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fuck me. my cell bill is 89$. not like i don’t have money. more like, why is my 30$ plan costing me 89$. why? because i sent 269 text messages over my limit at 10 cents a message. fuck me. i have to go change my txt plan.

i left work early “sick”. i do feel like shit. physically and very much mentally. had to take a half a point but whatever. my one let it ride game had a straight flush earlier in the night (which is a semi big deal). then right after i turned my tables over to tony, he had a royal flush. for those who don’t know poker, that’s a really really big deal. that’s a 25,000$ hand. poor tony. i guess i owe him. and i also owe him 20$ because i had to borrow money to get gas on the way home, so i’d actually make it home.

i had another dream about throwing up – sort of. it wasn’t really throwing up this time. my mouth was full of raw ground beef and i kept trying to spit it out, but more kept showing up. these dreams are really not pleasant.

going to try to sleep tonight. i need to be up at 9 to get ready to be at the terminal by 10:30. i forget it takes me more like 45 minutes to get there now as opposed to 30 from the old apartment. i feel tired. i feel incredibly exhausted but i won’t be able to sleep. then someone in the building insists on slamming their door repeatedly suddenly, and without the drugs to help keep me asleep, it wakes me up now. i figure i’ll be up long before 9 rolls around.

and tomorrow i’m going to try not to cry for 5 hours straight. maybe i can play with the sledge hammer at the terminal again.

 

so…press conference. the usual. i almost cried. when russell unveiled the special guest. sort of got to me. because i am completely emotionally unstable. met some people i had met before. i’m an ass and am horrible with names. talked to an ex-cop who used to harass antique/architectural salvage people. who knew it was such an exciting, sordid, and criminal scene to be involved in. he’s got some information that will be helpful for me/us and he’s willing to pretend he’s not retired to sort of…bully… these people into throwing up information. hehe. he’s actually related to the deadbeat owner of the architectural circus. who apparently was jailed for narcotics at some point in time. like i said. sordid. was breifly asked to comment on things by the news paper. i need to think of a standard response to that sort of thing, because i’m always caught unprepared and i sound stupid. afterwards stuck around to do work on the kiosk. ended up in the catwalks trying to chase the birds out and get rid of the nests. they were squaking so loudly during russell’s speech it was almost funny. but i went up there, no birds to be found. no nest to be found. damn birds. they keep crapping all over our floor below. did a very little amount of work on the kiosk, as i didn’t quite know what i should be doing to it. found out that mike has no idea how to use velcro (!!!) and had to teach him there are 2 different sides…and you have to use both, because of you use 2 of the same side, they can’t stick to eachother. lol. found a trapdoor. la la la. finishing touches on the kiosk on thursday afternoon, as well as table set up and stuff.

since i will have 4 days off after tonight, gotta do some work on signage and faqs and stuff.

 

damnit i want a cat. if i got one mom would freak that i didnt just take ziggy. *whine*

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work was horribly boring last night. as someone pointed out, we are a winter casino. we do our best business, and get the best tip rate when it’s cold. now that it’s warm, business has definitely dropped. i was a 6-2am in non smoking. i’m not sure i did anything except change cards last night. got out at 1 so at least i got to bed a bit earlier since i had to get up at 7 today.

today was the clean up at central terminal. unfortunately we had bad weather, drizzle, and a drop in temperature. but we had a good turn out and work got done. we sold our shirts and a few memberships. i actually ended up taking a few people through some of the tower floors, and then taking the canadian film crew around a bit. i swear i still see something new each time i’m there. haven’t been there since leighanne and i did the tower at the beginning of december. definitely some more falling apart damage, but it’s not too bad. the first tour of the season is next saturday. should be interesting to see where things go from here.

now i don’t know if i should grab the pics off the digicam or take a nap…hmmm

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i had a dream i volunteered to scrub the floor of the terminal. ROFLMAO in the dream i used my mcds “hi-lo” skills to scrub the hell out of one corner of the floor, just to prove that it would make the floor look nicer.

and i dreamed about doing homework. some kind of math homework that involved adding/subtracting exponents. i don’t remember how to do that.

i gotta go pay my insurance fee for my dark room, and then i have nothing to do til work at 9. maybe today i’ll do webwork.

