2010 March | So Very Dark

Archive for March, 2010

Mar

halfway to friday

By rei 0 Comments

Categories: art, random links, rants, school and work

3 more days, 2.5 more days and my break will be over. Well, actually, it will be the weekend, but once you hit the weekend, you’re practically at the next week, so same difference.

Tomorrow march will be over. Good. This has been a long third month. Not all bad but certainly not all good either, and mostly stressful, on both sides of the coin.

This has been a somewhat unique break for me. Usually, after a day of recuperation and a half-hearted attempt at cleaning the house, I dive into neglected personal projects because I know that I’ll have no time to work on them during the school term. With my tablet on the way, I lack that sense of urgency. Part of the intent behind the computer is that along with the ability to write and web pretty much wherever I am, I’ll be able to work on my art anywhere as well — for example, in the inevitable downtime I never know what to do with after a teacher releases a class I’m in to do ‘lab work’.

So, due to my new lack of urgency, instead of locking myself up in the dark bedroom with my computer all day every day, I’ve been doing other stuff. I cleaned off our porch and did my best to convince the plants poking between the bricks that my porch was not the best place to grow — a job of work in the little front area of the porch, a section so thoroughly grassed over that I had forgotten it was even there. I’ve done some housework and have more planned. I’ve tried two separate (and equally unsuccessful) molasses ginger cookie recipes and intend to try making Snickerdoodles today. I plan to rake my yard and plant some perennials.

The silence weighs on me in the empty house.

Yesterday I spent an hour or so having coffee with Anna and walking down to meet her older children at the bus, but then I came back here and got started on the porch, and the yard and then showered and made dinner, and spent a couple hours with Briggs before he had to go to bed. I fell asleep on the sofa after working on thumbnails of the illustrations i’m doing for Melissa’s book for a few hours. Briggs made me tea this morning, and even brought me a cookie (the second recipe wasn’t that bad) but I was up pretty late, pretty early, so I drifted off again and woke up just as he was leaving. I reheated my tea and turned on the tv so that the noise of the dehumidifier wasn’t the only one I could hear in here.

On a usual break, on a break that sees me frantically struggling to finish just on more picture before the buzzer sounds, I avoid interaction and don’t really notice if the house around me is full of hush. Other people are a distraction from finishing my work, grudgingly tolerated once, maybe twice a day. The rest of my time is devoted to caffeine, computer and late nights. This week I seem to feel the emptiness of my home….though even if I had people, I’m not sure I recall just what I’m supposed to do with them anymore.

But today I’m going to make snickerdoodles, and maybe clean the bathroom and the floors. Those are good ways to spend a Wednesday.

Edit: I made the snickerdoodles and they are obnoxiously yummy and far too easy to overindulge in. If you want to experience their evil for yourself, the recipe I used to make them is here:

Mar

Day two

By rei 4 Comments

Categories: Books, random links and weather

Second day of spring break…I blissfully spent most of yesterday being rather unproductive…generally a necessity for at least the first day of a break, regardless of what else I have on the docket. Then I made dinner (apparently way too spicy…I really need to just set down the cayenne jar and take two giant steps backward…but I figured, heck, it was Indian food–it was supposed to be spicy!) and did the dishes, only reverse of that chronology. Although, I suppose I did do the dinner dishes after we ate as well, so, with dinner thus bookended, either timeline works equally well.

I have begun reading, as I never did back when I was in junior high and everyone else did, V.C. Andrews’s Flowers in the Attic. I read a few of her other books around that earlier time, and I remember the contents as fluffily enthralling and somewhat scandalous. As FitA is probably her very best known book of gloomy mansions and illicit affairs, I figured I might as well give it a read, as, if nothing else the story would be a bit of silly fun to pass time on my spring break.

The book is truly dreadful. The writing is — and I say this as one who is rather fond of purple prose — ridiculously flowery and overdone. The characters are similarly so, and generally not very believable. The intense dialogue and heartfelt confessions make me giggle at their absurdity.

(I have to mention, as a side-note…the page I found the cover image on was a blog called “Book Reviews for teens, by teens”…and the reviewer had this to say about the book: “This book is a beautifully written story about love,family and hope. This book will have you hooked right from the beginning, and you’ll be turning the pages quite quickly to it’s conclusion. Though quite sad and realistic…” I don’t believe that anyone over the age of 20 will hold with this opinion of Andrews’ writing, but as an amusing contrasting viewpoint that, in all honesty, I mock, I wanted to share it with you.)

The skies are clear today and I expected warmer weather than we have been subjected to over the past few chilly, rainy days. A glance at Weatherbug, however, suggests that is not the case, with temperatures in the high thirties and low forties. Ahh well. At least it’s not raining.

Edit: I trudged my way through to the very end, and FitA never got any better. I have no desire to pick up the rest of the series to find out what happens to the ill fated “Dresden Dolls”…but I do have a mild interest in hunting down the V.C. Andrews books I read as a teen to discover the magnitude of crappy writing that I overlooked in my innocent youth.

