person virus vs. computer virus

The similarities are that they both infect you and make you feel terrible.  I’m pretty sure that’s where the similarities end.  A person virus... let's just say the common cold for this matter, makes you feel crappy for about 4 days.  Eventually the headache disappears, the snot dries up, and the raspy voice and mucusy throat are a distant memory.  Congratulations! You’re back to normal.  Let’s celebrate by going out to a bar and getting another cold!  A computer virus makes you feel crappy to the 10^th degree until it’s finally gone.  I don’t even know what that means, but it feels like shit. And it’s not like tea and chicken noodle soup will help.  You need a computer-ninja, someone to sneak into your computer like those people from the Matrix sneak into the Matrix and set shit straight… a master of the hard drive: Like my friend Mike.  Onto the story.

On Saturday morning after I wrote my previous blog post, I decided that it would be an awesome day to sit and sew whilst listening to Pandora radio.   This was not to be.  The second I clicked on Pandora, things went to shit.  Instant virus.  Windows kept popping up telling me how bad shit was, and that my memory was gone.  I believed that lying piece of jerk virus for about 5 seconds, until I saw a window that said “buy the full version here!”.   That makes NO SENSE. Why WHY would I want to buy a full version of a virus?  For the next 4 hours, I was closing obnoxious windows, restarting in safe mode, running virus software (that kept saying that nothing was detected) crying and sitting in my pj’s trying to figure out how the hell I was going to fix my problem.  I just wanted to listen to the Fiona Apple station.  Then shit got real, yo.

I finally decided that brownies would fix my problem.  Usually when something in my life goes wrong, I try to temporarily forget them by making myself something delicious.   It’s not uncommon to find me in the kitchen after a bad day.  Then out of the blue (the blue sporty-car they own, I knew they were coming over so it wasn't out of the blue-blue) Mike and Lauren arrived and solved two of the biggest problems in my life.

1) Who would help me eat all these brownies so I don’t get a fat-ass?

2) Can someone solve my computer virus problem?

Answers: THEY DID.

All was right in the world again. I only finished 20 squares this weekend (170 down, 54 to go) but all in all, Halloween is supposed to scare the shit outta you right?  Mission accomplished.  Next year, I think I’ll go as a computer virus.

In slightly related news, this was my Friday night. It's self explanatory.

new design + 150 sqaures.

Do you like my new design?  I'll keep tweaking it here and there until I... don't... well, until I like it I guess.  But I like the new header I did.  See what an extra free twenty minutes at work and an old magazine can do?  I took a photo of my cutout letters and manipulated some of the brightness and contrast in Photoshop. 

In other exciting news...

I tried to make myself look nice, but that doesn't work at 9am.

I finished a total of 150 squares!  Only ONLY 74 to go. I couldn't be more excited!  Actually I could, if I had 210 done and only 14 to go.  But I'll get there!  And I could this weekend, seeing that the Philajerseynewyorkeverywhere area is supposed to get pounded with a Nor-Easter like whoa.  I don't think it'll be too bad here, but it'll be enough to keep me productive and warm inside the confines of my home. 

Different hair!  And... braaaaaaaaaainssssss...

It's Halloween weekend too.  I had high hopes that this year would be the year that I got off of my crafting butt and created a bitchin' costume.  Alas, my quilt making and zombie run made it a daunting task.  So this year... I go again as a zombie (like I'm complaining).  I'm banking on my liquid latex and makeup to make it look good this year, better than my zombie from three years ago.

Here were my awesome ideas that didn't materialize:
The "morning after" girl, present on every Saturday and Sunday morning Septa route
A #2 pencil
A box of Summers Eve
Lucile Bluth
It's Pat from SNL

ps...

I'm getting tired of the design of this blog.  This will be fixed.

dinoflagellates and the orchestra

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of accompanying my dear friend Brian to see the Enigma Variations by Elgar, performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra.  I had to borrow a quote from www.philorch.org so I could properly describe the performance. "... Edward Elgar brought forth a strange orchestral piece--a set of variations on an unknown theme in which each movement was a portrait of one of his friends--it was a matter for astonishment, an enigma indeed. "Here," declared one critic, "is a man who knows what he wants to say and knows how to say it!"

Imagine for a second that you have a theme song stuck in your head.  And you varied that theme song to fit the personalities of your friends and loved ones.  Some friends are small and delicate, while others are loud and bold.  That theme would have to be varied to fit their personalities, and that's exactly what Elgar did.  The first half of the performance was really interesting.  Narrators, actors, images and music brought Elgar (just a name on the playbill at the time) to life. Snippets of journal entries and stories where extracted from their pages and presented to the audience, making it seem like Elgar was right there in auditorium, describing his life and his work.  The second half of the performance was purely on the shoulders of the orchestra, and they presented the themes uninterrupted.  It was quite beautiful.

The rest of the night was spent at Parc on Rittenhouse, discussing life, art, food and zombies.  That's right.

Also, I did this drawing of happy dinoflagellates for Kara's thesis.  It's going to be published, and I'm excited that I could make this important contribution to the scientific community.  Who knew that dinoflagellates were so happy and rambunctious?  I did.  I think I'd like to do fun drawings of the bacteria and viruses behind STD's. ... I probably won't finish my actual work now that I've made this decision.

100 down, 124 to go!!

PROGRESS, PROGRESS, PROGRESS!  Wow, so far I've been sewing the squares with gusto and it's been paying off immensely.  I'm really proud that I've done 100 of them, and I love the random colors and patterns that were created. 

In other news, I'm training for the zombie 5k run this weekend.  Let's hope that I don't "get dead" during the run so I can continue to work on this when I get home :)

50 down, 174 to go.

