still listening to the postal service and spending too much time grinning because it is so good. i've taken to wandering around manhattan mouthing the words to myself and sing at times when no one seems to be around so if you see a bespectalled girl with a bob muttering to herself, it is probably me. don't be scared. i am really nice. promise.

just wanted to capture a moment. a verbal snapshot.
last night i was walking home at 1am and a garbage truck passed me on the street. i looked up and notice that the guy hanging on to the back of the truck was reading a magazine. it turns out that the top of the large gapping door is the perfect sill for a magazine and there happens to be a handy tail light positioned the right distance above the door that one can read a magazine in the dark. he was just holding onto the pole, standing on the bumper, leaning over the hole-like mouth and flipping pages through a glamour, maxium or playboy reading and browsing as the garbage truck bumped 22nd ave. it made me smile. a tiny moment of life so sweet and perfect.

i just got done looking over the weblog awards site. it is pretty rockin. mainly, looked at the top american blogs (yes, i am a typical american. only concerned with my own country. actually, i am not. this nice canadian in my program, thomas, told me the other day that i am less american-centric then most americans. he said that i remind him of people at home in canada. sweet. now i can move to another country, fit in and get free health care. then i can get my allergy medicine again.) anyways, the site was super good. lots of cool sites. one thing was weird. both moby and wil wheaton's weblogs were on it. i understand that celebrates need to have blogs and i think that is cool, but it is still weird to me. i have trouble posting stuff to this blog and i am not famous. maybe they don't have a problem cuz they are used to being so exposed. maybe it is another way to get an attention fix.

another thing of note: the postal service. i know they have been a hot and loved band for a while now, but i finally heard their disk and i am addicted!!! it is lovely and is the new soundtrack to my life. everywhere i go, it goes. nice OMD/new wave sounding music. lovely, yummy sounds that butter my ears with joy.

enough. now onto the past two weeks. i have submerged myself farther under the surface my semester. i am getting used to being under pressure of work again and feeling okay with not breathing as much air. i am finding the creative currents and letting myself float along in a blissful hazy of type, motion graphics and 3-d products.

monday, january 19 - it was martin luther king day. no class and no internship. met with emre and johnathan and we analyzed a magazine for our magazine class. we all had such different tastes that we decided that we could agree on Eye magazine. worked on a poster for the lecturer coming in this week. we have guest lectures every week. sometimes they come here and other times we go to their studios. different students do poster advertising each lecturer. i got to do sue coe. she is a visual journalist, an animal activist and an amazing illustrator. the posters have a heart in the middle with various close ups of different types of animals and humans showing her love for her subjects that she tackles in her illustrations. worked on freelance work too.

tuesday, jan. 20 - presented ideas for three TV channels. i presented the white trash network, the overindulgence channel and the explanation channel. personally, i love white trash the best, but my professor said that it would be a challenging subject to present in a way that is funny and not demeaning. i think i am up to the challenge, but i am a bit scared. came home and moved all my furniture way from the walls. the exterminator comes tomorrow to the residence to kill the cockroaches and bed bugs. i haven't had problems in my room, but they need to do everyone.

wednesday, jan. 21 - move everything out of my closet and on to my bed. my room sucks. had an after effects tutorial class to day from 9-noon. learned lots. i want to intern somewhere this summer doing motion graphics. i think i would be good at it and like it lot. got the Eye presentation ready for magazine class. presentations in class were good. liked them. it was thomas's birthday so we all went out to dinner. kris, araba and i got there late so we sat together instead of with cem, emre and the birthday boy. we were at this kick-ass old bar on prince street that was from 1850s. good food. we stayed late and closed down the bar. araba got super drunk and funny. good night. though i keep asking myself why i always end up with kris and araba at the end of the night? we always shut down places together.

thursday, jan. 22 - more kevin. he is a funny, smart and entertaining man. we submitted our sketches for carts. we were supposed to have 10. could only come up with 7. we ended up just showing 4 of the ones we liked. i showed my cart that turns into a pinhole camera where i could develop and print photos in it on the stop. my second cart was pollution of ground water. (the top of cart would be a scene of the country side with a farm, landfill and a nuclear power plant. the cart would be boxed in and show the layers of the earth and there would be a spigot on one side that spit out dirty water to the customer.) my third cart was a cart of friends. clear molded figure of horses and humans filled the cart. you could buy your friend and fill it up with whatever you wanted. fourth, i can't remember. the funny thing is that none of these were the ones that were picked. the ones i didn't show were the ones that made it. one was a cart with a stripper?s pole. what to show with that cart in someway is the idea that under all the fantasy of the job that a real women exist and i want the viewer to think about that a little more. the other one was a large gumball machine with little containers with various organs in it to show the idea of organ selling.

