6.25.2008

sitting in matlab class

i never would have thought i'd be teaching matlab.  and i'm not, really, but i will be helping 20 girls do their matlab homework.  this is a big deal for me, having scraped a C in my only programming class and hating it the whole way.  turns out, the girl who is teaching me right now dropped that same class when she took it, and now she's flying.  just goes to show, classes suck.

last night all the girls except one played scategories over dinner.  at one point i said praline, with an ahhhhh sound.  one of the girls commented on my pronunciation and then said "i know all these WEIRD people who say prahhhline instead of prayyyline"

we all cried we were laughing so hard.  and then she said saulmon instead of saaalmon, and i felt better.

some tidbits of information:

-tj is back from japan and is driving to san francisco on thursday or friday
-the wtp girls come on saturday
-i found the key to my (brooke's) bicycle
-a black squirrel was eating food from my room on the balcony but didn't break the window screen but did knock over the instant soup bowls
-fanny found a raccoon on the roof
-christine moran's car door is rusted shut
-hanna wants to get a tattoo on her crotch
-gabe will take his dad's painting soon

etc
etc
etc

love sadie

6.22.2008

today today

today i woke up and did not do too much

but yesterday, yesterday i went to a music fest in Harvard square to celebrate the summer solstice and ran into barry and bennett and some old beta i didn't know and sungyun, and all in all it was fun but not amazing

but the day before that, well i moved some stuff from senior house to mccormick so i could start living there and then i went grocery shopping, and by the time i wanted to go out my back was hurting so i played scategories in my room with the other girls i'm living with, and i guess that wasn't so great either.

but thursday i went to the fablab again.  i cut a stencil of this old drawing:



just for fun.  and then the vinyl cutter went crazy! it started eating up my film, which was the last bit of film i owned! it was so sad! so i asked alec if something was going wrong, and he said probably not, but that he'd be happy to tell the fablab to buy more film, which is completely awesome.  so i can keep cutting my stencils, and my screens arrived too! i have 14 now.  plenty plenty plenty.  and i have an empty suite where i can print too!

i somehow ended up at beta splitting a Colt 45 with john and watching blazing saddles.  it's funny that john an i have trouble finishing a 40 when we split it, while his roommate downs three a night.  the poor kid's liver.  he said it's unfortunate that he doesn't have two livers like he has two kidneys.  i said if he did he would just be drinking more.

i found my bicycle key under a cushion and took it for a ride today down memorial drive to river st and then to central, back up mass ave and over to beta for dinner.  by the time i got there my legs were all gelatinous and my hands hurt from leaning on the handlebars.  but it was totally worth it.  bmx bikes are really not that great.  the waitress at dinner was really cute and kept saying "escuse me, escuse me!" when she filled up water cups, and she said things like "bloccoli" and "led bean." the food was good too.

i'm back in gabe's room which is still a disaster. it's not going to be fun to have to move out of here, if i do.  i used my light table today for the first time.  of course i had to move some boxes off of it first, but it's a great addition to the studio, storage and all.  tj is keeping all of his electronics underneath it right now until he gets back from japan and drives to san francisco with his girlfriend and his sugar gliders.  again, i will scan things later.  really i'm falling quite behind on drawing.  i've got something, but it's nothing to be excited about, unfortunately.  i drew a nice older lady in harvard square yesterday while listening to the tokyo tramps, an older chinese man and woman and what looked like their 20-something year old son who played the tambourine.  the woman had a thick chinese accent but sang country music, and the guy had ling sideburns and wore a cowboy hat and a harmonica stand on his neck.  the woman i was drawing stood up when i had half of her drawn, so i'll have to improvise a little.  she was cute though.  

6.17.2008

tech+Knowlogy

three things:
1) the fab lab
2) the broad institute
3) wtp

FIRST
the fab lab is a fabulous laboratory called the fabrication laboratory in the back bay area with some high class computer controlled (cnc) equipment including vinyl cutters, which is the subject of this section of the post.  vinyl cutters can be used for a lot of really cool things, like cutting vinyl...but also for cutting mylar, which can be adhered to a silkscreen to print tshirts.  for those of you reading this who don't know me, i had a silkscreening business when i was in high school (soSadieBUG).  There should be ten stretched screens in a ups truck driving from Arkansas as we speak, and with a few more vinyl cutting runs to the fablab, it should be time to start printing again!  

