sharing time

at the beginning of this year, i was inspired by emily falconbridge's deck of me challenge to start doing weekly artwork on a deck of playing cards. later in the year, this talented chica inspired me even further with her daily card art. so i abandoned emily's weekly prompts and started making cards whenever i felt like saying something pretty. normally, i don't post them online in my galleries, but the last two i've made i've really liked and felt like showing them to The Internet. so Internet, here are my cards.

for the top one: i printed off an image from one of the new ipod ads (that i love for the gorgeous colors and watercolor effect) and typed up some words on my computer. print, cut, glue, done. easy. for the bottom card: the words are cut from an anthropologie catalog. i sanded the card, added an american crafts rubon (a gift from stephanie) and glued on the strips. again, easy.

thanks for looking, Internet. :)

with a few more cans and a little more sand we'd be living in giza

we like pyramids around here.

we also like plans lacking follow through. for example, our plan to be good citizens and recycle our cans. and my plan to take over the world using mycokerewards points.

happy memorial day!

i hope everyone's properly enjoying their 3-day weekend. :) i apologize for being a bad blogger lately, but being home throws off my routine like whoa. in a couple weeks i'll be in texas and in my apartment!! so hopefully i can resume a normal schedule soon. anyway. it's pretty much a nonstop party at my house this weekend, so i've gotta get back to that.

ride bikes!

walked out of the library today from work and saw this. right in the middle of the sidewalk, five defiant feet away from the just-installed-today bike racks. i laughed out loud and pulled out my camera.

kept walking. thirty seconds later, a very loud guy starts singing operatically, "ride bikes! ride bikes!" i look back, and he's riding one of these giant bikes. a different one. obviously, they're friends.

how do i know? because if i rode a bike like that, i'd make friends with everyone else in denton who rode one too.

anyway, so singing bike guy pedals on past the library into schrader pavilion, still singing. he pulls up to some random girl and says, "wanna ride bikes?" she says, no, she doesn't have a bike.

he says: "well that's the point, isn't it!"

thank you tall bike boys for making me laugh today.

celebrating

i'm done! i took a few minutes on the way to work to enjoy being alive and officially school-less. now i'm packing, packing, packing, getting ready to go home for a few weeks and ready to leave the dorms. exciting stuff, people!

today

is a pretty good day. For starters, this arrived in my little p.o. box:

There are several reasons why this is good:

1. Wired appears to have finally gotten their junk together regarding my subscription. I bought it in January, which apparently means I start getting issues in March. My March issue was waaay late, and I called and asked about it. All they could tell me was to sit tight (of course, I don't really know what else I expected.) So I did, and luckily, it showed up at the end of March. April's issue never showed at all. I called, and they added a month onto the end of my subscription. My hopes for May were not high. But look! Here it is, on time AND
   
2. with Hiro on the cover! If you're not familiar with the tv show Heroes, I recommend you familiarize yourself as soon as possible. Created by the same dude who did Lost, Tim Kring, it's got the same sort of crazy, interconnected plot lines that Lost does, but without all the bazillions of bizarro questions that never get answered. With Lost, I got tired of never finding any answers. Heroes always answers just enough to make me dying for next Monday to rapidly approach. Mondays at 9 on NBC. Or you can catch back episodes online at nbc.com. (I sound like I've been paid. I haven't, I swear!) It is so worth your time. But you probably do have to watch some back story to know what is going on. Especially last night's episode. Let's just say it's a good thing that (as far as we know) parallel universes are only a sci-fi plotline because if they were real I'd just sit in my room in a perpetual state of confusion. Anyway...
   
3. Not only is my favorite Japanese time traveler on the cover, but so is Ahnold. Over Easter weekend I was introduced to the amazingness that is Arnold Schwarzenegger. Kindergarten Cop, Predator, and Total Recall. All I have to say is, "Get to the choppa!" Well, that's not really all I have to say. I am now a huge Arnold fan. I don't know if that's weird or not. I don't really care. Not only am I now a huge fan of his movies, but seriously I think he rocks as California governor. I wish he could run for president. I'm in favor of changing the rules to say only US citizens and Austrian bodybuilders who once played a killer robot in not one, not two, but three pieces of cinematic treasure can run for president. In fact, I think I'll write my Congressman about that today.

Speaking of California, did you see the collapsed freeway? And how no one died? And only one person - the driver - was slightly injured? That's just insane. Crazzzy.

Other good things that have happened recently:

• I got a raise! I now make an extra 25 cents an hour, baby. Which works out too about...20 extra bucks a month. Oh yeah.
• My battleship program that I slaved and cried over ended up not doing too shabbily in the tournament! I placed 13th out of 43, which as far as I'm concerned, is something to celebrate!
  
• Chris is borrowing Lauren's GameCube now that she has a Wii and doesn't need a GameCube. That is stellar news because I love GameCube. On the flipside of all of this:

All I want to do now is sit and read my magazine and play Super Mario. But this is Dead Week. I think for the first time I actually understand the true meaning of this. When I was taking euphonium lessons, Dead Week was good news because it was Jury Week. After juries, nothing really big happens. A couple easy finals, maybe. Now, Dead Week is when I cram and read and study and do all sorts of academic things and try to last without actually becoming dead through next week when I prove that I learned something over the last four months. In some cases, easier said than done.