The title was pretty self explanatory, if you ask me. I utilized my free time wisely tonight, and sewed another 30 squares.  I also rinsed and dried 3 new fabrics. I was getting a little concerned that I would possibly run out of fabric in the end, or end up having blocks of the same repetitive color.  Here's my progress!

20 down, 204 to go.

the first 10 squares!

20 squares, all sewed, pressed and trimmed up! It took me roughly two hours to sew them all. I'm so glad I kept track of my time.  So... if I have to sew 224 squares, it should roughly take me 22-23 hours to sew.  (Duh, me.  10 per hour.)  Obviously I won't be working on this everyday after work, but I guarantee that there will be large chunks of time when I'll be able to do more than 20 at a time.  Like... rainy weekends!

the second batch ready to sew.

 

 

 

all 20 squares, picture perfect!

48 fabrics, hundreds of possibilities.

LOOK AT ALL THE FABRIC!!!  Everything I have has been cut to size and I'm ready to roll.  Just looking at all of the colors together gets me very excited. I'm wondering how I should set a goal for all of the squares I need to sew. There's 224 of them... should I try to shoot for a weekly goal? Like, get 50 squares done per week?  Jeez, that seems like a lot. If I did 50 squares per week, it would take me a little over 4 weeks to sew.  I want to do this project right though, so it's important to take the time to sew everything correctly.

How about this.  First and foremost, I'll see how much time it takes me to assemble just one square.  From there, I can estimate how many I can do per day.  That sounds good to me.   I should also consider how I will be assembling all these colors... should I do dark and light patches?  A mix of everything together?  Hmmm...

just for giggles.

Here's what I do at work some days.  I draw and make comics.
These boobies are real.  I swear.

40 posts Q&A

For my 40th post, I decided to answer some questions people have been asking me lately about my blog.  And by people, I mean myself. 

Q: When do you find the time to write your blog posts?
A: You'll notice that most (if not all) of my posts are between the hours of 8am-4pm, Monday through Friday.  There's no coincidence that I post when I'm at work, due to the lack of actual work that I have to do.

Q: Why don't you allow comments on your blog posts?
A: Ah, I was wondering if I was going to ask myself that.  Technically I started this blog to keep me inspired, and to track my progress... not only on projects, but in life.  It's nice to be able to analyze my feelings and moods, and connect them to how productive I am.  If I allowed comments on the blog, I would end up shifting my focus to what people think of what I'm doing, instead of what I think. 

Q: What has been your favorite project to work on so far?
A: That's a great question.  Probably because I asked it to myself.  So far all of my sewing projects have a lot of fun... I love the purses because of the wide variety of colors that I get to use.  My least favorite is the stained glass.  It's not that I don't love stained glass, it's just that the project didn't live up to my expectations.

Q: If you could have dinner with one famous artist, who would it be and why?
A:  If I had to choose just one, it would be Kiki Smith.  Her works are amazing.  AMAZING.  I wish I could describe how awesome they are... on second thought, visit her interactive site at the MoMA.  See?  Amazing. If I could choose a bunch of artists to hang out with, I'd curl up on my couch in the winter with endless amounts of chili and hot chocolate and watch every single season of Art21.

Q: Do you miss sculpture?
A: Absolutely.  My time and space constraints don't allow me to work on big works of art at the moment.  Plus, I tend to become reclusive when I'm working on sculptures: All of my time and energy go into the piece, and not into socializing... or taking care of myself.  But some day, my sketches will come to life again, and massive figurative works will be born.  For now, I'm happy with sewing and crafting.  And having friends.

Q: Glass half-empty or half-full?
A:  I always forget which one I am.  It's the one where I'm real positive and optimistic.  Hold on, lemme Google that... Wikipedia says I'm half-full.  I try to make the best out of every situation.  You can't always dwell on the things that go wrong, or you might miss everything else that's going right.  That's not to say that I don't have my moments.  Everyone does.  But you've got to keep everything in perspective or you'll loose sight of the big picture.

Q: Why are you pretending that someone else is asking you these questions?
A: Because, I don't want people to think I'm nuts.

i'm drowning in fabric.

Holy hell.  There's so much fabric... so so much fabric.  Let me tell you what I did which the oodles of fabric this weekend. I went home and began bundling my fabrics, but the stack fell on top of me.  I survived the weekend by eating mother's preserves and retained my sanity by dribbling a basketball that was barely within reach of my one free hand.  I made a game of it.  Seeing how many times I could bounce the ball in a day, then trying to break that record.  When the police came to search the house, I called out, but they didn't hear me.  Desperate, I used a little fourth-grade chemistry to build a rocket, which I attached to a vacuum cleaner cord.  I launched the rocket which wrapped around a support beam.  I then switched on the cord retraction on the vacuum cleaner, which pulled me to safety.

No, not really.  That's from an episode of The Simpsons.  I'm actually really excited about my progress, although it sounds super boring: All of my fabric (5 1/2 yards of muslin and about 8 yards of assorted scrap fabric) was rinsed, dried and pressed.  I even took the time to rinse like colors together.  I don't even do that with my own laundry.  I cut the muslin down methodically: first into sixteen 11"x45" strips.  Then each strip was cut into seven 5-1/2"x11" strips... then into two hundred twenty-four 5-1/2"x5-1/2" blocks.  Lemme tell you: ROTARY CUTTERS ARE AMAZING.  Sounds like a lot of work, doesn't it?  Well, according to the directions I'm following, it's not.  I'm on step 2.

PS... I have this thing to do at work that I've been putting off since last Thursday.  I'm trying to do it now, but it's just too boring.  I know I'll get it done today... but I keep thinking about how cool the quilt will be.  OK... I wrote that last bit around 11:30.  It's now 12:46 and I still haven't done it yet.  But I did get a cup of coffee.  Now it's 12:53.  Maybe I'll just try tomorrow.