Living Every Day in August

Here's this month's summary of daily notables.

1. skating!
2. noodles twice in a day
3. sick.
4. rested all day
5. trippy inspiration from the floor
6. new hair
7. scrapbook paper and chipotle
8. Shakespeare
9. went out with daddy
10. writing with shadow
11. leftover noodles!
12. can't remember. but I lived.
13. awesomely terrible outfit
14. ice cream and late nights
15. date with dad again; also rain
16. cheesy lame romantic comedy
17. idle time
18. night walk
19. long day of work
20. night breezes
21. pasta, popsicle, peace tea
22. fixed bike brake sorta
23. loaded up on noodles after working hard
24. harry potter movie
25. groceries and cleaning
26. gloomy weather even though I couldn't be outside
27. messy hair and mismatched shoes
28. funny video
29. sat under palm tree
30. interesting gardens
31. got cool things

Style File, Stale Fail: Mismatched Converse

I don't know why mismatched converse isn't a thing. Seriously!
There are many people in this world who have multiple pairs, and I think it would be a good way to step out in style.
Obviously this is one for the style file.

Summer Goals Review: August

Aside from moving to Austin and getting a job, which I completed early on, here are my goals for the summer and how I did on them in this last month/the summer in general.

-practice drawing everyday
This... hasn't happened. I've still doodled as usual throughout the month and the summer, but I have hardly practiced new techniques or anything at all. :(

-blog 3 times a week
Without wifi, blogging more often has been difficult. I managed to make my 12-a-month goal for the first two months, but look at me here, this is my ninth. I have two more posts to make for this month, but of course, it's the last day of it, and that's kind of disappointing. I'll not be making the goal this time because the 3 posts I'm already doing today is kinda overkill...

-webcomic 1-2 pages per week
Here I prove my inability to be consistent in updating stuff. In the few months it's been "out" I've completed 6 pages. Does anybody have ideas as how to motivate oneself to work on a long term project?!

For the most part, I have to say my summer goals sort of flopped. But at least I did some important things this summer, like paying all my own bills! Er... most of them. My parents are still paying my cell phone bill. And I guess stuff like insurance.

Several trains of thought pulling into the station

So it's the night before school starts and I'm working all day tomorrow.

My house is clean (except the vacuuming and dishes) and we get wifi in a couple of days.

My screenwriting teacher still hasn't put up anything on blackboard and it's the day before the class starts; this is mildly disconcerting. Don't worry, I emailed him along with another email that I didn't have to send until tomorrow, but as I said, I'm working all day tomorrow.

At work yesterday I saw someone who I almost thought was Vic Mignogna at a glance. He had a weird accent though. However, with Vic being a voice actor, I had to be really sure. He was a bit stockier, though, either that or a bit shorter, in any case it wasn't him. The hair color and style and even the clothes were similar though. The face was rather comparable as well.

At work yesterday one of the managers asked about my school studies. I told him I was majoring in Creative Writing. He said I'd be the next Harry Potter. (He meant JK Rowling but couldn't remember her name.) He went on to say I might be like the author of 50 Shades of Grey. Uh, no thanks. He only said that because that's the most money-making book right now, he hasn't actually read it. I haven't either, but there's no way I want to. The only reason it's making money is because sex sells. I hear tell that the writing is awful.

I fixed up my facebook profile a little. I still don't intend on going there much, but I thought it'd be better to at least have a decent looking profile.

Twitter is my favorite social network besides blogging.

By the way, I got an iPhone. Yes, I conformed. My dumbphone went and just about died on me though. At least this way I can tweet away from wifi.

I worked all day on Friday even though I wasn't scheduled to. The manager asked if I could. I agreed because that means I earn more money. I'm so tired after working full days though.
I'm probably going to end up working another full day tomorrow. Plus I'm getting up at 6:30. I ought to be going to bed pretty soon here.

I painted with watercolors/watercolor pencils yesterday and today. I blew on the paint until it streaked all around like veins and arteries.

We went grocery shopping with a gift card we earned from house sitting. We stocked up on a lot of stuff and spent nearly it all. It was food and pens and pencils, don't worry. We didn't splurge except for popsicles and some pretzels.

