"Because I think you could do a lot of good for us here. Or at least not be in dead last."

Just a couple quick things about today, because it's really, really late and I'm tired!

The JJ Watt Foundation (if you don't remember who JJ Watt is, look here) had kind of a mini-launch today. The "Official Twitter" was opened and the logo was released. Super exciting! I think you should all follow both @JJWatt and @JJWFoundation on Twitter and buy the wristbands when they go up for sale next week! I know I will!

I ate an apple today. In case you don't know me that well, I'm allergic to apples. They make my mouth itch and sometimes I get these little hive things inside my mouth when I eat them. But I bought a green apple for drawing today and I just couldn't bear to throw it away so I ate it instead. It was yummy. I had my "emergency water" to flush my mouth out when it started itching. But that time never came. I ate an apple and nothing happened. I think I'll try again tomorrow.

I worked on both my drawing and design projects until about 1:15AM and I nearly completed both. Which is super exciting and relieving because now I can put most of my focus into my portfolio review and getting ready for that. But that's not why I told you I was working until 1:15AM. I told you that because when I finally walked into the outdoors at around 1:30AM, there was a light dusting of snow on the ground. I almost cried. Snow. On the ground. It's like pants on the ground but much less... Awesome. It sucks. I was sad. It ruined my good night.

I got my quote today from Twitter. It's a post by someone I don't actually know, but it was retweeted by someone I follow. The original author is Rob Delaney who I guess is Canadian and a writer, so that makes him cool, I guess. Here's what he has to say (it's an LOL, just so you know!):

"Atheism is so hot right now I'd say we're a few months away from hipsters joining the priesthood en masse."

"Freshman don't have to pay quarters!"

 Ok, so I think I might have overreacted yesterday. It was probably a combination of sleep deprivation and being extremely busy but even though I have a million things happening, I'm not as stressed anymore, promise.

So today was nice because my 10:30 class was canceled and I didn't have class until 1:30. So I slept in, which was Ok because I stayed up super late to work on my sculpture (which I actually took a huge chunk out of, and then broke. But I'm going to glue it back together tomorrow and everything's gonna be OK!). So I slept until about 10, got out of bed around 10:30 and then started my day.


I had a nice talk with my soccer coach today, whenever I go in there we always end up talking for a really long time about a lot of stuff I didn't intend to talk about and then I forget to tell him what I went there to tell him. But basically we decided a few things: we had a good weekend, we're going to Trampoline World as a team next year and even though sometimes I regret not going to college somewhere warmer, I am very happy here. I can say that now because the snow is going away. If we had had that same conversation a few weeks ago, I would probably have left and hopped on the next flight to California. But it's better now!

Speaking of melting snow, we had track practice outside today. It was good because we got to throw for real hammer (not that it was good for me, it's impossible, I swear) and it was fun to watch some of my teammates throw really, really far into banks of snow. It was funnier to watch them try to shag because it was snowy and icy and people fell a lot. I think I'm going to call it "Arctic Hammer" and try and get it in the Olympics.

After that, I ate really quick then went cycling. It felt good to cycle again, because I hadn't done it since last semester and it reminded me how much I love it. I cranked the resistance up and went a total of 15 miles! It's gonna hurt tomorrow but be totally worth it. Then I did AbRibberX, which was good and bad because I also did it yesterday so it hurt a lot more today. But I'm going to have RippedX Abs for the summer so... Yeah.

I took about an hour for myself then, to relax and get my head cleared before starting the little amount of homework I planned for myself tonight. I have to get up early-ish tomorrow so I'll save the lots of work for tomorrow because I can sleep in on Thursday again. I made this to help me cope with my busy life, I recommend you do the same. It feels good to write everything down and then give yourself the opportunity to demolish it when you complete it. Like burning all your homework and paper from a year of school during the summer:

Do it. I promise, you won't regret it.

Then I did my homework, which was pretty easy. I discovered an artist named Nathan Sawaya who makes sculptures out of Legos. Like real Legos. The little kids toy, Legos. And they're not replicas of buildings or spaceships, they're real sculptures. This was my favorite one and the one I did my assignment on:

Called "Yellow" it's make completely out of the same yellow brick over and over again. He has a lot of other cool stuff, I encourage you to take some time to look at it!

So that's all I have for you today! I tried to be positive and give you a suggestion for making your busy life more enjoyable and I'll try to do the same again tomorrow! I have to shower now and then I get to go to bed. I'll finish with a quote I heard from my track coach (he always writes the best quotes on the board during our meetings) by Zig Ziglar:

"The harder you are on yourself, the easier life will be on you."

"You couldn't make this sh*t up!"

My weekend started with a late night Sketch Comedy rehearsal and ended with a late night return to campus, followed by a really, really long stressful day. Here's the deets.

Thursday, as much as I can remember, was pretty boring. The only real excitement came Thursday night when we finally had our first (and only) rehearsal for the Sketch Comedy show on Friday. It lasted from about 10:30PM to shortly after 1AM and was really, really funny.

Friday was awesome. I got to sleep in (gasp!), picked up some video equipment, went to soccer practice (at that same awesome "turf" field) then went straight to the Sketch Comedy show. The show went really, really well and for being my first time ever performing, I was surprisingly not nervous. And I liked it. People actually laughed at me. Which normally I would be offended by, but since they were supposed to, I was pleasantly surprised. So hopefully we get to do another show before the end of the year.  And my friends were awesome and came with signs and stuff, so the other people in the Troupe were like, "Your friends are such jocks, they brought you signs." But I appreciated them, so that's all that counts.

