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April 23, 2007

asbestos was here

Disemboweled by workers in protective suits, the homes in this affordable housing complex in my neighourhood stand wide open now, a shortcut for birds and squirrels, spring breezes tickling all the spots where their poisonous guts used to be. I have no idea what happened to all of the people who used to live here.

Posted by jodi at 11:50 PM | Comments (2) | categories:  athens

April 22, 2007

Who needs Pennsic?

When you've got Viking Week at the frat house.

This picture was taken after the party, and I really wanted to show y'all what a mess it was beyond the plastic sheet wall, but I felt too weird sticking my camera into private property like that, even at 7:30 on a Sunday morning. You'll just have to think back to those high school bush parties (that's like a kegger out in the woods, for my American friends), add in some very Southern tall-backed rocking chairs and the pissiest of American beers, and use your imagination.

Vlad's the morning after the Slave Auction never looked that gross.

*Ahem. Speaking of my favourite summer dorkfest, I have some sad news for members of a certain geeky subculture who will be expecting to see me at Pennsic: Edmund and I can't make it this year. I will be moving house in Athens on August first, and we can't justify paying full price for the whole event to stay for just two days. Next year, I promise. We will still drink whiskey and drunk dial everybody at the appointed time.

The disappointments don't stop there, friends. For those of you belonging to a geeky subculture who will expect to see me at Maryland Sheep and Wool, well, that ain't happening either. My final exam slot with the class I teach is Friday May 4th in the afternoon, Peter will be here waiting to take off to the Great White North, and we're going to take our sweet time driving, stopping at whatever cheesy roadside attractions catch our eye and rocking motel beds throughout Kentucky and Tennessee. Then, as a consolation prize for having to back out on our vacation, we'll swing out of our way a bit to see some dear friends. Perhaps we'll sit outside in the early morning cold and drink tea in our pyjamas with our bare feet in the wet grass, just to get that proper vacation feeling.

Posted by jodi at 07:04 PM | Comments (9) | categories:  self-absorbtion

April 17, 2007

a fine day, mostly

Buoyed by the knowledge that while Peter has left again he'll be back here in less than three weeks to take me home with him for the summer, I headed back into the studio today and got next to nothing accomplished, instead helping other people with bookbinding and papermaking projects, and chatting for a while with a friend who's having some tough times. Everyone is reeling from yesterday's tragedy and I couldn't concentrate long enough to do much actual work. In the afternoon I walked over to the Family and Graduate Housing office and signed a contract on my new apartment. Here it is:

While I didn't ask for it specifically, this was the building I was hoping to get into, the shortest walk to my studio. Today they offered me the apartment on the corner, the closest apartment to my studio in the whole complex. Score! I move in on August first.

I'm excited to be moving. It will take me five minutes to walk to studio from here, which means I can go home for lunch and can work as late as I want without having to worry about biking home in the dark. I can work on game days without having to ride down Milledge Avenue through all of the parties and craziness and "you honk, we drink" nonsense. I will have my own space again (it didn't take me long to remember why I swore long ago to never again live with roommates) and never have to wait for the bathroom or listen to someone else's loud television while I'm trying to sleep, and will have four working stove burners all to myself instead of the two burners I currently share with two other people. I can keep the heat where I like it (down) instead of waking up at four every morning sweating because the furnace has been left blasting. When Peter visits we can engage in censored activities without worrying about other people in the house. No more having to bike to the laundromat. And this will be my morning walk to the studio:

This will make my last year away from home so much more bearable.

Posted by jodi at 06:59 PM | Comments (15) | categories:  self-absorbtion

April 10, 2007

want to be singing at the end of the day

Yesterday my beloved turned 41, and we spent it in all the best ways, doing lots of not much: lounging on coffeeshop couches, me drawing, him reading blogs; cooking supper together; propped up in bed watching the Trailer Park Boys movie; drinking wine; retiring early (say no more). I've been taking it easy since he got here, avoiding the studio, lying in bed longer, avoiding reading the news, drawing in my sketchbook. Peter brought me a 24 pack of Laurentiens, my favourite coloured pencils, from home, so that now I can colour on my printed book pages with more than just Sharpie markers.

There are pictures to upload, projects to write about, but I can't be arsed to do it while Peter is here. My hands, always so nervous and active, would just as soon be still right now, holding his.

