With Great Enthusiasm & Concern

Aye yai yai.

2012-02-06T22:16:00.003-06:00

Things I have said to my husband in the last 20 minutes that have stressed me out:

"You need to rethink and scrap or at least undersell that clown joke in your lecture."

"No, you can't pack your suit in your backpack."

"If you're going to draw a graph on the board, try to base it on fact in stead of made-up statistics...or, yeah, sure, I guess you could just draw a cake."

more stuff

2012-02-06T09:36:00.000-06:00

Tom flies to SC on Wednesday for a Thursday marathon interview day (as in: 8am to 4pm, interviews with a new person every 20 minutes). He's the last of the 3 finalists to fly out, so the notification of if he gets the (tenure-track) job should come pretty shortly after he returns. Assuming all candidates are equal, which they likely aren't, it's still only a 1 in 3 chance so we're trying really hard not to get hopes up. He could do a great job and present himself perfectly well, and a different candidate could be a better fit for that particular department's vibe. Still, the fly-out is a pretty big thing.

I'm working on 2 earnestly fun wedding invitations. It's really nice, both pairs of clients have the attitude of "we like your stuff, this is the direction we want to go, but you're the artist so go crazy." It's pretty great, getting to exercise a different part of my design-brain. Also, I'm getting paid for these, so that's a plus.

I'm one full spread away from the end of my illustrations for Book 2, plus touch-ups on some old spreads. The last 2 pages are a dense spread and could take a few days (more birds and fish and so on), and the touch-ups could be an extra day of work, but it's thrilling to be so close. Today after work I buy a big linoleum block to carve a new cover. Again: thrilling.

Still have to finish the model boat; going to embroider the title of the book on the sail, so it'll be my sign for my books at the various comic events I'm tabling this spring.

Also applying to a 2nd grant this month, which I don't think I have as realistic a chance of getting as the one I applied for last month, but what the hell. Need to also begin/finish/submit a new comic for an anthology by the end of the month, and apply to a residency (not live-in, just free studio access for the summer).

And I'm teaching a linocut class in 2 weeks. I'm pretty excited about that too.

Even though everything feels totally within my grasp, and I know I can get it all done (which I wasn't confident of last month), I'm still a bit of a mess. I'm not sleeping, which I think is as much about not going to the gym for a month as about having lots of little details to juggle in my mind. My vibe is increasingly inconsistent, confident and happy and proud switching REALLY quickly to stressed and overwhelmed and a little panicked. Office-work is in a crunch period too, so that doesn't help.

Soon soon it'll be done! Soon soon I'll be back in the land of the living!

Cats out of bags

2012-01-20T13:13:00.001-06:00

As of Wednesday night, my dear husband is flying out to give a job talk in Aiken, SC the 2nd week of February.

Still no word back about 2nd round interviews from either Pocatello ID or Athens WV...

...and I have barely slept at all this week. For context: I'm a world-class sleeper. I can sleep on a plane, I can sleep upright, and I regularly fall asleep at action-movie climaxes if I happen to be watching them at bedtime. I'm also a person who takes comfort from planning, and have only in the last few years really learned to be OK with, say, plans changing last minute without having mini-panic attacks. I've lightened up! Really! Or so I thought. Having so much up in the air is, mentally, exciting and encouraging and validating for Tom, but my nervous system won't listen to reason.

Also, in spite of good advice from people I trust and respect, I'm going to go look at an etching press this weekend. Not a Gigantic Proof Press that is 1,500lbs and motorized and hard to fix if it breaks, just a 2' x 3' little etching press that was posted on craigslist. If all goes well, I might have a Press Of My Own soon? I'd still print mostly at the community shops here in town while I can, but just *having* it would be a huge security blanket for me. I admit, it's an emotionally driven potential-purchase...the idea of having to move away from a city I love and a huge network of friends and art-community AND being totally unable to keep making work REALLY keeps me up at night. We'll see.

Holding breaths

2012-01-13T09:30:00.002-06:00

I try not to tell other people's news here. This is my little rant-forum; other people's business is their business to talk about. It gets muddy, though, when dealing with Tom-news; Tom-news is my news too, but I want to respect his requests for secrecy. I'm not supposed to talk about a few things on the horizon, because one Mr. My Husband is very superstitious and doesn't want to even announce the presence of eggs lest they don't hatch. (Metaphors!) The superstitious thing is no joke; when we moved him out of his last apartment that was just him, I found several dollars worth of pennies that were tails-side up. For such a tidy and spendthrift dude, fear of bad luck won the day: he wouldn't even touch the tails-side pennies.

