i get scared about a lot of things, and i'm preparing myself for a time when fear plays a smaller part in my actions and decision making.
when i close my eyes in the face of fear, i am drawn into a moving impressionist painting in a small place in my mind. there, i feel the physicality of my own presence in the wake of a greater presence... that which i am afraid of. it looms before me, in the dark blue-gray room, and i am small but dimly lit in its shadow. the fear is monolithic and shapeless and nearly consumes me, but remains just far enough from me that i cannot touch it. i glow in the faintest way, equally amorphic, like a misshapen play-doh cube. against the darkness, it's as if i am touched by moonlight... but only as bright as moonlight could be if veiled by clouds and reflected from a rippled pond. in this space, the fear never touches me. it only looms, towers in an arc before me, always inevitable, always forboding.
today, i imagined my fear in this way. for the first time in recent memory, i felt emboldened. not courageous, not brave... but simply that it was not in me to back away. not a feeling of strength or even determination... i still felt small and amorphous, fully aware that the Unknown could flatten me on a whim. but i didn't go anywhere, and i even thought about the possibility of moving forward into the blue-gray shadowy mass with a sense of confidence. i haven't stepped forward yet, but i feel the strength to do so growing within me. the surprise is that the strength is not what i expected. it isn't that of a warrior. instead, it feels like the floes of everything within me has slowed, and troughing into me is the weight of a new glacier. stoic and with the weight of ages, it presses into my chest, anchoring me to where i stand, giving me presence to move forward only as slowly as the glacier will grow within me.
from trickles, i will grow. a mountain of frost fears only itself. one day, without warning, i will breach myself and explode into the shadowy waters of fear. i will burst forth and destroy all that holds me, so that the dark gray-blue room will collapse into itself, drawing the wrap from the inside of my mind into a shriveled pile of navy latex sheets, and the brightness of the just-blued sky will feel like all i've ever known.
but for now, i remain where i rest, building momentum from pooling, icy droplets.
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Saturday, June 28, 2008
run into flowers
after talking with suzie about a particular story i'd written in college, i was reminded that i published a lot of my writing in my FreeOpenDiary--yes i had one--and that i'd downloaded the archive file after i stopped writing in it. so tonight i found the old file, which covers my life from january 2, 2003 to november 5, 2003. wow, besides being an inspired-yet-mediocre writer, i was going through a lot of shit in those days.
i can still place myself at my desk in room 911 in camp hall, still remember where everything was in that room, how good my stereo sounded when i need refuge from things, how hard the wooden desk chair was after so many hours at my desk, the kindred that i felt with peppy (my roommate and buddy) at the time. life felt really fresh then. i remember the feeling it created in my chest. always a bit scary, but not in the adventurous way that i feel fear now. like true fear, before i learned to fight it. a shearing, stainless steel feeling across my windpipe. not pain, more like tactile cold, but with motion to it... and a feeling in my forehead, a sharp awareness, to match. everything new came with a little adrenaline to it. usually some sort of doubt or regret too. sounds awful, right?
yes, in retrospect, i was pretty on edge for the first couple years of school. then i was depressed. then i was stressed, burned out, emotionally damaged and overworked. then i was a hardworking, successful fifth-year student. things definitely progressed in a certain direction, and after all of it i definitely have ended up much better than i used to be. yet somehow, i crave that feeling that i had my freshman year. i'm not sure why, because i know from reading back over those old journal entries that i was dealing with heavy shit all the time. that said, i guess i miss that because everything all the time was just so REAL. non-stop waves of real life and real emotions, the rawness of it all was captivating even though i may not have appreciated it as such.
it makes me wonder... have i lost a tolerance for this kind of emotion? have i lost the ability to generate those sorts of feelings in myself? they stemmed from certain things. namely the shift to college life from high school, the inevitable introduction to life as an adult, the excitement of making my own decisions on everything, and dealing with the then recent death of my best friend. classes were invigorating (for the most part). dating was new and intense. friendships bloomed in a way that i didn't know they could. hormones were out of control. sleep was an option that i handled in extremes, trading nights of almost none for days of morning-through-afternoon comatose. i get exhausted just thinking about how turbulent life was, but i can't help but crave it a little bit.
it's a stupid dichotomy because i've spent the last three or so years consciously seeking a sense of stability. and now, at a tender 23 years old, i have just about as much stability as i thought i'd ever need, with the exception of a steady, loving girlfriend to spend all my free time with... but i've got the steady, loving part for sure and i feel safe in knowing that the rest is only a matter of time. when i compare myself to the guys i lived with when i first moved to chicago, both over 30, single, working worthless jobs, alcohol their favorite recreation, recreational sex a close second, i can pause and smile proudly at what i've done with my life so far. yet i feel like i'll always crave the rawness of when things were harder. perhaps i love the feeling of emotional turbulence because it always yields an immense feeling of emotional catharsis, personal triumph, or victorious self-improvement in the face of the ultimate hurdle--my 'self'.
i think there is probably something in me that can still feel these uber-intense things, but likely my propensity for generating stuff of that caliber has been softened by emotional maturation, this as a result of growing and repairing myself after events of certain extremes. i sometimes tell people that i wish i could cry more often. i remember, as a child, feeling sadness at the end of a sorrowful, heroic, or charming film, and simply crying about it for a moment. it felt really good, really natural. not so much anymore. i'm reduced to events now, starting with the death of my dad, then my end-of-summer breakup with suzie, then the death of tony, then a particularly guilt-ridden breakup with leslie (inappropriately so, now that i think about it--this one feels wasted)... and i think that was the last one. this would have been in 2004. my theory is that after experiencing these extremes, my cry-reaction has been recalibrated so that equal or greater extremes must be experienced for me to cry again. it feels strange to realize this. but i'm pretty sure that's what the deal is.
so this begs the question... have i become more emotionally mature, or simply hardened? this question scares me a lot, to be honest. luckily, i know that i still feel intense things, as the genuine affection that i feel only for my mother, the strange semi-parental instincts that come with a younger brother, or the warm generalized happiness that comes when i step back and really appreciate my sense of family, or in a larger sense, the friends that i count as my family. there is also, of course, the recent *unencumbered* re-emergence of feelings for suzie, which are different than the intense ones i felt when i was 16, but still hearken back to that intensity with a more grounded sense of life. again--a sense of maturity, or a fear of emotional extremes? i can't really know this about myself, i think. either way, i know these few things are real, regardless of where they are diverted and rearranged within me.
today i was talking with suzie about some stuff she's going through, mostly frustration with this phase of her life. she's in an extended phase of college life, where she is successful but kind of ready for the next thing. this is stuff i empathize with by remembering my own phase and becoming a little frustrated along with her. specifically, i realized tonight that i really engage when she gets frustrated with her dad while living at home. now, i know i have some dad issues of my own, and i'll sometimes catch my subconscious mind attacking these things vicariously. it will feel like genuine anger or rebellion brewing up inside me, but towards a person that i'm not at all involved with other than by proxy. in this case, suzie told me about this thing where, as a small child, she took a coffee stirrer from a gas station coffee table while her dad was paying for gas. when her dad saw that she'd taken it, he told her that this was stealing and made her take the straw back in and apologize to the dude at the gas station. suzie likes this because it taught her never to steal anything. sure, that's reputable. but all the same, i got really pissed when she recounted this story to me! i became really defensive for her childhood self, angry that her dad would start some shit over a complimentary coffee straw. given, this is me taking the thing totally out of context. her dad may have been very kind about it, and in fact was probably right in showing her that she should ask or reconsider before grabbing and taking things, as it could have been a candy bar as easily as it was a straw. i don't know how it went down; i wasn't there.
all i know is that my temper totally flared up at this. it's a little bit of my protective/vindictive nature which rises in defense of those i love, but no doubt when i think about it, there's more to it than that. i must be bringing my own shit into it, which is a little troubling. this is for me to deal with, not poor suzie. she was just telling me this cute moral story from her childhood, and i had to go fuck it up by getting retroactively pissed at her dad. sounds a little off to me.
so maybe if i dig deeply enough, i've still got enough emotional turmoil left to get that old feeling back. maybe i just need to take the george bush approach... send in everything i've got, stir up a lot of battles, and do everything i can to tap into the tapped and untapped reserves of oil--i mean, emotions. untapped reserves of pent up emotion, which may or may not affect national gas prices.
this one was exhausting. it's the end of a long week, a good one though. i will press on, but first i will go to sleep.
peace.
i can still place myself at my desk in room 911 in camp hall, still remember where everything was in that room, how good my stereo sounded when i need refuge from things, how hard the wooden desk chair was after so many hours at my desk, the kindred that i felt with peppy (my roommate and buddy) at the time. life felt really fresh then. i remember the feeling it created in my chest. always a bit scary, but not in the adventurous way that i feel fear now. like true fear, before i learned to fight it. a shearing, stainless steel feeling across my windpipe. not pain, more like tactile cold, but with motion to it... and a feeling in my forehead, a sharp awareness, to match. everything new came with a little adrenaline to it. usually some sort of doubt or regret too. sounds awful, right?
yes, in retrospect, i was pretty on edge for the first couple years of school. then i was depressed. then i was stressed, burned out, emotionally damaged and overworked. then i was a hardworking, successful fifth-year student. things definitely progressed in a certain direction, and after all of it i definitely have ended up much better than i used to be. yet somehow, i crave that feeling that i had my freshman year. i'm not sure why, because i know from reading back over those old journal entries that i was dealing with heavy shit all the time. that said, i guess i miss that because everything all the time was just so REAL. non-stop waves of real life and real emotions, the rawness of it all was captivating even though i may not have appreciated it as such.
it makes me wonder... have i lost a tolerance for this kind of emotion? have i lost the ability to generate those sorts of feelings in myself? they stemmed from certain things. namely the shift to college life from high school, the inevitable introduction to life as an adult, the excitement of making my own decisions on everything, and dealing with the then recent death of my best friend. classes were invigorating (for the most part). dating was new and intense. friendships bloomed in a way that i didn't know they could. hormones were out of control. sleep was an option that i handled in extremes, trading nights of almost none for days of morning-through-afternoon comatose. i get exhausted just thinking about how turbulent life was, but i can't help but crave it a little bit.
it's a stupid dichotomy because i've spent the last three or so years consciously seeking a sense of stability. and now, at a tender 23 years old, i have just about as much stability as i thought i'd ever need, with the exception of a steady, loving girlfriend to spend all my free time with... but i've got the steady, loving part for sure and i feel safe in knowing that the rest is only a matter of time. when i compare myself to the guys i lived with when i first moved to chicago, both over 30, single, working worthless jobs, alcohol their favorite recreation, recreational sex a close second, i can pause and smile proudly at what i've done with my life so far. yet i feel like i'll always crave the rawness of when things were harder. perhaps i love the feeling of emotional turbulence because it always yields an immense feeling of emotional catharsis, personal triumph, or victorious self-improvement in the face of the ultimate hurdle--my 'self'.
i think there is probably something in me that can still feel these uber-intense things, but likely my propensity for generating stuff of that caliber has been softened by emotional maturation, this as a result of growing and repairing myself after events of certain extremes. i sometimes tell people that i wish i could cry more often. i remember, as a child, feeling sadness at the end of a sorrowful, heroic, or charming film, and simply crying about it for a moment. it felt really good, really natural. not so much anymore. i'm reduced to events now, starting with the death of my dad, then my end-of-summer breakup with suzie, then the death of tony, then a particularly guilt-ridden breakup with leslie (inappropriately so, now that i think about it--this one feels wasted)... and i think that was the last one. this would have been in 2004. my theory is that after experiencing these extremes, my cry-reaction has been recalibrated so that equal or greater extremes must be experienced for me to cry again. it feels strange to realize this. but i'm pretty sure that's what the deal is.
