I've been in need of better gainful employment lately. I have a job, but it is not very good, in that after gasoline I barely make anything.
So I'm trying to make more money. Here's what's going on:
1. I'm waiting to hear about an interview at Barnes and Noble, which is about a 5 minute walk from my house.
2. I am hoping to be signed up for cognitive, psychological, and social testing soon, for $30 cash, with the possibility of getting 8-16 hours more tests at $15 an hour. It's in Pasadena, through the psychology dept of a big school (USC), and they want females to test more than males. Leave a comment if you want me to find the contact stuff for you. Woo. I actually want to be a guinea pig. Evaluate me!
3. I'm going to call Greenpeace tomorrow. They are looking for summer fund-raiser people. I already work for an environmental nonprofit, so why not another?
4. I may be doing some secret shopping around here soon. It's secret, so that's all I'm saying...
Yep. Money.
Today is officially my second anniversary with Laura!
I'm a forgetful person. There is a book I want to lend to a friend of mine, who I can visit in Lancaster on Friday, so I have just tied it to my work shirt. I am working that day in Lancaster, so this way I will actually remember to take it with me. I tried to upload a picture of this, but it gave me a weird error.
ciao
What's your favorite type of cheese? Or, if you don't like cheese, why not?
Submitted by Draegon Scribe.
This seems like a good opportunity to post this video I came across about how cheese is like heroin: (you can skip to about 8 minutes in for the part on cheese/dairy)
I think it's pretty worth watching all the way through. It's interesting and funny.
That said, I was never that big on cheese when I still ate it, but my then-favorite was definitely mozzarella.
Good! :
- My lunch! Let me show you it:
It consists of: quinoa, red lentils, black lentils, garbanzo beans, broccoli, white mushrooms, toasted sesame seeds, nori flakes, a little bit of ground flax, and a little bit of soy sauce. Yum. I am eating it as I type!
- I picked a topic for my Art of Research project! woo!
- Visiting friends tonight!
- Yesterday I learned how to use power tools. I now possess knowledge of how to use a band saw, a drill press, and a lathe. I am most excited about the lathe. It seems like my kind of tool. It and I have an understanding.
- Thomas and I will have been together for 2 years tomorrow. Pretty neat!
- I sort of hate to keep yanking things from Drawn!, but they featured another thing that I thought was really amazing and wanted to share. It's an animation made of paintings done on walls, graffiti style. It was done by an Italian street artist called Blu. Click here to watch it on his vimeo page. It is massively impressive.
Bad! :
- Working in the [um I don't know what it's called... the power tool room?] at school and inhaling large amounts of sawdust makes my nose all congested and dry. That is an especially bad thing for me because a dry inner-nose = nosebleed city. I woke up last night with a minor one. Maybe I should get some of that dumb nasal spray.
- While I will get to see Jeff and Ruth, I will not get to see Tommi, who will only be around during the time slot of my digital illustration class. :(
- Sunday was the stupidest driving day ever. I don't want to type out the whole thing, but just know that it sucked and that AAA is the Mario to my Princess Toadstool.
Neutral! :
- My hairs are getting long and I feel like I should cut them?
There's this stuff in the cupboard called Wyler's Light Soft Drink Mix. It's kool-aid with aspartame and sucralose instead of adding sugar. On the back of the can, on the bottom, it says that they support ovarian cancer awareness. It says
The Rules:
Each player starts with 8 random facts/habits about themselves. People who are tagged, write a blog post about their own 8 random things, and post these rules. At the end of your post you need to tag 8 people and include their names. Don’t
forget to leave them a comment on their blog and tell them they’ve been
tagged, and to come back and read your blog for the whole story.
My eight random habits and/or facts:
- When I brush my teeth, I wet the toothbrush, apply the toothpaste, wet the toothbrush again, and then brush my teeth. The prospect of not getting the toothbrush wet both times before I brush makes me extremely uncomfortable.
- I also can't stand the idea of--when I am washing my hands--putting soap on my hands before getting them wet. Gross gross gross.
- I have never eaten a taco, a burrito, an enchilada, a quesadilla, or baked/refried beans... among many other common food items (not necessarily of the Mexican variety).
- When I was little I tried to have an imaginary friend, but it didn't work.
- I have to do a big research project and presentation for my Art of Research class and I have no hint of an idea what my topic should be :(.
- I like the words bumblebee, rollerskate, idyll, garbanzo, elixir, spiraling, coconut, superfluous, and extravaganza.
- I really like the number 4.
- I want to live in a house that contains secret passages.
I said I'd post a picture of the as-big-as-me drawing once I took one, so here it is:
What happened: I got to class about an hour early just to give me some time to erase stray pencil lines, re-ink some spots, and generally clean it up before critique. I worked on it a little bit and everything went fine. But then 5 minutes before class was to start, I was putting my supplies away and cleaning up my area when I grabbed my nearly-full bottle of blue ink by the not-actually-screwed-on cap and spilled the whole thing onto the table, the floor, and the right edge of the drawing. Disaster! My frantic 2-second solution was to cut the figure free from the now-stained surrounding paper and add some more color splotches to make it look intentional. I think that cutting it out was a positive change.
