Turkey Day Break

Well, I'm back!

I've been neglecting so many things since I last wrote and during Thanksgiving break. I told my dad that I couldn't go to his place for Thanksgiving because I had so much stuff to do... which was true. If I want to graduate in December, I have to get my second grade options in, paying off my u-bill, and pass my current classes, class discussions -- art book projects, some Italian show and tell thing. I also work, granted it's only 15 hours... a little more during Thanksgiving break, but still... it's work.

Well, the idea was to get everything in... but something happened to my plan.

I had all intentions of doing all that stuff... really I did... but after going to school for four months without a break and nonstop homework, I just wanted to relax. Maybe that's another reason for not driving two hours to and from my dad's. I mean... I wanted to relax and REALLY relax. I just felt like being completely sedentary that whole week... but even that wasn't possible.

I know, I know, "responsible people don't do what they want, but what they have to do..."... well... I was responsible for about three days.

My brother came home on Tuesday and all my school plans went down the drain. True, he practically lived downstairs in his room occasionally coming upstairs to fill his face with food, or borrow some video games to play in the 'cube downstairs, but he was still there and for some reason I went from being OK with doing work during Thanksgiving break to "Oh hell no, it's my break and I'm gonna f*cking enjoy it!"

I had to work Thanksgiving day... bummer. I had to buy sparkling grape juice before going home when I got off work... took me 30 freaking minutes to find some stupid wine bottles filled with grape juice. I mean, you'd think they're in the back with the booze... but they're not!

It never even occurred to me, until circling the grocery, soda, and wine aisles, to check the Christmas Shop aisles and there they were. Sitting on an end cap... all one flavor, but I didn't care much. I spent half an hour looking for them. Honestly Wal-Mart... why put them in with Christmas wrapping paper and all that crap? Even though it's all festive, I say the fake wine should be either with the juice or real wine... I'd make a good department manager if I do say so myself... except for when people come to me with their problems about so and so assistant manager. Solve the shit on your own!

We went to see Megamind on Friday... I loved it! Baby and kid Megamind were so cute!

I had to work on Saturday... but after that, I brought the PS3 from my room into the living room since the TV there is much bigger and I hurt my eyes squinting to try and read the text on my TV. I wanted to play Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks... but curse Sony and their non PS2 compatible PS3s. Lets see... I played LittleBIGPlanet instead the rest of break. Awesome game... still haven't finished it yet. I'm on Grandmaster Sensei's last level... I get to duke it out with the oni!

Well... break wasn't as productive as I wanted... but it was enjoyable!

 

Second Book Project

Well, next Monday is when our second book project is due and once again I have fallen victim to that dastardly disease... procrastination.

I think it was two weeks ago when we went around in class and presented our book concepts. So many people had good ideas and everyone around me seems so... artsy.

I'm not an art major, I'm a Spanish major but I do like to draw and I would love to have some kind of career in it... but, that's just it, I draw and want to illustrate stories. I'm not a photographer, I'm not some clever text artist or whatever those are called... if they even have a name, I can't take a photo that some one else has taken and make it into my own project without it being flat and boring, what I know about photoshop is limited to sketching with a tablet, maybe digitally inking, and coloring... that's it.

Our instructor says he wants us to do the work that we want to do, but he'd at least want us to try and branch out... okay. What I want to do is write and illustrate. My first book was a story that I rewrote from one of my Spanish creative writing classes and illustrated it. Should I do another illustrated kid's book? Will that be too boring? Will that mean I wasn't even trying to branch out?

I really want to learn Illustrator because it's what some artists I really like use for digitally inking and adding in speech bubbles, making logos, things like that. So my initial idea presented two weeks ago was to make a book that was a sort of compendium of illustrator text tutorials that I have tried. But... I have the text and what will I do to it to make it artistic?

Did I mention that we have to have image AND text somewhere in there... I hate that stipulation.

Anyway, I scrapped that idea and went with a similar idea to just use photo effects in photoshop AND illustrator. I'd pick a word then take a photo and try and manipulate the image to represent that word... does that make sense? Ex. words: Liquid; Image: A head made of water or something like that.

I figured that would be too hard so I'm going back to illustrating.

 

...Why the hell is this so difficult. It's infuriating...

 

My next idea is to take a few words from a song, that will be my text, then I'll illustrate either an image from the song or that phrase I picked out from it... not exactly sure on the small details yet. I think I'll stay with this idea... it's better than the above ones.

 

From Typepad Conversations

I like answering these things. Makes me feel like someone really cares for my opinion :)

As kids we're taught that sharing is caring – who do you love to share stuff with and why?

It depends...Are we sharing information, electronics, CDs, books, feelings... what are we sharing?

If it's information like "What time is it?" or "When is so and so getting married?" then sure, I share with pretty much anybody.

If it's books or anything else I can replace if they get broken or not returned... I might share. I'll pretty much share those things with family that way I have no qualms about annoying the hell out of them until they return my shit. But fortunately, my family doesn't want any of my stuff... so that's no problem.

However, when it comes to electronics and things I really, really, really value... you can forget sharing. I don't want to share my PS3, digital camera, laptop etc. with anybody trustworthy or untrustworthy because if they break it or don't return it... I'll be pissed.

