Here’s the updated projected itinerary for the Limited Edition Road Trip (Leg 2):

August 21 (Saturday): Chicago, IL to Lincoln, NE (518mi)
August 22: Lincoln to Cheyenne, WY (448mi)
August 23: Cheyenne to Dinosaur, CO (303mi)
August 24: Dinosaur to Bonneville Salt Flats, UT (288mi) + FILMING
August 25: FILMING
August 26: FILMING (half day) + Salt Flats to Rawlins, WY (439mi)
August 27: Rawlins to Pukwana, SD (597mi)
August 28 (Saturday): Pukwana to Belmont, WI (496mi)
August 29: Belmont, WI to Chicago (175mi)

This is what it looks like on a map:

View Larger Map

Travel tips welcome — what games should we bring to play in the car? Music to listen to? Other secrets for long hours on the road? I’ve already loaded the iPod playlist with Kelly Clarkson and Soulja Boy…

The above headline was the original “clever” idea for the entry about my Spaghetti-O pizza… No wonder I forgot it. (Lizzie The Awesome Landlord gave me the dough from her fridge, so I really did make it with help from friends though.)

Today I was riding my bike downtown to get a few things done and I passed the Polish Museum of America, as I do every day, and I was treated to a very satisfying visual pun — a few guys were waxing the granite facade and wiping the windows.

As I passed, I said to myself, “It’s a proper adjective, not an imperative verb!” and then “I am totally going to blog about this later.”

Birthday party tonight!

Summer school at SAIC is weird and intense — they have four different sessions of three weeks each. Studio classes run Monday through Friday, 9am-4pm.

I just finished working as a TA for one of those three-week courses with Stephen Farrell, which was great. I really enjoy being in the classroom in that position of sub-authority. I can joke around and defer administrative concerns to the big guy while still being looked up to and respected as a mentor. I learned quite a bit, too: (1) Stephen is a patient, observant instructor, a great example for someone with an interest in teaching; (2) I’ve never actually had formal typographic training before (this was an introductory studio course on the topic).

I’m energized and ready to kick even more ass in the second half of my summer. Being around such a furious pace of production is inspiring. I’ve got a number of cool things in the works, including a painting of a dinosaur eating my car. I’m only working three days a week at the library now, so you can expect much more Waste in the weeks to come. I will unveil the Limited Edition website on Thursday as well.

Viva cheap sandwiches!

Two Hebrew National “Dinner Franks” is just about one too many for lunch:

* Percent Daily Values are based on a 2,000 calorie diet. Your Daily Values may be higher or lower depending on your calorie needs.

INGREDIENTS: Beef, Water, Contains 2% or less of: Salt, Sodium Lactate, Spice, Hydrolyzed Soy Protein, Paprika, Sodium Diacetate, Garlic Powder, Sodium Erythorbate, Flavorings, Sodium Nitrite. CONTAINS: Soy

Source: Hebrew National

Sweet deals in Chicago this week. On Tuesday morning, all Subway restaurants in the area were giving away FREE muffin breakfast sandwiches ($2.00 value). Today, for lunch, Jimmy John’s was “appreciating” its customers by offering $1.00 sandwiches ($4.00 savings).

I’ve talked about this kind of stuff before, but it still amazes me. People go nuts for free/cheap shit, no matter what. I had to wait for 20 minutes to get my stupid egg sandwich with two saggy little pieces of bacon in it, in line with a ton of downtown business types who did not need to be saving two bucks. If they did, maybe there wouldn’t have been so many fake tans reflecting off the fluorescent lights in there. And the line for Jimmy John’s today was hilarious and pathetic. I guess if you get paid a salary and don’t have to report to anyone in particular, it’s okay to take an hour or more on your lunch break and grab that sweet deal. But if I had that much free time on my breaks, I wouldn’t spend it in line waiting to get a sandwich. I’d hit the tanning booth.

Of course, you need a soda to go with that sandwich, don’t you? $2.50. Customer appreciation indeed! Thanks for drinking overpriced sugar water, have some shit for cheap! I went to a little place up the street and got some falafel instead, with a cup of water.

Anyway, my Limited Edition prints are almost done and I’ll be putting a website up very soon that announces their completion and availability to the public. Each print generated by my car will come with two other prints: one, a swatch of Hot Rod Gray paint; the other, a text piece detailing the specifics of the project. As promised, the original MSRP of the car ($12979) has been divided by the number of prints I was able to make (243) to make the cost of each set of prints $53.41. If that seems a bit steep, I understand. I appreciate your patronage and will be offering a few special deals on these prints over the next couple of months. The first promotion I have scheduled will be in late June, and it will give you the opportunity to get a free small Diet Coke with your purchase.

I’ve been talking so much about my car and stuff lately that I haven’t really gone in to much detail about the food I’ve been eating. Yesterday there was basically nothing in our fridge but I still managed to make a passable dinner:

Desolation Bowl ingredients list:

-rice
-deli sliced turkey
-spinach
-tomatoes
-soy sauce
-hot sauce
-salt
-pepper

Cook the rice, fry the other stuff, mix together. Have a few bites and then decide that the little bit of cheddar cheese left in the fridge couldn’t hurt. Grate it on top, stir, and eat.

So today I went to the grocery store and came home with $156 of food, some of it particularly odd. I was starving when I got there, which is always a scary thing to do. Why? Because your receipt ends up with things on it like prune juice, Tuna Helper, and four frozen pizzas. Looking forward to the day when I have to scour the fridge for whatever’s left from this trip…