We can easily eat a loaf of bread in a day. Not that creepy stuff that lasts forever, real bread.

I washed my sheets and dried them in the sun but as soon as I put them out it got a bit cloudy.

Notebook Decorating

You know those big ol' books of patterned paper at the craft stores? People use 'em for scrapbooking, mostly, I guess as backgrounds. But recently I've gotten into decoupaging, which is, I guess, the term for sticking stuff to other stuff. You've probably seen some previous examples on my blog. like this board that comes in handy when you have carpet and you want to set your cup on the floor.

Anyway, being the cheapskate that I am, I never let myself actually buy one of those huge pattern packs though I knew I'd use it for things like making cards. For example, these two graduation-type cards from before the summer that I somehow never got around to posting. (there were two others at least but I think I forgot to photograph them)

The theme is exploration and finding your way. n_n

The quote is pretty random.

Anyway, for those I just used wrapping paper, a map, cut out or printed random pictures... just used whatever I had, and mod-podged it all together.

But a few weeks ago, I got my weekly coupons from Hobby Lobby, and wouldn't you know it, scrapbooking paper was half off. Was I going to take advantage of this deal? HECK TO THE YES!

So I got my brother to pick me up and drive me to hobby lobby (and to chipotle) and I got this:

as you can see, it used to be 20 dollars but I got it for 10

It took a while to find one of the sale brands and become confused why 180 sheets was usually only 5 dollars more than 80 sheets, like who would only buy 80 in that case?
Anyway, the only project I've done with it so far is to decorate an old notebook for use in my philosophy class, as I had a notebook with only a few pages used, and I needed a notebook for school.
Here's the results! I like the way the patterns work together.

The front

and the back.

Detail on the lettering, which is admittedly pretty bad.

Well, there's my latest non-drawing project! What creative stuff have you been up to?

It's one of those random updates!

School is coming really soon. I wanted to start practicing for school this week, but I worked all day yesterday and then stayed up late. So no getting up between 6:00 and 6:30 and getting on the bus at 7am today. I may still catch the bus to ACC and get my bus pass though. If I can. I don't know! Let's see, other than that I need to finish a picture, read a book...

I'm still housesitting for Peggy's family. Right now it's just me since Bethany's with her family and Emma's at work or doing errands, though she'll probably be back soon.
I'm not used to taking care of animals. The little dog, Greg, would walk all over me (literally) if I'd let him (I don't). But we're supposed to take him on walks and let him in and out, along with the cat. The problem with Greg is that he doesn't like to do his business out back. He gets to the point where he's frantic for a walk so he can go pee on somebody's bush.

Also, he has separation anxiety, so he barks really loud if he's alone too long or thinks he's going to be. On sunday when we went to church, we left the back open (we intended to close it but forgot), but it should have been okay because of the fence.
I guess Greg was so frantic to get out that he found a corner where he could squeeze under, so when Bethany and I got back we were trying to figure out if we had left the back open or if maybe another person charged with dog walking had been in and taken Greg out, since we didn't see him either. But the leash was on the table. So I went out to look for him. Thankfully someone was already trying to communicate with him (he had stayed in the complex--whew!), and he came running when I called his name disapprovingly. I found the place in the corner of the fence where he probably slipped under and put a large rock there.

pets.

I keep thinking of all these things I'll do when I live alone. Like not have any pets, only buy food that I want to eat, leave the AC off more, stuff like that. I know that's a long way off, and it will be harder in those days because there will be no splitting rent and all that. So I need to be patient. But I can dream. (I bet many people would find it pretty sad that I dream of living alone someday, without even any pets. I'm such an introvert, heehee.)
This isn't to say I'm tired of roommates. But I know that the four of us won't be living together forever, eventually there will be marriages and missions trips and all that sort of thing and I'll be left to myself. n_n

While housesitting, I have also discovered that there doesn't seem to be very much on Netflix. Well, maybe I'm just not searching in the right places. -shrug-

ooooh oooh and Peggy's family said we could eat whatever they had in the fridge, cabinets, etc... well... they had a lot of ice cream and let's just say they have much less now. ^^;

