sublet argonauts

Earlier this month I was thinking a lot about surprising commonplace exchanges between strangers. Is it fitting, then, to revisit this thought again at the end of the month (and end of the year as well)? I spur-of-the-moment arranged to sublet my apartment in Brooklyn to the friend of one of my classmates and his girlfriend. This involved quite literally chucking my apartment keys into a bag and FedEx 2Day'ing them to New Jersey, where they were received by a stranger to be relayed to strangers to be used to open my apartment and sleep in my bed. Meanwhile, I agonized over the jewelry I probably shouldn't have left out. I agonized about having broken the standing lamp and not having replaced the burnt out overhead bulb and having possibly rented out a room of darkness. Or my keys getting lost in the mail. Or any damages being incurred to my roommates' possessions. However, I don't believe any worrying was warranted because my subletters seem (through e-mail and a phone call) to be really decent people. They notified me by text twenty minutes ago that they had arrived safely at the apartment.

They're only staying three nights to enjoy New Year's in New York. The money is actually hardly anything worth having, but I enjoy partaking in the brave new subletting world. On the phone, the boy expressed that he and his girlfriend were going to buy me a bottle of alcohol to leave as a gift, and I was very shocked/delighted and feel overall good and affirmed.

xmas legs

christmas gifty from катя - faux zippered stockings :)

as a major birthday milestone draws near, let's take a look back at when i was a cutie patootie:

xmas baby

merry christmas from san diego

beautimous dress

most beautimous dressy dress i love

faraway christmas in texas

bagel's brother cam claims a gifty

chlom and jen

new snood

bagel got me a rabbit for christmas! he's in the shape of a scarf.

ten ten

oh look all my favorite foods

not bored yet

today i planted more tulip bulbs. tonight i'm making a lemon tart and variations of martinelli's apple cider cocktails

a baby one. there were two but i ate one immediately

me too lana

printing code

looks like getting in off the wait list for one of the most desirable classes next semester

happy christmas

So many new stores on Melrose Boulevard. I'm at Starbucks, waiting for Bagel to get off of work so we can celebrate Christmas tonight with mexican food at La Barca and exchange gifts before he leaves for TX. I really like the gifties I got him and want to steal them for myself.

I've been a real crab for the past few days but things are somewhat better put into perspective after receiving this e-mail today:

I will be undertaking a blood test next Wednesday to see if I can be a match for this man. The Be the Match website says that there's about a 1/12 chance of being a good match after the test results are analyzed. If you are the best match for the person, the doctor decides whether you need to undergo PBSC or bone marrow donation. PBSC donation is when they inject you with a drug called filgrastim for five days straight and then filter your blood coming out of one arm and going back in through the other arm  for six hours. Bone marrow donation would involve full anesthesia and surgically drawing bone marrow out of your pelvic bone. I'm really hoping that I can do it.

teddy

cathy's mama made me cathy and steph a delicious dinner, including a plate of chicken hearts.

teddy is all white now. cathy says he pulled a michael jackson.

Teddy four months ago

utah trendsetting

Utah is often the state where baby name trends are incubated.  Check out Natalie, Madison, Jacob, and Jayden on the map.

post-public assembly

Woke up this morning feeling like a drunk old man. At the airport now, still do.

big crash

i yanked at my cell phone charger in the dark tonight. little did i know, it was wrapped around my standing floor lamp. my yanking pulled the floor lamp over and the bowl around the bulb shattered all over my floor. i was going to pretend it didn't happen, but it was very loud and photographer insisted on coming into my room with a broom and dustpan and sweeping up all the shatters. which reminded me that boys aren't always useless.

skippping town

hot shit i'll be (probably hungover) in LA tomorrow! but i'm really disappointed that i didn't get a chance to have a new york christmas, especially ice skating at rockefeller center, even though i hear it's overrated :(

embarrassed book

how i spent the last of my fifteen minutes of fame. on to obscurity.

