Last week I walked into studio and Matthew was downloading pictures off of his camera. Since I have to walk by his desk to get to mine he stopped me and told me he had taken a video of a squirrel jumping out of a trash can. I stopped and watched it and then there was a brief and awkward conversation about the other files in the recently downloaded pictures folder. He was afraid to open them while I was watching. Later he e mailed me to say the pictures weren't of nudity, but of moss and snow. I wrote back that I've been interested in moss gardens and mosseries and thanks to gmail it looks like I have a growing interest in nudity (although I really do...).
Yesterday was the first day of final reviews for all the studios in our department. Due to some unfortunate planning they are all being held in one room, simultaneously with each other. There are three large classes and everyone is either presenting a project, reviewing it, or standing in the middle of the room talking. Because of this the room is noisy and little can be heard. During this, Andrew leaned over to Martin and said, "This project makes me want to dress up as a clown and masturbate in public." Which pretty much encapsulates the projects from the class I TA.
I had always held the assumption that he urban planning students were smarter than the landscape architects. Fortunately, they changed my mind today in our urban planning movie watching and essay writing class. Either they don't know what a personal essay is, or they don't have brains, I'm not sure.
So our class has two parts, one is to watch movies. These movies usually have a planning/social justice component to them; we watch them on Tuesday nights and then talk about them during Wednesday's class. The second part, and my favorite, is that we write a weekly essay. There are topics for these essays, but they are generally pretty open for interpretation. Since we didn't watch any movies last night we talked about our essays today in class. One guy was criticized widely because the majority of the class agreed that his paper was about different qualities of the air in different locations, they did not like his tangent into politics. I thought it worked, I said so and pointed out that he was writing about the political climate surrounding the recent election. I got criticized for being too mysterious. Not unclear mind you, they just wanted something far more literal than what I had written.
I have the stack of essays I've written this semester sitting next to me to revise by Saturday, they're my diversion from writing a traveling fellowship, I just don't think I can take their suggestions.
Tonight, after my first day back to school after a week off, I took a three hour nap and effectively ruined my sleep schedule. This is the schedule that allows me to wake up early three days a week to make it to my one required class; I managed this morning waking up early enough to take the bus. I had been planning on going back to school and, by default not take a three hour nap, get work done but it's been snowing and someone called and said it was icy and if I didn't have to get out I probably shouldn't, which is reason enough for me to stay in. I have my laptop so I could have worked on some of the papers that are due, but I haven't been, choosing instead to spend my time after waking up on reading the internet. Oddly, while I was on vacation I had been waking up reasonably early and had not been taking naps (long ones, that is), I guess the one day of school really wiped me out.
Last week I found 25 dollars in a Christmas card from my grandma while I was cleaning out a box of papers and my mom sent me some great new chapstick, right when I was needing some.
Ceri and I went on a bike ride while she was here. I got Garlic out and brushed the dust off her and she was ready to roll although I'm still a little paranoid about flats on the back tire. I also didn't fall over because of a failure to unclip my shoes. Ceri said the cold was hurting her teeth, but I couldn't stop smiling because it had been a long time since I'd gone on a ride that wasn't to school.
I got a new pair of long underwear that is completely inflexible. It's hard to pedal in and even harder to sit in a chair in; it's warm, but it pulls my pants down while its crotch sags lower and lower.
I didn't get much done today, but I still have hope for tomorrow.
