Models

On Monday and again today in Basic Drawing, we worked on figure drawing. I knew it was coming, but I was surprised that the whole nude model thing didn't make me more uncomfortable. Sure, I wasn't totally at ease, but when it came down to it I just drew. I really enjoy the figure drawing, there is a lot more information to be found in the human body than in still-life objects. I especially enjoy the feet, arms, and legs. There is a lot more detail in these areas than one would think.

I have decided that today I will be devoting myself to studying for the midterms I have coming up next week. I especially need to study the artwork I need to know for Art Visual Culture, which is on Monday. I didn't study that thouroughly enough last time. I also need to get the notes from my Social Scientific lectures last week, since I had some major alarm clock issues and missed them. Luckily the professor posts all the notes online the Monday after that week. I'll have to study those too, since that midterm is Tuesday.

So my to-do list for today is: Get notes, study art history, and take a good long shower. That sounds doable.

Self-Portraiture

I have just finished TWO self portraits for Basic Drawing. The first was done from a picture, and the second while looking in the mirror. The first went really well; it actually resembles me fairly closely. The second was the one I wanted to cry about. It's really frustrating to have to look at yourself and draw it at the same time. The motion of looking from the mirror to the paper made it impossible to hold the same face the whole time. It was a frustrating ordeal.

Last night Jenn and I went to the Halloween party with Dan, Nick, Jen, and Chase. It was fun to dress up. I haven't done the Halloween costume thing in years. We had a good night. Oh and besides just dressing up for halloween and having fun, when we were walking I found a man's phone on the ground and called one of the recent calls to find out whose it was. Then I took it to the Iowa House, where he was staying, and gave it to the front desk to return to him. I felt very good about myself. It was my good samaritan act for the week!

Family Weekend

My family has arrived in Iowa City. They're staying in the Iowa House, which is actually in the IMU. So they are even staying on campus. Right now they're getting some packets I guess and then they're coming up here to pick me up. I think we're going to eat, and hopefully to the Coral Ridge Mall. So I'll hang out with the fam for the day and have a chill night. Then tomorrow we're going to the game. After the game we're going to dinner with Dan, Jenn and their families at Old Chicago. It should be a really good time. And tomorrow night my family is going to see a hypnotist/mentalist guy. There's also a Halloween party tomorrow night that Jenn, Dan and I are going to. I'm pretty excited about that.

Should be a busy weekend! And on top of all that, I have two self portraits to finish for Monday! Oh boy.

Potter character out of the closet

So apparently, even though the books are over, things can still happen in the world of Harry Potter. Check it out:

A Night In; Walks

Although Thursday night is the big night for socials with the frats and sororities, Jenn and I have decided to stay in tonight. We have this new routine (and by routine I mean we've done this once so far) of going on walks to get excercise. And I'm not just talking down around the Pentacrest and back. I'm talking 2 hours worth of walking around almost every corner of this campus. It was a lot of fun. This way we get in our talking and don't sit around being lazy while we do. We probably won't walk quite as long on a regular basis, but we are going to walk. At least for an hour. And it's nice to do it at night also because then the sun isn't making us hot and we don't have anywhere to be. Tonight we're going walking after I get done with class at 8, and then we're going to watch movies. It should be pretty relaxing.

My family is coming into town tomorrow. This weekend is Family Weekend at the University. I'll probably meet up with them after my class tomorrow and then go do whatever they want for the night. It will be good to hang out with my family. I wrote my mom an email about looking at futons while they're here. Hopefully I'll find one to get for our room so that we can get the whole remodeling thing underway in here. I really think it will be worth it.

Paper

So there's a paper project I have for my Rhetoric class that has been a process over a couple weeks. My teacher never told us when the final draft was due, and I have that class tonight. So I wrote her an email yesterday to ask when the paper is due, and she told me it's due today! Talk about short notice and not letting us know due dates. Plus she doesn't use the Iowa site for posting assignments so when I checked there, it wasn't posted!

So now I have to spend the rest of my afternoon putting together a very complex paper that's due by 6!

Home

My friends and I had a great weekend at my house. It was a lot of fun. We all really needed the break from Iowa, especially after midterms. It was kind of like a vacation. We rode the 4 wheelers, went out on the horses, walked down to the river, went to the haunted forest, and most importantly ate home-cooked meals. It was really good to see my family and relax at home. I think everyone needed this relaxation.

I'm now getting things together that I want to take back with me, like winter coats and scarves and such. The weekend is coming to an end!

