Feb 2004

bag of tricks

2004 Feb 09

unlikely roommates: after not seeing the random guy who wanted to move in with us, he shows up at the house meeting on thursday. we have to turn him down after all. nothing personal but we're not running a halfway house for a&d. his friend is currently wanted by the sherriff...nice.

ethnography: a girl from rhodes wants to do an ethnography on our house. so she's going to be coming over and analyzing our strange lifestyle. we warned her that it's nothing like the real world, okay maybe it's random like the real world, but in a non-dramatic way.

seed day: we planted the first of our seeds on saturday afternoon after making a huge lunch of fried foods. i pissed off casey by telling her it was too early to plant the tomatoes, basil and eggplants. i know she was looking forward to it, but it's just too early for that stuff. it would be a waste. the crazy thing is that we ended up having shake-n-bake on the same day, so we also had a huge dinner of fried foods.

uele's baby shower: tj turned the co-op into a room full of pillows and writhing kids, and food and had a really cool blessingway ceremony for uele and mark. it was way better than the usual babyshower bidness. as i suspected, everyone got her tons of clothes for newborns, and not enough of the kind of stuff you really really need...hopefully I can help her score some of this stuff from people i know.

art night: same evening, was art night at our house. when i got home, the stencil making party was already underway. so we spent all night making stencils, making music, singing cowboy songs, dancing, and i think at one point it all degraded into dramatic monologues. our ethnographer was there, but fortunately none of the really crazy shit went down until after she left...some things we just gotta keep on the d/l.

where's fedex: i thought i knew, so i got up at 7 am (unheard of for me) and drove over there...only there is...where is it? who knows...not where i remember, at any rate. so i wasted all that time for nothing.

so while i was up all nice and early, i went over to unemployment to spend some quality time over there. i went to pick up a check but they had sent one to my house. so i figured while i was there, i'd go ahead and file a claim too, why not...

so lately, life's been busy, crazy, and interesting. people are around more and we do fun things, and i like the variety of stuff going on around me right now. i just wish i wasn't so broke.

pick up and drop off

2004 Feb 13

brian reminded me of a simple fact that people will pay money to folks who can deliver all the valentine's day stuff that people order from florists. so for a few days this week i've got some work. fortunately i'm damn good with a map book...the money's not all that, but it's enough to solve some dire problems for me. so for a couple of days I shook up the routine, saw some new sights, and came home with cash every night. that's what i need more of. i get super tired of being basically unemployed. i'm not in to sitting around all the time...

sigh.

bye bye denny

2004 Feb 14

we had denny's going away party/morgan's play reception/valentines day/uninvited show today. that turned out pretty good. lots of people came and we had the house all decorated up nicely, and it was a lot of fun. josh made denny a flip book/address book that was really cool, and andrea and ky made a heart shaped pinata that we all stuck messages inside of. not as much dancing at this party, but there was a lot of drum circle action. unfortunately i got sick about halfway through so i missed some stuff, but i think denny had lots of fun and so did everybody else.

red paint

2004 Feb 16

didn't do much of anything except recuperate from the party and get some chores done. but i did go to see morgan/suzie's play, red paint. they did a good job with it. it was all over the map emotionally and there were times when i felt like crying and laughing at the same time. it was pretty intense.

i'm gonna go take a bath now. it's been awhile. not that you needed to know this. i don't get too into being wet in the winter. fortunately nobody in this house is likely to get worked up about it, but sometimes i have to go into the outside world, so i should play along...

i can't wait til spring. it's so cold here. not like say in indiana, but cold enough for me. i'm not into it.

no more mr nice guy

2004 Feb 19

got that song stuck in my head...it's not a reflection of the general pattern of the day though...today's been pretty alright.

woke up this morning and it was all nice and sunny. made some maduros, sauteed apples, fake bacon, and fried yams for breakfast. usually i just eat the same bowl of grits so this is a big departure for me. after that it was time for some expresso, then i got motivated to go outside and see what was up with the weather.

it was pretty nice outside indeed so i spent the day out in the yard working on the strawberry bed, and some of the rest of the yard. the whole day flew by and i hardly noticed. i sat there with mephidus in my lap and rubbed him all over. he's such a friendly cat, i wish i could adopt him sometimes...he clearly must have been somebody's cat because he's so outgoing, but alas he's a stray.

decided to rig up some neat containers for the strawberries. one scheme is a wrought iron spiral tower thing i found on the side of the road over by central gardens. stacked descending pots on that one, and stuck it in the bed. in the spaces around it, i took some of the bark from the logs (which essentially looks like hollow logs), and stacked them and filled them with sheet compost so they'll attract all sorts of worms and fungi, and planted some of the strawberries in the top. that took all day but it looks really cool. i'm excited about this strawberry patch.

towards the end of the day, we went back inside and jb and josh cooked up some bad ass dinner and we all sat around the table, with shawn and ted showing up too.

then i had to go to work.

it wasn't too bad although there were tons of dishes. i knocked 'em out in no time. brought home tons and tons of food that was fixin' to get thrown out. good timing, i'm almost out of food.

don't be drinkin' dat coffee

2004 Feb 24

wah no deez dayz ahm i gonna learn me not to be a-drinkin' dat coffee after 5pm yo...ain't nathin but trouble, dat is.

didn't get any sleep last night. for all the good it did for me to lay there with my eyes shut up tight and head on my pillow, i might as well have gotten up and read the whole permaculture manual from cover to cover...or some other equally long book. cos i didn't get NO sleep. none. so when 8 am rolled around it hit me like a 2byfo' to the fo'head. couldn't hardly see out my eyes...but i made it through class. after that though, the whole day went to the dogs.

