esprit de l'escalier

School and some tunes

Sorry for the lack of posts! Things are going well. School is going well so far. I like my classes and classmates. Even the stats class seems like it will be fun. (I think working with number crunching nerds for so long rubbed off on me. Heehee, love you guys.) I only have classes Monday and Wednesday (with the hopes I'll be working part-time), so my days on campus are LONG.

I packed my lunch and dinner today, but my PB&J dinner melted quite a bit in my car today. I'm done with this 90 degree heat. Plus my building is freezing, so there is no happy medium. The building is all exposed concrete on the inside (here's an inside peek). It's not to my taste, plus it's drafty and has poor acoustics. It's like the architects tried to be too edgy and missed the mark. I like my buildings to be a bit more functional (not to mention pretty). The library is divine, though, and has a collection of designer chairs. My first day of school I didn't have anything to do and sat in an Eames rocker reading a book on Louis Sullivan. It was fairly divine. (I'm completely in love with the book, and John Szarkowski's photography.)

My commute to school begins early and I've becoming used to watching the sun rise. Below are some songs that I am currently loving on my (long) commute.

I'm totally obsessed with this new song from Spoon, "You Got Yr Cherry Bomb" and am very sad that a good video does not exist. The live vids are kind of terrible. Here's a link to where it's streaming elsewhere... Turn up the speakers.

Below is a video for John Doe's song the "The Golden State." On the album version, he sings with Kathleen Edwards, whom I love. Here the song is a little slower and is sung with Cindy Wasserman. It's still good.

And here's a video of a new Josh song, "Mind's Eye." The new album has firmly nestled itself into my brain.

Big changes afoot

I have very good news that I meet with mixed emotions.

Tuesday morning I found out that I got into an urban planning Master's program I had applied to, which starts September 19! Come the end of August I'll find myself moving back to Ohio, ensconced in my parents' basement (until alternate housing can be arranged). I'll be a Buckeye again, back in the heart of it all.

Obviously this is something that has been cooking for awhile, but I've been a little cagey about it, not wanting to discuss it too much, in case it fell through, so I haven't put much actual thought about leaving Chicago. This has been my home for four years. My job has been my only real job, and I will have been there almost four years. I've lived in this city long enough that it seems small, and I run into friends and acquaintances all over in random places. I love my friends here, I love my co-workers, I love my roommate, I love this city. And yet I'm leaving.

I got a little emotional on Wednesday coming back from lunch, the immediate elation of the acceptance letter wearing thin. I walked past Millennium Park and the gorgeous buildings on Michigan Avenue, thinking that when I spend time here next it'll be as an ex-Chicagoan, a tourist. (Are cities like Narnia, once a king or queen, always?)

While I'll miss public transportation (Columbus has a bus line that isn't horrible, or maybe it is, it's been awhile), I won't miss the CTA and it's continuing implosion. I won't miss the scandals from the Mayor's office, either.

For awhile I've felt that Chicago is a little too big for me, so Columbus fits the bill in that regard. I'm excited to rediscover it. There are excellent restaurants and shops, and I'll be closer to my parents and grandparents. There are also semi-dormant friendships to reawaken and new ones to be made.

I am most excited about this program. I'm excited to dive into city planning and to truly carve out a niche for myself. But I haven't given myself enough time to truly get used to the idea of moving. In a month! So much organizing to do, and packing and cleaning. The last of this summer will fly as fast as the first.

The Cosmic Infinite

I missed my graphic design class last week because I was in Ohio. I missed viewing everyone's posters for an art movement. The professor had printed them out and everyone got a chance to look and critique each other's work. That's mine up above (click on it if you want to see it larger) on Suprematism. Apparently people liked it, which is fun to know. I wish I could have seen everyone else's work.

I also missed beginning our final project. Six pages dedicated to your art movement. I showed up in class tonight armed with two heavy art books. I spent the first half an hour scanning paintings I might want to use. And then spent a half an hour or so staring at a blank Illustrator page, completely blocked. My brain was full of my day of Excel spreadsheets and a raging headache that was finally tapering off. I flipped through our text book and then through one of the art books and started messing around.

Slowly an intro page emerged, and then the second page. I looked at some other people's work and got an idea about how to tie everything together. The professor seemed to like the direction in which I was moving. All was going well until Illustrator suddenly closed. Then I realized that I had been pressing Control-S instead of open-apple-S to save. Because part of my brain was still in the PC world. Argh. I was able to gin up a pretty good approximation of where I had left it, but it was pretty frustrating. Even with the setback, it was nice to work through a mental block and to get the creativity going.