Cancelled

My evening rhetoric class tonight is called off! Which is awesome, because it's Thursday night and that means GREY'S ANATOMY! Unfortunately, Jenn and all the mie boys have a test, I think in Chemistry, so it looks like I'm doing the Grey's thing without them tonight. That's ok, though, because I'm sure Katie will be watching it in our room. NIck and I are going to grab dinner and pass time while all our friends are taking the test.
Tomorrow is the day I get to come home finally! I'm pretty excited, especially for my friends to see where I live. Mom is going to make us ham Saturday night! Which is super exciting because it will be nice to have something home cooked and delicious! Maybe I can convince her to make green bean caserole or nappa cabbage salad! Eek!
I am really excited that I only have my 1:30 discussion section and then I'm done for the day! I love Thursday night!

Swim the Ocean

The Motion City Soundtrack show I'm going to in December has some great opening acts. Previously I have been a big fan of Anberlin, who is opening, and I had listened to Mae, the other big opener. But I had never heard of Metro Station, who is the relative unknown opening for them. Coincidentally, their single "Shake It" was the free iTunes single of the week. So of course I downloaded it. And then I looked into the rest of their cd, and it was really awesome! And besides that, they have a song called "Kelsey" and it is quite possibly the best track of the album. So I've been listening to the cd, along with Mae's newest release. It makes me a lot more excited for the show, even though it's not for 2 more months!

Give a little respect

When I got back from class today I discovered that I have a random song stuck in my head. For some reason, "Give a little Respect" by Erasure is playing continuously in my head. Which is odd, because I can't recall the last time I actually heard the song. When I tried to explain to Jenn which song I was talking about, she didn't know what it was. So I looked it up on Youtube. I didn't find an actual artist video or anything, but I did find some ridiculous things that made me laugh, such as this:

Give a Little Respect

Why this person decided to dress up as a clown and dance to "Give a Little Respect" (in public, on top of that), I don't know, but it's pretty amusing.

Pernicious

In Rhetoric class on Thursday night, we read a couple of very eloquent essays which were very hard to understand. However, one word jumped out at me in the second one. That word was "pernicious." I was like, woah! That's like my name! The difference between my name and this word, though, is that the word means some very not nice things. The definition, when I looked it up, said things like "causing insidious harm or ruin" "injurous" "hurtful" "deadly" and "fatal." So while I found a word that seemed pretty cool because it's root was my name, I don't think I am particularly fond of the word. I really don't think I go around causing harm or ruin, I'm a nice person! It was funny though, to see a word that looked like my name, considering my name comes from a fantasy book series. That was my amusement for the night.

Head for the hills, the kitchen's on fire

So I'm pretty excited today, because I got an envelope in the mail containing... the tickets for me and my friends to go to MOTION CITY SOUNTRACK at the House of Blues in Chicago! MCS is one of my favorite bands and I am super excited. There are five of us going, and we're staying at Dan's house in the suburbs for the weekend. We're hoping to make a trip into the city too. The only downer is that it's December 15th so a)it's a long time away, and b)we're going to freeze while we wait ALL DAY to get as close as possible.

In other news, it's a home game weekend, which is fairly exciting. It's actually black out day tomorrow, so everyone is supposed to wear black to the game. That should be cool to see. Hopefully it's not too cold.

Next weekend I am coming home, along with about 7 friends who are staying at my house for the weekend. I'm excited to see my parents and also excited for my friends to see where I live. It's going to be a lot of fun. This Sunday there's a possibility that I'll get to see Gilligan too. Which is really exciting, since I haven't seen her since my graduation party! She may be coming to Iowa City to visit a friend's art show, so if she comes we'll meet up and hang out for a while. On top of that, I have to finish my midterm critique drawings by monday!

What a busy life.

Republicans, Democrats, and Ravioli

I finally decided that the topic for my paper would be the fact that defined political parties are tearing America apart. I am going from the angle that Americans decide to affiliate with a political party based on one or two stronger beliefs and that they take the rest of the beliefs of that political party as a set. This is a pretty rich topic, you would think, but somehow I just keep stopping after each point, unable to think of another reason. I feel like maybe the topic comes from about 2 different points and that's all there is to it. I'm sure I'll think of more though.

At least the ravioli was tasty.

Had a Bad Day

I woke up this morning in a bad mood, and I didn't really have a reason. I walked to my class in the rain and got soaked. Then I tried to work on a paper and couldn't come up with anything. My friend Jenn and I went to my car to drive to student health and then to her condo, and I found out I had parked on the wrong side of the street and have a ticket for $20. Then we went to student health, where I went to the pharmacy and had to use my debit card rather than the UBill to pay for my prescriptions, because the UBill has yet to be paid. After that we were driving and I turned on my right blinker and it went crazy, which I guess means my tail light is out. To top it off, the low fuel light went off and I had to go spend another $20 on gas. Now I'm back in my room and I have to write a 4 page paper for tomorrow night, and I have no idea what I'm writing about.

Could there be anything else going wrong today?

And yet I learn nothing...

