Do you know it's my birthday?

Sometimes when I'm walking through a subway tunnel past a thick stream of people I start to have internal conversations with them. I think its because i'm noticing things about them, really quickly as we pass each other, it's like flipping through a book of human faces. I often catch people's eyes as we pass each other. I wonder if it's unusual that I look at the people I pass.

that was a doodle of me walking past a lot of people on a typical day. Here is a doodle of me last tuesday.

Nobody knew it was my birthday! I don't know why but something was weird about that. Not really weird just...I dunno, it made me giggle. Like I had a special secret but they had no idea that they were walking past a girl WHO'S BIRTHDAY IT WAS! Yea, it's weird isn't it? Those doodles also double as experiments as my dear cousin Marc bought me a drawing tablet for my birthday!!! Those sketches were me trying to draw into Illustrator. I think I was having an easier time with Photoshop. Here was my first attempt at that.

it actually kinda looks like him. I think i'm gonna have fun with this thing. Well I'd love to tell you more about my birthday and the adventures that resulted from it, but I am very sleepy. Perhaps a later time, internet.

Mitzvah girl all day

First of all woah, a blog post two days in a row, this is a rarity i'm sure but I feel good right now and I feel like writing. I just watched Girls and it actually ended on a positive note this night and it gave me a boost of positive energy, especially as I simultaneously finished my art project but I'll get into that later. Today I woke up, made a cream cheese and cheddar cheese and chive omelette and then set off to Penn Station. I think I mentioned this in my previous post... I probably should've reviewed it so as not to be redundant but meh, here we are. Judy (Pearl's daughter) is awesome, she reminds me of Janeane Garofalo. I love Janeane Garofalo btw. Martha and I saw her preform at UBC one time but we didn't have a magical moment like I wanted. It would've made my year if she had at least heckled me or something...but I digress. Judy is a funny/spunky/smart art teacher with successful children. Her mother, Pearl, is my step-grandma of sorts. I stayed with Pearl for a couple days two years ago when I was in New York. She is wonderful. Judy and I took the Long Island Railroad up to Rockville to the assisted living home where Pearl is lives now. Pearl is still very smart and mostly lucid. Once Judy introduced me to her she remembered my name for the rest of the visit (which is more than I can say for most people I meet) and I think she remembered how she knows me but she was very fuzzy on things like relationships. She often thinks Judy is her aunt or mother, things like that. Pearl wanted to give us things to make us happy. She kept trying to give Judy sweaters that Judy had bought for her. It's sweet but I couldn't help but keep making connections to infancy, like when toddlers are always trying to hand you things...except they usually try and snatch it back right away so maybe this analogy doesn't work. Although on the way to Pearl's room we passed the "craft area" and it reminded me so much of elementary school. Big letters painted on the wall that said "inspire" and "create" and there was a display of paper mache masks that the seniors had made...I did that exact same activity in fifth grade! I don't really understand it but there seems to be some sort of cyclical pattern in behavior or needs. This feels like it's going to be a long post. Bare with me I've got two more mitzvahs to share before the day is done. Judy and I take the train back to the city (after popping our head into a cathedral next to the train station) turns out Judy has been commissioned all over the place, one time she made a fresco on the ceiling of a bank in North Carolina. Awesome. So we part at Penn Station and I take the E to the L, back to Brooklyn, then transfer to the G to go to Wendell's house. He lives in the...well next to the projects, but I was happy to be exploring a new neighborhood and was cold but beautiful out. Look I took a picture!