so this begs the question... have i become more emotionally mature, or simply hardened? this question scares me a lot, to be honest. luckily, i know that i still feel intense things, as the genuine affection that i feel only for my mother, the strange semi-parental instincts that come with a younger brother, or the warm generalized happiness that comes when i step back and really appreciate my sense of family, or in a larger sense, the friends that i count as my family. there is also, of course, the recent *unencumbered* re-emergence of feelings for suzie, which are different than the intense ones i felt when i was 16, but still hearken back to that intensity with a more grounded sense of life. again--a sense of maturity, or a fear of emotional extremes? i can't really know this about myself, i think. either way, i know these few things are real, regardless of where they are diverted and rearranged within me.
today i was talking with suzie about some stuff she's going through, mostly frustration with this phase of her life. she's in an extended phase of college life, where she is successful but kind of ready for the next thing. this is stuff i empathize with by remembering my own phase and becoming a little frustrated along with her. specifically, i realized tonight that i really engage when she gets frustrated with her dad while living at home. now, i know i have some dad issues of my own, and i'll sometimes catch my subconscious mind attacking these things vicariously. it will feel like genuine anger or rebellion brewing up inside me, but towards a person that i'm not at all involved with other than by proxy. in this case, suzie told me about this thing where, as a small child, she took a coffee stirrer from a gas station coffee table while her dad was paying for gas. when her dad saw that she'd taken it, he told her that this was stealing and made her take the straw back in and apologize to the dude at the gas station. suzie likes this because it taught her never to steal anything. sure, that's reputable. but all the same, i got really pissed when she recounted this story to me! i became really defensive for her childhood self, angry that her dad would start some shit over a complimentary coffee straw. given, this is me taking the thing totally out of context. her dad may have been very kind about it, and in fact was probably right in showing her that she should ask or reconsider before grabbing and taking things, as it could have been a candy bar as easily as it was a straw. i don't know how it went down; i wasn't there.
all i know is that my temper totally flared up at this. it's a little bit of my protective/vindictive nature which rises in defense of those i love, but no doubt when i think about it, there's more to it than that. i must be bringing my own shit into it, which is a little troubling. this is for me to deal with, not poor suzie. she was just telling me this cute moral story from her childhood, and i had to go fuck it up by getting retroactively pissed at her dad. sounds a little off to me.
so maybe if i dig deeply enough, i've still got enough emotional turmoil left to get that old feeling back. maybe i just need to take the george bush approach... send in everything i've got, stir up a lot of battles, and do everything i can to tap into the tapped and untapped reserves of oil--i mean, emotions. untapped reserves of pent up emotion, which may or may not affect national gas prices.
this one was exhausting. it's the end of a long week, a good one though. i will press on, but first i will go to sleep.
peace.
Sunday, June 22, 2008
narrow stairs
as i sink down into this worn-in old couch at the star lounge, absorbing (still) the new death cab album, i close my eyes and feel everything at once. the music is simple and warm. i'm thinking about my day, my weekend, and what lies ahead for the week. deadlines at work, my relationships with my co-faustians, the way things have been going so well... and how i'm looking forward to launching into the week.
i feel so relaxed right now, not in the way that you usually think of, as the antithesis to stress. but relaxed in the way that i feel like i'm settling casually and more fully into myself, into this new life that i've built. the feeling is fleeting, so i try and appreciate it when it comes.
i find myself feeling more and more thankful these days, especially towards those i spend most of my time with. sally and bob continue to be warm and guiding presences in my everyday, and dave continually surprises me with his insights into design collaboration. i learn from them as designers, and more innately as people. when i think about the way i act, i think of my behavior as it compares to those more mature than me, and i measure the gaps this way.
i like to keep track of where i'm doing well and where i'm failing, in this respect. brian helps me here, i'm learning. i spend a lot of time with this guy, these days. the defining lines between our relationship as friends vs. that as roommates is always blurring. this is partially because we work well in both capacities, and partially because we spend so much time around each other, it's hard to discern which is which. i guess at this point there's no need to distinguish one from the other. that's something to celebrate because it means that shit is going well.
on that note, we were eating in the kitchen today and were discussing how we'd been living in the apartment for almost a month now with no great conflict or issue. so i took the opportunity to ask if he had any gripes with me as a roommate, while we were on the topic. it's better to air these things out early, because we know they'll only incubate and worsen otherwise.
to my surprise, he had little to say in the way of the roommate part of the relationship. instead, the focus jumped immediately to the way i'd been handling things in our friendship. that basically, i'd been busting his balls way too much lately. there had been sneaking suspicion in my mind lately that perhaps i was joking around, chiding him too much, and he confirmed this and then some. he approached it very level-headed and with a sense of consciousness to how they would make me feel, which made these things a little easier to hear. but in the end, i realized what i was hearing about myself was that i'd been slipping in making sure i'm always being a kind and sympathetic person, with my best friend/roommate, no less! what the fuck!? to be fair, a lot of stuff was intended to come off as jokes or tongue-and-cheek comments. but as brian pointed out, they often extended too far, to things like criticism of his behavioral nuances, or needless questioning of simple and pointless things.
after a little consideration, i was reminded of a particular day in my youth, on a hot alabama day playing a soccer game, when my dad came to me at half time and told me to tuck in my shirt. when i asked why, he told me that i would cool off better with a tucked-in shirt. i argued that i had started the game with my shirt tucked in, and that i wanted to play with it un-tucked because it let more air flow through, etc... we argued about which way was better for at least five minutes, each one going into the physics of the air flow and fabric texture and sweat abduction. i think i finally just tucked in my jersey to get my dad to shut the hell up, and minutes later when the game started, i glibly untucked that shit again, knowing that dad couldn't do a thing about it for the next 35 minutes. the point of the story is not who was right, but that my dad should have backed the fuck up and just let ME make the decision that affected ME, and me alone. this is the kind of shit i realized i've been chiding brian about, and it is without reason, and to no positive end for either of us. what it boils down to (and this is where i start to see my dad coming out in me in ways that give me pause) is that i try to get everything in a certain order--the "right" way--all the time. it's the way i work, it's part of what makes me a good designer, a perceiver and appreciator of systems and balance. it's ok to project onto design and the arrangement of furniture and organization of the fridge... but not on my friends.
duly noted.
to resume where i left off in the talk with brian, i took in as much as i could because i could tell that he had been patiently tolerating me, and had been putting up with this shit for almost a month without freaking out on me. so of course i feel pretty bad now, but that's good because it will remind me to put on the sympathetic/subjective friend hat more often and the compulsive/objective roommate hat a little less. there's always something to work on, i think, and i'm really lucky to have people like brian around that will not only put up with my crap, but work with me to get past it all and improve as a person and develop our friendship.
so as we sit in this coffee shop and take turns drawing in my italian tarpaper sketchbook (thanks, s!) we grimace and snicker at what we add to each turn of the drawing, one of us eventually laughing out loud at what seems to be undeniably clever or hilarious as we pool our bizarre imaginations in the form of ink on paper. it's always a good moment, and it signals that everything is cool, and we've got good things ahead of us. i think it will continue to get better. i'm going to put effort into it, anyway.
in the meantime, i'm really looking forward to 2 major events in the next few weeks. 1: eric moves up. we're pretty stoked about this, as the apartment is finally settled and furnished and arranged, and we're dying for eric's stylistic and material additions to the place (namely: books and a general sense of epic grandeur), not to mention the good times awaiting all of us existing in the same place. event 2: suzie visits again for the 4th of july weekend. the reasons to be excited are pretty obvious, but i'm equally excited for eric and suzie to meet each other. the first time that he and i consciously hung out, we traded stories of epic, heartwrenching, unrequited love while eating some Al's at 2 in the morning. i find it really interesting that suzie was unknowingly the catalyst for the first of many unabashedly honest talks of past lives and common threads... and now the two of them will get to hang out. it's a line of progression that likely links solidly only in my head, but i'm sure it resonates to some degree with eric as he understands that suzie is as embedded in my character history as a love for family or a need for embellished artistic/human expression. he gets things like this, just as suzie does. i'm really interested in what they will find in each other.
also on the horizon is suzie's birthday, july 17th, when i will fly to cleveland for the first time in god-knows-how-long. cleveland used to be my favorite city but still holds a special place in my heart. it was the venue for so many great experiences, a backdrop for the shakespearian theatrics of my late teens. i learned what love was like, had my first kiss there... learned a new love for music and how it relates to experience... developed a real relationship with my sister, who is something like 12 years my elder... got to be around my niece during her really cute early years... practiced art for a summer in the beautiful northern sunlight, warm rays in cool air... there's just a lot of me that developed there. i could go on for way too long. anyway, suzie's 24th birthday marks seven years to the day since we had our first kiss and effectively started dating. that is, before launching off into the whirlwinds of our lives, which would eventually pull us far apart. however, Serendipity meets secretly with Purpose, and through their backroom scheming, we were guided to find each other years later, after making mistakes, maturing, and growing into ourselves. so here we are now, waiting it out, resuming a path that we started carving together at such a young age. it's precious and stoic all at once. but i digress.
what else is new? i buzzed my hair, which was a refreshing change. also, we have internet at the apartment now, and i have resumed my xbox live account. that means... halo! it may be sad to say, but i've really missed playing this game in a really serious way. it's one of only a few things that can really occupy all of my attention, which is super relaxing because i don't have to think about anything for that period of time. on top of that, it's really exciting and fun, and lends itself to team-oriented bonding experiences with nick and whatever random people i meet online. so glad that's back in my life. on top of this, i'm spending time every week with a book, drawing more, eating less and riding my bike to work a lot more. life is fuller, more resolved.
it's a good deal. until next time...
i feel so relaxed right now, not in the way that you usually think of, as the antithesis to stress. but relaxed in the way that i feel like i'm settling casually and more fully into myself, into this new life that i've built. the feeling is fleeting, so i try and appreciate it when it comes.
i find myself feeling more and more thankful these days, especially towards those i spend most of my time with. sally and bob continue to be warm and guiding presences in my everyday, and dave continually surprises me with his insights into design collaboration. i learn from them as designers, and more innately as people. when i think about the way i act, i think of my behavior as it compares to those more mature than me, and i measure the gaps this way.
i like to keep track of where i'm doing well and where i'm failing, in this respect. brian helps me here, i'm learning. i spend a lot of time with this guy, these days. the defining lines between our relationship as friends vs. that as roommates is always blurring. this is partially because we work well in both capacities, and partially because we spend so much time around each other, it's hard to discern which is which. i guess at this point there's no need to distinguish one from the other. that's something to celebrate because it means that shit is going well.
on that note, we were eating in the kitchen today and were discussing how we'd been living in the apartment for almost a month now with no great conflict or issue. so i took the opportunity to ask if he had any gripes with me as a roommate, while we were on the topic. it's better to air these things out early, because we know they'll only incubate and worsen otherwise.
to my surprise, he had little to say in the way of the roommate part of the relationship. instead, the focus jumped immediately to the way i'd been handling things in our friendship. that basically, i'd been busting his balls way too much lately. there had been sneaking suspicion in my mind lately that perhaps i was joking around, chiding him too much, and he confirmed this and then some. he approached it very level-headed and with a sense of consciousness to how they would make me feel, which made these things a little easier to hear. but in the end, i realized what i was hearing about myself was that i'd been slipping in making sure i'm always being a kind and sympathetic person, with my best friend/roommate, no less! what the fuck!? to be fair, a lot of stuff was intended to come off as jokes or tongue-and-cheek comments. but as brian pointed out, they often extended too far, to things like criticism of his behavioral nuances, or needless questioning of simple and pointless things.
after a little consideration, i was reminded of a particular day in my youth, on a hot alabama day playing a soccer game, when my dad came to me at half time and told me to tuck in my shirt. when i asked why, he told me that i would cool off better with a tucked-in shirt. i argued that i had started the game with my shirt tucked in, and that i wanted to play with it un-tucked because it let more air flow through, etc... we argued about which way was better for at least five minutes, each one going into the physics of the air flow and fabric texture and sweat abduction. i think i finally just tucked in my jersey to get my dad to shut the hell up, and minutes later when the game started, i glibly untucked that shit again, knowing that dad couldn't do a thing about it for the next 35 minutes. the point of the story is not who was right, but that my dad should have backed the fuck up and just let ME make the decision that affected ME, and me alone. this is the kind of shit i realized i've been chiding brian about, and it is without reason, and to no positive end for either of us. what it boils down to (and this is where i start to see my dad coming out in me in ways that give me pause) is that i try to get everything in a certain order--the "right" way--all the time. it's the way i work, it's part of what makes me a good designer, a perceiver and appreciator of systems and balance. it's ok to project onto design and the arrangement of furniture and organization of the fridge... but not on my friends.
