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November 29, 2005

in this post we get to experience the reality and results of my quirky personality

so, i'm obsessed with knitting right now. honestly, i'm really not wanting to be blogging right now, in so far as i'm not able to knit if i'm blogging. like, i would friggin love to have any/all of you over right now, and i would go on and on about what's been going on, or asking questions, or whatever the hell direction you would want said conversation to go into; but i don't wanna be on this computer. i have only 2 1/2 weeks to finish up everything that i can't show you(ok, maybe it'll turn out to be 3 weeks, but honestly, i really don't want it to go down like that.). i mean, i'm only going to work cuz it helps pay for the roof that i need to be under in order to knit. i know i'm at work, but i'm really thinkging about what ALL i'm knitting, where i am, how far to go, what's next on the list, and what i wanna knit for personal reasons after all this holiday knitting... in addition, i've been making other things too, which i will share with you now....the following is going to be sans glorious commentary. it's gonna be like a share and dash sitch; i really wanna share with you, cuz you matter to me, but you're just not knitting, and knitting is what i'm...obsession would be a mild comparison to what i'm feeling...oh, and darin, should you read this. i friggin swear, i'm gonna have that drawing to you by the end of this weekend. i just gotta find a sufficient picture of worms/grubs....

and so i went to thanksgiving at craig and lygia's place. we watched lots-n-lots of FIREFLY

and some other stuff

oh yeah, i also hung out with nathalie and damon over at isaac's. also at the show nathalie and lisa were in called gravy train. i don't know why, but i didn't take any pictures; although i did buy one! i'm gonna pay this weekend...soooo stoked!!! the show was a bunch of different co-operative artworks. the one i bought was one that nathalie and lisa did together. it's called dakota...

i've been watching ALONE IN THE WILDERNESS about this guy going up to alaska and making a log cabin. dude, it's BEYOND intense...

Posted by Meagen at 08:59 PM | Comments (5)

November 21, 2005

yup-yup

although i suppose one could say i look like i'm in some serious pain, let me assure you that this is the look of HOT-DAMN-I'M-TRULY-ON-THE-MEND!!!!

Posted by Meagen at 07:33 PM | Comments (4)

November 17, 2005

gettin' my copy-cat on

this morning when i was walking to the BART i saw this guy taking a picture of city hall with his cell phone. when he finished and walked away, i stopped, turned around and took a look for myself.

thanks for the head's up dude! wherever you are....

Posted by Meagen at 07:35 PM | Comments (2)

November 16, 2005

G.O.F.

THREE DAYS TO GO!!!

Posted by Meagen at 07:55 PM | Comments (2)

November 15, 2005

wha?

this is the latest installation in the sf arts commission window on grove street(accross from city hall). dude, what i want is just 10 minutes alone, with a baseball bat, at the end of this exhibit. i'll spin it as a performance piece titled, living in the snow globe; feel my pedestrian rage. whaddya thunk?

also-also; i'm back at work but i still don't feel so good. these entries are gonna be short-n-sweet until i do feel soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo goooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooood.

Posted by Meagen at 06:34 PM | Comments (6)

November 11, 2005

ppppllllleeeeehhhhhffffff

sorry i've been sorta MIA this week. i kinda came down with a cold, and i really haven't been doing much of anything but sleeping and trying to go to work. they sent me home on wednesday, and i thought yesterday i was feeling better, but i wasn't feeling too good at 5AM this morning....

until...of course, i realized that CAL is closed for veteran's day, and i could go back to bed. i'm feeling a bit better at the moment(like i actually feel like i can handle knitting), but i'm gonna be taking it SUPER SLOW over the weekend. there's no way i'm gonna be sickie-poo for next saturday's imax showing of GOBLET OF FIRE!!!

do yourselves a favor, and go get some airborne so you don't wind up like me!!!

