i may have developed a dependancy...

for every due date in english this semester, i've gone out and got red bull to keep me up the night before so i can actually meet that due date. although, the last 2 times i've gotten a 4-pack and stayed up all night. this time i only got 2, and i already drank one last night, and i won't be staying up all night. i'm so incredibly glad i don't have to have the entire paper for tomorrow. i can just write as much as i can and then stop. and finish it later. like, the day before it's due. i really hope i don't actually do that though...

i've gotten part way through the intro so far. go funnels! it's gone from "From almost the moment we are born until we die, our brains are constantly changing and developing" to "Once the process becomes second-nature, the brain can be free to concentrate on what is being said, rather than how to transfer thought to paper." still haven't gotten to my thesis yet... all in good time, i suppose. since this needs to be 13+ pages, i can take my sweet time getting there.

i'm actually rather happy with how the point-sentence outline turned out. real sentences and everything!

in other news, tomorrow i need to do some wheel practice to make up for almost a week of nothing, and figure out a better reason behind doing silk paintings of maritime signal flags besides "hey, this is cool!"

also, instead of going home this weekend for carver celebration, i'm letting heather take my ticket and going to paw-paw's to learn to weld instead. i'm still kinda mixed about it, but i feel kinda bad because i haven't seen him in probably close to 2 years. and i really do want to learn to weld.

oh, also! i planned out my course load for the next 2 years. i have a feeling i'll be stuck with 17 credits again in the fall, but only 14 by spring 2012. which hopefully will be awesome. i need to pick an english class and a random elective for the fall though. registration is next week.

saturday was fun. went to belle isle - finally! - with emily and 2 of her roommates. fun times mostly... a kid slipped into the river and went down some of the rapids before a couple guys fished him out. emily helped pull him out. it was pretty scary.

and then when we went to the intercultural festival, she embellished the story with more daring exploits, including delivering a baby, fighting off a polar bear, shooting a nazi, and riding unicorns. i wish my life was that exciting...

i don't think i've talked about a hetalia fic in a while. really there's nothing new... though i occasionally feel the need to rant about canada and french. so i will. because he doesn't speak french-french, he speaks french-canadian. which is completely different. so it always bothers me when some author has him speaking french-french, especially swear words. because it's really easy to find quebecois swear words. they're on wikipedia, for fuck's sake! and that's one of the reasons i so enjoy reading everything orangepencils writes. she lives in quebec and speaks quebecois and all her canadians speak quebecois, not metropolitan french. especially quebec. he only speaks quebecois. [well, not only, he just doesn't like english.] the only reason i remembered this today was because folie a plusiers has been updated recently [finally!] and canada speaks french-french. and suddenly i realized how much it bothered me, the use of french swears, rather than quebecois ones. but i'm worried the author would take it the wrong way if i suggested using quebecois, especially swears, rather than french. i wish i could find a for-real online translator... oh well...

unrelated: it's not even 8, and i'm almost finished that red bull. not cool.

rant-related. and because it's sexy.

music fiend!

lately i've been more actively thinking about my attempts at making an fst. i've been sorta collecting random songs from "my music" [as in, not from any other fst's] for the past month or two, and i've noticed a slight pattern to them: they're either indie or classic rock.

so my new goal is to create 2, with those as guidelines. i've got a fair list going in total:

"Skipping Hearts" MR RUSSIA [belarus]
"Stuck on Repeat" Little Boots [pre-revolution]
"shoulders" 13ghosts [canada]
"Billy Brown" Mika [england, due to a fic...]
"One Week" Barenaked Ladies [2 nations fighting]
"The Boys Are Too Refined" the Hush Sound [girls]
"Wine In the Afternoon" Franz Ferdinand [drunk arthur]
"Lumberjack Song" Monty Python [canada]
"Where Did Our Love Go" the supremes [post-revolution]
"Backstabber" dresden dolls [angry!revolutionary!england]
"Womanizer" franz ferdinand [france]
"Let Me In" siriusmo [belarus]
"Le Disko" Shiny Toy Guns [all the girls]
"Magazine" millimeters mercury [america]
"fortunate Son" CCR [america]
"Brand New Day" NPH [cold war america]
"We Didn't Start the Fire" Billy Joel [everyone]
"Angel of Mercy" Shy Child [everyone]
"When I Was a Boy" The How [colonial!america]
"Ballroom Blitz" Sweet [meetings]
"Legend of Zelda Theme" System of a Down [america]
"Changes (Borderline Remix)" Tahiti 80 [prussia]
"Fashion" Rogue Traders [poland]
"Filthy/Gorgeous" Scissor Sisters [poland]
"Farm Land" The Never [austria & hungary]
"Guitar vs Piano" Gokusan [prussia & austria]
"Let's Go To The Mall" Robin Sparkles [temporarily-canadian-poland]
"Letter From God to Man" Dan Le Sac vs Scroobius Pip [everyone sorta]

i have a feeling the indie one is going to work out better [and faster] so i started actively looking for songs by little-known artists. which reminded me that i should really check out 3hive again...

