Productive....Finally

Wow I suck at this whole updating thing...two months...really?

Anyway today was my first day of classes here in Chicago. I just have to say....wow....why didn't I come here in the first place? Also, why is spell check telling me that "didn't" isn't a word? Apparently "isn't" is not a word either....Whatever.
I digress.
Class went pretty well all in all. We shall see how tomorrow goes.

Summer

Yesterday was the 4th of July. Yesterday was the first time all Summer that I've truly felt like this was summer. We had a cookout at a friend's house and we set up a badminton net and we had sparklers and those snake things that are pellets and when you light them on fire they turn into a pile of crap. We pretty much took the whole day to act like children, except we were children who cooked and drove. It was all I wanted for my bank holiday. Today my family held a cookout for their friends and I could invite some of mine, but they had to leave early and my sister left and then there was no one around that I could relate to in any way at all. Fun for awhile, but not nearly as amazing as yesterday's escapades. (If you could call them escapades? Maybe?)
So here it goes, photo journal away:
After dinner we hung out at the house for awhile and then drove out to see the fireworks. While we were waiting we met a very interesting man who decided to show us how to make a bug spray flamethrower. Yeah. We messed around with sparklers while waiting. I took pictures from the 3rd person.




It felt like forever but they finally started, and I decided to get a few pictures, this is one of the good ones.


And for the arsty picture of the post, this is one taken from the back seat of my friend's car. I like the brake light color. I might use this as a research image later if I ever need a nice red-orange wash for a show or something.



We wanted S'mores after the fireworks so my friend's roommate set a fire in the smaller grill. She apparently used gasoline to start it and we saw the light from inside and thought she set the garage on fire. She didn't.

And that was when I stopped taking pictures for the evening, I came home at 2:30, was asleep by 3:30.
Amazing.

Reverting to Childhood

My friend Katy and I decided that we wanted to go to the City Museum in St. Louis on Saturday. So we went. It was one of those "oh God I hate it here, Run away!" kind of days. Well, we got there at 3 in the afternoon, left the museum at like 10 at night, and went to visit a friend in the St. Louis Loop. We left St. Louis at a little after midnight and managed to make it back to Decatur by 3 am. Brilliant! It was a wonderful little escape for us. I spent today working quite apathetically on one of my projects to try to make up for goofing around in Missouri for most of the weekend.
Here are a few attempts made by Katy, to get a photo of the Gateway Arch at night, while I was driving back into the city after mistakenly going the wrong way...("I don't think we're going the right way..." "Why Not?" "Because we're in Illinois again....")

Brilliance! I can't wait to do it again! It was just what I needed after the giant mess last week was.

First Day of Spring.......?

Yesterday as most of you know, was the first day of spring. This is what i woke up to.
Snow? Really? The other day it was like 50 degrees outside, i drove home from lunch with my windows rolled down.

Run, baby, run

I went to Moweaqua yesterday. I've written about Moweaqua before, and it seems to be the place that i go to escape for awhile. I escape Decatur, the theatre dept., Millikin, all of the dangers of having to walk by yourself at night don't really exist there. It's a lovely place to run to, a bolster, a cushion, a place like home for me when i can't really go home. A place where i feel loved.

We went out, had dinner, came back to the farm, made hot chocolate and watched M*A*S*H until we passed out and it was just what i needed last night. Good company, good conversation, and no time to myself to think. It was perfect.

hurting

This is my attempt to get things out of my heart and onto something tangible.
This is my attempt at art.
This is my attempt to not screw something up gone horribly wrong.

I hate myself right now.
and i have no control over the situation.



sorry to be a downer.



ADDENDUM: I look back on this particular entry, and now realize that i wrote it while i was very very upset, and i tend to say things that i don't really mean when i am upset. It's something i kind of need to work on, and am actively working on making myself better about, but it's hard because according to a bunch of my friends i have "a way with words" when i'm upset or angry. Things were made better yesterday/last night/this morning by good people, whom, i now realize, will always be there for me.
Also, i do not hate myself, contrary to what is written above. everything else however, is totally true.

Far,Far

Last night one of the pillows down towards the end of my bed fell over and rested against my leg and i woke and thought she was with me again...
when i fell back to sleep i dreamt that she was.

i miss her so...

