Let that city take you down.

I've been pretty restless lately. Wanting something big to happen. I want things to change a bit. Not a whole lot. Even though I wouldn't mind a good change. This always happens to me. We're in a nice apartment and we can manage in Indianapolis, but I really, really want to move to Chicago. I feel like the people I know who are there are better than me because they are going to school there and they get to experience so much more. I get to experience the inside of my apartment on a daily basis. Sometimes I feel like I'm stagnating and I'll never be successful. I want, more than anything, to be a successful photographer. I want to be the best. I want to be known for something unique.

Boring day.

I pretty much did nothing today. But 4 days after Greg's birthday his gift finally arrived. It was the newest FFXI expansion. I don't know why I buy them for him. It just takes him farther away from us. I know why I bought it. It's because I like to see him happy. I think he's happy. I also gave him a coffee maker that we got on Black Friday for 5 bucks. I have yet to receive a birthday gift from him. That's an awesome feeling. Let's just say I'm feeling pretty awesome about myself right now... Not. But he makes me feel like I shouldn't be upset.

I wonder what's wrong with me. Why is it taking so long? Do I need to change something? Am I doing something wrong? Right now it feels like it's never going to happen.

I'm just being a whiny, self pitying, jerk right now.


Anyway. I got pretty crafty with Greg's gift today. I didn't have any wrapping paper, so I created my own.














This is how Emma spent most of her day.


Looking out the window and barking at anything that moved.

Here's a picture of my workspace at home.


This picture gets the award for the most adorable picture of the week.



Emma was a very cuddly puppy that night. Sometimes she gets that way. She'll just want to sit and sleep on us. I love it when she's in that mood.

Oh Tannenbaum.

The Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer ornaments were only 6.99 at Target. I couldn't pass them up.





Batman is supposed to be an antenna topper.


My sister got me this for my birthday. She got it when she went to Disney World. I was really surprised she remembered that Mulan is my favorite Disney movie/character.

After much waiting.

I am officially registered at IUPUI once again. It's about time. I had to wait for an advisor for about an hour and a half. While waiting I watched an episode and a half of Law and Order. It was pretty entertaining.

I am taking:

Literature for Today- Retaking this because I was a lazy bum the first time. I should have passed it. The professor was amazing we actually read Fight Club and compared it to the movie. I know, right?

The Film: Theory and Aesthetics- Another retake, because this class was just really freaking difficult. There wasn't much talk of aesthetics, and the professor was all over the place.

Intro to Computer Imagery I- Should be a pretty easy class, but I don't want to underestimate it. It's pretty much learning to use a Mac and Photoshop to create, scan, and manipulate images.

Beginning Ceramics, Wheel Throwing- I hear that wheel throwing is pretty difficult. I'm apprehensive after someone told me that. I was really excited.

I need to work really hard to get my gpa up, so that I can be an official Herron student.

Because I hate confrontation.

I think it's more of a social persecution than an outright "I'm going to kill you" persecution.

Monday, Monday.

School starts again. Boo! I'm doing pretty mediocre in my classes right now, because I don't feel like working very hard. It sucks.

Pet peeve #293: Huge, seemingly useless, arguments on teh intarwebz. It happens everyday, and it will never end.

Thanksgiving pictures.

My first Thanksgiving dinner at home in two years.  Two years ago I had dinner with Greg's family, and last year I was visiting my brother in Kansas.


mmm.... Thanksgiving food. 

My sister, Buttler (right) and my step-sister, Katie (left).



Katie.



Buttler.



This looks a lot better when it's not in Firefox.  In fact all of my pictures look a lot better when viewed in another browser.



A bowl that I like a lot.




The chandelier in our living room.



Taken at 2:20 p.m.



Taken at 5:37 p.m.



Our "fake" mailbox.  I have no idea why we have 2 mailboxes.



The grass.















My mom's dog, Cait.



The family cat, Ginger.  She is 10 years old.



Emma jumping off of Greg's deck.



Emma experiencing her first snow.

Happy Birthday Greg!!!

