Archive for the 'rants' Category

22
Jul

exploding snap

This blog has very little to do with either Exploding Snap or the Harry Potter universe…I simply lacked proper titular inspiration and am currently reading a Draco/Ginny fanfic in which the game was mentioned, and once I decided not to bother having a title that has anything to do with what I’m here to write about, well…it was the first thing that popped into my mind.

I wish we had wizard games to play.

Honestly, I’d forgo the games if I could have the magic.  And McGonnegal as a teacher.  And maybe Molly as a mum.

…moving on.

I’m back in school–despite the foot-dragging and pouting I did, the universe did not decide to extend break by another couple weeks.  *sigh* Usually by the end of a three-week break, I’m eager to return and have more knowledge shoved in my thought-hole, but this past break was a bit too full of stress to reach a point of longing for school.  Also I realized that I’m at a point in my curricular path at which I’m fairly well done with fun classes like drawing and illustration and painting, and into learning that stuff I will need to know for my exciting career in Graphic Design, which, though necessary, is occasionally less fun.  *sigh*

The guy in front of me is watching cartoons on his laptop without headphones on and it is mucho distracting, and making it difficult to write.  I put some Bach on my iPod to drown out the chatter, but I don’t know if it will be enough.  So annoying.  If my level of writing skill deteriorates drastically, I apologize.

Anyway, my return to school has brought a few pleasant surprises.  The first is, I am Student of the Quarter.  Yay, resume material!  Speaking of resumes, as soon as I get on top of writing mine up and turning it in to Ms. Yee (the dean of the G.D. department) she’s going to start looking for internships for me for next quarter.  Very exciting.  I think that was pleasant surprise one and a half, maybe?  Not really a surprise as both times I have spoken to her in the past she told me how she had heard of me and to come see her when I wanted an internship.  Anyway, pleasant surprise number two is that one of my classes — Real and Imagined Creatures in Art (doesn’t that class just SOUND awesome?) actually IS awesome.  The teacher is fantastic and I love her and the subject matter is very fun.  I’m only sad I took the class on the shortest quarter of the year.

Other than that, school is school…I have two classes in advertising — my Art Direction class, in which we are learning to make advertising campaigns, and my online class, called Advertising Design — obviously, doing about the same thing.  Then I have a psych class that I was sort of excited about, but as my teacher is somewhat of a Freud-loving flake…well…we’ll see.

Outside of school….we got a car!  Woo-hoo!  A very nice young man at the Greensburg Toyota found us a 2005 Prius and sold it to us for a price that was not only below the listed dealership price, but also below the Bluebook price, so…yay!  (I need to bake him cookies.  Cereal.)  Our fuel costs are projected to go down a bit as a result of it being…well, a PRIUS.  Also it’s got all kinds of neat goodies, like Sat-Nav, and Bluetooth and some other stuff.  And WE HAVE A  CAR, which is the very important part of this paragraph.

Briggs and I have been watching Nurse Jackie and United States of Tara…I’ve been watching 3rd Rock from the Sun, Private Practice and season 8 of Smallville, and I finally read ‘A Child Called It’.  It wasn’t nearly as good as I had heard…I mean, yes, it’s horrifying what that kid went through, but the book was very…though the subject matter was very different, it was intended for the same demographic that Chicken Soup for the Soul is, and Reader’s Digest.  I was intrigued enough to finish it quickly, but in the same way that I’m intrigued enough to crane my head as we pass an accident on the highway, or to skim all the tabloid headlines at the supermarket.

I finally got to go swimming.  Not in a river or lake, as I long to (though Briggs and I may have found a place…by the time we got there it was getting dark and a thunderstorm was flashing, but we are hoping to make a group trip back…maybe this weekend?) but in a pool — I checked into the YMCA downtown and discovered that their rates are not that bad, and they have a POOL.  So, after I got out of class on Tuesday, I headed over and signed up, then swam as many laps as I could (which was not as many as I had intended to) and discovered that I should probably try to pick up some goggles* at some point.  When I left I looked like I’d been in a hippie’s van for a good couple hours.  But, I swam, and have enough time between classes to do so again today.  Hurrah! Oh, and I guess they have some other amenities for exercise as well, or something, that I should probably check out at some point or whatever.  ^_^

Not a lot else is going on out in the boonies…I went to game on Tuesday, which I feel a bit of a cad for doing, as Briggs was stuck at work during that time, but it was very fun…though I managed to pick up a bounty hunter and almost get everyone in the party killed…a couple times.  I have discovered that my character is vengeful (or…”Justice-minded”…yes, that sounds better…) and likely to try to pin stuff on innocent bystanders to avoid persecution by the mob.

