I've been busy. 

My summer internship with the Whitney is going well! I've been enjoying my time there a lot, enjoying the various projects I'm working on, and learning a lot from the various seminars/trips we've been scheduled for (so far we've had seminars with a few Whitney curators, their General Counsel, Chief Marketing/Communications Officer, Head of Education, Head of Publications, etc; bright and early tomorrow we have a trip scheduled to the New Museum). 

Besides that, I also recently interviewed with the ACLU National Archives, and will be interning there this fall (for school credit, hurrah!!). 

And besides that, I've been wanting to travel more. 
To remedy that, I've been exploring more of NYC lately (walking a WHOLE LOT every day), visiting the High Line, Hudson River park, East Village, Coney Island (mermaid parade!), and lots & lots & lots of Chelsea. 

Colin and I also took a day-trip to Philadelphia last weekend, which had been both of our first times in Philly and had been on the agenda for a while. First stop was to the Yards Brewing Company (a Philadelphia microbrewery) for some Yards beer and free brewing tour:

Can't leave without actually sampling some beer, right? 
Not counting the free beer samples during the tour, that is...

Shared a flight, which is a tasting of their Signature line of  beers 
(there's also a flight option of their Revolution line beers, which are their 3 presidental ales and the love stout-- but we went with the signatures). 

Afterwards, we walked around and did some usual touristy things.

As far as this (long) weekend goes, I have no idea where to go. 
What's a good day trip-- no overnighting, unless if there's a campground-- from Princeton, NJ? Cape May, maybe? 

As a side project for the summer, I've been tackling this guy and chronicling the progress: 

I imagine my next post to just be photo progressions of this thing.

Though the semester's been over for a few weeks now (by "few," I mean... like...2), things have been pretty busy still, and a lot has happened in the last few weeks. 

Since my last post, the weather has gotten increasingly great, which means that the backyard cardinal has returned. 

He's incredibly loud & wakes me up most mornings. 


Tom's been insisting on being let out to play everyday as the weather's been nice, but he and the cardinal play nice and leave each other alone. Or maybe the cardinal's just too smart/fast for him.

In the last few weeks, I've gone to MA and back, and to Baltimore and back (yay three-day holiday weekends), both of which were fun trips. Also, I love car rides, so any extended car trip is a good trip in my book.  

Last week was my last week at work, where I've been an admin for the last three years (minus that brief hiatus for a few months to Belgium). Leaving (for good?) is a strange feeling-- breaking a very familiar daily routine, however stale, is pretty jarring. Gone are the familiar faces, familiar work computer, familiar telephone rings... The office went out for a farewell dinner in Bayside last week on the boss' dime, and everyone's thoughtfulness over my last few days there really blew me away. 
Man, it's so easy to get nostalgic about something the second it's over. 

Had a busy weekend, which included a trip into the east village to pick up a gallon of gesso (also debated getting more stretcher bars and some yards of canvas...), a trip to the movies to use up my LivingSocial pair of Fandango tickets before they expire, a soup dumpling outing with Colin & Tim & Kim, and a long walking trip with them from downtown Flushing all the way to Flushing Meadow park to gawk at the Unisphere and the Pavilion, and then further on to the Queens Zoo where I fulfilled the day's goal to feed/pet a goat-- they have an adjoining petting zoo.

The weekend left me exhausted enough to sleep well the night before my internship starts (usually my nerves would leave me awake). Today was my first day, which was basically just orientation and meeting everyone. Tomorrow the real work begins!

In the meanwhile, I'm been trying to get myself back into painting more. I have a whole bunch of stretcher bars that I can either take apart and make into 2 large-ish paintings, or keep as one large painting and two smaller ones. I think I should have enough canvas to stretch over them, in any case... 

Finally, some quick easy watercolors: