…has been oddly busy. i somehow managed to go every day the past week with just enough sleep to be functional. barely. did a lot of fun stuff, but just didn’t get the 10 hours a night i need.

…i’m like a possom ok? i require a lot of sleep.

monday

the week started out on the wrong foot sleep-wise when i saw the ratatat show monday night at the empty bottle. the show was AWWWWESOME. loud and danceable and they rock so hard live! when they started playing ‘seventeen years’ for the encore the crowd went insane. they had a cool video projected behind them and during the encore they turned on the fog machine and just let it go. by the end of the show the whole stage was swathed in fog and when ratatat finished playing, as the last incredibly loud notes faded away, they stepped back and just sort of disappeared. totally fit the moment. i went to the show with jon, andrew and christina. we met josh and some of his friends/coworkers and katie and a bunch of her friends came too. doors were at 9:30, there were two openers and ratatat probably started playing shortly before midnight. i think i got home at 2:30 or something like that.

the next day i was next to useless at my internship. luckily i was doing inventory so all i had to do was precisely count pieces of art and lift semi-heavy portfolios of art worth hundreds of thousands of dollars – heck maybe millions, i have no idea. anyway, after monday night i was behind on sleep all week.

thursday

i was totally in the zone at work – doing like five different things at once, trying to change some stuff in my application. i was having a great day and getting a ton of things done. i had a little bit of a backache, so i took two excedrin. no sooner had i taken them when we got a surprise delivery…new herman miller chairs! it was a fantastic surprise. the day kept getting better and better.

except, remember those excedrin? bad idea. i forgot that excedrin has caffeine in it and i do not react well to stimulants of any kind. this is why i pretty much only drink green tea, never drink coffee and certainly don’t drink any red bull. i could feel it coming on but was powerless to do anything. by then it was probably too late to eat anything (i’d had only a banana to eat so far that day) to counteract the caffeine. i spent the next four hours twitchy and fidgety and distracted. i couldn’t sit still and couldn’t concentrate.

…which would’ve been bad enough, but soon after the chairs arrived, our internet service went down. for the rest of the day. so not only was i knocked out of the zone and wacked out on caffeine, i also couldn’t work (probably not the worst thing since the caffeine rendered me unable to concentrate). at aaron’s behest i started to read “vas: an opera in flatland“, which is this insanely awesomely designed book that aaron’s friend did the design for. everyone in the office seemed to have heard about it, but no one had read it all. i finished it. i spent all afternoon reading it. by 3 or 4 i no longer felt so anxious. finally. i went home at 5:30, tired and sluggish from the post-caffeine crash and totally dejected after my great day turned upside down.

friday

friday night travis, kareem and i went to an art show opening. bobby, the registar at my internship, had a new exhibit up at 65 grand. none of us knew what to expect, really. we got there and the entrance was this sort of shady looking doorway behind a restaurant. we went up 2 flights of stairs to what i guess is the kitchen of the gallery owner’s apartment. it was packed with people and there was art everywhere. hanging from the ceiling, on podiums, on the floor. i was worried someone was going to step on the artwork! the piece i liked best was ‘hive’ – a really disturbing paper and paint beehive-shaped sculpture that hung from the ceiling over the crowd. the bottom was open and gaping, as if something inside had forced its way out. we hung out there for awhile and drank some free beer, then decided that we wanted to see some more art.

on the second friday of the month, artists in pilsen usually open their studios to the public, so we drove down there to check it out. unfortunately once we got down there we found out that it was cancelled. soooo we drove back up to travis and kareem’s place and rented ‘kiss kiss bang bang’ which was outstanding. kareem bought three packages of kettlecorn and i think we probably ate all of it. i highly recommend ‘kiss kiss bang bang’ – so funny and a lot of fun to watch.

saturday

saturday i got up about five hours earlier than i would’ve liked. i picked up cecile and we went to the lincoln park archery club‘s open clinic at their range on the lake off of recreation drive. neither of us had done archery since high school. there were a good number of people there – probably 30 at the height. the club had all different sizes of bows, including compound bows. everyone took turns and it was a lot of fun!

after archery we went to hot doug‘s and had some delicious alligator sausages with spicy remoulade and blue cheese and tater tots. full and sleepy, we went to dominicks to get stuff for josh’s bbq. after a pit stop at toys r us we went to josh’s, where jon and josh were just getting things ready. i was going to go to nako’s performance but i was still pretty sluggish post-hot doug’s so i didn’t make it. i fell asleep for about half an hour and when i woke up mark and jocelyn and some others had arrived. a bunch of people came and we sat outside and listened to music and drank and ate good food. at about midnight, josh, andrew, jon, ben and i walked to another party on milwaukee. i hung out for about an hour then drove ben home.

sunday

sunday i got up about five hours earlier than i would’ve liked. i got on a few buses and met lindsay and erik at earwax for brunch. i hadn’t seen or talked to erik since high school so it was cool to catch up and hear what he’s doing now. after brunch lindsay and i went to the renegade craft fair in wicker park. amy was there selling her wares and dawn was helping her out. their booth was next to the folks from poketo. the poketo people seem very cool – they and dawn and amy were fast friends. i bought some of amy’s cards and a tshirt and some wrapping paper.

after renegade i went home and managed to get about half an hour of resting in before i had to get ready for the faith in place fall harvest celebration. i picked up antonio and katie and we spent the next hour stuck in pouring-rain traffic on our way out to oak park. we got there about half an hour late but managed to get some delicious desserts and hear the main presentation. dawn won a bunch of stuff in the silent auction, including a bunch of coffee, tea and hot chocolate for the office and a 3 day weekend at a vacation house. antonio, katie and i were all pretty tired from the weekend so we went straight home to get some sleep.

today

today went pretty well. i stayed at work a few hours later to try to make up for the time i lost on thursday. i got a lot done and am happy with where most of my projects stand. on friday kareem and i had talked about comics and he said he wanted to read ‘y the last man’, which pat got me into a month or so ago. after work, i lent all of my issues to kareem and then travis, kareem and i went to alliance for tea and macchiatos.

and that brings us up to the present. i came home, ate some leftovers and caught up on email. then i put on some tivo’ed ds9 and started writing this. it’s 11 now, which is about 3 hours later than i had fantasized about going to bed tonight…oh – plus my ds9 episode just finished. must be a sign.

coming up: mom and one of her friends are in town for two days to see the king tut exhibit at the field museum. we’ll have dinner wednesday night at the craziest place (within reason) i can think of, so if anyone has suggestions, let me know. this weekend i’m going home for a bunch of family birthdays on one side and trivia in bluegrass, iowa with the other side of the family. next tuesday night is the sufjan stevens concert at the riviera and next saturday is stefapalooza/labrequefest/engagement extravaganza in morris.