Only 27 min left of my favorite month

Well, the bell is about to toll the end of the fine month of October.

No other month compares in my opinion. October is the time of year you truly feel the day's length fleeting and your senses become awakened to a new palette of smells and colours. The sun begins to set around 5:00pm and soon the dinner hour is completely black, suggesting a different variety of foods should also be introduced. Thinking back to late June, when evenings would often trail along until nearly 10:00pm, the evenings of October seem entirely longer and dominant to the days. Something nice about this October is that it was essentially a dry month, too, allowing me to bike to school and back without cursing Mother Nature.

Now just 21 minutes left in October 2007.

I should take a quick moment to commemorate the birthday of my father and three uncles, who turned 61 and 59 last Sunday (28th). Happy birthday, Pops.

Tonight is Halloween. I am without costume, still at school, and I just finished coloring these perspectives I promised my studio group all weekend. I will now go scan them and head home.

Here is one:


Oh. Here's to a rockin' November.

Shellac = shiny fun things

Our midterm for my Landscape Drawing and Painting class is to make a weird proscenium and memory chamber for two soon-to-become threatened species: Apis mellifera (common honeybee) and Quercus agrifolia (Coast Live Oak). It is a strange project but it is very doable because there are only a few guidelines we must follow. Above all it should be interesting to look at. I think I succeeded.

Look inside the boxes:





Required parts were two matchboxes and one cigar box as the base for the assignment's elements. I didn't want to bother with procuring a real cigar box, so I made one using museum board that I found in a drawer. The matchboxes were easier to come by.

I used a lot of shellac-varnish on my box. Everything is eerily shiny and decoupage-y looking. It would probably go up in flames if one of those matches was lit. I am exhausted from all this craft making. I shall now sleep.

Happy Birthday, Janine

Today is Janine's birthday. Here's to you!

I sent her a card from this cheeky site I just found. Some of these are pretty damn hilarious.

Another gratuituous link...

Click here for Swedish people. I shall be enjoying this performance very soon.

Otter boy

A Monday with Philippe:

Going too far

I found this item on one of my classmate's desks this morning. I believe in haute cuisine and all that junk, but I think this case of fusion has overstepped some delicate boundaries.

The kicker is that this particular person has in the past claimed to be a vegetarian.

Board

This is my board that I will present in 20 minutes for LA 111: Plants in Design. Just posting an entry here while it plots.

D-day is Thurs. 11am

All evening I have been (re)designing the Wurster Light Court. Non-Wursterites will not be familiar with this space. It happens to be an interior courtyard of our monster building which is home to the College of Environmental Design. On the UCB campus.

The design is for my Plants in Design course, so most of the intervention has to do with (you guessed it) plants. So far I like my plant palette. There are many ferns and clumpy grass thingies. Oh, I plan to better articulate this information when Thursday morning rolls around.

We were only given 10 days to do this project (the first 7 days of which I was completely focused on studio and not thinking about plants in the very LEAST). So that gives me less than three days to complete a 10 day long project. Sounds like a typical situation for most misbegotten souls here at Wurster Hall. In between now and Thursday's presentation, I have exactly 8 hours of classroom time and two additional projects to turn in.

I plan to be here until 2:30am. I have class at 8am today, so I need to get at least 3 hours of sleep. I must be well rested, for tomorrow I will be watercoloring this enormous Light Court design.

So that means I must sign off immediately and return to my plant mode.

Hasta luego, Jean Paul

Jean Paul's last week in Berkeley is nearing its end. Last night marked his farewell party on Grove Street. Things began around 9:30, when JP and his crew (Pete, Ingrid) were the first to arrive. It was nearly 11:30 before a critical mass was established. Many, many people were in attendance; some people we met off the street even dropped in (I warned them not to steal anything). Particular highlights:

1. Michael Gougherty head-butting our dining room door and cracking it.
2. Drinking from the tequila bottle at 3:10am.
3. Realizing, for the second time in a calendar year, that crumbly chocolate cake is not a good party food if you have beige carpet.
4. Waiting for a cat fight to break out between roommate's love interests
5. Watching a guy that brought a bucket of chicken to our party consume nearly every piece of it.
6. Drop in visit from the neighbor at 2:50am.

There are certainly more highlights to be added, but my brain is slow tonight. I've been looking at numbers too long on a spreadsheet.