Mar

spring break. woo. hoo.

By rei 0 Comments

Categories: Books, movies and tv, random links, rants, school and work

So.

Winter quarter is over. No more art history at least, which is a relief.

My Sweethearts candies box designs went over very well and are getting showcased. My photobook on the other hand…well, I’m not finished with it, but I got enough completed to turn in…however, my final assessment of what I have done so far is that it came out okay. I saw a few of the other completed designs and they were lovely, really lovely. I think that the combination of my lack of strong layout and typography skills and OH YEAH, having to rework my whole design last minute, might just have worked against me a bit. On the positive side, as my new partner in the project is a graduate and therefore has no deadline looming, I can finish it at my leisure, and after getting the chance to look at some other people’s work, maybe I’ll have a few ideas of how to refine what I have into something better.

I’m a little depressed and annoyed by the fact that spring break is only a week long. Not long enough to recharge and certainly not long enough to complete the giant list of Stuff To Get Done during this time off. I’m also a little depressed by the realization I had last night that the usual end of the quarter freedom I enjoy so much isn’t available this time around — that sudden awareness that my work for the the quarter past is done, for better or for worse, that I’m free for a brief time to pursue my own desires with no one else’s artistic demands weighing upon me. This break, instead, I still have a half-completed photobook to attend to, as well as promised illustrations for the children’s book a friend (not in art school) is writing for a class. *sigh* Both projects I’m happy to be a part of, of course…just spring break continuing to disappoint me with it’s brevity and I have a million things of my own I would like to work on as well.

On a more happy note, my tablet should be arriving in just about 2 weeks. I’m massively excited. Of course, I’ll be back in school by the time it gets here and won’t have my break to spend goofing around and getting used to it, but still…I’m getting my tablet. Last night Briggs had me watch a video review on it, and now I’m more excited than before.

Other than that…

The weather is grey and drizzly, but definitely spring. I’m hoping to find time to plant some of my perennial wildflower mix this week.

I’ve been rewatching the utter lack of any redeeming quality that is Smallville. I’m mid-Season 1 and have decided that Lex is totally gay for Clark. Also that some third-graders have a better grasp of writing and character development. Oh, right. I already knew that.

Briggs and I have been watching Caprica, and have been quite pleasantly surprised. If you are a Battlestar fan and haven’t checked it out yet, I recommend doing so. Honestly, even if you haven’t seen Battlestar – there ae plenty of easter-eggs for fans of the series, but I think it’s totally watchable without prior knowledge of the world. Caprica also isn’t quite as heavy and inaccessible as Battlestar could be from time to time…a bit brighter and flashier, but still well-written with good acting and character development (take a hint, Smallville!)

I watched this week’s episode of Chuck last night, and I’m wondering if they might actually let the show and the character evolve, or if they’ll find a way to put everything right back how it was again next week.

I have been reading a bunch of random stuff, as usual, and enjoying some of my choices more than others. If you are interested in actual literature, both Things Fall Apart and July’s People (books from my World Lit class) are excellent choices. Oh, and I suppose that Heart of Darkness is pretty good too… RE my recreational reading, Beauty Sleep, a YA retelling of Sleeping Beauty, really surprised me. Very fast read, but very fun, well written and hard to put down. Most recently, I finished Malice…not great, but interesting enough that I’m thinking of finding the second book in the series…I suspect that it would be quite enthralling to it’s intended age group. Not a lot else that really grabbed me, except the weighty Tawny Man trilogy, the third trilogy of Robin Hobb’s series in the Six Duchies world–a story that excited and annoyed me by turns, largely because, yet again, the ever-irritating Fitz was the central character and narrator again.

As usual, not a lot else in my life is noteworthy. School, blah blah blah, I love my cats. As the first day of my break — official decompression day — I have spent the afternoon so far goofing off on the internet, drinking coffee, finishing my book and writing a blog.

Maybe tomorrow The Doctor will show up and take me away. If he does, I’ll blog it.

’till my alien abduction or some other interesting update, later skaters.

Mar

first day of 30

By rei 1 Comment

Categories: my cats, school and weather

wow…just accidentally clicked on the ‘Bejeweled 2′ icon and the game took over my whole monitor for a minute or so.

I’m 30 now. It’s depressing.

I have less than a week of school left, and some big projects to finish. It’s stressful.

The snow has melted and the weather gotten warmer. It’s sunny.

Robin has been increasingly veering towards the good side of the cute/obnoxious divide. It’s adorable.

I got some insight on my benefactors and threw together a speech in about half an hour for the scholarship awards ceremony, but I guess it was still good enough that people were speaking positively about it at the faculty meeting the next day. It’s awesome.

Everything apparently went through and my tablet should be shipping on the 6th. It’s awesomer.

I only get a week of spring break…again. It’s hella lame.

The weather outside is gorgeous, but I have too much work to do to go experience it. It’s frustrating.

I have decided to use a bizarre structure to convey information in this blog. It’s weird.