We walked to Tastee Freeze after that, which was nice. It hasn't been really cold here lately (is it finally spring???) so it was nice to walk at night. We saw these two things on the way there:

This is a very, very deep puddle located at the crosswalk that is necessary for all students to walk across multiple times a day. So it kind of sucks that it's there. And my friend got really excited because she was wearing rain boots so she jumped in. Then she got water in the top of her boots and decided she thinks there's a hole in her boots. Excellent choice.

Just made us all laugh!

After ice cream, we made some crafts and ate some (more) food at Dragons After Dark, then hung out some more, then went to bed. It was a good Friday.

Saturday was also very good. I shot footage for my next video production project, which is an action sequence. I chose to do a pants-off dance-off. It's not as racy as it sounds and I think I actually got some good footage, but we'll see once I start editing. And to top it off we went to Spicy Pie and used some COUPONS and saved a whole bunch of money and ate a whole bunch of pizza.

We left for our soccer tournament around 3PM. We rode in vans (our van won by like 30 minutes) and had time to watch the first half of the USA-Argentina men's soccer game before we left. Talk about some good soccer! It was exciting to see Messi completely shred the US defense. But it ended in a tie, so I guess USA picked it up a little in the second half.

We ate dinner at Macaroni Grille and the highlight of the dinner was probably the tables. They were covered in paper so we got to color all over them. Unfortunately our table only had two brown crayons so the creativity was limited but we got some interesting things on there:

"It's [coach] on an island, with a mean crab clamping his leg standing next to a coconut tree with a whale mermaid swimming in the water saying 'swim to me, I can help you." Courtesy JW.

Not exactly sure what all this is, but obviously there's some sort of conflict going on here. Courtesy AG and LC.

It started out as a horse, then a horse with a tree, then our coach said, add a noose. And I didn't get a picture but the artist also added in a skeleton hanging from a noose. It was a little cynical for a tablecloth but hey, it's pretty impressive for a brown crayon.

And the same girl drew a caricature of another girl on our team.

And it turned out very good! Courtest SL

And that night in the hotel was pretty much nothing like you could expect. I could tell you everything that happened (I'll tell you some of it) but you probably wouldn't believe it. We started a contest where you have to time how long you pee for. Like, you bring your phone into the bathroom and time your pee with the stopwatch. I drank five glasses of water at dinner and I peed for about 14.8 seconds and I think that was the longest from the trip. So I'm really good at... Peeing... We tried to fit our whole team in the elevator. Which subsequently broke. We were stuck for a few minutes while it tried to lift us, but after we kept hitting the alarm I think it gave up and opened the door on the first floor for us. It was weird that we tried to do that because the first thing I noticed when I walked in was this sign:

It's almost like... We don't pay attention...

So after that scare a lot more stuff happened but it ended up with us not being able to sleep and me staying up until about 1:30AM rolling around in the bed because I couldn't sleep.

Sunday = Game day. It was very exciting to get to play soccer again. We played three short games against Viterbo, MTA and St. Croix and went 1-2. But we scored a whole bunch of goals and worked on a few defensive tactics we'd been practicing. It was nice, tiring and now my legs are so raw it hurt to shower. But that's a good thing.

We were supposed to be back around 10:00PM, but we got held up a little by a tiny medical emergency (everyone is OK now, promise!) and didn't get back until around midnight (and I was in the fast van. Roommate didn't get back until like, 12:30).

So of course it would happen that the night before Monday I don't get enough sleep. Today was such a long day. And it only made it worse to go through both art classes and listen to Prof and Prof talk about all the projects due next week. Basically my next two weeks are total hell. I have huge drawing and design projects both due on Monday. I have a Video Production project due Tuesday. And then I have my freshman portfolio review on Wednesday. So I guess what I'm trying to say is I'm going to die. So if I don't update this, sorry, I'm only trying to maintain my sanity.

I sat restlessly through Econ just looking at my schedule (then he gave us homework, too... guess what I'll probably forget to do), and I wanted to cry a few times, but I didn't because I'm not that stressed out (Yet. Just wait though I'll probably be that girl who just starts crying in the middle of class for no apearent reason and then ends up not doing anything because I'm crying. Just kidding. Gotta keep my head up!) and I later told my roommate, "Don't cry because your life is a total sh*tstorm, be happy because you are alive!" So I'll have to live by that mantra for a while until this is all over!

This picture made me pretty happy:

Ok, just kidding, it really scares me a little, actually. Usually I wouldn't diss on Clay Matthews like that (I mean, he could kill me) but that is a scary picture. Both because of his face/arms and because it looks like he's bald. But at the same time, it's kind of hot, right? :\

So that was my super long weekend. Sorry it all got backed up. But like I mentioned, it's that time of year when I probably won't get on here everyday, but I'll still try to share things with you. At least a little everyday. I'll try. Really hard. So hang in there, like me and let's make it through these next few weeks together and with smiles on our faces!!!

I'll end with this little story thing I found on Facebook that made me smile:

"When I was little, I was always told that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote "happy." They told me I didn't understand the assignment. I told them they didn't understand life."

"I could just stand in your room and sing that song and I'd be happy!"