As far as the drawing goes... it is about things like the beauty of the human body, starvation, protest, veganism, efficiency, body temperature, thermography, maps, and size.
I wish I had a place to put it.
Well, I'm in the market for a new bike.
My bike has always been pretty stiff, it has always been a bit difficult to steer, and the brakes have always been real bad, but now the whole thing is practically unrideable. I don't know what the deal is, but turning the pedals takes serious effort even on level ground, and climbing any sort of significant incline is pretty much physically impossible.
This problem seemed to spring up after I got it to Pasadena, but I'd thought it was just that the wheels were low. So today I took it over to the bike shop (I had to walk it the whole 3.5 miles because by then the back tire was completely flat) and got the tires all fixed up. But then I went to ride it home and, shit o lord, it wasn't the slightest bit easier to move the thing. I still had to fight it like crazy and I actually just about fell over trying to ride through an intersection. It was like pedaling through tar. I dismounted and walked it home again.
The guys at the shop told me that unless I'm working on developing freakishly huge Incredible Hulk-esque leg muscles, I ought to have the whole braking system replaced. They let me ride around a few new city/beach-cruiser-ish bikes and I was Blown Away by how much easier to ride they were than mine. Pedaling, steering, riding in a straight line. All 1000000000x easier. And the brakes! I could actually stop when I wanted to! Amazing! I had no clue how stiff my bike really was until I got on one of those. And here I'd been thinking I was just pathetically out of shape or something. It's like a whole new world has opened up before my eyes.
So, I need a new bike. I am sad about it. My bike has served me well this past year. I rode it around all last Summer and loved it like a child. Thomas gave it to me. I like that bike.
But it just isn't doing its job anymore. And after almost wiping out in the middle of an intersection and being bashed in the shins repeatedly by its pedals during our 7-mile walk today, I've lost most of the affection I once had for it. It is time for it to go.
I am back in school / school is back upon me. I am really glad, actually. I can feel like a real human again instead of a sea urchin. I was playing The Sims 2 so much that my brain is still working in sim-mode. I feel compelled to micro-manage all the tasks in my life and figure out the best way balance my different wants and needs in order to keep my health bar in the green as I race against the clock of life. Luckily, in real life it does not take me 5 minutes to walk across the room and I seldom wish to be abducted by aliens or throw sport parties or buy rugs costing at least $600 or make out with 6 different people or see ghosts or be saved from death.
sigh. I don't know any Sims 2 players. No one will get my geeky references.
Anyhoo (anywho?). I really liked my Materials class today. The two instructors are highly entertaining and interesting and I think it's going to be a great class.
I've just devised a system of alarms that I think is foolproof for myself:
1. I set three alarms on my phone x:55, y:00, y:05, where y is the hour I need to be up. My phone is loud, but the alarms only go off for one minute and don't repeat, so it has failed me more than once. The first two are songs, and the last one is the same as my phone ringing. My phone is on the other side of the room.
2. I set a dresser alarm clock to y:00. It's not that loud, but it will go off until I turn it off. The clock is also on the other side of the room.
3. My phone goes off at x:55. This at least wakes me for a moment, even if I do not get up and turn it off. I have a tendency, in my supremely groggy waking time, to turn off future alarms, but 3 of them is too much trouble.
4. At y:00, both my phone and the clock go off. This is too annoying, I must get up and turn them off. I have to turn on the light to find my phone (that's important).
5. This is the important part. It is still y:00. I don't want my phone to start ringing in 5 minutes like someone is calling me, because that is supremely annoying, but it's the last alarm, and I know if I turn it off and go back to bed I know I won't get up. So I turn it off and actually start doing things! It works!
Good things!
- Body Worlds was amazing. The fetuses were definitely the strangest part, for me. It's amazing how even the
squiggly little 7-week-old wormy fetuses actually LOOK like Impossibly tiny humans, with their teeny little hands and fingers. They are so ugly and weird dude it's awesome. Among the other highlights: blood vessel configurations floating in space (as pictured to the right [more photos of these things can be found here), the thoracic and abdominal organs (especially the intestines. In person, they look much more like balloon animals than they do in illustrations), and the entire muscular system. The elaborately posed (mostly)intact bodies were all incredibly beautiful.
- Um I am still on break and it is still awesome.
- Check this shit out: illustrations by Emily Jo Cureton, based on words from crossword puzzles! It's basically the greatest idea ever and I'm really excited about them.
See the rest of them HERE.
(I found out about these, as well as the stop-motion movie I posted a few days ago, from the illustration blog Drawn!)
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Bad Things!
- Thomas might be allergic to Wednesday. (the cat).
- Gas prices.
- That is all.
Other!
- Pasadena just passed that law about smoking in public places. I will personally enjoy not encountering smoke as often, but I feel sort of bad for the smokers in my life.