friday, jan. 23 - web class. showed websites that we like.

saturday, jan. 24 and sunday, jan. 25 - can't remember what i did. probably worked or something.

monday, jan. 26 - internship. not as crazy as some of the other days. left at 2:30 to go to the nursing home. we have a class with maira kalman this semester where we go in and meet with an elderly person every week and at the end of the semester we tell their story in someway.

i am excited and nervous about this class. this class was one of the things that drew me to this school when i applied. i like telling stories. i like to sit one on one with people and talk about what their lives were/are like. i like learning new things and seeing what other people see. this is probably why i did journalism as my undergraduate degree and why do and love photojournalism so much. there is some so cool and special to getting to know someone and hearing what they have to say. so for these reasons, i am excited about this project. i am nervous about not being able to communicate with someone. i am nervous about maybe uneasy about being in the nursing home. I wonder if i can take it.

so we met for this class and were assigned our people. i got a woman named gita litz and she was a photographer. her work is in the MOMA collection. should be interesting. after this we scurried back to the studio for our book class with howard reeves. it was the first time we met with him. we all went over what the class would be like and talked about what projects we would like to do.

i want to do a book that has in depth portraits of various poster artists. most books highlight the posters and give brief blurbs of who the artist are. i want a book that explores who they are, what their history/influences are, what their working practices are, what their studios are like, etc. i want to celebrate these artists that are circumventing the computer and going back to older traditions of making graphics such as silk screening and letterpressing. i love the images, textures and feeling that their art creates and think that they should be celebrated as much as their images are.

went out to a saloon/bar up on 2nd and 30th (i think) had a great sandwich. didn't drink. i have been feeling a little bit down lately. around this time year, i feel a little depressed. don't know if it is the weather or what. also i am a little daunted by all the work we have to do this semester. last semester i didn't really know what i was getting into. now i know what i am heading into. i feel like i just got done climbing a huge mountain (ie-last semester) and now i am in the valley looking at the next everest that i have to climb. i know i can do it, but my lazy, procrastinating, hibernating self wants to just watch the simpsons and read books.

tuesday, jan. 27 - had been thinking about my channel all week. how do i treat white trash in a way that is respectful? i respect it. in fact, i love it. i love the middle american, small town culture. i find it fascinating and wonderful. i realized that i want to celebrate it on my channel. not judge it. just set it out there and show it for what it is. a fascinating part of our culture and country. people here watch nascar, fishing shows, eat francheesie and deep fry turkeys. these things make america what it is for me and they are things that i love about this country. that is what i want my channel to be about. i struggle with these ideas and how to describe them. i also struggle with a name. white trash, double wide, moblie home, trailer hitch, redneck, blue collar, rural were all to harsh. i finally decided on mack. it refers to the truck and also to the "hey, mac!" the logo will be one of those embroidered name patches from a uniform. the manifesto, name and logo go over well. pheww! i thought i was going to blow it.

wednesday, jan. 28 - we had a snow day!! how crazy is that. new york definitely cannot handle snow like chicago can. it's super strange to get used to. i went shopping with natalie for a pair of boots. i found a pair at nine west on sale. i also found the cutest pair of black heels!! (i can't believe i said that.) why did i have to get excited about shoes and clothes and looking better when i am a poor graduate student? why couldn't i have done this in chicago when i was a well-paid art director. sigh. natalie and i also went to check out galleries in chelsea. it was wonderful hanging out with natalie. i felt like i did when i was hanging out with val or others in chicago before graduate school. it was nice.

thursday, jan. 29 - worked on sketches for products for cart. came up with four items. will tell you about them when i know what got picked. worked on my slides for the art directors club show entry. went to a studio visit. we saw marshall arisman. man, he is fucking cool!!! i loved hearing him talk! so inspirational. he said things that totally struck a chord in me. it was amazing. he rocks!!!!! i wish i could go have coffee with him every week for an hour. i could learn so much from him. he made me realize that my mind going off in all these crazy directions is just the way that an artists mind is built and that we are not crazy, but totally normal. also nice to meet someone so talented and so down to earth and so modest about what he does. he has trouble, doubts and creative blocks just like me.

went to the workshop with kevin and mark. learned how to use power tools. yummy. then had demonstrations on how to make more types of models.

