wipeout week!

I nearly fell asleep at my desk Friday, but only because it was such a busy week with things to do and people to see every single night.  This coming Tuesday, I fly out to Tahoe for the holiday with Drew and Amanda.  I want to be ready for all of the lake festivities, so I'm hoping to catch up on errands and projects and sleep this weekend.  Add in a Sunday beach trip (which you know I will...) and I think I'm set!

Here's the run-down from this week:

Sunday's walk through Manhattan....

Sunday, I attended Secret City again with Erin and Amanda, and after eating our post-SC biscotti and cookies, we wandered up to the L train and they headed into Williamsburg for the Renegade Art Fair while I steered myself all the way to Jersey for a friend's birthday party at a swanky outdoor drinks-garden.  Jersey is the Garden State, afterall, they'd better get such things right.

Williamsburg Finds, Part 2.

Willisamsburg Finds, Part 1.

Monday it was back to work and I finally hit my groove on expanding the Tiffany's animation theme.  Hopefully they like the new frames which will show how the theme plays through the longer version of the video. The gritty, silent-era look will give way to more of a clean celluloid overlay with colorful light-leak washes.  None of that is supposed to make any sense to anyone living outside my head, don't worry.

The train gets patriotic.

New dress!  I like it a lot.

View from the Commute.  Not too shabby....

Tuesday I met with Alex briefly during the day and made more solid plans for finishing his branding, STAT.  I've had freelance offers coming in and know I need to do right by him first, so I'm hoping to piece together something he's really happy with this week.  After work I headed to Sara's Camp Sunshine, installment #3.  She's already got a fourth in the works, and I'm so proud of her.  She's become a superb curator of talent and every show I've been to has been great start-to-finish.

Wednesday,  I hung around work finishing up a freelance project for just a couple of hours and then linked up with one of my very favorite people from college -- Julia Zema.  She's a fantastic, inspiring, fearless person and I've missed her so much.  It was great to catch up and hear how she's enjoying life in Chicago.  She's dating a super nice guy who's originally from Manhattan, and they were back visiting his family for a couple of days.  His brother Danny, who lives in Red Hook, is a jazz saxophonist by night (a Stumptown Coffee Roasters employee by day), and had convinced them to attend a show at The Village Vanguard.  I'm so glad I got to catch the gig with them -- The Vanguard is one of NYC's oldest jazz clubs and has a lush red-velvet, underground sensibility to it.  The trio played jazz as I've never heard it; the guitarist would dabble in harmonics occasionally which made a sound like bells, the drummer was incredible at somehow keeping a beat that you could feel but couldn't wrap any sort of mental counting around, and the upright bass player looked like a shaman and was pouring sweat down the neck of his instrument.  Then there was the fact that Elvis Costello was there.  That was a fun celeb sighting, my second of the week.  (I had seen Adrian Grenier walking on the LES Sunday morning and gave him the look that says "I know who you are, but don't get a big head about that.")

killing time at the office...with a sparkle-gun.

Jules and I!

After jazz, the four of us walked to a Edwards (a bar in Tribeca) where Julia's friend works and she supplied our table with free wine and beer and the best mushroom quesadilla I've ever had.  Perhaps the only...  I told Danny that I'm going to take him up to see Marjorie Elliott since he's such a fan of New York jazz and had never heard of the wonder that is the little old woman on Edgecombe Ave.  Then I dashed home on the J train knowing I needed to get some sleep because Thursday was....

Date day.  As if by the rule book, Andrew Jackson contacted me Tuesday to set up a date for this week.  We agreed on Thursday, thai food, West Village.  I met him at 7 PM at this nice restaurant that faces Highline Park and we had no trouble falling into conversation.  After dinner we walked the Highline because he'd never been, and he really appreciated the unique vantage point the park offers in terms of New York architecture.  We had a nice time and he is by all means an impressive guy -- easy-going but driven, highly successful and with a good head on his shoulders, and very sweet.  He wants me to go to a loft party a friend of his is hosting tonight, but I'm not sure yet what my evening plans are or whether I want to see where things go with A.J.  It was definitely a new experience though, going on a date with someone I had no previous connection to at all.  It made me feel like a true New Yorker.  It's a totally different game:  Karolina and I stalked him online at work Thursday to make sure he checked out, and I had to give three of my friends phone numbers, details of the where and when, and make sure to check in with all of them when I made it home by 10 that night, as planned.  But I definitely felt nothing queasy in my instincts about him or his intentions and he was a perfect gentleman, so it was a great experience, really.  Plus, I got to come home to Sam, Ryan and Maddy in my livingroom ready to tease me.  That's the cherry on top.


Friday I did something I've been needing to do for a very, very long time.  Three years, to be specific.  I reserved a practice room at Funkadelic Studios (just around the corner from my office) and headed over after work for an hour of DRUMSET messin' around.  If I had to draw a picture of how big the stupid grin on my face was as I sat down and shook off the rust, I'd need to find a mural wall.  It was only $10 to play for the hour and I'm planning to make this a twice-weekly adventure.  After the studio, I headed up to see Heather Berman at her apartment and we had a very serious discussion about the band we're putting together with our pals Mike Erla and Stu.  We scheduled our first band practice for the week I'm back from Tahoe, and we'll begin with covers but the real plan is to write our own music as soon as possible.  HB and I have each always wanted to be in a band, and I feel like we're at the point where we're fully committed to giving it a try.  We started talking about new business ventures over cocktails but then I had to run off to meet Liz Fullerton in Williamsburg for a night-time frozen Arnold Palmer on the roof of Berry Park.  Danielle has returned from her cruiseship gig and will be visiting town mid-July.  I get my best pal back!

I felt exactly like Tabitha by the end of this week.

Heather conferences Stu in for our band meeting.

Got this picture from my ol' pals who are hanging out in VA right now.

So that brings us to today, which has comprised of doing laundry in a major way, working on Alex White's branding (while he's down in Colorado helping his family with fire watch), convincing my friend Brian McCauley Johnson to join in the Tahoe trip, and whipping my life into shape from the week's tornado of events.  I feel like a very happy, very fortunate camper.  I assume my next post will just be gloating pictures from Lake Tahoe.  Until then....