So let me tell you, I have never been so excited with anticipation before. I woke up at exactly 8:00AM and for the 17 seconds it took me to turn my alarm off, find my phone and check the text messages, my heart was probably beating 300 times a minute. And, it was totally worth it because when I checked my phone, I learned that campus was closed until noon. So I went back to bed, but not before I read the message like, 7 more times just to make sure. So I only had one class today, and it wasn't until 2.

We had a real soccer practice on turf today. We were really excited about it until we learned that the "turf field" was really just a concrete floor with turf-colored carpet on it. Ouchie knees right now, but at least I got to do some real goalkeeping!

During drawing I listened to a good mix of music, including The Flight of the Conchords, Florence + The Machine, 500 Days of Summer and Basshunter. Interesting playlist, to say the least.

Besides all of that, nothing really happened. But I did learn an interesting fact. And it's true because I looked it up and verified. The less you sleep, the more you dream. True. Because when you miss REM sleep, your body has to make it up, so when you keep missing it, you go into REM faster and for longer periods of time. That's probably why I have such vivid dreams sometimes. Just an interesting fact for you!

I feel obliged to share something visual with you, so I'll put some funny Internet pictures up for you to LOL at:

I don't know what to write here, but this made me laugh really hard, for some reason.

I'm going to try this sometime, now that I know the process.

Ha ha, Zune, ha ha.

Enough said?

I'll end with the other quote I found from the Smithsonian's "Historically Hardcore" campaign!

"Bret Michaels got with every chick on the love bus. Genghis Khan got with so many chicks there's a .5% you're related to him."

"Ice pellets are like nature's Dippin' Dots!"

Ok, Moorhead, thank you for a wonderful beginning of spring. I looked it up, spring officially started on March 20th. And right now, the outdoors is blizzarding. Earlier today, we thought there was a thunderstorm because we heard thunder and saw flashes and we ran outside to jump in the rain and got bombarded by ice pellets instead. It was terrible. And now it's straight up snowing buckets and the wind is blowing so hard the icicles on the light post outside my window are actually frozen crooked. I'm too upset to share a picture of the current conditions but here's what the ground looked like maybe 20 minutes into the ice pellets (they happened for maybe 2 hours total):

I had to take the picture while I was walking because it hurts to get hit by these things and stopping to take a picture would only have increased my pain. But basically, it's just like hail except ice pellets.

The only good thing that could come out of all of this is having no class tomorrow. However, as of 1AM, we still have class tomorrow. They're predicting a total of 10 inches now and 6 of them falling between tonight and 6AM tomorrow morning. Those sound like conditions enough to cancel class. But I guess now all I can hope for is to wake up to a nice text message canceling them.

Since I so wanted class to be canceled, I waited as long as possible to finish making my platonic solids. That was about 10PM. I was in our little study room, alone, until midnight. And I made a whole bunch of failure-cubes and one good one. Here's what I accomplished:

This is my good truncated cube laughing at all of my failure cubes. I tried twice to make a "twisted cube" but they were both terrible. I tried once to make a truncated cube and failed miserably. And I tried to draw just a normal cube and couldn't for some reason get it to work so the whole sheet was scrapped (and maybe I dragged the whole thing through glue, too).

But this is my good, near-perfect, truncated cube. I should have decorated it but I was looking whatever remained of my sanity when I finally got it done so it's just going to be light purple. Which is a nice color so no one should complain.

I practiced the hammer in track today. First time ever. Let me tell you, if I don't kill someone doing this, anything is possible. And my back hurts real bad. But my coach says I have to throw it even if I don't want to, and he says it's going to piss me off for the whole season, but that I have to do it. It's almost like track isn't a democracy, and our coach is the dictator. Hmm...

We spent a large portion of our night wasting time. When the sky turned purple (yeah, like really, really purple) we went to the 12th floor of our dorm building, which is like a pent house, a round room of windows, and hung out and watched the terrible weather. We might have parkoured around the edges as well, and climbed some of the beams. I got about 7 CDs worth of music from my friend. We watched this little clip about 30 times. And after watching a whole episode of Tosh.0 we decided to face the facts and get started on homework. And now I need to face the facts and go to bed, because it looks like we're going to class tomorrow. I'll let you know how that turns out.

So that was a very A.D.D. post for you. I guess I'm just trying to waste time until I get the text message declaring a cancellation of classes for tomorrow. But all good things must come to an end and I need to end this. So I'll finish with a quote I found on the same website as the llama clip. It was on an advertisment for the Smithsonian "Historically Hardcore" campaign and is kind of inspiring and funny.

"50 Cent got shot and still whines about it on stage. Teddy Roosevelt got shot mid-speech and didn't leave the stage until he was finished."

(PS It sounds like there is a constant rumble of thunder outside. It might just be a train, but I think it's the weather and it means we should not have class tomorrow.)

"I want to swim and tan over the summer. Swim and tan. While I'm tanning do you want to swim or tan? If I tan can I swim? What if I want to swim and tan. I want to tan. Want to swim with me this summer? No I want to swim and tan. But I can swim while I'm tanning. But I want to swim...."

Mondays, Mondays, Mondays. This was the best Monday yet because my night class got cancelled! So I only had six hours of class compared to the normal 8.5. Awesome.

So anyway, getting back into the swing of things was hard. Design was first on my schedule and let me tell you, nothing beats waking up to inhaling a huge cloud of toxic plaster dust. Here's what I accomplished:

This is a Plastiline figure of what my plaster project is "going to look like." If I have to take a guess right now, I'm going to say that it doesn't end up looking like that. But we'll see.

