Category: Sketches

First Day of 2013!

1/1/2013

First drawing of 2013!

I've been doing drawings from /r/redditgetsdrawn for a while now (well before it soared into popularity
overnight a few days ago, however hipster-ish that might sound).

It's a pretty good arena that brings
together people who'd like to get drawn and artists who'd like the opportunity to get more practice.

In honors of New Years and of resolutions, I resolve to keep this up and not lapse into long periods of not drawing. Here are the ones I've done in the month of December :

Speaking about the new year, it's end-of-the-year-survey-time--

I've done this survey every year for the last, like, 7 years now (as I move from blog-to-blog, and will keep with tradition. I find that it really is a good way of reviewing the past year, especially of all the good things that have happened:

01. What did you do in 2012 that you'd never done before?
Received my Masters degree diploma. Went para-sailing in Taiwan. Got a job with BENEFITS. Moved in with a BOY. Attend a wedding where the bride and groom are from my peer group. Got my wisdom teeth taken out/was under anesthesia for the first time.

02. Did you keep your new years' resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
I don't quite remember, but likely it was to draw more often. Which I think I did. Same resolution for this year, except I'm going to try to quantify it-- try to draw at least 5 drawings/week.
Read more books (tally it up at the end of 2013 on GoodReads).

03. Did someone close to you give birth?
Nope!

04. Did anyone close to you die?
Nope!

05. What countries did you visit?
Taiwan, China, South Korea, North Korea (technically...), and Japan.

06. What would you like to have in 2013 that you lacked in 2012?
Um. I don't know, I feel very blessed with the things I already have. Really. I'd like to travel abroad again at least once in 2013. Colin's going to Vienna and Israel for work soon, which I'm pretty jealous about.

07. What date from 2012 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
No particular dates, but 2012 has been a very good year.

08. What was your biggest achievement(s) of the year?
Getting a job that finally has to do with my degree.

09. What was your biggest failure(s)?
Being lazy when I could have been more productive.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
Wisdom teeth extraction!

11. What was the best thing you bought?
My pentel brush pen. It was like a $3 purchase, but it's totally awesome.

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?
Kat and Spookfish Theater for all their hard work and successes.

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?
Some republicans.

14. Where did most of your money go?
Rent and NJ Transit monthly train passes (can you believe those things are more than $400 bucks/month?).

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
Asia-trip. SNL with Louis CK!

16. What song(s) will always remind you of 2012?
Gangnam style.

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
i. happier or sadder? about the same- happy
ii. thinner or fatter? about the same- pretty healthy!
iii. richer or poorer? despite costly rent/train passes, richer. I was unemployed this time last year!

18. What do you wish you'd done more of?
Working on personal projects, whether it be drawing or painting, etc.

19. What do you wish you'd done less of?
Internet browsing/Redditing.

20. How will you be spending Christmas?
I spent the weekend before Christmas up in MA with Colin & his family, and Christmas Eve/Christmas in NY with mine.

21. How will you be spending New Year's?
Bottle of wine, chocolates, potato chips, Colin, Breaking Bad marathon.

22. Did you fall in love in 2012?
Blerg!

23. How many one-night stands?
Well, you know me.

23. Old friends you've seen?
Um. Hm.

24. What was your favorite TV program?
30 Rock, Breaking Bad, Colbert, Daily Show, Archer, Louie.

25. Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year?
Nope

26. What was the best book you read?
I actually read quite a bit this year. Life of Pi was good (slow start though), Michael Grant's Gone series. Room by Emma Donoghue. The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker was great. Escape from Camp 14 was riveting.

27. What was your greatest musical discovery?
Meh. Not music, but I've discovered NRP and listen to NPR almost non-stop nowadays.

28. What did you want and get?
A pretty awesome library job.

29. What did you want and not get?
Nothing- I'm good.

30. Favorite film of this year?
Argo was great. Django Unchained.

31. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
Well, the day before my birthday Colin & I went to an SNL dress rehearsal (Louis CK hosted) and that was an absolutely fantastic surreal experience.

32. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
Mmmm. Gah, I don't know. I'm pretty satisfied with the way life is going. More travel?

33. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2012?
Business casual.

34. What kept you sane?
Sleep.

35. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
I hate this question. Louis CK.

