Thursday, December 27, 2007

ho-hum

Things I've accomplished since my accident:

1. Finished knitting my awesome scarf.
2. Watched five movies.
3. Learned how to play Hearts (and win).
4. Slept over 12 hours in one night for the first time.


I wish I could add "churned out dozens of awesome drawings" to that list, but it figures that inspiration falls short just when I have all the time in the world to draw. This is one of the most frustrating things that I experience. It doesn't matter what I try to draw, nothing is good enough for me. I know I can do better, I know I have it in me...it's just a matter of removing the excess mind-clutter and letting the artwork out. Work stuff doesn't count. I can do that. It's just all of the ideas I have in my head for personal use that are clogged. I feel like I draw more freely with my tablet on my own computer...so hopefully once I go back to my apartment I'll be ableto do something of substance.

I AM going to the art museum tomorrow to check out the Roman art exhibit from the Louvre...so maybe that will help with inspiration.

It'll come back, one way or another. It always does. Just getting this out there for now...I won't badger it to death.






I'm so looking forward to not having to use crutches. My palms ache...

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Saturday, December 22, 2007

Stardust

So I got to get out of the house today! I went along with my mom to the movie rental place and got a bunch of movies to watch. I went to Target too, but I'm not sure if that was a good idea...I was able to get one of those motorized scooter things, but the place was a madhouse, so I was basically in everyone's way. I won't go out to any retail store again until after the holidays, I think... Anyway!

I watched Stardust today. When it was in theatres, I wasn't really interested in seeing it. It looked cliche and overall kind of "meh". But I wanted a variety of movies today, so I decided to give it a chance because I was in the mood for fantasy. Wow. I might have to buy this movie. It struck the same chord in me as Enchanted did. It blended fantasy and just the right amount of reality.

The story was relatively simple, which is perfectly fine with me..because sometimes I'm just not in the mood to pick apart a complex plot. The main character, Tristan, was incredibly endearing...Charlie Cox is just adorable. There is no other way to describe him. Robert DeNiro! His character is surprising, based on what I expected from the commercials. A very pleasant surprise. Everyone is just wonderful...

I can't even say now what it was that I liked so much about the movie. I just know I smiled a lot, the story stayed with me, and I want to see it again. And I want to draw now.

That's how I know a movie was good. Haha!


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Friday, December 21, 2007

people are awesome.

It's been two days since my accident, and I've had so many people stopping by to hang out, drop off little get-well things, or sending get-well cards. I'm even getting pictures of the outside world courtesy of Jon (you really shouldn't risk your life to take them, though..haha!). So all in all, I've learned that people are awesome over the course of this week.

Thursday, December 20, 2007

storytime!

So, everybody who reads this is already aware of what happened...but I'll just put this down for the sake of the record, so when I look back on posts I'll be able to say "Oh God, I remember that!".

Short version:
I broke my leg/ankle yesterday by slipping on ice outside the apartment complex.

Long version:
I went out to my car yesterday morning and found a really thin layer of ice on the windsheild. I went ahead and got in, starting the car and turning on the windsheild wipers to see if they'd possibly get the ice of. They didn't, so I grabbed the ice scraper and got out..and accidentally shut the door. All of the doors besides the driver's door were locked, and the door handle on that door doesn't work. So my car is running and the keys and my purse are locked inside.

I ended up going to the office to get a spare set of keys to my apartment so I could call somebody to help me get into my car. The office didn't open until nine, but luckily some of the maintenence guys were hanging around in the lobby. One of them got me the keys and I headed back to my building. I ended up slipping on a big patch of ice and experiencing a pretty epic fall. I heard a crack (never good) and I landed halfway in mud (also never good).

I started to freak a little because I couldn't get up, I didn't have a cell phone to call anybody, I was in pain and it was cold, and there was literally nobody around. After about five minutes of that, it seemed like ten people showed up at the same time...Luckily somebody called 911 and a few minutes later an ambulance and a fire truck arrived. The paramedics and firemen were having difficulty gaining traction as well. All this time my car's still been running with my purse locked inside...so the firemen go to take care of that while the paramedics get me into the ambulance for the two second drive across the street to the St. Vincent ER.

After that, it was basically a lot of waiting. Waiting to get x-rays, waiting to be transferred upstairs to a room, waiting for the surgeon to come and tell us something. Luckily, no surgery was necessary...what the doctors told him earlier in the day was a lot more serious than what he saw on my x-rays. So I can't put weight on it for six weeks (no driving for me), I won't be able to walk around comfortably for about three months, and the surgeon said it'd "make noise" for about a year.

I honestly thought it wouldn't be as serious as it was at first....Then after the word "surgery" was mentioned several times and they actually admitted me to the hospital with the assumption that I would be staying there for several days, it kind of hit me. I guess I thought something requiring that much fuss would hurt a lot more. In reality, this hasn't hurt quite as much as my surgery did a year and a half ago. But the pain is going to last a lot longer, which is something I haven't decided is better or worse. Not that it matters in the long run, things will get better one way or another. This is just a temporary inconvenience. Maybe just a little less temporary than other things...haha.