Posted by Meagen at 10:03 AM | Comments (4)

November 07, 2005

the trip part two: NOT

SORRY! i know i said i was gonna show you pumpkin carving and stuff, but i got this

when i went to work today. i guess i was really in tune with making the easiest possible transition for myself to go back to work. in addition to this being a short week...

apparently i arranged to have some of the new harry potter legos waiting for me at my desk today. needless to say what i'll be doing this evening....




but before i go, i wanna say that my aunt friggin ROCKS!!!

i got her wonderful care package in the mail last friday. she told me her thrift store had some knitting stuff, but i didn't know it was gonna be knitting stuff i wicked want!!!! both yarns are 100% wool, and from the look of the label, we're talking possibly from the 60's. as much as i wanna make a striped sweater with them both, i know i'll wind up looking jaundiced. i'm kinda wondering if'n there's enought to make a small, lightweight blanket....




also-also, i think that nathalie would make a super cute robot!!!!! DON'T YOU?!?!?!

Posted by Meagen at 07:49 PM | Comments (6)

November 06, 2005

time sure does fly when you're not at work!

well, the vacation officially ended on friday, and i go back to work tomorrow. in an attempt to psyche myself out about returning to work tomorrow, i've decided to take today to share my east-side picts with you.

here we have the family homestead. it's the end of an old hat factory...well, it was a hat factory at the turn of the century, when the mill river was flowing behind it. then the oxbow developed, and it became a factory for OTHER things...as well as a bowling alley at one point (i think that's what i was told anyway). when our family moved into our end, the rest of the building was all-original parts(as it were) and most of the other spaces were used as live/work artist studios. not just painting and printing, but some amazing fibre artists as well. i really love this place EXCEPT because it previously lay next to a river bed, the foundation is infested with every creepy crawly bug know in new england, and prolly then some too. they, and the bats, like to make sporadic excursions into the interior of the house, which gets the ol'adrenaline pumping at usually the most inopportune of times. it's gonna take some getting used to having inspect bath towels before you use them again...


the first couple of days i was home, i participated in the festivities surrounding my father's 50th high school reunion. there was a lot of partying, and dinners, and partying, and brunch, and partying...at one point, after we'd gone to the house of some family friends, i thought it was about midnight...turned out it was about 7:30pm. i don't know how these people, all of whom are 50+, do it....and i sure as hell hope they don't expect me to maintain that pace. unfortunately, i don't have any pictures from all of the shenanigans to share with you. didn't take any...wicked bad blogger i am.


from northampton we drove down to misquamicut to partake in the seasonal closing ritual at the pleasant view inn. all though the ritual turned out to be kind of a bomb(can you believe it rained for almost the ENTIRE TIME I WAS BACK HOME? hence i have NO autumn foilage shots to share at all), we hung out with some friends who are more townie in origin, and we had our fun, as sporty will attest:

the only elaboration i'll provide is that, at one point in the evening, we found ourselves being serinaded with beatles tunes sung in cantonese.....dude you just never know when you're travelling with sporty.


one of the kitchens i had a job in during college when i spent summers down there with my family, was THE OCEAN HOUSE. it's really, really old, and was in it's heyday around the turn to the 20th century. rich families would spend whole summers there in watch hill, enjoying the beach, riding the carousel, or strolling the village center. 80 years later, when i worked there, it was basically the same deal, only the top two floors were closed, and the place wasn't filled the way old-timers claimed it used to be.

i worked in the kitchen as one of the line cooks, and was the only non-johnson&wales employee there. man-0-man i had some crazy times in that old place!!! if'n you ever ask me when you see me in person, i'll gladly fill you in. apparently it's gonna be torn down to be renovated....not sure how it's supposed to work out(couldn't get many straight answers, which i'm sure doesn't suprise you), but i figured i should take some pictures beforehand...



and LOOK!!! i saw my very first tree ent in real life!!!!


after an overnight we went back up to northampton. i ran an errand over to hadley, and on the return trip, i saw this:

i did a double take, cuz i thought it was too late in the season. i've tried to explain what tobacco barns look like to folks, and haven't done such a swell job. but here's one in full action!!!

