harbinger of elfdom

Got up all nice and not really all that early for the train. Paniced for a second and thought I had slept in but I hadn't. Got all packed and headed off a little after 10:30. Later than I would have liked but still way early.

There was a man in an elf coustume on the max. A premonition for Santa Land Diaries?

The walk from the Max to the train station was quick but it goes through a really dicey area. I think I'll ask mom for cab money so I don't have to walk through that area to the max/street car at 9:30pm tomorrow.

I thought it would be all crowded because of the train delays and closures that happened earlier in the week due to bad weather, but it wasn't. Had 45 minutes before we would even start lining up so I got a good seat and read a little. There was about three nice parent/kid pairs in the station. All of them having fun with their kids and not yelling and trying to get them to fall in line. The dad/son behind me in line were especcially adorable.

The train was delayed about fifteen minutes. Not so bad. I was sitting backwards and no one was next to me, despite having an apparently full train this ride. I listened to music and dosed off (something that has never happened before) and woke up when the play list ran out. Watched the last episode of Nip/Tuck season four and listened to music all the way to Tacoma.

Mum and her friend were there, they had been waiting a while due to my late train. They came bearing fish & chips for me. Whoo! We picked up my bus (uhg) ticket, might as well do it then when we had the time. The lady at Greyhound was lazy not very helpful with the people in front of us and I feel bad for the person put on hold that had probably been calling for a while. So expensive and troublesome to visit home. Bah! They should use some of those thousands of airline miles and just put me up on a plane. Then I'd be classy!

Nodded on an off on the ride home.

Mum, Rubie and I watched Waitress. Not as good as I expected it to be but I loved the idea of a happily-ever-after with just her and her daughter. That was nice. And some of the pies looked dang good! Nathan Fillion was adorable sure but, I dunno. Maybe moms reaction towards the movie altered my own.

And since we were in the mood for Nathan Fillion we put on some Firefly. Mmm such a good show. Was it good that it had its series and movie and was quality or should it have been drug into the ground?

I'm going to take some tapes down to Portland with me. Yay, Red Dwarf!

Lots of travel tomorrow. David Sedaris is worth it!

IT WAS MOLDY THREE WEEKS AGO!!!

AHHGHG!!! Work was so stressful at the start. I was running late and when I got there it turned out I didn't have my keycard so I had to ride all the way back to Goose Hollow and get it and then go back to the studios and when I got there I realised I had left my purse at home and that had my lunch in it so I had to buy my lunch with the change I had in my pocket. AHHHGGG. No fun. The MFA's had some snacks left over from their open studios so that was great.

Not so great? Cleaning out the first floor fridge. UHHHGG OH GOD THE SMELL. I got several "I feel sorry for you"'s from the studio people. And "you are a brave woman" from Jason. Yeah. That thing. Disgusting. I'm going to put a real sign on it, not the "hey this fridge is a little warm so be careful" thing that is on it right now.

Work went relatively quick.

Milk shakes are becoming a regular part of Lindsay and mines diet. Yum! We spent an hour and a half unwinding watching Christmas lights blink and listening to techno.

Tomorrow I got home to see mum, Celia, maybe Nate and David (Sedaris that is).

mint & basil

Today I did some serious baking and blending. For breakfast I had a chocolate milk shake (I needed the sugar, what?) and for dinner I made Basil-Cheese Triangles. The milk shake was delicious and the Oster blender worked perfectly.

I bought the Feta Cheese and Basil for the Triangles yesterday but had no luck finding the phyllo dough at Safeway. They didn't have it at Trader Joe's either (not great in the selection department there either) but they had this artisan pastry stuff that could potentially work. And it did! It broke a little during its travels but it worked out. Lathered butter on those puppies and wrapped it around the feta/egg/basil bits. Cooked up real good, all flakey and warm with delicious gooey centers. Mmm mmm MMM! Now I'm all buttered out. Whoo!! Like to learn how to make it with phyllo dough. I have some of the feta stuff left over, probably will use it for scrambled eggs in the morning.

Well, today was back to school and back to work officially. My website is coming together though the tools for building it are painfully boring to use. iWeb? Bleeh! Stuck in some Hitchhikers quotes. Will add more art with it. Just really stale. About four people were missing from class, guess they didn't get the "class returns Thursday" memo.

Bought a mint green cropped jumper and one of Nicole's prints from the Holiday Art Sale that is going on at school right now. Lots of great art, even more over priced and "ehh I don't really like it" feeling pieces being sold. Nothing grabbed my eye on the first couple of sort throughs. I had my budget and I didn't go over it. I actually ended up with four things so that was really sweet! Three things on my wall, one in my closet. Bought the jumper and print during the Digital Tools/Drawing break.