36. What political issue stirred you the most?
The election. Civil rights.

37. Who do you miss?
I'm happy about who are in my life.

38. Who was the best new person you met?
All of my new co-workers.

39. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2012:
Save your money, contribute to a retirement fund as early as possible, put money in some investments too.

40. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year:
This Drive meme never failed to make me laugh: http://anongallery.org/6546/drive

2 Comments

a bit melancholy

3/13/2011

0 Comments

Not too much to say, other than that it had been gray this week.
It had been bringing me down, but it's sunny again today.
Sometimes there's nothing you can do but wait for the rain to pass
('And I will keep you company through those days so long and black').

Instead of ramblings, here's a simple post of some of this week's doodles.

Mouse belongs in the world of giantcat and girl. I think he's a bit of a phoenix.
He'll do some wrong, then die, and come back.

But if the world could remain within a frame like a painting on a wall, I think we'd see the beauty then and stand staring in awe- At our still lives posed like a bowl of oranges, like a story told by the fault lines and the soil.

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First Post in the New Year

1/8/2011

3 Comments

So far, this year has kinda been off to a slow-ish start (though really, it’s only the 8th day in! So not many accomplished acts of productivity is a-okay). Today’s been a prime example of non-productivity, complete with sleeping in until 1PM and completely missing the morning.

Been following the story of the shooting of Congresswoman Giffords all day. Tragic event, paired with a lot of mind-numbingly depressing partisan bickering and bull. I realize that this in itself is quite partisan, but I just logged onto humanevents.com to see how the right is responding to the shooting, and the most recent reader comment in their article covering this news story is:

“She voted against Pelosi. There was a Republican Federal District Judge present who was the real target. Obama gets to put a Liberal District Judge who is Simpatico to the illegal Aliens in and send a message to his own not to cross him. This was a set up by the Obama Administration pure and simple. They will now spin this to make the Tea Party members and conservatives look like the bad guys; introduce new legislation to remove more of are freedoms. This to them is just another means to an end. The Liberal media will have a Hey day with this. They want the House back and will do anything to get it.”

Grammar aside—ugh. That was enough to make me stop reading further. Comments as extreme as that one make me hope that they must be satirical, but unfortunately I do know someone in real life (much to my extreme chagrin) who thinks the exact same way, and I can definitely imagine an identical-to-the-above sentiment coming out of his mouth.
It’s nothing but sad.
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On a much more random tangent that has absolutely nothing to do with current events and politics whatsoever, the linoleum of my first cat&girl drawing is completely cut, and I'll think about printing some prints of it soon:

Actually making prints of this will be a messy process though. I have some printmaking ink (black) and a small brayer (acrylic, not rubber-- so I hope it works!). But I still need to get a sheet of glass or something to spread out and roll the ink on. Not to mention that I don't have any papers either to print on either. That'll require a trip out to the art supply store.

I'm thinking of doing a series of linocuts of cat&girl. And giving them a proper name. I'm not opposed to cat&girl, but there's already the pretty-popular webcomic Cat and Girl out there. Then again, giving the "work" a name seems like I'm taking this series seriously as a "work", whereas I know that they're just pretty silly and not-art. Then again, I'd consider my whole recent body of work as not-art and embrace it as so.
It's okay, I like my comics and inks.

(everytime I think about what is art/what isn't art, I think of Lisa Turtle from Saved by the Bell and the quote, "What is art? Are we art? Is ART art?" Can't get any more low-brow than that. )

I was thinking about the girl and the cat on my train ride yesterday, and about possibly expanding them outside of linocuts since I do find them more potentially interesting than previous ideas... but I'm probably going to stick with the linocuts for the time being. The person-with-cat idea isn't particularly original, after all (aside from Cat and Girl, there's also Garfield and Calvin and Hobbes, among countless others that I'm currently forgetting, I'm sure).

I'm growing fond of the girl and the cat though.

Here's the second linocut I'm currently working on:

The prints ::should:: (hopefully) look something like this, but mirror-imaged:

Also, Colin got me an easel for Christmas! I now FINALLY (at loooooong last) own an easel! I still have yet to put it to any use (shame), but will soon. He wins at gift-giving this year.

He's also currently digging his car out all by himself (insisted that I can stay indoors) so we can go catch a showing of "Black Swan" tonight. He's the best!