And here's the giant block of plaster I have to carve it out of. I called on my inner Michaelangelo to help and guide me, and this is what he helped me accomplish. What great guidance. NOT EXCITED to try and do more. Scared out of my mind, actually.

We went back to work on our really, really big abstraction pieces in Drawing as well, but I only got mine drawn out and since it's abstract (and pencil on dark green paper) if I had taken a picture of it, you probably wouldn't have seen anything. So I'll wait until I get some pastel in there to show you. But it's probably going to be bad, because oil pastels are the medium of the devil.

As I was eating dinner, I got a text from a friend very excitedly telling me that my night class was canceled. This was awesome. So instead of going to Economics, I went back to my room, worked out for a solid two hours and then worked on lots and lots of homework. I wrote a film history paper and then cranked out two near perfect platonic solids:

Everyone, meet Truncated Cube. He is nearly perfect, just a little off on the part resting on the table. But since you can't see that part, I think it'll be OK. I'm scared to decorate this one at all because it was such a pain to figure out, and I don't have the time to do it again if I ruin it. So I think this is a finished project!

Now everyone, meet Ke$ha Octohedron. Ke$ha Octohedron is perfect! And covered in glitter! I made a really big mess in our study lounge but since no one else was in there (it was midnight) I decided it was OK and made sure to clean up after myself. But then I kind of crushed it bringing it back to my room. I'll have to see how it dries but hopefully it's not ruined because that was A LOT of glitter...

Besides all of that, the only other exciting thing I did today was wear my new running shoes to the gym. I got a few "nice shoes" from random people and they are really comfortable. Good buy. And I guess Moorhead is officially under a "winter storm warning." It is supposed to start raining anytime now and that rain is going to turn into freezing rain, which will turn into sleet which will turn into snow which is going to ruin my tomorrow. They're predicting anywhere from 8-16 inches. Seriously? GO AWAY, SNOW, NO ONE WANTS YOU.


In honor of both my need for a good laugh and March Madness, I found a joke appropriate for both to end this post with:

"The psychology instructor had just finished a lecture on mental health and was giving an oral test.

Speaking specifically about manic depression, she asked, "How would you diagnose a patient who walks back and forth screaming at the top of his lungs one minute, then sits in a chair weeping uncontrollably the next?"

A young man in the rear raised his hand and answered, "A basketball coach?""

RECAP: Spring Break 2011

Sorry for the long delay in this post. I know you've all been dying to know what I've done over my break. Well, let me give you a quick rundown:

First of all, and maybe most importantly, Japan happened. We all know what happened over there (if you don't, do you live under a rock?) and I think we should all keep them in our thoughts and prayers!

I'm working on my fourth bag of Sweet Tart jelly beans. Don't fall into the same trap I did and try them. You'll never want to stop, and you'll completely lose your appetite for anything else. But really, they're the best thing since... Oreos, I think.


I learned about this video on Friday. Just watch it and then never tell me you don't know what order the days of the week go. And if you ever ask me what day of the week it is I will tell you that it is "FRIDAY FRIDAY" and that I'm going to have "FUN FUN FUN FUN." And even though you will questions whether or not this is a serious project, from beginning to end, I have to admire Rebecca Black for being such a trooper and going on national television and sticking up for herself and even poking fun at herself on her Twitter. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, it's this:

I finished two of my three crafting endeavors. I couldn't find a mirror to make the mirror with, so I decided to wait until summer and maybe try to find a garage sale mirror somewhere! But I made the lamp and it turned out really sweet, and now it's just sitting in my house, at home, doing nothing. Maybe Mom will plug it in somewhere and turn it on when she needs to be reminded of me. Or maybe it'll just sit in the middle of the dining room table until I come home. Who knows. But this is what it ended up looking like:

Very cool looking. And that is a $7 light bulb in there, so luckily it is bright enough to shine a decent amount of light through the negatives. Plus you can see all my amateur photography!

I got two new pairs of shoes. Some fresh Nike kicks (in off white and green!) and my Gel Noosa Tri 6's. Awesome. I haven't gotten to run in them though because I got them on Saturday but I am super pumped to give them a real go this week.

I watched four awesome movies over break:

I saw this in the theaters. It was bad because I was super distracted the whole time and kept wanting to just get up and do something, so I had to keep telling myself that "I'm in a movie theater, sit down and watch this movie." And I tried. And it was a really good movie. Animation was super, music was SUPER SUPER (I downloaded the soundtrack. Just the music makes me want to go to the desert.) and the voices were SUPER SUPER SUPER. I would have loved this, had I not been so darn ADD that night and I'm excited for it to come out on DVD so I can watch it again!

This is a documentary basically designed to counter everything in "Supersize Me." And it did its job. The guy who makes this is funnier that Supersize Me Man, he talks to more real doctors than Supersize Me Man and he goes on a more realistic diet that Supersize Me Man. Basically, if you're too lazy to watch this (but really, if you want a really good movie about dieting and food, you should definitely watch this) all it comes down to is: Avoid carbs as often as you can. Don't go out of your way to avoid saturated fats, they are actually good for you. Don't eat trans fats. And last, it's better to be obese but active than to be a healthy weight and not exercising. But really. Just watch it, if anything, it's a really funny documentary.

It's a mockumentary about frozen food enthusiasts who participate in other activities such as competitive freeway sports (I Spy and the alphabet game), christian punk rock, dressing up as a "klown" and "kutting" kids hair and working at an abstinence center. Beginning is funny, middle is funny, end is funny. Makes you feel happy to have real hobbies and interests.