duly noted.
to resume where i left off in the talk with brian, i took in as much as i could because i could tell that he had been patiently tolerating me, and had been putting up with this shit for almost a month without freaking out on me. so of course i feel pretty bad now, but that's good because it will remind me to put on the sympathetic/subjective friend hat more often and the compulsive/objective roommate hat a little less. there's always something to work on, i think, and i'm really lucky to have people like brian around that will not only put up with my crap, but work with me to get past it all and improve as a person and develop our friendship.
so as we sit in this coffee shop and take turns drawing in my italian tarpaper sketchbook (thanks, s!) we grimace and snicker at what we add to each turn of the drawing, one of us eventually laughing out loud at what seems to be undeniably clever or hilarious as we pool our bizarre imaginations in the form of ink on paper. it's always a good moment, and it signals that everything is cool, and we've got good things ahead of us. i think it will continue to get better. i'm going to put effort into it, anyway.
in the meantime, i'm really looking forward to 2 major events in the next few weeks. 1: eric moves up. we're pretty stoked about this, as the apartment is finally settled and furnished and arranged, and we're dying for eric's stylistic and material additions to the place (namely: books and a general sense of epic grandeur), not to mention the good times awaiting all of us existing in the same place. event 2: suzie visits again for the 4th of july weekend. the reasons to be excited are pretty obvious, but i'm equally excited for eric and suzie to meet each other. the first time that he and i consciously hung out, we traded stories of epic, heartwrenching, unrequited love while eating some Al's at 2 in the morning. i find it really interesting that suzie was unknowingly the catalyst for the first of many unabashedly honest talks of past lives and common threads... and now the two of them will get to hang out. it's a line of progression that likely links solidly only in my head, but i'm sure it resonates to some degree with eric as he understands that suzie is as embedded in my character history as a love for family or a need for embellished artistic/human expression. he gets things like this, just as suzie does. i'm really interested in what they will find in each other.
also on the horizon is suzie's birthday, july 17th, when i will fly to cleveland for the first time in god-knows-how-long. cleveland used to be my favorite city but still holds a special place in my heart. it was the venue for so many great experiences, a backdrop for the shakespearian theatrics of my late teens. i learned what love was like, had my first kiss there... learned a new love for music and how it relates to experience... developed a real relationship with my sister, who is something like 12 years my elder... got to be around my niece during her really cute early years... practiced art for a summer in the beautiful northern sunlight, warm rays in cool air... there's just a lot of me that developed there. i could go on for way too long. anyway, suzie's 24th birthday marks seven years to the day since we had our first kiss and effectively started dating. that is, before launching off into the whirlwinds of our lives, which would eventually pull us far apart. however, Serendipity meets secretly with Purpose, and through their backroom scheming, we were guided to find each other years later, after making mistakes, maturing, and growing into ourselves. so here we are now, waiting it out, resuming a path that we started carving together at such a young age. it's precious and stoic all at once. but i digress.
what else is new? i buzzed my hair, which was a refreshing change. also, we have internet at the apartment now, and i have resumed my xbox live account. that means... halo! it may be sad to say, but i've really missed playing this game in a really serious way. it's one of only a few things that can really occupy all of my attention, which is super relaxing because i don't have to think about anything for that period of time. on top of that, it's really exciting and fun, and lends itself to team-oriented bonding experiences with nick and whatever random people i meet online. so glad that's back in my life. on top of this, i'm spending time every week with a book, drawing more, eating less and riding my bike to work a lot more. life is fuller, more resolved.
it's a good deal. until next time...
Sunday, June 15, 2008
unintentional blog hiatus comes to an end!
well, thanks to brian for blogging and getting me inspired to write some shit down.
i suppose i'd kind of given up on blogging for a bit, well, because i just lost interest in documenting the goings-on of my mundane everyday. partially, things became less mundane, and partially, i became a little bit less self-interested. i mean, really... i was documenting my groceries! the 'intentional new experiences' mantra has been replaced by seeking out the comfort of a newly-established home and the availability of a social life.
mostly, brian moved up and with a friend came many new activities, one of which is not sitting alone in a shitty apartment, atop an air mattress, blogging yet another night away. all that to say... life has taken the totally-expected, yet nevertheless-profoundly-great-turn-for-the-better in the last month:
1. we moved.
oh for the love of god, am i excited to be out of that apartment. the new place is really badass. roomy, clean, older and full of character but with amenities. we have a dishwasher! with the move came my long-awaited IKEAgasm, which resulted in lots of new shit for the kitchen and bedroom. including, above all things, this badass bed with a matching full mattress... eight months on an air mattress will really make you appreciate the real thing, lemme tell ya.
brian has proved to be an equally trusty roommate as he is a friend. as a bonus, he cooks like a motherfucker! we're both looking forward to the day that eric moves up (late this month!?) to complete the triumvirate. by then, we will have furniture in every room, art on every wall, ikea lamps illuminating everything, and... this house will become a home.
2. work has been rockin.
cool new projects have come along, one of which has been given to me as my first 'solo' project. at faust, you never have a project all to yourself (nor would i want that) but this newest one was definitely under my wing after the initial brainstorm. with a little guidance here and there from bob and dave, i crafted a really clean and clever Catalog of Programs layout for the Urban Gateways (arts for public schools) program, which led to oohs and aahs at the presentation. very exciting to get that sort of reaction on your first project. also, logos/branding for the Old Town School of Folk Music and a sharp latina writer/blogger named Esther Cepeda are in the works. lots of fun solutions bubbling up for both of those last week, and crits are expected tomorrow.
with every week, i feel more comfortable in the office, more like myself and more confident in my design. eventually it will have to stop getting better, but i'm not sure when.
3. suzie and i are dating again!
after 5 months of seeing if we could stay in touch and stay sane, trans-atlantic style, suzie is finally home for the summer. she flew from cleveland to see me a couple of weekends ago, and we had a wonderful time. i asked her to be my girlfriend again, and she accepted, so now we are officially making this happen. i don't suppose there was a lot to be doubted after our new years rendezvous, as we were exclusive and in love all this time. all the same, i got butterflies when i asked her but felt much better when she said "yes, thanks for asking!" we get along so well when we're together. i feel so happy when we're doing things together, but beyond that when we share the same space, not even touching or looking at each other... i simply feel at peace. we were listening to music in my room and i was just staring at the ceiling fan like i used to when i was in high school, and i realized i felt like my self again. i couldn't remember the last time i felt like myself, which was a strange thing to happen upon.
we'll have another visit over the 4th of july weekend, followed by a few others over the course of the summer, until she returns to england in september. after that, there's another heinous period of waiting until she returns for christmas. then a month for her to put her thesis show together in january-february, and then, hopefully, her plan to move to chicago and pursue her career as an illustrator will finally land us in the same place... yes, at the same time... and yes, for more than four days at a time. we have a lot to figure out, and a lot to learn about each other, but we both are excited about seeing this through to as far as it will happily carry us.
people have been giving me concerned looks when i say she's moving to chicago. but there's no moving in together when she gets here, no ridiculous leaps into the void. just endless opportunities to get caught up on all the little stuff. then we will see where it all goes. if there's anything we've learned in the past seven years (yeah count 'em) it's a sense of patience. well, that and an implicit understanding of the inevitability of mistakes and pitfalls. plus, it should be noted that chicago was her favorite city as a kid and she'd always kind of planned on moving here. i'm glad our paths are finally crossing.
---
eventually i want to post a bunch of my work from faust up here, as well as pics of the newly-set up apartment. but that will come with time... and the availability of a digital camera. for now, i want to get to bed early. it's going to be a busy week.
peace!
i suppose i'd kind of given up on blogging for a bit, well, because i just lost interest in documenting the goings-on of my mundane everyday. partially, things became less mundane, and partially, i became a little bit less self-interested. i mean, really... i was documenting my groceries! the 'intentional new experiences' mantra has been replaced by seeking out the comfort of a newly-established home and the availability of a social life.
mostly, brian moved up and with a friend came many new activities, one of which is not sitting alone in a shitty apartment, atop an air mattress, blogging yet another night away. all that to say... life has taken the totally-expected, yet nevertheless-profoundly-great-turn-for-the-better in the last month:
1. we moved.
oh for the love of god, am i excited to be out of that apartment. the new place is really badass. roomy, clean, older and full of character but with amenities. we have a dishwasher! with the move came my long-awaited IKEAgasm, which resulted in lots of new shit for the kitchen and bedroom. including, above all things, this badass bed with a matching full mattress... eight months on an air mattress will really make you appreciate the real thing, lemme tell ya.
brian has proved to be an equally trusty roommate as he is a friend. as a bonus, he cooks like a motherfucker! we're both looking forward to the day that eric moves up (late this month!?) to complete the triumvirate. by then, we will have furniture in every room, art on every wall, ikea lamps illuminating everything, and... this house will become a home.
2. work has been rockin.
cool new projects have come along, one of which has been given to me as my first 'solo' project. at faust, you never have a project all to yourself (nor would i want that) but this newest one was definitely under my wing after the initial brainstorm. with a little guidance here and there from bob and dave, i crafted a really clean and clever Catalog of Programs layout for the Urban Gateways (arts for public schools) program, which led to oohs and aahs at the presentation. very exciting to get that sort of reaction on your first project. also, logos/branding for the Old Town School of Folk Music and a sharp latina writer/blogger named Esther Cepeda are in the works. lots of fun solutions bubbling up for both of those last week, and crits are expected tomorrow.
with every week, i feel more comfortable in the office, more like myself and more confident in my design. eventually it will have to stop getting better, but i'm not sure when.
3. suzie and i are dating again!
after 5 months of seeing if we could stay in touch and stay sane, trans-atlantic style, suzie is finally home for the summer. she flew from cleveland to see me a couple of weekends ago, and we had a wonderful time. i asked her to be my girlfriend again, and she accepted, so now we are officially making this happen. i don't suppose there was a lot to be doubted after our new years rendezvous, as we were exclusive and in love all this time. all the same, i got butterflies when i asked her but felt much better when she said "yes, thanks for asking!" we get along so well when we're together. i feel so happy when we're doing things together, but beyond that when we share the same space, not even touching or looking at each other... i simply feel at peace. we were listening to music in my room and i was just staring at the ceiling fan like i used to when i was in high school, and i realized i felt like my self again. i couldn't remember the last time i felt like myself, which was a strange thing to happen upon.
we'll have another visit over the 4th of july weekend, followed by a few others over the course of the summer, until she returns to england in september. after that, there's another heinous period of waiting until she returns for christmas. then a month for her to put her thesis show together in january-february, and then, hopefully, her plan to move to chicago and pursue her career as an illustrator will finally land us in the same place... yes, at the same time... and yes, for more than four days at a time. we have a lot to figure out, and a lot to learn about each other, but we both are excited about seeing this through to as far as it will happily carry us.
people have been giving me concerned looks when i say she's moving to chicago. but there's no moving in together when she gets here, no ridiculous leaps into the void. just endless opportunities to get caught up on all the little stuff. then we will see where it all goes. if there's anything we've learned in the past seven years (yeah count 'em) it's a sense of patience. well, that and an implicit understanding of the inevitability of mistakes and pitfalls. plus, it should be noted that chicago was her favorite city as a kid and she'd always kind of planned on moving here. i'm glad our paths are finally crossing.
---
eventually i want to post a bunch of my work from faust up here, as well as pics of the newly-set up apartment. but that will come with time... and the availability of a digital camera. for now, i want to get to bed early. it's going to be a busy week.
peace!