3 Comments

Snowing Outside, Recovering Inside

12/26/2010

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First off, Merry Christmas everybody! (belated)

Wow, first real snowfall of the year (just one day too late!) and it looks pretty huge. Glad to be nice and warm indoors with some cocoa by my side. It's REALLY coming down.

Weather.com reports it to be a blizzard, and that we should be getting around 5-8 inches today. Man! Hope it won't be too much of a hardship getting into the office tomorrow.

I was supposed to work this past Friday (Christmas Eve), but came down with a fever the night before that I'm still currently recovering from, so I had to call out. Since then, I've been basically living in my bed this entire time, minus the occasional bathroom/water break. Up until last night, I had very little appetite and had a banana sustain me for almost 2 days. Fever as of Friday night was 103F, Saturday (Christmas!) 99.8F, and now it's pretty normal again. Still have a crazy cough and shortage of breath though.

I think I'm only making such a big deal out of this fever due to:

a) it happening on Christmas Eve/Christmas Day and ruining my holiday by banishing me to my bed the entire time & seeing very few people (had to cancel on a Christmas Eve get-together with some family, which we had worked SO HARD to arrange and schedule, grr)

b) it's been literally YEARS since I've last been sick, and I had almost started to believe that I was invincible. I can't remember the last time I've been sick prior to now, actually. I think it's been at least 4-6 years.

If it wasn't for my ipod touch and the internet over the last few days to keep me entertained in bed with plenty of reading material, I would have gone insane. One can only watch A Christmas Story so many times without going insane (in my case, I watched it zero times-- even once is too much). Kat came over to my place after work yesterday (yep, poor girl had to work on CHRISTMAS DAY) and hung out with me. There were gifts. :D Apparently miracle berry pills DO work, and do make lemons taste sweet.

But, in any case, school's done for the time being-- until the end of January-- so I have a bit of down time to catch up on things I've been putting off and to start on new(ish) projects. So yeah- I know sometimes quite a bit of time goes by between updates on this blog, but I'll make a post before the end of the year with a wrap up of what I'm thinking about for the new year.

And I finally opened my secret santa gift! I got:

A copy of Tall Tales by Al Jaffee, Introduction written by Stephen Colbert.

And my cats got:

A new ladybug catnip dispenser toy, haha. My cats LOVE catnip.

Thanks, Santa!

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I am old.

11/10/2010

6 Comments

Turned 24 last week on a rather uneventful day (wake up. work. school. sleep). Celebrated the next night, and had a lot of fun! Low key, good food, good company, & harmless mischief (heehee).

And my loot! I'm not normally a materialistic person (I meeeean it)-
but my loot was amazing. Colin gave me a relief print of a Woodring drawing:

It's seriously awesome.

It looks more awesome in person, because you can see all the small details. The work is titled "Squeaker in the Woods" (seen faintly on the bottom of the print).

I like relief prints a lot and think they're amazing. Regarding prints, this was a series of 100 (as indicated in pencil on the lower left), and is the 83rd print in the series. The artist's signature is on the lower right.

I'll admit, I wasn't the best printmaker in school (or the best history of printmaking art history student!), but I can still appreciate this print for what it is!
Printmaking experts feel free to chime in and correct me on anything though...

First off, you can tell that it's a relief print, as opposed to an intaglio print, pretty easily.
A relief print (like woodcuts or linocuts) is done where the black/inked parts are what's left on the block, and the white part/uninked parts are carved out. Think of it like an ink stamp-- the raised parts of the stamp would get ink it when you smoosh it on an inkpad, the carved out parts don't get ink.

With all the small spaces of white and black in the print, it's amazing that it was done so neatly. Can you imagine carving out all those small spaces to create the white portions of the drawing? Or how to just leave a small strip of black (like around Frank's feet)? Harder still for an artist- when printed, relief prints appear in a mirror image than what's carved on the block/plate.

When you look at the print, you can see that all the inked parts are indented deeper into the paper (as would happen when the block/plate goes through a press), which is how you can tell that it's a relief print.