If you've seen the previews for the upcoming Russell Brand movie "Arthur," you may be surprised to learn that that movie is a remake. I was. And I watched the original and I have to say, it'll be hard to top. The original was nominated for and won some Oscars (much deserved) which is almost unheard of for comedies. I thought for a while after watching this that there was no way anyone could top it. However, after analyzing the situation, I came to the conclusion that if anyone were to give a better performance in the role of Arthur, it would be Russell Brand. So I'm interested to see the new one and compare the two!

To cap off a great weekend, some friends and I went to SkyZone. SkyZone is like a hyper-active-super-athletic-awesome-place-to-do-things-that-might-kill-you-in-the-real-world playground. Basically, it's a bunch of courts that have trampolines as floors, and walls. They have dodgeball, on trampolines. They have foam pits, on trampolines. And they just have big areas, full of trampolines. Jumping on the ground will never be the same. If you don't believe me, watch this video, WE DID THIS (but it wasn't nearly as cool because there were abot 2o38472834623 more people playing than that, but still, WE DID THAT):

PAT NESHEK GOT PICKED UP BY THE PADRES. THIS IS POSSIBLY THE GREATEST TRAGEDY MINNESOTA HAS EXPERIENCED SINCE THE BRIDGE COLLAPSED. Anyone want to start a petition to get him back? Or move to San Diego with me?

So besides all of this, I just did a lot of running, did AbRipperX a few times (highly recommend it, my abs hurt real bad) and slept. I even did homework and applied for jobs for the summer. And last night, I fell asleep to a thunderstorm. Spring is coming, and Moorhead is under a winter weather advisory this week. Heavy snowfall predicted on Tuesday. MY LIFE IS AWESOME, RIGHT?

I'll end with a little quote which I think describes how I feel right now. From the movie Rango:

"The animals here have had millions of years to adapt to the harsh conditions. But the lizard? He is going to die." (I'm the lizard.)

"Name the creature with the most legs, ever." "A cat."

Ahh, Spring Break. Blogging from home. Being on the Internet without a cord. Not hitting my head on my ceiling when I wake up. Not having to risk my life getting in and out of bed everyday. Showering without shoes. Driving. Shopping. Eating Goldfish and Oreos. The simple things. Spring Break.

Spring break really started on Thursday night when I finished up some homework and packed. I went to bed early because of 6AM soccer on Friday. But I did get a Film Studies midterm done (I scored a 9.4583333333333/10...) and finished up some notetaking:

Translation: French Impressionism was an early cinematic film movement in France. Stemming from the Impressionist painting movement, trademarks of French Impressionism include expressive cinematography, lavish sets and exaggerated acting styles.

6AM soccer was enjoyable. It felt good to put in some hard work before a long break (but I'm gonna try and get out to run everyday here because it's warmer and I have time!) and our coach was nice enough to put breakfast in the locker room for when we were done. He also put flowers in the locker room but doubted our judgment (whether because it was 6AM in the morning or because we're known to eat just about anything, I don't know) and it pretty much made our morning:

Shoot. That water just looked really good...

Enough said.

Drive home was enjoyable, we listened to music and I sat in the back by myself and danced pretty much the whole way home. I love the cities and I tried to get a good picture of the skyline of St. Paul but the dirty windshield combined with my poor timing caught only these two pictures:

Attempt at St. Paul. Nasty windshield.

Attempt at Cathedral. Dirty windshield and freeway sign.

I spent the rest of that day at home, hanging out with my family. It was good fun. I went to Target with mom and discovered the best jelly beans ever. Sweet Tart jelly beans. SO GOOD. I also saw these and got a little sad inside:

WHAT ARE THOSE? WHY ARE THEY LOOKING AT ME? What little kid would want to wake up on Easter morning and find those? Not me. CREEPY.

Today was a good day too. I slept in, which was awesome, went to lunch with my dad, then tried to shopping. I drove to the Mall of America only to find the exits backing the freeway up about half a mile. I kept driving and turned around and tried the Burnsville Center. I got a parking spot (nearly across the street) and walked around for a while but was unmotivated to try jeans on (I really, really need new jeans. I am down to one wearable pair because I wore holes or ruined with art supplies the other pairs) and decided to go to JoAnn's instead. I got some supplies and $20 and about an hour later, I knocked off my first Spring Break project:

I just need to find a way to mount it so I can make it say "Welcome to the" and hang it in our apartment next year. Stoked to decorate more!

Watching Saturday Night Live right now, with Zach Galifianakis, pretty funny stuff. I liked the musical performer too, Jessie J. I haven't heard of her before but I liked her first piece so I'll have to look into her! I'll end with a funny quote from Galifiaknakis because he's in front of me right now and I just found a good one on the Interwebs:

"At what age do you tell a highway it was adopted? I think seven, because that's about the time he starts to think, "I don't look like Kiwanis club.""

"Do you want this fish stick?" "I don't need another one I've had like, a million already." "No, you've had eight."

Ahhhh, Wednesday down, Thursday and Friday morning to go. ALMOST THERE. SO CLOSE. Good news is I believe (or rather, I hope) that I don't have anything due for the rest of the week so I have to go to class but it'll be pretty low stress. Awesome.

