First of all, I have to give credit where credit is due-- photo credit to MrBillGeorge, as I used his photo as a loose reference for the drawing above.
Colin found his old Wacom Tablet from his home in MA and let me borrow it for a while for me to play and experiment with. Tried to install the Wacom on my laptop last night after work, and the installation software it came with was oooooooold, so it took me a while to get it off my machine and then for me to download the latest version from the Wacom website. But after that, it was smooth sailin'.

So yeah, above is my first ever Wacom drawing! Which is why it's a little meh-- could use way more work. The brushes/pressure takes some getting used to, and overall I just need to get more familiar with what Corel is capable of, and WHERE the various drawings tools ARE in Corel. I'll keep practicing. 

But anyways, had a great weekend up in MA at the Radville's in Cape Cod (Sandwich), met some more of Colin's high school friends. Good times, lots of fun, lots of relaxing. Lots of poker and bocce. Since around, what, 13 of us were there at various times during the long weekend, Colin and I set up my new tent in the backyard to sleep in-- and also broke out the new air mattress-- in the open space to the left of the depicted hammock, actually. Maybe I'll edit the drawing later to include the tent. It was actually a really comfortable and gorgeous (was woken up at 6AM Saturday morning so I could "see the sunrise") place to sleep.Well, the edit will have to come much later, since I probably won't get to play with the tablet tonight at all-- darn school!  


   

Today's the first day of school (well, tonight, rather), and I'm feeling a little jittery. Nothing I'm really worry about, but it's going to take some getting used to in order to fall back into a schedule of going to classes after work again.
I'll miss those 7PM-8PM naps, which will now conflict with 6:40pm-9:15pm classes twice a week (Tues & Thurs) again.
 
Tonight will be the first day of Multimedia- Design & Production, and next Tuesday's Technology Applications in Information Management. 

I guess school starting signals that it's the end of summer.
I still want to go camping at some point this year, hopefully in September before it gets too chilly. However, after seeing videos of botflies online a few days ago, and then reading up about them, I'm now paranoid about getting one and having to shoot myself to rid me of the MAD crazy HYSTERIA that will come with the knowledge of being a host to a botfly. 
I know botfly infections are fairly rare in the U.S. (though it still happens!), so it's not really enough to deter me.

I'm looking at the following campsites, but am still browsing around:
Cheesequake State Park (in my head, it's pronounce CHEESE QUAKE Park), NJ.
Jenny Jump State Forest, NJ
Clarence Fahnestock State Park, NY
Wildwood State Park, NY
Choices picked for not being ::too:: far away (under 60 miles) from either Princeton, NJ; or from Queens, NY.

Hopefully, I won't let school have me completely abandon this blog.
Here's a drawing!

Just some 'messing-around' drawings of birds...

Working today (Saturday), in exchange for taking off next Friday. Fair exchange, though not sleeping in on a weekend = tiring.

Last weekend we painted one of Colin's bedroom walls a BRIGHT blue color (a pretty cyan), that's just a bit brighter than the blue in the image above. It's a good shade though, and looks good contrasted against the white of the other walls. He wanted me to paint something on one of his walls... I suggested a squid in a corner. I'm not completely happy with the idea of JUST a squid though... Like, it needs to be running away from something. But I can't think of anything right now. What's something that would chase away a squid? Or, what's something that would absurdly chase away a squid? A hamster in scuba gear?

Later, went and did the above drawing (it was like finger painting) using the Brushes app for the iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch, since it's the only thing I have that I can draw in color digitally, aside from MS Paint (I have traditional media supplies-- watercolors, oil paints, and oil pastels, but didn't feel like getting too messy). Maybe one day I'll splurge for Photoshop. And a Wacom (I've been eying the Wacom Bamboo for quite a while, heh).
I still prefer old pen and ink though.

