receiving gifts in the mail

There is something about opening up your mailbox and seeing a package in there that just makes your heart go all a-flutter, you know? Well, truth be told I get excited if I see any piece of mail with my name on it, but maybe that’s just the egoist in me!

Then again, it’s always really annoying too because our mailbox is super small where the opening is 5″ by 6″ and we don’t have a locker for parcels either … so you can imagine how absolutely stuffed it can get with the letters/packages/catalogs/magazines of four people. Sometimes we end up having to go down to the post office because not everything fits.

A bit back I won a giveaway hosted at Paints and Pans for a wonderful pair of earrings from Nell Belle Designs. And they arrived in a box that fit just perfectly in my mailbox. It was so exciting. Thanks, Natalie and Nell!

[NOTE: This post originally appeared on a now-deleted blog and is reposted here for my own sake.]

spring … already?

Have you heard the news? It’s basically spring. Already. I’d expect this kind of weather for Texas, but up in New York? Oh wow. It’s been absolutely lovely. Flowers are blooming all over campus, I almost don’t mind going to class. Although when I’m stuck in the library scanning things, then a beautiful outdoors is just taunting.

back from boston

A few days ago I took a trip to Boston with roomie D and it was a doozy. Boston was fun, but it’s nice to be back in the city. Anyway, there were a whole host of tourist attractions that had to be seen, so we definitely did the Freedom Trail and saw all those places. One of the places I was most excited to see was the Old North Church, where two lanterns were hung to warn the patriots of the British troops’ arrival by sea (“One if by land, and two if by sea”). Ah yes, the American Revolution was always my favorite war to study in school. The picture is of a chandelier hanging in the church.

happy st. paddy’s

Well … that was a bit of an unintended hiatus. Whups. I got bored this evening, so I baked cookies. Yummy yummy chocolate chip cookies. And since today (yes, since it is past midnight, it is ‘today’) is St. Patrick’s Day, I tried to make a clover-shaped chocolate chip cookie. It was marginally successful.

It’s spring break for me right now, so I’m trying to catch up on reading and papers. And eventually I will finish the bag that I’ve been working FOREVER on. But yeah, schoolwork comes first!

[NOTE: This post originally appeared on a now-deleted blog and is reposted here for my own sake.]

my, what a large david you are

“David (inspired by Michelangelo)” by artist Serkan Ozkaya is a double-sized replica of the famous statue “David” by Michelangelo. Tuesday night I went down to Storefront for Art and Architecture on Kenmare Street because they were hosting a lecture about the nature of the double and the statue. I had been at a lecture earlier that evening by Srdjan Weiss that was held uptown, so by the time I got down to Storefront the place was packed and I didn’t stay long. Then again, given how small that space actually is, it’s always packed so I don’t know what I was expecting.

“David (inspired by Michelangelo)” was hanging out on a trailer in front of Storefront. Quite a shocking thing to see on a Manhattan street. I mean, it’s a gigantic 30-foot-tall statue that’s golden, horizontal, and on a freakin’ trailer. I knew it was going to be there and I was still taken aback by the sheer size and out-of-placedness of it. Ah, yet another quiet night in the city, eh? Anyway, it’s headed to a museum in Kentucky called 21c Museum, so goodbye, David, it was fun to see you!

new york kind of adventure

Galleries in New York are basically free art museums. Sometimes they have super cool exhibitions. Sometimes these super cool exhibitions are really, really popular. I went down to the David Zwirner Gallery in Chelsea last weekend because I wanted to see the exhibition by Doug Wheeler, the one they dub the “Infinity Room”. It looked pretty nifty and last Saturday was its last day, so I left my apartment at 10 AM …

And I had a New York kind of adventure. Well, a lot of waiting actually. I spent a total of three and a half hours waiting in the line outside. About halfway in that line, I popped into the David Zwirner Gallery (a different part of it) which had an exhibition by Adel Abdessemed called “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf” and uh … it was kind of weird. The above piece is called “Décour” and is from that exhibition. It was a series of four representations of Jesus on the cross made out of razor wire. Weird.

There was a nice camaraderie in the line outside and I passed some time chatting with a guy near me who was from Milwaukee. A different guy made a coffee run for those of us who requested stuff and a third guy offered people granola bars. It was actually kind of fun.

Anyway, after those three and a half hours on the line outside, I had to wait another hour in an interior space before entering Doug Wheeler’s exhibition. It was spiffy. Wow. So cool. It’s one of those things that you really had to experience because it was all about perspective. The walls were a continuous curve and the way it was lit, there were few shadows and it was really hard to tell depth, so it felt like you were in this white void. And … the lights cycled every 32 minutes from bright ‘day’ to a darkish ‘night’. I think I lucked out because I was in there as it transitioned from the bright to dark and it was freaky cool. It really played with your sense of perception. SO COOL.

Then, after all of that I stopped by the Chelsea Market for a really late lunch (it was almost 4 PM by that point) and then took the subway from 14th Street. And that’s where I got to see some of the statues from Tom Otterness’s “Life Underground,” which is a whole bunch of little bronze figures playing all over the station. They make me smile every time! It was an incredibly long, but incredibly awesome day. I definitely need to make it a priority to do more things like this! Oh, and happy March!