sidewalk arts festival

every year, scad sponsors the sidewalk arts festival. students and others compete in chalk drawing on the sidewalks throughout forsyth park. the festival was actually yesterday, but jessica and i both forgot our cameras. but that's actually not a bad thing. the festival was terribly crowded with people trying to look and see what everyone was chalking. but the art is on the sidewalk, so everyone was walking in between the art. it was so crowded, we never would have been able to get any decent pictures anyway. so i went back today and took pictures of the art all done. here are some of my favorites.

i think this one was the best work i saw there.


cute! goldfish and koi were a popular theme.


the ubiquitous obama...


finding nemo was playing in forsyth park that night, so i think this was pretty creative. it might have made some children cry :)


nice juxtaposition of a cartoon geisha next to the girl with a pearl earring.


also, while i was riding around the park, i noticed some people in civil war dress. it seems that the monument in the middle of forsyth park is the confederate soldiers memorial. so all these women were dressed in black hoop-skirt dresses (and it was quite warm for that today!) and there were also soldiers and cannons in the park. oh, and plenty of rebel flags. can't forget those. but here's some pictures of the crowd milling around.

it's been beautiful this weekend, although yesterday was far too hot for me. i really wanted to go to the beach, but that fell through. i have no way of getting there, and the person who was going to go with me to visit her parents out there changed her plans. that's okay. maybe another day. it will sure be hot enough here for it until the day i leave!

craziness

i haven't been writing for a while, huh... well, sadly, my mental life is a shambles! i'm waiting to hear back from the interviews i've done in boston, which is making me terribly irritable. sorry all, i'm kind of superstitious about interviews and job karma and all that. and i feel like already too many people know about what i'm going through with these 2 interviews, and that's why i'm not hearing anything back from anyone. when i get anything--even a rejection--i'll talk about them...

also, i'm having a hard time dealing with our family problems. lee's mother is sick and i'm not there and i don't know yet when i'm going to be there and i feel like i'm really far away and there's too much going on but i can't do anything about it.

and finally, there's my new boss at work. she's nice, and that's about as far as i can go. she does have an art background, but she's never used it and it doesn't apply to anything taught at scad. i feel like if she never sinks, she'll never swim. she relies on me for way too much stuff--but she's my boss! but i feel like her boss. she's also never managed anything or anyone before, so i also feel like the boss there. i may not have library management experience, but i have 3 years of other management experience. this woman runs almost everything by me, or just plain doesn't know what she's doing or what's going on. she's also a drama queen and a terrible chatty patty who won't shut up! i feel like i can't get anything done in my office. this job has truly driven me to drink. it's a good thing that i don't buy alcohol for just myself at home...

dc pictures

day 1

the capitol upon arrival at dc's union station


minerva in the library of congress. you pass her on your way to see the lovely reading room--which as a tourist you are not allowed to enter, only to view from a sound proof box looking down over it. so sad.


the sweets we ate at the american indian smithsonian museum. we had savory food from the lovely food court as well... but here is the indian pudding, which i don't think i liked, and the mesquite cookies (complete with pine nuts). YUM!


day 2

the national cathedral


thou shalt not enter!


after a super tasty lunch with miriam in durgan park.


at the tidal basin for cherry blossom viewing with 2 million of our closest friends! it was not really fun...


the national portrait gallery


walking to dinner in our neighborhood, we passed a building that said it was syracuse university's paul something building. so here is su in dc. note the orange flag.


dessert! a three layer mousse cake at l'ocolat cafe. i'm drooling as i type!


day 3

at the national zoo. i really like the petting zoo area because my favorite animals are goats and sheep, followed then by the capybara, which i did not see... ;(


after the zoo, we sat on the porch of the inn and had our leftovers from the previous night's dinner. it was a lovely little spot.


then off to the train station to boston, by way of the national gallery. i have officially (as if it weren't official before) seen more i.m. pei buildings than any other architect. it doesn't hurt that he did the rock hall in cleveland and the everson art museum in syracuse--both places i've lived. otherwise, i've seen buildings of his in paris, japan, dc, and other places throughout the country and the world.


and the fountain across the way, in front of the rest of the national gallery.


a great trip over all :)

dc and btown

it's been a crazy time recently, with a new boss that won't shut her yap, family illnesses, job interviews, and a trip to dc.

last weekend, lee and i met in the middle and met in dc. i hadn't been there since i was 13 years old! we stayed at a cute place called adam's inn in a great neighborhood with a lot of fantastic ethnic food. we ate turkish and el salvadorian, went to a great chocolate cafe, and had decent pizza and pasta while listening to live jazz--all in the same neighborhood!

what's nice about dc is the amount of free things there are to do there. once i arrived--it's a long story, but lee and i were supposed to arrive within 45 minutes of each other on friday morning, but my train hit a car on the way...--we went straight to the capitol building and supreme court. we didn't wait to go inside, but got some nice pictures. then we went to the library of congress. YAY! the exhibits were fantastic, but the tour was terrible. just go for the exhibits.