ART?

Last night was light hang for Arcadia, the next Millikin mainstage production. It went a whole lot better than i was expecting it to, which was awesome, because i was bracing myself for the worst night ever. I'm going to go ahead and attribute the quality of last night to the two electricians in charge, and the fabulous crew that could work by themselves without someone baby-sitting them and just good company in general.

So while we were still putting lights in the air, one of the crew members tipped over a light that was sitting next to his ladder and we all heard the sickening crunch of the lamp shattering. He freaked out a little and i said, it's alright, just get the trash can so i can tip the light over and get all of the broken glass out of it. When i removed the base-cap to change the lamp this was what came out:
Only the glass envelope around the lamp had broken and the filament remained completely intact. This picture is one of my friends and the crew member looking at it in sheer amazement. (something like that NEVER happens, the filament always breaks with the glass). Part of the duties of the Master Electrician (i am NOT Master Electrician by the way i am the Assistant Lighting Designer for this show) is to set up the light board and the tech table for the show. My ME (abbreviation) decided that he did not like the little clip lamps for the table and thus created this magnificent work of art:
It's basically a dorm lamp with a crapload of gel gaff taped to it. We had an argument about what color the gels should be because (LEARNING TIME YAY!) if you use blue gel (which is the norm) you will look up from your paperwork at the stage and everything on stage will look pink or red, because looking at everything under the blue lamp light fatigues the blue color receptors in your eyes. So then he was like well let's use red, but if you work for awhile under red light, when you look up at the stage everything will look green because you just fatigued your red receptors, so he solved that problem by using just a bunch of different colors. which i don't really think solved the problem....

Disco Fever....DENIED.

So i was working on my first ever realized design, and i had a disco ball and some really sweet cues in there, and then someone decided that it was too "dark and scary" for a children's show. sigh. and were worried in the sad, blue emotional song that the kids would fall asleep. I'm pretty sure they wouldn't fall asleep, they would be watching the disco ball. which i did have a freaking concept for thank you very much.
anyways, here are pictures of working on it and random things, and the disco ball.this picture of the seats, is one of my favorites.

and alas, the disco ball....sigh

Rail Girl is Pleased

well, the title of this entry merits explanation if you don't attend Millikin University and if you aren't in the theatre department there. So in one of our theatres it's said that a little girl was killed a buried somewhere in or near the theatre, and that she still haunts it. To appease her, you're supposed to leave M&Ms up on the lighting rail for her (thus her name "rail girl") and if you don't well...she'll sabotage your show. That's her story. Supposedly an actress once said that she doesn't exist before going on stage and while she was walking up the stairs to the stage door, she tripped and she said that she felt cold hands around her ankle. But there is a giant candy bucket up on the rail, and nothing has happened so far in the rehearsal/lighting/programming/focusing of this show that i'm working on right now, so i am under the assumption that Rail Girl is pleased, as one of our professors would say. Now i've been uber-busy this past week trying to design, hang, focus and cue a show in less than a week is super stressful, but i still have found time to take a few pictures, from the theatre of course.
These are a couple source fours that we didn't hang, but i took a really artsy picture of.
This was my view last night.

PWN'D!:The Musical

So i was driving back to Decatur from Champaign on Sunday when my driver's side rear tire pretty much exploded. I drove on in denial for another minute then i decided to pull over to check it out, and it was pretty much dead. The next thing that went through my mind was aw crap, i've never changed a tire on the truck before. Lucky for me the woman driving behind me when it blew out pulled over to help me. She flagged down her friend in another truck and he pulled over, too. When they couldn't get the tire off, they called his cousin and uncle to come out and help, and when they arrived they brought a floor jack, an 18 volt impact wrench, a torque wrench and an air compressor (my spare was flat...sigh). They had me sit in their truck where it was warm while they changed my tire for me, and then they made sure i was okay driving back to Decatur. They also gave me a can of pepsi while i waited. I don't know if they knew it, but they restored my faith in people that day, and confirmed that good people do exist. I want to find them and send them a card or something. They were wonderful.
Behold, the sad remains of my pwnd tire.