A full plate

(The following is kind of whiny. Feel free to skip to the picture of the kitten.)

The immediate future, at least until the end of March, scares me just a little bit. Work is heating up. We just finished data collection and are cleaning the data and getting ready to deliver it to the client. All the while we are waiting for the rebid contract of the next round of the project to come out. (That may not make any sense, but trust me when I say I'm going to be very busy and will probably have nightmares about excel spreadsheets.)

I also just recently decided that I want to get another master's degree (once this one is done) and would like to start in the fall. So I've got the GRE to take, as well as an essay to write, a writing sample to polish and professors and colleagues to harangue about recommendations. I also need to get my visa to China ready and make some plans for my trip other than arrival and depature dates. Plus I've got two night classes that seem like they are going to be fun, but very production heavy. Hopefully that means not a ton of reading. I also like having something of a social life, so that needs to get worked in there somewhere.

I'm trying to keep a master To-Do list with deadlines. Hopefully I can keep myself honest. Actually, that's partially why I aired my annoying laundry here. Feel free to nag and poke. I'll need it. I've realize something else I will need. For twenty-five years I've avoided a coffee addiction. I think my time has come. Actually, I know it has. Sigh.

Anyhow, sorry for my belly aching. Here's the promised picture of the kitten. Frank had his second round of vaccines last night. He now weighs 3lbs. 8oz. He also comes to his name when called, which I think is fabulous. He can't not come when you call him. It's hilarious. Sometimes it looks like he fights against it but can't help himself. I have no idea how this happened.

It does not look like this today

But I am going to pretend that it does. I spent all of yesterday in the library working on a paper due next week. (Though I did sneak out to see Stranger Than Fiction, which I enjoyed more than I thought I would. Last week I saw Little Children, which was good, but made me extremely tense. It was populated with some very beautiful people, though.)

Since I'm busy busy and the weather is pretty November (read: grey, cold), I thought I'd post some photos from a couple of weeks ago, when it was sunny. (See the originals here and here.) My mood seems to be a reflection of the weather as well. I have an extreme want to hibernate.

How I've become a little OCD

Buckingham Fountain
Originally uploaded by clairehelene7.

I'm not a woman who plans well. I believe plans are mere guidelines and can and should be thrown out as needed. This is probably evident in my haphazard approach to dressing myself every morning. This week, however, there is a little growth in my personhood. I have been haranguing a couple of my professors in my master's program about the rest of the year's schedule. (This is partially due to the fact that I'm scheming to take a big trip off the continent over my spring break and want to figure out dates so I can buy a plane ticket.)

Anyhow, I've become a little OCD about it, and two of these poor profs have received many prodding emails from me. Thanks to this, though, I have figured out my academic schedule up to this summer. Once I take all of those classes I have two classes left, and one of those is a required capstone class. There is one class that is left to chance. Isn't that nuts? I can barely plan to have enough food for the week. My life is now planned. SCARY.

The picture above is from my lunchtime walk in Grant Park today.

Cotton-headed start to the day

I feel like my brain and whole body is covered in one of those lead vests you wear at the dentists—all my limbs are being dragged down by a force greater than gravity. My head is wooly with cotton and I'm having trouble finishing sentences. The last two weeks have been go-go-go and my body is now ready for a nice long nap. I curled myself up into my ergonomic chair and thought about napping, but my cube is in much too public a thoroughfare. I'd be caught for sure.

My summer session class on text and image ended last night. I enjoyed it—it was a good mixture of theory and hands on projects. It sounds weird, but now I have a better understanding of some other classes I need to take. My professor did a good job, though some of the other students annoyed me. Some of us went out for a couple of beers after we were done last night. Two of the people that annoyed me the most were there. I have a huge pet peeve of people who refuse to discuss politics with strangers. The one loud mouth guy who had to be right about everything (which only makes me argumentative, because who’s he to say he’s right about everything?) touched on something political and then wouldn’t let me continue the conversation. WTF? I can understand people not wanting to discuss politics in a job interview or something like that, but we were just sitting around chatting. AND HE BROUGHT IT UP. It pisses me off.

Anyhow, I wrote the beginning part of this post around noon and now it’s almost time to go home and I’m feeling perkier. The latte finally caught up with me. Plus I’ve been grooving to some music on Reg’s Coffeehouse and Pandora. The beats have woken my brain from its little slumber.

