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lamp sketch

Monday, July 30, 2007

Not a whole lot to share today, just this 10 minute sketch I did of a lamp in our office during our status meeting. I did it in Microsoft Journal, which, performance wise, may be the worst possible choice to use as an art program. I think it records WAY too much information. But I do like the watercolor quality to it.

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offsetting all yall fussin

Friday, July 27, 2007

It's kinda weird working in the CBD. It's the one place in New Orleans where things aren't moving slowly. I've been taking Esplanade to Decatur to Camp St. to get to work and it's quite a nice ride. Decatur St. is kinda funny in the afternoons when all of the tourists are out. It's kinda funny to think that they go to the French Quarter to walk around all day long, looking in shops, trying to find things to buy and drink and eat, like they're at a big fair. No one's telling them "just go find a place to sit and eat for two hours, then go find some shade along the river to sit." They're all so busy and we're all so...

Now that I'm thinking about it, though, I don't even know that I'd call this a lazy city anymore. It seems like there's a lot more activity going on, aside from the streetcars. It's probably more just that the city is compressed now. Everyone lives closer together or something. I guess what it is, at least in my experience, is that the city has become uptown, downtown, mid-city and the points in between. But it's like, when i go North of Esplanade on Wisner (toward the lake) there's just not much of anything there. There are pockets of civilization -- there are businesses again on Harrison Ave (including a snoball stand that's open past sun-down!), there are some things going on in Lakeview and Gentilly, but it's not a lot. When we drive East to my mom's or my dad's we pass through New Orleans East and it doesn't look a hell of a lot different. I know we don't get the full story from the interstate, but you can just see it... there's just not a lot of life there.

But when you stay localized to where you live, when we don't go past City Park, it's like things are fairly normal. I don't know, i go back and forth. Sometimes it's euphoric to be here. We've been going to the park nearly every evening so that I can go for walks and the kids can play with other kids. The evenings have been so beautiful. The temperature is warm but not stifling, everything is green and lush and there are trees everywhere. Huge oak trees and palm trees... there are so many different types of palm trees, some so huge and dense that the trunks have ferns growing in their shingled bark.

But you have to contrast that with the stories of the crimes, the woman who was car-jacked in broad daylight at the mall, the man who was shot down Carrollton right near the corner of Claiborne. I admit that I sometimes elect to be naive. It's not going to happen to me because I'm invincible, or simply because it never has. I didn't grow up in the best of neighborhoods, but we've always been safe. I think I live in a fantastic neighborhood now, but as everyone you meet points out, no area is completely safe.

I don't think New Orleans is a lazy city anymore, and it may also simply be because my personal experience now, here, isn't what it was in the past. (Though I have to say that in some ways I can't help but feel like my mind has reverted back to it being 1993, but that's a tangent for another day.) But I'm not the only one who's mentioned this. This was what I was getting at with working in the CBD, that it's like the one place in nola where things are in constant motion. Work is actually happening, there is money being spent and deadlines being met. But then you go home, back to your (hopefully) quiet neighborhood, you spend a few hours enjoying the warmth and slowing down the tempo...

Part of me feels compelled to chronicle my experiences here to offset this pervasive negativity that I've seen in New Orleans media, blogs in particular. Perhaps I've got rose-colored blinders on. Perhaps I don't have it as hard as some other local writers and so my experience is inherently different. But listen, I grew up hearing my grandpa pseudo-swear at the local news as he sat at the dinner table, complaining about the crime, the politicians, the corruption, the pot holes in the streets, the bums in the French Quarter... I don't know. You know, everything that people are complaining about now. But let's face it, it's not worse now, it's just a continuation of the same old shit. And fo reals, the same old shit in New Orleans, as far as I'm concerned, is way more interesting then the same old shit in just about any other place this country has to offer. Of course I'd like less crime, to feel like my family is safe. I want my wife to feel safe. I'd like to get bounced off of the seat by the bumps in the road less as I ride my scooter. But I wouldn't like less Spanish moss. I love that there are swans swimming through the waters of city park and a huge flock of herons nesting in the trees in Audubon Park. I enjoy seeing how many people are out walking, jogging, riding their bikes, and walking their dogs. I feel like there is community around me here, something I don't EVER remember feeling in Milwaukee.

And part of me feels compelled to chronicle my experiences here to see how they change when things stop going my way.