can you see how the tobacco is hanging up inside to dry? there's a lot of tobacco grown in western mass...potatoes, asparagus, and tobacco...so there you go...


another thing i've mentioned to some folks is the large polish population in my home town. MR.SKIRVIN, will you look at that perogie selection!!!! and you know there were like a gazillion different kinds of keilbasa...

i spent a good amount of time at the supermarket when i was back east. i made like 4 different pots of soup while i was there. i'd gotten a new cookbook and was really into trying out the different recipes.


below, you'll find the mccolgan clan. we'd gone to have breakfast up at the look restaurant. in front you have my younger brother tully...yup-yup, just like the coffee place here. (he friggin LOVES that coffee BTW). not the most flattering of pictures, but what can you do? i always thought tully looked like mike seaver from growing pains...can't remember the actor's name at the moment. anyway, next there you have sporty himself, although it's really mostly the back of sporty's head. then, way back there, is sporty's brother, uncle ed...sometimes known as farmer ed. he bought a farm that had a sugar house, that my cousin and her husband now own. i like that uncle ed is politically liberal too.




after a few days in northampton, i went down to nyc to hang out with aunt caroline for a few days. although i understand a lot of what i experienced had to do with weather, the bus trip down there was the most hellish i've ever been on. let's just say that i could've flown to jfk airport from sf in less time than that bustrip that usually takes 3 1/2 hours.....



i was pleased that every morning i was there, i woke up to giada on the television; followed by rachel ray even!


the first day we went to check out the new costume exhibit at the met(you couldn't take picts), and checked out a couple of things along the way.

that's aunt caroline herself in the orange coat

we were both very taken with this JOAN OF ARC painting. there are parts that are so photo-realistic that it's creepy....



that night we went out to dinner in the neighborhood. aunt caroline had found this awesome vegetarian restaurant just a couple of blocks away. i'm tellin'ya, this place put GREENS to shame(although i cannot remember the name at the moment; lemme do some research and get back to you). not only did they offer more diverse vegetarian california cuisine, they did it in an amazing 40's style dinner club decor. the beauty of the moon that evening, right outside the building's door, really did reflect my overall experience.


the next day we to the morning show of GOOD NIGHT AND GOOD LUCK(amazing movie, PLEASE check it!), then re-vamped this side hallway back in the apartment that had gotten full of "stuff". after we were done with that, aunt caroline suggested that she would like to see the shopping center that had been put in the place of the old colluseum(few blocks behind the ritz). it was a beautiful, but typical shopping center. i suggested we check out williams & sonoma, cuz, well, i have yuppie cookware dreams...i admit it. while we were in there, checking out all the cookware, gadgets, and specialty items, i was blown away to see this guy!

that's mark bittman from the food network's old show HOW TO COOK EVERYTHING with mark bittman.

i really enjoyed his demonstration, but i kinda felt for him at the same time. there were all these older women (who totally don't look like they've ever been regular cooks) who kept asking him things like, do you HAVE to use that kind of pan?", or "do you HAVE to use butter?", or, the best, "do you HAVE to use shrimp?" i don't blame him for being a bit short with the response that mostly shrimp are required in shrimp dishes. i asked him if he had any culinary suprises while writing the cookbook, and he looked at me like i was a ph.d. candidate....



on my way outta town i was taking random shots. unfortunately i did not get the one of the guy at the corner of 68th & park who i believe was ari shirazi. man, now THERE'S someone i'd wanna have a beer with.


i went home, turned around and went to ted's new house in roslindale. dude, it's so totally the raddest fixer-upper ever. i entered through the back, on which there is a giant deck. it let me into the all season porch.

then you go into the dining room.

in between the dining room and the non-eat-in kitchen is;

the dreaded wall. i know part of the renovation of the house involves the elimination, if possible, of this wall.

and there's the man himself, in his natural habitat...the kitchen.

and we spent quite a bit of time in this very living room. as i said, the weather wasn't all that great. we did go to building 19, which was a throwback, and we did go to a couple of different grocery stores;

that's the sunset outside of onna them, and we did look for the THIS OLD HOUSE project currently(?) going on in cambridge, and we also carved some pumpkins, which will come in the next installment. i'll prolly finish this up tomorrow, since i haven't done too much outside of the apart in the past couple of days, other than go to the movies with damon and nathalie to see REVENGE OF THE WERE-RABBITT.
oh; and by-the-by, i'm gonna try doing entries in the pm for a bit....experimentation runs rich in my life right now....

