At one of the branch offices of Yours Truly that proudly serves You - Our Far Rockaways Branch - open all day, all night, with wi-fi, pay-as-you-go snacks and massage.
Onwards to school matters.
The room where I am to install the culmination of this school experience is also the room that is still a classroom and will be the room in which we defend our dissertations. What does this mean.
This does mean that it makes it very difficult to install what I need to install in the amount of time available. To this JR said Where were you all week. Ummm, working. We thirteen were to install on Wednesday. Wednesday I was in Rochester. Most of my classmates are hanging or have hung prints. They are done. Those of us who are showing video were told that Monday was tech day. Thursday I ran from this branch office to B&H to seminar which ends at 540PM. Then rushed out to do more art errands and returned to school where we are kicked out at 10PM sharp. Returned to school this AM at 10AM and was there until 3, really pushing the shit out of my getting-to-airport luck. Happened to see JR, no tech support was there and the gal who was there reconfirmed that Monday is the day. So.
I purchased a screen that needs to be hung. When will it be hung. Monday I can do this after 530PM as my classmates are defending. At that hour no tech help is available. I can do what I can by myself until 10, when I get tossed out again. The next AM, Tuesday, I defend first, at 9AM. It would be really great to get some sleep, to do some reading beforehand.
I am beyond annoyed at this additional, annoyingness.
Still have to get a good dvd burned, have to get screen hung, have to locate player + projector, move classroom accoutrements out of the room, have to move in a bench.
Time to do some scholarly reading and figure out how many more minutes my plane is delayed. Ms. Announcer just announced not only a gate change but a time change.
Grrrr.
Time to do some coffee slargling in addition to the reading.

Slargled Love.

Despite the fact that there was no pole to slide down, the visit and lunch at the Art Deco firehall in Rochester yesterday was good. As I wandered off to the ladies room (really just a small private bathroom which one of the firemen ran ahead to check for me and was in there for a good long while and when I entered I was nearly overcome with the scent of Lysol which I could taste for several minutes), I contemplated searching for the allegedly-missing pole, believing that that might be a stock response to that query, in avoidance of truth and law suits.
The chief said he could, if our group had time, drive me to a station with a pole. But we (me, Evan of the Shiney Apple p.r. firm, the judge, the judge's handlers) had no such thing and after beans, greens, diet Cokes, we sped off to the next photo shoot spot, a scorching public park in a suburb of the post-industrial city.
Shot hundreds of images of the judge, also manhandled her all day, getting hairs to stay just so, giving her short demos of how to stand, how to rest her hands in a natural manner.
Now, back at school, where tensions and exhaustions are running high as the defending process happens next week Monday-Wednesday just before the opening on the 10th. I go on the 9th, first, at 9AM and plan on rising and shining early, meandering to the French pastry/coffee place near my subway stop, getting all cranked up and heading into god only knows what. It was suggested to all of us thirteen that we devote the first ten minutes to presenting a historic sweep of our work. As this is the new directive I must add some more material to my powerpoint amassment.
About to meet pals out at Sweet and Vicious, to soak up some real life after a full day of school, travel, inner-city travel.
Tomorrow a further quest for materials to hang the screen I purchased earlier today at B&H.
Yesterday, I'll end with this tale, I took a ride from a stranger as I was rather in distress.
The judge and one of her handlers took me down the supersecret judge elevator in the court building, depositing me in a sector of the parking garage's lower level/deep bowel. This whole ramp had no signage, no clues as to where or how to find one's vehicle ever again.
Spotting me a man in a conservative navy blue sedan stopped and offered assistance, informing me firstly that he is a divorce lawyer and secondly that I was to become the third lost subterranean person he aided in this manner.
We drove around for about fifteen minutes, me looking for any sort of guidance from the endless array of concrete pillars, explaining how I'd entered this fracas in the first place.
Finally, the car. Then, as the man/divorce lawyer gruntingly got my lighting bag out of his sedan he told me he had done some archival management of a firm that had records of many prominent people of the Middling City, Millard Fillmore amongst them. It sounded interesting. Or was I just a grateful listener.
Last days of school are upon me. I will forever be back in the travel role of coming back to the Shiney Apple as a person with an art agenda, not as a grad student ever again.

Ever Love.

Merrily emailed off the thesis approximately two hours ago to JR. It came out as 2200 words and received a panicked email from Beth this AM who said that our theses (which, curiously, rhymes with feces - another post-ingestion product) are not to exceed 1500 words. Which I find odd as it's to be at least 1K. That is a tiny wordy window. I imagine someone at Parsons taking a giant marker to my thesis à la CIA and x-ing out all brilliant phrases, passages, footnotes, ruminations from word 1501-2200. That would like totally suck.
So now onwards to finishing up the digvid edits and then kapoof. Almost done. Let us not put our champagne before the flute shall we for Yours Truly still must defend her watertight diss on Tuesday. For that You must burn candles, think fine positivity-rich thoughts and oso much more.
Onwards.
Tomorrow is gig in Roch all-day with a politico.
Speaking of pols, just picked up lit by/for a would-be politico who is a restaurant man. He knows lines, he knows 86ing. Does he know how to run a Middling City.

Pol Love.

Stopped over at Liz and Alan's place today amid the Garden Gawk to give her the gift from The Frick that I forgot to give her last evening at my pre-grad soirée that they held for me. As I walked up the walk, underneath the mock orange they spotted me. They approached me and queried thusly Was it you two (meaning me and Kennedy) who bolted that thing to our front railing. I attempted a boldfaced white lie in the spirit of a prank but thought Really, it is rather obvious. But if they didn't think it was us then I wondered if Liz would presume the thing bolted to their front rail was left by a cross-town garden foe and then an all-out garden war would ensue. Last night's party was a raging success - no gunshots, broken coffee tables, no fisticuffs, no fires. Made one of my famed green soups and made sure that Blair et Monique (the affable hosts of the dinner party series Soup Night) had a slug or two of it. I told Blair that I am already excited - way in advance - to make again a fine Brazilian potage I made not too long ago. Cue following remark from Kennedy: This from the woman who not too long ago stated that she HATES soup. Well, here it is, for the record. There are many shitty soups that to me resemble something perhaps that'd be served in a 19th C halfway house: all water, no body. So I've been crafting soups that completely rock. The end about soups.
Time now to sign off for now to do a bit of online stalking of the famous photog Hiroshi Sugimoto for The Thesis.
Onwards to that.

That love.