Graffiti
The regional office I work at is being remodeled, and since the new one is going to be in the same place the old one is in, we have to move to a temporary nearby space - two, actually, just to make the move that much more complicated, and therefore fun - for a few months, and then move back to our new permanent home.
Since I'm in charge of things like communication, I ended up deeply involved in this move process; we started planning a little late and things began to get chaotic as we approached out "move out by" date; it's been a perfect miasma of muddles. Very difficult to keep the communication straight, especially as things started to change almost every day. But it's the sort of lively challenge that I love, and find fascinating, so I've been all for it even though it means my "regular" work has suffered.
Part of my job is to keep morale up - make people feel like this move is going to be fine, and not too disruptive - and so I had the idea that we should be allowed to graffiti on the walls, since we're just going to knock them all down anyway. My boss loved this idea, and so I got some mega Sharpies and paints (though no one uses the paints) and this week, we've been allowed to go to town.
It's interesting to see what's happened. My co-workers tend to be a less participatory team in a company famous for its employee personalities, so I hadn't high hopes. Things were slow to get started - I think I set an early example (a scrawled labyrinth to test the markers) - but then someone suggested a haiku wall, and then someone drew a couple cartoon figures, and someone else traced life-size outlined silhouettes of people doing yoga poses, and before I knew it, there was at least something going on.
I contributed this haiku (we're allowed to take home the office plants, a very similar process to the one we did a decade ago when we moved out of the last regional office, the old Hamms Beer factory):
Remember the Hamms?
I still have a plant from there
in my living room
OK, so it's no Basho, but it's a fine technically effort. It's been fun to see what people do. I wanted to do something sort of dramatic, but I am not a very good visual artist, so I was at a loss as to what. But I had a flash of insight and realized I could use my laptop and the projector to trace an image on the walls. I'd had a Blues Brothers quote in my head for the last few weeks - kept coming up, weirdly - so I quickly found a cool stencil image on Google and executed my plan. It worked beautifully. I had one of those oversized Sharpies - probably an inch thick - and it really laid down some satisfyingly solid blackness. It looked incredibly cool when when I was done, and passers-by were impressed - especially if they hadn't seen the projector. I finished it with the quote underneath: "It's 106 miles to Chicago, we've got a a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark, and we're wearing sunglasses." "Hit it."
By the time I got in this morning, that wall had become the Movie Quote Wall, with the TV Quote Wall right next to it. All day, new items appeared, some expected, some surprising. Someone countered my M*A*S*H quote ("A Winchester only recognizes one 5:30 per day, and this is not it") with a Frank Berns classic: "Do you have papers to prove that these are your papers?" Someone quoted Stephen Colbert, and two people quoted Moonstruck; I spotted a Royal Tennenbaum quote that was so not the obvious one (but a great one): "I'm very sorry for your loss. Your mother was a terribly attractive woman." And I was really surprised to see two Repo Man items (this on a wall with maybe 20 quote), including a sketch of a tree-shaped air freshener next to the "You'll find one in every car...you'll see."
After I got home, I realized there's no Woody Allen yet, but maybe someone will beat me to it. The only issue is choosing which one. I'm inclined towards "La-di-da" but there are so many. I was having the same issue with The Big Lebowski - you can't have just one quote. There are too many great ones to chose. So I set it up, and did another stencil (the Shepard Fairey-style "Abide" face of the Dude), and then surrounded it with about 7 - 8 quotes, including "That rug really tied the room together, did it not?" and "Obviously, you're not a golfer." Right at the end, I added "That is our most modestly priced receptacle" but I don't know if anyone at the office will get that one.
There was something extremely satisfying in writing on the walls of my office. It's fun to write on walls in general, but it's more fun in the workplace. The way the black marker was so smooth and deep on the white wall, the spontaneity of it all - no more taping instructions or signs up, you can just write "Binder graveyard, this way" - and the collective effort all added up to something sort of magical. Makes me wish I could always write on walls, and I plan to find a way to make this possible in my future. I never understood the appeal of graffiti before, because I'm not a fan of most styles, but I now see the allure.