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ups and downs

Sunday, July 15, 2007



This week was completely up and down. Our stuff came last Monday, as I'd mentioned, and man is it nice to have my bed back! I've been going bad and forth between these moments when I love being here and moments when I think I'm nuts for ever coming back. In a way I expect this to last for a long time. Hopefully it will skew more toward the former than the latter.

On Wednesday I woke up and the sun was shining in my window, I could see the leaves of oak trees through the slats of the blinds, and birds were chirping outside. I love the sound of birds singing in the morning - it reminds me of being a kid, waking up at my grandma's house on a sunday morning after spending the night. I had an ok day at work and after dinner we went to Audubon Parle where the kids played while I walked the oval trail around the park. I was in a good mood on Thursday too, until about 4pm when my wife started IMing me about the cost of insurance for our van and my scooter. The cost for the van wasn't entirely surprising, but the figure she told me for the scooter made me angry. I'm not going to tell you what it was, but suffice it to say that it was So exorbitant that I should have known it was inaccurate. But this is New Orleans, if they tell you that insurance is going to cost you all of your male offspring you get angry, but you beleive them nonetheless.

I got traightened it out on Friday, though, and settled down a bit. It's like, when things are going well here I really love being here. When things aren't going well, I start to think "why the hell did I leave Milwaukee?" Good ol', functional Milwaukee. Stupid, cold, it's hard not to think it's all going to be ok when it's summer, but then it gets cold again Milwaukee.

Friday night Kim and the kids were out at my mom's while I cleaned up the house and did some stuff around here. Then my brother called from Arizona and I went outside to talk to him. It had rained earlier, as it rains every day here, and the sky was all lit up and purple. So I pulled out my camera and started taking some long-exposure shots of the sky through the oak trees outside of my house. It was rather surreal, but the picture above is straight out of the camera. No photoshop, no tweaking colors. That was at like 10:30pm. Fo reals.

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first nola ride

Monday, July 09, 2007

I finally got all of my stuff today. The movers arrived as I was finishing my letter of complaint to the company, which I will send to Allied, Behrens - the Milwaukee franchise or whatever, and likely post here as well.

But I'm not going to complain right now. I actually intended to write briefly about taking the scooter at for a short ride this evening. I have to say again, our location is awesome. I'm only a second from City Park, which made for a nice ride up Wisner Ave to the Lakefront. Unfortunately a bunch of the Lakefront is still closed, so I rode over to Marconi down to City Park Ave, then through the park for a while. Eventually I ended up at Harrison and Wisner and was going to head home, but I decided to ride up Esplanade toward the French Quarter instead. This is the route I'll probably take to work so I kinda wanted to check the streets out to see if they'd be rough or full of holes or what. I have to say, though, that during the whole ride the streets were better than I'd expected.They were a little rough here and there, but no huge pot holes that I came across. I wound up hitting way more bumps than holes.


All in all it was a fun ride. I'm looking forward to being able to ride almost year round.

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driving; arriving

Thursday, July 05, 2007

I had this feeling that the drive from Milwaukee to New Orleans this time around world be more difficult, for no reason other than that I wasn't all that excited about doing it. It's not like I'm not excited about moving back, but naturally I'm anxious abort it, on top of the fact that the whole thing still feels so abstract. It doesn't help that the delivery of all of my stuff is late and I can't settle in. Were going to be staying with my mom or in a hotel until July 9th, it looks like, so for the next week I have to exist in this state of limbo where I'm kind of living here, but I have no home.

Fortunately though, the drive was very smooth. My older brother, Michael Gray, flew up to Milwaukee and took the drive with me so that Kim could fly with the two boys. Elise rode with us and was a perfect angel. She never complained once about the ride. At one point we pulled over to use the rest room and she politely asked, "Dad, can we use the bathroom at McDonald's so I can play for a minute so I won't be bored?" I figured if she could ride with me for 17 hours I could return the favor with 20 minutes at a McD's playland.

My new next door neighbor introduced herself the other day as the wife of an elected official, and proceeded to go on a racist diatribe about the crime in the city, section 8, and how she was telling all the whites she met to just "get the hell outta here." She didn't understand why in the world I would move back to New Orleans. I told her that when you're away from New Orleans, it's all you think about. Which is naive, but whatever, I was trying to make small talk. But she didn't get it; she wants to move to "white Metairie". I do take the warning seriously, that we need to be careful, and I know that people don't think their comments to be racist (that's "just the way it is"), but it didn't make for a good start to the day. I asked Elise if she'd heard the lady talking, which she did, but she didn't understand what she was saying. At least that.

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