Well well...I was quiet for a couple of days and what happens? Twenty-something comments on the "top 5" recipies. It's very cool to see these "recipies" and what really defines a moment or time in one's life. What I realized yesterday as I was moving out of my apartment is that even though a certain song or album might have defined one time in your life, it's not necessarily limited to that time. I say this because the music I was playing as I was moving out is going to remind me of just that. However, it's really the combinations of albums or songs that make it interesting.

And yes, I have moved away from Roger's Park. It is like night and day, RP vs. the new 'hood of Andersonville. I won't go into details about my back alley in RP, but my final impression was almost the worst I have ever seen it, and I genuinely don't want to nauseate you. Berwyn ave, however, is clean, beautiful, and quiet--and is located near many non-corporate eating establishments. Now all ("all") I have to do is unpack. Oy.

By the way--I'm going to Canada tomorrow for a conference. I'll see you guys on Tuesday, and I will have pictures. Of course.

The top 5 greatest albums of all time (right now):

1. Radiohead: OK Computer
2. Tool: Lateralus
3. Chemical Brothers: Surrender
4. Pixies: Surfer Rosa
5. Doves: Last Broadcast

I'm beginning to think the "top 5" are like ingredients in a recipie, and you're cooking up what your life feels like at a certain time. Which is why, for example, I can listen to Dave Matthews' Under the Table, Smashing Pumpkins' Siamese Dream, Pearl Jam vs., and the Offspring and be reminded of my sophomore year of high school quite vividly. So I know you have a top 5 recipie, what is it?

Forgot to post these from last Thursday's figure drawing session. See Phineas' drawings to compare styles for fun. Also, an explanation of that first drawing: I was drawing the dog during a break, then got lost in drawing the model on the same sheet of paper, and there it was:
model with chihuahua head. It had to happen to someone.

From one of my favorite sites, explodingdog.com: This isn't a dream. Beautiful.

I think I have a new favorite (fashion) designer: Alberta Ferretti. I think I spied the most beautiful shoes I've ever seen in my entire life last night on a model wearing her designs in this month's Jane. I will have to link them later, as I don't have the magazine right now and I really, really want you to see them. They were half shoes, half pumps, lace up the front, with ribbon twisted all around them. Haute, of course. Gorgeous.

I've had a dull ache in my head for about 5 days now. I think it might be due to the air mattress I'm sleeping on. See, liquidating your assets (i.e. selling your futon--your only solace for sleep) means making (temporary) adjustments. Hopefully this won't be uncomfortable for too long.

In the meantime, I'm just going to drink more coffee (drown the dull ache in caffeine, which usually works). Sorry no stories of urban mayhem. Not much has happened since the gunshots last week. Fortunately.

Hey, do yourself a favor and go downlo--er--I mean, buy the Chemical Brothers' "surrender" cd. Then put it on "Out of Control" and close your eyes. Or turn the lights off. Anyways, back to my coffee.

Saw Ghost World and Zoolander this weekend. GW was better than the comic, though now I like the comic better. Zoolander was ridiculous...but very, very funny. And I'm not even a Ben Stiller fan! Make it a Blockbuster (or a locally-owned non-corporate movie rental establishment) night, will ya?

Instructions: right click, save as, and tile (verb). Exciting effect. These started out at about 500 pixels and the smaller it became, the more excited I got. Enjoy.

Hey, does anyone want to write a book review of Fast Food Nation for Fertile Field? The coming issue is themed "Consumer Culture" and I thought it might be cool to have that in there. Any interested parties can email me. It needs to be about 300 words or so, but that's flexible, and the deadline is Monday. Is anyone up to it?

Lately I've been incredibly inspired, art wise. You can probably tell by the way lay-c.com looks from one day to the next (or one hour to the next) that experimentation and change is a major fuel for me.

Relatedly, beflix.com is a great site devoted to "glitch" art, which is exactly that--taking a screen shot when your computer chokes, cropping the interesting parts in photoshop, changing the levels, and voila! There you have a great piece of art in 72 dpi glory. Really, really beautiful stuff. I want to join this movement with 990000 and Beflix and work with blocks of color and glitch art. Pixels are the new paintbrushes. Style sheets are the new canvases.

In the strange block that usually smells like garbage and has increasingly gotten shadier; where [some insane] parents let their small kids run free in the streets; where I saw someone get mugged last fall and had no idea what I saw until it was over; close to where I got hit by an SUV; where class, gender, profession, and race collide in a heaping, steaming carwreck of a thing Chicago calls "diversity:" last night I heard gunfire.

I dialed 911 after the first suspected shot and gave them my address. They said "thank you" and that was that. No police.

Then: POP POP!

