A good night

New Art (kinda blurly photo)

Sitting here, drinking 2/3 of a bottle of wine. It's almost midnight on a Tuesday. Steve and I are watching the Arts Channel - Baryshnikov is jazz dancing to some 40's crooner - so smooth. Gazing out the window at a low orangy half-moon overlooking the blinking lights of the city and it's ever present cranes. Steve is now curled up in the window box with Inga. He has bought flowers with pea vines twirling through them. The mess of tonight's dinner (angel hair pasta with garlic, basil, tomato, chard and a squeeze of lemon, and of course some asiago cheese grated on top) is strewn about the coffee table. For once the kitchen is clean, but the floor still has my artwork and various scraps of magazines in piles (kitchen remodel ideas, artwork ideas, outfit ideas) all about - and cat hair- lots of cat hair. I'm not the cleanliest person you know. We've booked tickets to Minnesota, and have a lot of free time there - please send recommendations. Today was lovely. Got the painting Steve's mom bought framed. I wish I could frame all of my ladies with a limitless budget and good strong matting. We've developed a new bad habit- there is a beer store on Pike that we've recently discovered. About 300 different beers, sorted by region. Tonight of course I bought local wine :) I picked up some new pens and markers at Utrecht my fav art store on Pike and resumed my doodling for Miss Caroline's fashion 'look book/catalog' thing.

When I am mildly drunk I become effusive, so here it is:

Last night, after Caroline's Poetry Reading in Fremont we went to Big Time for a few beers. As Caroline was leaving she tipsily gushed to me (I'm approximating, I may have also had a few beers) "I have such amazingly creative friends, I just want form an artists' salon or something!" and though I think this all the time, I really felt a surge in satisfaction at this comment. I am truly amazed at the talent of the women in my life. I love how uncompetitive my ladies are in their love of art and am touched every time one of them wants to either buy my work or collaborate on a project. I admire all of them and instead of your regular run of the mill jealously I feel really proud whenever each of them performs or produces a truly beautiful piece.

Hahaha ok, I'm becoming my mother, sitting here with my glass of wine, falling in love with the world, strongly fearful of becoming too attached because of an overactive awareness of the fragility of it all. Oh, and just to make things that much more poignant, A Gershwin Piano duet is now playing, which also makes my think of my mother (who spent ages trying her hardest to play this piece, I'm not sure she'll ever reach that point, but it will never cease to remind me of her). Except, now there is a very 90's black and white performance of The Phantom Of The Opera on the arts channel and it is bringing out more scornful emotions ;)

I don't want to sleep tonight. I just want to finish this bottle, bother my cat, doodle a little and enjoy my Panda. This is a good antidote to a week and a half long bout of terrible dreams and a bad attitude.

Home

It's almost three a.m. and I'm still fairly buzzed from Tracy's bachelorette party.

If my parents and sisters did not live here I would never come back to the Tri-Cities. It's so bizarre here. On one hand the weather is unbeatably beautiful, but this trip more than any other has caused me to really feel stifled here.

Everyone here treats me like it's a 'town mouse' versus 'country mouse' competition. This world is so damn small it makes me feel like drowning. I need to get back to the city asap. I'd like to be anonymous in bars and to just have good non-competitive conversation with my ladies. My Tracy is amazing and great, but damn I hate coming here. I feel like I'm being scrutinized by people I haven't seen in four years for every pound I've gained and every stress wrinkle under my eyes. All the girls here are tanned within an inch of their lives and blond. I wore a cute little dress and heels out to a bar tonight and I felt mormon next to everyone else.

blarg. I'm just really happy to be spending time with my sisters.

The Meghann right now.

I’ve not written a post in a quite some time. Let’s just say I’ve been swamped with life. Not in such a bad way, I just am unable to leave a day or a weekend free from commitment lately. The consequence has mainly been an increase in friendships and a decrease in my bank account.

Last weekend was the birthday weekend. I tried to keep it low-key this year, tried. Friday night Steve’s parents took Mark Gilz, Daron, Steve and I out to dinner at Taste because Shirlae was in town. I know I am biased because it’s the restaurant Steve works for, but I really really love the food here more and more. They just remodeled to remedy the scathing reviews for being “cold and cafeteria like” by adding dark brown circular booths and extra lighting. I wasn’t blown away, but the spring menu definitely did the job. Some of the favorites were lamb with cherry jus and fried blue cheese, smoked gouda polenta with some sauce that I can’t recall, and of course one of my fav dishes of all time the gemelli with crab and cheese. This dish is mac and cheese on crack. Handmade little swirly noodles in just the right amount of cheese with large lumps of fresh crab meat, truffle oil, bread crumbs and mache (kinda like baby arugula but not as peppery). I could eat bowls and bowls. I’ve already decided that if I had to choose a last meal, this would at least be a course in that last meal.

