jellicle cats come out tonight

8. I love to sleep.

Hopefully most other normal people also enjoy sleeping. I probably love it more than the average person. Although I do quite often, I prefer not to function on little to no sleep (#artstudent). I love a good 12-hour night. I hate when people brag about only sleeping like 4 hours a night, and being all like "whatever, ndb, I'm fine." It's like, ugh, shut up, I guarantee you're tired. Also people who are like "I just can't sleep more than 6 hours."

I don't have any classes tomorrow or obligations. I plan to never wake up tomorrow. Much in the same vein that Peter Pan plans to never grow up.

Hi, I'm Owen Lars, and this is my girlfriend, Beru

7. I love John Mayer.

Sometimes I lose sight of this. I allow people's opinions of him to influence on how I feel about him. Let me say this here and now: I freakin' love John Mayer. I love his music, I used to/still kinda do love him personally. He's so talented. His voice will always calm me down, remind me of good times. I really don't listen to the radio, nor have I ever, so I have my own personal memories of listening his music (February 2005 was a big month for "Room for Squares")

'Victoria' has always been and will always be my favorite song of his. That and 'Daughters' were probably my top-played songs when I was 13.

(Sorry for how totally cheesy the video is. I couldn't find a good one with just the song)

Stand and face me, my love, and scatter the grace in your eyes

6. I love cake/ general baked goods.

I was having a hard time deciding what I love today. I'm not in a very good mood, which doesn't lend itself well to writing a positive blog post. Cake is something I coincidentally can't have right now because it's lent. I was thinking of things I would really like right now. Carrot cake (yum), chocolate cake, yellow cake, coffee cake; I would literally eat any of those in a heartbeat. As well as baked goods: croissants, cookies, muffins.

"You can't say that your favorite type of cake is birthday cake, that's like saying that your favorite type of cereal is breakfast cereal."

"I love breakfast cereal."

Some Unholy War

5. I love driving.

I don't get to drive very often when I'm at school. I had to use my roommate's car to drive to Fleet Farm (this won't get an entire post, but I also LOVE Fleet Farm) both last night and this morning. I always really enjoy driving, but last night I was driving over the bridge in town, and I was just like "I love this" and that was that. I can't believe I used to be scared of driving.

On another note, sometimes I wish I went to high school/college in 1997. That seems so specific, I know, but that was before facebook, before cell phones (kinda), before laptops (kinda). I think that's what college should be like (but now that I know what I would be missing, I can't give any of those things up). Bad fashion, but that's probably what I'll be saying about what I'm wearing today in 10 years. Good music (mostly..) depends on what genre. I never used to appreciate late nineties music (unless it was BSB and Britney Spears), but now I definitely do. Also, I think at that time, it was the height of me thinking people who were my current age were super cool.

Just a little love-letter to the past.

I'm a fool, too out of reach, I believe no one

4. I love this painting.

The Third of May 1808- Goya

I can never quite pinpoint what I love about it. I never really realized until now how it might be somehow construed that I'm sadistic and I love to see blood and gore. I love to see blood and gore, but I don't think I'm sadistic.

Last year on a final, I stated that I would love to hang this painting in my dining room. I just love it. The style, the subject, the colors. I do love Goya, but this is by far my favorite. I think I kind of think it's tragic and yet powerful. Does anyone agree, or am I alone on this one?

How can someone so young, sing words so sad?

3. I love my room.

I love my room so much. As messy as Maddi and I can get, when it's clean and fresh and tidy, it's wonderful (even when it's not, I still love it). We just cleaned it up today. We did dishes, I vacuumed, we took out trash and recycling, and I dusted the other day. We also bought groceries so now we're not so abysmally stocked with just junk food. We have a beautifully cozy, pretty room.