as far as the indie one goes i've got:

"Skipping Hearts" MR RUSSIA [belarus]
"Stuck on Repeat" Little Boots [pre-revolution]
"shoulders" 13ghosts [canada]
"The Boys Are Too Refined" the Hush Sound [girls]
"Wine In the Afternoon" Franz Ferdinand [drunk arthur]
"Womanizer" franz ferdinand [france]
"Let Me In" siriusmo [belarus]
"Le Disko" Shiny Toy Guns [all the girls]
"Magazine" millimeters mercury [america]
"Brand New Day" NPH [cold war america]
"Angel of Mercy" Shy Child [everyone]
"When I Was a Boy" The How [colonial!america]
"Changes (Borderline Remix)" Tahiti 80 [prussia]
"Fashion" Rogue Traders [poland]
"Farm Land" The Never [austria & hungary]
"Guitar vs Piano" Gokusan [prussia & austria]
"Let's Go To The Mall" Robin Sparkles [temporarily-canadian-poland]
"Letter From God to Man" Dan Le Sac vs Scroobius Pip [everyone sorta]

with "Legend of Zelda Theme" System of a Down [america] as a bonus.

i'm still determined to find at least one t&s song that fits somewhere. i can't use "come on" because i found that one in a liet/pol one. but i can't figure out how to make the song i really want to work ["feel you in my bones"].

i decided that for a cover i was going to futz with a photo i had. so i surfed my belle isle album for things that would be ambiguous and clever and 'indie' and edited them in picnik.



9 so far. multiples of some. once i figure out the specific songs and how to zip/rar the folder up and such, i can title it and add the title to one of the images.

in other news, yasha turned 20 today. scary. he was going to celebrate at bourbon street, and something about me needing a dress and getting me hooked up with some chick... idk. but anyway, that fell through and instead he's having a get together tomorrow afternoon at his house. i think that's much better, especially considering my recent revelation.

thing is, christian is going to be there.

and i haven't seen or talked to him since we broke up in august.

yasha says he says he's fine with it, and i hope so. i know i'm going to be awkward for a bit because i just am. but i really do want him to be okay with it, because i still feel bad about the whole thing. mainly because of my recent revelation. i finally figured out why specifically i was uncomfortable with it, aside from him being in love with me and me not. well, the two are connected.

so yeah, i'm nervous about it. i want it to work out. i don't want to ruin yasha's party with our issues. i'm hoping i get there before he does, or at least that we don't get there at the same time...

today was my last day of work. it was a pretty good day, considering it was also payday. yayy! my before-tax total was $666, which i laughed at, but i got $615 out of it - even with my exemptions. stupid medicare and social security... but in addition to that i ended up winning My Oh My and a $25 gift card. My Oh My is basically all the department heads getting together and deciding which employee was the most involved and helpful and all around best for the week. i'm slightly surprised i won, but not really. i wasn't even aware of how the winner was picked until mom told me. i know ellie and dan had been very glad i was there. i really helped wellness get things straightened and able to hire a 'real' employee. i did the grunt stocking work to the regular people could focus on the customers and the busy work. it was hard - my back was not very forgiving - but it worked out well.

and i added to my repertoire of skills at MOMs.

i spent my $25 on some omega-dha pills to help with my add, a delicious chocolate protein drink [mmm odwalla] and an amazing raspberry blood orange. god, that's my new favorite fruit. it wasn't as sour as oranges [and especially blood oranges] are, and you could taste the raspberry right at the end. amazing. i might have to get mom to stop by saturday when we go back to rva so i can grab 6 and bring them back with me. i know ces wants to try one.

anyway, i think i'm going to go to bed now.

oh! i just remembered an awesome thing i discovered about vista yesterday. when i have 4 firfox windows and 8 apps open in my bottom bar and vista compresses the 4 firefox tabs into one, i can right click it and tell it to display all stacked. and then i've got all 4 in quadrants in my screen. they're tiny, but that's okay. when i need to access one i just fullsize it.