Gardening
I have no idea if it's interesting to read about gardening. It's somewhat interesting to actually garden, but I wouldn't say it's exciting. Not exactly a page-turner. The plants grow slowly, or not at all, or are eaten by snails or just fizzle out in mysterious ways. But there are some parts which offer something in terms of education or information.
I decided to grow a few oddball, one-off plants, such as Walking Stick Kale (aka Jersey Kale or Walking Stick Cabbage), which grows 6 - 10 feet during the season, and gets its name from the fact that you can chop it down, dry it out and use the stalk as, yes, a walking stick. I guess it can go up to 18 feet. Who knew? They look like miniature palm trees. I thought, I gotta try this...can't wait to see how it turns out.
I also got some Anise Hyssop Agastache (smells like licorice) and a plant called Helichrysum Petiolare, which we mistakenly thought was a type of foxglove (hey, it was right next to it at the nursery), which also has some licorice associations. Hmm. I tried some echinacea - I like to make simple fresh herbal teas from my garden - and also got a real wild card, something called Bloody Dock. Docks are similiar to sorrels, I discover, and there are many, many varieties. Bloody Dock (Rumex sanguineus) is called that because of the red markings on the leaves, which makes it ornamental, as well as medicinal and culinary - an herbal trifecta, if you will. I have not been able to find any information on what its medicinal uses actually are, but I did see it can be used magically to attract money or fertility. I don't see those elements traditionally going together, but still - it's a fairly nice-looking plant, even though, I come to discover, it's technically a weed. No matter - I propitiously planted in a container.
I don't have much to say otherwise about the garden except the best recent acquisition was one of those silly cheap plastic wind decoration things, about 18 inches long, an iridescent single helix of moulded plastic that only cost $3.99 but looks like trippy infinity when it twists in the wind. Let's hope the Bloody Dock turns out as amusing to look at this summer.
The regional office I work at is being remodeled, and since the new one is going to be in the same place the old one is in, we have to move to a temporary nearby space - two, actually, just to make the move that much more complicated, and therefore fun - for a few months, and then move back to our new permanent home.
Since I'm in charge of things like communication, I ended up deeply involved in this move process; we started planning a little late and things began to get chaotic as we approached out "move out by" date; it's been a perfect miasma of muddles. Very difficult to keep the communication straight, especially as things started to change almost every day. But it's the sort of lively challenge that I love, and find fascinating, so I've been all for it even though it means my "regular" work has suffered.
Part of my job is to keep morale up - make people feel like this move is going to be fine, and not too disruptive - and so I had the idea that we should be allowed to graffiti on the walls, since we're just going to knock them all down anyway. My boss loved this idea, and so I got some mega Sharpies and paints (though no one uses the paints) and this week, we've been allowed to go to town.
It's interesting to see what's happened. My co-workers tend to be a less participatory team in a company famous for its employee personalities, so I hadn't high hopes. Things were slow to get started - I think I set an early example (a scrawled labyrinth to test the markers) - but then someone suggested a haiku wall, and then someone drew a couple cartoon figures, and someone else traced life-size outlined silhouettes of people doing yoga poses, and before I knew it, there was at least something going on.
I contributed this haiku (we're allowed to take home the office plants, a very similar process to the one we did a decade ago when we moved out of the last regional office, the old Hamms Beer factory):
Remember the Hamms?
I still have a plant from there
in my living room
OK, so it's no Basho, but it's a fine technically effort. It's been fun to see what people do. I wanted to do something sort of dramatic, but I am not a very good visual artist, so I was at a loss as to what. But I had a flash of insight and realized I could use my laptop and the projector to trace an image on the walls. I'd had a Blues Brothers quote in my head for the last few weeks - kept coming up, weirdly - so I quickly found a cool stencil image on Google and executed my plan. It worked beautifully. I had one of those oversized Sharpies - probably an inch thick - and it really laid down some satisfyingly solid blackness. It looked incredibly cool when when I was done, and passers-by were impressed - especially if they hadn't seen the projector. I finished it with the quote underneath: "It's 106 miles to Chicago, we've got a a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark, and we're wearing sunglasses." "Hit it."