Intaglio prints (like etchings or engravings) are the opposite-- the etched/carved away lines from the block/plate are what becomes the inked lines. With intaglio, after the etching/engraving/drawing is done, the entire plate is inked, and then the surface is wiped clean. Therefore, the ink sits below the surface, held in the lines of the drawing. The drawing gets printed with the high pressure of a printing press.

alright.that's.it.for.the.amateur.arttalk

Then, with Kat's and Sean's present....
It was wrapped.
After the wrapping was removed, there was a cardboard box.
After the cardboard box was opened, there was another box.

Old-timey mildly dusty box... what can you possibly be?
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Antique (functional) typewriter!!!

It's a Remington Rand #5 from the 1930s, and is still perfectly functional. My mom actually asked me why Kat and Sean would get me something that was "so old", haha.
"That was the pooooint, mum."
They got me extra tape too. I hope that I'll still be able to find typewriter tape for this thing 50 years from now.

I learned from the internet that:
"The most famous feature of the Remington 5 was its praiseworthy red self starter key, which is akin to today's "tab" function. Instead of counting out the spaces to indent paragraphs, one quick click on the self starter key would be equivalent to five spaces, while two clicks would give you an instant 10 spaces."
See red self starter key below.

Apparently it was also hailed for being ultra-portable, weighing a mere 16 lbs.
I'll polish it up and dust it off and give it a real good cleaning soon. A part of me is feeling timid about using this thing because it feels so antique-y! And because there are sooo many buttons and levers and turny-things and I don't know what they all do, exactly.

So many levers and turny-things...

6 Comments

Rally for Sanity

11/3/2010

2 Comments

Neither Colin or I brought cameras along with us to DC last weekend for the Rally (all in our much-perfected method of packing as lightly as possible when travelling), so no photos were to be had sadly. Luckily, there are millions and millions of photos of the rally on the internet already, so it's not really like the world is really at a loss without our photo-documentation contributions.

I got into the Princeton, NJ Friday night and after hanging out at one of Colin's neighbor's backyard enjoying their new fire pit, we went to bed around midnight or so. Got up around 4AM, and we (Colin, his roommate, and myself) were out the door and on the road by 5AM. The drive down was pretty smooth and completely uneventful-- I was worried about hitting traffic, but the road down I95 was pretty darn empty for the entire drive. We decided on heading to the New Carrollton Metro Station, which is the last stop off the Orange line in MD (it's north-east of DC). When we got to the New Carrollton station by 8AM, there were a few other cars pulling into the lot when we were, but nothing crazy. There were still literally hundreds (thousands?) of available parking spots-- free parking, since the Metro doesn't charge for parking on weekends, so that's where the car was abandoned.

from http://www.wmata.com/about_metro/news/

Despite the Rally breaking a 19-year record for the largest amount of Metro customers on a Saturday, at 8AM the New Carrollton station wasn't too bad. There were a good amount of people coming out from the parking lot & trying to purchase tickets at the fare machines, and we did have to stand on a line-- but that was all for about 2 minutes. It just took us a while to figure out how much money we had to put on our cards (we weren't sure if we could add more money to our cards at later time, like with Metrocards in NYC, or if it was a one-shot thing where we'd waste money if we didn't put quite enough on the card to cover our fares).

Anyways, got our fares & got on the train. The first train car up the stairs was packed, but after walking down a few train cars, they were all pretty empty, and we all got seats. More and more people on got at each stop as we progressed into downtown DC, but it never got so packed that people had to stand. The ride into the city took 30 minutes, so we were downtown by 8:30am.

Colin & I got off at Farragut West & walked 2 blocks to our hotel. We only had a small backpack each, so we put all the things that we'd need/want to have for the rally in one bag (water, snacks, map, money, etc) and everything else into the other backpack (clothes, etc) and checked the non-essential one with the hotel.

By 9:30am, we were out on the streets looking for a quick bite before walking over to the rally. We were near the White House, a few blocks above Washington Monument (the rally stage is on the opposite end of the Mall from the monument). We decided to walk down a few blocks closer to the Mall, then walk on a parallel street towards the rally stage. Stopped at a Corner Bakery Cafe (apparently these are a chain?) for yummy paninis and our cashier was awesome & gave us awesome service. After we sat down, it took a while to get our food, but the line for people to order was looooooong. By the time that we finished eating and were ready to head back out to resume our trek towards the Capitol, it was around 10:30am. Upon leaving the cafe, there were hordes of people all walking in one direction, so we followed. At this point were about 3-4 blocks north of the mall, maybe around 11th street. By 11am, we were on 7th and stayed on 7th, though in hindsight we probably could have made out way further, but we were moderately satisfied with where we were.