and i found the most amazing fill ever on the kink meme. the prompt was something about canada being killed by a serial killer and how being a nation plays into that and the awesome twin-ness between him and america. and at first i thought it was going to be dark and depressing - actually it totally is for the first 20 or so parts - and i didn't want to read it. but then i did and it's fantastic. it really is. even though it is depressing and crazy and it just doesn't matter. it's over here.

okay, bed for real now.

week of hellll

soooo portfolios are due monday. i'm pretty much done, i just need to fix my mp3, which is proving rather problematic. stupid thing wants to save to the computer when you click on the blackboard link....

anyway, everyone else's stress is making me a bit stressed, plus i've got a paper due friday in fi that i haven't even written. correction: i've written the opening paragraph. it's a then-now paper, written about an issue that is important today and comparing it to how important it was in the past and getting to the 'why' of the issue. i'm doing drug use and how the american government deals with it. a pretty interesting subject, but one i'm having trouble writing... probably because i have to do a lot of research.

but really, this is the worst week for a paper to be due - at least for afo students. there is virtually no time for any of us to spend on non-art things, since we've all decided that that takes precident over academics. i mean, this is our future here at college! i'd say it's pretty important.

but what makes it hard for me is 2 things: meds, and a trip home. i am completely out of meds, having used my last one last tuesday with the intent of writing this paper but instead nearly finishing my portfolio. and now i can't get more here, cuz the test i took says i don't have ADD, but the notes from dr zeiger say i do. inconclusive, and so they can't do anything for me. fucking a...

on top of that i have to go home tonight for an eye appointment in the morning. i'll be spending around 9 hours total on a bus and with no internet, making it hard to write that paper. and when i get back tomorrow i have to go almost immediately to drawing, and then the paper is due. i'm gonna have to knock it out when i'm home tonight, and finish it thursday night. this is not gonna be fun...

in other news, i went swimming yesterday! anna found the hours of the franklin street gym pool, and she and i and jenny went there for about 20 minutes yesterday before drawing. it was pretty cool, i guess. it was just for laps, and the swim club was practicing, and it was dark and grungy and stuff. but it was still nice to be able to do that. i ended up rushing through a shower when we got back to the dorm - i just washed my hair - and as a result managed to get shampoo in my eye in addition to the chlorine already there. not fun. it was the same eye that had the infection, too. and it still stings a bit.

oh, i didn't talk about my infection. after the flogging molly concert, we had to rush home cuz i had an eye appointment. i figured it was just the usual "how bad are your eyes" thing, but the doc got distracted by a more pressing issue: my red and unhappy left eye. turns out i had an inflamed cornea from wearing my contacts longer than they were really good for on tired eyes. i've been banned from contacts until i can go back - which was supposed to be last friday, but had to be rescheduled for tomorrow - and i got steroid eye drops to knock the thing out as fast as possible. my eye is all better now, but i'm still waiting till i go back to really start wearing my contacts again. i cheated and wore my last pair saturday for the belle isle trip, but it was only for, like, 8 hours.

alsooooo, yasha came down to visit last weekend! exciting! it was a bit strange, having 3 people in our room, but not too bad. he met ben, and we got bubble tea, and did fun things. we spent saturday at belle isle - it was practically a floor outing: me, cesley, anna, jenny, nicole, susan, emily, kelsey, laura, taylor, liz, ben, molly, and yasha. soooo exciting! yasha and molly really bonded, it was quite adorable. jenny found a toad that had been frozen, so we buried him and mourned. nicole delivered a very touching eulogy for poor toadie. and then on sunday yasha snuck out of the parking garage and didn't pay. exciting!

sunday night there was a fire on the 7th floor. some guy's phone charger started smoking and stuff. according to bed it smelled like burnt plastic for a while. and of course, this happened at 3am. i was sleeping. at first i didn't know what was going on, and i never really woke up. as soon as my heart stopped racing from climbing those dumb stairs, i was dead asleep.

i'm making a giant book for space. it'll be an open book, 4' x 2.5', with the story of 'the snow queen' coming out of it. i'm making a giant castle for in the middle out of slotted wood and hot glue and glitter, with various scenes arrayed around it. it'll be awesome! i get to buy a mirror and smash it!

okay, i think that's all the news and updates. i'm sleeping in bowe street next sunday night so i can turn my portfolio in nice and early. it'll be awesome!!

walking to belle isle
[courtesy of laura]