I've always been fascinated with the concepts of memories and dreaming (basically, mental functions that we can cognitively think about when conscious, but don't have complete control over).
In order to remember bits and pieces of dreams during my waking life, I used to keep a pencil on the nightstand next to my bed so that I could grab it in the dark and scrawl some key words summarizing my dreams on the wall before I succumbed again to sleep. Then it evolved to keeping a pencil and a pad of Post-Its on my nightstand, after I had re-painted the bedroom wall over with a fresh coat of paint.

It's an act of discipline to jot down these notes right upon waking (similar to the discipline required for keeping up with semi-daily drawing exercises), and I haven't really been keeping up with dream note-taking at all for about a year now. I do still quite frequently wake up and just lie in bed for a few minutes, recalling the previous nights' dreams, finding interest in the weird imagery and scenarios. 

A few days ago, I had a dream where I managed to achieve awareness that I was in a dream, at a level I've never experienced before.
Some strange things happened in the dream, involving me yelling at some elderly women because they were scamming strangers-- something I'd never do in real life, because though scamming people is "wrong," it's not necessarily a white-and-black moral issue. Example: if these women were homeless and/or in dire financial straits, it's not necessarily ethically unacceptable to scam people in order to survive. Hell, I'd probably throw some money their way anyway, knowing that I'm being scammed, if I knew that the women need the money more than I do.

In any case, after yelling at these women, I climbed into the backseat of a car, and we started driving-- I was embarrassed that I had made a scene. Once I was in the car, driving for a little bit, I realized that I was in a dream. I even did a full checklist-- I'm in a car with who-knows-who, and I had just yelled at some elderly women. I don't know where in the world we're driving off to. Totally a dream. 100% a dream.
I was completely and utterly aware at the time that I was dreaming. And, it seemed that the moment I realized this fact, things stopped... happening. Like, as if my subconscious couldn't go on continuing creating the story, because my consciousness was butting in (though I was dead asleep). I immediately panicked at the thought of being trapped in a dream. I tried to calm my anxieties, thinking, "Hey, I'm lucid dreaming-- I can try to do something REALLY AWESOMELY cool now and totally take advantage of the situation."

But no dice, my panic was too great. I just kept thinking-- "I'm trapped awake in a dream! How in the world am I going to wake up and get out? What if I CAN'T ever wake up and get out? What if my consciousness is stuck in this dream forever?"
And then I was trying to block my consciousness of lucid dreaming something disturbing and creepy, rather than something cool (of course, consciously thinking "don't think of anything disturbing and creepy! Don't think of anything disturbing and creepy!" always results in oneself thinking of something disturbing and creepy). I was afraid of my dream conjuring up something unsettling quickly (like a strange, deformed figure dragging itself out into the road in front of the car), and that fueled the anxiety even more, to the point where I just kept willing myself to WAKEUPWAKEUPWAKEUPWAKEUPWAKEUP!

Finally, I woke up in a complete state of panic, heart pounding HARD. I remembered everything clearly, and couldn't believe that I managed to pull myself out of a dream/sleep. It was a scary event, but do I realize that in my panic, I kind of wasted what could have been a potentially interesting lucid dreaming experience. Maybe next time.
I had fallen back asleep that night and got close to lucid dreaming again (I was driving around and saw some blue, Dr. Seuss-esque looking/fake-stuffed-animal looking birds and KNEW that something wasn't right). I haven't been actively trying to lucid dream or anything like that, so I can only imagine what could happened if I put in the effort to achieve this.

The drawing below is also inspired from a dream I recently had.

Hey New Yorkers!
My best friend's theatre company, Spookfish Theatre, is debuting a new original play in NYC next week.

"Wabi Sabi, Not Wasabi!" will be playing from August 28th-September 4th at Theater for the New City.

The information for it is as follows:

Wabi Sabi! Not Wasabi.

Written by Ming Peiffer
Developed with and Directed by Kat Yen

Feeling like outsiders since childhood, best friends Hailey Chen and Lillian Chin have been planning their escape from their hometown in whitewashed suburbia to pursue lives of fame and fortune in the giant melting pot of New York City. But their plans for "living the high life" quickly disintegrate when their dream loft in Soho turns out to be a one bedroom in Flushing, and Lillian's native Chinese cousin unexpectedly tags along. As the girls attempt to fulfill their juvenile plans for success, their own differences become evident as they are forced to confront the dysphoria attached to their ethnic roots and explore their own prejudices concerning sexuality, self-identity, and issues of race and society as first generation Asian-Americans.

