2 posts tagged “community calendar”

first of all, i just want to point out this blog's feature of tags. I thought it would be really interesting to see which topics I talk about most, and I think it's hillarious and unsurprising that dinner is the largest tag there. i love dinner.

This morning a whole crew of us woke up early and went to breakfast at a diner for Danna's last day! It was Lily and my's idea. But it was mary, danna, stephanie, saralee, travis, j., lily and me! it was so fun. and so good. but now i want to throw up. everyone else seemed to go back to bed. and i kinda want to, but i'm also SOOOO excited to have finally woken up early! I escaped the pull of that cave monster bed! Even though I recently hung up a picture of cows being milked next to my bed. which I thought was really funny or cute when I first put it aside, but as I was hanging it I suddenly thought, what the heck am I doing?

Yesterday I spent the whole day with Travis in his bathroom on the third floor. I told him he really should take advantage of more bathroom jokes. Or just sign up to do the bathroom cleaning chores all week. It'd be just hilarious. But it was great and gross. First I sifted through dust, to pick out all the big pieces. Cause we got this dust from the vacuum cleaners. Then I sorted through hair and picked out the stupid fake red pieces. And then we glued hair to the floor! For real mom! I glued hair to the floor. It's kinda like the opposite of something you want to do. Like, "oh, be careful or you might glue that hair to the floor!" I felt like I was making a toupee. Which I was! for the floor! the end result is really cozy actually. and kinda gross and matted. but I've become somewhat of a hair-glueing expert. Maybe i'll go into the wig making profession. It was pretty great working up there though. The installation is really coming together. I'm so excited for his artist conversation this week. I think we should all dress up really dressy. like ties and dresses. But I love dressing up. and men in ties.

Some things I haven't posted about:

1. the Obama party I organized went great! 45 people came! and we had free brownies! and we all sat in the freaking 95 degree weather and no one passed out! In fact, we couldn't get people to stop talking about obama. It felt a little cheesy, like we weren't doing much, but it was exciting to get that many people together and pumped.
   
2. I forgot to write about CITY when we played it a billion weeks ago. it was so fun! I loved the dance party part. My dancing name is Tina LeRue. For City, my character's name was Rose Candyland. And I sold cake, because I made cake that day. two buttons per slice, an extra three for delivery. It was basically just a big game of pretend. and there was a bizzare plot involving keeping all the fans hostage in the log cabin, and the state regulating circulation because it was potentially hazardous. i got held hostage at one point because I found out about the fans, and they took all my buttons. Then they let us go and we started a gym (Gymerobia) in front of the log cabin to watch who got to go in or out of the cabin. Lily had a great character. She was looking for her husband, whom she may or may not have killed, and her businesses were to fan you, find her husband, and kill hussies.
   

Right now we are listening to the knife. I love it. such a great morning beat! Sam, get on that on emusic so i can steal it from you. It's really making my morning come alive.

Today is Danna's last day. I'm really sad. but she says that I'm a part of her life now, and I can't help it. so we have to see each other again. It's gonna happen. All of a sudden there's like 10 times more reason for me to visit Chicago.

Last night Stephanie excavated her bed from all the stuff in her room, and had a raffle party. I acquired pointy brown high heels! I can't even walk in them. I don't know how i feel about pointy shoes. my toes aren't pointy, so should my shoes be pointy? I just feel entirely different wearing pointy high heels. Also, lily and I found more inner liners to make more liner art out of.

I re did the community calendar for july. I think it did a much better job this month than last month. I added more cards and more color coding, and also added staff arrivals and departures, because I think that's important. I was a little sad that I wasn't up on that calendar when I came. So now the new people can feel special! Although, I told lily she can't like them more than me.

I also redid the kitchen chandelier. The christmas lights burnt out, so I had to dismantle the whole thing. But I added a zipper fringe! I really love it. I really have been wanting to use those zippers for something. Pictures forthcoming (when my camera starts working again)

Also, yesterday me and mary and lily talked about our feelings. Mary said she is trying to implement a way that we can all talk about our feelings in a general way about how we are doing here because they are important and maybe in all the rush it can get overlooked. You have to make time for feelings. I felt better.

Onto homework! For a real class! oh man, school work is bringing me down. enough of this lala land art world. i have to take TESTS for this online class. weird.

(dad, no pictures this post. sorry. tomorrow i will make sure to take pictures)

So I think I will introduce you to the space (as it is called as a whole) in sections based on where I am updating. Tonight I am on a green couch which I'm sure has a name but I don't know it yet so I will call it the jungle because it is very green and i am surrounded by fake greenery and artificial christmas trees. which is a little scary cause it keeps touching my shoulder and I think i'm being eaten by bugs. From here I can see the skyscraper in front of me. Which is super tall and window-y, and kinda like a tree house maybe. but with more glass things. Maybe I can go up there. I'll investigate tomorrow.