(I'm super happy gifs work on blogger now like seriously)

Style File, Stale Fail: Pattern Party Edition

I was just minding my own business, roller skating around on my day off, when I stepped (er, rolled) into the gym for a drink of water. It was there that I realized just how badly I had chosen to dress that day. Don't blame me, I wasn't even thinking about the outfit. It was just "I want to wear my sleeveless stripey dress. I also want to wear a skirt. I should wear my second favorite skirt. Oh, I want to skate. Let's wear my least favorite socks in case they get worn and sweaty. 

WHEEEEEEEEEE

Look at that beautiful progression of clashing lines and colors.

This has been the first really noticable Stale Fail that has earned the right to grace my fashion tag. You're welcome.

The Merchant of Venice

On Thursday was Shakespeare night and we read the Merchant of Venice. Here are the highlights:

The character Shylock lends money to a merchant, and if he can't pay it back in time, Shylock gets to take a pound of the merchant's flesh. The whole time we were reading it, Peggy was making a big deal about how the bones and the blood count too, but the rest of us were saying that WASN'T flesh, and as it turned out this was the argument that saved the merchant's life in the end, so we got to say HA to Peggy and she insisted in her side by saying she had interpreted it as Shylock meant it.

There, of course, were some funny phrases, the most amusing of which was along the lines of "the bagpipes make them so sad that they pee their pants" which we all thought was quite ridiculous. Who knows what Shakespeare really meant. Maybe it was a figure of speech that has since fallen out of use.

My friend from Japanese class stopped by for a little bit too.

Maybe next time, we should do Shakespeare at a park or coffee shop. The first one we did was at Thunderbird, but we felt maybe we were disturbing other patrons.

If I was a schizophrenic, this could be much worse

It was my first experience working all day. My break was a bit under an hour. I worked from 10:45 AM to 9:10 PM. I messed up many times, I was achey and tired, and so ready for the day to be done.
While I was preparing to mop, I saw a strange shape on the floor, formed by water droplets. It looked like a face, a large smiling face with large strange lips and two eyes each adorned with three eyelashes that stuck straight up. It was just some water droplets, but I immediately envisioned it as a creepy intense and rather psychedelic graffiti type art. Just something weird, but kind of austiny. Like the "hi, how are you" frog-alien-thing.
I tried to paint it on a chair later, but it transformed into a duck with dreads. So I tried again with markers. Here is the result:

I decided some weird and cryptic words below would add to its quirkiness. They mean nothing. But they sound like they mean something secret. bowahahahahah
I'm pretty satisfied with it. It's trippy and weird and the slightest bit cool.

Currently

It's time for one of these again, as I've moved along in my life as is normal.

Reading:

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley.
As it is famed for, the ideas in this book are intriguing and thought-provoking. There's a lot of sexual content, but mostly it's standoffish and conceptual, at least so far. Also, since I have read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, all I can think of when everyone in society hails Ford as the greatest entity ever is that they're all worshipping Ford Prefect, which is pretty weird and difficult to take seriously at all.

Watching:

Death Note
I've quit this three times and yet I'm coming back to it?! Well, it's peer pressure. Actually they didn't pressure me. My roomies were just interested, and I figured I'd give it another go because a) I'm older now and b) I was watching it alone before. It's not as frightening as I remembered, though it still has the confusing aspect of the main character being the villain. I think watching it properly requires that the viewer have solid moral footing and an ability to not take whatever someone says for granted, or they might get confused. When you get past the creepies, it's an intriguing detective thriller with a lot of logic and clever thinking.

Gravity Falls
To be honest, I'm not entirely sure what's up with this show. There's all this conspiracy theory and supernatural stuff in a kids cartoon, but at the same time it's pretty endearing and funny in its meta-humor style, and the animation is fantastic, especially the opening. (Don't believe me? Go look it up and watch it, and pay attention to how beautifully the light is depicted in every clip.) I don't know what the point is or where it's going, but I'm pretty sure I like it.