So unfortunately, the GameCube waits for me at Chris's apartment until I take what will be well-deserved brain break on Saturday. The magazine stares at me from my desk, waiting for me to find a few minutes here and there to squeeze in an article or two. And I go to memorize a speech in German, relearn chapters 1 and 2 of my chemistry textbook, and read about von Neumann computer architecture.

peace out homes.

the one where she starts to pull her hair out

It's going to be a long three weeks. Finals might kill me this year. Actually, if I manage to make it to finals, that will be the easy part. It's the two weeks leading up to finals that will end me.

perfect day

We had today the first clear, warm weather we've had in over a week. (It snowed on Easter!) I loved it. Chris and I went to church early this morning and then I came back and did some homework. I opened the window and let the gorgeous fresh air relax me completely. I watched the Braves kick some Marlins tail and went to Starbucks with my favorite Alisha. Then I got crazy with my scrapbook stuff. :) I did four pages - probably a record. Woo! I just sat there cutting and glueing away, listening to the kids outside my window blowing bubbles.

I was supposed to play badminton at 5, which I was really excited about, but my people canceled on me. So lame. So I just kept scrapping, and then went to a friend's recital at 8. My first vocal recital! It was really cool; I enjoyed it quite a bit.

Here's hoping the whole week is as good as today!

juanito hits the beach

Remember Juanito? Well, we brought him on spring break with us. I think he enjoyed it.

cutest thing EVER.

Holy cow this is the absolute most adorable thing ever. More supersuper cute pictures and an article here.

beautiful spring

I know I just posted, but I wanted to share this picture of the Bruce courtyard the other day. This campus really does have its moments. :)

spring break

[warning: long post ahead]

Well, last week was my much needed spring break. Chris and I left Saturday morning and drove to Laredo to visit his family. It was my first time to Laredo and my first time meeting most of his family. His mom and oldest brother came up to Denton the week before for his first DMA recital, so I met them then, but he has lots of other family: 4 sisters, 2 brothers, 5 nephews and lots and lots of aunts and uncles. It was a little intimidating, to say the least! But of course, all of his family is very nice and we had a lot of fun. And we ate a lot of food. :)

Chris's mom's house wasn't big enough for us to stay there (it's really big but lots of people live there!), so we stayed at his sister Trina's new house. She and her family haven't moved in yet, so it's been sort of a free hotel for various people over the last several months. She has two little boys and lots of video games, which we definitely took advantage of! Chris and I stayed up late every night we were there playing Super Mario Sunshine and Donkey Konga. I love video games. :)

I got to sleep in the master bedroom (yay for being the guest - and a girl!) and this was the view outside my window:

We spent a lot of time touring around Laredo in the Festiva. It's actually really pretty! (I have to admit I wasn't execting that.) The warm warm weather meant there were lots of palm trees and beautiful flowers everywhere, and most of the houses were painted bright colors. This one in particular caught my eye:

I loved the little patio area and all the green with the bright splash of pink! This house was right across the street from the school where Chris's brother James teaches high school English.

We were planning to go into Mexico one morning and spend a bit walking around in the shops, but I woke up one morning feeling sick and yucky so we decided not to go in. We did go right up to the border though!

By the Rio Grande:


Since we didn't go to Mexico and shop, we went instead to the import store where I bought my fam silly souvenirs. They had incredible things there, like 15-ft. tall mariachi men and suits of armor statues.


Chris and I bought some rad rubber sunglasses for ourselves:


Then, on Wednesday morning we packed the Festiva up again and headed off to Odessa, about a 6 and 1/2 hour drive. Two and a half hours in,

we stopped. Or rather, Festiva screeched and clunked and turned off, and we coasted to a stop at the Taco Way in Uvalde, Texas. While Chris exchanged about a million phone calls with his car-smart brother George and his taking-off-work-to-come-pick-us-up brother James, I fretted and worried and took pictures. Finally finally finally after three hours, many calls to mechanics who never showed, one friendly stranger who put in a call to his mechanic friend (who never showed), and two crosswords, Chris decided to try again.

He cautiously turned the Festiva on and pulled out of the parking lot. The terrifying aroma of burning wafted through the open windows. Festiva huffed up a bridge where lo and behold we saw Auto Parts Alley! Four mechanics in a row, waiting for us, to fix our poor car and empty our wallets. Fifteen minutes later, we were on our way with full wallets and a happy Festiva. It turns out that the only thing wrong with Festiva was the compressor. Our friendly mechanic looked at it and told us it had locked up and caught a belt in it, which caused the screeching and clunking and turning off, and then burned the belt off, which caused the burning smell. (duh!) Once all that was taken care of, the car was fine! The only thing we were missing was an air conditioner. No problem - we have windows. So we were on our way. After a long pretty drive through the "mountainous" area of Texas,
we were safely in Odessa. Finally. Odessa was fun, as always, and slow, as always. I loved it.

Chris and I played Hand and Foot and wore red things on our necks with Grannie and Papa. (Except for Papa: "I refuse to wear this thing.") We took the crazy dog for walks:

She quickly realized she couldn't jerk Chris around like she does everyone else. He reined her in pretty fast. I was impressed.

We went to the Sand Hills again - woo!



Here are the other videos we took. "Ramp Gone Wrong" is a funny one. There's also a bonus video of some improv accordion by Chris.

All in all, this was a great spring break. I had a lot of fun meeting all of Chris's family, and it was super relaxing being in Odessa with Grannie and Papa. Now. Only 6 weeks to summer. 6 weeks to summer. 6 weeks to summer.