Since I promised, my Video Production project finally finished uploading (at 7:37am... That took a LONG time...) and I'll share it with you. Like I said, don't judge me, it was my first try.

We started a brand new project in Design today (the day before break? REALLY?) and this is what I had to bring to class:

Plastiline, wood chisels, a rubber mallet, duct tape, 8lbs Plaster of Paris and a cardboard box. WHAT DOES IT MEAN? It means I'm going to die, that's what. I'm doing an impossible project in Drawing and Design now. This is not good, people, not good.

I turned my sketchbook assignments in for Drawing and we didn't even critique them which means that I won't know how bad I am until after Spring Break, so there's a chance I could go through break disillusioned about my oil pastel skills, which is good, I guess. But here's what was accomplished in my last three hours of drawing before spring break:

What? Is that what I think it is? Well, if you think it's a staple remover shoved all up in that orange's business, then yes, it is what you think it is. I didn't want to do it, but all my drawing friends are bad influences and they were like, "Just do it, you have to draw it, it'll only make it easier, don't question it, just do it." And I did.

Here's what I used that masterpiece above to draw. Note how little what I drew looks like the real thing. Totally not helpful at all. But that's ok. This is just a rough draft of a product that will be eight times larger (on exactly 4 sheets of Fabriano Tizziano 50x65 paper... For you art nerds out there). But at least it looks like there is some improvement in my oil pastel usage.

I don't really have anything else to say except that I'm hungry but all I have in my room is sugar and right now we're on this "Food Restriction Period" (my non-participating friend won't let us call it a diet because it's not a diet, it's just not eating dessert seven times a day) so I can't eat it. I have to end with a quote that pretty much sums up how I feel about dieting anyway. By Don Kardong (no idea who that is):

"Avoid any diet that discourages the use of hot fudge."

"Be there or be a square. Think about how hard it would be to do things if you were a square. Don't be a square."

Ahh Tuesday. I woke up thinking it was already Thursday and I got really excited knowing all I had left until break was two more classes and two more soccer practices. But no. I was falsely excited and came to the bleak observation about 10 minutes into my day that is was in fact, only Tuesday, and even now I still have four classes, three soccer practices, one track practice, one project due and I have to pack. So there.

And one more thing before I start- I'd like to give a shout out to my dad who is a loyal reader of this blog. So naturally, he is my biggest critic (he's only trying to help, I'm sure) and I wake up this morning to a great little collection of texts from him:

"You had a misspelled word in your title, unless you meant to say ginat. And I don't know if that's how you would spell lougie either..."

"You have  dentist appointment at noon on Monday."

What a great day to start my Thursday Tuesday!

I turned in my video this morning (I actually woke up extra early to finish it and get it handed in). I don't really know how I feel about it. I guess I was really overwhelmed by the whole thing so I was pretty relieved when I finished and it was a comprehensible piece. But after seeing some other peoples' videos, I was a little disappointed in the way mine turned out. Now of course, lots of the people in my class have movie-making experience already (editing experience would have made this so much easier) so maybe I shouldn't feel bad. But anyway, I'm attempting to upload it to YouTube and currently, there are 127 minutes remaining. So it probably won't make it up tonight. But I promise, eventually.

I finished the drawing sketchbook today and they're pretty awesome. I mean, as awesome as oil pastels can be, I guess. I wish I was better at them because I thought I thought of some pretty cool concepts that deserved a lot more credit than I gave them with oil pastels. Maybe I'll revisit them later. But here they are, in all their imperfections:

Easily my weakest piece. It's called manipulation where you manipulate something. I chose a fence. I guess the fence itself isn't too bad but I should've done a watercolor wash for the sky in the background instead of trying to go in when I was finished and do it with pastels. But I learned from my mistake and will do better next time. Promise.

The funnest of my pieces. This is metamorphosis. I metamorphosized a tongue into a road. It's pretty awesome, it kind of reminds me of one of those old school golf courses where you have to putt the ball into the clown mouth, except now you're driving your car into a real mouth.

This one was also kind of bad. I think it just comes down to being a weak idea. It's supposed to be scale, so I drew a bunch of office supplies in different sizes but it's not as obvious as I feel like it should be. But I like my table and the shadowing so I guess it's not all bad!

And this was my cutest idea and my most experimental method. It's location, so I drew a hot air balloon in space. Totally impossible but it's supposed to be. I did most of this using water and oil pastel, almost like water color painting except with oil pastel. I went over some of it with normal pastel then to give pieces texture and shape.

Glee today was probably the most awkward episode, ever. I don't think I have to say anything else about it! Raising Hope was hilarious (as always) and it reaffirmed my friend's faith in "BOOYAH" as well.

And the other highlight of my day was listening to Lupe Fiasco's new album "Lasers" for about two hours straight while finishing my sketchbooks. All I can really say about it is WOW. So much packed into one album it's hard to believe. Now, I wasn't giving the lyrics my full attention, but I'm pretty sure I heard him make a Maya Angelou reference, sing a love song (Lupe? I didn't expect this from you!), and sing about a deceased loved one. All in one album.

And I'm pretty sure about half the songs are actually about how much he hates Atlantic Records and how they're restricting his creative freedom, etc. Which doesn't make sense to me. How many of us, when we listen to a song, automatically judge the record company it comes from? How many of us even know what record companies our favorite artists come from? Can anyone name more than three or four record companies? What's the big deal with censoring artists if no one is going to relate it back to you, anyway? And you're making yourself more unpopular by setting restrictions because then your famous clients (aka, the artists) go to the public complaining about you and how you're not giving them enough freedom and that makes you look bad and pisses the fanbase off. THINK ABOUT THAT.