But I'll say this, and let folks draw their own conclusions:

Tom has applied to 50ish jobs, in almost every state. We thought we had a "No Dakota" policy, but when a job came up in Spearfish SD I got oddly excited about getting to be friends with rustic weirdos and developing sophisticated snow shoe skills; instead, a "No Florida" policy emerged. Every job posting in FL was MEGA depressing. "St Olaf's School for Troubled Evangelical Children," surrounded on 3 sides by a vast swamp? T'anks but no t'anks. West Virginia seems more appealing than that: at least there you get beautiful vistas and cheap cost of living. Lots of jobs posted in Indiana and Georgia, literally none he was qualified for in Texas, but there were some interesting posts in Alaska and Hawai'i. There are still new jobs being posted for fall 2012, but not many. The season is moving to the next stage: phone interviews with the long-list of finalists, before moving on to the short-list for fly-out job talks.

And so I won't say anything else. I won't say anything about the three things I'm not supposed to talk about.

* * *

I've been spending all of my time this month working. Like, since coming home from Michigan for new years, I've just worked. I had one night out with my pal who just had a baby (as much for her mental health as mine, two new hermits meeting up), and there's a potluck this weekend that I RSVP'd to in December, but everything else is getting a "thanks pals, maybe next time" response. I go to the office, bike home, draw, draw, draw, cook dinner, then draw until it's time to sleep, and that's not even an exaggeration. I haven't been going to the gym, Tom has been picking up more than his share of house work, and I haven't been super great at remembering to do basic grooming things. But it's paying off! I'm at the half-way point for my book, which is ahead of schedule. Ahead of schedule is really good, since I picked up another wedding invitation to print this spring. Office-time has been busy too, so I've fallen behind on correspondence...again.

The bit of fuck-around time I'm giving myself is trying to figure out how to continue my practice if we do have to move this summer. I'm really starting to build a solid (if small) little business with my print work, especially if I can use these invitations-for-friends as promotion for soliciting custom work from other folks. If I had my own press, I really think I could grow this work to be more than just the current level of self-sustaining: I think I could push it to be profitable/household-expense-contributing. If I had just 1 Custom Thing a month + etsy sales, plus seasonal craft/art fair stuff, I'd make as much as I could at a day-job (at least, the kind of day job I would qualify for in Rural McCollege Town). That would still give me time to keep up with my never-going-to-make-money comic work. And since Tom would be making a lot more $ and we'd live in a much lower cost-of-living area, we could easily get by any dry months while I work to build it up more. The only hitch is not having a press. Those flat-bed press fuckers that I work best on sell for $15,000, and they're rarely up for sale (not manufactured since the 1960s) and in high demand. I could get an etching press for a third the cost, and still do multicolor linocut and woodcut work, but since those presses aren't self-inking, it's a lot more laborious to do large runs of anything. I'm still trying to figure it out.

News!

Overbooked

2011-12-22T09:19:00.000-06:00

I keep doing this to myself: instead of getting to emerge refreshed and renewed in the new year, I'm staying in hunker-down work-mode through April.

February I'm teaching a linocut workshop (which is super exciting and only a day, but I'll need to prep handouts)
February I'm designing/printing an invitation for acquaintances of Tom's (for which I'm getting paid a reasonable price!)
Beginning of March is a deadline for a local print residency I'm applying for, and 2 comic anthologies (for which I'm making new 3+-page-spread little comics each)
Mid-March is a big zine festival, where I'll sit and sell Book 1 and talk with other small press folks; need to have my boat finished by then.
Mid-March I have to print the cover of Book 2 (hand-carve a block + 4 hours on the press)
Mid-March Tom defends his dissertation: celebration ensues!
End of March I have to send the next chapter of my book to the press, to have it back in time for the April convention, so through all this I have to have finished drawing and scanning and digitally cleaning and file-building (have currently finished 5 spreads out of 18)
Beginning of April is a deadline for another local print residency I'm applying for.
Beginning of April is Tom's sister's graduation in STL
3rd weekend of April is the small press comic convention in Ohio, where we visit with Tom's nephew and I debut the next book.
The 4th weekend of April Tom is going to STL for his friend's bachelor party
Mid-May is Tom's graduation: Dr Tom!
End of May is Tom's friend's wedding in STL, where Tom is officiant/I am reading something

And in all of that is Life--20 hours/week in an office, cooking and going to the gym, occasionally remembering to clean myself and my apartment. Tom's mom is in ill health, Tom's job stuff could change EVERYTHING (though we're both just staying in "we'll stay in Chicago for another year while he adjuncts and works on pubs and re-applies" mental-mode to keep from over-worrying about maybe-moving), my closest pal in the city just had a baby so I want to be good support for her, etc etc. It's all really thrilling, being this active toward the work I really care about, but I *did* have a mini-panic-attack last night.

