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Aug

Success in my most important of challenges

By rei 2 Comments

Categories: Travel and places, movies and tv and weather

As you may recall from this post (and this one, and this one, and this one...), my most striven for and elusive task this summer has been finding a wild place in which to swim. However, though surrounded by creeks and three rivers of note, the closest I had been able to get was creek-walking and pool swimming.

Yesterday, that finally changed.

A couple weeks back, Briggs ‘ The Mad Researcher’ Alden found an internet guide to swimming holes…just a place where people can note their own favorite spots. He found a few in our general area, and one in particular, Jackson Falls, not far from us at all. We did not have time to go before this past weekend, but in all honesty, the stars were rather perfectly aligned for the trip to be when it was; the weather was warm but not sweltering, which was good, as we inadvertently took the long way around, most of which was uphill and through some brush; Anna’s family was visiting her in-laws, but she was home and looking to get out of the house, so I had female moral support and a swimming companion; we had even just been grocery shopping and recently acquired a cooler, so I was able to pack us a picnic lunch.

We got lost a couple times, as we are still breaking in the sat nav, and did have to pull out the computer and check directions once or twice, but eventually we pulled up to a beautiful, woodsy path along a creek. We had an invigorating hike, and by the time we found the spot, we were more than ready to cool off in the chilly water. Anna and I had definitely been concerned that we would arrive to a party spot swarming with macho teen guys and high-school girls in skimpy suits that would make us feel fat and old, but the place was relatively deserted when we arrived, and we spent a while splashing in the water and jumping off the falls (with many a girly scream from me and corresponding derision from Anna) and picking up a few scrapes and bruises and having our feet nibbled on by small fish…a phenomenon which I had heard was not uncommon, but had never experienced, myself.

Eventually, a group of adolescents did descend like locusts on the swimming hole, at which point we decided that it was probably a good time to head back. As the return hike was more downhill, it was much more pleasant…and when we got to the car, we had cucumber sandwiches, juice and marshmallow-rice squares waiting for us! All in all, a perfect afternoon.

The rest of the evening was pretty nice as well…I finished up some homework and Anna came over for dinner (massive salad with grilled salmon) and we made two failed attempts at watching a fun romantic comedy — “Conversations With Other Women” = over the top artsy, lots of ‘we’re so clever’ banter and full movie split-screen, and “She’s the One” = just…bad, and full of unlikable characters. …but we still enjoyed hanging out and eating salad. ^_^

Anyway, the place we swam is, apparently, just one of three good swimming spots on that creek…the biggest having a 30′ waterfall and a bigger pool…we are definitely going back to explore further. This time with hiking shoes, instead of flip-flops.

A happy Rei:

Jul

so much for summer

By rei 1 Comment

Categories: movies and tv, rants, school and weather

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?)

Jul

the end is nigh

By rei 3 Comments

Categories: art, rants, school and weather

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’.)

Jul

well…I wanted an adventure…

By rei 0 Comments

Categories: Travel and places, random links, rants and weather

I believe there is a line somewhere in The Hobbit…or perhaps somewhere else, about adventures, and how when you are having them, you are most often wet, cold, hungry and/or miserable, and they don’t seem at all as glorious when you are in the middle of them as when you are hearing about them beside a warm fire.

That sounds about right.

Yesterday, Briggs and I had big plans to go out to the Laurel Highlands state park and hike. Laurel is lovely…it is foresty and lush and very typical wilderness for this general area, only with lovingly kept-up trails (which we did not partake of) and a lake and a creek or two, and so on. It is where they keep Falling Water and Kentuckknob, the two well-known Frank Lloyd Wright houses. It’s where Briggs’ family reunion was held. It’s gorgeous and we always want to go visit it, but life and finances and so on usually get in the way. Well, Briggs is on vacation, and yesterday was his payday, so it was the day we were going to drive the hour or two to Donegal and experience nature. Which we…um…never get to do at home?

As you may recall from my last post, the other adventures we attempted on Briggs’ break (my attempts to find the Allegheny river) were mildly, well…not catastrophic, per say, but…unfortunate. And wet. Mostly wet. Why I thought this adventure would be greatly MORE successful, I’m not sure, but apparently, I did. Despite the universe sending me very clear signals to the contrary.

After going to bed around 2:30a, and not falling asleep until, probably, at lest 3a, I woke at 5a not feeling well. I couldn’t get back to sleep, so, around 5:30, I went into the living room and curled up on the couch watching anime until Briggs woke up, at which point I informed him that before we went hiking, we needed to go to Pittsburgh so I could go see my doctor. That took…about three hours, counting the drive and the the hour-and-a-half wait to see anyone. So, our start was a little later than we had planned. *shrug* We could have lunch, pick up supplies and still get there with plenty of time for an awesome hike.

We did and it was, aside from me acquiring yet ANOTHER injury, tripping on the way up a hill and smacking my shin something wicked, and aside from (or maybe even because of?) going down the less established* trail before finally turning back and fording the creek at a point where it was only about ankle deep. Seriously, overall, it was pretty awesome, and the weather was PERFECT.

On the way back, we decided that we had been so awesome at hiking that we deserved a prize of pie. So we stopped at a pie store. When we returned to the car with our new pie, we noticed that there was a lot of greenish liquid on the ground, apparently starting sort of…where our car was. Which ended up meaning, of course, that we had lost all our coolant and would need to fix whatever was causing it to not be in the radiator where it belonged before we could drive the car. Fortunately, the damage was just a little hole in the top, most accessible radiator hose. …UNfortunately, we were in a tiny, boondock town, to which the closest town of any size was…a slightly larger tiny, boondock town. And it was after 5pm. In other words, we couldn’t just jog around the block and grab the part we needed.

We did get a tow-truck driver kind enough to drive us all the way back to Monroeville, which was nice, but once we were there, we were stuck. Briggs’ sister wasn’t able to get the part before the store closed, the dealership, which was open until 9pm Monday through Thursday, closed much earlier on Friday, and there weren’t even any car rental places still open. The result was, we were staying the night at Burgandy’s house, far from my computer (which was safely at home) and our cats (who were likely to eat our legs when we eventually walked through the door). I also missed my sofa, my clothes and my bed.

Add to this the facts that I was pretty darn low on sleep and that the leg I had banged on the hike had a tiny cut that for some reason would NOT STOP leaking this red, blood-like substance**, despite the fact that I had first gotten the minuscule injury HOURS before, I was in an emotional state that I must admit is best described as ‘fragile’. Yeah…I cried a couple times. It was pathetic.

Anyway, Burgandy picked us up and took us home and fed us, and loaned me pjs, and we (Briggs) figured out what was up with my leg (the cut was right below the giant bruise/swelling I had from trying to fracture my kneecap the week before, and it seems that the dead blood/plasma/knee fluid were draining. ) and we went to bed and I slept almost instantly…and when i woke up, , the dealership was already pulling the car into the shop, andBurgandy fed us pancakes and loaned me clothes and took me to a farmer’s market…and now there is ANOTHER new episode of Futurama to watch and we have a pie that is probably still okay to eat in the fridge, so we are likely to bounce back…but I am definitely re-thinking the wisdom of ever leaving the house.

*turns into deer trail. Then gopher trail. Is easy to find by squinting at the waist-high undergrowth (ferns, bushes, and nasty thorny vines) and determining which area might be slightly thinner than the rest. Easy to stay on by clinging nearby branches and roots as it traverses the very edge of the stream-bank.

**what was leaking from my leg was red, but disturbingly thin and watery–not the bright, viscous stuff that’s supposed to live inside skin.