A Child Of Atom

For no real reason that I can figure out a small marching band just passed by the street in front of my apartment playing "St. James Infirmary." A good portion of the block was either leaning out their windows to watch, or standing on their fire escapes. I assume it was a Katrina fund raising thing, since that's a very New Orleans song, but that's the only clue I have to the purpose.

LOVE.

I received two different emails reminding me that a feeling of extreme dehydration is a symptom of low blood sugar, (and therefore possibly a symptom of type 2 diabetes). Since this coincidentally occurred while Michelle was visiting me, and she actually is diabetic, I had her check my blood sugar levels. Everyone will be happy to know that I was firmly in the middle of the tolerable range of levels. You'll also be happy to know that my thirst has subsided, which is good because... well... let's just say that I spent a lot of time awake last night between the caffeine levels and the amount of liquid in my body.

Just in case you were curious, and frankly I can't see a logical reason why you wouldn't be, today I have consumed the following:

One large glass of milk
Three large glasses of tea
Two 20oz Pepsis
One large glass of orange/carrot juice
Four large glasses of water.

This is roughly two gallons of liquid.

I'm STILL thirsty.

Wasn't there a horror movie where one of the symptoms of the possession or infestation or whatever it was was extreme dehydration? I think I may be possessed.

Kyle has given my very first official meme tag! I've officially joined the world of bloggers now.

7 Things I Plan To Do Before I Die:
1) Hike through the Aztec and Inca ruins on the Yuccatan
2) Become conversationally functional in Japanese
3) At least be nominated for a Tony
4) Publish a comic book
5) Learn to bake biscuits as well as my mother
6) Attempt the Appalachian Trail
7) Produce theatre in Savannah, GA

7 Things I Can Do:
1) Replicate almost any texture with scene paint, drywall plaster, and white glue
2) Turn even the most innocuos comment into something dirty
3) Predict with fairly certain accuracy when someone will come out
4) Be charming
5) Word puzzles
6) Say "thank you" and mean "fuck you'
7) Bake a MEAN macaroni and cheese

7 Things I Cannot Do:
1) Dance
2) Any form of math involving both letters and numbers
3) Flirt with someone I'm actually attracted to (though this is getting better)
4) Finish things
5) Break up gracefully
6) Swim
7) Small talk

7 Things That Attract Me To Guys:
1) Hands
2) Large noses
3) Furry butts
4) The ability to play an instrument
5) A well pressed white dress shirt and jeans
6) Modesty
7) (This is the most specific one) Thick blonde hair on a heavily muscled forearm

7 Things That I Say Most Often:
1) Fuck a goat! (Alternatively "God bless a goat!)
2) Christ on a cracker!
3) Ya'll
4) Where the hell did I put ______
5) What the fuck?!
6) Oooooo-kla-homa! (very badly sung)
7) Goddamnrrrrgh! (Degrading into a snarl and a growl)

7 Celebrity Crushes:
1) Anderson Cooper
2) Patrick Dempsey
3) Jason Mraz
4) Paul Rudd
5) Orlando Bloom
6) Heath Ledger
7) Paul Bettany

7 People I Want To Do This:
Well... this one's a problem. I don't really know enough people in the blogging community to be able to call anyone out on this. Kyle tagged me... Dorian might pick it up... I could pin it on my sister as a way to force her to pay attention to her dormant blog... Maybe Bohb could use it for his secret blog that he created but hasn't posted to yet... It doesn't seem like the sort of thing that my mom would be into... so if anyone wants to pick this up, just let us know where you posted it, and I'll happily come read it.

All season I looked longingly at the apple tree that stood at the end of the property at the theatre. It's a fairly old tree, broken in the middle, and it hasn't been pruned for generations. Judging by the age of the tree and the history and location of the property it may very well be one of the original trees propagated by John Chapman. By the time I left though the fruit was still very small and green, but beginning to show signs of plumping up. In the week I've been away they've done a lot of growing, and have started turning red. I was determined to eat this fruit, one way or another. I had three of them yesterday, just eating them out of hand, but it wasn't satisfying enough.

So this morning Alison and Tom and I spent an hour or so shaking the branches of the tree, (the deer have eaten all the convenient fruit) and gathering them. We very easily ended up with a milk crate full of apples, leaving the tree still packed with ripening fruit. A peeling party commenced at the Equity housing, at one point there were 8 of us pairing, and about 2 hours later we had 6 apple pies with brown sugar crumb topping. The apples themselves were tart, and very firm, maybe just a little dry, but they made beautiful pies. As the season is winding down here at the theatre the kitchen has shifted into full left-over mode, so the pies were a huge hit with the resident company and the rest of the staff. The group of us also felt very accomplished by the baking. There's something mysterious and arcane about baking, or at least people seem to think so, but these pies were the simplest thing in the world. (We did break down and buy frozen crusts though, there's only so much I'm willing to try in a strange kitchen.) It was also a very fitting end to the season, a very communal gathering of people from several different departments to accomplish something creative, and satisfying.

Here's the remains of the poor car. The poor deer's remains are... well... probably bear food by now.

I resisted turning on Word Verification, mainly because spamments (spam comments) hadn't seemed like a problem for me so far, but after deleting 7 spamments today... Well. It's on, so to speak.

Sorry about the inconvenience guys, please don't let it discourage you from commenting.