Below are aerial shots of the Mall during the rally, with a little red dot (click to find us!) to indicate where Colin & I were.
(The first shot seems to be done earlier in the day, since I think that the fenced-off lawns got filled up during the actual rally).

credit: http://geoeyemediaportal.s3.amazonaws.com/assets/images/gallery/ge1/hires/national_mall_washington_dc_10_30_10.jpg

Credit: AirPhotosLive.Com

So yeah, to the immediate left of us was the white Police Tower (I was holding on to the tower's right barricade for a long while during the rally) to the right of us was the Family Reunification Tent. From where we were, the last-most jumbotron was just somewhat visible. Just being a row or two back from us made them not-visible, apparently, since there were plenty of "I can't see anything!" complaints from people not-too-far behind us throughout the rally.

As for our experience during the rally-- standing around in one tight spot for an hour until noon for the rally to start wasn't the greatest, but it wasn't quite that crowded then, so not too claustrophobic or squishy. The jumbo-trons were playing re-runs of various musical performances from the Daily Show/Colbert Report, so there was something for entertainment. Saw a few signs (but they had to come to us, as we weren't goin' anywhere). The Roots played for a while but nobody really cared.

Started getting interesting when the Mythbusters guys did their audience warm ups-- participated in multiple crowd waves (which were poorly organized at first, because I think they wanted it to start from the back and travel to the front? But nobody in the far back could hear instructions to start a wave?), but abstained from the crowd jump so I wasn't registered on the seismograph. At this point the crowds behind us started chanting "louder, louder, louder" because there weren't enough speakers for the sound to travel all the way back to the end of the Mall. We could only hear so-so as is, so I could imagine what it'd be like just a few yards back.

When Stewart and Colbert actually came out, that's when people from behind actively tried to get further up front-- there was this guy behind us who was really not having that, and kept asking people sarcastically where they expected to go, as there was "no room" to get anywhere (which, mind you, was true). All in all, some older folks pushed their way into our area, that sarcastic dude got pushed further behind, etc. At one point he and some other people wanted to pull down the walls of the Family Reunification tent (where lost people go to reunite with their families) so that they could see past it and try to get a view at a jumbo-tron, but the security people weren't having it. Good for them though-- I mean, if the tent's walls were taken down and it was only a roof, I can see a lot of people trying to park themselves in the empty space, defeating the point of a Family Reunification Tent.

But yeah, rally. Liked the fear awards. Didn't necessarily like all the music acts. Some people's criticisms were that they came for a rally/to hear Colbert & Stewart speak, not for a mediocre concert... which is somewhat valid. I did enjoy the "Greatest, Strongest, Country in the World" song though. "I use French words like croissant and bourgeoisie... There's no one more American than me"-- catchy! Stewart's ending keynote speech was great.
I'm curious of how the rally looked like aired on tv, though- still have to look for a stream or torrent of it or something.

After the rally was over, we waiting a short while to leave, then walked all over the Mall. Tried to see the stage, see more signs, etc. I wish I actually saw the one below in person. I want oneee.

credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kylerush/

Afterward, we sat in the National Gallery of Art's Sculpture Garden for a while and people-watched for a bit, near Lichtenstein's House I, which is also where Colin & I had decided earlier to meet up if we had gotten separated at the rally.

Then, we spent some time at the Smithsonian Visitor Information Center and the Hirshhorn Museum & Sculpture Garden. I love the work of Juan Munoz, whose work we first saw in Madrid last year. Colin really dug Olafur Eliasson's Round Rainbow.
By 5:30pm, we promptly kicked out, as the museums were closing.

We made our slow walk back to our hotel then-- I was so tired. So so tired. So so so tired. I think I became delirious from how tired I was. Made it back in about half an hour (the walk is less than a mile from the Mall), and checked into our hotel officially. After constantly staying in private rooms in various hostels (with an occasional budget hotel) in Europe, it felt good to be in a real hotel room. With a television! That plays English-language television programs! And a coffemaker! And multiple clean fluffy towels! And toiletries! Haha. I was sooo tired, but still had to look through everything in the room (what's this? Room service menu? We can order room service?). Then I passed out in bed and watched some footage from the rally on cable news stations.

