Monday, March 17, 2003

 

I was going to start this off by saying that I hate Adobe Photoshop, but that's not true. I hate my graphic design class. I am very happy and thankful that I am becoming familiar with these various programs, but not at the cost of my sanity and making me feel completely non-creative and artistic. For this particular assignment, we took an entire roll of pictures and scanned in our favorites or the ones with the most "design potential," whatever that means. Then, in Photoshop, we're supposed to create 3-9 panels that have something in common. I particularly liked my pictures of my favorite antique store in town, so that's what I'm working with. I have cut out rectangles of the various brick and stone patterns, but I don't want to do anything else to them, so she may just get them that way because I've played with some things but haven't liked anything and I don't work in a way that I can come up with an idea for it in my head then figure out how to make the computer do it. Overall, I have to have someone with that ability tell me what to do to the picture then I can usually figure out how to make the computer do it. She may not like it, but I'm in the sentiment where we're just critiquing (is that spelled right? it looks wrong) them tomorrow then will have several days to make changes and actually turn it in. When she agreed to start doing our projects that way, she made it clear she wanted us to bring to the critique what we would consider a finished product. But, I guess, it will be as finished as I can make it, right? Right, that's it, of course.

Oh yeah, and what gets me most about this class now (in addition to it being Mondays and Wednesdays from 6:30-9:20pm): it's no longer required for my major, but too late to withdraw. A similar thing may be decided about sales/sales management, which is the other class I'm taking right now I wish I could drop. Then there's persuasion, but we won't get into that one just yet...I'd like to drop that one, too, but know I never actually would.

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Saturday, March 15, 2003

 

Many times over the past several weeks have I thought of posting on here, but the time and ambition just hasn't been there. Even now I have a seemingly endless list of things to do, but I have some ambition for this today, so I'm posting.

It has been an interesting past two weeks to say the least. A couple of you know the details, a couple still need to be informed of the details [Bethy, either call or IM me and I'll fill ya in], and others just know that the past two weeks have been extremely hard on me. I want to thank everyone who has prayed for me and helped cheer me up and de-stress whether you knew you were doing it or not. :) In addition, I pulled two basically all-nighters this past week, but managed to still get a decent amount of sleep. I did much better this week than Bill, though, with his 5 hours in 3 days!

Last night I was up until 4AM, but slept until noon today. Yes, it was somewhat stupid, but it was just too dang fun to go to bed! My dearest friend Melissa Harper performed at a concert for an AIDS benefit here last night. Except for one act, all four of the performers were great and they raised $138. I also had THREE cups of the free coffee offered, which facilitated my sleeplessness. Highlander grogg is really good. :-D After that, Melissa, Ariane, Ian, and I went to Wal-Mart. We were at Wal-Mart until something like 1:30AM because it's always the most fun to go late at night. We got back to the dorms around 2 with plans to watch some Gilmore Girls because Ariane needed to catch up to where we are in the 3rd season. While preparing for this, Melissa and Ariane realized there was a bat asleep on one wall in the 2nd Burritt Annex lounge where we were planning to watch GG. Thus comes the story of Colby, the 2BA bat...

Kelly (our RC), Claire (her roommate), and several other girls had been up because our floor sometimes turns into something of a slumber party on the weekends and they had a friend visiting. After Kelly ran around the dorm and called other RCs looking for the bat net, she gathered a box, a mailbag, a pillow, two brooms, and a surgeon's mask to try to capture the poor sleeping bat and release him outside. Melissa (wearing the surgeon's mask) and Claire were going to put the opening of the bag over the bat, who was later named Colby, then Kelly was going to try to gently knock him into the bag with the handle of a broom. Melissa and Claire, however, chickened out. So then Melissa just took a broom and knocked Colby off the wall with the bristles. At first we thought he was dead, but he did move a little and was breathing. They were going to try to sweep him into the box or the bag, but that was going to be difficult, so I got the brilliant idea to use a dustpan. Melissa scooped him up in the dustpan....after an incident of Colby spreading his wings which caused a loud unison scream (yes, at 2:45AM) followed by my laughter and exclamation, "that was the coolest thing I've ever seen!" Not that I was volunteering to help pick him up... Anyway, we finally got Colby in the mailbag then Melissa, Ariane, and I took him outside and propped the bag open so he could get out because he was hanging on too tightly to the side of the bag to dump him onto the sidewalk. Many pictures were taken by all and I wish we'd had a video camera. It was hilarious. At this point it was after 3, but we still watched Gilmore Girls... :-D

In other news, I finally opened a bank account yesterday. I first went to Bradford National Bank to ask about savings accounts, but left realizing that there were more questions I should have asked and feeling like it was a little too formal and big for me. Greenville Bank felt more like First National back home. They were more laid back and friendly, so I opened an account there even though the interest rate was much lower.

All this to say that I finally have some cash again. This is rather bad because it is the reason I went to the Evil Empire this afternoon and bought a CD. A week ago when I was hanging out with Kyle Coates who was visiting, I noticed that they had a demo copy of Andrew Peterson Clear to Venus for sale. I've been wanting to own an AP album for a while now. So I went over there this afternoon with the hope in the back of my mind that it wouldn't still be there. It was and so were several other CDs I really want to own, but I held back from those. I was actually considering not buying Andrew's CD, especially since I didn't really know any of the songs on that album, but then I noticed there was a song entitled "Alaska or Bust." There was no question anymore. I had to buy it. It's wonderful, but I still feel guilty. It's hard not having my Lemstone around!

Oh yeah! And at Wal-Mart last night I found a DVD of a Journey concert....you have no idea how much it killed me not to buy it, but I'm happy to still have those 20 dollars.

Mitch McVicker is going to be in concert for free here on April 17....heck yeah I'm going!

Is it Spring Break yet? I'm really ready for Spring Break. One week.....sigh. I can make it....I can. ISU's on break now....lucky. Wish I could be on that missions trip to Mexico, but I'm glad I'll be home all break and all my Iowa Staters will be around to bother. :-D I may be taking the train to get back to Greenville. How fun would that be? I suppose I should get that figured out soon, eh?

I want to go disc golfing....wonder if I could find someone with a car to go to Carlyle. I shouldn't take the time to, but it's beckoning me! Greenville should really make a course. I'll bring it up the next time I chat with the mayor's wife. ;)

Final ellipsis count: 10

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