Toccata and Fugue in D Minor is currently playing…you know, the creepy one?

I’m drinking coffee with Irish Cream flavoring.

I should probably end this before I begin describing the temperature of the room and texture of the carpeting….

*update:  will have to acquire goggles before using the pool again…after swimming laps today, my eyes were bright red, stripped of their protective outer layer (I’m pretty sure) and burned LIKE FIRE.  Hours later they are still sore as mad, so…no more swimming in the heavily chlorinated pool until I have proper eye protection.  Oh well — I really should check out the rest of the facilities anyway.

11
Jul

so much for summer

Today is the last day of my break.  Tomorrow at 1pm I will begin my Art Direction class.

Sadly, the last week of my break has been less restful than I might have hoped.  Along with the fact that it was ungodly hot until Friday, we (as you may or may not know) lost our car on Tuesday night due to being a liiiitttlllleee late giving the bank their money.  It wasn’t even a case of not HAVING money to give the bank — Briggs had just gotten paid and everything…he just hadn’t gotten around to bringing the money TO the bank.

So, instead of spending the last week of my break de-stressing to my heart’s content in a quiet house, watching stupid tv shows, drawing and trying to learn yoga, Briggs and I spent the week trapped at home, struggling with PNC to figure out how we can get our car back (turns out we can’t) and doing the opposite of de-stressing.  PNC were big jerks and totally unhelpful, my credit score is pretty much screwed for years and we have to figure out how to get a new car now because there isn’t really public transportation out here in the boonies.  (And by ‘isn’t really’ I mean that, about 30 miles away, there might be a bus stop).

I kind of want to call the school and ask for a do-over.  This has not been the relaxing break I had hoped it would be, and I do not feel refreshed and ready to jump into a new quarter of school.  I mean, over the course of this break:

I possibly fractured my kneecap

I got caught in downpours two days in a row

I acquired at least two slightly less major leg injuries

I tried to give myself sunstroke at least once

Our car broke down in the middle of nowhere

Our car got repo’d

I still didn’t get to go swimming or find the darn river.

The frustrating thing (okay, one item on the list of frustrating things) is that all over school, before I started on break, were these posters extolling the virtues of taking classes over the summer quarter, and why students shouldn’t take the summer off.  I got in right before AIP changed from fixed tuition to variable, and if I were to take a quarter off, I would have that revoked, and that includes the summer quarter.  So, where as almost all other college students get to have a summer free of classes to…I don’t know, go work at a boat house in a lake-side town or whatever, I am required to stay right where I am….but most of my peers are not.  And those posters just…taunt me.  But I know if I took a quarter off to deal with stuff like not having a car and being on the verge of a nervous breakdown, when I returned they would suddenly hike tuition by 200% for no apparent reason and I would have to drop out of school just a couple quarters before graduation and spend the rest of my life working in a Burger Hut.

But let me tell you…I could really do with a real summer break right about now.  Preferably one that was water-adjacent.

Anyway…other stuff…I made zucchini bread for the first time the other day.  I put a bunch of chocolate chips in it and it is delicious.

Even more delicious was the salad we had last night.  Tons of delicious veggies (something we haven’t had a lot of the past few days) with awesome grilled chicken on top…sooo good.

I got fully caught up on Gossip Girl and Grey’s Anatomy, and have watched the first three episodes of this season of True Blood.  Briggs and I started the second season of Better Off Ted last night (super funny if you haven’t seen it) and remembered a show we had forgotten about — The United States of Tara, a dramedy about a woman with multiple personality disorder and how she and her family deal with it.

Anyway, since I go back to school tomorrow, I’m going to go now and continue to make the most of the rest of this day.  I hear there may be a bonfire later.

I’ll probably catch on fire.