We then all walked over to the Paramount to see Avenue Q. I almost peed my pants laughing a record number of times. I was really really surprised at how hilarious this musical was. I now want cute little floating muppet bears to follow me around taunting me to “buy some beeeeeeeer! Yaaaay that make us happy!” If you can scrounge up the funds (holy cow expensive tickets) I’d recommend this any day. Afterwards we walked up the hill to get drinks at the Capitol Club. I’d never been, but they have a perfectly uncrowded balcony. As poop-tastic as the weather has been, the nights have been soo lovely up on the hill. We sat for a long time watching city lights, peering out from the tree-tops (the balcony is nicely nestled near the top of an old tree and looks out over downtown). It was cool and slightly windy but dry J

Saturday we went to Elena’s ‘non-bbq’ (she does not own a grill, but we sat in the sun and drank beer in the spirit of bbqs). We played some basketball, Frisbee, sat on their glorious balcony in eastlake. We managed to fit 10 people onto the balcony, and I managed to actually get a hint of sunburn. We sat out there pretty much the entire night talking, smoking cigars (ok, not me, but everyone else, can’t stand cigars), and eating the requisite ‘bbq’ foods. It was a lovely day overall and I’d never been so happy to have a redish nose and pink shoulders.

Sunday morning we woke up and went to Steve’s parents house to cook a father’s day brunch. Steve made a hash from potatoes, cauliflower, apples and asiago cheese, I made buttermilk waffles from scratch with caramelized bananas and pecans, and Shirlae made blueberry cobbler. It was a fat kid brunch for sure. Steve’s mom brought out the champagne and all. After lounging around in our fatitude, we decided to go for a walk around scenic Medina. There are a ton of 4-8 million dollar homes for sale in Medina right now in case you were interested. Yikes! We also took Inga out for a ‘walk’ in their backyard. I tried to make her put her paws in Lake Washington just for fun and she scratched me… big shock there. Why are cats just soooo fun to torment? After sitting on their back porch in the sunshine looking out over Lake Washington, watching people in their yachts drive by we returned to normalcy by heading back to Seattle. We then rushed to dinner with some friends, a small little bday dinner at Wann in Belltown where we proceeded to eat even more food and drink more than a few drinks. It was very lovely indeed.

This week has flown by, I’ve managed to make it to the gym once, but played basketball with Steve for an hour on Wednesday. Gotta break these bad spending and eating habits! I’ve spent almost all of my free time after work planning my HS friend Tracy’s bridal shower next weekend so I’m looking forward to relaxing a bit this weekend.

No plans tonight, which is quite alright with me. I wouldn’t be surprised if I manage to fill it with some form of social activity, but right now my goal is to leave it open for some alone time. I’m reading Michael Chabon’s Yiddish Policeman’s Union and I’ve been officially sucked in. I am excited to get some breakfasts with the Beth tomorrow morning, then explore the delights of the Fremont Fair with Ms. Okano, then off to the Gilzenbirth celebration at the Kingfish Café!

More food, more friends, less money…. Sigh.

Unfinished thoughts and total failures

After cleaning my place all afternoon I finally feel ready to spend time on my art again. To get me in the mood, and to follow the "spring" cleaning vibe, I present to you a collection of things that didn't work. (I say "spring" because it's fucking snowing).

I actually kinda like the ring lady, she's got a nice fat butt and big hair. Maybe someday I'll make her bigger and better.

I keep trying to do the reading lady and I think I've finally given up on her...

Third is a drag queen. Hot mess

Fourth was drawn before my show in a moment of pure stress and agony.

Aww this one turned out blury, but she's a doodle from school
This was the beginning of something that went nowhere. she's the same as the book girl above.

Sometimes I try to draw men. And fail.

First in a series of mad and unsuccessful attempts to transfer my style to watercolor.

More failed watercolors

This looks like 80s fashion watercolors...

Sometimes I just take a magazine and try to draw the models in my style. Sometimes that results in a mess.

Sometimes I can't draw feet that are proportionate...

Anywho, that was fun, I'm ready to do some new stuff finally so maybe I'll have an update with those things soon!

New Hobby

www.cheiler.blogspot.com

Check out Steve and I's new hobby/blog.

Lovely things...

I want to go see this oh sooo badly:
http://www.pnb.org/season/dc2008.html

I've seen this guy dance once w/ ayako at Bumbershoot and I was thoroughly in love afterwards....

Sexy Sexy

So last night Steve and I finally rented and watched Lust, Caution- the Ang Lee movie which has the reputation of an NC17 rating for violence and lots of naked Tony Leung.

Highly recommended. Maybe not at the level of In The Mood For Love, which caused me to forever fall in love with Tony Leung, but it was so intense and lovely that I keep thinking of it all day at work. It also makes me want to go back and watch In the Mood for Love again because he is much younger and far less creepy :)

I felt that Ang Lee's lengthy use of subtly in this movie worked much more powerfully for me than his approach in Brokeback Mountain. It's still a fairly lengthy movie, but it moves much much faster. Also, very importantly, the chemistry between Tony Leung and Wai Tang is intense. INTENSE!

Aside from all of that, it really really made me want to do my hair up in pin curls and wear hats that slant over one side of my face. Wei Tang's wardrobe in this movie is absolutely delightful. Carefully detailed blue trench coats and black velvet hats, red lipstick, and many many skin tight silk mandarin collared dresses which oh so boobed white girl me could never ever wear. I wish I could pull something like that off.

Anywho, I try to make my 'movie reviews' fairly vague. Living with Steve has caused me to be overly sensitive to the fact that many people don't want to know anything about the plot of a movie before they see it. So, I guess what I can say is this movie is powerful, sad, beautiful to look at... And there is a ton of "doin it" as Steve would say.