You know, in a way this piece made itself. There were a number of happy accidents that went along with all the hard work I put in. For example two flat tires prevented me from leaving town as I'd planned to do when it was better for me to stay and work on the piece. The stool, already in the gallery, was the perfect pedestal for the plate of treats. Also, I hadn't known that I'd want a backdrop for this until I got to the gallery and set up the stool and empty cake plate. Then I remembered that there's a fabric store in the building next door.
I think people liked it. It's amazing how difficult it is to give away free home made pastry when it's part of a sculpture. People either think it's a facsimile of food and not edible or they're "afraid to touch the art." Or they're just afraid. Poor things.
One week after my post referring to people not Facebooking anymore I received my invitation to join Ello. Plus ça change...
I am so tired I can barely move. I got four hours of sleep last night. I've worn out my arms and hands making things. I have to show again in two weeks. Nobody's even looking. Why do I go to all this trouble? It's a compulsion. See? Nothing makes sense.
The picture above is of an object. That's not an image I made with a graphics application. It would be difficult to make something so uneven in a graphics application.
See?
Time to eat something and get cracking on éclairs and haul them and my butt down to the gallery and set up and then stand there on the concrete floor for seven hours because if I sit my whole body will seize up from the physical wringer I've been putting it through.
It'll be fine. It'll all be fine. This is my life. Better than working in a diamond mine. So unspeakably much better than working in a diamond mine.
Well this is a new one: I've e-over-socialled myself. I didn't know that was possible.
I have limited capacity for being around other people. Everyone does I guess but I think I hit a wall sooner than most. Classic introvert.
My high school reunion is coming up. I agreed to get in touch with seven of my classmates, only one of which I communicate with regularly, to make sure their contact info is up to date and to see if they're thinking about coming to the reunion.
Phone-phobic that I am, I've mostly been communicating by e-mail or Facebook message. Over-achieving communicator that I am, it takes me about an hour and a half (at least) to write a short e-mail. I want to be clear and expressive. I want to avoid misunderstandings (fail). I want to be present and authentic.
Of course it isn't as easy as writing seven e-mails. (Some people would just write one and send it to everyone on the list. What is my problem?) I couldn't find everyone so I had to contact other people who might know where my missing people are. I also contacted a few others because I was thinking about them and it seemed like a good idea to see how the were. The whole thing snowballed. Now I'm managing about eight e-correspondences of varying intensity.
It's not like it's a bad thing. I really like, respect and admire the folks I've been corresponding with. It's just too much socialness! My little amorphous brain can't handle it! All the reading! All the writing! All the thinking! All the interpreting and reading between the lines! All the not-going-down-the-rabbit-hole-of-thinking-about-adolescent-blunders-and-failures!
I just want to think about colors and textures and shapes for a while. Or nothing. I want to think about nothing. Or just a thin veil of light blue. Or a blurry image of white hydrangeas in a glass jar.
However, I have a deadline and two more people to reach one way or another and one more person to thank for forwarding contact info to me - another person I really like and hope to see again someday.
I bet I can put it all off for a couple more hours. Or maybe I'll just crank out two (hopefully) quick-ish e-mails and get the hard part done with and do the follow-up at a more leisurely pace.
People keep telling me I've lost SOOO MUCH weight. I hadn't realized that I was quite SOOO LARGE to begin with. Which just goes to show you that I have NOOO IDEA what I look like. Ever. Guess I don't care that much. I'm good with that.
Something interesting has already happened to me this year: Pete and I went to a party where I spoke most of the night with a number of people I'd never met before and never stressed or felt freaky about it. It never even occurred to me to notice anything unusual had happened until I was in the car on the way home.
Progress is possible!
The party was on my birthday but it was unrelated to me other than I was invited. I didn't feel birthday-y this year. I think I just wanted my life back from the holidays. Instead of doing something specifically for my birthday we went to this party.
Maybe it was an unnoticed birthday vibe or plain resignation but my social anxieties deserted me. Good riddance. Hope they're gone for good! See ya later - much!
The next day we did do something special for my birthday and my friend, Janna's, birthday which was a day later. It was over-the-top. You can read about it here. Seriously over the top. Wow.