I've been back in the mountains for less than an hour and managed to kill a large animal. I spent all summer here marveling at how bold the local deer are, rarely running when cars approach, even when approached on foot they just seemed to stand there and stare you down. I saw a deer or three every single day that I was here, and quickly got into the habit of calling out "Deer!" whenever we were driving, to make sure the driver was aware of the animal, on the off chance that it decided to dart out into the road. Three months of driving and riding and there wasn't a single incident.

Today an approximately two year old buck, who still had spots and velvet on his antlers decided to dart out in front of us as we were on our way to Wal-Mart. I started to call it out, as I have trained myself to do, but it was too late. A significant portion of the windshield was in our laps, and the deer was sprawled out on the opposite side of the road from where I had last seen it.

No one was hurt, Alison had a few very minor cuts from the glass, but there were no other injuries. The deer managed to get up and limped off into the trees, we assume that it is probably dead or dying in the woods somewhere. The car had some pretty major damage, the hood is dented, the windshield is gone of course, and the roof is a bit crinkled where the windshield meets it.

I haven't been in an accident of any sort in a number of years, and I don't really ever want to be in another.

Welcome back to the woods I guess.

It's back to the mountains for the weekend.

Just as I was leaving last week the producer asked if I would be willing to return to help with the final load-out and shutting down the theatre for the winter, pulling benches inside, shuttering everything, pulling down the rented lights, that sort of thing. I decided to go up a bit early, so I could a few days with my friends without the pressure of a show, and also because the weather is significantly cooler up there (a high of 77 on Saturday, and 72 on Sunday!). I'm looking forward to it, this time it is essentially a vacation, at least for the first few days. Sunday night and Monday will be a lot of work, but nothing compared to the normal change-over weekend. The set will actually stay in place, whoever is there next year can deal with removing it, just as we removed last year's final set.

It's a fitting closure for the season, more satisfying than walking away and leaving the show to run itself as I did last week.

This test tells me that I can expect to live for 84.58 years. Not a bad life span, I reckon.

I took the test again and adjusted it a bit, answering as if I had taken it 2 years ago when I lived in Connecticut and my life expectancy went down to 80.78 years, adjusting mainly for the fact that I drove a car a lot more when I lived there than I do now. Funny to think that it made such a difference. Now I need a test that will take into account subway muggings, city pollution, bad taxi drivers and the stress created by pushing tourists out of the way when I'm trying to get through Times Square to the comic shop.

Normally when I sketch I don't really draw that much attention. Occasionally I'll look up and realize that someone is watching me, but they normally go back to their own lives and we never interact. Today I looked up from my sketchbook and into the face of an older gentlemen who gave me look of disdain and shook his head as he looked back to his newspaper. I didn't think much of it until later when I realized that all he could see was these two drawings. On opposing pages of my sketchbook there were two drawings of women's legs and feet. He must have thought that I was a fetishist or something! Lesson learned on that one I guess.

Something a little different from my normal bust shot of fellow subway riders.

I fell in love on the train tonight.

I do this a lot, when I see some particularly intriguing guy sitting across from me. I suppose that's what the Craigslist Missed Connections are for, but that just seems a little to much like a message in a bottle for me. (Not that I don't LOVE reading them...) I can have very rapid fantasy relationships over and over during my train ride home.

Tonight I was standing in a semi-crowded D train and looked down at the yellow legal pad the guy seated beside me was scribbling on. There, scrawled over pages and pages was a very lengthy and complex looking equation. He was rapidly filling another sheet with line after line of alchemical looking symbols and numbers, with notes in the margins about differentials and what-not. He may as well have been writing in Chinese, as much as I understood, but DAMN was it sexy.

I was instantly in love with him. (It didn't hurt that he was cute) There was something about the fact that he was deeply invloved in this pursuit that is incredibly mysterious to me that made him even more attractive. Math may as well be magic as far as I'm concerned, but here was a guy who was effortlessly solving this enormous equation as easily as I would write a letter. There's a huge dollop of sexy on that.

I've always been that way frankly, guys who play intruments, or sing really well, or play ball, or dance, or speak other languages... they fascinate me. Anyone with a skill that I don't have basically. There's some part of me that is looking for a guy with skills opposite mine, so that I can claim them by some small measure I suppose, or at least benefit by having them near. (Or it might just be that this guy could probably balance my checkbook for me, a bit of math that I can't even do.)

So if you are out there Mr. Equation, email me, and don't forget to drop a couple quadratic formulas into your reply. It will turn me on, I promise.

Scott encouraged me to check out Illustration Friday and to consider participating. After looking through a couple dozen of the links today I was very impressed with what was going on over there, so I've decided to join up.

The above image was completed a few weeks ago as part of a suite of illustrations that I created for a theatre in Connecticut. This image, (along with five others) represents their season for this year. This particular play is titled Jonah's Dream and is based on the biblical story of Jonah and the whale. When I saw this week's theme I immediately thought of this image. It's a bit different than the images that I have posted here before, showing a different side of my range of illustration styles.

This is going to take some readjustment. My Subway skills are rusty. Four sketches yesterday, and only one that I feel is worthy of you guys seeing. Two others that I started but the models left the train. I have to retrain myself to pick out the models that will be on for a few stops, and regain the speed it takes to get the image started properly, not to mention finished. Practice makes perfect though.

Regardless, I'm back!