I can also see the kitchen, which I like a lot. cause I like to eat food. and because it's so freakin organized! and I LOVE organization!!! there's a co-op list and chore list and different cards that describe each job and people who are cooking start at 6 and serve dinner at 7:30 and blow the whistle to tell us all that it's time to eat! and then we eat! and today J installed a new piece of glass over the pantry-thing so there's this light coming in when you go to get peanut butter!. avacadoes, oranges, and apples and onions hang from some baskets, I found a strawberry scooper thing to scoop out the stems of the tons of strawberries I cored and froze this morning cause some people went berry picking this morning early, and there's art in the kitchen too! There's a whole pile of salt and pepper shakers. And pieces of those play-skool plastic kitchens. My favorite part of the kitchen I can't see right now but i'll tell you about it anyway. Its the community calendar over the kitchen table. it's made of a grid of string and clothespins holding up little tea set plates with numbers on them for the days of the month. Then there's different colored index cards that represent different people coming and going and different events. So cool! I got to set up june's today. it makes me feel important. Also, I couldn't find a "J" to start the "June" so I used a Jack card from a deck of cards. It made me feel like I'm slowly getting into this groove, figuring out how to make my own collection and add to this place productively instead of just moving around already collected stuff.

I have a desk now. It is my place to do projects and collect things and no one touches it. So far I have only collected three things. I am taking it slow. I want to explore the second and third floors more tomorrow to excavate things that other people haven't already organized ("organized") in the first floor or already collected. THings on my desk right now: a small blue toy truck, a  thin compass, a plastic horse that looks like it is itching it's head with it's back foot. I'd never seen a plastic horse that wasn't posing for the prom or whatever. There was a toaster on my desk to begin with, so I'm gonna make it my inbox. I need to make a sign for that. And laminate it. I'm excited about scanning and laminating. Those are two of my more enjoyed office tasks. Especially when making art things.

Today was a bit weird. I just started doing stuff, taking apart the display in front right now so we can put up a new one for the artist conversations event we have this friday. I now hate pulling staples out of floors. But it looks pretty good/clean right now. Satisfying feeling. I'm also trying to still (ok, I guess I've only been here one freaking day. but I feel like I should have it all worked out already) figure out my schedule. If I am "working" from noon till 11, I guess I should wake up early and go to the YMCA and workout and shower then come back and do whatev till work time. But I wonder if I'll actually do that. Yes. I will. I just declared it. And it's on the internet, so must be true. 

One thing I've been feeling all day is just wishing I'd been here forever or at least five years. So many people all around are so in it and have been doing this for so long and it's just so impressive! So many charts and meetings and things are just really working! People are busting ass everywhere, and it works! they have so many different things going on. Like, this summer. We're going to have artist conversations events every Friday night with a new installation and focus and the museum will ideally be slightly different each week and everyone works all week to make it happen that weekend. And every Saturday we're starting to renovate the outside alley into an urban garden! I've been learning about urban gardens all semester in Grassroots Community Development class and now I get to walk into this community and work in a community garden for real! And then Elsewhere is working on expanding and growing and what's the next step and selling "Lifetime Touch Cards" which I don't really understand, but I guess it allows you to touch things. even though you are allowed to touch things anyways without the card. But Stephanie, one of the co-directors, says people really love them for some reason.

I got an Elsewherian Pin today. I'm secretly very excited.

Also, I got assigned to do every Friday's dinners because everyone will be crazy getting ready for the artist conversation event. So that'll be so exciting! I'm thinking I'm gonna make chana-masala (chickpea onion tomato stew/curry) this week. Maybe? Any other ideas you have? it's about 10-15 people I'm cooking for. I think?

I'm really excited. I'm just really happy to be here. And get settled. And make my bed more awesome. I'm thinking of hanging things. Also, I'm really enjoying the massive amount of clotheslines and clothespins around here. It's totally brilliant! totally activates and uses a space that would be dead otherwise. So maybe I'll hang awesome things to make me dream awesome dreams. Also, Dana said we could figure out a bed situation so I'm not sleeping on this weirdo bed where there's like a hole of springs in the middle which are too tired to hold me up.

Today there was super depressing sappy music playing all morning/afternoon. It was like "Oh man, my life sucks, I'm so lonely, my girl left me, my best friend went off with my girl, life is full of loneliness, and by the way, my life is so freakin lonely." yeah. what a downer. I have to get my guts more in line in order to put my ipod in. I always feel super self conscious about broadcasting my music for even just one other person. I judge everything that comes on like, oh man, this is lame. oh this is lame too. Also, it doesn't help that I've been listening to Miley Cirus a lot (I didn't just say that. You didn't just read that.) It's just such a freakin G.N.O.

I should go to bed so I can wake up and shower! And make things! oh, and the radio just came on with a good song. so this is a good sign and a good beat to strut up to my room with.

goodnight!
aliya