It sounded like it was right downstairs. I dialed 911 a SECOND TIME (because this was no joke) as I sank down on my kitchen floor. My phone panel beeped and said *EMERGENCY* (duh) and this time I gave a description of the two guys who just minutes before were standing in the back alley looking where I couldn't see; the guys who sneakily were let through the steel-bar gate of the building at the end of the alley, right before the last 2 shots were fired.

What is this?

I never heard sirens. The police never came. The cranky 911 operator's voice asking for a description rang in my head as I tried to sleep.

Every time I want to open my mouth and say something I'm stopped short by the futility of it all, of wanting to tell people there's something better out there but knowing that they might not get it. Of knowing that I come from a comfortable white middle class background but knowing that in the studio apartment right above me a single mom lives with her three kids (under 10). That certainly cannot be comfortable. Maybe I'm just a fish out of water. Or maybe this is just a really bizarre place to live.

I joined the Cheetah Gym yesterday with my new fantastic roommates. No more kamikaze-style biking in the urban wonderlands, now I can get a propah workout in glorious Andersonville, less than 1 block from my new house, complete with juice bar, sauna, kickboxing and television. Just give me an Odwalla smoothie and a Clif Bar and you'll never hear from me again. God bless America.

But in all seriousness, I move on the 27th. Yes, that's in the middle of the week. Yes, I need minor help loading/unloading the truck (like I said, I'm liquidating the big stuff so it won't even be that painful). Yes, I will buy you pizza if you help me. Yes, I'm totally stressing because Fertile Field is supposed to launch another edition beginning of September, I'm flying to Canada on the 29th to speak at/attend a conference (which I don't have a hotel room for yet ACK!), and my lease is up that weekend so I need to be o-u-t. Too much! Too much!

For some reason, I woke up in the middle of the night from a dream...laughing. And the terrible irony of it is that something genuinely made me laugh in the dream and I TOLD myself I would remember what it was when it woke me up. Of COURSE I didn't remember what it was this morning, all I know is that it had something to do with Autobots, Decepticons, and large bodies of water. To top it off, I'm singing the Transformers theme song ("Transformers...more than meets the eye! Autobots ssumph dum dum dee dum, du dum du dum de dum de dum--The Decepticons!"). Isn't THAT random.

On the plus side, the liquidation of my assets is going well. Not to get too excited about it yet, but I think I sold the velvet chairs and the futon, and I think I found a home for some other stuff. Yay for Naz for telling me about craigslist. And yay for the people bidding on my auctions! Boo on the people that are too cool for school and aren't bidding. Boo-oo-ooooooo.

So I didn't end up running with Elvis on Saturday night unfortunately (due to a suspected knee injury...hey it was bound to happen sooner or later), but I did have an awesome weekend. Too many details to recount, but in short I saw my wonderful cousin, I went to a great party, and I house-sat for some kind folks (with air conditioning, laundry, and cable) who lent me a car. I was in heaven.

I woke up this morning and went out to said on-loan car only to find it "kissed-in" (I just made that up) by the two adjacent cars. I mean, not even an inch on either side. So I waited half an hour, still no owners to move these cars. Another 15 minutes, no owners. So I said what the hell (as I eyed the crunched up back end of the Mitsubishi in front and the...oldness of the car in rear) and gently nudged the car in front of me forward and somehow I managed to squeeze out of this spot. Parking is an oxymoron in Roger's Park.
***
Last night I dreamed that instead of the bridesmaid dresses Liz has picked out for us we had gold lame evening gowns. She was really excited in the dream because the woman who made the dresses threw in matching long gloves for free. I have to admit, that is pretty darn hilarious.

And for you people who are ALWAYS talking about my paintings and how you want one and wah wah wah, there is one rotting away at an amazing price on Ebay. SO GO BID ON IT! This may be your only chance.

As a last hurrah before Mojan joins the ranks of married people, we went to Mars. The planet. It was very red.

I joined the bandwagon: I am now an EBAY seller. For those of you that like my art, you can go bid on the first of what might be a few auctions on my paintings. I don't know why I didn't do this before! Anyways, go check out the auction on my Orange Fashionista series (of 2, only 1 is listed). Consider this an experiment in selling my art online.

Also, I'm selling something random. You never know, you might want it.

I just signed up for the Elvis Is Alive 5K on Saturday. This does mean I'll be running next to (and probably behind...way, way behind) people dressed up like Elvis. Someone told me last year Elvis finished in a little over 17 minutes. That is CRAZY. Do you know that? CRAZY. In summer. In an Elvis costume.

But what's even crazier is that I spent a bit of time actually considering the "Super Sprint Triathalon." I think I could do it, except I *hate* lakewater, and the idea of swimming in it for .75 miles (especially in that area...yeeg) is quite repulsive. That, and in the pictures all the people look ripped and well, I'm just not that competitive. I just like doing these things to prove to myself that I can. But that's enough information for now.

