Month: December 1999

Christmas-Eve Eve, and I still hate Christmas. Basically, I like Thanksgiving a lot better than Christmas. I love spending time with my family, and I love getting away for a day or two, but Thanksgiving doesn’t get in the way of my day-to-day craziness the way Christmas does. Christmas is the source of so much more obligation that it takes away all the fun of showering people with love. Bah humbug. But love to all.

Special shout-outs to people who sent me really sweet Christmas cards or messages. I’m sorry that my phone phobia has spread to e-mail and cards lately, and I haven’t responded properly. Big hugs to all you guys.

I did have a great Christmas party at work last week, though. Perhaps the first official Christmas party for work I’ve ever attended that I actually liked. There are many benefits to working at a small, friendly company where you like everyone. One of them is not the oft-repeated question about whether or not I have someone to bring to the Christmas party. Aside from the general sting of being reminded that I don’t have anyone to bring, it makes me glad that I haven’t settled down in Connecticut like everyone else there, however.

But I did bring my friend Adam to see the Candy Butchers at Brownie’s the other night. In case you know who the Candy Butchers are, rest assured that it was a great, fun show. If you don’t know, you should learn to love them like I do.

We kicked ass on Friday. Fragile was a huge success at our presentation to the Pratt faculty. We dressed down for the presentation to make it look like we were in the midst of moving (that was the point of the book, after all), and I threw in a little editorial commentary by wearing a t-shirt that read “I HATE DOING THIS SHIT.” I don’t know how many of the faculty realized how much editorializing I was actually doing, but I suspect hat the chairman of the department got the point.

So I end my second illustrious attempt at graduate school with a similar record as the first — A solid “A” to match every incomplete. Except I’m letting those incompletes turn into failures at Pratt, because I don’t think I’ll be needing a transcript again. And if I do, I’m willing to explain why I aced upper-level courses and failed basic requirements.

I ran into Mel Byars, the professor for my “History of Communication Design” course, who was wondering why I stopped going to class after Thanksgiving, missing the second paper and the final class presentation. I explained my desire to devote what little time I had to my studio class, and he told me that my first paper (on Piet Zwart) was the best in the class, and that he wanted me to submit it to the Pratt library, which inexplicably had no reference material on Zwart. so he thanked me for being a pleasure in class, and urged me to send the paper in to the Pratt librarian. Pretty good for a failure, I guess.

The only real disappointment of the day was that I realized that this one really handsome guy I’d been seeing around the Puck Building was one of the CommD faculty, and I never got to talk to him, even though I think he’s been checking me out. Maybe he was just smiling at the t-shirt, though. Oh well, another day, another lost opportunity.

My brain hurts too much to think properly right now. If my last semester of grad school has taught me anything, I have learned:

• I am much too old and weary to pull all-nighters. Last night I went to bed after 36 straight hours of school work, regular work, wandering around in the rain to find a Kinko’s whose Fiery printer was working, and being generally miserable.
• Group projects can really blow chunks. A corollary to this: When you spot a bad apple at the beginning of the semester, you know he won’t rally at the end.
• Group projects can also help you bond really well with people you like. Many thanks to my fellow survivor’s of Fragile.
• Pratt really needs to get its shit together.

In other news, I’m loving work despite the sleep deprivation. God only knows if I’ll be able to get to work tomorrow, seeing as there’s a threat of a city-wide transit strike. I’ll probably have to ride my bike to Grand Central, and I bet the streets are gonna look like Beijing.

If the MTA goes on strike, I think we’ll see a lot of people beating the crap out of transit workers.

P.S.: I hate Christmas.