Posted by Meagen at 09:23 PM | Comments (2)

November 02, 2005

de young is da bomb

seriously, though, i had a wicked rad time at the de young museum yesterday. i went with neilz, for the FREE DAY every first tuesday of the month. we wound up paying to check out the hepshaput(sp?) exhibit as well, which was very intense. well, I think it's very intense to look at objects (especially daily-use-type objects) that are like friggin three thousand years old. unfortunately for you, they did not allow the use of cameras in that exhibit. if'n your a fan of egyptian antiquities, i'd shell out the 5 bucks to check it for yourself. the museum itself looks fabulous, although i was not in it before the renovations. as you can tell from the above pict, there is now a tower attached to the building. this currently does not house any exhibits, but reference library type stuff, and an observation deck at the top of the tower. this was quite the popular attraction yesterday, so we omitted it from our tour for the purpose of more time to check out the rest of the museum. i think all that space is a great idea, and provides a little expansion space down the line, should it become necessary. (also-also; they're now in the process of renovating the california science academy...HUGE CONSTRUCTION SITE! the park's gonna kick major ass when they've finished all these renovations man!!!) i tried to keep track of both the titles of the paintings, as well as the names of the artists. in the cases where i did NOT keep track, i've posted the picts here. those i've kept track of, i put in a little photo album over there to the right. i have to mention at this point in time, that it was very difficult to maneouver my sweater and my purse and the camera AND my notebook all at the same time. i think this means i need to make a new bag...well...i just finished with a new bag, but it wasn't in time for that trip. shucks... the reason i bring this up is that i tipped over one of those poles that holds up cording used to rope off areas surrounding exhibits. in particular, i was next to josiah mc elheny's model for total reflective abstration(which i saw a whole "making of" thing on KQED about a month ago), which would have been horrible had i actually hit any of that glass with my purse. i wound up jumping back when all of a sudden i was surrounded by three women, and that's when it all went down. it took a wicked long time for my heart rate to return to "normal". gee-whilackers.... in the immortal words of nevil longbottom, "why does it always happen to me? if'n there's something to be dropped, knocked over, or spilt, i am the man for the job!!!....well, you know what i'm sayin...
i really liked this piece that i think was titled: STEPPING OUT although i have no idea who created it. what i liked about it was the material choice, since i usually associate wood sculpture with various "folk" movements, and this is very much a "fine art"-type sculpture. i like wood a lot because it feels warm to me, especially with the finish that was used. the other thing i liked about this is that it's got that early deco feeling to it. i really enjoy the initial designs of that period because of their portrayal of "modern life". everything is so intuitive and fluid as expressed through so many rounded forms; not at all what we've got goin' on in our current modern reality.

i liked this painting, which i think was titled PICKING COTTON because of the forms and color. they remind me of a lot of the illustration in my elementary school's reading books(which i friggin LOVED!!!). however, i'd be kinda frontin' if i didn't mention the little jolt i got from seeing that modern road sign off to the right, and it's suggestion that there's a lot of modern day slavery still going on in this world...hell, even still in this country (and if'n you think that's a crock, stop paying your rent or your credit card payments). i wish i'd remembered to write down the name of the artist.

since i was feeling very touristie, neil was gracious enough to give me the typical tourist pose with this fine example of modern sculpture. i can't imagine having a personal living space large enough to accomodate this sucker!