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Chicago Clock trip

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the chicago trip – october 19 and 20, 2003

I slept for 2 hours before getting up to get ready to leave for Baltimore. Adr took me to the airport, which was pretty much uneventful. I beeped through the metal detectors as always. I was flying Southwest, and they are…different. They said they are even more different in Buffalo than any other city. They said whoever had the oldest penny in their wallet could preboard. And what do you know, I had the oldest penny – 1944. haha So I got to preboard with the people in wheel chairs and with little kids. I rock!

Leighanne met me at my gate in BWI and we went over to our gate for the Chicago leg of the trip. Since she’s a gimp with the walking cast still, we got to preboard for that one too . We rock!

Upon arriving at Midway we caught a cab to my aunt’s apartment on the lake shore. The doorman gave us a note to meet her at the Barnes and Noble down the street at 4…our plane arrived at noon. My aunt was driving down from Wisconsin whenever she could get rid of her bed and breakfast guests. After calling her for an ETA we walked to a few shops down the street, stopped at a bakery for some food, and back to the apartment. The shops…are insane. Insanely expensive. And I know, it’s Chicago, it’s a huge city, I know I know I know, but STILL…who needs to spend 3000$ on a pair of shoes from Prada, which are boring as hell and can be bought at target. Went into other smaller boutiques, that aren’t super designer, expecting lower prices – nope. 200$ for a pair of pants I own, that I paid 60$ for at express (which killed me). Insane. So back at the apartment we decided to put Operation Clock into effect – the whole reason we went to Chicago – instead of waiting around for my aunt to show up. So we cabbed it out to Architectural Artifacts. It’s an architectural salvage place like Buffalo’s Horsefeathers, and also the home of our long lost Central Terminal concourse clock….

and now i have to password post this, cuz it’s still semi secret. email me for the log in info.

So we finished our photographing, and looked around the rest of the store, because we were waiting for my aunt to show up there. I came across my newest interior design theme I want to do… carnival artifacts…old freak show canvas paintings, etc. He had a whole crap load of these big carnival posters, SO GREAT omg. Leighanne is going to paint them all for me when we get our studio. There was so much great stuff in the store.

We eventually were tired of waiting, called my aunt back to tell her we were going to leave.

So we took the cab over to Uncle Fun’s one of the best stores on earth. A little store filled with all kinds of crap…toys mostly, but just…insane. I got my freud action figure there. Called my aunt again, who had gone to Architectural Artifacts anyway, and she came down and picked us up at Uncle Fun’s. From there we drove around to find dinner, and ended up at a biker bar called the Twisted Spoke. Drove around after that, I guess trying to figure out what to do, but basically hoping we didn’t die in a firey automobile accident. Ug.. my aunt driving…Anyway. Ended up at Margie’s Candies for really great ice cream.

Then we went to the drag show. The Baton has one of the best drag shows in the city (I guess) so we decided to check it out. Having only slept 2 hours, I insisted on the 8:30 show instead of the 10:30 show. It was great. I wanted to take photos, but no cameras allowed. boo. But yeah. It’s sad when men are prettier than me. But fake boobs and hair will do that to…people.

I think after that we headed back to the apartment, walked to the drug store, then back to the apartment for bed.

The next day we were going to check out this other Architectural place, actually Chicago’s #1 artifact place (tho the other one I thought was way better), a poster store my aunt wanted to go to, Wrigley Field, and the Bohemian cemetery. We did all that except the poster store, and we did some more walking around on Michigan Ave to some stores. My aunt didn’t seem to realize that gimps don’t want to have to walk around that much. Leighanne ended up asking to take a cab back to the apartment and car after the shopping. So we went out to Wrigleyville and had lunch, went to the Billy Goat, and another sports store so Leighanne could buy Cubs crap for her brother. Forced my aunt to take us to the cemetery (she’s so not into that – she actually left us there and went to the mall). Hit the architectural place, and headed out to Midway again for the flight home. Stopped at a starbucks for a while, because we had tons of time, but then went to the airport where we sat there for 4 hours waiting for our flight – we were still early…plus i never changed the time on my watch, so I was thinking it was one time, and it was an hour earlier, which made it depressing towards the end when I was really tired of sitting there hahaha. Preboarded again, yay. The flight was pretty sparse anyway.