The Embarrassed Book from Andrew Cerrito on Vimeo.

chukkas

Timberland Nellie (Wheat)

i'm looking to acquire these for my wardrobe

puppet doc

artist, trish, and i watched being elmo last night. i cried.

apricot impression

wonderful news. i thought my tulip bulbs would never grow and that i'd been watering a dead bucket of dirt/fish graveyard for weeks. but it seems otherwise. i'm really excited about them. apricot impressions.

it's always warm in our living room

haven't spent a night at home in a long time. artist, photographer, trish and i drank wine and made margaritas and drank those too. we watched a lot of it's always sunny in philadelphia and and i laughed and then i fell asleep on the couch.

one final left. i'm formally requesting a night out at los globos in january.

countdown three hours to make my physical computing final not total garbage

where is christmas

i always considered new york city to be the epicenter of urban christmas. i am disappointed to find that it doesn't feel like christmas here at all. where are the lights and snow and tacky window displays and christmas music all the time? and this total darkness at 4 pm is getting me down. 

spring 2013 class list

SCULPTING DATA INTO EVERYDAY OBJECTS
DIGITAL SPACES: NEW FRONTIERS IN REALTIME 3D
ANIMALS, PEOPLE, AND THOSE IN BETWEEN
BASIC ANALOG CIRCUITS

mystical oracle

my friend from school studied chinese in college but never had a chinese name. she asked me to pick one for her, so i asked my parents what it should be and they said aijia. aijia and another friend of mine, craggs, recently moved in together (orchestrated by me) to the bushwick neighborhood, just a few blocks from me. last night we went out for our first night out in our shared neighborhood. we mingled at my next-door bar, the shit box, met more school friends, went to a taco truck where we bought tostadas and were surprise gifted free shots of tequila by the taco truck man felipe, wandered my rooftop, and then went back to craggs' and aijia's where we played with my new ouija board. i played twice last week and nothing happened. we sat late at night at school in dark corners and in the girls' bathroom with our hands on the planchette, first timidly talking to air and later feeling exasperated and making dumb jokes. this time it moved. a lot. it moved when we had five people's hands on the board and it moved with two. it was mostly incoherent. twice it went completely off the board, coming towards me, then turned back around onto the board. i know all the scientific theories behind talking boards, but when it's happening the planchette really feels like it's moving independently and it is one of the eeriest feelings i've ever felt. at the end just mike and i were touching the planchette and everyone else watched. i asked, are you happy with the new tenants of this apartment? it wandered just a little bit and then it shot straight to yes and did a dead stop. at that point i said goodbye.   

animation and snacks

i've been cutting things out in photoshop for nine hours

update, 12:03am: photoshop went on for 12 hours total. i'm home now watching some sort of fruit tart cook-off and it's really making my abdomen bag rumble.

update, 2:32 am: at a quarter to one AM the artist decided to make cinnamon buns. best decision ever. we ate a bunch of them.

finals week

i'm at school trying to make three final projects magically appear out of nowhere. except they've turned out all the lights and are blasting big pimpin' as i sit in the dark and try to do a lab but can't see any of my electronics. i like and hate this at the same time.

noise evidence. though at least lights were turned back on.  
DC Motor Lab from valerie jean on Vimeo.

infestation

a boy at school is doing a final project for which he is keeping a box of crickets and a box of madagascar hissing cockroaches in the workshop. yesterday the crickets escaped and were running around and now we all say it's only a matter of time for the monster roaches to run free.

terminal 5

i've been so busy i haven't even had time to brag about the fact that i SAW ANIMAL COLLECTIVE PLAY LAST NIGHT AT TERMINAL 5. i went with people from school and had a really really excellent time. i heard Peacebone and the encore was My Girls. ahhhhh so good. afterwards, we stayed out late eating the most scrumptious sliders and then going to a ukrainian bar in the east village.

bagey floweys

beaaautiful floweys from bagget

hiphopify

the joys of web class projects

i didn't make this one

but i wish i did

many places

 i like these maps

internet ethics

last night when we sold our tickets, we had an overwhelming response for them (because we priced slightly lower than we'd paid...because we didn't think anyone would want them). we were selling the paper tickets that we'd printed ourselves, and i've been thinking about how we could have photocopied 20 of them and sold them all and scammed everyone. we didn't do that. but as with air bnb, are we all just a little crazy for being so trusting?

lana says to trust no one.