Life's like, "I do all this great stuff for you and all you do is mope and complain. What's your problem?"
And I'm all, "What's your problem? Why are you always hitting me all of a sudden? You're really pissing me off!"
And Life's all, "What do you mean I'm hitting you all of a sudden? You have all this great stuff. Nothing lasts forever. Nobody gets to keep everything. I took it easy on you for a long time there and this is the thanks I get? You're not here to get massages and presents every day. You're here to learn stuff. Grow the hell up!"
And I'm all, "GRRRRRR!!!!! I WANT NICE PRESENTS EVERY DAY AND I WANT YOU TO STOP BUGGING ME!"
And Life's all, "NOT GOING TO HAPPEN, DUMBASS. And P.S., you have to make up with me."
It took me all day to figure out how to resize this image so I could save it for the web and post it here. A simple photo of a revolting bowl of Count Chocula. Yes, the process was extremely aggravating. It's six PM and I've just figured out how to do it.
This is continuing fallout from the destruction of my laptop (I had to use the word "fallout" - my laptop fell) Yes, I lost some software and some work I'd done with it but nothing very expensive or truly irreplaceable. I lost so many photos that I don't even know how many I lost. Of course most of them were worthless. I can live with those things. They're gone and I can barely remember them.
I have yet to figure out how to get my address book up and running using the backups I made. I may never manage it. There's always Facebook and waiting for people to e-mail me so I can save their contact info again but still it's frustrating. The same is true for my Safari bookmarks - not the most devastating loss either. It's just that I used to have a comfortable system. I had passwords and receipts saved in my old mailboxes. Now I have to hit the "forgot password" link when I want to sign into something unusual. Big deal. Once everything worked smoothly, now it doesn't. Oh well, suck it up and rebuild.
What has probably annoyed me most though is not having Photoshop. I have photos to post up here! Today I downloaded a trial version of Photoshop Elements. Adobe makes everything so much more confusing than necessary. I'm sure I'll spend additional hours searching through the maze of tutorials to find out about stuff I don't want to do and stuff it hasn't occurred to me to do. For today though, I can finally bring you a simple, reasonably-sized photo of a bowl of Count Chocula.
If only I could just be cool about all of this. I know it's going to take a while for me to get back up to speed. I chose to try to learn a new thing (Photoshop Elements) It's computer software - of course it's confusing. I just need to be patient. What happened to all the reading about Zen I just did? Things are new and different and you have to adjust. C'est la vie...
Perhaps tomorrow I can post the photos from my birthday and begin to put this laptop incident behind me.
Now the reason I wanted to post this image in the first place is that today for the first time I found the taste of Count Chocula to be disgusting. I believe this makes me officially mature. It is no longer fun to eat Count Chocula. I hope that the same cannot be said for Lucky Charms.
Not happy. My computer fell off the table where it was charging and died. We're traveling so I don't have access to my backup hard drives. Also, my iPad was plugged into the computer when it fell so the iPad is compromised too.
That is the tip of the iceberg though.
The first Christmas without Dad is being more challenging than I though it would be (for me at least) so I'm in a crappy mood to begin with.
Hey - at least the weather's nice, the company's good, The food is good, Fay is healthy, I have a home to go back to, I have back ups for most of my files, my novel is safe and overall I'm in good shape.
There's light around the edge of this black cloud. Now I need a good wind to blow the damned thing away.
I feel like Bob and Doug McKenzie right now: I'm delighted to have thought up a topic.
The topic for today's blog post is Telephone Phobia. I believe I have telephone phobia.
Hang on a second while I grab a beer. Thanks. I'll try to keep this under two minutes reading time.
If you click the link above you'll go to Wikipedia where they will tell you that people with phone phobia are afraid that they will "fail to respond appropriately in a telephone conversation." I buy that.
I can tell you I'm afraid that the pressure of having to talk to somebody on the phone will stress me out so much that my thoughts will fly out of my head and I'll be left babbling out dorky, senseless mumbo jumbo. The person on the other end will have no recourse but to be mean to me and make it utterly apparent that they think I'm a total freak. Then they will hang up on me without addressing the subject of the phone call (not that they could tell what the subject was)
Has this ever actually happened to me? Not that I can recall - but if it did I would definitely try to blank that out.