Writing:
A silly fanfiction, but it's going kind of slowly. It's my attempt to write a fluffy romance, and it's supposed to be lighthearted and stuff. I'm mostly writing it for Bethany and myself, since it involves our superhero characters, along with Thor and Loki. Ahem. XD

Playing:

Plants VS Zombies, on Bethany's computer.
I go a little crazy and panic over it. Bethany's offered to play a level in front of me and demonstrate how it ought to be done, since she has beaten the game five times, but I refuse. I just wanna be independent!!!!!!! And for the zombies to give me time to plant sunflowers before they force me to put down attacking plants.





So that's what I'm up to!

None of the images used are mine. All media is copyright its original owners. I'm only showing my appreciation.

Sick on Saturday

(This is from Saturday August 3.)

Wouldn't you know it, I went and got sick.
I don't know what it was. Did I catch a stomach bug? Did I eat something funny?
I woke up on Saturday morning very tired, but it was an hour earlier than usual, so I didn't think it was that strange. I had a full day ahead of me, but when I ate breakfast I wasn't super hungry. I ate a relatively normal amount, however.
The first half of my day was to be filled by childcare for a retreat. One of the moms was in there to help me, but there were so many crying and tired children that we couldn't hold them all. We got some older kids to come help and another mom came in for a while. By that point I was feeling discomfort in my tummy but trying to ignore it. However, I was moving very slowly and the thought of food was completely unappealing. By lunchtime I was strongly considering calling in sick to work, just in case, because I felt like stuff could potentially come out both ends if you know what I mean. I got up to walk down the hall and by the time I reached the end I really felt sick. I waited miserably until one o clock to call in sick to work, so that they'd have 3 hours advance to get someone to cover my shift, and so that it wasn't in the very middle of lunch rush.
Then I almost fell asleep outside. I felt something settle in my stomach, and figured I'd probably vomit soon, but I was so close to drifting off that I didn't care.
Then a bunch of kiddos burst outside so I sat up. Immediately I felt the warning signs. I walked as quickly as I could inside and to the bathroom, where I, as expected, retched three times in a row. I had skipped lunch, so there wasn't much food in my stomach, and it was mostly bile. But a lot of it. (Enjoying the story? c: )
Afterward I felt a bit better, but not well. I tried to take a walk, but that did not bode well, so I went back to sitting.
When it was time to go home, even standing in the sun was exhausting. I was okay in the car, but the speed bumps in the apartment complex were not helpful and I was feeling bad by the time we got home (Peggy's mom was really sweet and dropped us off near our apartment even though it's across the complex from theirs). When I got home, the first thing I did after a quick detour to drop my stuff was to stand over the toilet because it felt like I was going to puke again. I didn't, so I laid down and started reading Brave New World, but fell asleep.
Bethany brought me a sprite later, and brought her little brother over, so there was noise from the other room but for the most part I kept on reading. They went on an excursion and I made plain ramen to test if I could eat. Still wasn't feeling hungry. After just a few of the dry noodles, my tummy felt funny, but this time it was the other end.
I ate the noodles and looked up salmonella symptoms just in case it was the eggs from either that morning or a couple days before, but the symptoms weren't nearly as bad as salmonella, so I was safe from that.
I managed to drink most of the sprite and eat the plain ramen. I took my place on the floor again.
I finished The Emperor's New Groove, finally (the disc had been in my computer for at least a week, I think), and started watching it with commentary before I decided it was just unnecessary stimulation and it was edging on annoying despite being about slightly interesting topics, so I put my computer away and lay in bed feeling awful and texting my parents.
I threw up again. This time it was mostly sprite. I couldn't tell how far along the ramen had gotten in digestion. At least I couldn't see it. (Ah, glorious details.)
I started writing this and then my parents stopped by with some carbonated water because I'm all sugared out, and with some oriental flavored ramen since all we had was chicken. And some sprite. But I do not want that right now.
Anyway, I need to go to sleep and I'm going to skip church tomorrow to rest.

PLEASE pray for the babies I watched this morning, I hope I didn't afflict them with this terrible sickness. :c