Arrived at BWI and had to catch the shuttle to satelite parking, where Leighanne parked in section U2 completely not on purpose. We get dropped off in that section and she stops to take a photo of the sign. We go to the car, and we have no keys. She’s like, where are my keys. She had them on the bus, they’re friggen huge, how do you lose them? A bit of panic ensued, because who knew how long it would take to walk all the way across the state to the other side of the parking lot, to tell someone they were left on the bus, and have that bus drive all the hell out there again so we could get the keys. THANKFULLY she had put them down on the pavement in the other aisle when she took the picture. Drove to her house, met her brother and dog, and headed to bed.

Woke up early to go to the airport on Leighanne’s way to work. Sat at the airport waiting for my flight, trying not to fall asleep. Right before boarding, this guy sitting next to me started talking to me. He was in his 40s probably, home visiting his father in East Aurora, where he grew up. We were talking about whatever, I mentioned I work at the casino, blahblahblah whatever. Fly home, get off the plane. While walking through the airport he caught up with me and made a comment about the oh so friendly and welcoming Buffalo weather. So we’re leaving the security enforced area, and he askes me if he can buy me lunch sometime so he can learn the gambling secrets. I’m like OH THERE’S MY RIDE cuz thankfully adr was walking up. WHAT IS WITH OLD MEN ASKING ME OUT?! Seriously!!!!! I keep getting more comments that I look 30 years old… is that it? Do these old men think I’m 30, and therefore in their age range, or them in my age range?! I DON’T GET IT BUT MAKE IT STOP. Unless, of course, it’s trent reznor or someone.

Forced myself to go to photo class so I could develop my 2 black and white rolls that were finished, while my color rolls got done at rite aid. Called into work because I’m beyond tired, and have way too much to do.

I think I’m forgetting tons of little things I wanted to mention. Too tired, oh well. I’m sorta irritated about the Monday events…when intially planning for this, I told my aunt we wanted to check out the Manteno State Hospital. Looking at the map it was like, 60 miles away, but she said with Chicago traffic, it was a 3 hour one way drive, and we’d never be able to make it out there and back to catch our flight. Well we so totally could have, we were friggen up at 8am Monday…3 hours there, a few hours to urbex the place, and 3 hours to Midway…would have been no problem. So I’m annoyed. What my aunt thinks is fun, and what I think is fun are two completely different things, but it’s like…I don’t want to tag along with you while you go to your favourite Chicago spots…you can come here any time you want. I’m here once a year, if that, and I want to do certain things. Even if you don’t like them, I’d think you could be semi accomodating to them…As I would be to guests coming into Buffalo. But whatever.

It was a good trip. And seriously……holy shit. hahah. Unfriggenbelievable.

Leighanne commented that my chicago purchases post was reminiscent of a mastercard commercial, which i thought too, when i wrote it. so i decided to go all out with that theme:
flight to Chicago – $180
cab ride to the architectural warehouse – $20
coming home with a $40,000 clock for free – priceless

 

Chicago Pictures

Posted in: US Vacations, Vacations \ Tagged: ,

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it’s done. the central terminal official website is done. well…almost done. done enough to be launched officially. still waiting on russell for 2 parts, otherwise it’s done and up for viewing. please check it out, let me know if you notice anything wrong.

now that that’s pretty much complete, i can finish the new site, and get a new layout for this one. cuz i hate this layout. haha.

going out tomorrow with brian. i’m home alone for the weekend again, adr’s going to detroit. i think mom is gonna come over and rearrange the living room with me on sunday. fix the curtains so we can turn the heat on etc. we’ll see.

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without the internet i am nothing.

i pay adelphia 100$ a month for cable and powerlink, i’d really like it to work.

anyway.

yesterday. i don’t even remember what i did all day. oh, more thumbnails. finally done with them all. site still in progress though. work, blackjack. had a good time, had some good tables i was relieving. good supervisors.

tour this morning. ug. it was so fucking cold. roulette tom didnt show up again. whatever. took jerry into the catwalks. it was so much sunnier today than last time, it was lit up alot. much much brighter than last time. almost didn’t need flashlights. the big room that leads to the catwalks still totally freaks me out though. headed back down and hung out in the concourse with brian, james, and bri’s uncle for a while. they went to check out a new …”courtyard” access that jerry and i stumbled upon…a window that used to be sealed up, but no longer is, that gives access to the roof of the restaurant, at the very base of the tower. pretty cool perspective of the tower from there.

it seems i’m a bit famous. ppl come up to me at these things and ask if i’m sara. yes and who are you. this time it was a local photographer, one i had talked to at allentown art fest, cuz he had some great bob pics i asked if we could use in the book. this time he tracked me down, said he emailed me, but i never got it. he has some crowd shots for the fundraiser for the site, and i volunteered to be his tour guide to bct when he goes back for his own private photo session. could be good.

came back home, slept again, and up now. i’m so scared of our heat, since its electric baseboard heat. you turn it on and it smells like fire, the dust burning off. paranoid about actually starting a fire. so i’m freezing. hahah. yay.

was planning on getting some work done, but then the internet came back on, so fuck that haha.

