...

a friend warned me of how boring it might be to live all your apartment life in one room, but it splits up nicely. you're totally unaware of the "bedroom" half when you're on the couch.

this room is tan, where the other's green... but the light color is a sweet setting for the orange. i'm also pretty seriously considering a mural on that blank wall. i don't want anything more hanging on it, but it needs something. i'm thinking of taking the leftover paint, making it a shade lighter, and replicating an art noveau poster i've seen in a deck of cards i bought at the museum of modern art in Japan. any opinions on that one?