Social Experiment 002 and my 30th birthday

Last Sunday work had sent me to East Butler Pennsylvania to work the design for a prototype display for Sprint. I had the rare but awesome opportunity to collaborate with Ryan Gorham. He is Sprint’s hammer of design justice. Also-A very cool person. If you are ever in Kansas and bump into him, he is worth giving a nod to. Anyhow-I was staying at the luxurious Fairfeild Inn Butler, next to a Get Go, Dingbat’s, and a whole lot of nothing. Every night was accompanied by 45 minute drives to downtown Pittsburgh where I met up with several old friends such as Jae Ruberto, Morgan McMullin, Candi, and one of my favorite people Mandy Hearne. Also I had the rare privilege of seeing Ms. Molly Doodles(Fig 1)

Fig 1

I realise that this photo is very similar to yours madam, and I think it was quite by accident in retrospect (You know who you are)

After days of drawing with Ryan and nights of coffee with Stillers, I headed back to PDX by way of stupid Sky Harbor with their stupid free internets. D’oh! I found out my gate had changed from A22 to A26. I wound up sitting at the gate next to this girl who was reading a book (I assume blindly on Gerontology). We both were laughing at this hilarious little girl being chased by her mother and the poor gate keeper at gate A28 trying to get someone to give up their seat as the flight was over booked. We boarded and took off a little past schedule.  On the flight I decided to write a note to the girl to introduce myself because, hey, I am always looking for new friends. It read to the effect of-“Hi my name is Gabe. I’m not hitting on you, my girlfriend’s name is Lesa, she is awesome. You seem pretty ok. Do you want to be my new friend? You can background check me at my blog, website, blah blah blah…I’m not a crazy person, This flight is boring.” and then I drew a little photo of our plane with mild turbulence lines trailing off behind. In my normal-not-awkward-at-all personality, I walked back to her seat stuck it in her book she was reading, and ran away as I would be expected to. Fun stuff!

So SE_002 was a pretty okay success. She wrote me today with a picture of a sculpture of a giant fly. (Fig 2) Cool peep for sure.

When I got into PDX, Lesa had many hugs and smooches waiting for me behind a fresh new doo from Mr. Caldwell of Hair Pollution in PHX where she had been the prior week for a friend’s birthday. I got home around 11:40p that night. 20 minutes left in my 20s…how appropriate. I layed down beat and tired on the bed. I blinked at the clock and it was midnight and I was 30. My dad won the race at 12:01a EST with his yearly operatic voice-mail singing the “Happy Birthday” song to me on pitch, on time. It made me smile. In the morning I had to rush to work as Callaway and Nike needed my love ASAP. Of course I’d forget my hard-drive at home. Already loosing my mind. I ran home, grabbed the drive, peeked in the pile of presents to find Sketchbook Pro and a t-shirt from the Russell art fest that read “Support Local Artists | Oppose global tyrants”. I wore it to the Saturday Market with pride yesterday. When I got off of work, I treated myself to a massage over at An Sen with Emily. As usual, it was great. I rode my bike home slightly high from the rub and was greeted by a sleeping Lesamonster. She had been super busy taking photos for Portland Fashion Week which can be viewed here. I woke her up and opened gifts. Dear Amazon: I love that you offer gift wrapping services, but the wrapping shouldn’t be so well done as to prevent the opening of gifts by people with weak or tired hands. Thank you.

My ‘loot’ included-John Maeda’s book-“Design By Numbers”, Casey Raes and Ben Fry-“Processing”, Daniel Shiffman-“Learning Processing”, Ira Greenberg-“Processing-Creative Coding and Computational Art”, Sketchbook Pro 2010, as well as some much needed jeans, a sweet new loofa (don’t judge), and iHome dock for my iPod, as well as a VooDoo Cock and Balls birthday doughnut, and many more. Stuff aside, it was really nice to spend a quiet evening at home with the Lesa and eat burritos. Yesterday, I woke Lesa with kisses and we went to BrunchBox for breakfast sammies and walked a bit before getting some coffee and walking the market. We went home and did our own things for a bit before heading to Sauvee Island for a corn maze and cider. We capped the night at Ms. Delta with okra, coffee, sweet potato fries, and laughs. It was was a really great day.

Today, I slept in a bit, walked to get coffee, caught up on email, did some house errands, and am spending a bit of time reading up on social responsibilities as said by Papanek. That man makes me laugh so hard sometimes. His writing style is great.

Alright, time for some more coffee and cozy socks. Its freaking October of 2009! Geez!

~G