New week. New stuff. New stress levels. Actually, I have been way more stressed in my life, but this week was hard. The hardest one so far, but I made it through and did good work. Still love what I am doing. Wouldn’t trade it for anything.

Monday: showed a more final version of my pleather book. The layout didn’t work too well, but I have next week to fix that. Warren seemed pretty cool with it. Had some good suggestions. Need to figure out what my next project is. Have to do one more book. Was thinking about doing something with my grandmother. Don’t know though. Also felt sick all day.

Tuesday: worked on sagmeister cd. Did yoga. Feeling much better. Cold is going away. Or I am freaking out less. Mr. G showed us different boxes. Cigar, cereal, match boxes, cigarette boxes, etc. worked and finished the facade of the bluebird restaurant for milton’s class. It looks pretty good. Must send val a jpg of it. Think she might like it.

Wednesday: printed pieces of my sagmeister cd. Still have much to do though. Want to avoid staying up all night like I did last time. Showed my restaurant façade in milton’s class. He seemed happy with it. Now he wants to see what I am going to do with the inside of the restaurant. Cool. I have ideas for that. Fun stuff. I have more ideas for that then the outside. After class, I worked on sagmeister’s cd. I am doing 12 postcards that have a flexi-diss on the front of every postcard. The entire thing comes in a envelope thing with the cd. I was up to 8:30am making/designing it.

Thursday: went to bed at 9am to be woken up by the maintenance man wanting to change my battery in my smoke alarm. Then go woken up at 12:30 and 1:45 by phone calls. Got up at 2 to make it lecture at 3pm. Alex shear and tod lippy came to speak. Super good. Tod lippy runs a lovely magazine and alex shear is this crazy collector. He has 100,000 things in his collections that span everything from rip off of 7up bottles to guns to tollbooths to military stuff. Everything in away celebrates 20th century America. He is getting his own show on pbs and his own museum. Fucking amazing guy. http://www.pbs.org/wnet/egg/206/shear/

Presented my cd project. Sagmeister liked it. Called it lovely. Everyone’s projects were amazing. We blew him away with how well we did. Everyone was super stressed about this project and worked super hard on it. Every time someone finished we would applaud them. Nice bonding moment. I have a good class.

Went out and had a celebratory dinner and drinks with a group from the program. Went dancing later. Finished the night off with Natalie, chris and johnathan. We tried to get into a karaoke place, but it was closing. Didn’t stop Natalie. She sang giabaldi on the street as chris, johnathan and I ate our pizza.

Friday: made a flash movies about bunnies and meat. Learned more flash stuff.

Went out Williamsburg and had dinner with jeff. It was at this wonderful new thai place called chai. Super yummy! And they had this cool indoor pond. Then we went back to his place and watched a kirosawa film. Good. Not as good as yojimbo though. Then sat up talking until 1am. I like him, but not sure where it is going. Going to give it couple more weeks to see.

Saturday: ran all over manhattan. Had to go to the studio to get my drum boxes and then down to kim’s on st. marks place to get blank tapes. Then over to greenpoint Brooklyn. Today I am recording my cigar box instruments with my friend steve. Actually, steve is recording it and I am playing on it. Steve’s apartment is huge and nice. His friend mike is there when I get there. Mike has played in a bunch of bands. (ie- Hassan Chop, Den of Size) We sit around and talk and solve problems with the instruments. Kyle shows up. He will play the thumb piano. Turns out he is the guitarist from rainer maria who I saw a couple of weeks ago. I am a bit intimiated. Haven’t really played with people before and these guys are pros!!! I give up my fears and start to jam with them. We come up with some nice stuff. Just record large chunks of stuff. Steve and I will go through it later. Kyle leaves and we all switch instruments. Finish it all up around 5pm. Mike takes off and steve and I clean up. We go get polish food. (greenpoint is a polish neighborhood.) go to the studio and work in the library and eat a cupcake.

The recording was great. I am proud of what I played. I fit things together and was able to contribute and sound pretty good. I found the groove a couple times and I was surprised how I could hear what I need to do. Everyone was wonderfully nice. Mike wants me to meet his wife and maybe do some music with her. Cool. Basically, I realized I have within myself some natural ability to make good music and that I can be confident in that.

Today: slept 12 hours. Still fighting something. My body is tired from this past week. I took a break and watched spirited away. Came into the studio and finished most of my book.

This week was tough, but wonderful. I found out that I am stronger then I think. I can do and make great thing. I also find out that I want to make more music. That’s a nice feeling to have.

Good night my bunnies.