So yeah. #1 on the list is finishing the drawings for the next book. Last night I cut down all the paper I'll need for the rest of the book and measured out the dimensions for the drawings on each page, so that traveling and in Texas during low-key times I can work on composition pencil-drawings for the rest of the book. I can't have another 2 week lull while I re-work the same page. Forward marching!

Keeping busy

2011-11-26T12:16:00.001-06:00

Tom left the house to catch the train for St Louis at 7 yesterday morning and doesn't come home until late Sunday night. I didn't go with because my I-need-to-be-done-with-book-2-by-April deadline is super super tight, given the average number of hours it takes to finish a page and inevitable seasonal interruptions (travel for Christmas and New Year, illnesses or low-energy periods, editing Tom's dissertation, etc).

Yesterday I got up with Tom and got started drawing a little late in the morning, near 10am, but didn't stop until 11pm. I finished a page that had taken a few days to get ink-worthy and started inking a second page. It was great, I was working at a really good pace and everything, but by the end of the day I was donezo. I was scraping the awful bottom of Netflix watch instant (meaning I have now seen The Santa Clause 2 to my desperate shame), my hips ached from immobility, and I decided that for the next two days I needed to give myself some Task Outside The Apartment to do.

So! I woke up a little later than I intended this morning; my alarm was set for my normal 6:30am, but for "Mon-Fri" so of course it didn't go off. I had my eggs and clementine and carrots and coffee, got dressed, grabbed my granny-grocery-cart and headed out in the rain to Gethsemane, a huge garden center about a mile and a half from my home. I GOT MY FIRST CHRISTMAS TREE, Y'ALL. I rolled it home (yes, rolling the tree a mile and a half in the rain in my granny cart), set it up, put lights around the window (will get lights from the basement for the tree later) and hung up a new print from Jen. It's so festive!

I've been uncharacteristically excited for the holidays this year. Usually we put up lights around the window in the living room (as much to give us more light with a 4pm sunset as to decorate for Christmas), paint our Christmas gourd and call it a done deal. Well, Halloween weekend when I was doing mega-printing, lots of forces came together: I found myself thinking Christmas decorations at Target were cute--unironically--for the first time; I was printing holiday decoration prints in the studio for a few hours; and while I was doing that, the podcast I was listening to marathon-style had their Christmas episodes. Add to that the thinking-about-Christmas we've been doing in negotiating our holiday travel plans for a few months (who is coming? where are we going? oh, no one is coming? are we hosting? nope, going to Texas!) and I'm primed and ready like I've never been.

Anyway. It's fun. The cats are napping on their pillows by the radiator, the room smells like dirt and green, and I've gotten out of the house enough to feel like now I can hunker down and watch Poirot or something until it's time for bed.

Merriest of merries, y'all!

My messy living room with a tree and napping cat and lights!

My new print: "To those who have hunger, give bread,

and to those who have bread give the hunger for justice."

(Paired with a sweet print "The Salt and the Hot Black Oil" and

an "I love my bike" print. This is my slowly growing print collection corner.)

Nothing new here, just the messy dining room; just didn't want it to feel left out of the picture party.

Media Week

2011-11-18T17:11:00.001-06:00

Time out likes my CTA Prints for holiday gifts

Tattoo Article in which I'm briefly quoted

bullshit mantra against procrastination

2011-11-17T14:32:00.001-06:00

looking at design is bullshit. looking at fashion is bullshit. looking at aesthetically-manicured lives is bullshit.

there is only work. make work. make art. make design. make fashion. make an aesthetically-manicured life. fucking make it.

fuck the internet.

BLAH.

Time

2011-11-14T16:35:00.001-06:00

I've got an awkward amount of time before meeting up with Tom for the gym...so I thought I'd write about how quickly time disappears.

I thought I was going to start working on my book a month ago, after finishing the model ship, when out of the blue I got an exciting email (details not to be revealed until the fat lady runs the story) about a local magazine promoting the CTA prints for a "buy this for the holidays" edition in late November. I was down to 5 or 6 copies of a few of them; I had intended on closing the run when I sold out, but it'd be stupid to not be ready for a potentially lucrative promotion, so I had to reprint.

I got in touch with the lady who runs the studio I'd need to work from (with the wood type collection) and she said I could print Halloween weekend. So for the whole week building up to that, I did work to be fully ready for a marathon printing session: cooked food so I could pack 4 meals a day, carved extra blocks, bought paper, got a zip car to drive the prints down to the studio the night before, etc.