So anyway, I'll end with a Lupe quote because I did hear a whole bunch of good ones while listening. I'm picking a few lines from his song "State Run Radio" which I think touches on what I was mentioning above, so it's only fitting.

"You're now tuned into the weakest/ Frequency of fear, keep you locked right here/ And hope you never leave this, never be a leader/ Think inside the box, and follow all procedures..."

(And PS I've been writing this for probably 20 minutes and there are still 120 minutes remaining on my YouTube upload so... Maybe tomorrow...)

"Once I spat out a ginat lougie onto a cookie and said 'Eat it' and she did."

Mondays are becoming increasingly hard to cope with as the end of the year approaches. You'll see some examples of boredom to the max below but I would like to start by officially starting my countdown until spring break. I'm counting the number of classes/meetings/activities/important due dates I have until break. Right now the count is: 18. Which doesn't seem like a lot, but it is. For three days that's a lot. It's going to be a long three days (and Friday morning... 6AM practice).

So my day started with design. Which is cool, except when you're making platonic solids. Platonic solids are where you cut out paper and then fold it into cubes, pyramids, octohedrons and isohedrons and dodecahedrons and infinitidifficultihedrons. So we made cubes and when some of us were finishing those, he points out the next one we should try. So I start that, get it all drawn, cut out and creased and as I'm trying to fold it together, I realize there's no possible way that it could create a shape. I consult with other classmates who are at the same point as I am and we finally get the attention of Prof who asks, "Why are you making that one?" And when we tell him because he told us to (and he had to look around to see that everyone else was making the same one) he says, "Oops, I guess I meant this one." And points to a completely different shape. But I made the best out of what I had already made instead and came to this:

It's hard to take a picture of platonic solids because they're so.... Three dimensional. But there's my (almost) perfect cube and my awesomimadeupidecahadron.

Then drawing happened. And let me tell you. I thought this surrealism project was going to be cool but I was so wrong. Oil pastels are going to be the death of me. I simply can't work with them! It's like coloring with crayons but much much more complicated and the colors smear and get everywhere and my drawings always look blotchy and I can't draw an orange to save my life and just wow. You know it's bad when Prof is walking around, looking at people's progress and she gets to yours. I say, "I'm really struggling with oil pastel." And she looks at my work and says, "I see that." Luckily she then volunteered to help me which will be awesome. I was also in the drawing room from about 9:30PM-midnight working on my sketchbook assignment, I got three out of the four done and I'll share pictures tomorrow when they're all done!


So by the time my night class started I was about dead. I had to buy a Mello Yellow before class to kep me awake and I couldn't focus on anything Prof was saying so I ended up doing this instead:

Some more doodles. I'm working on mastering those one sided plane deals.

Attempt one: Partial success. Minus the part that is like, inside the shape I think it's ok.

Attempt two: Also a partial success. I think it's fine but I can't figure out if that little middle loop is physically possible or not. It looks cool though so I'll accept it!

I have to wake up early tomorrow morning to finish my video project and do some history reading before my 10:30 class so it's definitely my bed time. I'll end with a cool quote I heard today from Buddha, don't remember where but hey, it's Buddha:

"Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned."

"ABRE LA FREEKING VENTANA, DORA!"

Fun, fun, fun weekend! Lots of good stories to tell, so listen up!

Friday was a very, very long day. It started at 5:20AM. But the good news was soccer practice was awesome, I won a pasta dinner (with my team, of course!) and even the conditioning was "fun." I ate breakfast with some of the girls and then my roommate and I watched Dora the Explorer and Go Diego Go because apparently real TV doesn't start until later on Fridays. So we were watching Dora and all I could think of was the skit from SNL about Maraka and Mittens. And then when Go Diego Go started Diego was following around this animal he called "okapi" which looked like half zebra half antelope mix with a really long purple tongue. We thought Diego was lying to us. Then we learned that the Okapi is a real animal:

"The okapi (pronounced /oʊˈkɑːpiː/), Okapia johnstoni, is a giraffid artiodactyl mammal native to the Ituri Rainforest, located in the northeast of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, in Central Africa. Although the okapi bears striped markings reminiscent of the zebra, it is most closely related to the giraffe."

Then after dropping off scholarship materials, eating again and taking a long nap, the festivities began. It was Scorch's birthday on Friday and let me tell you, Dragons know how to party. We worked a station at his party that involved a large inflatable soccer ball, and all the mascots liked our station the best. After we were released from that we ate another 18" pizza at Spicy Pie and then headed to the 2 Minute Film Contest at the Fargo Film Festival. It was really, really funny! There were some really good short movies and it was well worth the $2 we paid to get in.

We then proceeded to have a dance party in the car. We decided that we needed to let some more dance energy out and were pleasantly reminded that school was hosting a Mardi Gras masquerade and we wanted to make a mask and dance our brains out. However, 11PM is too late to arrive to a school event and we were disappointed to find that all the masks were gone and the dance floor was more of a mosh pit (which sometimes is fun, but when you have dance moves like we do, being in close proximity to other people is a big no no). But luckily bingo started just as we were about to leave, and we grabbed some cards and played. And won. Between three of us there, we won seven times. My friend was there the entire time and won zero times. So I now have a Chuck Norris poster, a reusable coffee cup, a new set of Sharpies and a 3-pack of chic pocket-prong folders at my disposal.