Corn maze = Good time autumn fun

My friend Andrew has proposed his annual escapade down to Fremont to the autumn corn maize (maze). Each year, he gathers together a group of people to carpool all the way down there to participate in the old-fashioned Halloween pre-gaming.

Seeing that this year there will be no official Halloween party in the Castro, I see the corn maze as a potential alternative venue for the crowds of San Franciscans looking to rabble rouse a bit amongst tall vegetation. With a little planning, beers and flasks can be smuggled in and enjoyment to be had. There are, however, no bathrooms at the corn maze (as far as I can recall) so drink with knowledge of that constraint. Otherwise, you will be wandering into adjacent corn fields to relieve yourself, and you know what can happen out there!


Bird's-eye view of the Fremont Corn Maze

One of the fun things I remember about the Fremont corn maze was the interaction between strangers. It is inevitable that within the group you arrive at the corn maze with someone is likely to go missing among the networks of winding paths and dead ends. If such an event occurs, you could try calling your friends on the cell. However, that route isn't terribly effective given that it's hard to give directions in a place such as this ("take a right at the big group of corn husks" doesn't quite cut it) and given the fact that cellular reception not as reliable as in the city. It is best to ask for some help: "Excuse me, but did you recently pass by a bunch of loud drunk people? One person would have smelled of bourbon. You did? Where were they headed?" Someone might even escort you to them and offer you a swig from their group flask. Good things come from asking for help in the corn maze. Really.

Oh, that reminds me of one important hint: don't wear any shoes that you would care about if they got submerged in mud/manure. I speak from experience. Same applies to your pants.

Consider visiting a local corn maze this autumn.

In other Halloween pre-gaming news, Jean Paul's going away party is this Friday, the 19th, right here on Grove Street. I am trying to figure out where my pad of colored construction paper is. I would like to decorate this place properly...in the spirit of the season.


Think this concept, but much better....

No-zones of victory

Stop the presses!!!! Something amazing has happened in DC! The end of a wholly corrupt system, resulting in millions of pilfered dollars going into the pockets of DC's cab drivers, is about to happen.

Status check:

I think I've posted this image before. I was browsing through my photos of Donnell Garden for my drawing assignment, and I came across this one. It's a favorite. It's just so damn optimistic!

In rainbows

The new Radiohead downloadable name-your-price is really quite good. I prefer a few tracks over others, but usually I end up liking the ones I don't listen to at first the most.

Super easy download, too. I paid 5 pounds sterling, about $11 US. Sure, the really dedicated fans might pay more, but I am a graduate student. I feel like their system sets it up so those like me are able to benefit from others' subsidy.

It's nice to have new Radiohead tunes to listen to. I've listened to The Eraser too much, frankly, since last summer.

Found: skull of varmint

I was in Rodeo this afternoon for some studio work. I walked along Rodeo Creek Trail until it terminated near Hwy. 4. At the top of the ridge is a railway line. I decided to do a little Stand By Me and walk along the tracks so I could get a better view over the creek from above.

On the tracks I found a severed raccoon head. It had enough fur and skin on it for me to identify it. No signs of the body around. Ouch. I will post pictures asap.


The head.


The view of the creek I wanted to get from the tracks.


View of coal products plant on other side of tracks.


Turkeys on the prowl.

Happy 250th!!!! Plus, ants.

This entry is this blog's 250th official entry!!!! Hurray!!! Thank you for your readership and support.

Now that the excitement of that milestone has come and past, I move on to the next issue of concern (IOC). That concern is focused on a small bandit group of ants currently housing themselves in the wall next to the washing machine. This location also shares a wall with guess who's bedroom.

The ants were first discovered when I went into the bathroom. My first duty when I enter the apt. bathroom is to sweep the floor. My roommates are hairy and this is something I do anywhere from 1-3 times per day. While sweeping, I picked up one ant. Odd, I thought, because ants are never present at 3110 Grove St.

I opened the door of the bathroom and noticed a mass of ant activity around the base of the washing machine. Blast, I thought, they must have come in from the rain yesterday. Ants do that, I guess.

I would not let these little bastards prevail, so I armed myself with a spray bottle full of my secret anti-ant formula: 50% bleach, 50% water. This solution can knock out ants in a matter of seconds, plus it helps clean the surrounding environs. So much for Raid.