Being nearly 7pm, we were starved since the last time we had eaten was around 10:30am that morning. I would have been happy ordering a large delivery pizza from our hotel room and scarfing it down in bed while watching tv (doesn't that sound so so heavenly? Haha), but Colin insisted that we go out to somewhere nice. Blerg! Haha, so obviously he was made to do the research on where to go. Decided on Founding Farmers (an apparently "certified green restaurant" whose whole thing is about sustainability farmed products and locally-sourced items), which had a huge amount of reviews on Yelp, was vegan/vegetarian friendly, was nice but not insanely unreasonably pricey, and was within a few short blocks of walking distance. I looked at some reviews myself, and A LOT of reviews said to expect a 45 minute-1 hour wait without a reservation on a normal night. And seeing as how this was a night with thousands of ralliers in the city, I was dubious that we'd ever get a table. Colin called to try to get a reservation so that if there was an hour wait we could nap until our slot, but they said that there weren't any more available reservations for that night.

We decided to walk on over anyway and see what the wait was like.
It actually turned out that we got seated immediately when we got there-- amazing. Good decor, great service. I hear that they also have a special vegan menu, but I just ordered off the regular-- and the dinner was great! Especially the yummy memorable cornbread appetizer, served in a heavy skillet with honey butter. We were both stuffed and incredibly satisfied by the end of the meal.

After we got back, I tried to stay up for as long as I could... and was out cold by 11pm. The next morning, after we got up and checked out around noon, we met up with Colin's roommate at Dupoint Circle and walked around a farmer's market. So many apples. Then had crepes for lunch and walked over the the White House to gawk at their Halloween decorations (including scarecrows and a, like, 10-foot tall pile of multi-coloured gourds out front). Finally made our way down to the Mall and visited the American History museum (which was actually more interesting than I had thought it would be), and then took the Metro out of the city to go retrieve the car and drive back to NJ. Got to the car by 4pm, got back to NJ by 8pm or so. Took the 9pm train back home to NYC shortly afterward, got home around midnight. Lots of traveling in so little time!

I had fun though.

yummy cornbread in skillet

Some random thoughts about the rally:

Walking around and people watching, I was really surprised by the amount of older people who came out (40+ years old) because there were so MANY of them! Broke all sorts of stereotypes in my mind. So many older folks... which is great!
Nobody I know who went to the rally, it seems, were actually able to see/hear anything? Which can only be contributed to the greater-than-expected turnout, hurrah. And not being able to get to the rally at least an hour before its start-time, I guess, due to the craziness of road traffic and metro traffic. Apparently Princeton had a bus for their students, and it departed from campus at 7am-- which would have been way too late, with traffic and all. A classmate of mine went from Queens, NY on the HuffPo bus, and they were supposed to depart by 6am, but didn't end up leaving Queens until nearly 7:15-- I think she said that they got to downtown DC around 1:30/2pm. All 200 or so of the HuffPo buses...
Cell phone reception at the Mall was crazy during the rally (as expected)! I didn't get any texts til way after, sorry! There was this lady standing on a chair in the Family Reunion tent who was just on her phone during the entire rally, calling up her husband a few hundred times. It was a constant stream of pretty-hysterical, "I don't know why you're not picking up, but I've been looking for you for the last THREE HOURS. I'm in the Family Reunion tent- please come find meee!". She also called up her daughter at some point with her hysterics, pleaded for her to please call her father because she couldn't understand why he wasn't picking up her calls or responding to her texts when she's been looking for him for THREE WHOLE HOURS. Lady, your husband's not responding because he's not getting your messages, not because he's ignoring you. Also, he's probably just trying to enjoy the rally & have some fun. Relax! Also, you should have really decided on a meet-up spot prior to getting to the rally, ya know.
I didn't get a Reddit t-shirt! I didn't know where the tent was, but apparently it was right near the First Aid tent? The First Aid tent that I had been staring at for hours and hours on Saturday. Poop! Colin and I really got a kick out of seeing all the Reddit signs though. (I only have 238 karma, so I'm not a huge Redditor... but still, I would have liked a t-shirt! And will probably sign up to do the Reddit Secret Santa this year- fun!)
So, Republican House and Democratic Senate. Great- now let's work together.

