The Horoscope

Today is Mr. Riccio's birthday. Who better to spend it with than us? He said that he was thinking of laying low for the day--sort of taking the day off--but then he read his horoscope. He brought the newspaper in with him to show us because he didn't think we would believe it if he didn't bring it in for us to see. It was so funny! It said something to the effect of: "Today you will need to give guidance to a group of individuals working on a collective project. They may need guidance, so don't hesitate to lend them instruction." Thank you horoscope for telling Mr. Riccio what we have tried to many times! What an appropriate horoscope. My horoscope today, which was also appropriate, said: "It may sound a little harsh, but it is possible that you will get suckered into something today! Someone may appeal for your help, even though they're not entirely prepared to do their bit." Story of my life here. :-) Maybe there's something to horoscopes after all.

Today was a crazy day. We began at the studio this morning at 8:30 to start loading everything into vans and trucks to be transported to the Tarble. There was so much heavy stuff to move, and we all had our turns almost getting crushed by large pieces of wood, but we had no casualties. Then, we all drove over to the Tarble and then had to unload everything we had just loaded. We were all exhausted when we were done with that! Once we got everything unloaded and the assistant director of the Tarble Arts Center looked at everything (we're having to work with the assistant director because Kit, the director, broker her ankle), and then several problems started to become apparent. Problem #1: We have a large, 18-foot-long wall in one of the galleries, and Mr. Riccio had planned to support said wall with just two pieces of plywood. Assistant director Mike said "no way" to that idea because the wall could tip over--crushing visitors and paintings. So, now we don't know what to do about the wall. We might have to construct a framework out of two-by-fours to hold it up. Then, our temporary wall in the other gallery just looks bad because it's made of plywood instead of the material that we had originally ordered--the stuff that got stuck on the train near Chicago. But we're hoping that with some creative lighting techniques we can hide the fact that the wall looks really cheap-o. This wall could also easily be pushed over, but we have no ideas for making it stand up, so we'll just have to hope that nobody pushes it :-)

Then, Catherine and I were sent off to Champaign with some vague directions to a place called Illini Plastics to get some help gluing together the Plexiglas case Mr. Riccio was trying to build. We took my GPS with us in hopes that she would help us find the plastics place, but we didn't have an address, so we just kind of had to drive around until we found ourselves in the "industrial" part of town--by the train tracks. Then we saw the Illini Plastics warehouse and took our Plexiglas box inside. When we showed the box to the Plexiglas guys, they started to laugh. They said, "Wow! How old is that Plexiglas?" We had no idea. Then they wondered what had been used to cut the edges. We had no idea. Then they wondered how old the glue was that Mr. Riccio had tried to use on it. No idea. And finally they wondered where the Plexiglas had been stored because there was a thin film of something greasy on top--grease is not good for gluing Plexiglas. We called Mr. Riccio for answers to the questions, and all he knew about the age of the Plexiglas was that it was "really, really old," and the greasy film on it was caused by some paint thinner he had put on the Plexiglas to remove some spray adhesive he had put on it to keep the surface from getting scratched. When we told the Plexiglas guys this, they started to laugh really hard. They said that paint thinner disintegrates Plexiglas and showed us that if you even touched the face of the Plexiglas, it would get scratched because the plastic particles were being eaten by the paint thinner. So, what we ended up having to do was have the Plexiglas guys build us a new box. While we were waiting for it to get built, we went out on the town in Champaign for a little while :-)

Then, we made it back into town just in time to see the award results from the i-movie competition in which our Dudley video had been entered. We got second place! Then we had to go have a debrief meeting to discuss what we finished today and what still remains to be done. Much still has to be done, but hopefully it will all come together. I'm so excited because Dr. Rugh is coming on Friday!!!! She will be our distinguished guest speaker at the exhibit opening on Saturday. It will be fun for her to see campus because it was actually she who suggested that I check out Eastern Illinois University (she's friends with Dr. Reid and had heard about the program from her)--and I never would have met Greg if I hadn't come here! She's planning to stay here all day on Saturday and come to the dinner we're having that evening, so it will be fun to get to catch up with her a bit. Well, I'm exhausted so I don't think it will be too long before I head to bed, and I am going to be really sore tomorrow!!!