Flexistentialism Welcome Guest | Login or Register

• When you procrastinate something you’re expected to have ready for a meeting, you look foolish.
• Hives can be caused by anything. I.E., your doctor can’t tell you whether your virus, probable bacterial infection, or a new, unknown allergy is why your head is swelling, sore and itchy all at the same time.
• Hives leave by the swelling and blotchiness slowly traveling downward…so if today your upper eyelids are puffy, tomorrow your under-eyelids will be puffy, and then your cheeks, and you’ll be generally scary looking for a three or four day period.
• Aspirin does not go well with low blood pressure. Unless feeling like passing out all day is your bag. On a positive note, ibuprofen does not seem to share the same effect.
• Medical science is still unsure how to tell when a regular cold becomes a bacterial infection. So, the decision to use antibiotics when you’ve felt sick for several weeks is still a gamble. (15% are bacterial, but an additional percentage seem to heal faster with antibiotics).
• Long-term mohawks have a peculiar growing pattern in which the short hair immediately next to the ‘hawk grows faster, and in unpredictable directions. Owners of said mohawks are sometimes resistant to getting a trim, since they don’t regularly see it.
• Listening to the Blagojevich recordings will not give you any juicy bits to share, just make you additionally disgusted at the corruption.
• When you’re offered a job that isn’t a good fit on the same day that 68,000 jobs are lost across the country, your best option is to take it and put up with it.

Last week, I took a trip to Michigan to see two close friends, and the days were balanced between finding fun things to do together (Detroit’s Roller Derby is a lot of fun, as are Detroit’s dive bars…) and realizing that this is a city on a downward slide into decay. Michigan leads the states with 9.6% unemployment, and just about every other building I passed in the city was boarded up. Entire neighborhoods were seemingly abandoned by city services, with no working streetlights or even stoplights.  It is true that Detroit has cut back on city services because there isn’t the budget for it. A guy on the street asking for change told me he hadn’t eaten for two days. Visiting one friend at work in the Cadillac Building (a towering building with over 40 types of marble in the decor), the ground floor of the building was turned over to be the waiting room for Detroit’s Unemployment Services. Every day, she told me, every chair is filled. And the snow falls and falls and falls, seemingly without end sometimes.

We had a depressing debate, actually, about whether the rest of the country cares enough to save Michigan from what seems like a state-wide economic failure. I worry that every other state won’t want precious funds going to a state that seems too far gone, but my friends who live there optimistically believe the opposite. For the sake of their jobs and safety, I hope there can be a turnaround, even if the new jobs coming in aren’t part of the Detroit automobile industry.

All the same, it was great to spend time with some friends I rarely get to see and see their new digs, their new plans, and help them feel more comfortable in the long Michigan winter. People there are quite friendly, and I love asking them to point out where they live on their anatomical [right palm] state map. And even in a city that appears to be dying, there was a fascinating trick to Detroit buildings: from the outside, most of them look dark and small, but once inside, they are spacious, brightly lit, and often full of people. Hopefully the city too can turn a similar trick.

There’s been a lot of action at the warehouse/Big Project lately. In 25 days, we erected a loft approx. 800 sq ft in size, including stairs and railings (well, most of the railings). We bought furniture, put up art, created a bar, and put out a spread worthy of the Queen. OK, so the Queen never showed for our NYE Open House. But it was still a pretty fantastic event, with about 150 people attending, demonstrations of the plasma cutter, fire performance, homebrew, good music, and champagne. We were extremely lucky that we were seen as a hot new event – and that those who attended were generous with donations to help cover our expenses and the cost of constructing a loft (wood = not cheap, even if our labor was “free”). Even the clean-up wasn’t too bad! All that being said, I think all of us are glad that we’re better known in the community and that everything went off without a hitch. Now it’s time to get to use our spaces as we intended – for projects we didn’t have space for before. Well, at least, after we paint the loft and stairs and put down grip tape on the steps and finish the railings and maybe improve the bathroom…