*Spent most of, if not all of, the weekend with Emily. Sunday before last was up at Devil's Lake doing hiking. I bought an annual parking pass for 25 bucks. That's the best parking deal I know of. It was lovely. Example:

Emily, peeps, peeps, Emily. The only downside to the whole thing was getting a voicemail from Jessica, my art promoter. She was calling about if I was running late for the sunday meeting. Oh. That. I thought of various excuses, but ended up calling back and saying something came up. She'd later on assume the next episode is what happened on sunday. Which makes it...er...sorta fortuitous, 'cuz you see--

*I woke up on Monday with another bout of severe vertigo. Yeah, almost like the first episode two years ago. If you want to read about me going to the hospital, the entry that I thought was deleted due to server problems just came back up. It's the previous entry.

Here's a brief summary. I woke up. My balance was completely off, where I pitched over to the left in trying to turn off my alarm. Then the vomit came. I kept the little of it confined to the bed. I quickly came to appreciate that I had a completely empty stomach. I struggled to lay still with my head supported, careful not to move it even a few degree left, right, up, or down. If I did, the pain would explode. And like a tube of toothpaste I'd be squeezed up, hacking, the room spinning a terrible mess and my vision warped. It was hellish. I quickly did become clever and grab one of the trashbags I normally use to haul laundry. It would become a steady friend every time I moved in the slightest.

I lay there for 3 hours. Time for class came and went. I vaguely drapped my bathrobe around my right arm, and a blanket kindof around my left arm and shoulder. I was near the closet window on the ground. I remember it was slightly cold, how I couldn't do anything except lay there. Finally, around 12:30, I decided to try my phone. A little bit of charge. I could call one of two people who would help, and I wasn't about to have Brian see me half-naked. So I called Emily. And from helping me down the stairs while I threw up to driving me to the hospital, to recovering at her place for a day and her making me just plain pasta (at my request), she was sympathetic and good-natured. She was and is a real significant other.

After that episode, there's been other stuff, such as:

*My first photography show is coming up on friday!

See? (I blacked out my last name for obvious reasons.)

All of you are invited.

There was that whole big drama with my print company sending out my shipment, it taking two weeks to get here, the color shots looking too dark and the images being cropped, and then corresponding with customer service to get things set right. Thankfully they sent stuff overnight and I was able to do the installation with the others (or 'install' as the hip ones say).

I figured installing would take 2 hours max. Emily had wanted to drag me out to play a 3 hole golf game with Molly and her boyfriend Tim.

It took 5 hours, from 10 to 3pm. Jessica had made it sound like showing up at 10 was a very big deal. I'd gotten up at 9:15, kissed Emily goodbye, drove to my place, got the shipment box, got an energy drink, decided I didn't have time to go to Indie Coffee for food, went and got trail mix at the BP on Park St., then hauled ass with radio blarring to the gallery--all to smile and wave at the dude who owned the space, Michael. We'd showed up on time. It'd be another 30 minutes before anyone else got there.

Gave me time to sort stuff anyway.

Danielle (see above) got there relatively quick. She'd had an accident where several of her pieces had been damaged and glass got broken. She seemed very shaken. I'd be. If any of my pieces broke, I'd be fucked. So she left for the rest of the time I was doing my install, to fix things I guess.

Justin and his SO were amazingly fast at putting stuff up. Granted he had a plan beforehand that needed slight tweaks, but he'd just used push-pins and silver office clips to put his stuff up. And it suits his style. Big emphasis on depth of field and every day scenes.

Rachel meanwhile does lots of shadow and heavy contrast work. She and her boyfriend showed up with finished pieces framed and matted and everything. They spent a very long time getting stuff to hang all balanced.

Now for me, this was the first time I'd ever had use of a gallery space. First thing was to figure out the dimensions, promptly recall I needed some visual and geometric themes going, make up those themes, measure twice, hammer in nails once--or a few times if my calculations were off. I opted for what's apparently a salon style: verticle pieces on the sides, horizontal pieces in the middle, where the horizontal ones flow from the spaces in-between the vertical prints. So it's like:

@ = Vertical print
x = horizontal print

@....@

I'll probably take a photo of the photos just for show. I mean I might actually end up doing this once in awhile regularly, right?

Which pieces go where was a bitch at first, but a pattern emerged. I think it was the measuring and discussions that took the most time. But I'm happy. All I need to do is take up Danielle's offer to help me matte the 8 x 12 of "Rise and Fall" and to frame Tungsten Falls. Otherwise known as 'fourth thumbnail down on the left' or 'my most likely cash cow.' Seriously, everyone loves it for some reason.

I'll let you know how it goes.

I also:

*Celebrated Cinco de Mayo/Christian's birthday party over at the Vintage with Emily. We took in the spectacle of thousands of undergrads making drunken asses of themselves. She got nostalgic for her days of yore. I got...er...nostalgic about how I'd study most weekends, almost all weekend, in college.

The biggest thing to really happen was taking to Erin. She was feeling very self-pitying because she'd been single for a year after her boyfriend of two years cold dumping her--on AIM. I know. She said she didn't have any prospects. This of course prompted me to go into one of those drunken 'let's be honest' conversations.

This requires a preface. Hopefully this'll all make sense about why I brought it up.

I'd heard from Hillary way back when that there was a rumor Erin had mentioned, about me hitting on just about every available female. I figured this may have made my pursuing her seem less genuine than it really had been. That bothered me, since Erin and I have been friends throughout this time--not good friends, but friends. What's odd is that she seemed genuinely surprised that such a rumor existed and she was "angry" someone would say something like that about me. She's mentioned a few times in the past that I'm just a genuinely 'good' guy and reiterated that here. So I guess either she's a liar or Hillary was. Either that or the rumor was misattributed. Hill was many things good and bad but a liar wasn't one of them.

More importantly to me was that I finally did say, explicitly, that I'd been interested in her, that I knew it wasn't mutual, and that that was cool. Because of that, I was surprised she'd found no one, but that someone would come along. I mean hell it just made no sense otherwise.

Emily came by around this time. She'd been sitting with our friend May and some others doing tequila shots. Still, I felt slightly awkward that I'd gone to sit and talk to Erin all this time. She was sitting along and doing her 'I feel socially awkward so I'll look at the floor 3 feet in front of me' thing. I dunno, I just end up bothering her when she does that, kinda because I do the same thing.

So. One last thing that was actually #1 in my mind until I wrote this all. I've:

*Been studying hardcore for a "kindof" comprehensive Systems Neuroscience final!

Oh it's been thrilling. I started way ahead of time this time, about a week and a half ago. I've covered this half of the semester once. Even the papers for discussion sections. I now have 6 days to:

1) Re-read 2 months worth of material from the first semester for the cumulative portion of the final (1/3 of the exam).

2) Read the last half of the semester's notes a second time.

In amidst finishing my last two pieces, doing my final week of collecting cortisol samples from monkeys, editing my undergrad Rachel's honors thesis paper, and trying to find time for a weekday date that Emily has proposed for who knows why, I think I can do this.

I mean I had 3 weeks where I basically lived like a normal person without any stress. And it felt weird. I'm only at a 3.5 on a 10 point stress scale, though.

But I do need to go to bed to pursue some of these many things. Well, to sleep and then pursue.

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