I'm listening to Sean Hayes’s album Big Black Hole And The Little Baby Star. You can stream a couple of songs at his website. It’s kind of funky and groovy for an acoustic singer/songwriter. I found him via Erin McKeown’s MySpace page. Check it out, it’s fantastic.

Side commenting

I started my third quarter tonight. I think it's going to be a good class, the professor seems really great. It's a seminar about gender and identity and new media. I was walking out of class with a friend from my previous classes and he agreed with me that he had high hopes for the class, but was worried about some people comandeering the discussion. (I am always worried that I am one of those people, because I tend to be very vocal in classes. I'm just chatty and can't help it.) He said I wasn't one he was worried about, which made me feel better. Besides, I really prefer side comments as opposed to hogging the spotlight. Side commenting has gotten me into trouble time and time again, but I am almost always on topic, which I always feel should count for something. I like the sidelines better, though. I think sometimes more interesting things are going on off to the side than front and center. That's why I like comments on blogs. I kind of feel like they are side comments to whatever the topic at hand is. Little conversations happen, and sometimes there are multiple conversations that don't relate to each other exactly. I like that. Though I like lurking, too. Blue Girl had a good quote up the other day that perfectly explained lurking. Go take a look. (And maybe, if you want, de-lurk yourself here and say hello!)

***Update: Go check out the long list of comments over at Mannion's place for his post about movies about writers... It represents the beauty of blogs and comments for me!

The Evening Vaudeville Show News Hour

Have I said how much I'm enjoying my class on Old Media, New Media? I really love being back in a classroom, and I find this class to be very stimulating. This week was the first in two weeks' discussion of how journalism is changing (and has changed).

This evening we talked about how public sentiment for journalists keeps declining and how the news organizations keep making themselves more and more into cartoons of their former selves. We talked about the arrogance of the analog news services, especially the NYTimes. (Which I have to say I enjoyed more than I should have.) We talked about how news has become this vaudevillian display where news stories aren't actually told, but incredibly slanted spectacle is given as if it has some meaning. We watch a lot of clips in class, and this is usually a lot of fun, but being forced to watch 3 hours of tv news clips underlined the reasons why I don't watch tv news. It all makes me a little ill. I don't want to see how straight news gets gussied up only to have the lede and important information buried for the sake of marketability.

One thing that we watched that was really amazing in its arrogance was a documentary the NYTimes created and sent to journalism schools to show how real news is made. Thomas Friedman explained the three step process to writing: 1) Collect as much information as you can about the subject; 2) Cross off what you don't believe; 3) Write up the rest.

Let's focus on #2. There was once a time when the basic rational powers of people were respected, but I guess we've moved light years away from the Enlightenment, haven't we? Why are people leaving mainstream media? Arrogance and paternalism. Hello? Cross off what you don't believe? Isn't that slanting the story? The media is all about directing people's thoughts on any subject. Giving two "talking heads" a chance to screech about each side of an issue isn't being balanced. Can we move away from the corporatization of the news or are we too far gone? (I think I could say that about the country, actually.)

Anyhow, for more angry ranting about what a mess the media is, please see Lance.

Zing zing zing went my heartbeat

I had an especially nice time in class this evening. I am currently taking a class called "Old media, new media" which is something of a readings class on the history of different sorts of media forms and how they have adapted to new technologies. Tonight we discussed movies, the Hollywood system and how adolescent boys are dropping like flies from movie theatres to instead play video games. My favorite part? The movie clips. My professor always intersperses his lecture with clips, but this class was especially nice. I've got the Trolley Song from Meet Me in St. Louis in my head. (He showed that for an example of integrated movie musicals. It was a favorite as a kid.) He also showed the title song from Singin' in the Rain. I would like to go out right now and rent them and watch them back to back. Unfortunately life won't let me do that. (Why don't I own either of them?)

Some find me a little annoying to take to movies, because I tend to have loud reactions to things. Tonight was no different. I couldn't help but laugh in the scene from You Can't Take It With You, when Jimmy Stewart gets Jean Arthur to scream in the restaurant. I hate it in classes when people don't respond to anything. I think I'll have to rent it and watch all the way through. I'm also going to have to watch The Lady From Shanghai. Maybe I'll skip my Superbowl parties and have a little film festival instead.

I have a question, if any one out there can answer it, I'd be much obliged. We watched the running scene from Drums Along The Mohawk. Is the "It's..." man from the Monty Python Flying Circuses a joke on that? Because that's what I thought of when I saw that scene.