Then, 2 days of 18-hour printing, making a ridiculously huge number of prints: 14 total, editioned 50 each, almost all 2 colors (which means each color change is cleaning the press, cleaning the type, putting away the type, setting new type, cutting new book board for the linoleum, etc).

I figured after that I should take decent pictures of the new prints (borrowing a friend's really nice digital camera), and what the hell while I'm at it I should re-shoot all my prints. I thought it would take 1, 2 days tops. Nope: took a whole week! I set up little dioramas, cut giant pieces of paper from the art store to tape to the wall to make it look like I had different colored walls than just dirty rental-white. Framing and shooting and setting up dioramas and so on, a whole day of shooting lost (no flash--metallic ink washes out + rainy overcast skies = all blurry pictures). Then, cleaning up the pictures in photoshop and writing new copy to post on etsy. One week, gone.

That weekend was lots of social obligations (a friend celebrating getting a job, cleaning the mess I made taking pictures, babysitting in exchange for that studio time, driving out to the far suburbs for a great art opening), and then life stuff (groceries and cooking and laundry), so no drawing done.

Then last week I thought, fucking A! Done! After Tuesday's errand-day, I'd be able to get right to it. Nope! Lunch with the lady who ran the Logan Square gallery was really really charming but ran long, so I didn't get to drop off replace copies of my book at the comic shop, and then I had the tattoo appointment (which was baller, but painful as all get out--my whole upper arm is still a deep yellow bruise).

And last week, what did I do? Blah, don't remember. Something. It felt busy. At the end of the week I janked up my back REAL bad, to being almost totally immobile (too much weight in an over-the-shoulder bagged bike ride + overly tight jacket). I spent Saturday in pain but working, cleaning pens and building mock-ups, and I went to help out at the open house at the studio in spite of the back pain (again, in being-a-pal gratitude for studio use around Halloween). Yesterday I finally--FINALLY--got to draw.

When will I get to do it again? Jeezy fuck, maybe not til Wednesday night. Tomorrow I have to drop off the framed copies of the prints I sold at the Logan Square show (which I lose money on...that's on me, I didn't price them well), which is an hour long train-bus trip each way, and drop off books at the comic shop which I didn't get to do last week. Today I ignored my normal Monday-afternoon job (the helping Tom thing) to buy the frames, take the train home, trim the mat board frame the prints and clean up my mess, which in all took 3 of the 4 hours I have to work in the afternoons.

The framed prints for delivery tomorrow

This mess isn't rotating correctly...

I also found a discount frame for the "give bread" print

I got from Jen, in trade for babysitting.

Everything is in trade!

Meanwhile, I'm editing every cover letter that Tom sends out (bless his heart, dude can't spell), helping with other stuff for his degree so we save some money, working 20 hours at the office, cooking, etc. I keep thinking, "Oh, there's no way this book will take the full 6 months that the other one did!" and then life keeps ratcheting things up.

Here's hoping for a nice, quiet, productive winter, y'all. For now, off to change clothes to get to the gym.

Fakeness antidote

2011-11-10T15:28:00.001-06:00

While i'm waiting for my kettle to boil for a cup of green tea, before I settle down to working, I thought I'd post some pictures as an antidote to my goddamn bottomless OPTIMISTIC AND SUCCESSFUL self-promotion work I've been doing on FB and on the formal work-blog. I feel like that optimism and success is a gee-dee lie. Here's truth:

This is a crappy webcam photo of my new tattoo after Round 1 of shading.

That means there is a Round 2...which I wasn't anticipating, nor was it what I'd budgeted.

I like it a whole bunch, but it hurt like a motherfucker and the artist & I

had an awkward silent vibe for the whole 3 hour sitting. I was mostly

trying to remind myself of other times I'd been in pain, and that it ended and wasn't

ultimately that bad. Shading is WAY worse than line work, y'all.

I'm going through another "trying to give a shit about the way I look" phase.

They usually last about two weeks; it snowed today, so I bet this one will die off soon.

Mom sent me this beautiful scarf-shawl from her most recent trip abroad,

and I learned that hair-twist trick (not a braid!) from some bottomless well of

online searching while bored at work. It worked out pretty well; this picture

was taken after round-trip bike commuting to work, putting my helmet on and off twice.

Got some new boots. My old walking-around sketchers got holes

where my pinkie toes labored for liberation; it's too cold for my gym-shoes converse,

and too warm for my only-comfortable-below-5-degrees mega-winter boots. So I got these.

They were on sale at anthropologie, which means they were $120 off and still about $50 more

than what I should have spent. Still, cute and shoe-niche-need appropriate.