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
a month passes so quickly these days
first off, i apologize for not having written in so long. i doubt i have many dedicated readers, but for those of you that check in regularly, i certainly don't want to piss you off and lose your readership. otherwise my ad sales will plummet.
i can't believe that i've been up here for more than a month. time has passed really quickly especially since brian moved up. now i've got someone else who's curious about the city to go on trips with, so we spend many more evenings out than i used to take alone. and that means significantly less time to blog.
work has been really good... projects are coming in and out, and i'm starting to pick up speed a little. speed is always a concern of mine, but since most of the work so far has been rearranging pre-existing elements or doing a lot of typesetting, it's been ok. it's generating new ideas that i get self-conscious about. no one's ever said anything to me about being slow, but it's always a self-awareness thing that i have to deal with. a couple of things (a wrap for a shipping truck, banners for SAIC, and a Faustly wrapping paper project) have gone to print, and i've just sent an email to sally to see if it's ok to put any of them up here. i'm trying to respect faust's policies, despite being extremely excited about sharing my work. if and when i get the ok, it will be up here.
hm, what else? well, upon going back through the cameraphone images i've taken in the past week or so, i was reminded of one particular event:
yes... paul vs. physics... physics wins. previously listed as Paul vs. Wrought-Iron Fence. what can i say? sometimes you make mistakes. every once in awhile, one of those mistakes is t-boning a giant fence, bursting your front tire, and slamming your knee and shoulder into iron bars. we've all been there. i was just riding up onto the sidewalk after a couple of blocks riding with no hands, and apparently didn't really want to correct my angle OR hit my brakes. something in my head didn't want to react, so i just rolled straight into a fence. at least i have a sweet bruise to show off now, but even that's healing up now. yes, i was wearing my helmet...
beyond this catastrophe, brian and i have been enjoying some cool stuff around town. we were turned on to a cool place called Earwax, a fun little restaurant in wicker park that not only serves some bitchin french toast, but also an incredible spinach and feta turkey burger. yummmm... we also caught a cool acoustic show at a place called Uncommon Ground, which is a restaurant/bar/venue and we just happened to get seats in the small venue room. i enjoyed a really really good belgian ale on tap, called Tripel Karmelier. i'm only recently working my way into the beer realm from cider world and wine land, but this thing was tasty. i took a camera phone image of the beer glass (a giant snifter kind of thing) because i really liked the typography on it, but the photo is pretty shitty. anyway, the music that was going on was pretty hilarious at first. it was some big-headed dude with chin hair and a bowling shirt, and his alt-country-slash-Nickelback-emo band. eesh. the best part of his set was a song called "Thunder", which he wrote--get this--while sitting in his living room during a thunderstorm, watching the rain flood underneath his front door. the song began with the guy on the pedal steel kind of warming things up, and then from the singer, just a single utterance of...
"Thund-errr."
man, that shit was so amazing, brian and i were bending over into the table to hide our laughter. what a fucking joke! the lyrics were replete with mentions of lightning and blue eyes and all kinds of amazingly obvious metaphors. after these guys were all finished, the next act was a lot better. there was this cute singer girl from minneapolis and her band, which luckily had a really good guitarist. her voice was pretty rockin. it reminded me of a young gwen stefani, from old No Doubt days. it was a good time, some serendipitous free music and good wholesome food.
lately, i've been trying to read again. mercedes let me borrow her copy of "What is the What", which i believe is the only dave eggers book to have escaped my corneas. no longer. this beast is underway, and it feels good to read again. also, i'm getting back into good habits with exercise, including weights with the Faust Fit Club, running on occasion, and my new righteous bike commute... roscoe village to riverside, about 14 miles each way, or about an hour. it's serious. amazingly, i found a route that doesn't hit too much sketchy shit while traveling through the west side of chicago. there's a strip of rough neighborhoods that pretty much line the west side, and some parts of this strip are thicker than others. yesterday, i decided to try a new route on my third time doing the commute, and cut across chicago ave. instead of north avenue. holy shit, what a mistake. not only was my tire going flat for some unknown reason, but i went through countless blocks of sketch, skeez, and uncomfortable looks, not to mention extraordinarily unkempt roads...
all i could think about was "dude if this tire goes all the way flat and i have to stop and walk it, i'm fucked." nothing says "hey, take my bike" more than a guy in lycra, bike shoes, helmet, and glasses walking through the ghetto. feelings of vulnerability, moreso than fear, became really prevalent for the latter half of the ride. interestingly enough, though, i was trying to be really conscious of my thinking the whole time... was i scared because i was a white guy engulfed in miles of all-black neighborhood? or was i scared because i saw rough shit going on, like a drug deal across the intersection from me? i think it was mostly the latter, but honestly i think a tinge of it has to come from fear of the unknown. and clearly, black urban culture is outside my realm of experience. a lot of that ride was spent trying to look at what was going on around me and accept it for what it was... and i think i made some progress in enlarging my scope a little bit.
the hardest thing to distinguish around here is what is sketchy, and what is only less-affluent, different, and unkempt. when my safety is involved, i have to make the judgment quickly. there's no second-guessing when it comes to looking down two streets and riding down the cleaner, safer-looking one. however, i am always struck with the need to think about this after the fact. i think it's part of becoming part of the greater sense of urban culture that takes place here. things are strangely segregated into neighborhoods in chicago. sure, there are lots of cultures that occupy this space... puerto ricans, poles, romanians, ukrainians, blacks, whites, countless others... yet all of these seem to group together in certain ways. it's enough for a hundred sociology papers, and i'm sure they've all been written. for now, i'm left to try and absorb it as reality before i even begin to try and make sense of it. anyway, enough of that heavy stuff.
on a significantly lighter note, the end of may brings two wonderful things.
1) suzie comes to visit chicago! i'm extremely excited... this is the first time we'll be hanging out since we decided to give this whole 'making it work' concept a shot in january. it's been a long four months, but only a few weeks to go. it will fly by.
2) brian and i move into our new apartment. yes, we found a place, and we are in the middle of signing things and writing checks. this is the place that i first looked at right after i discovered it across the street from dave's place. as i told eric that week, "it makes me a little nervous that such a badass place fell right into my lap on the first try, but then again, that's aligned with everything else about this experience, up to this point." brian and i had done our due diligence and looked at a few other places, but at the end of it all, we took another look at this one on West Huron. brian had seen camera phone shots of this place before, but upon seeing it in 3D, he was giving me faces of exasperation and excitement right off the bat. we talked to eric about it, got our applications in, and now we're just ready to finalize the deal with a little cash exchange. we're super excited, and should be moving around the 24th or so. i'm really excited to get out of the frat house situation we're in now. the other night, dan brought home THREE GIRLS at FIVE IN THE MORNING and they were fucking around and being really loud, to the point that i had to get out of bed to tell them to shut up. and then, after all of that, they were up again at 9:30am, being loud as hell again. i can't take it much longer...
must. get. to. quiet. stable. home.
better things are on the horizon, though! i suppose they always are...
i can't believe that i've been up here for more than a month. time has passed really quickly especially since brian moved up. now i've got someone else who's curious about the city to go on trips with, so we spend many more evenings out than i used to take alone. and that means significantly less time to blog.
work has been really good... projects are coming in and out, and i'm starting to pick up speed a little. speed is always a concern of mine, but since most of the work so far has been rearranging pre-existing elements or doing a lot of typesetting, it's been ok. it's generating new ideas that i get self-conscious about. no one's ever said anything to me about being slow, but it's always a self-awareness thing that i have to deal with. a couple of things (a wrap for a shipping truck, banners for SAIC, and a Faustly wrapping paper project) have gone to print, and i've just sent an email to sally to see if it's ok to put any of them up here. i'm trying to respect faust's policies, despite being extremely excited about sharing my work. if and when i get the ok, it will be up here.
hm, what else? well, upon going back through the cameraphone images i've taken in the past week or so, i was reminded of one particular event:
yes... paul vs. physics... physics wins. previously listed as Paul vs. Wrought-Iron Fence. what can i say? sometimes you make mistakes. every once in awhile, one of those mistakes is t-boning a giant fence, bursting your front tire, and slamming your knee and shoulder into iron bars. we've all been there. i was just riding up onto the sidewalk after a couple of blocks riding with no hands, and apparently didn't really want to correct my angle OR hit my brakes. something in my head didn't want to react, so i just rolled straight into a fence. at least i have a sweet bruise to show off now, but even that's healing up now. yes, i was wearing my helmet...
beyond this catastrophe, brian and i have been enjoying some cool stuff around town. we were turned on to a cool place called Earwax, a fun little restaurant in wicker park that not only serves some bitchin french toast, but also an incredible spinach and feta turkey burger. yummmm... we also caught a cool acoustic show at a place called Uncommon Ground, which is a restaurant/bar/venue and we just happened to get seats in the small venue room. i enjoyed a really really good belgian ale on tap, called Tripel Karmelier. i'm only recently working my way into the beer realm from cider world and wine land, but this thing was tasty. i took a camera phone image of the beer glass (a giant snifter kind of thing) because i really liked the typography on it, but the photo is pretty shitty. anyway, the music that was going on was pretty hilarious at first. it was some big-headed dude with chin hair and a bowling shirt, and his alt-country-slash-Nickelback-emo band. eesh. the best part of his set was a song called "Thunder", which he wrote--get this--while sitting in his living room during a thunderstorm, watching the rain flood underneath his front door. the song began with the guy on the pedal steel kind of warming things up, and then from the singer, just a single utterance of...
"Thund-errr."
man, that shit was so amazing, brian and i were bending over into the table to hide our laughter. what a fucking joke! the lyrics were replete with mentions of lightning and blue eyes and all kinds of amazingly obvious metaphors. after these guys were all finished, the next act was a lot better. there was this cute singer girl from minneapolis and her band, which luckily had a really good guitarist. her voice was pretty rockin. it reminded me of a young gwen stefani, from old No Doubt days. it was a good time, some serendipitous free music and good wholesome food.
lately, i've been trying to read again. mercedes let me borrow her copy of "What is the What", which i believe is the only dave eggers book to have escaped my corneas. no longer. this beast is underway, and it feels good to read again. also, i'm getting back into good habits with exercise, including weights with the Faust Fit Club, running on occasion, and my new righteous bike commute... roscoe village to riverside, about 14 miles each way, or about an hour. it's serious. amazingly, i found a route that doesn't hit too much sketchy shit while traveling through the west side of chicago. there's a strip of rough neighborhoods that pretty much line the west side, and some parts of this strip are thicker than others. yesterday, i decided to try a new route on my third time doing the commute, and cut across chicago ave. instead of north avenue. holy shit, what a mistake. not only was my tire going flat for some unknown reason, but i went through countless blocks of sketch, skeez, and uncomfortable looks, not to mention extraordinarily unkempt roads...
all i could think about was "dude if this tire goes all the way flat and i have to stop and walk it, i'm fucked." nothing says "hey, take my bike" more than a guy in lycra, bike shoes, helmet, and glasses walking through the ghetto. feelings of vulnerability, moreso than fear, became really prevalent for the latter half of the ride. interestingly enough, though, i was trying to be really conscious of my thinking the whole time... was i scared because i was a white guy engulfed in miles of all-black neighborhood? or was i scared because i saw rough shit going on, like a drug deal across the intersection from me? i think it was mostly the latter, but honestly i think a tinge of it has to come from fear of the unknown. and clearly, black urban culture is outside my realm of experience. a lot of that ride was spent trying to look at what was going on around me and accept it for what it was... and i think i made some progress in enlarging my scope a little bit.
the hardest thing to distinguish around here is what is sketchy, and what is only less-affluent, different, and unkempt. when my safety is involved, i have to make the judgment quickly. there's no second-guessing when it comes to looking down two streets and riding down the cleaner, safer-looking one. however, i am always struck with the need to think about this after the fact. i think it's part of becoming part of the greater sense of urban culture that takes place here. things are strangely segregated into neighborhoods in chicago. sure, there are lots of cultures that occupy this space... puerto ricans, poles, romanians, ukrainians, blacks, whites, countless others... yet all of these seem to group together in certain ways. it's enough for a hundred sociology papers, and i'm sure they've all been written. for now, i'm left to try and absorb it as reality before i even begin to try and make sense of it. anyway, enough of that heavy stuff.
on a significantly lighter note, the end of may brings two wonderful things.
