friday

woke around 6:30, but we were still five minutes late to meet nina at the pancake house at 8am. thankfully, she was ten seconds later than us. breakfast of pancakes in the midst of bavarian stained glass, surprisingly busy for 8am. nina brought sculpey for us to play with, but we never got around to it.

dropped di home, and left for TBM, where i lamented the unfinished state of things, and picked up paper for today's printing, as well as a shovel, so i could dig my car out later; 7" of snow was forecast for today.

down towards screwball (via chai), i stopped on the way to meet up with john kinzie to drop off some bullhorn handlebars and di's new watecolor which he bought as a gift for his wife jennifer, and picked up from john some dianogah debris which was still at his house from when we used to practice there, years ago.

east on irving park to screwball, where i picked up four gallons of ink as the snow really started to come down. from there, i drove south on western ave to lake, and across to crosshair, where mat has his painting studio and new press. i loaded in the paper and ink, mat coated screens, and i set to editioning the dianogah prints mat made last week (partially as an exercise in getting his press set up).



mat went back and forth between burning screens and relocating the spray-out booth into an unused shower stall, a move which should have happened years ago.

mat's new press is great, bigger print area, more precise. very exciting.

we ran both colors on the spoon / sea & cake print, finishing around 4:30. i packed up quickly, and dropped mat near an EL stop, then took off north to try to get to TBM by 5:30 to meet john k for some drywalling.

on dempster, i stopped for another chai. when i arrived at TBM, i spilled the full hot chai all down my leg and the floor matt of the driver's side of the newly cleaned car. i was SO bummed out.

john arrived soon after, my mood improved, and we spent several hours installing drywall in the back office and the darkroom. by 9:30 i called quitting time, and we drove over to portillo's by old orchard for hot dogs.

left there at 11, it was super cold out, i went home, woke di up from sleeping on the couch, took her to bed. showered myself, and went to sleep.

thursday

woke sort of late, around 8. di went down to cat sit at tyler and stephanie's, and i ran some errands: walked seth, then went to get the car washed (which was sorely long overdue). from there, went to city hall to get 2008 vehicle stickers. from there to get chai, then rent videos (simpsons movie and battlestar galactica 'razor'), then to kinkos to make films for the spoon poster. home again.

at 1pm, di and i left for her folks' house, to have "christmas" with her brother's family who were in town. sort of strenuous, we took off after playing uno with the kids, kaitilyn and paul. and back home.

we discussed our options, and decided the most efficient way to waste the rest of the day would be to watch both rented movies, back to back, which is what we did. i answered a bunch of emails, type this now, and will now go cut films so we can print the spoon posters tomorrow.

ok.

wednesday

spent most the day working, slowly, on the drawing for the spoon / sea & cake NYE show at the metro. somewhere during the day, di and i got caught up in watching all sorts of youtube videos of people blowing up elmo dolls.

in the evening, around 5, we went over to my folks' to visit with my siblings, their kids, and mike's GF lulu who had just arrived from lawrence with her son, simon. people were tired, i was grumpy, the kids were wound up. we sat and watched 'ratatouille', constantly reminding the kids not to stand in front of the TV, so uncle jay could watch the movie.

di and i went home.

christmas

despite the fact that i am 35 years old, and quite disillusioned with the commercialization of an already-preposterous christian holiday, waking up on christmas morning is still a special feeling. di and i got up around 7, and slowly got ourselves collected enough to head to my folks' house. i wore my new tie and shirt. we stopped at the second starbucks we went to for chai. seth came with us, and, as usual, ran out into the back yard with casey, the goofball.

the tempest of christmas morning had, for the most part, subsided by the time we arrived (around 8:30). we gave our gifts out, received some great presents, and had fun watching the kids get wound up about their new things. i was most excited about the 'old town school of folk music' guitar lessons we got for my dad. we ate various coffee cakes and juice, soy nog, etc. i made a fire.

di and i went back home for about an hour, to drop off our gifts, regroup, and feed the cats and seth.

around 2pm, we drove way-the-hell south to lemont, IL, for the gathering of di's mom's side of the family. they had a train set up in their front window.

[i'm having a hard time concentrating on typing this, as the new access to our turntable has us playing all sorts of old LPs. right now, di has put on a men at work record.]

dinner was italian beef and perrogi. they served me bailey's, and i was happy.

around 6pm, we jumped back in the car and drove 40 minutes up to northbrook, to my cousin joan's house. we missed the presents, but arrived in time for dinner. joan's husband, vince, is a great cook, and they just finished installing an all-new kitchen, of which di and i were pretty envious.

the whole family tried to get a photo taken of the group, to recreate a pro studio family photo taken about 3 years ago for gramma. no one's camera was working (aside from mine, which i only had their incidentally), and there were too many people telling everyone what to do, so i just ended up getting mad. we cut out immediately after the pictures.

we drove home through a tunnel-like train overpass on techny road, and that seemed to cheer di and i up.

at home, we unpacked some of the gifts we had received, including a new estwing axe given to me by diana's folks. i am really pleased with this thing, and look forward to more splitting in the spring.

sitting in the den, we decided it was time to pull out the risk board, to take a stab at re-learning this old patience-trying game. we both got sleepy pretty quickly, and packed it in after only a couple of battles. we'll save this for when we have a third person here, and more energy.

to bed.

monday! out!

monday morning, we woke up and went grocery shopping, stopping for chai on the way. grocery store was busy but not unpleasant.

at home, we loaded the food in, reviewed which presents we had left to buy, and went out again, this time to (gasp) the mall, where we tried hard to roll with the holiday shopping excitement, but pretty much just ended up getting mad at a variety of unique idiots with whom we came into contact.

but we got our christmas shopping done, and i bought myself a new shirt & tie, using a gift card from my credit card company.

back home, we dropped off our gifts, i took seth and went to my folks' to visit with my brother and aidan who just flew in from lawrence, KS. fu madness with the three kids running around. diana went to take care of tyler and stephanie's cats, in exchange for the house-sitting they will do over new year's eve for us.

at 8pm, i met di back home. i started a fire, made some tea, peeled some clementines, and cleared off the kitchen table. i brought down the presents, and we spent the evening wrapping gifts.

saturday & sunday

saturday and sunday i spent at TBM, hanging drywall.

saturday night, diana and i went out to yann and sarah's apartment downtown for dinner. they live in a beautiful, huge, two bedroom apartment that's all new and looks like the setting for a really good catalog photo shoot. it is definitely homey and comfortable, but was a huge contrast to our cozy (aka small) house, under renovation. they made bouillabaisse, olive tapenade on bread, and an apple tart for dessert. this meal, in combination with the pork we had at andrew and xan's a couple nights ago, made us really want to start cooking more at home. a really great visit. we hadn't met sarah before, and felt really comfortable with her after about four minutes.

sunday, john 'weincek' kinzie came to TBM to help hang drywall. john had asked to learn how to do this, a he is planning on tearing out some bad plaster at his two flat before his mother-in-law moves in. we had a great day, very productive. even threw some mud up onto the joints in my office, to show him how that works. lunch was at kaufmann's, of course.



sunday night i went out to my folk's house to have a short visit with my sister and her family, who drove in sunday afternoon from sioux city, IA. we had a fire in the fireplace, and the girls were very pleasant i was impressed.