this was my favorite painting of all the paintings in the museum. i can't remember the title or the name of the artist(although the name of the artist is like on the tip of my tongue...it's one we ALL "know"...). i could look at this endlessly and really enjoy it. the feeling i get isn't necessarily from one particular aspect of the painting. what seems to happen when i look at this painting, is that the form and style speaks to some emotional experience i've had, some how brings the good feeling of that experience to the forfront of my current synaptical reality and just warms my cockles, yo. and that's just one of the reasons i like aht so much...

these "rain drops" were on the ceiling of the room that housed the rocking chair you'll find over in the de young album. they had a random pattern that covered the entire room, but i tried to get a shot that provides both ceiling and reflective views. i thought this was both playful and appropriate: doesn't it directly address the issue of perspective? and isn't the ability to identify multiple perspectives like a friggin crucial part of viewing artistic work of any sort? and isn't it also equally crucial for the living of one's life?!?!?! and then doesn't that take us to the place that provides relevance for art in our day-to-day lives? yup-yup.

this was one big friggin head!

i was also impressed that this artist chose to portray such a small dog humping such a large dog.

these little buggers made me smile! as it so happens, my mom bought reproductions of these types of musical instruments when we were in mexico back in '84. one got dropped and glued back together, but it still makes a pretty neat flute/recorder! the ones she got are a cross between the one all the way to the left, and the center one. let me also mention how much warmth i feel from terra cotta....

now that i've written a book about all the art i didn't take notes on, i'm gonna go set up that album with all the stuff i DID keep track of. lemme also assure you that once i'm back to work (monday) these installments are gonna be much shorter. hopefully equally amusing, but much shorter since i will have less time on my hands. speaking of less time on my hands, let me leave you with this picture of a 19th century skull reliquary from the gulf of papua...

Posted by Meagen at 08:19 AM | Comments (0)

November 01, 2005

it's difficult, although i don't know why

it's been really difficult to get back into bloggin mode after a couple of weeks off...now i understand why i can be reading a blog that's going along rather nicely, then there's like a 3-4 week "interruption", and then things are back to "normal". i can totally undestand how that happens now! i'm having that problem. at first i was blaming IPHOTO, but now i understand that everything in that fkn program is organized according to date, and that you avoid importing duplicate picts via some pop-up window, and really the only thing i can blame for not sharing the trip picts is myself. i seem to be having great difficulty forcing myself to work at the computer when i could be knitting and making myself a new bag for the upcoming year. however, i don't have any of those picts today. today i have picts of the weekend, in which i'm including halloween(cuz i'm on vacation, and it's my blog, and i can just go wit it like that...).

so; last friday adam was playing out solo for the first time. it was at the sf ccac building(at least that's where i think i was) in conjunction with an art show. nathalie and i rode our bikes. now i know the weather wasn't the most clement, but it was invigorating to ride in. i haven't really ridden my bike in about a year, and it was good to be on it. my bike (i'm actually on my second or third bike by now) has been my main source of transportation since the spring of 1990. there have always been times when i've been really into walking places, and i don't ride the bike everywhere, but i realized this is the longest time i've gone without riding it at least once a week in the past 15 years. falling down those stairs really threw a wrench in the works in so many ways....THE POINT BEING that i will most certainly not go too long again without riding my bike. it was so much fun!!!! especially cuz my "new" bike (which i've had for about 8 years at this point; thank-you peter verdone!) is a small frame for someone just my size=lotsa control! oh, wait, yeah...we went to see ADAM!

despite some initial anxiety on my part, i had a really fun evening, and enjoyed talking with a buncha folks. i also really, really enjoyed listening to adam play out. his own music is kinda quiet and thoughtful, and i think it can be difficult to capture people's attention with something like that...whereas listening at home is a wonderful etherial kinda experience....


saturday i spent the day running errands and knitting. in the evening i went to a party at travis and eva's house. i didn't take very good blog picts though...i'm just not in the swing of things digitally yet...