shoulda went back to bed. "go and take a sister by her hand lead her far from this foreign land-wooden ships" couldn't get nothing to work right today. and what i wanna know is why the hell do they have to go and put lard in everything. sheesh. my falafel turned to shit, but i made 4 sweet potato pies and tons of people came over to my house and were their sweet selves.

i love these nights when suzie sings and joshy plays guitar and andrea makes food and mess in the kitchen and casey dresses up and paul is cute and ky sings in my backyard. life is mighty fine, wouldn't it be grand if it could be like this every day until eternity...

pressure drop

2004 Feb 25

the pressure done dropped 'round here...the air pressure that is. the sun done gone somewhere else and now i look out my window, it's all cold and rainy.

eli cries cries cries "oh please please let me in!" and i feel sorry but what's done is done, and you can only let someone shit in your bed so many times before you gotta send 'em out the door.

woke up from an intense dream about trying to save my house from a wildfire with garden hoses. but really today, there's no danger of fire outside though because it's as wet as a restroom floor in the worst bar in town.

no reason to change out of my sleepin' clothes today. just kicked around the house. got a bunch of interesting phone calls though: one from wholesome in TX, one from the botanical gardens, and one from the census bureau. pretty strange.

wish somebody was interested in hiring for THIS month...it's not like i can tell the bills to fuck off just because there's no work and thus no money...

and maybe it really isn't any better out there, but i'm inclined to believe that it HAS to be.

Gonna go to chicago this weekend. haven't done that in awhile. and sometimes a girl just needs to do something crazy like go get really cold and hang out with college friends. i need to take advantage of all this free time anyway. so maybe i can't really afford to go places, but why let it get me down, i say...

tonight we're having breakfast for dinner, then going to a free concert at the university and then i'm gonna go wash njeri's dishes because it's not like i have anything better to do.

not that exciting in central illinois

2004 Feb 27

made it out of memphis around noon and headed north. here's the deal:

there's this really cheap gas station near turrell, ar. never noticed it before, but it's worth stopping there for gas as opposed to far more expensive locations.

i love it how there's hawks all over the place in arkansas-either flying, or just sitting on fence posts.

brian had his first boomland experience. i always stop there for gas because, well, it's just THAT cheap. but the incredibly hokey atmosphere is an added bonus.

illinois is still totally boring, but we had this weird interestate tag game going with two trucks moving furniture and a car with a really weird license plate that would speed up to 80 to pass us then go 50 once they pulled ahead. all i know is somethin' shady was going on because they had tinted windows, and everytime they saw a cop they totally backed off and went as slow as necessary to avoid passing a state trooper.

effingham is still totally scary. we stopped there to eat though, and man people there have this weird almost cajun accent. it's like nothing i've ever heard, but these guys were talking and i couldn't understand hardly a word of it....that shit was THICK and everyone else sounded about the same.

coming into chicago the traffic was a bit hairy but nothing out of the norm for a friday night. parked the car up at howard because lakeview usually has zero parking available anyway, and who really wants to move the car every 24 hours?

It was 11 or so by the time i got to jans. i was pretty damn tired so we just sat around and kicked it until 1 am.

freaks of one kind or another

2004 Feb 28

started the day off by heading south. since brian's never been to chicago, i took the 146 instead of the train so he could see some of downtown, then we got on the train and went to chinatown.

there was some weird shit going down across the aisle from us...there was a couple of black girls sitting across from us a shade younger than me and they were bustin' out all the gossip from their block so it was pretty juicy and loaded with language not fit for the inside of a church. the older white couple in front of them probably wasn't used to hearing that sort of thing and the lady asked them to lay off the profanity. then all hell broke loose. you could tell they were hotheads anyway, but they started screaming and talking about "the white man" and lynching and some other stuff that made louis farakhan sound like a regular friend of whitey. anyhow, the old folks got off promptly at the next stop and things went more or less back to normal.

by the time we got to cermak it was pretty nice outside. chinatown was busy so we looked around for awhile, got some pastries and tried to find the bookstore.

then we went back to the loop and walked around the parks, and got the idea of going to the field museum but it was way too late by then. so we walked along the lake down there and went back to jan's.

then we got a hold of jim, went to binny's beverage depot, and all went out for sushi at this place i always used to go to with cristin called new tokyo. then we got ahold of sarah and elaine and went to this irish bar down the street and hung out there for awhile. i really enjoyed it because i haven't seen elaine or sarah or jim in quite awhile, and don't usually get to see them when i'm in chicago.

might as well be summer

2004 Feb 29

damn it was warm on sunday! i couldn't believe it-it was somewhere around 65 degrees in chicago on the last day of february.

we got kind of a late start on the day, but went over to the thai restaurant and ate the stuff we got as a picnic lunch in the park by belmont harbor. since the weather was so amazing, everyone was outside doing their thing, but i still think the sandals and shorts were a bit optimistic.

after that we went to argyle. the streets there were still covered with the detritus from a million firewords. we took care of some business, then waited for sarah. while we were waiting we watched this woman walking down the street arguing vehemently with someone none of us could see. it was slightly funny in a way because everyone else on the street she passed tried to see who she was yelling at, but quickly realized that it was all in her head.

sarah arrived and we headed for devon, walked around there and bought a bunch of stuff to make indian food for dinner, went home and cooked it all. it's kind of fun to do these things at jans because she has a small kitchen and few dishes, so it's a challenge to figure out how you are going to do it, but it always works out in the end.