"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."