(this is not today, this was on my birthday)

The Dinner Party

Would it throw people off if I changed my blog layout? It's always been the same, and I guess for being a design student, I sure do have an ugly blog. This is probably going to be the kind of thing where I ask a legitimate question, and nobody actually comments. I don't know if anybody really reads this blog anymore, but comment if you have a preference either way.

Through the looking glass

2. I love TOMS.

I love Toms shoes so much. I have a red canvas pair, and then I just got a gray canvas pair in the mail today. (My birthday present, and for those of you keeping score at home, that was 5 months ago.) Just such a good cause, relatively inexpensive, comfortable, fashionable- the list goes on. It used to bug me when people would be confused when I said "it's a good cause" because they were like "they're just shoes..." but I think most people understand the idea of them now.

TOMS

everyone's so intimately rearranged

In a bid to be more positive, and to post more, and to steal ideas (i love stealing ideas) I'm going to post one thing each day that I love (Stolen from the one and only Rachel Louwsma- Party of Four!) I can be so negative sometimes and lose sight of the fact that I really love so many things and people. Although, bare with me, because most people are probably only used to my cynicism.

And I guess since I'm starting this near the tail end of the month (I didn't really feel like waiting) I'll do it until the end of April. I'll have to make sure that I love a lot of things.

1. I love Oreos.

Yeah, I guess that seems like something strange to kick this off with, but it's true, I love Oreos. I don't eat them obsessively like some people, in fact I really only eat them once a year, at the cabin, and those are usually peanut butter Oreos (so. good.) But last night I was looking for something junky to eat and I ended up buying a package of Oreos downstairs. Regular Oreos. I think besides the taste, the reason I love them so much is because my grandparents would always have them at their house (along with fig newtons) and every thursday night when we went there for dinner that would be the only snack we would have. Oreos and milk. I can still remember sitting on the area rug in the TV room, or up against the rocker eating Oreos and watching NBC's thursday night line-up. (If I ever eat Oreos while watching Friends, which I've done, it's a major flashback.)

So yeah, hopefully that's going to be the kind of thing I'll be posting.

Dig deep, and you'll find it.

Also, is it possible to develop dyslexia in your twenties? It's been taking me at least three times as long to type simple sentences lately. I keep spelling things wrong or accidentally writing the wrong word. I suppose I could google all of this. I suppose I just want a lot of attention, or something, right? Right.

I seem like a big bag of problems from all of my posts this week. I would say that I would quit making them so self-centered, but since it's my personal blog, I think that might defeat the purpose of having a blog in the first place.

Inclement Weather Advisory memo

Something I'm really happy about right now:

Due to the weather, classes after 12:10 are cancelled. Although this is a day that I only have one class anyway, if this were to happen before spring break, I would have had to go to first aid this morning. But since that class is only a quarter long, I don't have it anymore.

So mostly this blog says: I don't have class today.

Also:

I think I might be bi-polar.

I lift my street, I'm a guillotine.

A fact about myself:

I realized that every significant thought I've had in the past week, past few days has started with "I wish..." And many of my spoken statements have been that way, too. I'm honestly not sure what I'm supposed to do with that. I've been doing a lot of self reflection lately, and trying to figure out why I do the things I do, or what the things I do say about me. It's my understanding that it's a sign of weakness to begin all of your sentences with "I wish" and, I suppose to some extent that I'm not being proactive. A big hobby of mine is sitting around wishing stuff will get done.

This isn't a blog post I'm writing about procrastination WHILE I'm procrastinating, but it's just saying things that I wish I could change.

^I didn't write "....things that I wish I could change." on purpose. That was subconscious.

Blerg.

and now, by the way, if anyone is aware of my current school assignments, my chair just broke. I sat on it, and it broke. At this point, at 2 in the morning, there's nothing I can do to fix it.

I'm surprisingly calm about this. But that doesn't say anything for how I will feel about this at some point in the near future.

Responsibility. This is all my responsibility.

and then the storm of shit begins.

Well, it's the token "life sucks" post.