Starring Janice Amano, Natsuko Aoike, Alton Alburo, Rachel Lin, Steve Lin, Tony Mui, and Ming Peiffer

Lighting Design by Austin Smith
Costume, Set and Sound Design by Spookfish Theatre
Production Manager/TD Becky Sagen

Saturday, August 28th at 8:30pm
Sunday, August 29th at 2:00pm
Thursday, September 2nd at 9:00pm
Friday, September 3rd at 9:00pm
Saturday, September 4th at 7:00pm

Theater for the New City
155 1st Avenue
New York, NY 10003-2906
Get Tickets at our website www.spookfishtheatre.org
or go to https://www.ovationtix.com/trs/cal/85
Ticket Price: $12
------------------------------
Asian-American presence in the performance arts is still severely lacking-- from writers to actors, so I do think it's important to support work like this.
But most importantly: just support the arts in general!

I myself will probably be attending on Friday, September 3rd-- hope to see you there!

Oh Fridays. What's kinda of surprising to me is how quickly Fridays seem to come around nowadays.

Below is a short summary of last weekend.

This weekend will include--hopefully-- actual (house) paint BUYING, along with some real wall painting. Should be fun, once the indecision over paint colors is overcome.
And yes, there is a stray cat who hangs around Colin's place who is also a black cat, so he/she/it looks practically identical to my cat. I'm positive I can tell the difference if the two of them were together (they have slightly different faces), but they look similar enough that Stray Black Cat is able to emotionally manipulate me to feed it and pet it. Stray Black Cat is a lot more sociable than my cat though. 

And, oh yeah, speaking about black cats, it's Friday the 13th, and thus "Colgate Day". Happy Colgate Day, Alma Mater.

Lately (though it really comes and goes), I've been having some weird dreaming experiences, which I'll probably write about in my next post.

Continuation of 'work in progress'. Yup, still trying to work on and develop this thing...

So  roughly a week ago, during a fairly mundane, routine day at work, our office suite's landlord's son-in-law comes into our office, saying that his father-in-law (our landlord) isn't breathing. He asked if we can come over and "do the, you know... CPR thing on him?". [Our landlord's apartment is actually in the suite right next door].
He had a sheepish grin on his face, almost as if he was embarrassed to be bothering us at work, which made my coworker laugh awkwardly and ask, "Wait... What? Are you serious?"

The son-in-law repeats that, "Yeah, he's not breathing".

My coworker and I had a moment of 'oh-gosh-he's-not-joking-around-is-he?'
She quickly called 911 as my other coworker ran to grab our boss, who's an RN and ex-EMT/Paramedic. Both the boss and another CPR Instructor rushed off next door, with me mostly staying in our office suite to herd two classes full of students and to keep them from crowding around too close to the doors. One of the classes going on was an Advanced Cardiac Life Support Course, the other a Basic Life Support Course (CPR, AED), and one of the students from the BLS Course turned out to be a Korean ER physician, so he dashed over next door to assist with the situation as well. Turned out to be a good thing, since the landlord's girlfriend was a witness of the cardiac arrest, and spoke only Korean, so our student was able to play translator.

Long story short, the fire fighters showed up first with the AED; it was unshockable rhythms all the way. When the paramedics showed up, we decided to let them do their jobs and have us go back to resuming our jobs/classes next door.

We joked (dark humor) to the ER physician that the events that just transpired was his exam-- which he clearly passed-- and that he would be issued his CPR certification card and could go home for the day, heh. Later on in the day, he said he called his friends to tell them what had happened, and none of them could believe it-- imagine going in to take a routine BLS/CPR Certification Course, having the guy next door go under cardiac arrest and having to go help do CPR for real on someone.