Sorry our apartment was filled with loud boys!!!

Black Friday.

My mom, sister, Jeneane, and I braved Black Friday.  Jeneane and I stayed up until it was time to leave at 4 am.  My mom drove us up to the south side of South Bend.  We went to Kohl's, Radio Shack, Target, and Wal-Mart.  When we first arrived to Kohl's we got stopped by a local news reporter that asked if he could interview us.  So, he asked us what we were buying, where we were going, and how long we planned on being out.  I must have looked pretty bad.  I didn't have any make up on and I had been up all night, so I was pale and my hair was a little greasy.  Luckily it was a live feed and it was 5:30 in the morning the day after Thanksgiving, so how many people are going to be watching?  Not much else happened, other than a whiny lady that wanted a cart that my mom got.  I got a ton load of DVDs from 5.88 to 14.88.  The Office Season 2 was only 14.88.  The only thing I had to buy were the DVDs because my mom was like, "I'll just get it."  All in all it was nice to spend time with my mom.  By the end of it all I was pretty tired and I felt horrible.

Thanksgiving!!!!

And it's my birthday. Technically it's at 11:01. I'm sitting here watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade by myself, and it's snowing.

Spent time with my mom today.

We went all around Plymouth today to two banks, the courthouse, downtown to Cook-Robertson insurance company, went to JC Penny to return things that my mom bought me for my birthday, and then mom dropped me off at Greg's house. Greg and I picked up Sheehan and went to Pizza Hut to eat. Hung out at Greg's house after that, then took Sheehan home so he could leave for Bedford, IN with his family. That was pretty much my day. I also took a nap. Yep... That's about it.

Home.

I'm home now. It's kind of nice. I didn't have to make dinner, and I pretty much did nothing.

Going home.

I bought a shelf today, and Greg put it together for me. So I have to rearrange the bedroom. Which I will do tonight. I'll post pictures later.

My blogs have been short as of late.

I really just haven't had much to post.  We're getting ready to head home for Thanksgiving.  I think we're staying from Tuesday to Friday.  I love going home, but I don't like staying too long.  I don't have a room there anymore, so it gets kind of annoying.  But it's been such a long time since I've been home.  It's been two years since I've had a Thanksgiving meal with my mom, and this year it's my birthday.  I'm pretty excited.  Also the guys from Far From Phoenix will be staying the weekend after Thanksgiving.  That should be really exciting and somewhat stressful.

Ch-ch-ch-changes.

I really feel like doing some rearranging and definitely some cleaning. We really need a shelf for the bedroom. I think I want to rearrange the bedroom, but I don't think Greg will be too keen on that.

The Life Aquatic

I was a half hour late for work today. That really sucked.

Woah. Just in time.

So. Not much happened today. I slept in too late. I went to class and papier mâchéd a few things for my next project. Worked out with my new Ok Go treadmill track.

Drawing.

Man. I'm really tired of drawing class. I'm really tired of class all together. I shouldn't have taken classes over the summer because I'm really burnt out. I've missed so many classes. I can't even believe it. Now I have to work really hard to produce some drawings. I need to start drawing at home. It helps that I have now taken the drawing pad out of the trunk of Greg's car.

I'm excited for Thanksgiving. I haven't had a birthday on Thanksgiving in like 5 years. Yay for birthdays, boo for turing 23. I'm going to just stop aging now.

Bloggity blog.

So, I put a bunch of pictures up on facebook and nobody has commented on them.  I'm quite disappointed because I think they are my best yet.  Oh well.  I guess it's nothing to take personal.  I just really want some feedback about them.

Pure Mac.

I've switched back to Safari, and I'm happy about it.  It integrates better with OSX than Firefox does.  Like the new button that allows me to select something in the web browser and then add it to my dashboard.  The other thing is that you can group together a bunch of your bookmarks on the bookmark bar into one and when you click it, it opens them all at once.  It's pretty useful.  

