slacker=my middle name when it comes to this blog. but part of me feels it is forgivable that i neglect this little guy every once in a while. after all, i am in graduate school and school picked up speed two weeks ago. we spent the first part of the semester concepting and firming up ideas; and now, execution time is here. Time to produce everything that started as a thought a month or so ago. (and this is for all classes. all six.) so basically, i am busy and buried, but i am loving. i like to be busy. it is better then sitting on my ass and picking my nose.

i'll start off my spring break. it wasn't really a break. i actually worked more over those 7 days then i had most of the semester.

monday, march 8: went into the Times. I am in charge of putting up a show in the art department gallery. the artist is Ross MacDonald who is an illustrator, letterpress printer and a prop maker. i met ross before when he invited a group of us out to his farm in the fall to learn to letterpress. He is a super nice guy and wonderful to work with. Anyways, i went into the Times early and worked on organizing things for the show. ross, his wife and his daughter came around 1pm with all the artwork for the show. We figured out the titles to all the pieces and with the help of Mike, the carpenter, arranged the placement of the pieces. The MacDonald's headed home and I stayed to order all the food and do more work on the show. Stayed until 6:30pm that day and didn't really have lunch. Went home, had dinner and headed over to the workshop around 7pm. I had gotten my wood the day before and wanted to start cutting it. Mark, the shop manager, cut all my wood and helped me start to attach it to my cart. i walked out at 9pm with the skeleton of my cart put together. went back to the studio and worked on title cards and posters for the show until 1am in the morning.

tuesday, march 9: got little sleep. my body decided it wasn't tired and stayed up until 3am. In total, i got around 6 hours of sleep. headed back up to the Times. Mike, the carpenter, rocked it before i came in. He hung most of the artwork and it looked so good!! Ross framed all his work in various old picture frames and it looked fabulous. mounted the title cards and worked on the show more. headed home around 5pm. Ate dinner and headed to the workshop. worked more on the cart. headed out to williamsburg around 8pm or so to have dinner with a friend. stayed out late and had a great time. good to have a break.

wednesday, march 10: woke up tired again. felt sick. too much work and not enough sleep. back up to the times around 2pm. hung all the title cards and did more work. i cannot remember what it was right now, but i was busy during all these days. making phone calls, talking to people about various logistics with crowds, updating the RSVP list, securing space, etc. lots and lots of running around, bugging people for answers and just general organizing. amazing how much time everything took up, but it was worth it. left around 4 or so and walked down to 38th to pick up my fabric for my cart. then walked over to homefront hardware on 29th to get more supplies for the cart. went back to the studio to drop off stuff and then headed over to the woodshop. worked more on the cart. cut the openings for the windows on my cart. went out at night and had drinks with lauren and araba. we needed a break from the week and had all been down in the woodshop working. lauren's friend john joined us at international bar. chill evening. it snowed that night. pretty.

thursday, march 11: finished the intro poster for the show. did other stuff. today, my friends val, robyn and rachael are coming in from chicago. they are coming to celebrate my birthday which was last week and to see NY since they have never been here. they are staying for four days and i am super excited to have them here. yea!!! they arrived around 2:30pm or so. they got food to eat and then i walked them over to see my studio. unfortanly, i didn't have much time to spend with them because i had to head up to the times and be there by 4:30pm to get ready for the show. it's okay though. they are coming to the opening and we will hang out afterwards. get to the times and put the finishing touches on the show. get the food ready and the reception room. finally at 6:30pm, i head downstairs to check people in. have fun sitting at the front desk and admitting everyone. everyone was super nice and the security guard and i became fast friends. by the time i left at 7pm, we had around 80 people show up. (pretty damn good!!) went up stairs and found the girls. they dug the show and seemed happy. they headed out to a bar and i promised to hook up with them later. hung out at the show. met some people. became friends with one of ross's old interns. invited him to come and hang out with the girls and I. headed off to the village. got some hot dogs, hit a couple of bars and then we all went back to the gramercy park hotel where the girls were staying. hung out in their bar until 3am. finally headed home.

friday, march 12: got up late. my body finally crashed from the week and the drinking from the night before. went into the woodshop around 1pm to do some work. was cranky, groggy and out of it. took me way longer then i wanted to get stuff done. finally got my doors on and made them slide. caught up with the girls. they had been at the metropolitan museum of art all day. seemed to have had fun. i felt guilty to have left them to their own devices today. feel like am not being the best host. i think they understand. promise not to work on any school over the next two days. will just hangout with them. we head down to a bar in the east village where i had invited the handful of people that i know in NY to celebrate my birthday. the bar is usually super chill, but tonight it was total craziness. turns out they were having some crazy maximum party there. thomas, sam and their friend from canada showed up. Araba and lauren also came. everyone had fun and seemed to ignore the annoying crowds surrounding us. headed off to get hot dogs again at grif dogs. then it was home again.

saturday, march 20: got up and met the girls at union square at the farmer's market. we decided to go up to macy's and H&M for some shopping and then wanted to head down to chinatown. got through macy's and a little of H&M and decided we were too tired to do more. came back to the neighborhood. had some food and beer. val and i walked around the neighborhood looking for a good place for dinner as rachael and robyn hung out in the room. (we wanted to have one nice dinner to celebrate my birthday and robyn's.) val and i wandered all over looking at restaurants that lauren had suggested. found one that worked. then we went and got hot chocolate at this place on 18th. the BEST, MOST AMAZING hot chocolate ever!!!! heaven in a cup! went back to the hotel. girls got ready and then rachael came to see my room as val and robyn waited for their friend from milwaukee to come have dinner with us.