This is my entire business. Everything I sell on etsy is in this ikea flat-file,

next to my ratty-ass couch that the cats scratch on instead of that perfectly nice

cardboard lounge scratcher. Actually, Atley likes to stand ON the scratcher
to get a better position to scratch the couch. Jerks. Also, I don't like the etsy "favorite" system.

Folks mark "favorite" on my shop and on prints, which is cool and encouraging,

but that rarely translates into sales! Way to raise and bash my hopes. Jerks.

Someday I will have a studio. Or a room of my own. Or something.

Until then, I work in trade with my pal Jen (trading babysitting and open-house-booze-slinging)

or in cash-payment to the community studio a neighborhood away for print work.

My book work is done here, drawing in the living room, with my back to the couches

and fighting cats and dissertating Tom, and in front of our

Entertainment System/Work Station/mega-monitor computer, which crashes every few days.

If you can't tell, I'm grumpy. I'm sleep-deprived, I've spent outside my budget this month, I'm having little we're-both-tired fights with Tom (who is stressed about job stuff and dissertation stuff anyway), and all the work I've done this month on my print sales haven't translated to, you know, print sales. Hopefully the shout out in the magazine will boost that later this month. Fingers crossed. Until then, time for tea and drawings. Sounds and Seas doesn't draw itself.

poor dude.

2011-11-04T09:02:00.001-05:00

tom dreamed that i got this huge arts grant and was accomplishing a lot, but the only way i could get the grant was if he lifted an atlas stone.

not that he's worried about his job prospects or anything.

poor dude.

Keeping it real

2011-11-02T20:21:00.003-05:00

Skipped the gym today since I'm still bone-exhausted from my 48-hour print marathon last weekend.

Tom's at his weekly gaming night. Me?

Ate a whole tray of bacon for dinner, drinking some cheap Romanian wine, going to read some goddamn george rr martin after my shower.

BAM.

KILLA OUT.

absenteeism

2011-10-24T13:46:00.001-05:00

lots of good news bubbling out of the ether in the last week or two. don't want to announce anything prematurely, but things are looking up!

i know a common theme recently has been infrequency of posting, to the point where i'm thinking of discontinuing this blog. it doesn't have much function for me anymore: as my professional considerations (small though they are) are getting more in the forefront of my mind, anything interesting or dramatic that does happen to me gets self-censored into vague references here (see good-news cloud of vagueness above). I'm posting more personal pictures on FB, and more work-stuff on my website, and everything else is just pleasant behind-the-scenes routine that feels increasingly self-indulgent to write about here.

Peace out. More later, maybe.

So this happened

2011-10-12T19:55:00.004-05:00

(Harold Washington Library)

This is Pallas Athena, the patron of heroic endeavors. The symbol of wisdom in battle, of knowing when to fight the right fight and how fight it well. Not blind peace, not blind warfare, but justice. The symbol of inspiration (she did, after all, emerge from Zeus's head fully formed) and strength, as well as mechanical arts and crafts. She is closely associated with the owl; I tip my hat to Chicago with the owl image. Chicago, where I came to embrace my path as an artist. Chicago, where I became more confident in my skin, more comfortable with who I am and who I want to be, where I learned (again and again) when to fight the right fight and how to fight it well.

Athena, who prompted Zeus in an argument to say "Great Polypheme, of more than mortal might? Him young Thousa bore (the bright increase of Phorcys, dreaded in the sounds and seas)..."

My tattoo celebrates this chapter of my life. I love it.

A few thoughts on getting the tattoo:

Getting tattooed down by my elbow immediately sent my hand to sleep. Immediately.
Getting tattooed up by the front of my shoulder was immensely painful; felt like flesh being carved.
The rest of it was pretty easy, pain ranging from the pressure of writing on your skin with a bic pen to very short bursts of pinching, burning discomfort. The artist said I sat well. We did this in one two-hour session.
It will look pretty different with shading; that will happen in early November. The background (for instance) behind Athena's face will be filled in darkly so she'll pop a lot more, etc etc.
I really really like it. It's more art nouveau-y than I'd imagined in my daydreams, and the feathery part of the helmet is less graphic-bold than I'd daydreamed, but I'm not even able to look at it with anything but pure giddiness. Seeing the sketch complete, and seeing it on my arm, is so much more exciting than I'd imagined. FUCK YES!

(Before the tattoo I was planning on taking "untattooed" arm pictures

but they turned into beefcake pictures. BAM MUSCLES.)