SECOND
the broad institute is roughly a block and a half away from where I live and i've been inside once for an art lecture.  needless to say, the building has nothing to do with art, but instead houses millions of dollars of chem and bio engineering equipment.  almost all of the labs are bl2 biohazardous and full of people laughing over pipettes and one-million-dollar slide scanners and stuff.  on the seventh floor is the information storage room with ventilation in the floor and a water-evaporation cooling system on the roof above it.  as we (jason who works there who i ran into who decided to give me a tour) ogled through the little window in the door and remarked on how much storage there might be in there, an older guy with a name tag stopped and said there were probably 1.6-1.8 petabytes, which is more than some countries!!  Then he unlocked the door and let us look inside.  it was remarkably well cooled, and the pretty giant room was packed floor to ceiling and all the way back with hard drives.  there were over a dozen large boxes containing sever hard drives each unopened in the corner.  the older guy remarked: "we buy storage like it's going out of style!"

Jason and i went to the cafeteria where he gave me free coffee (coffee was the reason i had left senior house, and as i was talking to jedediah by kendall jason walked by, and so was the chance tour of the broad) and we talked about taking time off (he took three years off right before he graduated, got a job and went back to finish his degree when he wanted a research job instead) and about picking a major, and applying yourself.  it was great advice because it sounded like he had been through everything i talked about.  my lesson: never pass up what people offer you, especially when it's a tour of an unfamiliar hazardous lab building.

THIRD
wtp or the women's technology program is a summer program for high school girls going into their senior year to help expose them to mechanical or electrical engineering.  i'm working for the mech-e half.  started today, it was wonderful.  my lovely boss barbara hughey told us (there are seven undergrads working for her) that she does not like to micromanage, so she had whiteboards all around the lab telling us what jobs need to be finished in the next two weeks.  the jobs ranged from assembling a cabinet (done) to writing a lesson plan (in progress) to killing the large bug that keeps flying around (not done).  It's totally loose.  we took a lunch trip to fire and ice in harvard square where dr. hughey bought us all-you-can-eat lunches which were delicious, and we walked back afterwards, all on the clock mind you.  sarah cole spent the day putting together wind-up turtles and foxes, and i sent a billion emails to people about rube goldberg machines.  it was great.  on top of it all i got my id card today with food money on it.  i can now eat anything i can buy on techcash non-stop until august first (gross!).

summer is looking up.  unfortunately gabe's room is looking like a jungle, or a storage closet.  i had to climb through boxes to find a pair of socks this morning. it's ridiculous, but all of my stuff is in it (less one box, one lamp, and my mattress topper).  it should take another ten hours or so to get it all arranged nicely.  woe is me.  also i got some books from the library by the guy who wrote emotional design, as well as a comic book and a dvd copy of blazing saddles, which i've been meaning to watch for ages!

the sun is setting beautifully and the tree in the courtyard of senior house is so nicely lit and yellow-green.  it's not raining anymore, i could buy myself ten dinners tonight if i wanted, and it'll be a great day at work tomorrow.  mmmmmmmm summer.

6.16.2008

new (york) post

just got back from nyc. four of us drove down in a two-door toyota 
with shaggy fur seat covers. I sat in the back both ways, it was hard 
to walk when i first got out of the car. we listened to pretty droney 
music like the smiths and the decemberists, or sugar-high music 
like atom and his package, or vampire weekend on repeat. needless 
to say it's great to be listening to my own music right now. and 
speaking of music, there was a free concert at summerstage in 
central park this weekend, vampire weekend, born ruffians and 
kid sister. we showed up around 2:30 or 3 (it started at 4) and the 
line was about a mile long. usman, our in, had already gotten into 
the concert, so we missed our line-cutting shot. (on the way uptown 
we passed the farmers market at union square where i saw one of 
the guys i used to sell apples with)

while we waited, i saw two gals i went to high school with, one in 
a white shirt and one in a white dress (it poured during the concert). 
then john and i ditched. we walked a bunch and got up to the Met, 
which is where i wanted to be instead of waiting in the sun for two 
hours and the rain for three (when we saw barry connie and usman 
for dinner, they were comparing pruney fingers and toes.). there 
was a superhero costume exhibit, complete with the iron man outfit 
from the movie, which was neat.

on the train ride downtown we were talking about new york being 
dutch when two kids in the seat in front of us asked us if we were 
from mit and flashed their brass rats. turns out one of them is in 
phi sig, a block away from where john lives. it's really cool to be 
recognized by your ring. went to whole foods when we got down 
to union square where i saw another friend from high school who 
has an inexcusably weak handshake according to john.