I'm still procrastinating. Right now I'm putting off writing a 4 page paper. Somehow it doesn't sound all that appealing. It's okay though, I'm spending my time well. I am currently in the process of putting a ton of music on my computer. Which is quite the process. I had to burn discs first; now I'm trying to name them all and get their album art, and then I'll have to put them in playlists, after which I will put them on my iPod. Nick is coming down to swap music with me too, which means more work in iTunes. It's a good thing I love music.

Procrastination turns against me

I called the campus pharmacy yesterday to renew my 2 prescriptions. The bad part was that I had just taken the last one of one of them the day before, and the pharmacy needs 1 business day to fill a prescription. And I was going to go today before 5 but I JUST FOUND OUT that they close at 4:30 on Fridays and don't open again until Monday. I am thoroughly upset. And I need my medicine! [insert upset groan here]

In other news, I am in a frenzied process of cleaning my room so that it's presentable when Sarah and Aunt Nancy & Uncle Dave get here. My side was fairly decent, but Katie had a lot of stuff on the floor. So I called her and asked if I could just clean everything, and now I am doing just that. I even did our dishes. Now I just have a few final things to do; empty the trash, put the dishes away, and clean off our vanity counter.

I actually find that I do enjoy this cleaning thing. Huh.

Dirty Laundry

I have a lot of laundry, and it seems to have piled up overnight. It's really weird because I did laundry not too long ago, but maybe it was longer than I thought. So that seems to be what I'll be doing tonight. I will study my Social Scientific notes for my test tomorrow and do my laundry. Fun times.

I cleaned the room a lot today. I even cleaned the bathroom, which we really haven't done before now. It's much better now, I just hope it stays that way. I'm going to wash my towels with my laundry tonight and then the bathroom will be wonderful!

I've spent a majority of the day organizing my iTunes stuff and making sure it was all straight on my iPod. I love to organize, which is weird becuase normally I'm kind of a messy person. But lately I can't stand it when our room gets messy. I guess it's because this is our only living space, unlike at home where there are other rooms to go to.

Time to go tackle this laundry job!

Wet Socks

I like being lazy on rainy days, but when I have to actually get up and go accomlish things, rain isn't my favorite thing.

I had to take the bus from Jenn's condo and get off up the hill from the IMU, which is where I needed to go to get a card for Lauren's birthday. So I didn't have an umbrella and I walked in the pouring rain down the hill. I decided at the bookstore that an umbrella was a worthwhile purchase.

I haven't had class all day but I have 6:00 Rhetoric. I feel like I shouldn't have a class. It's weird. I really need to do laundry, too, but of course I haven't done anything THAT productive today. I did go and get my liscense renewed. And I cleaned up the room a bit... it's becoming something of a pigstye. And that drives me nuts.

Good News

I got another email, and Izzy is home and doing better. He is on medication for a while, but it seems like he'll be okay for now.

This week is going to be crazy! I don't have my 9:30 lecture tomorrow which means I don't have a class until 6. That is amazingly convenient and wonderful. Lots of sleep time will be clocked in tonight. Also, I have to study for my test on Thursday! I had my first midterm today, and since I didn't know what to expect, I totally overestimated what I knew and I bombed it. I am so frustrated with myself on that one. I know this is how I function, though, and when I get that grade back it will be a wakeup call. Hopefully that will teach me that I need to step it up a notch. It's just a little hard to adjust from not needing to study because I retained the information to studying being necessary to pass. I guess I just got caught up in the social end of things. Time to step up my game!

My cousin is coming to stay with me this weekend. I am really excited for her to come and visit campus! She got her acceptance letter today and Iowa is on top of her list right now. I'm going to do my best to convince her about how great it is here! Plus, she is going into journalism as well and this is one of the best journalism schools there is. I'm really glad I'll get to see her and hang out with her all weekend. It should be fun!

Time to go be lazy some more! I don't have to get up in the morning!

Izzy

I recieved an email from my mom yesterday telling me that my dog is sick and at the hospital. I've had Izzy since I was 2 years old, and he is pretty much my 3rd brother. I really don't know what I'm going to do when he's gone. My mom said she had to pick him up off the floor because he was having trouble, and he's been really slow. The last thing I heard was that the vets think it may be cancer. I don't know how to deal with this, and at the same time I may be overreacting. We don't know for sure that it's cancer, maybe he's just sick and he'll get better. However, with his age and how much he's been slowing down over the last couple years, I have been jumping to the worst case scenario right away. If there is any thought about letting him go, I will be driving home in a heartbeat, no matter what day it is and what classes I will miss. I'm just hoping for the best.

Izzy has just been around for so long (as far back as I have any memories) and I can't imagine what it would be like if he isn't around anymore. I just hope he has more time.