Updates

2011-10-10T11:25:00.002-05:00

Failed a squat on Thursday, meaning I had weight on my shoulders and couldn't stand up, so I fell. Not as scary as I thought! There are safety pins in the cage, so I didn't get crushed to death. I did 135lb x 5, then rest, then 135lb x 4 and failed on the 4th. When I get to 3 sets of 135lb x 5, I'm going to be super proud.
The opening on Friday night was a rousing success! I had 4 prints in the show (3 CTA prints and a bicycle pugilist print), and they each sold 3 times over. Is this exciting and validating? YES. Is this actually also a bummer? ...yes. I didn't do my pricing calculations correctly; the gallery keeps 50%, and with the cost of framing (since most of the purchasers want their prints framed and the gallery owners said yes), I lose a little money with each transaction. Lesson learned. Still, good publicity, good to be part of the print crowd.
Spent the weekend working on my model ship. First of all, the kit came with 2 giant blue prints, 3 instruction books with contradictory/incomplete information, wood and sails and little tiny wheels and stuff, but no glue or drills or any assembly materials. So I went to a local (crazy) craft store and got what I needed, set up in the dining room Saturday and got to work. First I re-read through all the materials, then I watched some how-to youtube videos by super rural, very intense about model ships Australians, but just got more and more lost in detail and decided to plunge in. Getting the form built wasn't too bad, but planking is a lot of work. I have to cut, steam, form, pin, rubberband, clip, hold, glue and re-trim each plank...in all my hours working Sunday, I got 5 done, about a third of one side of the ship. I figured out the rhythm and process so I think the rest won't take quite as long, but...it's still a lot of work left. It's wonderful.
Tattoo appointment tomorrow afternoon!
I sold 3 books at the comic shop in Wicker Park! This made my day on Friday, more than the gallery show. The book is my heart and soul, and this comic shop is packed with mainstream-alternative comics (Fantagraphics, Drawn and Quarterly) and packed to the brim with really good local zines and comics. That 3 people found my book in the melee and liked it enough to buy it, in spite the fact that it's at least 3x more expensive ($15 vs $2-$5) than most of the zines/non-commercially-printed comics, is pretty wonderful.
Heading out of town this weekend for an anniversary do-over. The adventure plans I made for our one-year wedding anniversary fell victim to dissertation deadlines, and we were so exhausted from a week of no sleep that we spent the afternoon crying. Happy anniversary! This weekend is the 2 year anniversary from when I asked Tom to marry me. We're going to Starved Rock State Park, and other adventures along the way. I haven't been out of the city since I went to NYC in April; a little fresh air and forested hikes will do both of us good.
Tom's been down/bummed/off for a while now. Family stuff plus the bearing open your heart and dreams to piles of job applications will do that. Another reason this weekend out will be good.

Gross and Great

2011-09-28T12:55:00.001-05:00

The amount of protein (read: eggs and chicken and beef) Tom & I go through in a week is really, really gross. Like, I'm not going into it in the interest of the part of my heart that kept me vegetarian for so many years. Suffice it to say, it's a lot.

A lot, and exactly what we need.

We've made ridiculous progress in the gym in the last 6 weeks or so, ever since starting the Starting Strength routine (and making a commitment to eat enough, where "enough" is roughly 1g protein for every lb lean body weight). We lift 3x a week: one week Mon A, Weds B, Fri A; the next week Mon B, Weds A, Fri B.

Workout A: 3 sets of 5 squat; 3 sets of 5 bench; 5 sets of 1 dead lift; 3 sets of 5 (weighted) dips; 3 sets of 8 weighted back raise

Workout B: 3 sets of 5 squat; 3 sets of 5 overhead press; 3 sets of 5 Pendlay row (as a clean replacement); 3 sets of 8 pull up; 3 sets of 8 decline bench weighted crunches

Tom has gained 8lbs, which is massive for such a hardgainer (that's a technical term, y'all, for skinny folks who have trouble putting on mass), and his strength gains are through the goddamn ROOF. At the beginning of the year his one rep max squat (that is, the absolute most he could do for just one rep) was 225lbs; Monday he did 3 sets of 5 reps of 250. Same story with dead lift. At the beginning of the year he was plateaued at 260lb dead lift and now he does 5 sets of 1 rep of 325lbs!!

I'm not quite in the same range of exponential growth, but I'm doing a LOT better. At the beginning of the year I my one rep max squat was a shaky 135lbs; now I'm doing 3 solid sets of 5 at 125 (which is a big improvement, and super close to 3 sets of 5 at 135lbs, which means I'll have the Big Boy 45lb plates on both sides of the bar). I'm making steady (slow and small) gains with my bench and (new favorite) overhead press, and I'm getting past my 1RM dead lift in spite of mid-summer lower back injury and semi-annual knee aches (whenever my bike seat post inches too low). More than anything, I feel solid. My arms are denser, my legs are denser, my stomach is more solid, and my back is really different feeling. It's neat.