Status: The solution has worked. There are currently about 30 dead ants on the floor, some of them still wiggling their poor, chemically-attacked legs in vain. They will soon die. I've sprayed the whole area in there with Anti-Ant and I hope that from the remaining survivors they will send a scout to the nest to report undesirable ant living conditions in apt. 3C.

Drawing experiment #6

Click here for larger detail.

Stuck

Hmmmm....so it started raining really damn hard here in Berkeley around 11:00pm. I am determined to wait out the storm before I leave Wurster. This crap has GOT to stop sometime. That said, the idea of riding my bicycle home in this is less appealing than staying here all night.

It's not such a downer, I guess, since the first year grad students are pulling an all nighter to finish their Blake Garden installations and presentation materials before 9am tomorrow. I feel bad for them. All I am doing is inking a drawing about bugs in a belfry. They have to produce life-size installations, 30 scale models, and plan and section drawings for the review. I remember doing that and it was a shit load of work.

Life is better as a second year.

Update from the Wilson Center

I've been unsuccessful in getting a hold of George Seay, my old boss at the Wilson Center. Aside from catching up, I was hoping to get some insider tidbits about Haleh's homecoming. She had been in Iranian prison since May. Recently released several weeks ago, she is now back at work in DC. I am sure the sound of those noisy gold wrist bangles she always wears is a welcome sound in the Center's hallways.

Link to October 2007 issue of Centerpoint is here.

A whole mess of new skivvies

I am set for Fall 2007. Undergarmetwise that is. In the mail today I received a shipment of many pairs of new underwear and 3 new bras. They aren't anything particularly new...the same styles and sizes from years past. Still, I would argue there's something that puts zing into your day by tossing out the old and stepping into the new. Wadda bang!

I've had to order these things over the web for the last few years. I could probably never find the time to actually physically go bra and underwear shopping. Seems like a waste of time if you know what you want. I'd rather spend my weekend in good company, listening to music in the park, or even having a productive Sunday night at Wurster Hall. Who would have guessed?

Speaking of productivity, time to begin drawing...

I can't be your boyfriend

Below is a link to another great single off the new Jens Lekman (Yans Lake-man) album to be released this week. I got it a few days early!

A Postcard to Nina

Aside from Jens, the weekend was pretty action packed. Friday entailed field trip excursions to the Musee Mechanique, drinking with classmates and professor at Vesuvio's, freaking out about Blue Angel jets weaving about SF's skyscrapers, and bussing ourselves west to see the opening acts of the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival out in Golden Gate Park. We saw quick bits of John (Cougar) Mellenkamp and Neko Case, but failed to stay (due to the cold setting in) to see Jeff Tweedy. The day was made complete with an injera meal unit enjoyed with Jason. Fast service, lightening fast. In that respect, that place is entirely NOT authentic in the Ethiopian sense. Here is a link to probably the most authentic Ethiopian restaurant in the continental United States. It takes anywhere up to 3 hours to have a meal here. There is a good chance you will also get something delivered to your table that you did not order. And you will pay for it.

Sunday I returned to Golden Gate Park to see HBRSB, one of my favorite your bluegrass bands. They've seen a lot of the world since I first saw them in early 2005. Way to go. There were TONS of people there, making it really hard to even hear anything at the central Banjo Stage. Christina and I left there to find the Star Stage, far removed from the major event foot traffic. We still managed to see some great acts before leaving at 4:00 PM.

Since that time, I have been at Wurster Hall mulling over parcel maps of Rodeo, CA.

This is the week of field trips. Tomorrow studio heads out to Rodeo, again, to visit the headwaters of Rodeo Creek at Fernandez Ranch. Tuesday, for Plants in Design, we head out to Emeryville to the Chiron corporate campus. Chiron was one of the big anchors that started to redevelop around the train tracks many years ago, effectively reshaping the city form.

Is it me.....

....or is that not the greatest picture of Jerry Boone in the Oregonian? At least his coverage of my stepdad isn't so bad....yet.

Socratic habitat

This is an actual school assignment. I still have to watercolor it.

Also, the best thing on the Interweb today:

Collision

About 12 feet from my apartment building this morning I had a bike collision with a pedestrian. I don't know if this is a coincidence or not, but today was also the first day I remembered to wear my helmet. Turns out I didn't need it to survive this wreck - my victim would have benefited more from having it having taken a spill on the sidewalk. Anyway, the poor girl (14 years old) was certainly more calm than I was post-impact.

Nothing like almost maiming someone in public to start off your day!