Life doesn't suck. But sometimes it sure feels like it. I'm bummed out about many things right now. Mostly things that were once in my control, and I have since let them go beyond my control. This is not completely about procrastination, this is also about dedication. I know that it's a horrible attitude to have towards things, but if I don't want to do something, I don't really give it my all. That happens a lot. To a lot of people. But I feel that that's a horrible attitude. However it's hard to reconcile those feelings when things just aren't right and there's a perfect storm of suck in your life. This probably seems kind of cryptic, but that's about as descriptive as I want to get.

I just will say that it's so easy to let things slip so slightly beyond the grasp of my control.

Well, I shouldn't say that. I have control over everything, but everything just seems more overwhelming and daunting.

I wouldn't read too much into this. My idea of being stressed out is not having enough time to sit around on my lazy ass and not do anything. I'm not saying that I shouldn't actually care about the things I'm stressing about right now, but I certainly need to stop acting like it's the end of the world. I need to find my happy medium between that and my nonchalance.

In other news...

It was spring break last week. I think that's probably why being at school right now sucks so much. It's a teaser of how life is like at home. I had just enough time to get comfortable. I had good times with the cat, friends, and family. Was (generally) well fed, slept (generally) well, and watched a lot of criminal minds. Which I stopped watching because of increased paranoia, but then I missed the characters too much.

I was working as a waitress at a cocktail bar

I had some weirdly vivid dreams last night. First, I had a dream that my family had moved into a new house. It was a really weird house, I can't really remember what it looked like, but it had a large-ish green porch and it seemed like it would probably be in Vermont or something, although I'm sure we were still in Minnesota. And then I was very aware of the fact that I could never go back to my old home again. And that depressed me very much.

And then I had a dream that seemed far less likely- that I had left my student ID, my safety glasses that I use for woodworking, and my safety badge, in France. When I was there 3 years ago. At a time when I didn't have any of those things. And of course the natural route was not to easily replace all of those things, but to go to france, and go to the house I stayed at, and asked for them back. Which is only interesting to me because I feel like I have all but forgot the useful phrases and skills for speaking to French people, but in my dream I spoke very clearly it all made sense. I know enough to know that it made sense. So in my subconscious, I still know French, apparently. And it reminded me how much I miss speaking another language. And it makes me mad at myself, because my computer came pre-loaded with Rosetta stone, I just need to choose a language. But alas, I've been too lazy. Maybe this summer..

Spectacular, Spectacular

I've been working on putting together my change of major application, and other odds and ends this afternoon, trying to catch up on certain things. I put Stand By Me on to have on in the background, and I had the most visceral reaction I've ever had to any movie I've ever watched. It was only the end that made me emotional, and it's not terribly emotional movie, other than guy-love friendship stuff and the nostalgia of it all. But even so, that's never happened before. Maybe I have residual feelings about River Phoenix being dead. And maybe I just needed a really good cry, but about what, I'm not sure.

In other news, The Oscars were great. Not in the sense that the show was great and funny, but all of the outcomes were great. James Franco and Anne Hathaway might *seem* like a good idea, but I wasn't really expecting much. As much as I love the Franco, he's never been good at hosting SNL, and neither has Anne Hathaway. Which is obviously not the same thing at all. But it's the same idea of having a go at being funny and being out of your element hosting something, so it's a fair comparison. And the rest of the show was stupid too. Why was there so much emphasis on old movies? I can see where they were trying to go with that, but it just came off as being weird. I agree with pretty much everyone who won their awards as much as I possibly could. For the major ones, that is. I really can't say I have any stock in who wins shorts, or documentaries, or documentary shorts. But Randy Newman, come on. That wasn't such a great song, and who cares about Randy Newman. And although I hadn't *really* seen any of the other Animated Features, I was bitter about Toy Story 3 winning. It didn't really mean much to me, and I get disenchanted with Pixar when it comes to the Oscars because everyone loves them and looks past other worthy movies (Fantastic Mr. Fox, anyone?) Other than that, I was very pleased with how things turned out. All the acting awards went to the right people. I don't want this to be a post where I wax on poetically about my feelings towards all these actors and movies, or give my full analysis, but....