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so today was pretty cool. headed out to pick up jerry and go to horsefeathers. since they were all weird on the phone with leighanne, we tried to be stealth about looking for bct artifacts. there’s a major problem with that…we just haven’t seen enough of what was inside while it was open. there were things that would fit, mainly because they were art deco styled. in particular there were 2 lights we found at the end that stick in my mind as very possibly being from the restaurant. but i still have no idea. on the way out i asked specifically if they had anything from the terminal and she very quickly said no. i think its kinda suspicious but whatever. not like we could afford to get them back anyway. did find one thing however…something i had told leighanne about. i had seen a picture of it at the historical society, and i said i’d die to come across one. it was a souvenier little metal clipboard, that the clip part was an engraving of the terminal, and it had some other decorations on it. they had one. i was like OMG I ACTUALLY FOUND ONE! lol…125$ and in not so good condition. but it’s still so freaking cool. it would be neat to be able to have them remade to sell as fundraising items, but it would probably cost alot to have made again. it’s way rad tho.

after that, went to the spot so i could finally see jerry’s photos. he’s got some good stuff, i asked him to scan a few for the site. it’s funny how i can take so many photos, and brian can take so many photos, and jerry can take so many photos…but we still have different stuff. it’s cool. so hung out there for a while, left to drive back to the college and detoured by the darwin martin house, since i’d never seen it, and the miller mansion that leighanne found for sale on a buffalo real estate site.

headed home and attempted to cook chicken, but not sure i cooked it enough cuz i didn’t feel too well all night at work. they tease me with this 9-5 shift, which for me should be a roulette shift, but then i get stuck on blackjack all night. it sucked.

 

i should go to bed now. probably won’t.

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so the fundraiser. headed out early to stop at doug’s pottery show. bought something for my mom, and leighanne picked up a few things as well. talked to doug’s mom who has various connections to people with connections to bob. she gave me a few names for info about the buildings for the book. hopefully something goes well with that. i invited both of them to the terminal whenever they want to photograph the building.

got to the fundraiser and picked out a table. people started coming en masse around quarter to 2. alot of people showed up especially in the beginning (cuz everyone thought “tours” meant actually guided tours through the entire building including the tower, not just russell talking about the building etc). talked to alot of people, people asked tons of questions. i must have answered “what happened to the buffalo?” 243 times today. so many people told me they had seen my work on the internet. thanks to the person i’m sleeping with at google who puts my site in the top 5 hits for various searches LOL. one guy said, yeah i printed these. i was like what? he said he remembers them because he printed them all at color tech for me. he remembers everything i’ve brought in, even my fathers. he was telling me how he specially prints them for me because he knows how i want them to look (in particular the ones of the glass windows, he makes sure to get true black in them). i thought he looked familiar, and it turns out he runs the college street gallery (who sells all the concert photos, and i’ve spoken to him before). he said he’s planning 2004 events and wants to do a “then and now” exhibit on the terminal, so he’s going to get in contact with me at some point. then the person who designed the picnic in the plaza poster wants to use some of my fathers photos as prototypes for the 75th anniversary graphics they’ve started working on – focusing more on the architectural points inside, rather than the outside of the building which is on everything. so that was cool. then the slow food buffalo person ran after me outside on the plaza to ask me about my web design. then the guy from the railroad association, who was fixing the roof door when we were there wednesday, started asking me about setting something up to sell some of the photos in the RRA’s possession. good networking day for me. hopefully some things pan out. leighanne started a memory book. people wrote various memories of the terminal in it. we got about 6 handwritten pages with little stories i’m going to put on the website. including brendan’s stupid story about going to catch a train there and a giant rat went walking by them as they waited. that one’s not going on the site. haha. met the person who owns/runs the .com terminal site. he admitted to not updating it in like 2 years haha. i said i noticed. rofl.

