How do I want you to feel about my life today?
Well, I finally started cranking out some silkscreened postcards. I am still cutting most of them out, but a limited run (of postcard no. 9, out of sequence only because they were the most plentiful) was dropped in the Mission and 24th mailbox on Friday. Prepare yourself.
There are more on the way. I seriously underestimated the issues involved in screening 220 postcards (matching fronts and backs, successfully printing little letters, finding a good halftone but that’s vague but not too vague) but that’s what workshops are for. Joanna continued to crank out some pretty cool stuff too. I grabbed one of her test strips.
On Wednesday, Phanna and I won trivia night with an unprecedented two man team! It came down to a rare tiebreaker question: “what was the average weight, in lbs, of a knight’s armor in the middle ages?” We said forty-five. It’s fifty. Add one Pig Buck to the bank.
Work is so silly. I read about valves and programmable logic controllers and things like that, and the next day I show thirty-five college kids what I learned. Part of their training is licensing as a third engineer (on a ship) and this week Baby Bluehawk and her friend passed the exam requirement. She stopped by my office beaming to deliver the news and it was charming. So that’s a good part of my job, right?
The second Critical Mass of 2007 was much more successful than the first. This time I coralled the Bulldogger and Marella to join me, but we cut it too close and, again, I missed the beginning (do they really start at 6:30?). Luckily, we intercepted a fellow straggler who came prepared with a walkie-talkie and he led us to Fisherman’s Wharf, where somehow the mass had extended itself. After that (and besides a rare Pac Heights excursion) it was a pretty standard ride. The guy with the ridiculously loud speaker cart was there this time, which makes a big difference.
This week, after nine and a half years of post secondary education, Jill started her first job since the ol’ sandwich shop in high school. That’s the kind of irony grad school gets you. But suddenly she’s a development engineer at a fancy biotech company on the Peninsula and I am very proud of her. I still remember first meeting her in Dr. Stewart’s Physiscs class on virtually our first day at Pitt. We ended up choosing the same major (bioengineering) and working together on just about every group project, sometimes against our will. I caught up with her for a rushed Guinness (which she claims to only drink with me) on Wednesday night and asked her how it was going. “Lonely,” she said. She will be fine. Jill is always fine.
Oh Morgan Jameson, what the fuck are we doing? I wrote her a really heartfelt email a little while ago but it was utterly unsendable. So I didn’t send it, we didn’t speak for a while, and now, somehow, I am doing this thing where I write her about every little detail of my madness. And make no mistake, it is madness: we wrote 5,548 words to each other this weekend. It’s helped bring things to a conclusion but now she just thinks I am insane and self absorbed, which of course is kind of true, but I think I regret it. As it stands now, the plan is to not write each other for a month.
I went to an Oscar party at Louise’s tonight. I will say several things about Louise: (a) she throws a damn good Oscar party. Just like last year, it featured her baked potato bar, which is executed with such authority that it transcends the irony that would surely destroy any lesser baked potato bar. This brings up another good thing about Louise: (b) she’s groomed her irony into sincerity, which seems to me like your only viable option if you are going to stick with this type of disposition(At least without becoming an insufferable Mission jerkoff). Louise does karaoke and Stevie Nicks parties and sundae bars because she loves them. We also made buttons, which I realized is an awesome thing to do.
After another Sparky’s breakfast this week, Sadie took Nowell and I to the giant camera obscura at the Cliff House. It was closed (apparently because the day wasn’t “beautiful enough”) but at least it made for a good Polaroid.