we met the three wet concert-goers for dinner and as we decided 
where to go, it started pouring like nothing else. we decided go to 
s'mac, a mac and cheese restaurant 6 blocks away. we made a little 
fortress with three umbrellas and 5 people, which meant we were 
all exactly half wet when we got there. it was quite squishy. and 
i've never eaten so much mac and cheese in my life, it was huge! 
it was served up in a cast-iron pan, which was a lot bigger than it 
looked considering it's solid cheese. the only people to finish were 
connie and usman, because connie got a small and we all liked
usman's. gross

connie and i broke and went to see fuerzabruta, finally! we split a beer 
at the bar that didn't card me and went in to see the show which was 
in a large smoke-filled room where everyone stood in a circle. the 
show was a mix of treadmills, moving furniture, falling people, 
gunshots, sideways walking women hanging from the ceiling by 
their waists, flying walls, water, women sliding in water above 
our heads, boys kissing their girlfriends between acts, boys taking 
photos of women in water above them with their iphones and cat-
calling them, dancing, moving around in the dark, holding connie's 
hand, and confetti. it was great. maybe not $80 great, but great.

john and i went home that night and when we left in the morning to 
go to my dad's for breakfast we ran into one of my old-time friends 
and her dad and sister. it was great. turns put she's going to china to 
teach playwriting in english this summer. we only got to talk for one 
stop though, so i don't know what else she's been up to. it was a good 
way to end the circle of running into people i didn't know very well.

we ate breakfast at dad's where he told us he is at war with his caribbean 
housemate, and their way of getting to each other is by leaving the 
bathroom door open while the other one is in the kitchen and saying 
hilarious rude comments to the wall or the air and never directly to 
the other person. the woman left the bathroom door ajar while we 
were making eggs, it was great. dad spoke to the door as he went and 
closed it.

then we left and met barry and connie in queens to drive home, 
slept in the car listening to bad music, and got home and slept until 
noon. feels good. i wish i were still in new york. i move to mccormick 
today, start working tomorrow. a full day of ice breakers and scenarios 
to learn about, and lunch at fire and ice! should be great. i'm going to 
grab some coffee. will scan some drawings when i finish them. falling 
a little behind. happy monday!

6.11.2008

Certainly Can Cancan

yesterday was very hot.  very very hot.  in fact i stayed inside all 
day except for getting a cup of coffee at 7:30am, and trying to get 
an espresso machine from reuse around 5.  there was no espresso 
machine when i got there but i did get a large cutting mat, and on 
the way back i scoped out the SH dumpsters and found a bicycle!  
Ken had thrown a few out that were parked in front of an emer-
gency exit.  i have a bike now, single speed, with a flashlight duct 
taped to the back of the seat for night riding.  it's a road bike and 
it has brakes, and i pumped up the tires with my new bicycle pump 
from rachel.  john said it was fast, i have yet to ride it.

i started painting in gabe's room yesterday, over the koi.  brooke 
you are in the painting, and i might be in it too if i decide to be,
there's a space for me. and my mom is teaching us how to chop 
fish (koi) and telling us not to feel too bad about it.  so that's the 
homage to the koi i'm painting over.  

i drew some chess players in harvard square the other day.  it's 
funny to watch them play and watch them pour 40s into abp paper 
cups at the side of their tables, and hear them click their timers as 
they make moves.  they're pretty ferocious looking.  i'm reading 
the yiddish policeman's union by michael chabon. it's all about yids 
who play chess, and this one who's father was the master of it, and 
tried to teach him but ended up just slaughtering him every time, so 
he writes a letter to his father telling him he loathes the game and 2 
days later his father kills himself (incidentally before the letter had 
even arrived).  but the detailing on the characters is great, and trans-
lates pretty well to watching the grumpy old harvard square chess 
players.

the final episode of top chef is tonight, and the final mexican summer 
camp party in 462, and i'm working desk until 10 when they both 
start anyway... 

i have a few little basil plants growing on the windowsill.  they smell 
good but they're also covered in fruit flies or they were yesterday.  
i've killed several bugs this morning on the carpet, an one on my 
drawing pad, and i'm trying to assemble the light table i got but of 
course i cannot lift it by myself so it'll have to wait.  also i have no 
idea where to put it.  the room right now has two library-style book-
shelves in the middle of the room while i try to paint the walls.  in 
fact all i have in this room is furniture.

i think i'm done here, will scan drawings in later.

