The Most Worth-Reading Thing In Years (Is Imaginary)

my motivation to do anything has come and gone all day. i blame the internet. and organic food. so yeah right now i lack the motivation to do much of anything. except, sleep. Let's all use our imaginations now and imagine I posted right below this the most mind-blowingly worth-reading thing of the past, let's say, few years?

HERE RIGHT HERE THIS IS THE PART THAT'S WORTH READING

now wasn't that not a waste of your time?

so yeah i'm not sure, but i think that my taste in movies may be terrible, because i don't dislike many films, so like maybe i can tell if a movie's objectively bad if i don't love everything about it but even if i do love it it's maybe still suspect? i'm not sure if i'm actually changing the subject or not, but, man that thing i wrote above sure was worth reading, right?

Time Management, Physical Awkwardness and Other Asperger's-Like Stuff

I think the drop 8 months ago did more than shatter my laptop's hard drive, because 2.0's been crashing more and more on me. When I say that, I mean, I got my stuff in late even though I was going to get it in early, because it shut down on me as I was posting up my WordPress post, then got the blue grumpies within a minute of rebooting right as I was logging back in again, then shut down on me again right as I was posting the link to the post, all within 10 minutes of each other. It hasn't shut down on me again, yet, so it's been 10 minutes since the last time, but I'm not not holding my breath.

So I guess next time I'll just get my stuff in even earlier. Which means I'm going to have to actually have my stuff done earlier, of course, which isn't much fun, but seriously the best part of my Mondays is no longer having my information design deadline looming over my head, so, yeah.

Learning time management in Business for the Professional Artist, we're supposed to keep track of an entire day in 15-minute increments. It's due tomorrow, so of course I waited until today. Mondays are my busiest day, so it also looks the most impressive.

12 research shoes made in AL and AK, put on background music (Neko Case, Fox Confessor Brings the Flood)
12:15 AZ
12:30- AZ still. It's a toughie- I think Arizona brand jeans make shoes, so I settle on those.
12:45- blog
1:00 still blogging
1:15- AR, blog. Album ends.
1:30- discover usalovelist.com, a website of made-in-the-USA companies.
1:45: CA. It's got a lot of shoe companies, but all of them appear to be distributed through Nordstrom, whose website only features images of individual shoes while I'm looking for photos of pairs.
2:00- screw this, head to bed
2:15-6:30 sleep
6:30 wake up
6:45 stay in bed, just five more minutes I swear
7-8:45- scripture study and religion class homework
8:45-turn in religion class homework; head out to art history class
9-10 art history class
10 breakfast, nick my finger open meanwhile and search for a bandage
10:15- 11 bleed, work on homework
11:15 head to class
11:30-12:30 class
12:30-head home (finger bleeding only a little now.)
12:45 computer is stupid and slow, and this tissue-held-in-place-by-a-rubber-band is cramping my animation hand
1:00 read textbook reading for animation design class
1:15 do test on reading. take off makeshift bandage.
1:30 animate
1:45 finish stuff, upload it and head to class
2-4:30 animation design class
4:30 procrastinate near end of class
4:45 procrastinate after class, head home
5:00 make oatmeal and procrastinate some more
5:15-6:15 rejuvinated by oatmeal, use usalovelist to shoe-in the remaining states
6:15 youtube break
6:30 research next shoe thing (three shoe ideas are needed; I just got the biggest one out of the way first.)
6:45 research third shoe thing. This one's the easiest.
7-8 fhe. We play signs and hot potato.
8 eat fhe brownies.
8:15 check email and stuff
8:30 youtube while I wait for indesign to load (bravest warriors season 2). more oatmeal.
8:45-9:30 indesign create a processbook module for my shoe project; plain oatmeal is nasty so I add ketchup and mustard, and can at least pretend I'm eating a burger.
9:30 youtube break again (Sherlock Hound.)
9:45-10:30 continue processbook-compile all research done during the day, crunch numbers on it.
10:30- do 9 sketches at the last minute because that was also a thing we were supposed to do
10:45- try to upload my finished project, computer crashes on me
11:00 turn in project late, blog about it
11:15 fill in gaps in day's record
11:30 reflect on the meaning of the events of the day
11:45 blog

So yeah. I discovered a couple of weeks ago that no matter how important the project, unless it's also urgent and I've already squeezed my procrastination out, I feel like I'm wasting my time if I do something for more than about a half-hour at a time. Served me right for blocking out an hour to do something, in my planner (it would usually take me twice that, then, unless I really want to schedule in unstructured time, which, yeah sure why not.)