Back in Bubblewrap

Due to an illness (aka tonsilitis and the flu at THE SAME TIME) i was in bed for awhile, with a huge lack of things to take pictures of. So now i am back in action having missed a lot of days, and feeling crappy about it. My first day not quite 100% well but out of bed and upright was National Bubblewrap day and my RA happened to have a bubblewrap floor program. This was the result of my bubblewrap creativity.
That's right, i made a bubblewrap prom dress, with bubblewrap DARTS! For those of you who don't know what a dart is in sewing:
They're used to make things fit you i guess is the gist of it. There is a helpful diagram for you there.

I Love Lamp

January 16, 2008
We went to Lowe's today.
This Lamp is freaking sweet.
The lights are coconuts.

Moweaqua

January 15, 2008
Moweaqua is the kind of little town that country songs are about. There's one main road, no stoplights and everyone knows everyone. If someone waves to you while you're driving, you wave back. That's the way it works. I also FREAKING LOVE it out there. Also they have a giant rooster downtown. That's my friend Maggie kissing said giant rooster.
PS Moweaqua rocks, stoplights blow.

Inviting

January 14, 2008
Back in Decatur. After a long drive, a huge dinner, and a late movie my bed invited me to hop in, beckoned me actually, until i could no longer resist.

Hey Baby!

January 13, 2008
My best friend had her baby. So today's picture is of me holding her! Sooo Cute!. Also, in lesser news, i dyed my hair.

Guitar Heroes

January 11, 2008

Yes, that's right, my mother and my aunt played guitar hero. and yes, that is my picture of the day. Need i say more?

Smokes

January 10, 2008

this is Smokey again, except he had an excessive amount of cat nip and is going slightly insane in this picture.

Gnome-tastic

January 7, 2008

Yesterday a freak January tornado came out of nowhere and punched the apple orchard in the face. Which sucks, i love that place, i refuse to use the past-tense to describe it. It's a part of my childhood and i still love to go there for apples and donuts and all that yummy stuff. I wanted, for the picture of the day, to get a photo of the tornado, but that would have been uber-dangerous for me to do.

so instead i did something else stupid.
GNOME!

Kittehs

January 6, 2008

SIBBIE! close up. This was taken while she was sitting on my lap being a small, fuzzy space heater. Also watching Fred and Ginger tap dance across the screen with Chris and Lee. It was a good day.

One final thing. Not a part of my photo-a-day, but a part of my day.

Ginger Rogers.

I wanna drive the Zamboni

January 5, 2008

yes i do! It's true i've always wanted to drive a zamboni. Now i kind of want to go about finding a way that i could actually drive one. If anyone has any ideas as to how to do that let me know.
it would be awesome.



Also in light of this Zamboni post i did a little research as to how the Zamboni works. I came up with this picture. The blade that the Zamboni uses to shave the ice can slice through thick stacks of newsprint and it weighs something like 57 pounds. so if you guys get nothing else from me through this whole year, you learned about the blade on a Zamboni.

Cat in the Christmas Tree

January 4, 2008

Or next to the Christmas tree at least. This is Smokey, my friend JJ's cat next to the last bit of Christmas left in their house. I felt lucky to get such a good picture of him, he must have been in high spirits that day. Or feeling not so much like a jerk.

Condition:Frozen

January 2, 2008

Those icicles have been known to kill people.

well, you know. these icicles have never killed anybody, but i'm sure they could if they got of their lazy asses and fell or something.

Well....so

so this is going to be my Photo-journal of sorts. but basically my New Year's resolution was to take a picture a day until 2009. but if this works out it will be longer i hope. I guess it's kind of a exercise in discipline of sorts.

So let's do this thing.

These pictures ARE NOT part of the 2008 pictures, but i love them nonetheless and they were taken at the very end of 2007.

This was at school, that bike sort of lives at the bike thingy by the Fine Arts Center and i've never seen it move, or anyone riding it for that matter. All the people who actually have bikes and ride them on a daily basis had moved their bikes inside KFAC to sit in the hallway. This one outside got buried in the snow. and there was a loneliness about it. i don't know how to describe my feelings about this picture but they're there. If anyone could help me out that'd be great.
This picture to me embodies the new year. Looking both forward and behind at the same time.