I thought I would share the things that I’ve been working on today. This is the cover of the booklet I’m creating for Grandma’s birthday.

Besides spending a relaxing day at Woodthrush Woods, my mom, Rob and I went to Grandma’s house. I spent the rest of the day working on the book I’m doing for Grandma’s 100th birthday.

She lives by herself, still has a valid driver’s license and can thread a needle. Remarkable.

Everyone wish Cindy a very Happy Birthday.

After two hours driving from Nashville, with no sign of ice, I have made it safely to Chattanooga. Having greeted my parents, but not my husband, I now go to bed to find him.

Good night all.

I don’t like this airport. Or at least, I don’t like Concourse G. It is a warehouse that seems designed to hold cattle more than people. Ick. But my flight is not cancelled even though it is snowing here. Tally ho!

I should have known that things were about to go horribly wrong when I made my train and bus connections to the La Guardia airport with no trouble. The Atlanta airport is shut down. Rob got in right to Atlanta right before it closed. I have been rerouted to Nashville, by my request, and will rent a car to drive to Chattanooga. Rob is taking a shuttle service. My next stop is D.C. on my way.

Updates as they occur.

We just put the set model up and it’s huge. Because of the workshop I’m basically building my model 1′ to 1′ instead of 1″ to 1′.

I’ve come out to Chris Parks’ house because of problems with the truck. Poor Dave, who was assigned to come pick up the set from the studio space in NYC had the worst driving karma. It took him six hours to make the hour and ten minute trip from Princeton. Since I had to come out tomorrow anyway, I offered to drive the truck up and let him relax.

Emily and I had a breakthrough yesterday, but then today I felt like I ran smack into a wall of creativity. I finally realized that it had two causes. 1) I was trying to design and build the show at the same time. 2) Emily tends towards abstraction in her design while I tend towards naturalism. These two tendencies work really well when we are working together, but when we are working on pieces separately then they clash. It’s very interesting. Anyway, around ten o’clock I finally understood what I wanted to make happen with one of the tales (Abu Al Hassan)and it fits with Emily’s vision. Hurrah. We’re meeting with Chris around noon tomorrow to work out Codadad which has been giving us fits.

I have clean clothes. It’s a beautiful thing. We went to the laundry mat this morning before we started working. While the clothes were running we went across the street for a muffin and coffee.

The design work is going well although Emily and I are both exhausted from the long hours. She had her wisdom teeth pulled a couple of days before I got here and it was a major job. (I, of course, will not go into the gory details here.) She went into the surgeon today and he said, “This isn’t healing as fast as it should. What’s going on in your life?” She told him our schedule and he told her that she had to get more sleep.

We’re at this strange point where we feel like we’re making really good progress but also keenly aware that we don’t have enough time. Fortunately Chris is really understanding and helped us revise our schedule so that Emily and I can get some rest. Yay.

So there.

And only an hour late! I met up with Emily with no problems and now I’m at her place in Brooklyn.

I should have mentioned this earlier today, but it’s my sister-in-law’s birthday.

Well, I’ve made it to the Atlanta airport and my flight Chicago is supposed to be leaving on time. I don’t know what will happen with the flight from Chicago to NYC. We’ll see how that goes.

Meanwhile, here’s a photo from DC that I forgot to upload on Friday. It’s an interesting juxtaposition, I think.