And just when you thought our night would end, we were just beginning. Instead of going to bed, we went to my room and named our apartment for next year ("The Jungle" so we can make a huge sign that says "Welcome to the Jungle" and hang it in the front room), and I picked out my Mod Podge crafts for spring break:

This is what the crafting community calls an" IKEA hack-" going to IKEA, exploiting their cheap yet functional goods and making them so much better. Lamps covered in film. So simple and easy to make yet so stylish and awesome looking! Very excited to make these.

But instead, "THE JUNGLE" and in all animal prints. This way we're not obliged to put animal print anywhere else and our apartment doesn't turn into a real jungle.

And finally, this mirror. This one pictured sold at Anthropologie for $600. I think I could make it for less than $20. Does anyone want to challenge me on it? Hopefully I have time to try it over break!

Saturday was an equally exciting day. Got to sleep in, which was really nice. Then we tried something at the Wellness Center called "Body Pump." We thought, "Oh, we're soccer players. We lift all the time and run all the time, this will be no biggie." WRONG. COULDN'T HAVE BEEN WRONGER. OH MY GOSH MY WHOLE BODY STILL HURTS. It was so hard. We had no idea what to expect going in and we had no idea what kinds of things to grab and we put too much weight on for pretty much all the lifts and it was SO HARD. But we're going back because it was a super good workout.

Afterward, we went to Wal-Mart, bought glitter and food (for unrelated purposes, promise) and started on a night of Mexican food and crafts. We ate quesadillas, rice and beans and chips and salsa. It was delicious! We completely trashed the floor with craft things and had a blast. And to make the night better, we ate a whole diet cake. That's right, I used diet and cake together. It's true, we made a diet cake. For you non-believers, try this and become a believer: instead of making a cake from a box with all the eggs and oil and other things that usually go into a boxed cake mix, just use a can of diet pop. Just cake mix and diet pop. That's all. I promise that it'll taste delicious and it's good for you (as good as cake can be, anyway). Experiment with flavors. My personal favorite is white cake mix with some diet orange soda. Delicious. I can't stop saying that word. But seriously, it's good.

We took a break from our crafting to go a someone's house and play that Dance Central game on xBox Kinect. It. Is. So. Much. Fun. Like, seriously. You know that you look nothing like the people on the screen but you think you do because they tell you things like "Awesome job!" and "Flawless!" and give you high scores. And if you really got into it, I think it'd be a pretty good workout, too. Then we went back to crafting until all hours of the morning.

Today was a little slower paced. I slept in (again. I mean, twice in a weekend? What is this madness?) and went to our soccer banquet. We shared our favorite stories about the seniors and ate good food. We presented awards (I won freshman of the year, yippee!) and just had a good time being together again.

I then edited my movie for a couple hours (actually, first I slow motion slipped and fell into a large snow bank on the two inches of snow that had fallen over night. I got snow down my pants and all up in my business. And my purse was completely full. My life is awesome.) and it's turning out pretty good, not exactly how I wanted it, but for a first time, I'm not disappointed. Either tomorrow or Tuesday, I'll have it posted up here so you can see it.

And to cap the day off, we watched that "America's Next Great Restaurant." Although initially it didn't really catch my attention, after they announced that the winner would open a chain with restaurants in Los Angeles, New York and MINNEAPOLIS I decided I had to watch so we could go to it when it opens and act all famous and stuff. Don't ask me why I need an excuse to watch a TV show, but if anyone asks, that's it.

To end (remember, tomorrow's my long, long day) I'll put in a quote from one of the 2-Minute Films we saw. It was about Parkour and even though it was short, it was pretty cool, and this quote obviously caught my attention since I remember it all the way from Friday night:

"If you're afraid to fall, you'll fall because you're afraid."

APARTMENT OF AWESOMENESS!

Very very long day. Had no morning class, our professor had said that we should spend the time either going to the Fargo Film Festival or editing our projects. I spent the time reserving a key to the edit lab for the weekend so I didn't have to do either. But I actually did other stuff too, like I ate, registered for soccer and finished applying for art scholarships.

There was a group on campus tonight called "Whose Rhyme is it Anyway?" They were an improv rap comedy group, and I live all of those things, so we decided to go. It was pretty cool, it stated kind of sketchy but it definitely got better as it went on and I'm glad I went. They were all really funny, and they all have some music on iTunes that I haven't had time to check out yet, but if you want to their names are: Heath Mcnease, Playdough and Manchild.

Besides that my dad just sent me my only real reason for wanting an iPad. This:

Yes, I want a $600 iPad for that. As a designer, I just think that it's really cool that someone designed a cover that does more than a cover is meant to do. Just awesome. I'm excited for the day I can think of something as awesome as that.

And I also found this article today, about the rediscovery of the original Nike waffle iron. Yeah, like the one the co-founder of Nike used to make his first pair of Nike waffle soled running shoes. Maybe not news for some of you out there, but it's still a good article about how the people who found it were conpensated and it just made a whole school better off. I recommend you read it!

Oh and as a little last note, AJ Hawk just signed a 5-year contract with the Packers! (He was released a few days ago as his contract expired). Go Pack Go!

I'll end with a quote I remembered from Whose Rhyme is it Anyway, it was during an improv session where they were basically ripping on these random guys standing on the stage, it was pretty funny.

"This guys is number 1... That's his GPA."