06/01/2001 - 07/01/2001 07/01/2001 - 08/01/2001 08/01/2001 - 09/01/2001 09/01/2001 - 10/01/2001 10/01/2001 - 11/01/2001 11/01/2001 - 12/01/2001 12/01/2001 - 01/01/2002 01/01/2002 - 02/01/2002 02/01/2002 - 03/01/2002 03/01/2002 - 04/01/2002 04/01/2002 - 05/01/2002 05/01/2002 - 06/01/2002 06/01/2002 - 07/01/2002 07/01/2002 - 08/01/2002 08/01/2002 - 09/01/2002 09/01/2002 - 10/01/2002 10/01/2002 - 11/01/2002 11/01/2002 - 12/01/2002 12/01/2002 - 01/01/2003 01/01/2003 - 02/01/2003 02/01/2003 - 03/01/2003 03/01/2003 - 04/01/2003 04/01/2003 - 05/01/2003 05/01/2003 - 06/01/2003 06/01/2003 - 07/01/2003 07/01/2003 - 08/01/2003 08/01/2003 - 09/01/2003 09/01/2003 - 10/01/2003 10/01/2003 - 11/01/2003 11/01/2003 - 12/01/2003 12/01/2003 - 01/01/2004 01/01/2004 - 02/01/2004 02/01/2004 - 03/01/2004 03/01/2004 - 04/01/2004 04/01/2004 - 05/01/2004 05/01/2004 - 06/01/2004 08/01/2004 - 09/01/2004 10/01/2004 - 11/01/2004 11/01/2004 - 12/01/2004 02/01/2005 - 03/01/2005 04/01/2005 - 05/01/2005 a firenze

Monday, August 26

11:21 PM
A couple of other things I forgot to mention about visiting Shannon: we went to the Walker again, and got to see the rest of the museum (and I saw the outdoor sculpture, including Oldenberg's Spoon Bridge with Cherry without 10 inches of snow covering it - water was pouring from the cherry stem onto the cherry!). Also, there was some kind of hip hop thing going on in the auditorium. We went in and caught the last act, which was a trio of beatboxers. While the hosts wrapped up, there was a group of really good breakdancers on stage. It went along with a hip hop themed exhibit on the first floor.

Also, I accidentally started a fire in Shannon's apartment by turning on the wrong burner on the stove, shooting a flame high through a plastic lid and spreading ashes and smoke throughout the place. Oh, but don't worry, I put it out with relative ease.

School started today. I feel ok about it. Not too nervous, not too confident that I have any good ideas for art.

Thursday, August 22

4:10 PM
I didn't get my car back till late afternoon yesterday. I took off as soon as possible, but I started getting sleepy around 1:30am, so I stopped at a rest stop to take a quick nap. Three hours later, I woke up and finished the last hour and a half of the 11 hour trip, arriving early this morning. Parts of the trip were quite scary. There were three lightning storms that seemed to be following me home (in fact, it's here in Toledo right now). At one point visibility was so poor that I had to pull over to avoid being killed by cars I couldn't see, and so that I could defog my windshield. It was rather terrifying; it seems wimpy to admit it now. But car accidents kill a lot of people, you know. Not me, not yet.

Wednesday, August 21

12:30 PM
I'm listening to the new Solomon Burke album. My. God. It's. Good.

Tuesday, August 20

11:15 PM
Hello, I am in St. Paul, typing on Shannon's laptop. Shannon is sadly absent, however. I meant to start back for home on Monday morning, but on Saturday afternoon my car decided to bust a proverbial nut and start leaking oil at a rapid rate. Yesterday morning we took it to a garage, who gave us an exorbitant estimate, so we took it to another place, who should have it fixed up by noon tomorrow. Meanwhile, Shannon left for home (Iowa) this evening as a torrential rain began.

But it's been fun here. The night I arrived (last Monday) while Shannon was taking a final, I went to a discussion with Judith Levine, author of Harmful to Minors, which was very good, if a tad self-congratulatory (most everyone who spoke was quite left-leaning - not to say I'm not). The event was held in this great bookmaking shop, which had some of their artists' work on display, and a nice store. Bookmaking is something that I should have tried by now, and getting more eager to do it. Other things we did are mushy in my mind, but they include: going to the zoo (where we passed a kid saying, "If we had a lion in our house, he would eat Eva first"); watching the Ethan Hawke version of Hamlet (which was pretty good) and The Shipping News (which reminded me too much of Chocolat in its sappiest moments, but had a refreshing undercurrent of horror); making calzoni (ok, calzones); eating out way too much; shopping for storage bins and waste baskets (of the two nearby Targets Shannon shops at, one is nicknamed "Targhetto" and the other "Tar-zhay" [as though French] - I wish this were original but suspect it is not); and painting cartoon portraits of each other on ceramic plates at the appropriately named "Paint Your Plate". Sunday we went to a nearby pow-wow with a friend of Shannon's.

I also got a haircut yesterday, and am surprised that I do not miss my long, unwieldy hair one bit. Yet.

And Maddy wrote me, which is exciting as always.

Sunday, August 4

11:11 PM
Went home for Dad's birthday last Tuesday, and then I stayed till today. I hung out with Joy a couple times during the week while Kate was at the Stratford Festival. We saw Goldenboy, this Norwegian band who Joy's friend's friend from Texas manages (somehow). They were pretty good at the sort of Blink 182 kind of "pop-punk" or "power pop" style of music or whatever, but it's not my favorite. They were technically adept, and I liked several of the songs, and they were good guys, so I bought an EP. The lead singer is apparently in love with Pink and wrote a song about her. ... Oh yeah, and Joy and Kate came up last weekend so that we could all see the band here in Toledo as well.

Kate and I saw Lovely and Amazing. I didn't know anything about it going in except that it had Jake Gyllenhaal and Catherine Keener. Kate didn't like it too much, and I think I was a little disappointed as well. But Keener was good. To get over the disappointment, we rented Mulholland Drive, which we hadn't seen for nine or ten months. That's a great movie. I've only seen David Lynch's last two movies, which may not represent his entire oeuvre all that accurately.