hurricane cabin fever

reporting from swallow cafe. the subway is still down, school is cancelled for the week, and the internet in our apartment went out today. and it is official that the front door to our building no longer unlocks. you can't get in unless someone already inside buzzes you in. therefore, i enjoyed a myriad of indoor activities today. i planted tulip bulbs in a pot and then buried the dead fish in our aquarium with the tulips. i turned on the kitchen faucet and let trouble drink the running water, which he enjoyed. i finished Tinkers, which was good, and I walked around on the rooftop of our building. bushwick was crisp cold and gray today. i had a coffee and a beer and a coffee, in that order. i felt bored, which i enjoy in theory, but felt bored by in practice.

Internet died. With it, my spirit.

hurricane update

we in bushwick are doing very well. i spent the day buying candles and foodstuffs, cooking everything i own in the fridge, and attempting to duct tape the cracks in my windows. the roomies and i having been spending all our time together, eating, drinking, and playing with the cats and the visiting yorkie doodle, ziggy. we are far enough inland that we have not experienced any flooding or torrential rain. in the evening we went up to the roof and drank shots of tequila and were almost blown over by the massive winds. once the television went out we finally succumbed to boredom and sat in silence. thankfully we still have power, water, and mimosas for the morning.

locked in

we're having a hurricane tacos and brownies party

bagey in german monique

baby pumpkin

happy pre-halloween! 

hurricane a-comin'

school closed tomorrow for a hurricane day. YES!

public transit stops running tonight, so i guess i'm just going to be trapped at home with trouble.

nor'easter 2012

i don't really want a frankenstorm to descend upon the city and ruin all our lives, but i wouldn't mind if class were cancelled Monday and Tuesday. 

hurricane sandy

should i be stocking up on supplies?

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo declares State of Emergency as Hurricane Sandy barrels through Caribbean, killing 40

Sandy could be ‘worst case’ superstorm, more powerful than Hurricane Irene; officials will decide Saturday whether to evacuate wide swaths of New York City

shut up, renee

renee is in heat. she's been yowling for days. sometimes it sounds like there is a demonic child in the apartment, sometimes like a frog. every couple of minutes i can hear The Painter yell, "Shut up, Renee!"

baking some coding some

today i made apple cheddar scones and continued working on this totally obsolete assignment instead of the ones that actually need to be done. scoop all the fireflies into the jar!

to buy kreayshawn ticket or to not buy kreayshawn ticket? difficult dilemma.

dopey

the prospect of how difficult my homework is going to be to do makes me very very sleepy

fall trips

red hook fall

longwood fall

Little Amish cupboard

Greetings from Lancaster, Pennsylvania. I just bought a little cupboard supposedly made by Amish people. Pa thinks I was ripped off but I love it.

mazelle

A few days ago the motorcycle shop next door was raided in a pre-dawn sting that busted a biker gang in possession of "assault rifles, pistols and even grenades" and "2,000 envelopes of heroin and 2 ounces of cocaine and marijuana." I'm sad that I slept through all the excitement. It's oddly quiet without the sound of revving motorcycles through the night. Tonight I went out with The Painter and some of his neighborhood friends. I was the only one not wearing plaid. We went to an Eastern European bar/restaurant in the neighborhood, where they served infused vodkas and pelmeni and pickled beets and the like. I learned a lot about our neighborhood as well as our building's mafia connections. Afterwards we gathered on the rooftop I didn't know I had. I'm spending the weekend in New Jersey with Candy and my parents and I'm really excited. They're bringing my winter clothes.

plastic icicles

new necklace new necklace

i'm not sure if it's very kreayshawn but it definitely fits my fashion mission statement of everything is a statement piece

theres somethin about

WHAT DO I HAVE TO DO TO LOOK MORE LIKE KREAYSHAWN

I'M STILL HERE

twelve hours and twenty minutes OH MY GOD

i've been at school for eleven hours. we are working on our final video project. please let me go.

coffee dizzy

it's 9am and i'm already at school. i haven't pulled a stunt like this in a long time, not since i was a working stiff.

lisa conference

fantastic news. a friend told me today that dan shiffman showed my sketch at the creative coding panel at the LISA conference: Leaders in Software and Art at the Guggenheim as one of the examples of what people can make in their first week of learning Processing. 

fineshrine

it's 11am. There are no classes today or tomorrow because of midterm study days. However, I am still at school to work. I thought everyone else would be too but the floor is almost completely empty, which is a very odd experience.

that's one of one of our more famous teachers in his office

my current jam:

sleepy hollow

buca, mrs. tuckersman, and i celebrated the halloween season today by driving out to sleepy hollow cemetery, where the headless horseman sleeps. let's keep the spirit alive by reviewing some halloween costumes of these two years past and thinking about possibilities for this year.

2010:

panda. alli pulled those branches off of a tree outside and i'm wearing her socks balled up on my head. we're in someone's apartment in the Expo Village.

hello kitty. this was the last day of the World Expo, which coincidentally was also Halloween. We weren't supposed to dress up but i did anyways.

2011:

beer maid. i borrowed this from katya's costume repetoire. she's a genie. john is john. we were at harvard & stone and it was really fun.

marie antoinette. rooftop party in downtown la. we got a lot of use out of these wigs. 

dead person. more wig. don't know what i was trying to pull off but that dress is actually something out of my regular closet. bagel and i had biked to the weho halloween parade and then ate sushi.