Sharing feelings? I'm not so much into that. Recently I had to share my feelings with my father. He's been conditioning me to share feelings for 20 years and I'll tell you... never worked. I need to work on that because I suppose that it must be done some time.

What Does It Mean?

I dreamt something... and it was sort of strange.

A couple days ago, I watched some Paranormal show on TruTV. It went through some videos of sightings that I thought were obviously fake (Aliens, witches, odd looking 'fairies', some 'ghost' kid that appeared in the hallways of a hotel when it could've easily been the own family's child)... but one really got me shuddering.

Shadow People

I wasn't fully paying attention, but some guy had put video cameras in his childhood house. There was one video that was just an image of a chair in a closet. After a few minutes or so, you could see this faint shadow gradually forming into a humanoid shape and finally it stood up before fading away... creepy.

My first thought was that somebody was behind the video camera and was sitting down and standing up slowly. However, it was too precise, faint and faded in and out too abrupt that I don't think it could have been a person's shadow on the other side. Still, that doesn't mean that it couldn't have been faked.

One of the paranormal 'experts' said that shadow people, while rare, are a manifestation of negetive energy and they're usually malevolent spirits.

Anyway, that and the fact that I recently played Nancy Drew: Shadow at the Water's Edge which made me think of the vengeful spirits --yurei-- in 'The Grudge', 'The Ring', and 'Dark Water', was probably what spurred on this dream.

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DREAM: let me just note that this was on Halloween

PJ Franklin (Jordana Spiro) from My Boys on TBS was in a Bates-like motel with all her friends from the show. She was sharing a room with her boyfriend, Bobby Newman (Kyle Howard) but PJ was sleeping on the bed and he was sleeping in a chair because they got in a fight for some unclear reason.

Something happened during the night and when PJ awoke, she found boyfriend Bobby dead (This was unclear also... but he was dead and she was crying) She was distraught and went into the bathroom to get ready to meet her friends and tell them the bad news when the iconic horror film moment happened. She opened the mirror cabinet thing to get her pills (Don't know what kind) and then closed it and...oh no... she saw a pale ghost with stringy hair and black eyes. She screamed and ran out of the room.

Some other stuff happened and random people who are not from the show died. I think Bobby came back as a zombie. PJ and Brando Dorff (Reid Scott) were walking outside the motel. For some reason Brando had a chainsaw. Either Zombie Bobby or some random ghost jumped out of the bushes then went back in them, but this made Brando so scared that he took the chainsaw and beat PJ into the ground.

Brando was about to run away after he realized that he killed his new girlfriend, but she rose up from the ground as a yurei/vampire and sucked on his kneck, instantly killing him. His body fell to the ground and she stood on it, Captain Morgan style...

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That's it... that's where it stopped. I don't even know why the characters were from My Boys

I was freaked and it didn't help that I heard a strange noise downstairs.

END

I'm Not Taking Italian and Paying a Crap Load of Money For Classes to Forget How to Speak/Write It

...Well it's true...

Instead of trying to learn the language by myself from books, CDs, etc. I opted to take a class filled with people you may or may not like who can make fun of your pronunciation... let's not forget professors who come across as condescending and know-it-alls because they're frustrated with how little we know or how short our memories are for remembering something said literally a second ago. (I like my professor though)

Usually, that's how you learn a language... in a class setting. Still, you have to work at said language to be able to continue to say that you speak and comprehend it. Still... next time I'm gonna learn a language by myself on livemocha.com... but that's for another post... maybe.

So...I have decided to write my next post in the little Italian I know so I can guarantee that I won't forget it.

Any Italian readers of this blog (which I doubt I have) feel free to make corrections or else I'll make the same mistakes.

Here goes...

And why not write it in Spanish too because I'm forgetting my first language and that's just sad.

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ITALIANO

Ieri era il mio compleanno. Non ho avuto niente perché io ho lavorato ieri sera. Dopo il lavoro, ho recivuto un text dalla mia buona amica che mi chiedeva se ho votato nella l'elezione di medio termine... *sospiro*... non mi sono voluta un buon compleanno. Ma gli altri miei amici mi sono voluti un buon compleanno. Grazie tutti!

In ogni caso, non ho votato perché non ho avuto il tempo dopo il lavoro né prima quando ero all'università. Non mi piace la politica comunque.

Ma la mia mamma mi ha compruto una focaccia con glassa di formaggio cremoso... yum! In seguito... sono andata a letto.

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I just read that out loud and didn't like how I sounded. I sounded like a little girl... I guess that has nothing to do with pronunciation though.

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ESPAÑOL

Ayer era mi cumpleaños. No hize nada porque trabajé anoche. Despues del trabajo, recibí un text de mi buena amiga que me preguntaba si voté en la elección de mitad de trimestre...*suspiro*... no me deseó un feliz cumpleaños. Pero mis otros amigos me desearon un buen cumpleaños. ¡Gracias todos!

De todos modos, no voté porque no tenía tiempo despues del trabajo ni antes cuando estaba en la universidad. No me gusta la politica de todas maneras.

Pero mi mama me compró un bizcocho con glaseado de queso cremoso... ¡yum! Luego... me acosté.

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There we go!

Moral... or whatever... if you're taking a foreign language and want to continue with it so you could communicate with other speakers of that language... you need to practice. It won't just stay in your brain and be perfect whenever you decide to take it out.