He wanted me to help him figure out how to create a vaulted ceiling out of paper for this installation he and his artist collective are working on. This part of the project sounds amazing and we might actually be able to pull it off. At first I was confused and frustrated because I had never really considered the construction of a vaulted ceiling before, this only needs to be a representation and not structural of course but still the shape of it was frustratingly obscure until I figured out that it was only two shapes converging... long story short is I think I have a handle on it now and I just need to spend a few hours with the computer at work to suss it out. Before I got to Wendell's I was getting texts from my friend Grace asking me to help her move her bed frame to her new apartment. I kinda wanted to help but since I already had a plan for the rest of my day I was trying to think of a polite way to decline, but then offered to buy me a cheeseburger and a beer afterwards. You guys. It has been way too long since I've had a cheeseburger, an unhealthy amount of time. And so I call her and plan to come to her place after Wendell's, and I do. I leave Wendell's house at 5:30 get back on the G, go to Grace's old apartment, in ANOTHER neighborhood I had never seen. We maneuver her Ikea bed frame (still in its assembled form, I guess she didn't have a drill or something) through her kitchen, down the stairs out onto the sidewalk. We walk it about 10 blocks, this is a full bed frame by the way, to her new apartment, in this cool graffiti industrial area where Hailey and I walked that one time, up two flights of stairs and into her new apartment where her new roommate and her Austrian boyfriend are animatedly watching the Super Bowl. I am starved to death because in my activity I skipped lunch. We finally get back on the L, go 4 stops and get a burger and beer from Dumont Burger so inexplicably amazing. I was so full afterwards, walking back to the subway I actually burped something solid and I didn't even care. It was worth it. I'm sorry if that was a gross over share but it is the only way I can figure to describe how good that burger was. Then I come home, exhausted from food, it's maybe 10pm. I watch two old episodes of 30 Rock and then new episode of Girls and I finish my doodle for what will eventually be the back of my new business card. I love it. It turned out exactly how I imagined I wanted it to, and now I'm going to sleep with a pleasant feeling of accomplishment.

My birthday is this week, but more on that later, you've read enough for now. Go rest your eyes.

Still here

I'm coming to you again from the indoor tundra of Storefront For Art and Architecture. It seems to be the only time I have forced, unmonitored, computer time. Although today I was given a fun AutoCAD task that I really want to be taking seriously but this is my first time using AutoCAD for mac and it's different and confusing, and not as streamline as the version I am accustomed to and so for now I'm am writing instead. I had a uniquely interesting experience on the subway getting here this morning. There is construction on the track where I usually get the 6 downtown and so the 6 runs on the other side of the track, but for some reason doesn't make it's regular stops but continues down to the end of the line and then you have to get out and transfer to an uptown 6. This happened to me last Saturday but is apparently the usual now for a Saturday. As the train passed my stop there was an inaudible announcement made, I turned to the woman next to me to ask if she heard it, but as it turns out she was a bit of a crazy lady who continued to speak animatedly about how this is just more kinds of "b.s" and if they're going to keep doing stuff like that then they should lower the price, and the something about her daughter...I kinda tuned out once I realized it was gonna be that kind of a conversation. But I only had one more stop to go so I smiled and giggled accordingly while trying to stare ahead. I did sneak one more look at her for any visible signs of crazy that I may have missed the first time. She had some bags, but not an insane amount. She was wearing cheetah print which maybe counts for something but alone is not grounds to avoid someone. Probably the give away was her lipstick permeating the line between lip and skin, but still I forgave myself for the mistake of engaging her in conversation. It was unforeseeable and inconsequential. As the train was about to reach it's final stop it turned a curve and a coffee cup laying on the floor pivoted so that it's spout was now closed to the floor, slowly releasing its contents out into the center of the aisle. There was nothing to do but stare, if the coffee moved far enough I would move my feet so that it not touch my shoes. It didn't go that far so I continued to stare. I then looked up to find that the other four passengers in the immediate vicinity were also staring blankly at the small stream of coffee. I giggled at the shared human behavior. What else were we to do? No one carried paper towels for these situations, all you can do is stare at the mess being made. So now i'm sitting here. I need to be better about moving around when I have to stay here because when I walked to Starbucks a few minutes ago I felt like my brain was frozen and I kinda couldn't remember how to walk. After this I'm going to go home, eat dinner with Martha and her parents who are in town. Tomorrow I will meet Pearl's daughter (Pearl is my step-grandmother for all intention purposes) at Penn Station and then go with her to the place where Pearl is living in Long Island, afterwords I will meet with Wendell about porticos... Wendell was in the Unitarian youth group that my dad led when I was three. Now he lives in New York as an unemployed artist. He and his artist collective are building a portion of a Cinema Palace and i'm going to discuss how they might make the ceiling into a portico of sorts, I dunno, it's kind of confusing to me too. I really need to move around now, I'm going to go do some squats and read about interns over there.