Oh, and a Massive Dude at the gym (who dead lifts 495lbs + chains) complimented my squat form Monday. "Good transition, good work." Made my day.

Now back to more chicken breasts. Gross.

BRILLIANT

2011-09-20T19:25:00.002-05:00

If I do say so myself, I just had a stroke of genius. (This is a world where "genius" is defined by an unexpectedly free evening + an end to the list of labor I outlined for myself for the evening + daydreaming + a credit card.)

I've been thinking about how much I learned by going sailing, the bodily experience of it, the lean, the labor, the nausea. Thinking about how much I might be missing by not having ever, you know, built a ship before as I lay out the pages for my next chapter. I've been casually looking to see if there are any ship yards in the Chicago area, or boat hobbyists, building wooden sloops who might need a hand.

THEN I THOUGHT OF THIS.

YES!

tattoo follow-up

2011-09-20T16:39:00.002-05:00

clerical error on the part of the tattoo shop (as in, the person i talked to when calling to confirm my appointment apparently told no one else) means no tattoo today since they didn't think i'd confirmed.

damn.

3 more weeks til the line work now.

Again, after a long delay

2011-09-19T10:33:00.003-05:00

I've totally fallen out of the habit of writing here. So far this month I've:

Gotten my wee book on the shelves of a new book store
Had a hilariously unselfconscious adventure date day at Navy Pier with Tom
Spent a nice long weekend with my mom (!) who came to visit
Framed and dropped off prints for a show in early October
Transferred $ from my tattoo savings account to my checking for tomorrow's appointment (!)
Had a lovely night out with our friend Eleanor in from out of town
Hand-pieced half a quilt for a friend's baby shower, and attended said baby shower
Watched a LOT of Star Trek: The Next Generation (whilst sewing)
Gone to the gym 3 days a week consistently doing the Starting Strength routine
Had my work profiled on two well-trafficked blogs, and made mega sales as a result (so have been making many many trips to the post office)
Signed up for studio time, and am in talks again to teach a woodcut class
Signed up for a table at two comic conventions to sell my books in 2012

and, most importantly,

Decided to put off learning programming for a year. This decision was made partly because I've got all this momentum going with my work right now with 2 shows and unexpected publicity, partly because this might be my last year in Chicago (which means my last year with easy studio access and a rich network of art-pals for criticism and feedback), partly because the more people I talk to about my plan w programming as The Perfect Day Job Solution the more skeptical I am of the way it was first described to me, partly because I just don't have the blocks of time I'd need to really integrate and work on the classes, and partly because I've been utterly miserable not doing my work. So it's done. I will slowly finish the first programming class I've already paid for, but it's back-seat to my work. As it should be.

Busy busy and getting busier. Weekends are booked until November. I just looked ahead to April to do some planning, and all weekends in April are scheduled, too.

Aye yai yai.

And so on

2011-09-01T12:58:00.001-05:00

The Good: Feeling really connected with friends and grateful for having such a rich network. It's been a wonderfully social summer. Feeling really grateful for loving family. Making a pretty good looking quilt for a friend who is having a baby. Staying better at keeping the house nice and tidy. Working really hard at the gym in a new, much more careful routine (in response to a summer of enthusiastic overtraining/overexhausted cycles).

The Bad: Melancholy abounds: the work I find meaningful (book work, print work, creative production of any kind) is on the back shelf, so the day-to-day of life is just boring secretary job and hitting my head against programming puzzles. Struggled with an assignment on Sunday and got overly frustrated in a spiral that became ego-bruising ("I'm not really smart enough, I'm not really smart at all, I'm wasting my time, I should just quit this like I quit everything"), and since then I've been avoiding it, which also feels bad. My ability to be "present" is suffering in this melancholy, so I've been a little off with Tom. Not bad-off, just a little out of sync, even in pleasant fun times. Hard to re-start enthusiasm for this (self-paced) thing I feel so ambivalent about.

The Ugly: My ass is so sore, y'all. I'm sitting here at work, and it's all I can do to not rub my ass and complain. The new gym routine is intensely squat-focused. Damn those squats!

Jeez

2011-08-23T17:45:00.002-05:00

Endured and triumphed through a dramatic 48 hours where it seemed likely that we would have to move across the country...in two weeks.

Universe, I surrender to the drama (by no means exclusively bad drama, but definitely drama) that surrounds me these days. So maybe we can agree to lighten up for a bit?