I cried a little bit when Christian Bale won. Every time I looked at his hands and saw that he was holding an Oscar it just made me so proud because I know he deserves it, and as much crap as people give him for being a jerk that one time, or being kind of a weirdo a lot of the other time, he's so talented and such a great person. I feel similar about the other winners, especially Colin Firth and Natalie Portman. (Melissa Leo was phenom, but I have little stock in her personally).

The only award that surprised me was Tom Hooper winning for Best Director. He made a great movie, one of my favorites of the year, and directed great performances, but in my heart of hearts, I do think that David Fincher should have won. He did something amazing with a story about facebook. He made me like The Social Network, because I didn't think I would, but he did it right. I may have some misguided ideas about directing in general. I don't ever seem to understand where the academy is coming from a lot of the time (although, their word is not the be all end all for SURE). Your movie either has to be truly amazing, or have a lot of commercial appeal (which is most definitely the case for when Jason Reitman got nominated for Juno, of all the sucky movies, over Joe Wright for Atonement, which was BEAUTIFUL.)

I digress. It was a good night for Hollywood and Actors. But not fashion.

Cool, a 'W'. What's that supposed to stand for? Witches Brew?

Can I just say how excited I am for spring?

I've always been that annoying person who wants winter to drag out as long as possible, and I suppose to a certain degree, I still am, but lately I can't wait for spring. It's always the season that I never look forward to, but always get really excited when it comes. But now I look forward to it and it's not even Valentine's Day yet.

This happened to me last year. Something about starting second semester, *spring* semester that makes me think it's spring already. It's certainly been sunnier, and on my way to 5:30 class it's still light out. I certainly have spring fever.

I've been really wanting to go out and hike lately, too. And I suppose I could do that now, but I don't have practical shoes for it here at school. And the last time I took a long winter walk in my hiking boots my hips ached for days and knee was swollen. Cold weather apparently does not agree with my want of outdoors time. It definitely does not make me want to be in school. Although I'm putting up with it well enough. I'll be happy when spring break has come and gone.

Danse Macabre

I feel so un-healthy right now, and kind of in a good way, kind of in a bad way. Last night roommate and I had our second 'potato night', where we buy a bag of potatoes, a thing of sour cream, a big bag of cheese and butter. Last night we also bought Warm Delights for dessert, and since we hadn't eaten since lunch at 11:30 and wouldn't be eating out potatoes until around 10 because we got going late, we got Amy's microwave burritos to tide us over.

Neither of us are obviously on a diet. Right now. But considering there were several points last night after many potatoes that I looked like I could be pregnant, I should go back to the gym.

But if anyone has a magic bullet and they want to make twice baked potatoes, it can be done. Scoop out the potato from the skin, sour cream, butter cheese, put it in the bullet- bam. Awesome delciousness. Emily, I'm looking at you.

Updating seemed like a good idea. I apologize if that made you really hungry, or kinda grossed out. Either way, my bad.

Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, Son.

It's about 1 am on a saturday morning, Sports fans, and I'm sitting on the futon in my room waiting to muster the energy to go brush my teeth and go to bed.

As you may or may not have noticed, I haven't 'blogged' since October. I got some harsh feedback on my lack of updating, and then I was just showing off my blog to my roommate and my friend and realized it's not that impressive since the last time I posted I was bummin' hard. I never re-updated after that because most things didn't change during the rest of the semester. One gleaming exception might have been painting an abstract series of Chipotle burritos that were well received.

And as all school things go, I got a break which included sleep, presents, and my cat.

