Suburb of Heaven

This coming week is going to be on the rough side, stress-wise. I'm doing some stuff at work that is Big and New and I am hoping I have organized everything but of course am scared that I haven't remembered to do something important that will screw things up. Plus it's stinky hot out, the kind of heat that just wears you down and makes you want to crawl inside and hug an air conditioner, and it saps the will out of me. Oh! and of course I'm crampy and irritable and hormonal as well.

I hope I will feel much better by Friday, and that everything goes smoothly.

Bemo's birthday was yesterday so we had chocolate cake and ice cream and friends brought over port and good chocolate and we played Cards Against Humanity and were happily raucous.

I'm also trying to nudge myself into writing more,but not fic. Instead I'm trying to work on the original book I've been trying to do for years now, but always find myself stalling out on (I hate plotting.) Maybe I can get something going with it finally.

I am stressed out like whoa from work. It's the longest stretch of stress where I have not (to this moment) broken down into some sort of ugly crying fit once I got home - I'm not sure if I'm proud that I'm managing, or feeling like I should just have one to release the pressure.

Essentially, I'm going through a really big learning process, and I hate the fact that I'm dragging some people along with me and making their lives difficult. Things are getting done, but not elegantly. And the big boss is in full-tilt ADHD mode, where he is unavailable for long stretches of time in the planning stages and then spins into your own carefully laid plans like a whirlwind and disrupts everything so you don't know if you're coming or going or if you have ever made a right choice in your miserable life.

I have a lot of dominoes lined up for tomorrow morning, and I'm worried that they will not fall properly because of my mistakes. I hope very hard that all goes the way I want it to.

Dreamed this morning, before the alarm rang, that my boss got together a huge group of people (like, concert-venue huge) to tell everyone I was fired, and why.

At least it wasn't a portent for a bad day. It was a very productive day, but now my feet are sore.

Also, something horrible and yet hilarious happened at work, and I probably can't talk about it yet, but it'll make a good story when I can.

Well, back from the road, but about to head out again in a few days. Here are some photos from Syracuse, NY - mostly of the Everson Museum and works therein.


I.M. Pei's first museum building. Lots of concrete. A really impressive interior, an exterior I think could use a little softening.

( the knitting porcupine )

Plus I was fed at an incredible restaurant named Sparky Town (amazing lentil soup and mushroom-cheese quiche, plus brownies to die for) and wandered around the Armory Square area and had a coffee at a place called Freedom of Espresso. All in all, a very nice trip.

In California for a work trip. The drive out here took me through the endless length of Nebraska (sadly, the fastest route through the state is also the most boring, plus it's an eternity), vast spaces of Wyoming, where I saw clouds stacked beautifully in a blue sky, Utah, of which I saw little (being asleep for most of it), Nevada, where I witnessed the weird neon of casinos at three in the morning, and finally California, with the scrubby mountains of pine trees turning into the industry of Sacramento and finally the skyline of San Francisco and the bay leading me around to the charm of Menlo Park and Palo Alto.

I've taken a ton of photos out of a truck window. Most of them are not very good, but they are good for my memory. And some of them tickle me.

The trip to DC was relatively smooth - no travel delays, and good service on Delta (nicer planes than I've seen recently, too) a nice time with my family and friends, some visiting time for favorite museums, an interesting and productive work conference, and a very comfortable, fun to drive, so-ugly-it's-cute Nissan Cube as our rental car (despite my overwhelming anger at how much the rental actually cost).

The conference was hosted at the National Archives:


( around town photos )

It was a short, but very good trip.

Have been helping a little bit with the install of our forthcoming ORLAN exhibition, "The Harlequin Coat." Part of this involves being hugged by mutant clothing on chairs.

I am currently rewriting (except there's not all that much there, so it's more like writing) our rights and repro policy. I am bogged down in the swamp of boilerplate and, as my boss says, it's hard to stop yourself from trying to anticipate every possible emergency, contingency, and quirk that might come up that you need to address in your policies - registrars being the doomsayers of any museum!