Autistical-type folk are supposed to crave structure, but I don't know. Even the idea of even unstructured time in a schedule, for me... kinda freaky-deaky.

But the way I phrase that, unstructured time, makes me realize, maybe that's some kind of kneejerk shying away from coming across as autistic? I just, don't want to come across as autistic. So maybe that's it, something ingrained so deeply, mustn't let them discover my vasty dark seecret, that I just, reject structure for its being too, typically non-neurotypical? I don't think that's it, okay seriously that's not it. It's bedtime, right now, I should be brushing my teeth, but I've been rejecting such ritual as toothbrushing since before anybody knew there was something different about me. It was one of the things that made my parents realize that, you know? So it's not any rejection of coming across as a typical non-neurotypical, that leads to my chafing against structure.

I only brought up the possibility because that phrase, "unstructured time," that just smacks of something some TA would refer to, in giving breathing room to some little autist's, some little professor's, flights of fancy-- and that just triggers in me something I'd apparently wanted to talk about, perhaps stemming from the introspection last night, which I'd brought up but didn't really delve into, how I don't want to come across all spergery, like the phrase "unstructured time" would do. But why is that? Is it shame? Is it modesty, which I refer to as the avoidance of calling undue attention to oneself? Or, I think this is the one, is it that awkward people just make you feel awkward (or at least they make me feel awkward, in a sort of self-fulfilling prophesy- I'm rendered feeling awkward by awkward people because I'm afraid that I come across that way...!)

Board game workshop, that was kind of awkward at first a little, with all those awkward nerdy-type people there, awkwardly around that little table, before I saw the board game being lugged through the Crossroads to some other area of the foodcourt where the official workshop was actually being held without our knowledge... there were more, non-awkward, type people there, and so I felt better, didn't have to be the cool non-nerd of the group.

Is there anything bad about coming across autistic? Do I just have some heightened PDD-dar that allows me to pick out awkward traits that others wouldn't see? Elder I'm-picturing-his-face, don't think we were ever officially any kind of companion though we did twosomeize at one point, said how he had Asperger's, stressed it mild Asperger's, stressed it very mild Asperger's, which surprised Elder Judkins who said he couldn't tell, even though from across the room it didn't look "very mild" to me. I slouch and breathe through my mouth and have a (I think) funny-shaped head in profile (it's the mouth, and the neck, and the back of the head, (the latter two dealing again with the slouching of course,)) but Elder Koenig said, when I told him what was "wrong" enough with me to be on the FCHHM, that whoever diagnosed me must have been high or something at the time. Maybe I am the only one who picks up on these. I dunno.

The back of everyone's head is awkward, really. So.

Yesterday, also, during sacrament meeting, some guy speaking, whom I thought to have delusions of eloquence at the time but thinking back at all his invented idiomata they were actually pretty solid just not used liberally enough so they called attention to themselves when he applied them, seemed smooth enough speaking, waited 8 years to go on a mission so he went when he was 23, and claimed a diagnosis of Asperger's syndrome. Which made me feel. Whatever it was I felt, I don't know, but it was there. Self-consciousness? Jealousy? Awkwardness? I'm just a man in the audience, who doesn't stir at all when those words pass his lips. I think jealousy, though. My 'dar didn't twinge at all from his presence, there was not any awkwardness in his stance or frame or gestures. Maybe I'm the same way and just hard on myself. How I come across, I don't know; old videos of me can stir some self-consciousness of my own awkwardness in me, though that could be for any number of reasons. Lack of it being left-to-right swapped like I'm used to, for instance.

Ryan and I are close enough as to pass for twins, an image we don't discourage (we're deliberately, nastily vague when the subject is broached,) but one of the things that akinates us (totally a word from now on,) it has been said, is our "hunchback"edness. First off, let me say, curse you, genes from my father's side of the family, but second off: I don't consider Ryan to slouch, so if I've got what he's got, I'm guessing I don't slouch as noticeably as I think I do. Maybe I'm still kind of gangly, but I'm not sure about that either.

In this light, even this photo here doesn't seem as awkward. Which is a real shame, as I just love making people uncomfortable. Honestly can't tell if I'm joking there. Maybe I'm just tired. I'm going to bed.

After brushing my teeth, of course.