By the time I got in this morning, that wall had become the Movie Quote Wall, with the TV Quote Wall right next to it. All day, new items appeared, some expected, some surprising. Someone countered my M*A*S*H quote ("A Winchester only recognizes one 5:30 per day, and this is not it") with a Frank Berns classic: "Do you have papers to prove that these are your papers?" Someone quoted Stephen Colbert, and two people quoted Moonstruck; I spotted a Royal Tennenbaum quote that was so not the obvious one (but a great one): "I'm very sorry for your loss. Your mother was a terribly attractive woman." And I was really surprised to see two Repo Man items (this on a wall with maybe 20 quote), including a sketch of a tree-shaped air freshener next to the "You'll find one in every car...you'll see."
After I got home, I realized there's no Woody Allen yet, but maybe someone will beat me to it. The only issue is choosing which one. I'm inclined towards "La-di-da" but there are so many. I was having the same issue with The Big Lebowski - you can't have just one quote. There are too many great ones to chose. So I set it up, and did another stencil (the Shepard Fairey-style "Abide" face of the Dude), and then surrounded it with about 7 - 8 quotes, including "That rug really tied the room together, did it not?" and "Obviously, you're not a golfer." Right at the end, I added "That is our most modestly priced receptacle" but I don't know if anyone at the office will get that one.
There was something extremely satisfying in writing on the walls of my office. It's fun to write on walls in general, but it's more fun in the workplace. The way the black marker was so smooth and deep on the white wall, the spontaneity of it all - no more taping instructions or signs up, you can just write "Binder graveyard, this way" - and the collective effort all added up to something sort of magical. Makes me wish I could always write on walls, and I plan to find a way to make this possible in my future. I never understood the appeal of graffiti before, because I'm not a fan of most styles, but I now see the allure.
Gardening
I have no idea if it's interesting to read about gardening. It's somewhat interesting to actually garden, but I wouldn't say it's exciting. Not exactly a page-turner. The plants grow slowly, or not at all, or are eaten by snails or just fizzle out in mysterious ways. But there are some parts which offer something in terms of education or information.
I decided to grow a few oddball, one-off plants, such as Walking Stick Kale (aka Jersey Kale or Walking Stick Cabbage), which grows 6 - 10 feet during the season, and gets its name from the fact that you can chop it down, dry it out and use the stalk as, yes, a walking stick. I guess it can go up to 18 feet. Who knew? They look like miniature palm trees. I thought, I gotta try this...can't wait to see how it turns out.
I also got some Anise Hyssop Agastache (smells like licorice) and a plant called Helichrysum Petiolare, which we mistakenly thought was a type of foxglove (hey, it was right next to it at the nursery), which also has some licorice associations. Hmm. I tried some echinacea - I like to make simple fresh herbal teas from my garden - and also got a real wild card, something called Bloody Dock. Docks are similiar to sorrels, I discover, and there are many, many varieties. Bloody Dock (Rumex sanguineus) is called that because of the red markings on the leaves, which makes it ornamental, as well as medicinal and culinary - an herbal trifecta, if you will. I have not been able to find any information on what its medicinal uses actually are, but I did see it can be used magically to attract money or fertility. I don't see those elements traditionally going together, but still - it's a fairly nice-looking plant, even though, I come to discover, it's technically a weed. No matter - I propitiously planted in a container.
I don't have much to say otherwise about the garden except the best recent acquisition was one of those silly cheap plastic wind decoration things, about 18 inches long, an iridescent single helix of moulded plastic that only cost $3.99 but looks like trippy infinity when it twists in the wind. Let's hope the Bloody Dock turns out as amusing to look at this summer.
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