2012: 

i'd like to be 1. chairy from peewee's playhouse, 2. wishbone as a literary character. logistics tbd? 

bedtime

at midnight last night I spontaneously decided to build my bed frame, which had been sitting in three large boxes in the living room for a week. i have to surprise myself with these tasks or else i'll always be too scared to do them. i think a million years' of wisdom was learned in the ikea armoire endeavor, because i was able to make the bed in under 2 hours while keeping all of the blood inside my body. and then i ate provolone on toast and spaghetti at 3 am and fell asleep with my glasses on.

ting

i'm working with a taiwanese girl on my physical computing midterm. i consider myself taiwanese too. the only difference between us is that i barely speak chinese. when she talks to me, little does she know that i'm typing on my laptop because i'm translating the things she's saying.

the day in platitudes

I overslept this morning. I had woken once earlier, at an ungodly hour, because a group of men were being very loud outside my window. In my sleep-drunk stupor, I was convinced that they were vandalizing the building and I made a mental note to look at the graffiti in the morning. In the morning I saw no graffiti but I did see the inside of the Swallow Cafe. I've been there every day this week and I already feel like the baristas are judging me for it. I had red wine and coffee for breakfast. It felt weird. To say the least.

I take the L-train as my main steed out of Brooklyn. The L is the wildest bronco in New York. It barrels its way through tunnels, rocking violently side-to-side. My ears pop every time. I've almost been knocked off my feet multiple times. A man came into our car playing the accordion and singing in Spanish. I want to know if people ignore subway car musicians because they think the music sounds bad or because they feel that if they show pleasure then they'll have to tip.

I met Pigtina in the East Village and we ate Venezuelan food, which I don't think I've had before. I had shredded beef with beans cheese and plantains in a crispy corn bun. Highly recommend. We then went to Van Leeuwen  for artisanal ice cream. Mine was hazelnut and it had lots of hazelnuts in it. I enjoyed it. The pig had Earl Grey. I sampled it and it was good and we talked about bedbugs.

Afterwards, I worked on the floor at school, where I promised to make a batch of pigs-in-blankets for a party Sunday night in BoCoCa. I was extremely pleased with myself because I knocked out all of the editing for the rough cut of my group's short film in less than two hours, thereby eliminating our scheduled meeting to sit around and edit together. I was terrified that we were going to be working through the night to finish.

I rewarded myself for all that time saved by coming home, buying a pack of beer (Goose Island IPA), reading a very heartwarming e-mail from the bagel, and watching a nature special on Siberian tigers with one of my new roommates, Artist.

bleh

i feel really homesick again. i took a lot of nice photos of my new home - i'll show off when i'm feeling less despondent. meanwhile, i'm in bed drinking wine out of a jam jar and listening to queen beyonce.

pigtina did my nails yesterday and made me beautiful

manhattan bridge

i filmed this today on the manhattan bridge. it is cold and not in focus. 

Manhattan Bridge from valerie chen on Vimeo.

weekly skype

weekly skype, september 25th, 2012

during last night's weekly skype my parents told me that they're really proud of me and that they can tell i'm working really hard (after i gave them a live presentation of this really awkward lab i did.) naturally, this positive reinforcement was startling and unnatural to me and ever since then i've been really ridden with anxiety about not being good enough at school to deserve any praise. 

crystals everywhere

piggy and i brought most of my luggage from her apartment to my apartment this afternoon and now everything i own smells like versace bright crystal. not that i'm complaining, it just does.

lunchtime

today i'm having a provolone and prosciutto sandwich with dryck lingon

ikea nightmares

i'm quickly finding that building ikea furniture is not fucking easy in a 7x12 room. neither was carrying all said furniture pieces down a narrow stairwell into my dungeon bedroom. i just switched from a glass of water to a glass of gin.

update: blood has been drawn

home sweet home

looks like i'm just in time

From the NY Daily three days ago: An insider's guide to Bushwick, Brooklyn

i'm only googling the neighborhood because i can't figure out where to buy groceries

update: i decided it was getting too dark to go looking for a grocery in the hood (however gentrified) so i went to the neighborhood hippie store instead. it's full of vegan goodies, meaning the only thing i was willing to purchase was a box of mushroom soup and a bottle of gin from the liquor store next door.

regular or memory foam

i'm conducting side-by-side lie-tests on the two different mattresses on my floor. 

servo lab

trying to do homework again...and failing

Capture 20121003 from valerie chen on Vimeo.

"it's not plugged in."

Not Plugged In from valerie chen on Vimeo.

throwback

a good old day

apps

we've started this new tradition as of today of downing a pint of beer each on our 15-minute class break. and now i'm listening to the CEO of Foursquare speak and it's great.

queen of the thames

i'm up late in this alien place called home and it feels weird in an unnerving way. i smell cologne and it confuses me.

rz's house

today is the mid-autumn festival, but i did not get any mooncake.
I started moving into Renee Zellweger's house in Bushwick today. I feel relieved and excited and happy all over. I have these dreams now of being peaceful and catching up in school and actually completing my assignments and not running all over Brooklyn every waking moment to look at the various shitholes where people cage themselves at exorbitant prices. I love my new digs and I just blew a bunch of money on buying a bed and mattress. I'm back at Piggy's for the night, but more exuberant nesting to come.