Posted by jodi at 02:37 PM | Comments (11) | categories:  self-absorbtion

April 03, 2007

on a less bitchy note

I had studio visits with two of my professors today, and one of them picked me this violet on his way in:

Posted by jodi at 09:04 PM | Comments (6) | categories:  in the studio

Dear Milledge Avenue drivers

I know it pains you greatly to have to slow down, pay attention to driving and share the road with cyclists, and to have to unclamp the cell phone from your ear and steer the six inches to the left to go around me. I know you have important keggers and big box stores to get to and that having to concern yourself with my personal safely doesn't really fit with your self-centred lifestyle. But I have as much right to drive my vehicle on the road as you do yours, and the route I choose to take and whether or not I wear a helmet is none of your damned business. If you think that bicycles belong up on the sidewalk getting in the way of (and possibly endangering) pedestrians and joggers and people in wheelchairs and puppies on leashes and children in strollers, then I'll say the same thing to you that I said this afternoon to the woman who pulled over at a stop light to lecture me about hit-and-run statistics and to tell me I belong on the sidewalk: FUCK OFF. The sidewalk is for walking, a bicycle is a vehicle. And even if you do call me "sister" while delivering your lecture, you're still an asshole.

While we're on the topic, dear Milledge Avenue drivers, let's just clear up one other thing: Milledge is a party zone where people drive fast and goof off, and the side of the road is often strewn with the sorts of refuse that might send me headlong into traffic if my wheel hit them. So, for future reference, the things that I will not drive over on my bike in order to spare you the trouble of steering around me include, but are not limited to, the following:

-broken glass
-dead raccoons
-the windshield wiper from a tractor-trailer
-crushed beer cans
-hairbrushes
-running shoes
-dead squirrels
-dead snakes (yes, dead snakes plural)
-anything else dead
-pizza boxes
-tree branches
-Krystal burgers
-joggers (do you pull over and tell them to get on the sidewalk? just wondering)
-basketballs

Thank you for your understanding in this matter.

Posted by jodi at 07:35 PM | Comments (16) | categories:  assholes : athens

April 01, 2007

goodbye, winter blues

I had every intention of triumphantly unveiling a lovely two-ply yarn at the eleventh hour of the February/March round of Project Spectrum (blue, white and gray), spun out of the beautiful merino that Mama E sent me a little while ago. I spun it all up as fine as I could on Friday night, intending to ply it on Saturday night after I was finished at the studio. But after wondering all day Saturday why my abdominals were feeling so sore, I sat down at the wheel, began treadling, and suddenly figured it out. It seems to be a combination of the double treadle and the very long draw, and it's giving the old belly quite the workout. Is this normal? Maybe I should try a different chair or something. Too bad I don't have a different chair. Actually, maybe I should just leave it the way it is. I ate a lot of potato chips and Clif bars on my trip to Kansas City.

So, spinner/knitter people, I have a question: I started with 4oz of fibre here. It's going to be a 2-ply and once plied will be about 16-20 wraps per inch. Can I get a shawl out of this? A little one?

As usual I've committed to something and then been a total slackass about it, but that's certainly nothing new so let's just move on, hmm? Although I suppose if I looked back over the last two months and tallied up everything I made or worked on that had blue and gray in it (many prints, actually, two or three dyebaths, a good chunk of my sketchbook project) I'd find that I didn't slack that much after all, it's just that I wasn't really thinking of those things as specifically for Project Spectrum. I have to remind myself that the project is a way to think about the things we do normally, our everyday living, crafts and hobbies, in terms of an overall colour scheme and hopefully find inspiration in looking at colours in ways we normally do not, rather than a list of rules and tasks we have to complete. So, hey, I'm doing great! Bring on the pink and green!

I did finish the secret blue knitted thing (at knit night over at Courtney's, which is the best time to finish something because then you can hold it aloft and cry "woohoo" and get congratulations and ego strokes from people who care, rather than just showing the roommate's cat or tossing it behind the laptop with ends not yet woven in and looking around for something else to cast on, pronto) but for the time being that's still a secret. I also started something else, also secret (no guessing!) with the leftovers.

stripes!

The next round, green, pink and yellow for April and May, should be easier, if only because I can at least pick up some of the many green knits I already have on the needles, and I've got fabric I dyed yellow and green waiting to be printed on and sewn with. Colour inspiration is all around me these days: in the last week or so every single thing has flowered in Athens, it's suddenly as lush and green as June around here (perhaps because the University of Georgia, in a spectacular display of waste and wealth, waters its grounds all winter long), there are more shades of hot pink flowers on shrubs and trees than I thought possible, and the whole world seems coated in a thick layer of yellow pollen. Hoping to get a jump on Project Spectrum this time around I went outside and found a lovely pink-and-green backdrop for my bobbin of blues to rest upon; there was plenty of yellow out there as well, but having a grimy splotch on the front of my t-shirt from wiping the pollen off my glasses is bad enough, I don't particularly want it in my yarn, thanks. Now that I look at the photo, though, it seems that when I dropped the bobbon on the ground it picked up one of the wormy tree-flowers, the source of all that is yellow and lung-clogging; you can see it there stuck to the yarn at about two o'clock. You just can't escape the stuff.

Posted by jodi at 03:55 PM | Comments (3) | categories:  project spectrum