On sunday night I found out that I'd be having class on fridays which is something I was careful to avoid in registration. But the class didn't fulfill weekly hour requirements, so it got extended (can they even do that?), but only until spring break when the class ends. And that's first aid. Which hopefully will be interesting and educational enough to get me out of bed on a friday morning at 9:30 and walk 20 minutes there and back for an hour long class. For attendance's sake, let's hope.

I also have cultural anthropology, which I've had two sessions of, and should be interesting. It's a larger class than I'm used to having for a gen ed. And it seems legit for gen ed as well. The only one I've taken that wasn't an honors course was Psychology, and perhaps I've mentioned this, but that class sucked. But the anthro professor reminds me of a mix of Harrison Ford and Michael Fielding. But he's as tall as a house, and he's so skinny I fear he may break in two.

I'm taking GCM this semester which is graphic communications management, basically print production. My teacher is the 80's. That's pretty much all I have to say about him. The first day he was having technical difficulties, and he called in this guy he knew to help him, and I swear both of them were characters both being played by Stephen Merchant. Rarely do you get to see people who are so comically awkward and unaware of it. I mention this only because I'm sure this means the class has already peaked. Is that as interesting in blog form as it is in my head?

I'm taking Design Theory and Methods. Which I've heard mixed things on. I'm not going to leave myself any room for error. This class reeks of 3D Design which I've decided doesn't stress me out because of my negative connotation and embarrassment from that class, but because of fear of my own inadequacy. So now I need to address that.

And lastly I'm taking a night class. Art after 1950. I'm taking it with my favorite professor who knows my aunt and uncle, who I got an A+ on my first midterm, and who graciously let me make-up my second midterm after I overslept.

happy late christmas

So I know I'll be hunting high and low

I'm having a day where I just can't seem to figure out what I'm feeling. I shouldn't say that I've been feeling bi-polar, because I've been a little bit more sad and depressed than happy. I'm not sure why I'm feeling that way, it's just one of those days, and nothing seems to be putting me in a good mood.

It's one of those days where I'd like to just quit school, because it literally brought nothing good into my day.

I'm currently attributing it to the fact that I have a programming assignment due tomorrow at midnight, and I'm having a hard time concentrating on it. I'd forgotten how stressful it is to have projects that are more mentally taxing than physically. Art projects have such easier solutions, and better ones, and ones that you can create yourself, not that you have to read in a book. I admire the people who are really smart in math and science, but I'm glad I'm not one of them. Usually. Now is a time that I wish I was one of them, though, so this assignment would just...come to me.

I'm also really frustrated at math. My teacher constantly is changing the schedule of when we meet, because it's supposed to be four days a week, but then we've been having increasingly more "independant study hours" where we don't meet and are expected to use the time to study on our own (although, I seriously hope my professor isn't expecting that we actually get up at nine to study on our own, if like me, you don't have another class until later). But the point is, he keeps changing the schedule, and sending out new ones, so I have all of these dates written down that we're not meeting, and then I have to change them, and it gets confusing, and it hasn't really been a huge issue until today, when we originally didn't have class, and I didn't see it on the schedule, so I didn't change it on my calendar, and I missed class, because I thought we didn't have it. I blame myself 75% for not double-checking, but I blame him the rest, because he needs to QUIT CHANGING the schedule. I'm already feeling extremely disorganized right now, he's just making it way worse.

I think honestly the most amount of frustration is coming from the fact that I CAN'T FOCUS on anything these days. I keep getting distracted. I literally can't help it. I can't turn a problem into an answer, I can't write in Java syntax, I can't sketch logos, and I can't paint for long periods of time. I can't do anything. I'm getting enough sleep, I'm eating enough, I just. can't. focus. I think it has something to be overstimulated. Listening to music, watching movies, tv, talking to people, it all sticks with me too much. I think I have ADD. And I don't just say that in a casual way, I'm not just doing random self-diagnosing, but I think I've had it for awhile. Focusing has never been my forte. And honestly, it's at the root of every issue I'm currently having.