In Drawing we drew chairs. We drew one from many angles, sometimes with some fabric on it. That was the first segment. The second was a set up with three chairs entwined with one another in front of a cloth backdrop with a sad-looking mannequin. My drawing was sorta messy. I also was really bored and frustrated with the arrangement. We go model model model model CHAIR STUDY model model model. But it must be said my general technical ability is increasing.

Student Council had pizza, what a gyp!

For the last part of lunch I spent the rest of my Holiday Art Sale budget. Bought one of BT's prints and this photo of a guy with a Mohawk and his eyes closed. The photo really spoke to me and I don't know why. I really love it, it has a nice high proud position on my wall. All of my newly acquired art does. Love it!

Swung by Trader Joe's and relaxed at home for a few hours before heading down to PNCA again for First Thursday. I just wanted to see Nicole and Andy at their show and hang about a bit. Not feeling up for the usual run about.

Nicole and Andy's show looks amazing. Their collaboration really came together. Andy said it was all right to take a few of the pictures hanging on the wall (it is a crazy variety going on, all pinned and hanging and stuff. We can also rearrange them if we'd like). I will take him up on it when I have a folder with me in which to safely store some of the work. I know which of his work I'd like to put next to my Mohawk guy.

Chatted with some people and went back home. Made the delicious squares and watched the trailer for the live action Speed Racer movie. It looks...fun. I'm not sure, might go see it. Hard to say.

it's all over the walls

I originally didn't put much up on my walls because I thought I would be taking everything down in a few months. Now that I know I will be here for a whole 'nother semester I decided to put more things up. I moved some of the things I had in the living room to my room and put up the Cho-Chan designed poster for The Underpants (a show playing at the Gerding Theatre) along with it. I put up some of the cloth hangings my host mother in Japan gave me (never been displayed before). One is above my window, the other on the wall between my desk and my bookshelves, the third is in the hallway. I put up all the art I have been given by friends over the years and some of the movie fliers I nabbed while in Japan. It has a lot more character now and balances out the white wall space around my bed.

All I need to make my life complete is enough room for one more book shelf. Alas I do not have this room (actually, if I moved my bed under the window and stacked my bookshelves on the other wall I might have enough room...I will have to measure this out).

Only went for the free lunch and book binding today. Lunch was delicious. Being an omnivore makes you really in the minority here and thus there is always more food left for seconds if it happens to have chicken in it.

The paper worked well enough for the cover. It won't stand up to much wear, not as much as canvas or fabric would. The paper did make a nicer edge and it was thick enough to not have the glue absorb right through it. A pretty nice little sketchbook. Love to make a larger, thicker one in the near future.

The Holiday Art Sale is all set up in the Commons. I'll be bringing some dollars tomorrow to support the local artists (aka buy tee shirts and that octopus hand puppet).

Deposited my first paycheck today. Huzzah! I now make in a month what I used to make in a week. Goody gumdrops!

My homework is all done for tomorrow. I feel that I am caught up and ready to get down and dirty with my finals.

I don't wanna wake up at 7am tomorrow! This week has been so easy!

pretty creepy

Eeeee!! Diana has ball jointed dolls and she let me touch them! Eeee!!!

Managed to get up and get to school for Teresa's presentation. It was okay. Nothing up my alley but I was there to be like "raawr you rock!" The paintings were cool, were they thesis grade study and work? I dunno. Maybe for any large, layered and time consuming piece a lot of research would be needed as opposed to something a little more free.

Hung around and didn't go to any more lectures. Got my tickets for my journey home to see David Sedaris this weekend. Yaay! Hear it is all washed out in Washington, but I think it should be sorted out come weekend. Train up, bus down. It will all work out, I am sure.

Got my paintings in for 2D and my portfolio in for Drawing.

Bookbinding was fun. Asked everyone the all important question of "If you were to name your kid after a place you wanted to visit, what would the name be?" Rainbow said "Bathroom", Leah said "Everywhere". Bath and Every would make decent shortened names. I'm so looking forward to the art that I do in this sketchbook.

After that I helped Diana bring her stuff home from school (she had a lot of stuff to lug and I have my wicked bike baskets). She lives around Burnside so it wasn't out of the way for me. She has a really sweet apartment. It has beautiful natural wall colors, lots of space, a bath, a view. Really sweet. We hung about, gossiped, looked at bad tattoos online, praised ourselves for being so mature, talked about art and then she whipped out her BJD's!!

Ball Jointed Dolls are really pretty (over priced and sometimes creepy) dolls from Asia (mostly Korea and Japan). Only one was finished (had its face painted) and we assembled and dressed him up. Diana was thrilled at the result as she never really liked that one before (I don't know why, he was gorgeous). The other one didn't have any clothes that fit him and the female one wasn't ready to be put together. Hopefully my visit and hanging out will encourage her to put the rest of them together and paint them. That would be marvelous.

