Because you demanded it (I'm talking to you, Kelly)--a blog post! So, yesterday, oy, right? I wake up slightly hungover from 80s night. I didn't mention 80s night, did I? The plan was to get together with Sarah and some of her friends at the Upstage on Thursday night for awesomeness, but she didn't show. I ended up having a beer and getting into one of the pool games (I was 1-1, winning my first game because my opponent quit since he had to leave, but I was unable to defend my title). So, I woke up Friday morning feeling kind of hungover and kind of bummed. I check my email to see what was up with Sarah. It turns out she was walking to a friend's house to so they could take the bus together to the club and she got mugged. Thankfully, she's okay.

Armed with this new emotional baggage, I head to AIR. I didn't mention AIR, did I? I'm in this print exchange. An edition of 27 prints due by last Monday. I finally got my image done this week and got it onto a screen and proofed it on Thursday. It turns out that I had to re-burn one of my layers and tweak some of the colors. I do some work around the studio for the Project Exhibition that's opening next Saturday (7:00 - 9:00. Bring your friends), and I print out and burn the last film.

I know this is going to be a long night, so, at lunch, I go to the North Shore Deli to get me some meat. Now remember, the weather in Pittsburgh is going crazy on Friday. It was beautiful all week, high 60s and better. Pretty amazing for the last week of November. Friday morning it starts to change. When I left the house at 11:00 am it was still really nice but by 1:00 pm the wind was howling and the temperature was dropping fast. At the deli I order #15, the AGH Special--two hoagies for $7.30. My plan was to eat half of one for lunch, half of one for dinner, half of one for a mid-night snack, and still have half of one left over for an emergency. Anyway, I place my order, and, as I'm standing around waiting, the power goes off. But it comes back on. Then it goes off again. I think it went off and on four times before it died for good. It seems that without power they can't slice the meat, so no hoagies for me. I ended up not getting anything because I really had my heart set on those hoagies. I figured I'd go to Max's for dinner and get a giant fish sandwich or something. Little did I know that I'd be working late into the night on only an Odwalla bar and a bag of Fritos. The power went off briefly a couple times at AIR but it quickly came back on each time.

There were a fair amount of people at AIR, and I was helping out, but for the most part I was able to fall through the cracks and mess around with my computer. I fixed the screwed up layer in Illustrator and chatted with Sarah. Friday night was dominated by printing, but the afternoon was the tale of two emails (well, an email and a Myspace message). First there was the bad one from Sarah, but then I got a message from a guy I used to hang out with (in so far as I was able to hang out back then) at the Art Institute. We haven't had any contact since. Hearing from him was a nice little boost.

AIR starts to die down and around 6:00 pm I start on my print. First I lay down the blue. It's the one I had to re-do. It looks good. I make the next color (light blue) a little lighter. Now the fun starts. I know the registration is going to be a bitch, if not impossible, to get right. I line it all up and hit a couple. It's not working. I wash it out and regroup. I lower my expectations, the little slivers where the paper shows through are going to have to be part of the print. I hit all the light blue. It's still looking good. Next is the green. I decide to go with a completely different green from the proof. This is the kind of artist I am, when I look at the proof I don't think the green needs to be lighter or more yellow or anything useful. I think "the green needs to be more fun". I dig around for a new green and throw it down. I decide that the little line of white between certain of the green and light blue shapes are unacceptable. I find that I can fix this by changing the direction of the squeegee half way though the hit (!). Remember, there's much voodoo involved with screenprinting. Three colors down and it's looking good. It's 11:30 pm. Bill appears (he's the only other person there at this point) and we make a run to the gas station for beverages.

When I get back, I make the colossal mistake of logging on to Gmail. I lose 45 minutes to Kelly's and her infernal 'monkey face'.

Back to work. The pink for the baby needs a little more 'oomph' (add a little blue). The baby goes down easy. Clean out the screen and add the blood. This is taking forever (why did I put all the layers on the same screen!), but it's going well. It's 2:00 am. Bill leaves, and, after volunteering at AIR for over 2.5 years, I finally find out how to set the alarm. I'd never been the last person out. I debate skipping out now and leaving the black for another time but I really want to get it done. I stick around.

I register the black. It looks like it's going to work. I hit the first one. It's not quite right, but it's close. I'm not flooding it because some of the lines are pretty thin, so I can see through to the print underneath. Hmmm, if I pull the screen to the side and hold it, I can sort of line it up, I can pull the squeegee with the other hand...that works (at this point I'd like to pause and thank the big, wheeled print drying rack. Thanks, buddy. Couldn't've done it without you). I run the black and clean up.

Working alone at night is creepy. Nathan was doing a tutorial from 6:30 to about 9:30. He took off after 11:00, and Bill left at 2:00, so I was only alone for a couple hours, but still. Nathan was using the power washer before he left and he didn't switch it off when he was done. When you don't switch the power washers off they have a tendency to turn on sporadically. It's in the back by the washout sink and I was down at the far end of the studio when it kicked on but it's LOUD, and it was something like 3:00, so it freaked me out pretty good.

After I was done printing and cleaning up, I tore down some paper to put between my prints and stacked it all up. Now I just have to weed out the bad ones and tear them all down to the correct size. I think I started out with 47 pieces of paper and I'm hoping to have an edition of somewhere in the mid-30s. We'll see. I think they turned out all right. I'm kind of dreading looking through them. It's so easy to make some huge error and not pick it up when you're working by yourself late at night/early in the morning, and you've only had a 99 cent bag of Fritos for dinner.

That was my Friday. I hope this makes you happy, Kelly.