dinner was lovely. we ate at Friends of the Farmer. good home cooking in a cute, small restaurant. the vegans were happy and the meat-eaters were happy. val and rachael paid for dinner for robyn and I. it was super sweet. i have the best, most loving friends. so good! while at dinner, sam called and said some MFA illustration students would be meeting at a bar a couple of blocks away and we should meet them. went and met them. araba and thomas showed up later. good time. jessica, an illustrator from the MFA illustration program, was there. had met her in the fall. super cool chick. was good to see her again. val, rachael and robyn got along well with everyone and later pulled me aside to tell me how awesome my friend in NYC are. happy to see the chicago friends and the NYC friends digging each other. headed back to the hotel for mojitos. robyn couldn't finish hers so val and i split it. robyn left and val and i stayed and talked. it was good go have a one-on-one conversation with val. i miss that. we used to have drinks at least once a week in chicago just to talk, bitch and laugh. i do that with people here, but it isn't like val. val is my oldest and one of my closest friends. she knows me better then anyone. she told me how hard it was for her to have me leave. and that chicago isn't the same without me. funny, i never thought she or anyone would be so affected by me leaving. it's flattering. as usual, val and i had a wonderful, thought provoking conversation about our goals, boys and our lives in general. a good time.

sunday, march 14: went over to see the girls. decided to head down to chinatown. wandered around there a bit, but it was a bit too cold. decided to go back to the hotel and just hangout and watch tv. went and got pizza with val which we brought back to the room. Grease was on and we all watched it singing all the lyrics which we knew by heart. finally, i said my good-byes around 10pm and headed to the studio. need to shelf books which i had neglected over break. worked until 12:30 and then went home to bed.

monday, march 15: i am super stressed. i have been since saturday. the girls noticed and i felt bad that my mind was elsewhere, but i felt that i didn't get the stuff done that i wanted to over spring break. freaking out over all the work i have to get done. freaking out over my TV spot which i didn't really work on. just basically stressed and freaking. need to do yoga. go into the times and do work. leave around 3pm to go to my meeting with Maira Kalman. we are meeting in small groups with maira to discuss what we are doing for stories about the people we have been visiting in the nursing home. my idea goes over well. will be making a small book with photos that i have taken around NY that are in neighborhoods or that tie into my person's life story. should be fun. book class is next. continue working on my project. after class, work on my television spot. collect new footage and hope it works. i've been racking my brain all week for a new spot or the "perfect" solve, but it doesn't come. sigh.

tuesday, march 16: continue working on spot. show it in class. get good feedback. feel that it isn't as bad as i thought. i can tweak it and make it work. feel better. we got fortune cookies in class with which we have to come up with a 30 sec short. mine says, "The important thing is to express yourself." hmmm?there is much i can do with that. met with my magazine group. figure out the structure of the magazine and i come up with a table of contents.

wednesday, march 17: go into the woodshop and work for a bit. go back to the studio around 3pm. my friend alex is coming into lecture about music composition for commercials. a handful of people show up, but alex doesn't seem to mind. it was a great lecture and everyone who came seemed happy with it. i am amazed that alex and i have know each other for 10 years and really haven't hung out or had interaction over the past 6 years, but we still both share a lot of the same ideas and philosophies. funny that we have had two different paths, but ended up having experiences that molded our beliefs in similar ways. had magazine class. steven heller gave a lecture about portfolio magazine. julie talked about the business side of magazines. headed out to a movie with my friend jake. we had drinks and saw city of god. it was my second screening and i still loved it. an amazing, amazing movie.

thursday, march 18: worked on stuff in the studio. worked on freelance. met kevin and the class at the 23rd gallery space to see where everything is going to go for our cart show. went over to the woodshop and put together my shadowboxes. came back to the studio and finished up my freelance.

friday, march 19: got up super, super early and went to the dentist. my body didn't let me sleep so i got 4 hours of sleep. the dentist was cool. i got to the NYU school where dentistry students work on me. so interesting. had fun watching everything that i forgot that i was tired. my dentist is a super nice indian woman. she took 19 X-rays of my teeth and explained everything she was doing. learned much. have to go back two more times, but i have insurance through them so everything is paid for. yippee!! went home and went to bed for two hours. had website class. seem to be in an okay position. now just need to start building my site. ieeeeee?web design. should be okay. just a little slow at it. worked on my website at night.

saturday, march 19: went out to brooklyn to meet kris and go to home depot. the trains were fucked up so it took me an hour and a half to track chris down. finally found him and we headed to home depot. luckily, it wasn't to crowded there so we found what we wanted and got out. got back into the city around 2pm and found out no one was in the woodshop. there was a crazy war protest that day that had messed up all the traffic all over manhattan. kris and I avoided it because we were taking the trains. got lunch at pete's place with kris and then headed back to the woodshop. spackled the inside of my shadowboxes and began to paint my cart. it looks pretty cool. went out with natalie, chris and kris. stayed out late and ended up this french place on park place. had pate at 3am. good. surreal, but good.

sunday, march 21: came into the studio and worked on my book project. finished my dvd. also worked on my second TV spot and figured out what i was doing with my fortune. ran around manhattan looking for pink spray paint, meat tenderizers and turkey basters for my cart. worked on my cart a bit too. went home and did laundry.

good night all! must sleep. have work to do tomorrow on my cart.