I've also switched to the Mail application.  Which is amazing.  It's nice to have all of my mail in one place.  Plus it has these really nice stationary, and I don't have to have a tab open at all times for gmail.  Now I don't miss any mail that goes to my IU webmail; it just comes there and I don't forget.  If someone sends me an e-mail with a date or a time, all I have to do is hover over it and click and it gives me an option to add to iCal.  It also does that with addresses, phone numbers, and the like.  It integrates with the address book.  Love it, love it, love it.

I'm really happy with Leopard.  I love spaces.  It keeps my desktop from getting cluttered.  Not that it was a huge problem because of the ginormous screen on this computer, but it is nice to have my applications in different spaces.  There is so much more about Leopard that I love, but I have to get back to what I was doing.

I love this puppy.

She is the best.  We love her very much, and she happens to be the cutest puppy ever.  I can't believe she's going to be a year old in a couple of months.  

I had a lot to blog about.

Today not so much.  Other than Greg and I walked around the canal with the puppy.  That was her first major outing like that.  She did really well.  Somebody even recognized she was a corgi!!!  I'll post some pictures after I work on them a bit.

Wow. Three posts in one day.

Apparently Scrooge McDuck is a big deal. His wiki article goes in to a lot of detail. Right down to his morality and beliefs. It's pretty crazy.

I like blogging.

Especially when I have coherent thoughts to blog. I really hate all the pressure to blog like I'm writing a paper for a class or blogging about politics or stuff like that. Is there something wrong with just writing how you feel and what you did today? Why is that considered pointless? Especially if it helps keep you sane and curb the boredom. I'm really bored right now. The most exciting thing I've done today was help a student get her jagtag*. She was really in a conundrum. The jagtag office wouldn't give her a jagtag without a print out of her schedule and she couldn't print her schedule without a jagtag. So, I ended up calling the office and telling them that she couldn't print, but that she is registered. They went ahead and got her a jagtag. Hooray for happy endings.

*A jagtag is a little card that IUPUI students use to print, and it can be used like a debit card on campus. It also gives you access to certain places on campus if you need it, so they are pretty valuable little cards.

Not much to blag about right now. Wait I lied.

I'm sitting in the nursing computer lab on campus, because I have to, 'cause it's my job. It's pretty boring right now, but it'll pick up in a couple of hours. Around lunch time. A few gaggles of nursing students will come in talking loudly and being annoying. I will have to ask them to keep it down. A few will come up and ask me how to print with Word 2007. A couple will be on their cell phones and I will kindly ask them to take their call outside. (I don't know how they get reception in here. I have to go all the way down the hallway for mine to work.) It will be a good time.



I have six hours left on my shift and only one show to catch up on. Speaking of shows. The WGA (Writer's Guild of America) strike is very sad. I hope the studios give in to their demands, because I don't want the Office to be cut short this season. From what I gather the studios won't agree to pay residuals on the episodes and webisodes they put online. For instance, if in five years the Office is over and all of those writers are out of work, they would get a check for all of the reruns that NBC put online. Right now NBC puts the episode up with advertising, they get the money from the advertising, but the writers get nothing. The people who created the show get nothing from the online reruns. The Office writers, last year, wrote and shot webisodes, for which they won an Emmy; and they didn't get paid for it. Those are still online with advertising. They are not receiving any compensation for those.  Production on a lot of shows have stopped completely. After next Thursdays episode of the Office that's it. No new episodes are being shot. The studios are being stingy and they need to pay the writers what they deserve. If the strike continues any longer the quality of television will go down considerably.

Please support the WGA. These are middle class writers, they don't make millions. They deserve compensation for what they create.

How the writers' strike affects 'The Office'.

This is a very good video explaining what the writers receive now and what they want, and why.

Why?

Oh why? Would you vote for someone who is in favor of big government. It boggles my mind that the idea of having a small and unobtrusive government is considered crazy.

Why would you want the Federal Reserve to keep controlling our economy?

Why do you want to see your money go to other countries when we can barely get by here?

Why do you want to see the dollar lose more value?

Our economy is crumbling. It doesn't make any sense.

Now really look at what the candidates are saying.

