sunday night. listening to the shins first album as i eat saltine crackers. apparently, a dinner of half a tuna salad sandwich and some butternut squash isn't enough to satisfy my appetite. what i would rather have instead of crackers is some chocolate or a cupcake or a hot fudge sundae. or just a jar of marchino cherries. that would be nice. no such luck though. crackers is all i have.

on to the past week:

monday, february 16: didn't have my internship because it was a holiday. we did have class though. came in and worked on my television spot more. also worked a bit more on my first product for my book class. went to the nursing home to visit my friend. she wasn't in the best of spirits, but she still wanted to talk. during the time i was there two other people and a dog stopped by to say hello to her. i think we all got her mind off of her problems for a while and she was in a much better mood later in the day. had book class. we went through everyone else's layouts and products. worked the night on my TV spot.

tuesday, february 17: went in to my internship. did lots. took down the old gallery show, filled past pages, wrapped up the pictures from the gallery show, mailed out old artwork. it was nice to be working on something else besides my classes. i forgot how nice it is having a normal 9-5 job. good to get out of the studio and the mindset of graduate school and wrap your brain around something else. turns out bonnie was sick for the TV class so we watched everyone's spots and then got suggestions from everyone on how to make them better. still need to order the monster truck video for mine. worked on finding more articles for the magazine class.

wednesday, february 18: got up super early. (yep. 9am is now officially super early in my book.) natalie and i went to get coffee and then we hit the porn stores/peep shows on 8 ave. we went in about four of them. most of the places were super clean and pretty nice. the clerks/owners were friendly and helpful. i didn't feel as out as place as i thought i would. it was fun to look at all the sex toys, videos and magazines. it also was interesting to see what type of guys shop in these stores and to see how they reacted to natalie and me wandering down the isles with them. i checked out a couple of the peepshow set-ups and got ideas for my stripper/peepshow cart. nice to finally be able to visualize what the hell i am going to build.

ordered my videos and various books off of amazon. i fucked up the shipping address on one of the orders. got extremely annoyed at amazon since they have no customer help phone number and you can't change the order after 5 minutes after posting it. arggggg!!!! finally got the amazon number. (google search for amazon phone number for those who are curious.) and it turns out that they can't do anything even if you talk to a live person. how evil.

met on the magazine. figured out covers and wrote up the magazine articles. stressed about it when i was doing it. not enough time and too much to do. the class went well. we looked at everyone's covers and gave feedback. ours went over well. everyone loved the flame/pepper cover version that anna did. after class, worked on sketching out my cart for kevin.

thursday, feb. 19: my monster truck video came. weird. i only put two day shipping and it got here next day. sweet. also my name patches for the logo for my TV network showed up. they are pretty fucking cool. worked more on my cart and the various products that it would have. went to curious pictures for a studio visit. they do various types of animation/motion graphics. nice stuff. came back and presented my cart to kevin. he liked what i was doing with the cart. gave me some good suggestions on what to do with various areas of it. didn't really dig my products. still need to work on those. went out and had a drink with lauren. just what we both needed. went home and did laundry until 2:30am while watching the monster truck video trying to pick out what footage would work for my spot.

friday, feb. 20: worked on my logo for my website. didn't really hit on anything stellar. figured out how to dub stuff off the monster truck VHS to DV tape to get it into the computer. web class was good. chris just caught up with everyone about their sites. i had to duck out early cuz i had a date, but i was pretty caught up on the project. need to send him my site map and ask him what areas he thinks i should map out.

saturday, feb. 21: came into the studio around noon. steven heller was meeting with us to show us paul rand's pitch books. we talked and looked at the books for about two hours. amazing and inspiring. it was nice to hear that rand wasn't the best presenter. he did the books as way to get everything layout in his mind of how to present and sell the logos/design. nice to know that you don't have to be a born salesman to get people to buy your ideas. i am all for working a bit harder on the back end to be able to sell something on the front end.

went home and took a shower and a quick nap. araba came over and we went to the cooper union to see a design show there. more amazing design. got some ideas on how to approach my suppa club logo. went to grif dogs and had a chocolate shake and a NY dog. then we headed over to Toys in Babeland. TIB is another sex shop, but it is a shop geared toward women. it was cool to see the difference between this sex store and the others that i had been in early in the week. all the products were out of their packages. we could feel, touch and play with them before buying them. the place was packed, but everyone was super nice and seemed to be having fun. looked at a couple of sex work books reading snippets written by strippers and peepshow workers. finally, we ended up asking one of the clerks questions about various products. what i loved is that she explained and talked about everything like a normal salesperson. the only difference being that such selling points as 100% cotton, machine wash and designer label were swapped out with clitoral stimulation, battery powered and multi-speed. definitely will go back if i ever need anything.

went home, ate dinner and fell asleep at 8pm. woke up at 2:30am and did some thinking on my TV spots. read a bit of my new book by johnathan frazen. I had read The Corrections and liked it okay. his writing loses me a bit. (too wordy.) his book of essays is a bit better, but still a lot of the flowery, jargoned filled sentences that make my eyes gloss over. went back to sleep at 5:30am and got up at noon.

sunday, feb. 22: got up at noon and ate lunch. came into the studio. finished my TV spot. talked to my parents about their trip to Las Vegas and just caught up with them in general. worked on some stuff for my internship. searched the web for cheap neon signs saying LIVE GIRLS and XXX for my stripper cart. also looked at gag sex gifts to see if i could find any thing that i sell as a product on my cart. now i am going to go home and brainstorm for my other TV spots and my sex cart.