Nice and easy ride home. Need to hang out at other peoples more often.

Tomorrow I am just doing the book binding and that is it. Need to sit down and do all the stuff that needs doing.

in a bind (that was a really bad pun)

There were rain showers all day and I had to bike in them. My wellies kept the bottom part dry, but I had two large wet patches on the thigh part of my pants. Just as soon as they were dry and I was warm and comfortable it was time to go home. Need me some rain pants. I'll make them fashionable.

My alarm went off at 7:10 and I turned it off when it went off. Then I woke up at 9:00, right when Jason's thing was supposed to start. I decided to just sleep and miss it and apologize when I saw him next. It is really nice taking a lazy start to the day on a Monday when you don't have to be anywhere in a hurry. I got to school around 12:45, in time for the free lunch. Grabbed a sandwich and sat and chatted with Jim and Matt. Said toodles around 1:15 and met with Diana who was going to the same bookbinding lecture as I. Fun!

Good thing I got there at 1:15 as that was when the bookbinding thing actually started. Sean was late and didn't get one of the official sewing things. He used a frame instead and mooched supplies so most of us only had five signature books, instead of six. The book went together pretty smoothly. I'm excited for tomorrow. More learning about binding!

After the session, Diana and I braved the rain and went to Oblation to look at paper for our sketchbook covers. They didn't have the lobster print I desired so I went with this cool aqua and silver chandelier print instead.

Diana was going to hang around for Justin Bland's thesis, which was orchestrating this Gingerblaze festival thing that she took part of. Her Marie Antoinette gingerbread sculpture is the bomb. I hung around and talked to people just long enough for it to turn dark for my return.

I watched Jan Svankmajer's Alice. I thought it was supposed to be scary but it ended up being more surreal and some of the scenes went really long. Some excellent stop motion but overall kinda "uhh, whatever."

Heroes had a pretty great little round up. Adam in the coffin, Nathan Petrelli shot..uhm. Well I guess that was it? A little lack-luster I guess. Sylar is still badass, but uhg why couldn't they have just gotten rid of Maya. Really annoying and pretty much useless. I think Nathan's shooting was more of a warning to those coming out on television about their powers and less of a killing off of his character. Nikki is probably dead, but I never really cared for her character.

Tomorrow I will defiantly get up early for Teresa's lecture. And Mia is added to the "to check out" list.

awww dang

Well. Today was not as productive as I would have hoped. I got all my painting done, so that is good. Just have to assemble it tomorrow. Didn't work on my comic outline/proposal at all. So that really...sucks. Yeah. Not so good there Trillian. That Thanksgiving break really jarred me and now I'm lacking motivation to do the things that I love. Crud.

Watched a lot of Nip/Tuck instead. Jon came by and gave me back my DVD's and comics and I lent him a couple more volumes of Transmetropolitan and Desolation Jones.

Uhg. Today was so bad. I even got up before noon!

on little Ibanez's feet

Posting late because I went out tonight. Out to a movie. The last showing. Again. Well, this time I was with a friend. Michael and I saw The Mist, which is based after a Stephen King novella. Yeah, his books don't interest me in print and their movies are equally disinteresting to me. The ending was devastating but any time they could have touched on the greater morals it just boiled down to black and white, good and evil, live or die, etc. The effects were not as quality as they could/should have been. Acting was okay. Ehh, can't say I would recommend it highly to anyone. It was fun to hang with Michael and chat afterwords at length about stuff.

5/6 of the way done with my paintings. Have several general outlines for where I could take my final comic. Watched some Amelie so I am familiar with how to write my comic (sort of want to work with the styles of character introduction that are present in that movie). Watched some of The Tick when I painted. Watched Mysterious Skin earlier on. The version I had was in Spanish so I had to figure out how to download and attach subtitles to it. Overall, the amount of effort put into getting the subtitles wasn't worth the movie. Really horrible story. As in, the subject matter. I dunno, wasn't in the mood for something that dark. Joseph Gordon-Levitt was of course, amazing but man that movie was heavy. Kind of wish the alien abductions hadn't turned out to just be the mind covering up for emotional trauma.

I think I wasted a lot of time today but by tomorrow I should have my paintings all done and arranged and my official outline and proposal finished. So maybe not so much waste. I'm on track. The comic is my major final project, then comes the website (which is more the process of gathering things than producing), then a collage which will come after the painting. I think that is it. Oh and the piece of architecture write up. What happened to my list of things to do. Dang.

I hear it is snowing in Washington. Ha ha, it is just really cold down here!