6.08.2008

Probation and the end of Probation

the 24 hours

John and I decided not to have any contact with each other for 24 hours. 
At first I tried drawing, and went to Toscanini's, where they had honey
 thyme ice cream, which I tried and which was delicious!  But I drank a 
lemonade, met Bill McKenna to give him back the hat and book he left 
in Gabe's room, and drew an older lady sitting near me until she left.  I 
only had her nose drawn, so I improvised most of it, and sat there 
crosshatching for a while, until a little girl and her mom asked me if I 
did that for a living.  It was pretty cute, the little girl said she liked to 
draw, and her dad did watercolors. The woman had spent the rest of her 
time there fawning over the breakfast menu, especially the warm bread 
pudding, which made me think of Brooke.


After that I went home and had a pretty great time, relatively unprod-
uctively, Gabe threw a party on Friday night, which I went to, drank at, 
and got thoroughly nauseous as the lounge got messed up and the guests 
got beat up by Matt Garcia.  By two or three, or four, I was ready to puke, 
but didn't and tried to sleep it off.  

part 2

Woke up still queasy.  It took me a record amount of time to walk down to
the shower, and walking outside in the blazing sun was a little more than I
could handle.  I went to get breakfast hoping to settle my stomach, but the
sweet smell of abp made me want to ralph, and I spat out the first bit of my
sandwich for the same reason.  After a few hours I would only get dizzy 
after running up the stairs or leaning over, and by 6 pm, I was ready to start 
my day.

Riders up

6 pm was also the beginning of the Belmont Stakes, where Big Brown was 
the surefire winner, and potential winner of the Triple Crown, which 
apparently hasn't been won in 4 decades.  Big Brown looked fine, and held
a steady 3rd place until a few furlongs short of the finish, but then he 
dropped back and back and back, finishing last, at a trot.  Apparently he 
couldn't take the weather.  But hey, it's pretty unbearable here too.

So I went to JP Licks to cool off and draw, I got this mojito sorbet with 
seltzer thing, but the girl had never made one before so I had a whole 
pint of sorbet in mine, totally overkill, but great.  I sat outside and 
listened to some guys chatting about hitting on girls and going dancing, 
and behind me was a motorcycle gang and a bunch of the biker-women 
eating ice cream in belly shirts.  The gang all got on their bikes (with
 their respective (maybe) women) during a red light and sat their revving 
for about 45 seconds.  Meanwhile, I drew a lovely old lady sitting inside 
Starbuck's, watching her through the window.


post 24

I went out to dinner with John, because the probation was over, and too hung over all day to drink, spent my night on the Annex roof watching people drink and play music and talking about growing cucumbers in a city.  Terrence, who is the only other person from my high school to go here, was there, and was starting to grow vegetables on the roof in a fishtank with no drainage.  John went off about acid rain, Terrence went off about New York City, John went off about starting an off-season cucumber delivery service, I recommended he outsource to Oregon, but I think there was someone there with a barn in Oregon so that might have made sense.  When I went to sleep, John stayed up researching submarines that can jump like dolphins .


Today we went to Barnes and Noble to draw and read magazines, which 
was ordinary, and then pegged home to hang out in the air conditioning.  
Gave John a drawing lesson, and colored in some of my drawing.  It's 
not finished yet, I want his shirt to match the wallpaper.


home

I'm taking care of Hayley for the week for 
Gabe, who is in Vermont finishing his 
thesis book.  His room is full of those flying 
ants again, I think I've killed ten of them 
already, and john  killed one that was at least 
4 times the size of the ones in here that was 
crawling around the kitchen,  I'm all itchy, 
and every few minutes I hear this wing 
buzzing from a corner of the room.  Hayley's 
looked ready to pounce a bunch of times, 
but she just sits there and watched until 
she gets bored and leaves.  I'll be sleeping 
in my old room for a while.