day 2 we walked from the inn to the national cathedral. it was beautiful. and a perfect morning to walk there--although it was a longer walk than we expected. afterward, we went to durgin park and had lunch with miriam. it was sooo good to see her :) and lunch was very delicious. i had butternut squash ravioli. after lunch, lee and i headed down to the tidal basin for cherry blossom viewing, but it was too crowded to be enjoyable. so we left and walked up through the japanese street fair. not very japanese... just some karaoke and some kids dressed as manga characters. but then we went to the national portrait gallery, and it was really fantastic.

on sunday morning before we left, we woke up and walked down to the national zoo. it was a beautiful day for the zoo :) the only bummer was that i couldn't find the capybara in the amazonia exhibit. the capybara is my favorite animal. it is the largest rodent in the world, so it always makes me think of the ROUS (rodent of unusual size) from the princess bride. except it's cute. note below:


after the zoo, we went back to the inn to gather our stuff and slowly made our way to the train station via the national gallery, where i saw a beautiful illuminated manuscript exhibit.

all in all, it was a very fun weekend. i will write more on the rest of my trip later and will also post the pictures from dc. but alas, i haven't downloaded them off my camera yet!

favorite cafe no more!

on friday night, bookclub met once again. there were 5 of us and we met at gallery espresso to talk about "the bride price" by buchi emecheta. it was an okay book. i didn't hate it, but i didn't love it. it was a slow starter, and you don't care about the main character until about 70 pages before the end. then all this stuff happens and you get really into the book. then it ends and you wish the the whole book was like that...

anyway, we ordered the cheese board, some wine, pita chips, cakes, cookies and were happily munching and talking away. by the end of our "meal," some people over next to us were very unhappy and looking at the floor. that's when we found out that there was an apparently large palmetto bug (aka COCKROACH) scurrying across the floor just a little way from us. i hate cockroaches...

one palmetto bug under some rugs and furniture in a cafe might be something to overlook down here in savannah. (you see now how i've become a little desensitized to the idea of them). you see, they are outdoor cockroaches, not the same at all as the ones we have up north. they do not infest so-called dirty places. they come inside through cracks in the walls or around doors, mainly looking for water. in fact, most everyone around the cockroach just watched it scurry away--no one even tried to kill it. they were just laughing about it. the upset people just moved their seats to the other side of the cafe. the problem comes next... when jessica said about 10 minutes later "um, maybe i shouldn't tell you what i just saw."

the ceiling of gallery espresso is made of wood beams. there was a guy across the way from us, with his girlfriend on his laptop. jessica said one fell off the ceiling onto his head. he brushed it off. jessica told us that, and we all got up and went to sit outside. and as we were bussing our stuff up to the front, jessica said she saw it sitting on his bag! oh no! so the problem was that there were multiple cockroaches and that they were brazen enough to be around people and in the light. this all means that they probably do have a palmetto bug problem--that the cafe is not sealed well from the outside and that they don't spray for them or something. i will never go back there again! i felt so dirty and creepy!

but our next book is "special topics in calamity physics." and i hear it's quite good, so i'm looking forward to that.

bookbinding and bbqs

this weekend i had a pretty busy saturday. jessica and i had signed up to take a basic bookbinding class through scad's community education. in the class, we made a book from scratch and learned a pretty basic sewing technique to secure pages to the book board. it was really a lot of fun. but kind of discouraging, too! the woman who taught the class graduated from scad several years ago from the fibers program. she now works for scad in several capacities--and when she demo'ed how to do the book, it took her about 20 minutes to a half hour. but the class was given about 5 hours to do our own books! someday, maybe i'll be able to do this book in a short amount of time!

i think i'll use mine to save all the beautiful cards and letters i've received from friends and family while i've been down here. lee will be sending along some pretty yellow envelopes from home for me to glue into the pages for some of the postcards, and i'll figure out how to put the rest in as i go. jessica and i are going to try to get together and make another book soon so we don't forget how. when i get back to boston, maybe i'll show some of you how to make these :)

then later saturday evening, hunt had a bbq at his house. his brother and sister-in-law are in town from boston for the weekend, and it was a good excuse to get some co-workers together, i suppose. i made car bomb cupcakes, in honor of st. patrick's week in savannah. thanks for the spring-time cupcake stencils, lee!


i've got to find a way to get more filling in the inside though. i spent a lot of time hollowing these suckers out, and this was all the filling i got. i think the crumb kind of sinks back into the holes after you make them. but i need more filling! how do they do it with jelly donuts?

it was actually chilly last night, too, so hunt and his brother had to get the chiminea going. then we all sat around in a 1-foot radius from the thing and stayed warm. well, at least we were cozy :)

and a good time was had by all, i think.

end of my 4-day weekend

today was st. patrick's day. savannah is shut down! you can't get anywhere, so most businesses, except bars and restaurants are closed. i didn't really think i was going to do anything, but a coworker called and asked if i wanted to see the parade with her. it was fun! savannah's st. patrick's was created to rival mardi gras. there's not really a lot of irish heritage here, i don't think, so most of the parade stuff has little to do with irish-ness. there's mostly a lot of drinking! but we stayed at the beginning of the parade and out of the drunken revelers, so we had a good time.

leprechauns...

shenanigans...

and mardi gras music!

and it was such a beautiful, picture-perfect day in savannah today.

but the best part was lunch. jennifer and i went to the sentient bean after the parade, where i had a delicious bbq tofu wrap. and we started off by sharing this wonderful jalapeno cheddar scone!


thanks jennifer :)