i did take this pict of my pre-party libation. i made this cranberry drink from a mag recipe, and it makes a seriously rad drink mixer!!! i brought that bottle in the picture as a gift. i put a little on the side for myself (gotta take a test run or 2!), but it wasn't a very pretty bottle; an old plastic water bottle thing.
i had a great time at the party, which may be why i have little to no pictures of the event or it's participants. i know i didn't get picts of lisa and isaac(which i thought of after getting dropped off), but i coulda sworn i had one of travis as shaggy. i just know it's not on my camera now. travis had the best huge hair!!!! i did get this picture of eva of wonderland

and of the decorations (the skeletons as represented by the green blobs in this pict, were making me crazy cuz they were flicking on and off at a very fast pace)....

and, of course, pictures of food





on sunday i went to the very halloweenie matinee ofTHE CORPSE BRIDE

at first i was a bit frightened b/c there were so many kids in the theater. however, everyone was well behaved and/or engrossed in the movie. it was a sweet film, with a great soundtrack(much debate among the mcgordroys about this) and an aesthetic that i found myself absorbed by for so many reasons. i mean the characters, in a similar manner to NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS, have that stop motion look of my childhood favorites(which all happen to be christmas shows) like RUDOLF THE RED NOSED RAINDEER, SANTA CLAUS IS COMIN' TO TOWN, NESTOR THE LONG EAR'D DONKEY, and that one with the heat miser.... plus the way color was used reminded me of THE COOK, THE THEIF, HIS WIFE, AND HER LOVER... not to mention that whole victorian/goth thing just really appeals to my new england sensibility....(ok, take a look at the library i went to as a kid, as just one small example of what i'm talking about with that last statement...

there's a lot of this type of archetecture in northampton, along with other types, of course, but the existence of these buildings, amongst other things, had an affect on the evolution of my sense of aesthetic)
i went to the film with neil, and then we spent the rest of the day running errands together. when i got home, i did some more obsessive knitting, watched the simpsons, and then went to bed.


on halloween i made most of a new bag (which i'll show picts of soon;yup-yup picts of the creative stuff are coming soon!), and baked some amazing cherry almond cookies, along with some MORE knitting, all while watching a harry potter marathon. i went to the castro THING with lygia and sean in the evening. we had a drink at lygia's house before we went out. i had lygia take this pict of sean and i because i'd seen a bunch of this type when i was back east looking at childhood photos.

so, it was a good thing i had that drink at lygia's. i thought i'd be able to take some pictures of the amazing costumes i'd seen while walking around. NOPE. it was a friggin MADHOUSE!!! i don't know why i don't remember from year to year how out of hand it's gotten there. basically market was shut down from either church or sanchez(we came up noe, so i'm not sure which it was; i'm assuming sanchez) to collingwood, and another two blocks on either side of each of the cross streets(that includes at least sanchez, noe, hartford, and castro streets for you non-san francisco folks; yup, 16 blocks). it seems like halloween has become san francisco's mardi gras. i ran into at least 2 other penguins, but i couldn't get out the camera fast enough, and i couldn't keep the camera out for fear of dropping it when swept up in human tidal waves. crossing into market street from the end of noe(where there were screens and a "dance area" was set up) was one of the most intense experiences i've ever had in my life. i was literally part of a human ocean. i had very little ability to do anything, but float and try to find a "current" that was going in the general direction i wanted to go in. eventually it thinned out a bit, and there were enough gaps in the crowd that navigation was at least attemptable. here's a picture of me on castro street, on the north side looking down the hill at the mileay...

my very first halloween we went to this event, and it took up about 4 blocks; it was primarily on castro (with IMPROMTU bands playing, i might add), starting at castro to 19th, and then collingwood to hartford on either side. this thing is friggin' huge. we almost got caught up in this "parade" that may have been paddywagonned, knowwhatumsayin?

at the time i wanted to join in, but sean and lygia said "no". now i'm glad i listened to them.




ok. this is officially a book with an abrupt end. coming soon; photos of the newly re-opened de young museum!

Posted by Meagen at 07:45 AM | Comments (1)