6.05.2008

The Laborious Walk to Central Square and the Chance T Ride Back


Last night John stayed over and we couldn't sleep. The air conditioner was

not on in the house and he kept tossing about, I guess until we woke up

because I don't remember falling asleep. But I woke up to a chill breeze
in
my little wind tunnel (the windows in my room are perpendicular). I
walked
to Central Square in order to draw and get some coffee, but when
I sat down
to draw I sort of waited a while until I had something to draw.
That's never
good, so I drank my coffee and sat, and drew a bit, resulting
in the following
page:




Upon leaving the coffee shop I dawdled around the few blocks to the T, and
stopped by the co-op to buy some milk and ran into Annatina from VAP. She
was with her mom who was not speaking English but was very cute asking
her about sugar. Also her mom had bought Red Sox red socks for Annatina's
little brother who had damaged his Achilles tendon.

Got on the T as Bill McKenna was getting off, so he didn't get off but came
to Senior House with me and we drew in Gabe's room. We also talked about
Coney Island, because for those of you who don't know, it is being "restored,"
which really means "Las Vegas-ified" (Check it out: thecidc.org). Bill might
have some tentative plans to stop this from happening, but there's not much
we can do without 2 billion dollars. I think I'll ride the ferris wheel next time
I go down. Can't remember if the swinging cars make me sick or not. The
Cyclone most definitely does.


6.04.2008

The Goings and Comings of Commuter Railers

Dropped Brooke off in Providence today.  We took a taxi up the big hill 
with another bike-and-builder named Jake who we met on the commuter 
rail. They're all staying in a Brown dormitory which looked pretty damn 
dumpy.  Dead-bolted doors and bathroom locks, double card swipe 
security, tiny little doubles, and linoleum flooring.  
It was raining.

We went to grab lunch but I realized I didn't bring any money with me to 
Providence, so we asked directions back to the commuter rail line at Ben 
& Jerry's.  This proved to be futile.  I don't think the girl working the 
register had ever taken a train, and the lady serving ice cream probably
has never taken a walk.  I'm pretty sure she would have died if Brooke had 
mentioned biking across America.  The walk down was nice, short and 
pretty.  It takes longer for me to walk from Senior House to Central 
Square.  

At the station, Brooke bought me a ticket, I found my debit card, and we 
sat down to start drawing in our new sketchbooks together before I left 
for Boston.  And so, here is the first drawing (started and finished today) 
of the summer.


and although this drawing was drawn on Monday, and was not part 
of the new sketchbook, it was the idea for this project, and so, the 
finished drawing:


if you'd like to see all the drawings, they will be periodically posted here:



and finally, Matt Lord had neither a Margarita, nor a Long Island Iced Tea
nor a Cosmopolitan, but instead went for a long list of drinks he had never 
had, including a MaiTai and a Kamikazi Cosmo.

Floor Five

There are several types of insects living in Gabe's room on floor five, 
into which I am meant to move upon Gabe's graduation.  The walls 
are all painted, although one contains a mural of two giant koi, which 
I will paint over soon.  I even bought supplies to do it with, although 
I don't have any idea what I'll paint.  Brooke and I will be sharing that 
room in the fall as a double studio, and taking her room as a forced 
double, and that way we both get a studio and neither of us has to 
sleep with the insects on floor five.  

Brooke is biking across the country tomorrow, and as a way to keep 
up with each other we have decided to start one drawing and finish 
one drawing every day of the summer.  Today we both bought 
Earthbound sketchbooks to start drawing in tomorrow.  Tomorrow 
we will go to Providence, Rhode Island so she can meet up with her 
other biker friends. 

Ally is reading Before the Storm, a book about Barry Goldwater, 
who is called "Mister Conservative" according to wikipedia.  The 
most interesting thing in the book so far is that he ran unsuccessfully 
for president.  Sounds enthralling!  

The rest of the happenings on floors five and six, which are also 
called Towers, have been quelled, or just paused.  Matt Lord turned 
21 today.  I do not know what the first drink he ordered today was, 
but here are our bets: 

Brooke-Margarita 
Ally-Long Island Iced Tea 
Sadie-Cosmopolitan            

Jose and Fanny both went home for the week and will be back for 
the weekend, and Gabe is in Rhode Island at nationals with the MIT 
Sailing team.  By the time Fanny and Jose are back, I will have left 
for New York City, Ally, Gabe and Connie will have graduated, and 
Matt Lord will probably just be drinking.

In short, floor five is a lovely dark lounge with three doors onto the 
balcony, excellent for sitting around writing about nothing in 
particular while listening to the gurgle of the three fish tanks (one of 
which contains no fish), whistling songs by Air or Kimya Dawson, 
storing bikes and empty Bombay Sapphire bottles, and waiting for 
everyone to come back.