We parked the car in the driveway and headed toward the garage while the sky churned into a sick green color. We nervously walked away from the sedan and tried to focus on reaching the safety of a roof. Gavin had almost cleared the car and dad and I were already almost there when the rain started; hurricane-force winds blew up in mere seconds and rain pelted all around us. Dad and I scurried into the open garage to clear the waterfall which had already formed from the lip of the roof, but Gavin had not yet made it away from the car. He was only a few feet from us inside the opening of the garage, but we could see that he was already soaked. The lightning was right above our heads and then I had an odd feeling. Gavin hit the ground just then, when a hideous flash of purple-blue light licked the ground mere feet from where he was, sending electricity through the water on the driveway. I think I screamed something and then dad started towards Gavin by instinct. I pulled my dad's arm back when I saw that Gavin was okay on the ground and that's when the most powerful bolt hit five feet in front of us, shocking the water pooling at our feet but not penetrating our shoes. I screamed again because my dad was almost caught in the forked fingers of electricity, but the rain was so loud on the roof and the pavement I could barely hear myself. The noise got louder and louder and I just envisioned those two bolts hitting the ground over and over inches away from my father and brother until I woke up with the unseasonably cool air hitting my face, the wind waving my blinds back into my apartment, sheets pulled so tight around my neck I could barely breathe. I have no idea if I actually screamed out loud or not.

If you ever find yourself without a TV (or perhaps just tired of your tv) I highly, highly recommend comics (again). I've been going through a friends' trade paperback collection and I've managed to be thoroughly entertained--and my attention has been kept for longer than a blockbuster flick.

First was The Dark Night, then Daredevil (too many to link), Ronin (interesting futuristic storyline reminiscent of Lone Wolf and Cub), and Sunday in one reading I devoured Elektra: Assassin. WOW, what a great read. The drawings are beautiful and terrifying all at once. The story wasn't choppy or confusing and the ending was very good (good as in, not predictable). Slightly 80s, but pre-photoshop airbrushing just looks better. All of these stories are by Frank Miller, and the drawings I enjoyed most were Bill Sienkiewicz. Elektra just nearly took my breath away it was so great.

Next time you find yourself in need of some visual mindless entertainment, think comics. They're not just for geeks, you know.

For a weekend where I clocked more sleep than probably the past month of weekends combined, I kept pretty busy. Here are a few things.

On August 4, 2001 I graduated from college. On August 18, 2001 I moved to Chicago. I lived in a hotel in Skokie for a month. And you know, pretty soon it will be a year since September 11 which seemed to make everything a little different.

Saturday I got stung by something (something big, because it had an impact) while I was riding my bike. I was going to work for a little while, but when I got to work my throat started to feel tight and I thought, "allergic reaction" and then I thought "I'm alone, what if my throat closes up and I collapse and no one finds my cold body until monday?!" So I asked the 2 people on the premesis for some benadryl, all to no avail. I was advised to "get in my car and go to the nearest wallgreens." So I just shut down my computer (this is about 15 min after I had been stung), got on my bike (I was a little panicky and freaking out slightly at this point) and headed over to the Emergency Room where I sat for a while before someone saw me. This time spent sitting watching the second hand spin on the wall clock gave me some good perspective on the severity (or lack thereof) of this reaction. After I saw the RN (30 min after getting stung) I was feeling a little more sane and said "Do I really need to be here?" In any case, I decided to leave because I figured if I was going to die from this dumb sting, I would be dead by now. So I put on my bike helmet and left. And that was that.

I know you all enjoy reading about the dramatic things that happen to me here in the land of big shoulders. Or whatever. Don't you think it's funny that I went to the e-room after getting a dumb sting but didn't go when I got hit by a freakin' SUV? Is this bad luck, or do I just play dangerously? But I mean, c'mon, what are the odds of a wasp or bee or yellowjacket or whatever flying into your hand while you are zipping down a utopianlike Wilmette avenue? I think the safer it looks, the more dangerous it is. It's a good thing my neighborhood isn't safe at all!! I might be dead otherwise!

She's so sneaky, that Mojan! She went ahead and figured out how to do web galleries and uploaded them without even telling me! Sneaky sneaky. Anyways, go check out the pictures from her supafun wedding shower a couple of weeks ago. You've maybe seen some of the shots before, but hey, it's all love.

And on the weekend note (what? weekend? when did the week happen?), tonight I am facilitating a talk on finances (complete with excel spreadsheets), tomorrow I am talking to a group of junior youth visiting from out of town, and Sunday I'm attending a WIPA (Women for International Peace and Arbitration) luncheon. It's my weekend of public appearances. Can someone do my laundry for me please?

Blah.

Got my hair cut yesterday because I needed someone to fawn over me for a little while. I'm now considering a pedicure. I've never had a pedicure. For some reason, it seems like it will solve the world's problems to get a pedicure. Dear friends, I think I have officially lost my mind (again).