So Very Dark

…nice that happened today:

I finally got around to going to the liquor store to get a couple bottles of wine (can’t buy them at the grocery store here…weird.) and the clerk carded me when I checked out.  It was awesome.  Especially since I just turned 28.

I’m exhausted.

This past week was brutal.

But, today I finished my last Concept Development class and have, as such, begun spring break and am back on the radar and in the land of the living.

Here’s what’s been up with me:

I had my birthday — I turned 28 to the tune of very little fanfare, as the day was spent in finals (though I did benefit from some lovely phone calls, myspace messages and emails — thank you again, everyone!).

I finished the first painting for my painting class that I actually LIKED, and predictably, my teacher pretty much hated it. I got a ‘C’ on it which is the lowest he graded me for anything in that class. But, aside from one small mistake that I plan to fix at my earliest convenience, I still like it a great deal, and as soon as I get the chance to photograph it I will post the image here.

I completed my Computer Literacy class with a full 280 points out of 280 possible on my Power Point presentation, accompanied by an “Awesome job!”, and though I do not know how I did on my final exam, since the questions were multiple choice and True/False reviews of previous tests for the most part, and not very difficult questions for anyone who knows their way around a computer at least a little, so I doubt that I got lower than a ‘B’, even if I floundered entirely.

The rest of my time, as I have mentioned, has been occupied in finishing my Concept Development final project. It has been beastly and I have no doubt that I created for myself an over-ambitious goal, as I am want to do.

We had four weeks total to do this final project, but that sounds like a lot more time than it is, even discounting other classes and time obligations, as the time-table was laid out as such:

Week one: come up with a variety of concepts that could possibly work for your final project. Even though I knew what I really kind of wanted to do, I still had to come up with thumbnail sketches for a number of different potential ideas, and discuss them with my teacher. We settled on the one I had sort of prioritized in my own mind, but it was a necessary part of the process, regardless.

Week two: Bring in basic layout ideas to present for evaluation and presentation. At this point I had finished all of my lineart but there was still (big) chance that the teacher could decide that he wanted me to totally re-work something. At this point, it would be counter-productive to have anything set in stone.

Week four: final due

So I had the spare time of two weeks (a day and a half a week and evenings I got home early from school or work) to fill in the flat color (unshaded) of all ten pages and then go back and do the shading on each one — flat color usually took, I suppose…one to two hours per page, sometimes a little more, sometimes a little less. The shading took anywhere between 2 and 5 hours per page.

I had to have it finished by Wednesday, since I had to go to work, and had to have Briggs print it for me that day regardless.

Starting my final stretch (the last 5 pages of shading) on Tuesday, around 1pm, I finished it Wednesday morning at 9:30am (after watching Beetlejuice, Vanilla Sky..something else, and all but the last episode of Firefly), in time to, after showering and dressing, be only about 10 minutes late to work. I was so tired yesterday that I was sure I was going to fall asleep without my own consent and be found snoring behind a bookshelf — luckily this did not happen (mostly due to copious , though I doubt I was the most motivated and inspired employee they had ever seen.

And.

It was totally worth the pain and suffering.

Our final projects were presented as though we were having a gallery opening of sorts — we set them up and then wandered the room and looked at what everyone had done. We also wrote what we felt the best project (excluding our own) was on a folded piece of paper and gave it to the teacher.

I got an A, the teacher told me I had done an excellent job, and I was chosen as ‘Best in Show’ by my classmates.

Other stuff:

My cats are cute– for the first time the other night, we saw them curl up together, and Nova even licked Mercury’s head.  And Mercury let her.  Briggs got a photo of them curled up together but he apparently hasn’t posted it yet.

I am reading this series:

I am enjoying it very much–a wizardry and politics fantasy series centered around a pair of half-brothers (who grew up not knowing each other) both from the slums, the elder’s path leading him into the circles of the powerful ruling class as an adept wizard, the younger’s life keeping him in the city as an assassin and infamous cat burgler until the supremely evil act of a supremely evil wizard and the machinations of another bring them accidentally together.  One of the things I enjoy most about this series is the fact that the characters are sublimely imperfect.  The older brother is arrogant and selfish and cruel, and often hurts and uses his brother, along with all the other people around him.  The younger has believed all the people in his lifetime who told him he was worthless and stupid and ugly and rarely stands up for himself when he should, and never tells anyone when he is hurting or needs help, so convinced he is that they simply won’t care.  I really like this about the series.  The two men obviously have a very strong emotional bond — though they have not known each other long, they have been through a LOT together–but despite that, life is not sunshine and puppydogs and doing anything for each other because they are family.  In all honesty, the younger brother’s life was probably much easier and less dangerous and complicated when he was a cat burgler than it is living in the palace with his brother, but aside from external reasons that he can’t go back to his former life, he doesn’t WANT to leave, despite the poisonousness of the relationship.  It is a rare character development, and I like it.