Final random thought, but I swear I had forgotten until my coworker mentioned it today--
I turn 24 tomorrow.

2 Comments

Rallies & Anniversaries & Halloween

10/28/2010

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Colin typing ::typetypetype::

So, this weekend is unofficially (?) me and Colin's 3rd anniversary, hence the drawing of the boy. I say unofficially because we've never really decided on which date to deem an anniversary date or which milestone event made our relationship a relationship.

He suggests making my birth date (next week) our anniversary date for easy remembering. Boys.
Besides, what would happen if he forgot my birthday one year? That's shooting yourself in the foot twice.

In any case though, we met on Halloween weekend, so I guess Halloween weekend is our anniversary now. To be honest, I kinda need an easy date to remember these sort of things as well. It's also pretty unofficial because neither of us reeeally care about celebrating these things. It's been a very good three years though.

We're going away to DC this weekend though! And being a 'special event' weekend (haha) just gave us reason to actually book a place downtown. We're staying at a place 2 blocks away from the White House.

But yes, I'm pretty excited about the Rally To Restore Sanity in DC this weekend, especially with the release of the sneak peak at the day's schedule.

We're planning on making the drive down to DC from NJ early Saturday morning (4am?), and abandoning the car at one of the first Metro stations we'll hit (either Greenbelt, College Park, or maybe Cheverly or Deanwood, depending on which route we take while driving down). If we leave by 4am, hopefully we'll make it in to downtown by 9am. It's just really unpredictable, with the traffic and all. If even half of half of the estimated 100k people are driving (I imagine a lot of people taking buses, and a lot of people carpooling), it's going to be a lot of cars on the road that morning. Then again, a lot of people are traveling down Friday night. Ah well.

Also, Halloween. I love Halloween! Or maybe I just love candy. Too bad most of Halloween day will be spent on the road, traveling back to NJ by car, and then to NY by train for me.

But, in honor of Halloween, here's a quick drawing of a creepy ACLS (Advanced Cardiac Life support) dummy that we have around here at work, which we use for training students. Sketch was done as I was proctoring an exam yesterday with this plastic-latex guy on my table. I used a ballpoint pen and a red exam-marking pen.

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Fall is here...

10/21/2010

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...which means apples. I like apples, I do. Fuji (probably what I eat most often), Granny Smiths, Mcintosh, Rome, Gala, Golden Delicious, etc. Nearly all of which went into the apple pie baked last weekend, for an October-fest (not really Oktoberfest, since it was more a get-together for autumn/pies/apples/pumpkins than it was for beer and wurst-- though... there was lederhosen).

Truth be told, I've never like apple pies. Guess I'm a fruit purist and think they taste best raw. Mmm, raw apples. Raw sliced apples with sprinkled cinnamon. Mmm. Baked fruit always just seems too mushy. However, I DID like the homemade pie from last weekend, so maybe it's like how I am with cats-- I don't really like cats, but I like MY cats.

Also, I've been looking through food blogs today and these Apple Walnut Cinnamon Roll Cupcakes look aweeesome and is possibly something I have to try sometime.

We carved a pumpkin, which was awarded "most sustainable," since we took someone else's pumpkin and recycled/carved it after they lost interest in it (after they had already done the dirty work of gutting it and all!).

Aside from apples, I guess persimmons (blergh!) are also in season. The persimmon tree in my backyard is bearing a lot of fruit, baskets of the stuff. Growing up, we've always had persimmons around the house-- grocery-store bought, not home-grown-- but I've never liked the stuff.

Fun to draw though!

Maybe I'll convince Colin to make me those Apple Walnut Cinnamon Roll Cupcakes this weekend. Oh weekend, you seem so far away.

Ukulele concert tomorrow night (Jake Shimabukuro), yaaaaaaay.

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Back from the Cape, back to work, back to school

8/31/2010

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click to enlarge

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!

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In the Office on a Saturday

8/21/2010

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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.

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First Day of 2013!

a bit melancholy

First Post in the New Year

Snowing Outside, Recovering Inside

I am old.

Rally for Sanity

Rallies & Anniversaries & Halloween

Fall is here...

Back from the Cape, back to work, back to school

In the Office on a Saturday

Doris

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