Vegas

2011-08-20T15:53:00.001-05:00

Tom, never one for understatement, on what it feels like looking over the balcony over the slot machines:

"You know those scenes in movies where the protagonist goes to hell, and he looks at a mountain side that is crawling with tortured, writhing masses? It's like that, but more shiny."

Social and forward-looking

2011-08-10T11:12:00.001-05:00

I've gotten a bit out of the habit of writing here. Things have been pretty lovely the past few weeks; Tom & I have been going out a lot with friends, now that we're out of the "holy hell we have almost no income" cash-flow stress-zone of June & July. We went to the zoo with Ed & Amy, a housewarming party at a friend of Tom's, nice evening bicycle rides with Jessey, and dinners and coffees here and there with eclectic groups of pals every couple of days. It's been nice; having made the decision to postpone starting Ch2 of my book until after I'm off the ground with programming stuff means I don't have any guilt when I'm just hanging out. The flip side of that is occasional low-feelings of hollowness or boredom. The class I'm taking right now only releases new lessons twice a week, and they take maybe an hour to go through closely and rigorously. Every time I sit down to learn I also repeat past lessons, but that's still maybe, what, 8 or 10 hours of work total a week? That's a LOT of down time, and I'm used to being full to the brim. Again, it's usually nice, but sometimes I start feeling blue about not doing my work. This week I'll sign up for the first of the 4 self-paced certification classes, so hopefully I can fill up all my morose-reflection time with that.

Other news! Yesterday I met with a tattoo artist for a consultation, and we scheduled two sittings for my upcoming left arm piece, Sept 20 & Oct 11, I think. This weekend Tom goes to Ohio to visit Long Lost Nephew; next Tuesday I'm taking a 3 hour Intro to Sailing class, which I bought in a Groupon deal in March. That week Tom goes to Vegas for a week, attending 2 conferences and a wedding. The weekend he's out of town I'm going to see Lyle Lovett with my buddy Eileen, which should be fun. Oh, and during all of this, Tom is applying to jobs. He's applied to 3 already, I think; the current list is 8 or 9 long, and growing weekly. We spend a lot of time jumping between excitement at the possibilities of this new chapter of our lives versus the terror of ending up in a Twilight Zone Corn Field--or, worse, the purgatory of no job offers at all.

Everything feels in transition, and loaded with the thrill and mourning of times like this, and it's not just us: all around are weddings and engagements and babies and divorces and career changes and moving on the horizon.

Busy busy.

Pie time!

2011-07-25T16:02:00.003-05:00

It's been a rough weekend here, to put it lightly. Lots of edge-of-seat, sad, infuriating stuff going on, frustrating in my inability to do anything to help, so big it made me dream that I learned how to teleport so I could punch a very particular someone in the face.

But that's not to share just yet. It's not my story. I will say, though, that I love my little family. We're tough as nails and thick as thieves.

Before Shit Went Down, I took pictures of Tom's Candy Bar Pie that he made for the pie competition at his dept. Warning to the wary, the pictures contain a disgusting amount of chocolate and a shirtless husband. (Man, I've been married for more than a year and that still gives me the giggles. Husband! I assure that the shirtlessness was mere practicality; it was easy +90 degrees in the kitchen with the burners on.)

Pictures below the jump. Onward!

A modified version of this pie ended up winning 2nd place in the soc dept's pie contest. I guess sociologists don't know how to make real pies?

In brief:

2011-07-21T12:07:00.004-05:00

Today Tom sends off his first two job applications. Very exciting!
Yesterday, Tom did his dry-run practice pie for the sociology department's pie competition this Friday. Rule #1 for the competition is no help from spouses or partners, so I watched with utter amusement. Graham cracker crust, melted chocolate chips and butterscotch chips, whole Spanish peanuts, and some marshmallow whip. Pictures to come. We tasted the sample pie (I scraped off the crust); it was kind of...overwhelming. More like a giant candy bar.
So I'm going with him to the pie competition tomorrow, at one of the prof's houses in a near suburb. Fun, right? Yes, until one remembers that pie is wrapped in delicious, gut-pain-inducing gluten, and my company will be all sociologists.
Mom & Marc & Anna visit this weekend, which is great; but the visit is brief, which is less than ideal. Still! Family!
Not a lot of update from me. Still pushing the blues out of the corner of my brain; that class I started yesterday is 6 weeks, not 2, and it's paced pretty slow (one lesson every Weds & Fri, lesson 1: how to open python.) Got to start somewhere, but I was pretty motivated to jump in head first.
Oh! Yes! Update: I'm doing awesome gym stuff. Monday I did clean & jerks with overhead squats at the top. INTENSE.