1) suzie comes to visit chicago! i'm extremely excited... this is the first time we'll be hanging out since we decided to give this whole 'making it work' concept a shot in january. it's been a long four months, but only a few weeks to go. it will fly by.
2) brian and i move into our new apartment. yes, we found a place, and we are in the middle of signing things and writing checks. this is the place that i first looked at right after i discovered it across the street from dave's place. as i told eric that week, "it makes me a little nervous that such a badass place fell right into my lap on the first try, but then again, that's aligned with everything else about this experience, up to this point." brian and i had done our due diligence and looked at a few other places, but at the end of it all, we took another look at this one on West Huron. brian had seen camera phone shots of this place before, but upon seeing it in 3D, he was giving me faces of exasperation and excitement right off the bat. we talked to eric about it, got our applications in, and now we're just ready to finalize the deal with a little cash exchange. we're super excited, and should be moving around the 24th or so. i'm really excited to get out of the frat house situation we're in now. the other night, dan brought home THREE GIRLS at FIVE IN THE MORNING and they were fucking around and being really loud, to the point that i had to get out of bed to tell them to shut up. and then, after all of that, they were up again at 9:30am, being loud as hell again. i can't take it much longer...
must. get. to. quiet. stable. home.
better things are on the horizon, though! i suppose they always are...
Monday, April 21, 2008
week three-ish
well, my first week at faust was really good. i was constantly surprised at how, by the time i got home at the end of the day, i wasn't tired. instead, i was kind of energized. the atmosphere and the people there are just good for me, i don't know what else to call it. even on days like today, when i was making mind-numbing numbers of edits on a corporate report, there was still teamwork involved and a real sense of me doing something that matters... and even better, something that is helping out my buddy.
my projects have been coming along well, and i'm starting to get more and more integrated into the process where i become involved with clients. after reading my employee manual a little, i realized that i'm not really supposed to discuss ongoing projects in the open like this, at least until they go to print. so no hairy details anymore. all the same, i have been tasked with a really cool internal project so that i can be part of the chicago design survey this year. this is where each chicago design firm submits work to a catalog and it's collected and published, non-juried. bob wanted me to be a part of this, which i thought was really really great. the project is to design a wrapping paper based solely on typography, and one that is not attached to any particular holiday. i'm really excited about working on this when i get some spare time!
over the weekend, i slept a lot and tried to get rid of my massive sinus congestion that i'd been fighting all week. it's a little better now, thank god. i spent the first half of saturday in bed before finally getting out into town to meet dave (my coworker and newfound friend at faust, if you remember) at a really great acoustic show from rogue wave at reckless records. i was only a few feet away from the band, and to top it all off... it was free! how badass! after the show, dave and i, along with a couple of his friends, went to a great mediterranean place. it was kind of shitty and rainy, but by the time we finished eating it had let up a little. the two friends were mercedes, one of dave's roommates, and her friend mada, a rather tall romanian chick.
we all talked about what we were trying to get into that night, and lots of options came up, but i had been determined to make it back to the fanatically good belgian waffle shop called Baladoche by the end of the day. dave was exhausted, mada had shit going on with her boyfriend, so me and mercedes swapped cell numbers and decided we'd figure something out. i took off to camp out at a coffee shop and work on suzie's package, and eventually met up with mercedes to catch "where in the world is osama bin laden." not a bad flick, mostly a great angle on the underexposed friendly side of muslim people. they're not all terrorists, you know? also a nice bit of revealing history on the united states' long-term presence on middle-eastern power struggles. yikes. so not a bad time, but by the end of it all we had no time to catch waffles. so we walked north to clarke's (where i'd gone with brian a week before) and had tasty late night snacks because i was f'ing starved. mercedes cabbed it home and i went back and crashed, pretty exhausted. i was glad to have made a new acquaintance.
sunday was another good sleep-in morning. i got up and kind of lounged around for a bit before finally getting my shit together for a nice bike ride to evanston. why ride to evanston? well, turns out i switched to a bank that has no branches in chicago... so i geared up for the 5 mile urban ride (which everybody seems to think is an impressive distance around here) and went to deposit my first paycheck. as i set down my bag to access the atm, i noticed i had a little stowaway. i've always like ladybugs. i think they're good luck.
then i rode back to ukranian village to meet up with mercedes again. she had offered to give me a tour of the neighborhood (since i'm looking at lots of apartments in the area) and it was a nice day for walking around. there are lots of great little shops and cafes, as well as a no-shit ukranian market full of crazy smells and chocolates and meats... anyway i ended up picking up some wine to bring back to dave's apartment, where they throw a movie night every sunday. it was a bizarre scottish film, but i had a good time and met some new people.
around three weeks now in the windy city, and i feel like i'm really getting into it. brian moves up at the end of the week, and then things get really interesting! here's to that!
much love to all my family and friends. i miss you guys!
my projects have been coming along well, and i'm starting to get more and more integrated into the process where i become involved with clients. after reading my employee manual a little, i realized that i'm not really supposed to discuss ongoing projects in the open like this, at least until they go to print. so no hairy details anymore. all the same, i have been tasked with a really cool internal project so that i can be part of the chicago design survey this year. this is where each chicago design firm submits work to a catalog and it's collected and published, non-juried. bob wanted me to be a part of this, which i thought was really really great. the project is to design a wrapping paper based solely on typography, and one that is not attached to any particular holiday. i'm really excited about working on this when i get some spare time!
over the weekend, i slept a lot and tried to get rid of my massive sinus congestion that i'd been fighting all week. it's a little better now, thank god. i spent the first half of saturday in bed before finally getting out into town to meet dave (my coworker and newfound friend at faust, if you remember) at a really great acoustic show from rogue wave at reckless records. i was only a few feet away from the band, and to top it all off... it was free! how badass! after the show, dave and i, along with a couple of his friends, went to a great mediterranean place. it was kind of shitty and rainy, but by the time we finished eating it had let up a little. the two friends were mercedes, one of dave's roommates, and her friend mada, a rather tall romanian chick.
we all talked about what we were trying to get into that night, and lots of options came up, but i had been determined to make it back to the fanatically good belgian waffle shop called Baladoche by the end of the day. dave was exhausted, mada had shit going on with her boyfriend, so me and mercedes swapped cell numbers and decided we'd figure something out. i took off to camp out at a coffee shop and work on suzie's package, and eventually met up with mercedes to catch "where in the world is osama bin laden." not a bad flick, mostly a great angle on the underexposed friendly side of muslim people. they're not all terrorists, you know? also a nice bit of revealing history on the united states' long-term presence on middle-eastern power struggles. yikes. so not a bad time, but by the end of it all we had no time to catch waffles. so we walked north to clarke's (where i'd gone with brian a week before) and had tasty late night snacks because i was f'ing starved. mercedes cabbed it home and i went back and crashed, pretty exhausted. i was glad to have made a new acquaintance.
sunday was another good sleep-in morning. i got up and kind of lounged around for a bit before finally getting my shit together for a nice bike ride to evanston. why ride to evanston? well, turns out i switched to a bank that has no branches in chicago... so i geared up for the 5 mile urban ride (which everybody seems to think is an impressive distance around here) and went to deposit my first paycheck. as i set down my bag to access the atm, i noticed i had a little stowaway. i've always like ladybugs. i think they're good luck.
then i rode back to ukranian village to meet up with mercedes again. she had offered to give me a tour of the neighborhood (since i'm looking at lots of apartments in the area) and it was a nice day for walking around. there are lots of great little shops and cafes, as well as a no-shit ukranian market full of crazy smells and chocolates and meats... anyway i ended up picking up some wine to bring back to dave's apartment, where they throw a movie night every sunday. it was a bizarre scottish film, but i had a good time and met some new people.
around three weeks now in the windy city, and i feel like i'm really getting into it. brian moves up at the end of the week, and then things get really interesting! here's to that!
much love to all my family and friends. i miss you guys!
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
it's all good
yesterday was my first day at faust. it started with a relatively early morning to catch the bus, then 40 minutes on that route until i made it to the metra train. at this point, it was a relaxing wait in the sun after a strangely stressful bus ride. the trip on the commuter train was simple but strange as my stop took only 11 minutes to reach. i am used to doing rides on the metra in excess of an hour so it felt weird to not have out a book or something. a fifteen minute walk to faust from the train stop found me in a really cool office space. dave was there to greet me and let me in. i was shown my new workstation, a sweet g5 setup with 3gb of ram and a cinema hd monitor... which doesn't mean a lot unless you're a big geek. basically, it's a sweet computer setup.
when sally came down to the slab (aka office level) i was offered coffee, which i gladly accepted, and she invited me to hang out and chat for a little bit until bob came back from the dentist. i had a little time to get my computer set up as i like it before sitting down with sally to go through the employee manual. it was loaded with things that set up the employee as someone who carries weight and responsibility in the day-to-day stuff, and basically lays it out as a place where adults come together and get shit done. there are guidelines to work from, but it leaves a lot to fall on the shoulders of the conscience of the employees, and less on the authoritative position of the owners. i think this is absolutely the way it should be. i'm excited to have so much responsibility in this place. it makes me feel like i'm finally being treated as an adult.
around lunchtime, sally and i went into a nearby town to pick up lunch for everyone. i had a wonderful veggie burrito over lunch with my new coworkers and it was a great time. the rest of the day pretty much consisted of finishing up the employee manual, doing my basic tax forms, taking the more-detailed office tour, and talking with bob a little on how to get started on the tech side of things. all in all, it was very chilled out and they didn't ask me to do anything other than just breathe and get acclimated. later on in the day, one of their original employees came in and i was invited to sit and chat with the group. this guy, jason, had worked with faust for four years and they had clearly absorbed him as family after a little while. i hope i'm around long enough to find something similar.
dave offered to give me a ride home, which was super nice of him. dave is one of the nicest people i've met in a while, always lighthearted about stuff but hardworking at the same time, which seems to be everyone's attitude at faust. i think he's filipino in background and seems to have a great west coast sort of style going which i figure he picked up from going to school in california. he got his masters at UIC and grew up in oak park so he seems to really know the city. anyway we rode home and kind of talked about random stuff, but it was really easy talk woven into smart conversation. right up my alley, you know? i think dave and i will get along really well. we had to run by his place in ukranian village (a rather cool part of town) and he was able to take me right to my place since it was on the way to his volleyball match.
today was just as easy, even though i actually got to start working on things. i have two jobs running right now, one for the school of the art institute of chicago and one for a regional printing house. the first will be a couple of giant window banners that will go on the SAIC's new fashion gallery space in downtown. these will advertise the event while covering up a couple of giant storefront windows that are boarded up for some reason. the gig for the printer involves redesigning the panels that they apply to the sides of their delivery trucks. both large projects in scale, but not too intense... both working within a pre-existing design system... clearly intended for me to use as a way to get my feet wet and learn the faust process a little while at the same time giving bob an idea of how i work and what kind of skill set i'm bringing with me. i came up with a couple of really simple ideas for the banners today, one of which bob seemed to be pretty interested in, so already some positive results. not huge or anything, but simple and positive is a good way to start, yes?
the day was filled with good music and an easy atmosphere, despite the fact that bob and dave are constantly crunching work for deadlines. you'd never be able to tell if they didn't mention it... everything stays so positive. it's just a great environment, and i feel energized coming home at the end of it all.
the joke in the office today spun off of a story in the news about a cougar that was found in the city (in my neighborhood, actually), and was subsequently killed in a hail of police gunfire. nothing really funny about that, but of course i had to bring up something about "which bar was it hanging out at?" then that crack led to the story of my falsified legend among friends as a cougar hunter, then dave's equally fictitious crush on the older mom who owns the local cafe, and things just went on and on until by the end of the day i'm pretty sure the four of us had conjured up a nice little inside joke. hey, these things matter.
