Basement Umbrella Needed

After escorting Jake to the airport to fly out to Japan I came home and discovered workmen dealing with the totally flooded basement apartment. The unit has flooded before, which really sucks for the tenet, but my area had never been affected. Today I got nervous about it and peaked my head downstairs just to make sure. Sure enough, my workspace was under a layer of water.

It ruined a bunch of projects from college and seeped into my main portfolio. A box of Wired and Metropolis, a bunch of books I bought to cut things out of, a stack of data cds, one end of a wonderful old map, and a batch of vinyl letters all had to be thrown away. I hate water damage so fucking much. Also, I don’t have renter’s insurance, and if I did it wouldn’t matter because most of the items damaged were more personal than valuable. At least my photo box wasn’t sitting on the ground.

On the upside my landlord contacted me and wondered if I could move out early so the guy from downstairs has a place to live. I was planning on moving some of my stuff this Saturday, but now it looks like I’ll move it all. It’ll be nice to get some of the rent money from this month back. We were going to be paying for a mostly unused apartment otherwise.

—

I got the invitations for Moped BBQ 8 done today too. The card stock is too dark for what I’m doing with it, so I’m not super satisfied with the end result. I’m still sending them out though, so keep an eye on your mailbox this week.

View Comments (4)

# May 06, 2003 01:42 AM

Comments

That happened to Jessica a few years ago- the basement in some crappy house she was living in flooded and she lost boxes of letters (many from myself) and other old journals. She’s a writer, so you can imagine how hard it was for her. I was pretty upset about it too- I had hoped we could read all our old letters together someday when we’re old. Sorry to hear about your Wired collection and all those projects from graphic design (you hated doing the early ones, anyway). It’s a strange thing, but loosing things isn’t always so bad. We hold on to so much that isn’t of vital importance. Granted, it’s nice to have a record of things, but my ideas about keeping everything are changing. What am I keeping all that old stuff for anyways? To show my maybe-someday-far-off-in-the-future kids? For the writers and archiologists who I assume will publish volumes on my life once I’m dead (yeah, right)? I’ve been tainted by the romanticized story of so many artists who lived their lives unnoticed and flourished after their deaths by what they left behind (VanGogh, and one could make an argument for Saddam Hussein even).

Posted by: vanessa on May 6, 2003 10:19 AM

i’d love an invite—ro and i may be able to attend. also, maybe this is a way for you to get your own half project going, but either way—water damage sucks.

Posted by: jim on May 6, 2003 11:22 AM

I’m sorry for the loss of your Communism book, it’s too short life was brilliant. I just thought of some of the things I have in the basement that are probably ruined. One of which is a large bag of clothes to be sold at a thrift store. shit.

Posted by: meredith on May 6, 2003 12:14 PM

That is really not good. I seriously cringed as I read that you works from college were ruined. Maybe it’s chicago’s way of saying “good bye”. In Japan news, I went to Bill’s class tonight and on the way to the internet cafe, I turned on the Wireless Searcher and found a　couple of networks on the way. This means I will start updating tonight.

Posted by: jake on May 7, 2003 9:33 AM

As Far As I Can Tell

Basement Umbrella Needed

Comments

Micro Updates