So if I absolutely must call someone I try to do it when I'm pretty sure no one's home. That way I can plan what I'm going to say and maybe even write myself a script for the voicemail. So sad.
Then, if my plan works really well I can leave a call back number where I'm pretty sure I won't be so that they'll get voicemail too and I won't have to answer the phone. That way I can deal with the information they left me in my own time and plan the next round of phone tag. I can't always do that though.
Then there's the possibility that I might be calling at an inconvenient time and bother someone. I'm not fond of that either. Of course, they don't have to answer.
Oddly enough I have no problem calling someone for work. Don't think twice about it. I will even call people multiple times if they haven't got back to me and I have no other work to do.
Why am I such a dork? I really don't know. It's difficult and unfortunate. Still, there are worse things.
By the way, I didn't really grab a beer. That was just a nod to Bob and Doug. Here's a clip below if you're unfamiliar with them.
Sunday, November 14, 2010
In writing my novel I seem to be disgorging the top of the heap of my brain. I don't meant the highest quality, just the stuff that's been on top of the pile in my mind since 2002. Man, is it DULL.
I was hoping this thing would be a rip-roaring wacky-fest, strange and surreal. Instead it's a bunch of long-winded chicks talking in a bar. It would seem I need to get out more - and not so much in bars.
A problem that I thought might turn up has as well: I don't want to hurt anybody. I've got to do some damage to some of these people but I can't figure out to whom and how. I have a great, demented sadist character but I can't think who to sic him on. Well, besides the guy whose body he took over. That guy's history.
For a so-called creative type I feel like I could be doing better.
However, maybe I just need to get this stuff out and afterwards I can write something more fun?
Ugh. At least I like words. Also, writing a daily 2,000 words worth of relatively grammatically correct sentences is proving to be easier than I thought it would.
So I'm plowing through. I'm gonna keep going and see what happens. We're only halfway through and nobody said I have to stop writing on December 1. Maybe it'll just take longer than a month to write something I like.
I do like writing though. And it's so much easier to clean up after than visual arts are!
I met a really nice man on the T today on my way home from the airport. He complimented me on my wheelie bag. It is a pretty good one: pink metallic leopard print (of course)
We got to talking and he asked me what I was doing for Thanksgiving. I told him I was visiting my mom. He said "that's what I'm doing right now." I asked him where his mom was and he said "she's at Mass General. She had a stroke the other day." Naturally I told him I hoped she was doing okay and he started telling me all about it. In fact I had to interrupt him because he was about to miss his stop. He jumped up and made it off the train in time. Phew. I yelled "good luck," to him as he left.
Pete and I just got back from our former local, the Beacon Street Tavern. We had a lovely evening there as usual thanks to our pals Walshie and Dermott.
Everybody does not know our names there, just Walshie (the manager) and Dermott (the bartender/assistant manager) I don't want everybody to know my name. That would weird me out.
It's our former local because we moved.
We haven't found a new local in Cambridge yet. That's where the boo-hoo part comes in.
It's so great to have an easy place where you can go and have a drink, a decent meal and a nice trade of insults with the bartender. We haven't been out in our new neighborhood enough to find that yet.
Number one, when reading a blogger.com blog DO NOT EVER (unless you're looking for porn) hit the "next blog" button at the top of the page (conveniently located next to the "report abuse" button) Learned that the hard way.
Feel free to hit the "follow" button, especially if you're reading my blog.
Number two, (hee hee, number two! Ugh, sorry.) Maybelline bronzing powder, the cheapest brand I could find, is an excellent product.
I don't normally use bronzing powder because I'm Palefaced and Proud* (and curly hair proud too - no capitulating to the straight hair standard!) I needed it this week to go as Rachael Ray for Halloween. I was going to use a hint of orange makeup from the costume shop (her T.V. makeup always looks overly orangey to me) but there was no way I was going to pay $8.99 for a pan of orange makeup.
Maybelline to the rescue. I bought a nice, dark color that I thought would instantly look glaringly wrong on me. In fact, I had to really cake it on to make it look overdone.
Of course I was wearing a very dark brunette wig at the time. Maybe it would look wrong with my real coloring? Nope, I just tried it. You can barely tell. Maybe that's why it's cheaper - not enough expensive pigment. Anyway, I thought it was a good way to build up a "natural sun-kissed" look. Not what I wanted it for and not something I'm likely to use again, but there it is.
Number three, "mayhem" is a crime in California. According to Wikipedia, mayhem consists "of the intentional and wanton removal of a body part that would handicap a person's ability to defend himself in battle." Also, "the noun 'mayhem' and the verb 'maim' share the same root, the Old French 'mahaigne'" which I'm guessing means "to harm in some way."
New topic:
You may have noticed I'm posting more regularly. Well it's NaBloPoMo (which I still think should be called INaBloPoMo - International Blog Posting Month) I hope to continue the daily posting habit long after November as well. If I don't then how else will anyone know what I had for lunch or how my latest pair of socks are coming along (which you still don't know) or what I think about shoes?
*Don't feel that I'm anti-tan across the board and I'll hate you if you have more melanin than me and you use it. Tan or fake tan if you want. It's none of my business.
I have a feeling that Laura bush wore this dress as a form of protest. It looks to me like she really didn't want to look her best.
Look how it clashes with Michelle Obama's dress. That color combo only looks good in a Jonathan Adler pillow. I don't know how they plan these photo ops as far as color coordination goes. Maybe she didn't know that Ms. Obama would wear red. But she had to know that that is one homely and unflattering dress. While I'm at it, were all her good bras in the laundry for today's historic occasion?
If you look at google images you can see that Ms. Bush does know how to dress to impress and she's chosen not to do so here.
While the concept of the above photo pleases me greatly - the transfer of power from G.W. Bush to Barack Obama - the aesthetics of the following photos are more pleasing to me:
Photo by Mark Baker, AP Photo by Daniel Munoz, Reuters
It's Monifa, the three-week-old baby pygmy hippopotamus who lives at the Taronga Zoo in Sydney, Australia. I hope she has some other kids to play with. Babies need to play. Pete and I saw a baby pygmy hippopotamus at the National Zoo in Washington D.C. back around 1991. It was zipping around in a big swimming pool like an adorable poo. So cute.
I swiped all of these photos from washingtonpost.com. Here's another one I just spotted:
George looks SO relieved and now Barack looks like "Holy crap, what have I got myself into?" Remember how terrified George looked when he first took the job on?
There's so much I want to say about the PotLuck/TapeOp trip but I won't do it all at once.
As always I had a wonderful time with the Tape Oppers at PotluckCon. Every year I meet a bunch of interesting new people and enjoy getting to know the people I met during previous conferences better.
I've mentioned before that I'm not so good at socializing or meeting people I really connect with. Well these conferences are a really easy way for me to do just that. The folks who go are intelligent, funny, approachable and easy to talk to, passionate about their work and yet also interested in other things that are happening in the world. Yeah, there's a lot of technical and gear talk going on but these are people whose business is creativity and who have had to craft their lives unconventionally to accomodate what they want to do. Music isn't my business but we do have shared experience. It's definitely a highlight of my year to be in such a large group of people who either think kind of like I do or blow me away with how their brains work.
If you idolize an indie-rock music producer or recording engineer do not hesitate to go talk to them. The vast majority of them are incredibly modest and happy to talk to anyone about what they do. Ask them anything. Except "what was it like to work with Nirvana?" or whatever their big band is if they have one. They're funny in that they can totally idolize each other and yet have no concept of how they themselves are idolized in return.
That's all I have time for now. I hope I get back to the topic because I learned a lot of interesting (well, to me) things this year. And then there's the whole New Orleans experience to get into. You know how life is though: it keeps coming at you.
The server that hosts my website, melzeppelin.com, and provides my e-mail has gone down. It's a good thing I was too lazy to look up my server password when I set this blog up. At least I can communicate this way with the two or three people who read this and also send me e-mail.
I am just on fire with fascinating blog posts these days.