(By the by…does anyone know of any gypsy curses I may be under?)

08
Jul

Mad at my Cat #14

06
Jul

the end is nigh

Nigh…is that right?  I feel like I’m missing a vowel or two…but when I throw in an ‘e’ I get ‘neigh’…and I know that’s wrong…

So, I’m on the home stretch of my break.  This time next week, I’ll be back in school.  I think…um…lessee…Tuesdays I actually get out of class at 3:09, so I I won’t be  IN school, persay, THIS time next week, but you get my gist.

As is usually the case, I accomplished much less than I might have hoped over my break — though I did get the house at least nominally clean.  It is, of course, quickly disintegrating back towards dirty, but still, better than it was.

I have gotten some art done, though not nearly as much as I might have.

I got no writing done.

I had my boyfriend remind me that, before I graduate, i really need to put together something…how should I put this…sequential?  Something that’s more than random school projects and occasional personal works, but something cohesive that shows what I want to do, illustration-wise, that shows I’m capable of a continuous something — like, an illustrated children’s story or a graphic novel.  But no pressure.

I worked on getting used to my tablet, but am still not totally comfortable.  One of my BIG issues is that a lot of key-command shortcuts I’m used to having are no longer available — in some cases aren’t even options on my programmable buttons…for example, I could program Ctrl+Alt+Z (undo) without a problem, but for some reason, I couldn’t program the command ‘Shift’ to any of my buttons at all, and though I COULD program Alt (which I use like all the time), I can’t use it for most of the stuff I am accustomed to using it FOR…like, quick-selecting colors.  It just doesn’t register.  Anyway, there are other ways to do these things…I just have to get used to doing them instead of using the keyboard.  Other than that, it is just taking a little while to get used to the format, just like it took a little to get used to drawing on my Wacom…but I’m getting there.  *sigh*

I still never managed to go swimming — the closest I got was a creek that was occasionally, for brief distances, deeper than my waist, but was more often shallower than my ankles.  This week really warrants swimming, too.  The temperature is at least in the 90s, and the humidity is oppressive.  I am NOT enjoying it, and if I had access to somewhere to swim, i would be fully immersed for at least…oh, 10 hours each day.  Instead, I’m sitting in my air conditioned house, wanting to nap, and not doing anything even slightly active for fear of counteracting the less than robust cooling.  (And absolutely not doing anything outside, oh golly no!)

Also, my goal of ‘getting a lot of exercise and eating right so that by the end of my break, I’m toned and fit!’ was probably counteracted entirely yesterday at our session of Game, when one of the edible offerings set out for us tabletop adventurers was curly fries with malt vinegar to sprinkle upon them.  I haven’t had said treat in YEARS and my GOSH it’s gotta be one of the yummiest things EVER, and I was pretty much unable to resist at all.  So yeah.  That, and a couple other Fourth of July weekend indiscretions, pretty much guarantee that any forward progress I made towards not totally hating my body was undone.  And this whole week is supposed to be miserable and gross like it is now, so getting any real outside exercise is…unlikely.  (Of course, it helped greatly when a friend of mine told me the other day, in response to my frustration with my less-than-ideal body, ‘oh honey…we’re just getting to that age where our metabolisms are starting to slow down, and we just have to accept it!’  Well…I refuse.)

Other stuff…um…not nearly where I want to be, art-skill-wise.  I was pretty much in a slump throughout spring quarter, got nothing done on spring break, and not a whole lot past the beginning of winter quarter, so…yeah…a lot of it is just being a little rusty, but I know my art isn’t where I want it to be.  I also know that the main cure for that is PRACTICE, which I haven’t gotten to much this break, between cleaning and Briggs’ break, and just general blah…oh, and by the self-defeating cycle of making something, not having it come out as well as I want, and then not really feeling inspired to make anything else.  Which I know is stupid and the opposite of what i should do.  Anyway…that’s about it here.

Hmm…I think hot weather makes me cranky.  Just a little…

Um…lessee…good stuff…I made really yummy eggs for breakfast yesterday — with sauteed onion, fresh tomatoes, dill and low-fat Swiss cheese. (There’s other good stuff, really there is, I’m sure…but that’s all I’ve got at the mo’.)