Join me this week Tuesday, March 3, from 7-10pm, fellow Jersey City Craft Mafia member Megan Gulick opens her show Down the Rabbit Hole at LITM. I’ll be the photographer so come and say hello.
LITM
140 Newark Ave
Jersey City, NJ
1/2 a block west of Grove Street PATH Station
for more information on the gallery, visit www.litm.com .
Megan’s show runs through the end of March.
I am working late because I was feeling sick the last two days and we have a big project due tomorrow. My cat wants to know why I am still on the computer and why is Rory not home yet, and who is going to play with her, etc. She gets this way at night and starts just sort of walking around then sitting and staring at us. It makes me laugh. I don’t think of it as love but I guess its the closest thing to love. She typically wants three things: a treat, the juice from a can of tuna, the laser pointer. She does not want to be picked up and will put up a fuss but she will purr loudly while you hold her and make scrunchy faces.
I’m uploading a ton of documents to an RFI for one of our clients so while I’m sitting here I am playing with the photo booth on my Mac book. If you are a friend on flickr, you’ll see more boredom there.
Feeling a little better finally. This is the fifth time I’ve gotten sick this winter!
when did we roll ourselves into small corners of the room
like dust motes, smitten with our own whole worlds
and smoldering
when you are a child, perhaps knee height and toddling
tables and chairs are there for climbing and overcoming obstacles
bigger than life and when you look back
you see why your mother said not to stand there
or that they were not very big at all
that’s what it’s like underwater sometimes,
knees scrambling toward your sunken frame
to lift you back into the air
and now you couldn’t stay under if you tried
how do we get to the top of the mountain
it is the question you cannot answer
This was an extra credit assignment in AP Physics with Mr. Tutzauer. I cracked up when I found this in my notebook over the weekend. For all of my attention deficits, I could always charm my way to the top of the class using wit. I embrace my nerd-dom, with my whole heart.
It’s a luscious mix of words and tricks
That let us bet when you know we should’ve folded
On rocks I dreamt of where we’d stepped
And the whole mess of roads we’re now on.
——-
These are my 3D glasses from seeing Coraline yesterday in Union Square. Because I cannot afford Ray Ban Wayfarers and my new spring sense of fashion is built around the concept of “free”, I punched the polarized lenses out and wore them this way. I’ve been dropping more weight, or at least slowly shrinking out of my jeans, and I am trying not to go spend money on any clothes for this interim. Its kind of hard to stear clear of my credit card, but I love a challenge, as well as actively working toward not caring what anyone else thinks.
Last night, Allison and I got to check out the new music venue in Jersey City, I.M. Automata Chino. Her old friends are booking shows there and it promises to be a very good thing for our night life. Super happy and we had a good time trying to dance to everything and naming all of the bands that influenced the boys on stage from song to song. I liked the country folks in the second band with the girl drummer and the steel lap guitar. Reminded me of my friends and yours, Widower.
I am happy to announce that I have joined the ranks of the newly-formed Jersey City Craft Mafia alongside some amazing like minded and creative neighborhood heroes.
Links to each of their web sites are over on my side bar, and I will try to post regularly about upcoming events we are going to host such as an art supply swap, classes, and craft fairs! I am so excited to get to be a part of this. It makes living here all the more fun and productive. Now that the holidays and travel are all out of the way, I can focus again on my Etsy shop and creating more handmade things!
Last night my roommate and I ran out into the night, electrified by warmer weather that hinted of spring, and the prospect of ice cream from Torico’s — a family owned and key favorite establishment in our neighborhood that recently opened again for the season. I had taken a five dollar bill out of Rory’s wallet with his blessing, and I could feel my heart get lighter as we plodded down our crazy vintage laminate staircase. We giddily skipped past the gym whose membership I am about to cancel, talking about painting and expressing yourself with visual mediums and how this correlates to eating your feelings with a generous helping of sprinkles.
We stepped into the ice cream parlor and it was as if we had never left. Bright and colorful, the distinct sugary sweet scent in the air, Torico’s felt exactly the same as it had last year, smelled like home in the summertime, and we were welcomed warmly by the woman behind the counter who I believe is one of the owners. She was telling every one that their change was in thousands of dollars instead of single dollar bills, and smiling from ear to ear. You could tell she was happy to be serving us.
