Hey ya'll! So I just spent the last three weeks traveling all over the place! Specifically Burlington, Montreal, Rehoboth Beach DE, and finally Pittsburgh. So here's a run down of my three week vacation!
It started when Brittany came to White River Junction VT (where I currently go to school at the Center For Cartoon Studies). Then, along with my roommate/bud Steve Thueson went to dinner. Here is a convo from the car:
We are talking about the Band 2Ge+her and specifically the song "Calculus: You + Me = Us".
The next day Brittany and I went to Burlington, but not before me running into a bud where this happened:
This is a good guy we're talking about so he shall remain nameless.
In Burlington we ate good food, I got my ears pieced again, fixed my phone, and I bought Maximum Minimum Wage which I love and whole heartedly recommend. Burlington is a really lovely city.
Lake Champlain water front.
Then it was off to Montreal. Brittany and I made a point to only listen to Canadian songs on the way, so lots of Drake, Gob (from my punk youth), and Arcade Fire (apparently one of the members is from Canada). We talked about a variety of things (including a long conversation about Spooky Black because we are strangely obsessed with him). Also we had this exchange:
A bit annoying but mostly cute.
We went all over the place. We tried poutine at some hipster joint (which we agreed was fine but not great), we were impressed by the metro system, but the real high light was going to the Basilica of Notre Dame Montreal; it was truly stunning.
I MEAN LOOK AT IT!
The last thing we did was eat at Montreal's Chinatown. Unlike DC's Chinatown, which is almost completely gentrified, there was actual Chinese culture in Montreal's Chinatown.
Then we went back to VT and spent the night watching TV.
I am not linking to this show because it's awful.
On Christmas Eve, I took an 8 hour train ride to Rehoboth Beach DE to visit my mom and dogs.
This is a very old photo of my perfect angel at my childhood home.
I got sick over Xmas, walked the dogs a lot, read a ton of books (including early Peter Bagge and Raisin Pie by Ariel Bordeux and her husband Rick Altergott) and talked to my mother quite a bit. We spent our last night together having fancy NYE dinner:
Then it was on to the final leg of my journey: Pittsburgh!
So I stayed with my buddy Thomas who is getting his PhD there. Because this is a very hard, time consuming thing to do he also didn't know shit about Pittsburgh. So we explored the city together. The high light of the trip was probably the Mattress Factory, which was a installation art museum housed in an old mattress factory. Now let me spam you with some pics!
Infinite Thomas pic; Unfortunately I can't find info on this artist on the website
Interior of a learning space based on Pittsburgh's Cathedral of Learning (which we also went to) by Rob Voyerman
A conceptual piece by Bill Smith, which I totally didn't get the point of but it looked cool as shit.
Anyway, yeah so we did a ton of walking around Pittsburgh. I met up with Sophie Goldstein (former CCS alum and successful cartoonist) and she gave me the low down of the Pittsburgh comics scene. It's growing like crazy apparently (along with the rest of the city) so there's a good chance that I'll move there after school, depending if I can get a job there.
So, here's me commenting while being a tourist in Pittsburgh:
I'm a classy lady.
Anyway, that's where I've been. I'm also going to upload a comic I did in December on here. I wanted to get it published but no dice. So look out for that! Also if you want to follow my travel comics in real time be sure to follow me on twitter.