this weekend eric was in town so he scheduled that flying lesson i gave him for his birthday. it was cool – we went up in a little single engine cessna and eric got to do the take off and everything! got some photos, but it was pretty hazy on saturday so we’ll see how they actually turned out. yesterday charlie and i went to the botanic garden and saw like 50 bunnies. they were EVERYWHERE and totally not afraid of people. i think i have 10 photos of flowers and 30 photos of bunnies. photos from this weekend, last weekend’s trip to brookfield zoo and the arboretum will hopefully be posted this weekend be posted a month late. sorry.

also this past weekend – jeremy’s going-away bbq, devin’s solo acoustic show, the swindler bros. birthday party, and ‘a scanner darkly’. sadly, no genderqueer fashion show or dawn’s softball game, but there’s always next weekend for that (softball game, not fashion show).

last night i went to danny’s with cecile and a bunch of her friends, some of which were at the late-night harry potter showing way back when. we had some beers and shots (french martinis?) then devin picked us all up and we went to another girl’s apartment and hung out awhile (with a small side-trip to the 24-hour mcdonald’s drive-thru at western and milwaukee). it was a great night until the part where it took me almost 2 hours to get home because of how rarely the buses run at 2:30am.

today i struggled and managed to get up at a decent time. matt picked me up and we went to the morton arboretum in lisle. it was soooo cool. i liked it a lot more than the botanic garden. mostly because there was a lot more solitude. the botanic garden is 385 acres and the tree zoo, as matt called it, is 1700 acres. we saw one part of the path/road that looked like something out of a fairy tale (or as matt said, lord of the rings) – tall trees to the sides like a long tunnel.

after the arboretum we found an empty corporate parking lot and matt gave me my first lesson on driving stick in his passat. it was…ok. could’ve been better, could’ve been worse i guess. 🙂 i got some smooth starts in there but also some stalling and some leaving of rubber on the pavement. it wasn’t nearly as nerve-wracking as i thought it would be though. tomorrow my mom is going to give me my second lesson in our truck, so hopefully i’ll be able to show some improvement.

after driving we went to fry’s electronics, the biggest electronics store i’ve ever seen (and true to nerd stereotype, the more knowledgeable the subject, the crappier the website). i could practically hear the angels singing as i walked through the doors. it was awesome until we were walking through the computer parts area – where you can buy special heat sinks and video cards and water-cooling systems, etc etc. i was oogling the cooling fans and custom cases when i realized that something was horribly wrong. wrong with the air. in the space of 2 aisles the b.o. factor had skyrocketed. wtf? it was a disappointing reinforcement of a nerd stereotype.

matt bought some random things including a car charger for his new treo (!!!) and i bought probably the most insulting thing i could get at fry’s, which was a cassette deck adapter. woo! antiquated technology, meet ipod. ipod, meet the only reliable way to listen to you in a car that doesn’t have an aux in.

tomorrow morning my parents are picking me up for a few days at home. cook-out on monday, unlimited piano access, kitty and fireworks – woo!

holy crap is it raining. so much thunder and it goes on for so long – my windows are continuously shaking. thunderstorms make me miss home. opening the front door and standing on the porch – looking over the front yard, across the court and into the trees on the other side, watching the rain come down. the sound of the rain pelting the roof and rattling in the gutters and downspouts. the smell of rain in the air on a warm night. my cat peeking her head around the doorframe to see what i see. sticking an arm out over the porch steps to feel the fresh rain on my skin. listening to the rain rustling the trees and falling asleep to the sound of it all.

maybe it’ll rain while i’m home this weekend.

from thursday through monday i was on set for ‘galileo’s grave’ and it was FANTASTIC. hands down the best set i’ve been on. maybe it was the awesome all-girl camera crew, maybe it was the 25′ crane, maybe it was the truck rig, maybe it was the ADs riding around set on the actor’s bicycles. i met a lot of cool people and got to know better or reconnected with others.