We got our choices: both soft-serve. I have a head cold with a sore throat right now and it was totally amazing to have cold vanilla sliding down my throat.
As we headed back to our apartment, we decided to take a detour and walk up Columbus, and we seemed to be walking in this funny haze where every person we passed was notably cartoon-like. First we passed a big girl with double plaited braids, a ton of baggage, and a down turned mouth. Then it was kind of normal people saying weird things loudly just as we were within earshot. Finally, we were approached by this man with a strong Spanish accent asking us plaintively if we wanted to buy a hat with a propeller on top of it. We didn’t.
Meanwhile, we had walked past one of the other gyms on Columbus, right near the PATH station, and read a sandwich board sidewalk advertisement pointing in to the front door of the gym. It read: HAS FASHION WEEK GOTTEN TOO COMMERCIAL? DISCUSS. Needless to say we cracked up, sharing the feeling that our neighborhood has this personality that is just completely hysterical in our perspective. We have such a mix of people from different backgrounds, people with different levels of professional careers, families, and a distinctly ironic artist vibe. You can’t help but walk down the street sometimes and fall in love with everyone you pass. Especially if you happen to be scarfing down vanilla soft serve as you go.
And my friend Rachael had a very wonderful shop update last week:
Vacation!! I was too busy learning how to ski to photograph our trip very much. It was entirely too cold and snowy/rainy outside all week to take many pictures, anyway. However, these two really sum up the week best: inside by the fire with family, or having outdoor adventures. It was really a great week, and I’m surprised that I spent half the time in a bathing suit, soaking in hot tubs and heated swimming pools (and I’m not sorry to say there are no pictures of that)!
Now that we are back, we are ever so slightly more muscular, relaxed, and happy for our new perspective on life here in Jersey City. Except that I caught a head cold from Aiden. Oh wells.
I really earned my spa day on Wednesday by skiing against my fears Sunday through Tuesday, and exhausting my knees in the process. Rory has the patience of a saint. I was given a private lesson by one of the staff at Stowe my first afternoon out and that was totally necessary– by Tuesday I could turn a bit and snow-plow my way down the easiest trails.
Wednesday we left the babies at home with the grandpas, the boys went skiing, and all the girls went to the spa. I got a manicure and pedicure, and that was really nice but I have to say that I chipped my nail polish almost immediately in the pool, and I ended up taking all the polish off my hands in the end… but it was still fun. I am definitely not the typical girly-girl kind of person but it is always relaxing to spend the day in a plush bathrobe… maybe I am more of a lazy tomboy. We are going to try to make the spa visit an annual tradition.
Favorite local spots from the trip:
Stowe Craft Gallery.
The Alchemist Pub and Brewery.
Ziemke Glassblowing Studio.
Bove’s Diner in Burlington.
Earth Prime Comics in Burlington.
The Shed Brewery & Restaurant — home of Mountain Ale and (my favourite) The Shady Monk.
Pinnacle Ski — knowledgeable, friendly!
Top Notch Spa Resort — maple sugar scrub was the most highly loved among our group.
“You could spend your time wondering if what you say you are is really you. Or you could just act like that all the time. That’s good enough, thanks. Save the angst for later.”
via seth godin
It was a wonderful experience to be on vacation for over a week, away from phones, internet, and familiar television channels. We were skiing up in Stowe, VT most of the week and made a rainy day trip up to Burlington for a few hours (sorry I missed meeting up with my friends there!). We ate in fancy, delicious restaurants, spent time with family, cooked, drank mountain ale, and just relaxed completely. The girls and I had a very memorable spa day where I was able to swim in an outdoor pool (heated) surrounded by snow and ice, with ski trails off in the distance on a high mountain peak. Everything was calm and warm, despite low temperatures. I feel a shift in my perspective. I had the chance to read two novels, learn to ski even though I was scared, shop in some quirky art galleries, and get lost in my own imagination. It was really very nice and it makes the transition back into Monday, back into reality, a surmountable, rewarding task.
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