friday, jan. 30 - get work more on our three ideas for magazines. we have a magazine called split that presents both sides of an issue. (ie-smoking, non-smoking.) a magazine that is obsessed just with one type of fruit for each issue. (the name is fruit). the last magazine is a food magazine that has stories and interesting things about food and history. we present and did okay. not the best presentation. we were not as prepared as some groups, but we have on and off days. didn't have web class. worked on helping lauren get the next show up.

saturday, jan. 31 - worked on my book cover ideas. went to a party at jeff's at night. at first the party didn't seem to be going so well for me. too many hipsters who were too hipster for me, but i finally settled in and met some cool people. becky, kate, eric and mark finally showed up and hung with them. met casey's friend harry who was totally awesome. good guy. got home at 4am. oh, and i forgot something. earlier in the evening, a shopkeeper almost gave me someone's credit card receipt. i told him that it was okay and that i would have give it back. he then told me to wait and ran back behind the counter to grab something out of a stack of shipping boxes. it turned out it was a big bottle of crazy czech beer called rebel. he gave it to me and said that honesty pays off. moments like this make life okay for me. (and the beer wasn't too bad.)

sunday, feb. 1 - i wasn't too hung over or tired the next day. went in and worked on book covers, freelance and my short movie for my motion graphics class. felt good to get so much work done.

tired. home. sleep. work more tomorrow.

time to play catch up on the blog. i am going to try and crank out two weeks tonight and two weeks tomorrow. tired and the pumpkin seeds that i am eating are not the best fuel for doing blogs. hot dogs and cheese would be good fuel. wish i had some. sigh. all i have is ginger snaps, pumpkin seeds and chocolate chip cookies. all supplied to me by my lovely mother. she sent me a care package. love the mom.

okay. we are now going to go back in time. image that it is the beginning of january instead of the beginning of february. do you see it? can you feel it? yeah!!!!! baby!! it's magic.

week before classes started: vegged out. watch way too much TV and just hung out. did work in the studio and other stuff. ana came and we explored NY in the super fridged temperatures. it reminded us of chicago which was nice, but we still froze our asses off. things we did: went to pearl river market. bought way to many asian cookies, gummies and crackers. went to the guggenheim and the cooper hewitt. good stuff at both. walked around a lot. in one day we did grand central, rockefeller center, a french book store, an asian bookstore, the swatch store, the NY times and magnolia to get cupcakes. Another day was spent walking around the village and going to toy tokyo, kid robot, H&M and katie's paperie. Bars visited were rolf's to see all the crazy christmas lights and the gramercy park hotel bar cuz it is just damn cool. oh, and we went to ABC carpet/interior store. and barnes and nobles. i hope ana had fun cuz i did.

school starts!!!

monday, jan. 12 - book class. our teacher is at a conference so steven heller gave a lecture on book jackets. wonderful as usual. learned much and drooled even more. beautiful, beautiful work.

tuesday, jan. 13 - video/tv/motion graphics class. we see our professors reel and this cool movie/talk where she connected all these random things together. neato cool. Bonnie Siegler is the professor. she is the co-owner of number seventeen. they do intros to tv shows and movies along with some tv commerical work.

wednesday, jan. 14 - magazine class. julie lasky is our professor. she used to be the managing editor at print magazine and now is the editor at ID magazine. she rocks. i had met her before. she was on a fellowship at northwestern during my senior year. she was in my photo class. we used to hang out and talk as developing film. it was funny, but i had no clue what print was back then. four years later, i was flattered to know that the managing editor of print thought my photos were lovely. for class we went around the room and told things about ourselves that no one in the class knows. good stuff. then julie explained the history of ID. one more thing. julie had on the best heels. i loved them!!

thursday, jan. 15 - Kevin O'Callaghan. my 3-D design class. kevin is great. funny, sarcastic and swears a lot. (my favorite characterists.) he and his assistant mark brought in the cart that we get to decorate this semester. (our project is to get a push cart and decorate it and also put products to sell on it. easy you thing? wrong. it has to tie to a political/social cause. now what would you do?) kevin and mark showed us different ways to make molds. learned lots.

friday, jan. 16 - web class with chris capuozzo. chris is the co-founder of funny garbage a great web design/motion graphics/all around creative design fim. they are the people that created crank yankers. we talked about what the class would entail.

i am sure that i did stuff after some of these classes like go out for drinks with people and stuff, but i really can't remember.

okay. i am going to stop this for tonight. i am not doing justice to my life. i am tired and therefore, all my entries are short and boring. i will try and write the next two weeks tomorrow.