Another Pink World

About

« here in indy | Main | chicagoland »

August 07, 2005

Let me expand upon that...

I was pretty alert last night, considering that i should have been nearly catatonic after two and a half fairly brutal days, and a total of maybe eight hours of sleep between them. but not up to blogging. (which is saying something, but then i don't have to tell you that, dear reader. you know i blog at the mere mention of the drop of a hat.)

i'm now at my friend stephanie's house, having just slept a solid eight hours all at once without waking up, which is pretty amazing. i think the white noise of a fan in my room helped a lot. well, that, and being tired :)

it's only 6:30am local time, and steph is fast asleep, as she should be-- she hadn't slept at all the night before. i fed lucy the talktative cat so she wouldn't wake her up, and now i'm sitting here, basking in the wireless, and eating the sugar-free yogurt with which stephanie has so considerately stocked her fridge.

:|:

i'm sitting in the living room, a room i helped paint a couple of years ago. i'm happy to see that our paint job is holding up really well. i convinced her to paint the brick fireplace white; we'd painted the walls a pale robins-egg blue, and uncovered the honey-colored wood floors. the heavy brick fireplace seemed out of place. it still looks perfectly crisp and white, like we painted it yesterday.

she's added some furniture and rearranged, and put the big bookcases back up. it's looking good.

i got to see steph's house last night. it's near downtown and over a hundred years old. steph told me exactly how old last night, but i don't remember the exact number. i know the year it was built starts with an 18 :)

it's a renovation project, and not a small one. the heart valve surgery she had to have earlier this year has prevented her from progressing much, which must be immensely frustrating. it's a beautiful old house, and it's good to see someone restoring it back to the way it was meant to be.

last night i also got to see the People Mover... yes, Indianapolis has a monorail!! i wasn't quick enough with the camera to get a photo, if we happen to go near it again, i will.

:|:

i may feel differently after more time passes, but right now my feeling about the art car weekend is that i didn't enjoy it as much as i'd hoped to. i've given some thought to why that might be. sleep, i guess, was a huge thing. not having had anywhere near enough sleep colors the entire experience, i think, and makes everything harder. i had other issues with energy level; the crash that i had friday night was truly one of the worst i've ever had. if sarah hadn't been there to take care of me, i think i really would have passed out at the table.

in retrospect, missing out on the dinner friday didn't help; it was a nice opportunity for conversation, and i hate that we had to leave so quickly.

i am sure the experience would be different were i there with my own art car. as it was, i was in a sort of limbo where i wasn't in the audience, yet also wasn't a performer either (a metaphor that may or may not be apt). and while the webcam shots that i got Friday night were astounding, having my nose buried in a computer screen during both of the parades meant that i didn't really experience the parades fully.

i think that one day, when the westy comes to fruition, while i'll want to take her to events, i'll pick and choose them very carefully. and might just call a moratorium on web camming for a while; it's cool, but it's not worth it if it detracts from the experience. i can use my phonecam to post pics instantly and still get a similar effect for the folks back home.

maybe i won't take the westy to an event without getting the fridge running on propane, so it can run continuously. having some creature comforts there with you all the time would probably make a big difference.

well, like i said, as more time passes i'll probably feel more positive about the whole experience. i think the big lesson is that for me, i've gotta find a way to make the whole thing more relaxed. sarah and i joked a lot about "art car time"... when you get a bunch of artists together, things don't always happen very quickly. "we're leaving right now" means "we'll actually leave in about twenty minutes". well, maybe i need to find a way to get on to art car time. i think in my latter years of going to roswell, i did learn to relax and take it all a lot easier than i did the first year.

sarah also observed that the extra stuff we do takes a toll that the other artists don't have to experience. most of them can just park their cars then hang out. we were having to stay on top of the webcams and bubble machine. although i do love the geeky, interactive stuff, and certainly have some interactive ideas for the westy, i'll approach them with caution.

well, enough about that. i'm not sorry i went. it was very nice of sarah to let me come with her. it's a cool scene, one i think i could fit into pretty well, i just have to learn how to appreciate it more and experience it better.

:|:

last night at dinner, steph asked me what i might like to do while in indy. "Absolutely nothing," was my answer, followed by, "maybe a movie." we're going to Chicago for the day tomorrow, so i think we all need a day to chill. it'll be nice. i think steak n' shake may be involved in some way.

Posted by lisa at August 07, 2005 07:31 AM

Comments

i am sure the experience would be different were i there with my own art car. as it was, i was in a sort of limbo where i wasn't in the audience, yet also wasn't a performer either (a metaphor that may or may not be apt).

This is how I feel when I head down to the Challenge races with Sean. Totally.

Posted by: Jason! on August 8, 2005 09:48 AM

"Monorail!"

Posted by: Phil on August 9, 2005 12:46 AM

Post a comment