well, i'm getting sleepy and though there is more to go into, the gist is that i made it home after a flat tire and later realizing i'd left my keys in dave's apartment... got some really healthy groceries at whole foods (including THE BEST GRANOLA EVER-- and it's made locally!) and in general all is well. i feel so good; things have sort of eased into place, and i'm ready to really start making stuff happen.
in may, brian moves up to start at his new t-mobile location and get rooted in the jazz scene, and then in june we will move into our new apartment (wherever that may be). in july or august, eric will move up to start at northwestern in september. in the midst of all of this stuff in the summer, suzie will have flown back to cleveland for the summer and we finally have time to hang out after the big new years rendezvous... so these are all the Next Big Thing and i'm ready for it all.
i'm stoked about life again... it's been awhile. well i have to look over some material for the SAIC meeting in the morning, so off to that. peace, readership.
when sally came down to the slab (aka office level) i was offered coffee, which i gladly accepted, and she invited me to hang out and chat for a little bit until bob came back from the dentist. i had a little time to get my computer set up as i like it before sitting down with sally to go through the employee manual. it was loaded with things that set up the employee as someone who carries weight and responsibility in the day-to-day stuff, and basically lays it out as a place where adults come together and get shit done. there are guidelines to work from, but it leaves a lot to fall on the shoulders of the conscience of the employees, and less on the authoritative position of the owners. i think this is absolutely the way it should be. i'm excited to have so much responsibility in this place. it makes me feel like i'm finally being treated as an adult.
around lunchtime, sally and i went into a nearby town to pick up lunch for everyone. i had a wonderful veggie burrito over lunch with my new coworkers and it was a great time. the rest of the day pretty much consisted of finishing up the employee manual, doing my basic tax forms, taking the more-detailed office tour, and talking with bob a little on how to get started on the tech side of things. all in all, it was very chilled out and they didn't ask me to do anything other than just breathe and get acclimated. later on in the day, one of their original employees came in and i was invited to sit and chat with the group. this guy, jason, had worked with faust for four years and they had clearly absorbed him as family after a little while. i hope i'm around long enough to find something similar.
dave offered to give me a ride home, which was super nice of him. dave is one of the nicest people i've met in a while, always lighthearted about stuff but hardworking at the same time, which seems to be everyone's attitude at faust. i think he's filipino in background and seems to have a great west coast sort of style going which i figure he picked up from going to school in california. he got his masters at UIC and grew up in oak park so he seems to really know the city. anyway we rode home and kind of talked about random stuff, but it was really easy talk woven into smart conversation. right up my alley, you know? i think dave and i will get along really well. we had to run by his place in ukranian village (a rather cool part of town) and he was able to take me right to my place since it was on the way to his volleyball match.
today was just as easy, even though i actually got to start working on things. i have two jobs running right now, one for the school of the art institute of chicago and one for a regional printing house. the first will be a couple of giant window banners that will go on the SAIC's new fashion gallery space in downtown. these will advertise the event while covering up a couple of giant storefront windows that are boarded up for some reason. the gig for the printer involves redesigning the panels that they apply to the sides of their delivery trucks. both large projects in scale, but not too intense... both working within a pre-existing design system... clearly intended for me to use as a way to get my feet wet and learn the faust process a little while at the same time giving bob an idea of how i work and what kind of skill set i'm bringing with me. i came up with a couple of really simple ideas for the banners today, one of which bob seemed to be pretty interested in, so already some positive results. not huge or anything, but simple and positive is a good way to start, yes?
the day was filled with good music and an easy atmosphere, despite the fact that bob and dave are constantly crunching work for deadlines. you'd never be able to tell if they didn't mention it... everything stays so positive. it's just a great environment, and i feel energized coming home at the end of it all.
the joke in the office today spun off of a story in the news about a cougar that was found in the city (in my neighborhood, actually), and was subsequently killed in a hail of police gunfire. nothing really funny about that, but of course i had to bring up something about "which bar was it hanging out at?" then that crack led to the story of my falsified legend among friends as a cougar hunter, then dave's equally fictitious crush on the older mom who owns the local cafe, and things just went on and on until by the end of the day i'm pretty sure the four of us had conjured up a nice little inside joke. hey, these things matter.
well, i'm getting sleepy and though there is more to go into, the gist is that i made it home after a flat tire and later realizing i'd left my keys in dave's apartment... got some really healthy groceries at whole foods (including THE BEST GRANOLA EVER-- and it's made locally!) and in general all is well. i feel so good; things have sort of eased into place, and i'm ready to really start making stuff happen.
in may, brian moves up to start at his new t-mobile location and get rooted in the jazz scene, and then in june we will move into our new apartment (wherever that may be). in july or august, eric will move up to start at northwestern in september. in the midst of all of this stuff in the summer, suzie will have flown back to cleveland for the summer and we finally have time to hang out after the big new years rendezvous... so these are all the Next Big Thing and i'm ready for it all.
i'm stoked about life again... it's been awhile. well i have to look over some material for the SAIC meeting in the morning, so off to that. peace, readership.
Saturday, April 12, 2008
recap for the holes in the week
it's been a good week, and since i've been unable to sit with my blog for most of it, there are some holes in the documentation. i will now fill in those holes. most of them, anyway.
on wednesday, brian and i got out and made the bus for a wonderfully sunny and windy day in the city. they seemed to either be perfect urban hiking weather, or absolutely miserable: cold, drizzly, windy, gross. this was the case, for example, as we made our way back to the apartment on tuesday night. i had my bike with me from the faust meeting, and rode at a walking pace with brian's luggage on my back as we walked for an hour in the rain. it was awesome, and poor brian didn't even have any rain gear on. oh well we made it. so on wednesday, we just sort of roamed around in search of adventure. in the midst of this quest, we were walking down clark (or broadway?) and happened upon a charming little place aptly called Austrian Bakery. and so it was. i enjoyed a magnificent raspberry/cream cheese danish and an almond pretzel with my coffee. brian had some kind of meaty-ass sandwich. the real treat came afterward, though, when i realized that the orange juice machine actually functioned. holy crap, fresh-squeezed orange juice is so good. to follow up, brian decided to shell out for a slice of tiramisu, which he generously shared with me. it was really incredible, so much so that i was too distracted to photograph it.
after our trip to the bakery, we sort of made our way across lincoln park, where we approached the lincoln park zoo. at the gates, i suggested we keep walking because i didn't want to pay for a zoo. brian said he loved zoos, but really didn't want to spend the money either. we continued south along lincoln park until we came to this secondary gate to the zoo, which was not as large and not really marked, but clearly an entrance to the zoo. it was wide open, no ticket booth, just a giant walking path in and out of the zoo. and then it hit us... this is a public zoo. free. animals for everyone, no tickets needed. holy shit, right? you would kind of expect there to be a bunch of socialist animals inside, but they were real american animals, including zebras that didn't ever move and lions that were really good at ignoring the super-annoying kids yelling outside their pit. we exited the backside of the zoo to walk to the lakefront, and after a photo op, we took a moment to sit near the waves and reflect.
following this chunk of adventure, we headed towards downtown in search of food and other good things. i stopped in the north face store on michigan avenue to see if i could find some adventure pants, but to no avail. adventure pants have been on my mind for awhile, and have recently become a priority. these are adventurous times. we continued along michigan ave. until we reached the gap store, where i was sucked in with tremendous force. and what do i find there? fuckin' adventure pants! so i try them on, decide they're badass, and check out. eventually, we found a pizza joint (one from the chain we'd been seeking the day before) and enjoyed a beast of a pizza.
after dinner, we split up. brian hopped the el and went home for a nap; i walked over to this design symposium that faust had invited me to. it was a discussion of the work of three established-but-still-fresh women designers, as moderated by one rick valicenti. i got there before the fausts, and ended up hobnobbing with a couple of the kids from buzz co for awhile. the presentation was really cool, and the motif seemed to be three different approaches on "remaining unapologetic" about your work as you make decisions and put them out into the world. this really spoke to me, as i think this is the next step in my design maturity. it speaks to confidence, experience, and a position where you can get away with it, all things which seem to come after about 8 years in the career. or so said rick when i mentioned this idea afterward. it was good to speak with rick as always, and he did me the kindness of pointing me out to the audience before the question-and-answer portion began. he explained that i was from alabama and now worked for faust. "everyone say hi to paul."
everyone: "hi, paul."
after all of that was done, i headed towards brian's side of things and we met at a place called Clarke's on belmont. it's basically a hip 24-hour i-hop, but with only two waitresses working the whole restaurant. we made a drawing, as brian and i will do sometimes, and ate french toast and belgian waffles and warm bevs spiked with whiskey and kalhua. it was a good chill late night thing, spoiled only by waiting for the bus for freaking ever in the cold. we were clearly underdressed.
thursday morning brought lots of sleeping in, but most importantly, the debut of adventure pants. we walked down belmont to the Bleeding Heart organic bakery, which i had been curious to visit. the girl behind the counter greeted us with blue hair and punk rock, and we were glad to have it. i had a muffin, brian had something like a scone, i think. either way, we enjoyed it. the rest of the day consisted of us walking around, hopping on buses, getting cold and wet, getting our feet soaked, walking into a marshall's to buy fresh socks, and going to see a movie. the movie was ok, kind of funny but super predictable. the trip home became very rushed afterwards as we started calculating how long it would take for brian to get back out to the airport for his late flight. he ended up making it home alright, and i crashed out pretty hard with a nice swelling sensation in my throat.
today, friday, has been an interesting one. i got up this morning with the intent of making a trip to faust for lunch. it was going to function as a practice run for my commute. when i went to look up the nearest wachovia to get some cash for a train ride, i suddenly realized that there are no wachovia banks in chicago. somehow, when i decided to switch to wachovia in february, i remembered there being lots and lots of wachovias up here. nope. totally made that up. so i called sally and told her i wouldn't be making the trip i thought i was, and asked if she had any suggestions for banks. she said she'd email me some.
with the hope that i may not lose all of my shot at a commute practice run, i decided to at least see how long it takes to ride my bike to the metra line that will take me to faust. it's a solid 35-40 minutes in some rather ugly traffic, on bad roads, in sketchy-looking parts of town. i think i will look for an alternate route over the weekend. all the same, it was good exercise. i actually rode much further south than i needed, all the way to cermak, then across cermak to the lake, and up the lakeshore for awhile until i came out way up on north clark. it was a really massive ride, and by the time i happened upon a cool place called Uncommon Ground, i was quite ready for a rest. this place was part restaurant, part coffee shop, part music venue. the radio was playing a nice mix of built to spill, feist, and dido, with other random stuff thrown in sometimes. i asked the hostess for a nice place to camp out, and she took me to a big soft chair. i found out a good bank to run with from sally, signed up with Harris Bank, sent out some emails, ate veggie chili and a big goat cheese salad, and packed up to go sit at a starbucks in roscoe village. there, i sat for awhile to work on some mixtapes. by the time i made it back home, i realized that i had to be at a show in an hour.
i repacked my messenger bag with a change of shoes and headed down western ave again to the empty bottle, where i saw two bands: the f*ck buttons and caribou. the former (who i'd never heard before) were actually really interesting. a lot of experimental electronics, sampling, and shit like that. kind of ratatat meets m83, maybe? caribou are a favorite of mine... they put on a cool show but i wasn't as stoked about it as i'd hoped to be. the drumming was very cool to watch, mostly. all the same, it was good to get out and see some fun live music.
on the ride home, i was hauling ass in traffic, dodging taxis in the rain, and was crossing this bridge when i hit one of those fucking potholes i'd mentioned in an earlier post. this one wasn't one of the worst i've seen (it didn't flip me over the handlebars), but it did catch me with little time to react. somehow i kept my head on straight and just took the hit instead of swerving into traffic, but this gave me a sick pinch flat on my rear tire. the good news is that i had just bought some tubes earlier before i went to starbucks. plus, i was only a few blocks from home at this point so i was just glad i didn't get injured.