Because I don't want the only thing I blog about today to be that.

I worked out today for about 50 minutes. It was pretty fun. I love it because I get to listen to my iPod that I don't get to listen to when Greg's around and it just gives me time to think.

I burned: 320 calories.

87 on the stair stepper

233 on the treadmill

I walked/jogged 1 mile on the treadmill. I'm pretty proud of myself.

About the bastard.

There's a guy in my contemporary art history class who thinks he knows everything there is to know about art.  He's been to the Louvre, he's been to Germany, and all over Europe, so he likes to tell us that this piece is art and this piece is not.  Then when someone makes a very good point he dismisses it and sits there with a smug smile on his face.  Those are the kinds of smiles that make me want to punch people in the face.  

He reminds me of someone I knew a while back.  I didn't see him very often, but he knew everything there was to know about music.  Even though I had been in band for 7 years, and I have taken music theory.  He would still try to tell me what was right and what was wrong.  Even though I made very good points.

That's the kind of bastard I was talking about there.  Don't get in a tizzy, just calm yourself down.

Everybody is talking about video games.

So, why not?  I have started playing Half-Life on the PS2.  It is, by far, the best FPS I have ever played.  I tend to get really into it too.  They're really good at surprising you with things, for example you get in an elevator and riding along, suddenly it stops!  You walk forward to push the button again and the cable breaks and you are falling down an elevator shaft into a pool of toxic waste.  The narrative is amazing.  You just get so immersed in the story.

I think Greg really enjoys watching me play because I get really jumpy and I will do my inhale scream noise whenever something unexpected happens.  Which is quite often. 

It's not cool.

To think that you are better than everyone else and then treat them as such.  If you do this you are being a bastard.  

Today was filled with cooking.

I played Halo with Greg and Sheehan until about 4 in the morning.  We ended up playing Tokyo Drift (this is when we play with just vehicles and pistols) most of the time.  There wasn't much killing going on just trying to get vehicles into stupid places.  Got up at 1pm and felt like crap, but I had major kitchen cleaning to do.  It was a freaking mess.  It didn't stay clean for long because I made chili.  I then helped Sheehan beat Halo 2, and we watched The IT Crowd.  Greg took him home, and Jeneane and I kept watching The IT Crowd.  It's pretty much my new favorite show.  I absolutely adore Roy, the Irishman.  He's brilliant.  

I think I'm going to head upstairs and clean our room.  It's pretty messy as well.  I really need to do some laundry.

Let's make an agreement.

Greg, Sheehan, and I saw the Darjeeling Limited tonight. It was great. I love Wes Anderson movies. They're so quirky and emotional, but the thing I like most is how they look. His choice of colors is amazing. I don't think the movies would be quite the same without that use of color. There's so much saturation. I liked the narrative although it felt a little flat, but it wasn't very predictable. You can never guess what is going to happen next in his movies. They can be so happy and sad at the same time. Overall it was a great movie.

We saw it at Keystone Art Cinema and Indie Lounge. Which is ironically placed in the Fashion Mall. The most expensive stores in two blocks, everything from Pottery Barn to the Apple Store to Crate and Barrel. It's quite an array of pretentious things that I can't afford. Including the movies at a whopping 9 dollars a ticket. Needless to say we don't go to the movies very often.

Now to continue with the fun with a lot of Halo 2 action.

I have a weakness.

And it's cheesy sitcoms. I don't know why. It's unexplainable.

I got an offer to do some wedding photography.  I hope she calls me.  Weddings are so stressful, but fun to be a part of.  You really have to know what they want from you and where to be and how in the way you can be.  

I have also had 2 senior portrait jobs as well.  It's been a busy month.  I love getting to do my real job.  Photography really is my passion.  I can't wait to get to do it full time.

So I'm participating in NaBloPoMo.

It should be great fun.  I'll talk about meaningless things that happen to me, and post pictures that I take and maybe a few digg articles.  I'm not a good writer, so don't expect me to expound upon huge issues with much academic thought.  It'll be my opinion, and probably not much else.