thursday was hot and sweaty – we were outside fro 9:30am to 5:00pm – but the rest of the weekend felt like october. friday and saturday nights everyone was bundled up in multiple layers except for a few brave grips who were still rocking shorts and tshirts.

besides the crane shot and the shots from the back of the pickup truck we also did a lot of shots from ladders. except for a few time-lapse inserts and a shot of a computer screen, the entire film was hand-held or steadicam. we shot all over the north side of chicago – clark & bryn mawr, bohemian national cemetery – and out on the west side and in arlington heights.

photos and production stills

antonio gave me a little stuffed snorlax! he totally made my day 🙂

saturday jon threw a bbq so i spent the whole day/night over there. we had delicious grilled meats, cold beer and lots of cornhole. i started out really terrible at cornhole but in the grudge match of the filipinos -vs- non-filipinos (jon & cecile -vs- devin and me) my team won best 2/3! i don’t know what happened but at some point i got the force and arc just right and was sinking beanbags one after another. all kinds of bizarre subjects of conversation were bandied about – gang wars, public acts of violence, the merits of ds9 -vs- tng, how lame it is that i’m still not caught up with battlestar galactica, and randomly i met a guy (whom i’d seen at these parties before but never talked to) for whose band firebelly did the cd insert design. crazy! small world i guess.

sunday i went sunglasses shopping with ozzie. no luck, but to be honest i could’ve seen something perfect and i wouldn’t have recognized it. it was like 90° and pretty humid and we went to old orchard which is an outdoor mall. it was like the surface of the sun out there and all i could think about was how much i wanted to lie in front of a fan and concentrate on minimizing body movement.

last night i saw the howe gelb show at the old town school of folk music and i have to think about this a little more seriously, but i think it was the best show i’ve ever seen. i wasn’t too sure about him after listening to a few of his tracks beforehand, but performing live this guy kills. he had a gospel choir with him and some insanely good musicians playing with him. it was the single most energetic and uplifting and toe-tapping concert i’ve ever experienced. plus, the venue is smaller and very intimate and andrew got us seats in the front row of tables shoved right up against the stage. the opener, angela desveaux was also good – she said she’d been doing nothing in chicago but playing guitar hero! her bass player was born in chicago and his aunt and uncle came to the show – they were sitting at the table next to me and once their set was over he sat with them to watch howe. he was totally rocking out – i think we all were in the front row. i wonder if anyone else there was as excited as we were…i mean, probably. it was a barn burner!

today was less exciting, but not because of the company – because of getting to the company. lindsay put on another lovely picnic out in lombard and ian was in town so i met up with him too. unfortunately these meetings were in suburbs nowhere near each other so i ended up kiling about 5 hours on the metra, el or bus to spend 1.5 hours with lindsay and 5 mintues with ian (construction at howard meant i was stuck on the platform for-freaking-ever) before he had to leave for the airport. i’m glad i saw him and went to the picnic though – it would’ve been even better if the weather had cooperated and not thunderstormed most of the afternoon!

on the docket for tonight: laundry (oh boy!), tivo and trying not to get heat stroke in my un-air conditioned apartment.

today i spent an obscene or nearly-obscene amount of money on new furniture. between this and the last month of clothes shopping (all of this is stuff i’ve been putting off getting for far too long) i’m really dreading seeing my credit card bill this month. mostly from ikea, i bought a whole new bedroom set (not that what i had before would in any circle qualify as a ‘set’), three bookshelves, a kitchen island, various kitchen wares, a pillow, hangars and other assorted miscellany.

i’ve just finished putting together one of my new dressers (i would assemble the other one as well, but i don’t want my upstairs neighbor to hate me any more than he already does) and transfering clothes from my old dresser. i’m most excited about having a real bed frame/headboard – a luxury i haven’t experienced since college. and any time a ‘luxury’ was last experienced in college, you know something is horribly horribly wrong.

next step: um…well, assemble everything and reorganize (my anal-ness is so excited by this). but then AFTER that, new (smaller) couch, rearranging living room and getting a piano.