finally, i came home and put on walking shoes and my headphones to go get some groceries. more unusual foods, more delicious sandwiches... tonight, salami on asiago focaccia and toasted pita with garden veggie hummus. hell yeah! plus, vitamin-enriched orange juice for my tonsils. what a long day, i'm ready to crash now. if you've read this entire entry, i'd be willing to bet that you are too.
on wednesday, brian and i got out and made the bus for a wonderfully sunny and windy day in the city. they seemed to either be perfect urban hiking weather, or absolutely miserable: cold, drizzly, windy, gross. this was the case, for example, as we made our way back to the apartment on tuesday night. i had my bike with me from the faust meeting, and rode at a walking pace with brian's luggage on my back as we walked for an hour in the rain. it was awesome, and poor brian didn't even have any rain gear on. oh well we made it. so on wednesday, we just sort of roamed around in search of adventure. in the midst of this quest, we were walking down clark (or broadway?) and happened upon a charming little place aptly called Austrian Bakery. and so it was. i enjoyed a magnificent raspberry/cream cheese danish and an almond pretzel with my coffee. brian had some kind of meaty-ass sandwich. the real treat came afterward, though, when i realized that the orange juice machine actually functioned. holy crap, fresh-squeezed orange juice is so good. to follow up, brian decided to shell out for a slice of tiramisu, which he generously shared with me. it was really incredible, so much so that i was too distracted to photograph it.
after our trip to the bakery, we sort of made our way across lincoln park, where we approached the lincoln park zoo. at the gates, i suggested we keep walking because i didn't want to pay for a zoo. brian said he loved zoos, but really didn't want to spend the money either. we continued south along lincoln park until we came to this secondary gate to the zoo, which was not as large and not really marked, but clearly an entrance to the zoo. it was wide open, no ticket booth, just a giant walking path in and out of the zoo. and then it hit us... this is a public zoo. free. animals for everyone, no tickets needed. holy shit, right? you would kind of expect there to be a bunch of socialist animals inside, but they were real american animals, including zebras that didn't ever move and lions that were really good at ignoring the super-annoying kids yelling outside their pit. we exited the backside of the zoo to walk to the lakefront, and after a photo op, we took a moment to sit near the waves and reflect.
following this chunk of adventure, we headed towards downtown in search of food and other good things. i stopped in the north face store on michigan avenue to see if i could find some adventure pants, but to no avail. adventure pants have been on my mind for awhile, and have recently become a priority. these are adventurous times. we continued along michigan ave. until we reached the gap store, where i was sucked in with tremendous force. and what do i find there? fuckin' adventure pants! so i try them on, decide they're badass, and check out. eventually, we found a pizza joint (one from the chain we'd been seeking the day before) and enjoyed a beast of a pizza.
after dinner, we split up. brian hopped the el and went home for a nap; i walked over to this design symposium that faust had invited me to. it was a discussion of the work of three established-but-still-fresh women designers, as moderated by one rick valicenti. i got there before the fausts, and ended up hobnobbing with a couple of the kids from buzz co for awhile. the presentation was really cool, and the motif seemed to be three different approaches on "remaining unapologetic" about your work as you make decisions and put them out into the world. this really spoke to me, as i think this is the next step in my design maturity. it speaks to confidence, experience, and a position where you can get away with it, all things which seem to come after about 8 years in the career. or so said rick when i mentioned this idea afterward. it was good to speak with rick as always, and he did me the kindness of pointing me out to the audience before the question-and-answer portion began. he explained that i was from alabama and now worked for faust. "everyone say hi to paul."
everyone: "hi, paul."
after all of that was done, i headed towards brian's side of things and we met at a place called Clarke's on belmont. it's basically a hip 24-hour i-hop, but with only two waitresses working the whole restaurant. we made a drawing, as brian and i will do sometimes, and ate french toast and belgian waffles and warm bevs spiked with whiskey and kalhua. it was a good chill late night thing, spoiled only by waiting for the bus for freaking ever in the cold. we were clearly underdressed.
thursday morning brought lots of sleeping in, but most importantly, the debut of adventure pants. we walked down belmont to the Bleeding Heart organic bakery, which i had been curious to visit. the girl behind the counter greeted us with blue hair and punk rock, and we were glad to have it. i had a muffin, brian had something like a scone, i think. either way, we enjoyed it. the rest of the day consisted of us walking around, hopping on buses, getting cold and wet, getting our feet soaked, walking into a marshall's to buy fresh socks, and going to see a movie. the movie was ok, kind of funny but super predictable. the trip home became very rushed afterwards as we started calculating how long it would take for brian to get back out to the airport for his late flight. he ended up making it home alright, and i crashed out pretty hard with a nice swelling sensation in my throat.
today, friday, has been an interesting one. i got up this morning with the intent of making a trip to faust for lunch. it was going to function as a practice run for my commute. when i went to look up the nearest wachovia to get some cash for a train ride, i suddenly realized that there are no wachovia banks in chicago. somehow, when i decided to switch to wachovia in february, i remembered there being lots and lots of wachovias up here. nope. totally made that up. so i called sally and told her i wouldn't be making the trip i thought i was, and asked if she had any suggestions for banks. she said she'd email me some.
with the hope that i may not lose all of my shot at a commute practice run, i decided to at least see how long it takes to ride my bike to the metra line that will take me to faust. it's a solid 35-40 minutes in some rather ugly traffic, on bad roads, in sketchy-looking parts of town. i think i will look for an alternate route over the weekend. all the same, it was good exercise. i actually rode much further south than i needed, all the way to cermak, then across cermak to the lake, and up the lakeshore for awhile until i came out way up on north clark. it was a really massive ride, and by the time i happened upon a cool place called Uncommon Ground, i was quite ready for a rest. this place was part restaurant, part coffee shop, part music venue. the radio was playing a nice mix of built to spill, feist, and dido, with other random stuff thrown in sometimes. i asked the hostess for a nice place to camp out, and she took me to a big soft chair. i found out a good bank to run with from sally, signed up with Harris Bank, sent out some emails, ate veggie chili and a big goat cheese salad, and packed up to go sit at a starbucks in roscoe village. there, i sat for awhile to work on some mixtapes. by the time i made it back home, i realized that i had to be at a show in an hour.
i repacked my messenger bag with a change of shoes and headed down western ave again to the empty bottle, where i saw two bands: the f*ck buttons and caribou. the former (who i'd never heard before) were actually really interesting. a lot of experimental electronics, sampling, and shit like that. kind of ratatat meets m83, maybe? caribou are a favorite of mine... they put on a cool show but i wasn't as stoked about it as i'd hoped to be. the drumming was very cool to watch, mostly. all the same, it was good to get out and see some fun live music.
on the ride home, i was hauling ass in traffic, dodging taxis in the rain, and was crossing this bridge when i hit one of those fucking potholes i'd mentioned in an earlier post. this one wasn't one of the worst i've seen (it didn't flip me over the handlebars), but it did catch me with little time to react. somehow i kept my head on straight and just took the hit instead of swerving into traffic, but this gave me a sick pinch flat on my rear tire. the good news is that i had just bought some tubes earlier before i went to starbucks. plus, i was only a few blocks from home at this point so i was just glad i didn't get injured.
finally, i came home and put on walking shoes and my headphones to go get some groceries. more unusual foods, more delicious sandwiches... tonight, salami on asiago focaccia and toasted pita with garden veggie hummus. hell yeah! plus, vitamin-enriched orange juice for my tonsils. what a long day, i'm ready to crash now. if you've read this entire entry, i'd be willing to bet that you are too.
Thursday, April 10, 2008
for april 8
until today, april 10, i have been locked out of my blog because a robot marked me as a spam blog. so i apologize if you tried to read this and couldn't get to it... anyway this is the entry for april 8.
----
yesterday was hilarious. it all started with waking up at 5am to the smell of cigarette smoke in my room, which ultimately ended up with me writing an email to my upstairs roommate who decided it was ok to smoke in his room. after becoming wide awake with the anger of being poisoned in my own home, i eventually fell back asleep before getting up at 8am for my first official faust interaction. i'd decided to go by bicycle, which left me with a pretty good 40 minute bike commute to downtown. riding the streets of chicago is SO FAST because everything is flat... not like birmingham where even the flat parts are just secret little hills. it's also really fun and really exciting, with traffic zooming everywhere and having to dodge two-foot-wide-ten-inch-deep crevasses that the people around here call potholes. you really gotta pay attention around here.
faust had invited me out to join them for a 10 o'clock meeting with one of their favorite clients, The Buzz Company. this place is basically a placement agency that freelancers can use to find work. the catch is that the whole staff is equally as quirky and creative as the people they hire. just hilarious people who have put themselves in the position to have shitloads of fun with what they do and allow it to make them successful in that way. faust has been working with them to make these catalogs that show off particular freelancers as products in some sort of fashion magazine. there's good copywriting, great photography, and overall i think it's a perfect example of faust throwing out ideas and then taking one and running with it. the whole meeting was really warm and easy, and i bonded quickly with kelly, the buzz co's vice president. i caught her subtle reference jokes really well, and i hope that basically it both established a good situation for me working with buzz co in the future while at the same time showing faust that i can handle this human interaction stuff like a pro when i need to.
after i got out of that meeting, i called brian, who had just flown in that morning. met him over near wrigley field at a starbucks, and then we headed up the red line a few stops to get to his new store. i camped out at a borders bookstore cafe while he interviewed/hung out with his new store manager for something like three hours. by the time he got done with all of that, we were both starving and so we got back on the red line and got off at depaul university to try and find this pizza place that brett had recommended. we were at that weird time in between lunch hours and dinner hours, though, so the place, and every restaurant nearby, was closed. so we started walking towards wicker park in the hopes that we would find something. we ended up at some pita place (brian called it the pita version of a subway) where i had a gyro and brian had something i can't remember how to pronounce. we enjoyed it and eventually made our way back across town to the apartment.
we got back and took naps before going out with dan and matt (the roommates) and their needlessly forward chick friend, jess. i asked dan if he'd gotten my email about the smoking stuff and he was really cool about it, so that worked out well. i was prepared to ship out to a new place if i had to. anyway, we went out to a place called Waterhouse over at paulina and roscoe. i enjoyed some sort of chicken and pear panini and a giant Magner's irish cider, which came in some sort of cross between a champagne bottle and a beer bottle. massive. you can get cider everywhere here, i love it. we had a really good time going out with these guys, who i mentioned before don't exactly fall in line with what you would expect me to enjoy in people. brian especially did a good job of trying to bring up sports a lot when scores would pop up on tv, as this is a skill set he has that i truly don't. all the same, i think everyone involved had a lot of laughs, ragged on each other a little bit, and just had a straight up good time going out to a bar. as we were leaving, we ran into a gaggle of girls who were waiting for the rain to stop (it was pouring) and suddenly brian was significantly less eager to leave.
so we stalled in the doorway for awhile as dan went to get the car. eventually that whole situation dissolved when one of the three just ran out in the rain, and matt picked up another one of them to carry her to her house. random shit! the last girl kind of ran after her friend, and brian was left to think about what he should have done differently after i opened the door to opportunity with "do you guys like playing scrabble?" the whole thing is hilarious to watch because brian turned off his dating radar in the months preceding the move because he didn't want to get tied up before we left. and now it's on full blast because there are loads and loads of cute girls around here. i told they guys in the car on the way over there that my radar is totally off as of late, and with the best of reasons, but that i would gladly do whatever i can to help brian find the curly headed jewish girl of his dreams. does that mean wingman duty? do i even know how to run wingman duty? shit, who knows. would Goose ask the girls at the bar about scrabble to help Maverick out? i think so. i will quickly prove to be one of the worst wingmen of all time, but my heart is in the right place.
we all went home after an hour and a half i think, and brian and i regrouped to head into the drizzly night in search of new things. we took the bus for awhile, and tried to go to this new bar i read about in TimeOut, but the soft open mentioned in the article clear hadn't taken place. so we started walking. the general idea is usually that i start walking towards a given destination in the hopes that brian will see a place that interests him along the way. in this instance, i started towards Baladoche, this incredible belgian waffle place, while brian looked for a good bar to check out. we ended up walking all the way to the waffle place after a lot of indecision about bars, and the waffle place was closed. so i thought, let's just head back towards Schuba's, a cool indie venue we passed that was closer to out house, and see what's up there. we headed in that direction, where we ended up finding a place called Jake's Bar. the neon sign in the window was a skull and crossbones with the bones being pool cues, but the interior was nice and had little candles on the table. i'm a sucker for candlelight.
the atmosphere was great, the bartenders were conversational, and Crocodile Dundee was playing on the bar tv the whole time. i had rums-and-cokes while brian sipped on whiskey and the night went along really smoothly. this place had a jukebox loaded with stuff like radiohead and the flaming lips in addition to your usual jukebox classics, so i unloaded some of the myriad quarters from my manpurse and started a little live dj jukebox session. this definitely included 'fake plastic trees' as well as 'yoshimi battles the pink robots pt. 1', among others. in the middle of all of this, the bartender walks up to us with a white paper bag and says "hey the waffle place down the street dropped off samples, if you guys want one!" and sure enough, after our long search, a hot delicious baladoche waffle fell at our feet. unbelievable. this led to a lot of pronounced laughter and back-slapping between the two of us, as well as some "dude can you believe that shit", you know the usual. i told the bartender about our long, roundabout quest for a waffle and she was also intrigued by this happenstance. we stayed out until 1 or so and had a hilarious time before heading back home and crashing out.
no doubt, a great indication of things to come...