On the other hand, my exhibition is on track nicely, despite all my apprehensions. The gallery guide is being printed, the preview sign is up in the Great Hall, and I've hashed out wall color and other sundries with our preparator. It's still not all quite there, but it's pretty darn close.

In media news, Bemo and I have been watching Justified, aka. There's Life After Deadwood. I've only seen two eps, but both of them have been really solid, and so far I like the show quite a lot.

I just finished reading a very good bio of Doc Holliday, rec'd from the friend's list, and I'm now reading a recent Jesse James one, which is just as enjoyable in a different way - the writing styles are very different, but the Doc Holliday bio was a little more cautiously written, since the author was picking his way through a mythic minefield. The James bio embraces a slightly more dashing style.

Watched Walk the Line and The Departedrecently, and enjoyed both movies a ton, although Bemo had problems following the twists and turns in The Departed because of his tooth hurting. But wow, good stuff.

And in other news, today I phoned Paris. I wish it was for something wildly glamourous. In fact, it involved talking to an artist about copyrights but did not involve scheduling a month at the most glitzy hotel in the city and then having to choose between various spa packages. Which would have been a better reason for a phone call to Paris.

No doubt I will soon be phoning somebody in Rome to ask about a tax code. Or ringing Prague to ask them if they want me to include a self-addressed stamped envelope.

My guidebook seems to imply that only mental midgets, assholes, and people with no soul dare to dislike New Orleans. I’m not sure I agree with them.

To be sure, there are sections of New Orleans I like very much indeed. Naturally, these are the ritziest sections – I always had champagne tastes on a Pabst Blue Ribbon budget. So my favorite area of the city was the Garden District, where gorgeous homes from the mid-to-late 1800s sit amidst fragrant gardens and old oak trees. I also loved riding up and down St. Charles Ave. in the streetcar from the 1860s, with the wind in my face and the occasional clang-clang-clang of the bell making me very happy indeed. Even portions of the French Quarter are lovely, once you move far away enough from the cesspool that is Bourbon Street.

My friend Kateh, who was there for the same conference, took one look at Bourbon Street and said gingerly, “I think I might have loved this…about five years ago.” Indeed, Bourbon Street must be paradise to those who enjoy getting boozed up and puking on strangers. But for those of us not too interested in that pastime, or intrigued by low-rent sex toy shops or Larry Flint ™ strip clubs, there’s really very little to enjoy about the place. The people-watching isn’t even all that high-quality. No fire eaters, no funky street artists, only a small, grubby handful of those annoying “pose like a sculpture” people - even the small boys who tap for change with bottle-caps tied to their shoes did not show up. Aside from a small, very good jazz band we saw through a window, most of the bands were really bad, and reduced to playing horrible covers of “It’s My Life” and the occasional disco hit so that the drunken patrons could sing along. But worst of all, and the thing that really made us avoid the place after a couple of hours, was the smell. Puke, garbage, and stale beer – mmm, tasty.

At any rate, even though I’m not a fan of seafood, I did find plenty of good eating to be had. I fell in love with the roast beef po’boys that I had, and the one I got from the little grocery with the flickering flourescent lights and the dicy clientele was miles better than the one eaten at the cute little bistro in the French Quarter. Beignets at Café du Monde were definitely worth the trip, and I still probably have powdered sugar trapped in my clothing.

As to conference-related things, all went well. There’s something very heartening about hanging out with a bunch of people all in your profession, and so I enjoyed the company of like-minded museum professionals, and especially, other registrars (even if I sometimes feel that I’m not quite there yet). I’m going to assist with writing a rights and reproduction handbook, and perhaps plan to go to Indianapolis next year to present on the topic. Most of the sessions weren’t that helpful, but I did do some scoping out on behalf of the director, and so hopefully provided her with some intelligence that will assist her as she goes into battle in a week or so. The shippers party (no relation to fanfic, but rather the people who do art shipping and who every year throw the best party of the conference) was at a bar called Howl at the Moon, with great food and two great bands. (The third band, sadly, was a dueling piano act that just ooozed cheese and smarm, so we avoided that bar and hung out in back with the zydeco instead.) Registrars may look like a staid lot, but they know how to party.