I overdid it last week. It started with an early flight from Boston to DC Saturday morning and didn’t seem to let up until today. I have finally gotten around to uploading my inauguration concert photodocuments from last Sunday for you. I put them in their rightful chronological place and I apologize profusely for not finding the energy to do it sooner.
I guess I’m still processing everything that happened, what with all the history being made.
Saturday: Flew to DC. Cleaned and prepared for house concert/party. Threw party.
slept 3 hrs
Sunday (see post in last week’s slot): Up at 8 – breakfast at Logan Circle then trek to the Lincoln Memorial. Stand/sit/wait for 4 hours. Concert for 2 hours – dance, cheer, etc. Trek slash waddle back uptown, eat quickly, shop for next party, next party, crash.
Monday: MLK day. Cleanup after parties. Drive to Philly to pick up Justin. Justin delayed. Drive back to DC. More than 6 hrs RT. 1am – study points of entry for Inauguration madness. Crash.
Tuesday: Up at 5:30am. Depart 6:30am. Crazy story involving being trapped with thousands of people underground on the L’Enfant Plaza metro platform for 1 hr upon arrival due to a medical emergency, baby stepping 7 blocks west to the 14th st Mall entrance, only to find it too crammed with people to get in, jumping a barricade and forcing our way through the crowd to get 40 ft into the side between 14th st and the Washington Monument (bad idea), then forcing ourselves back out after Justin heard of a promised land farther back that had jumbotrons and space to move (this took nearly 1 hr), and arriving at our final viewing position (at the WWII Memorial) by 11:20, just in time for the show, then babystepping back up 18th St around the parade. Finally home for a few minutes, then out to a dinner party. Back late. Crash.
Wednesday: Early morning departure with a stop at the Judiciary building to testify to the Grand Jury about that horrible thing I saw in Sept. Then to airport at 1:30 for a 2:30 flight, no can do. The scene at the airport was unlike anything I’ve ever seen in my many years of traveling in and out of DCA. The USAir line ran 1.5 times the length of the airport, all the way past the other airlines’ ticket counters. I missed my flight, so I went over to NASA HQ for a few hours and got on a later flight. Back in Boston just before midnight. Crash.
Thursday: I have no memory of this day. I’m sure I spent it at MIT.
Friday: Nor of this one. Except that I saw the last showing of “The Reader” by myself after my day of work.
Saturday: Cleaned, organized, spent a real day at home.
Today: I took a 4 hour crash course in Processing, a Java-based “open source programming language and environment for people who want to program images, animation, and interactions. It is used by students, artists, designers, researchers, and hobbyists for learning, prototyping, and production.” It was developed by some guys from the Media Lab (Ben Fry and Casey Reas), and it’s super fun. Check out their pages…they make amazing art and data visualizations.
This is the week I’ll create and start posting my work on a new blog devoted to data sonification. Stay tuned there only if you’re really interested in the technical details.
Overall, I feel hopeful and scared and overwhelmed and cautiously optimistic. And still sore.
