230507 check-in - Dan Metzger

 Gee, it has been a while. 

I moved in with a family whom I am actually friends with (I know their son, but we get along swimmingly), and I am finding I will be much happier here. Unlike the last, this family is friendly and does NOT spend 8-10 hours a day in front of a television. I can feel a grey smog lifting from my soul as we laugh together. Plus, their son (my friend) may be home soon, and we will be like roommates.

Work has been work, like usual. Collin Roan got hired here and will be in this month, I am told. There was one unfortunate incident where I think I found two co-workers complaining about/shit-talking me behind my back (I don't know why, but it hurt my feelings), which I have gotten over. If someone is miserable enough to fill their time putting down other people, I pity them. Anyway, that unconfirmed, suspicious incident has eroded my trust in them, which is altogether not great since we work together on projects. Office dynamics are slightly strange here like that.

Don't know if I explicitly stated this in my last post, but I have pretty much decided that (unless I have a literally miraculous offer), I will 95% likely not be working in landscape architecture after I graduate. I want to learn how to sail or make furniture. I cannot sit in an office all day. I am sick of an academic culture of learning how to do things, and not ever doing anything. Power to the blue collar. 

I am still really enjoying Austin, especially for all of its wonderful interest groups. I have been attending the Texas Juggling Society meeting on Thursdays, and I feel so free when I am just there learning new things. I have found that I am really not good at making friends my own age, but as soon as you put me in a room with a bunch of 60-something nerds, we hit it off immediately. 

After a talk I gave at that adult show-and-tell I previously mentioned, I started collaborating with a local bookbinder, and we made a book together. Next, we will do leather-bound books using paper that we made together.

I will be so happy to see your shining faces again. Please bear with my done-ness and potential apathy in the Fall.

The back of a spoon creating a beautiful pattern and color. I am mesmerized by such things but most times, nobody else gives a shit.

The book I made with my bookbinding friend (again, another example of me making friends past their fifties).

She had an awesome collection of Japanese marbled paper that was awesome to look through.

I went home too and stopped in BR. This is our dog Gigi in Slidell, a standard poodle.

My favorite corner in my new room. Note the instrument that Ellen let me borrow. My alocasia is putting up a new leaf. 

I found a horrible taxidermy lion on an estate sales website. I think the taxidermist was trying to make it looked stoned out of its mind.

Over and out.