----
yesterday was hilarious. it all started with waking up at 5am to the smell of cigarette smoke in my room, which ultimately ended up with me writing an email to my upstairs roommate who decided it was ok to smoke in his room. after becoming wide awake with the anger of being poisoned in my own home, i eventually fell back asleep before getting up at 8am for my first official faust interaction. i'd decided to go by bicycle, which left me with a pretty good 40 minute bike commute to downtown. riding the streets of chicago is SO FAST because everything is flat... not like birmingham where even the flat parts are just secret little hills. it's also really fun and really exciting, with traffic zooming everywhere and having to dodge two-foot-wide-ten-inch-deep crevasses that the people around here call potholes. you really gotta pay attention around here.
faust had invited me out to join them for a 10 o'clock meeting with one of their favorite clients, The Buzz Company. this place is basically a placement agency that freelancers can use to find work. the catch is that the whole staff is equally as quirky and creative as the people they hire. just hilarious people who have put themselves in the position to have shitloads of fun with what they do and allow it to make them successful in that way. faust has been working with them to make these catalogs that show off particular freelancers as products in some sort of fashion magazine. there's good copywriting, great photography, and overall i think it's a perfect example of faust throwing out ideas and then taking one and running with it. the whole meeting was really warm and easy, and i bonded quickly with kelly, the buzz co's vice president. i caught her subtle reference jokes really well, and i hope that basically it both established a good situation for me working with buzz co in the future while at the same time showing faust that i can handle this human interaction stuff like a pro when i need to.
after i got out of that meeting, i called brian, who had just flown in that morning. met him over near wrigley field at a starbucks, and then we headed up the red line a few stops to get to his new store. i camped out at a borders bookstore cafe while he interviewed/hung out with his new store manager for something like three hours. by the time he got done with all of that, we were both starving and so we got back on the red line and got off at depaul university to try and find this pizza place that brett had recommended. we were at that weird time in between lunch hours and dinner hours, though, so the place, and every restaurant nearby, was closed. so we started walking towards wicker park in the hopes that we would find something. we ended up at some pita place (brian called it the pita version of a subway) where i had a gyro and brian had something i can't remember how to pronounce. we enjoyed it and eventually made our way back across town to the apartment.
we got back and took naps before going out with dan and matt (the roommates) and their needlessly forward chick friend, jess. i asked dan if he'd gotten my email about the smoking stuff and he was really cool about it, so that worked out well. i was prepared to ship out to a new place if i had to. anyway, we went out to a place called Waterhouse over at paulina and roscoe. i enjoyed some sort of chicken and pear panini and a giant Magner's irish cider, which came in some sort of cross between a champagne bottle and a beer bottle. massive. you can get cider everywhere here, i love it. we had a really good time going out with these guys, who i mentioned before don't exactly fall in line with what you would expect me to enjoy in people. brian especially did a good job of trying to bring up sports a lot when scores would pop up on tv, as this is a skill set he has that i truly don't. all the same, i think everyone involved had a lot of laughs, ragged on each other a little bit, and just had a straight up good time going out to a bar. as we were leaving, we ran into a gaggle of girls who were waiting for the rain to stop (it was pouring) and suddenly brian was significantly less eager to leave.
so we stalled in the doorway for awhile as dan went to get the car. eventually that whole situation dissolved when one of the three just ran out in the rain, and matt picked up another one of them to carry her to her house. random shit! the last girl kind of ran after her friend, and brian was left to think about what he should have done differently after i opened the door to opportunity with "do you guys like playing scrabble?" the whole thing is hilarious to watch because brian turned off his dating radar in the months preceding the move because he didn't want to get tied up before we left. and now it's on full blast because there are loads and loads of cute girls around here. i told they guys in the car on the way over there that my radar is totally off as of late, and with the best of reasons, but that i would gladly do whatever i can to help brian find the curly headed jewish girl of his dreams. does that mean wingman duty? do i even know how to run wingman duty? shit, who knows. would Goose ask the girls at the bar about scrabble to help Maverick out? i think so. i will quickly prove to be one of the worst wingmen of all time, but my heart is in the right place.
we all went home after an hour and a half i think, and brian and i regrouped to head into the drizzly night in search of new things. we took the bus for awhile, and tried to go to this new bar i read about in TimeOut, but the soft open mentioned in the article clear hadn't taken place. so we started walking. the general idea is usually that i start walking towards a given destination in the hopes that brian will see a place that interests him along the way. in this instance, i started towards Baladoche, this incredible belgian waffle place, while brian looked for a good bar to check out. we ended up walking all the way to the waffle place after a lot of indecision about bars, and the waffle place was closed. so i thought, let's just head back towards Schuba's, a cool indie venue we passed that was closer to out house, and see what's up there. we headed in that direction, where we ended up finding a place called Jake's Bar. the neon sign in the window was a skull and crossbones with the bones being pool cues, but the interior was nice and had little candles on the table. i'm a sucker for candlelight.
the atmosphere was great, the bartenders were conversational, and Crocodile Dundee was playing on the bar tv the whole time. i had rums-and-cokes while brian sipped on whiskey and the night went along really smoothly. this place had a jukebox loaded with stuff like radiohead and the flaming lips in addition to your usual jukebox classics, so i unloaded some of the myriad quarters from my manpurse and started a little live dj jukebox session. this definitely included 'fake plastic trees' as well as 'yoshimi battles the pink robots pt. 1', among others. in the middle of all of this, the bartender walks up to us with a white paper bag and says "hey the waffle place down the street dropped off samples, if you guys want one!" and sure enough, after our long search, a hot delicious baladoche waffle fell at our feet. unbelievable. this led to a lot of pronounced laughter and back-slapping between the two of us, as well as some "dude can you believe that shit", you know the usual. i told the bartender about our long, roundabout quest for a waffle and she was also intrigued by this happenstance. we stayed out until 1 or so and had a hilarious time before heading back home and crashing out.
no doubt, a great indication of things to come...
Saturday, April 5, 2008
The First Day
mom dropped me off in nashville on thursday night, and my flight left at around 8:45 to arrive in chicago around 10. the image below was taken from the tv in the airport terminal while i was waiting for the plane to arrive. for those who know my connection with the number 23, i felt reassured. of course, there are other connections to be drawn in this particular image : )
the flight was short but not without some thunderstorm turbulence. once i arrived and gathered my massive amounts of luggage, i took the el to belmont, then rode the bus to leavitt street, where i was pleased to find a starbucks on the corner. two blocks later, i stepped onto the front porch of my new place. i called dan to come get me at the door. the apartment is a duplex, and ours is the top unit. dan is a straight-up kind of sports-loving chicago dude, someone very interested in basic man things and who decorates his apartment with giant posters of The Rat Pack and Goodfellas and shit like that. he also has a great trophy case collection of empty jagermeister and captain morgan's bottles. despite what would seem like drastic differences in our interests, we talked for a good hour and a half while i unpacked all of my shipments and inflated my bed. he's a a nice guy, easy to talk to, and i think we'll get along just fine. i went to bed thursday night strangely satisfied and ready for the morning.
when i woke up, the light coming in my windows was really beautiful. it was awesome just to wake up and have nothing else to deal with after so many months of going from one major step to the next. i got up after a little while and looked up nearby grocery stores on my blackberry (which has become quite the useful little mofo!) and walked to a Dominick's. but not without stopping at the nearby starbucks first! anyway dominick's is kind of on par with a publix or something like that. i had made up my mind a few days back that i wanted to really embrace this creation of new experiences. so in line with that philosophy, i bought only groceries i'd never bought before. croissants, weird yogurts, a new kind of granola, fresh bagels from the bakery, awesome irish cheddar, etc... no more peanut butter and jelly, no more buying the same grocery items every week. new, strange things like Green Tea Mango Yogurt are the new norm, for better or for worse. i'm not completely deviating, since it's still stuff like granola and yogurt. but it's a different kind of both. baby steps.
after getting my groceries, i came home and made a sandwich. croissant with strawberry cream cheese and irish cheddar... yum! then i poured myself a glass of water and headed out to the front porch with a book of dave eggers' short stories to wait on my bike and my laptop to be delivered. eventually, my bike showed up, and i unpacked and reassembled it while i waited for the next fedex truck to bring my computer. turns out he had already tried to deliver it and reported it as the wrong address, so i had to call fedex and have them arrange for a saturday delivery. no biggie. i happily got all my bike gear on and rode to a nearby bike shop to get a tune up and whatnot. not only is the shop only 3 minutes away by bike... it's full of wonderful helpful people who were really excited that i was one more of the 25,000 cyclists in this city. they even had a shop dog named Buddy who apparently has his own fanclub with pins and everything. badass.
so i dropped off my bike and launched off into a neighborhood hike, discovering lots of wonderful little shops and cafes and stuff in Roscoe Village before finding myself in familiar territory near Lakeview. when i got hungry, i dipped into a pizza shop and had myself a 3 dollar slice of chicago deep dish to go, which i carried for a block or two to eat on a starbucks patio. good shit! the weather, by the way, was absolutely amazing all day. sunny, breezy, and in the 50's, just the way i like it. once i started to realize how far away from home i was getting, i started heading back in that general direction. somewhere on Western Ave, i happened upon Fearon's Public House, a genuine irish sports bar deal with some sort of cider on tap. i peered into the window, surveying the scene, and decided i'd give it a shot. there was wonderful mahogany stuff everywhere, some obligatory guinness posters, and lots of nice TVs hanging from the ceiling. as i ordered my pint, i realized that not one but two of these screens were showing soccer! so i sat and sipped my cider while watching highlights from italian serie a and scottish premiere league, simultaneously. and all the while, i was marveling at the brilliance of a bar WITH NO CIGARETTE SMOKE IN IT.
after an extended period of sipping on that pint, i walked home and kind of chilled out for a little bit before heading back out to grab some stuff at whole foods. there, i was really stoked to find that they sell Strongbow cider in 500ml cans, which you can't get in alabama because of the alcoholic content. ludicrous. on the walk home, i had a great chat with suzie, who had just returned from a trip to italy, and decided to drink a cider on the way home. drinking beer on the street... just another new experience, as far as i'm concerned. not something i'll make a habit of, but it was fun while it lasted.
after that i pretty much went home and hit the couch to watch High Fidelity before crashing out. a good start.
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