Luckily I have so many people who are so awesomely supportive and helpful. I had five people visiting at once yesterday! I got two things of cookies, one from Jon (those yogurt chocolate chip ones are amazing, by the way!)...and one from Allison and the kids. Brenna helped cut them out and she chose Halloween sprinkles for them. Laura's been a huge help, bringing me stuff and hanging out despite having a crapload of stuff to do before leaving for Colorado. My dad left work and drove down from Chicago to spend a few hours hanging out with me.

All in all, despite the crappy timing of this accident, I'm really happy to have the friends and family that I do, and I still plan on having a great Christmas and New Year's!

Tuesday, December 18, 2007

lookit!




I do SO enjoy my scarf in progress...!

Saturday, December 15, 2007

Things.

Things That Make Me Happy:

1. Being done with finals.

2.
Free time to draw!

3.
Getting a new watch.

4. Knitting.

5. When my turn signal synchronizes with the music playing in my car PERFECTLY.

6. Sleeping in.

7. This wallpaper on my big new monitor.



Random Kristin Chenoweth Things:

"If (You hadn't but you did)"


"Glitter and Be Gay"


"Taylor the Latte Boy"



More Things to Come.

:)



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Thursday, December 13, 2007

time out!

It's the last week of this semester, so I'm in scramble mode. I'll get everything done, and everything will be fine, and I went through my "oh my God I can't handle this, I just want to give up" phase already. I've got a giant picture of Bora Bora as my desktop wallpaper, and it's a nice reminder to take a step back and take a deep breath, relax, and take things one at a time. Vacation will be there waiting for me in a few days.



Aaahhh.....backtowork!



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Sunday, December 9, 2007

:D

I got my Christmas present from my mom today. It was a brand new 22" widescreen monitor! I'm slowly but surely pimping out my computer...first the tablet a year ago, then the new speakers a few months ago...and now a nice monitor that gives me plenty of space to work my illustrative magic, as seen in the photo below:




Yeah, I'm an artistic genius. Haha...I'm looking forward to playing with this more!



:D

Thursday, December 6, 2007

weird dreams

Okay, I'm just going right in to it so I don't forget this dream I just had...

I was contacted by the wife of this pastor who's serving the church I did a website for while I was at the Synod office. I still help them maintain it, so this wasn't unusual. But what was unusual was that for some reason, I got it in my head that I had to move up to northwestern Indiana so I could live near the church and work on the site better. ]

At one fuzzy moment, I recall talking to my mom about it. She asked me when I was going and I said something like "Oh, I was thinking now."

And wouldn't you know, I had all my stuff packed in the car. About halfway through the drive it was no longer my mom and me, it was Laura, Jon, and me. On the way we'd decided it was an awesome idea to just drop everything and go live in god-knows-where, Indiana. "That's fine," I say, "they have some extra rooms in their house, so we can stay with them until we find a place." Because apparently I'd stayed at the pastor's house before, no problem.

So we get there and we go right upstairs and put our stuff down, looking through the second story of the house...There was what looked like a little girl's room that was huge...but it had a crib in the middle. And a gigantic luxury bath attached to it. There were two other rooms, but I don't remember them...Anyway!

I walked downstairs to let the couple know we'd taken over the second story of their house, and I hope they don't mind, yatta yatta. Turns out there's some sort of cocktail party going on, and I walk over to the wife and let her know what's up. She gets this look on her face, all apologetic, and tells me the upstairs is actually being used...I tell her it's fine, we'll find somewhere else, thanks anyway.

And just like that, we're out of the house and in some local diner trying to figure out what to do. While I'm apologizing, it comes up that it's my birthday (uh, duh!). I'm looking over available apartments when suddenly Jon puts a stack of presents in front of me. One of which is this gigantic Mac laptop. I forget the others...the laptop was insanely awesome and I asked him "did YOU buy this?!" And he looked all offended and said that of course he did, he wasn't going to STEAL it.

So after playing with the laptop and having some more conversation I don't remember, I look up and tell them, "You know what...I can't drive three hours to and from work every day...I need to stay with my job at Sticky Matters. Plus I'm not done with school until Spring. Maybe we should just go back."

And we did.

Sunday, December 2, 2007

sketches

Some sketches I did over the past week or so...



I got to use my new Facial Expressions book for this one...I had fun with these two.



Umm........I was sketching and the song Fergalicious came on, so I added the lyrics at the last moment.

a message from beyond...

I got a comment on my portfolio blog submitted to me in Portuguese earlier...I can't post the original text here, but I can post the translation. It amused me:

"Oi, I found its blog for google is well interesting I liked this post. It would like to speak on the CresceNet. The CresceNet is a dialed supplier of InterNet that remunerates its users for the hardwired time. Accurately this that you read, is paying you to connect. The paid supplier 20 cents for the moment of connection dialed with local linking for more than 2100 cities of Brazil. The CresceNet has a connection accelerator, that leaves its faster connection up to 10 times. Who uses broad band can also profit, is enough to register in cadastre itself in the CresceNet and when it will be to sleep to connect for dialed, it is possible to pay the ADSL alone with the money of the dialed one. In the schedules of only minute the expense with telephone is minimum and the remuneration of the generous CresceNet. If you I to want to linkar Cresce.Net(www.provedorcrescenet.com) in its blog I would be been thankful, until more and success."

So it was an advertisement, and I obviously didn't publish it to my blog....but I thought it was kind of funny.

Especially the last translated sentence.

"Until more and success"!




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