the casino attendance was…4. the guy whos name i dont remember showed, kevin showed as expected, and brendan came. the whole time we’re like, where the hell is tony, i don’t want to have to kick his ass when he doesn’t show. he showed reaaaally late. as he put it, he had a lame excuse, flat tire. but he showed and that was cool. of course mom and missy came, but tom who said he was definitely coming i didn’t see, and aunt darleen didn’t come. that’s ok. i was more than occupied the entire time.

kevin said “i hate the hair” ROFL. that was expected. i think brendan and tony were too shocked to say anything til i asked if they liked my orange hair, and they said yes (they lie i’m sure). haha when kevin said he hated my hair, i was like, i don’t care. he’s like i realize that, but i still hate it. hahah.

so after the fundraiser, we went to buca di beppos for dinner. brian and james were wusses and didn’t come with us.  and for the record JASEN GOES EXPLORING WITH US AND HE’S REALLY SUPER COOL AND SHOULD COME WITH US MORE OFTEN. JASEN ROCKS!

came home, “unpacked”, watched hedwig so leighanne could experience the hed, and then watched an inxs concert from colorado. i used to watch this tape every day in 12th grade. i’d wake up in the middle of the night and flip it on. i forgot how friggen amazing it was, and how ungodly no-man-should-be-that-sexy michael hutchence is/was. he’s a definite 20 on my 1-10 michael hutchence hotness scale. gah. it was funny, cuz we were acting like such teenie boppers watching it. it was fabulous. love love love inxs. i’d keep getting in the mood to throw in an inxs cd, but keep forgetting. i got my fill tonight.

leighanne is getting up at 4:30 to leave for home, and i’ll be the gracious host and get up at 4:30 as well. the way i see it, i’d just be getting home from work on a normal day. so no problem.

i think that’s all. took most of my color roll for class, just of candids of people and the crowd at the fundraiser. informal portraits were one of the things we were supposed to do on this assignment. the other ones i pretty much forgot. oh well. i took some pics in the restaurant too. i’ll take those in tomorrow probably. and dye my hair back to normal tomorrow too. hopefully in time to be able to dye it for a 3rd time if it looks completely fucked cuz of the bleach job on thursday. i sorta like my orange hair tho. i feel very punk rock with it. haha. i figure if the red looks really abnormal i can just erase it all with some black and be done with it. hahah black covers everything.

this is a reminder for myself, so ignore it
blurry self portraits
buy macro filters
thirteenth step series
corn maze

 

another funny leighanne moment i forgot about:

*in the car waiting for adr to come back with choco syrup, listening to u2*
leighanne: there’s this new band who did a cover of mysterious ways. i heard it the other day
sara: with the girls singing the chorus?
leighanne: yeah
sara: yeah, yesterday, i played it for you. it’s kmfdm

LOL

 

my hair is fabulously red again. i’m just hoping i didn’t miss any spots, and have bright orange chunks in the back haha. so that’s 3 hair changes in 3 days. i’m surprised i don’t have bald spots haha

i really don’t want to go to work. i’ve been working on the terminal site all afternoon. i’ve completely changed the set up, so anyone who i showed the preview too, it’s totally different now. and i think it’s going to end up being really nice. i’ve got jerry mac testing it for me, and i resolution tested it in 800/600 and 1024/786…it’s still designed for 800 but looks fine in the higher rez. glad about that, cuz i didn’t want to have to do 2 designs, one for each major rez like i was going to have to do for the first layout idea. hopefully i can make it as comprehensive as i want it to be. i’m currently working on the FAQ since i answered tons and tons of the same questions yesterday. everytime i think i’ve included everything i want to include, i think of something else that i need to add into the menu – which means i have to redo the menu every time. but i seriously think i got it all now. the only real hold up now is getting the information i need from russell – in particular what they’ve done since they took over the building, and russell’s future schemes for the building – he has some entertaining ones that i won’t include, but some of the more serious ones i think need to be on the site. people kept asking me, and i didn’t know what to tell them. my memorex answer was “it all depends on money. they need to fix the roofs, and then they can figure out what the building can be used for”

i’m so tempted to sign the list to get out early tonight, but i can’t. bad enough i’m going to have 3 shitty checks in a row. ug ug ug.

my mouth tastes like asphalt.

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