FoxTrot (Confessor) Brings the Flood

Named this post after the comic strip FoxTrot, and I guess the Neko Case album Fox Confessor Brings the Flood which I'm listening to right now? (YouTube playlist of official full album stream.) Pretty good so far; off to a better start than her Middle Cyclone, at least, as far as albums I've heard from her goes. Standouts, probably the title track, and right now John Saw That Number is playing and that's pretty good.

It's been 11 years to the day since Doomulus Prime made its first appearance, and it's been years since I thought about it but watching a YouTube video on how to hack MMORPGS which I hadn't even meant to click on, (alright so the video before that one was the one I hadn't meant to click on, but after that I was all, hey these DEFCON panels are pretty interesting, is what happened) and all of a sudden I remembered Doomulus Prime, and how awesome it was and how hard I laughed when I read that strip for the first time, so I decided to track it down and, it was 11 years to the day that that exact strip came out. Which means- mind blown- it being Sunday January 29th again for the first time in 11 years, any comic syndication service showcasing FoxTrot would have that exact strip as today's. Such as the one on my Kindle... but if there's one thing I'm good at keeping track of it's nothing, so I actually can't find that to double-check. But, that should be the case.* It takes 11 years for the day/date to sync up again, I mean that's the way Calvin and Hobbes reruns go, so...**

So YouTube videos anyway? I'm going to go long on this post, I can feel it, so I'm there we go, I just published, and am just going to have the rest of this as an update to the post, instead of having to backdate it going through that trouble.

I napped all this afternoon and evening, seriously going to sleep around 1:00 pm I guess and sleeping until 9:00. I really really really (really really really) need to do my homework which is due Monday, which is of course now today, by my time zone's standards and there we go, we just passed the 1:00 mark which means by this blog's time zone standards as well. So that's what I'm doing.

I hadn't meant to put it off, but YouTube binges called, and it was always all, welll it's not that intensive a project, and (and The Needle Has Landed is playing right now and I'm really enjoying it) anyway, I trapped myself on this one. I'd been going to get some of it done today/yesterday (Sunday anyway) (and apparently The Needle Has Landed is the last track of the album, sad) but keeping the Sabbath day holy is a thing, and was reemphasized in Priesthood, and so, like, man I can't do homework on the sabbath, no matter how easy, so I just slept then, and am awake now. Only, what was to be done there, between 9:00 and 12:00?

Well, you know. I watched YouTube.

Probably would have been keeping the Sabbath holier just doing homework. We're like little kids, you know, with literal minds. Oh, I can't do that, so I'll do this, and you make it so much worse.

But sometimes little kids, in taking things at face value, stumble across some obvious solution no one else had thought to try before because their parameters were too jaded.

In watching a video review of Ender's Game, something something Orson Scott Card something something homophobia something something something. And now I don't have very many opinions on very many things, but if there is one thing I do hold to very strongly, it's that Orson Scott Card is not a homophobe, seriously just friggin' read friggin' Songmaster, like, dang. I guess I just hold to this idea so strongly that whenever I get challenged on it, I have to rethink my entire worldview. The challenge doesn't even have to be that direct or that strong. People who clearly don't know what they're talking about, who've only heard from whatever-hand sources, just bringing it up casually, can set me off. And get me really introspective. Not even about that, just, make me think about my life.

So, yeah, Sabbath obtained, I guess.

Onte Alus-MG6

One of the things I failed to mention about the bunny hop, as well, is how it absolutely destroys your core. In the good way, of course, but my abdomen still smarts.

1

https://naturallycuriouswithmaryholland.wordpress.com/2012/07/29/white-tailed-does-still-nursing/

So the president is doing all the things that he threatened to do? Dude's been in office for, what, a week now (and this week passed a heck of a lot faster than last week did) and he's already gone through like all of his campaign promises. Whether you agree with anything he's doing or not, (obvious response to things), I look at that and am all, dang, dude's got his stuff together, now that's efficient.

Aztecpunk

The ancient Zapotec site of Monte Alban is constructed along a N/S axis, except for one building, building J, which is offset. It's believed that building J was an astronomical observatory, and, sure, why not. There are large stones around the base of building J depicting buildings atop upside-down heads, and that probably signifies the defeat of some foreign ruler. Makes sense- the building indicates a place or place name, the face indicates a ruler, the head's being upside-down indicates that ruler's deposition.

But that's no fun. When I saw the carvings, my immediate thought was, the city is actually a giant transforming fighting robot. So here's the concept: ancient Pre-Columbian cities are giant robots, actually, but dormant, with the robot's giant head (heck maybe an Olmec head) buried underground, to swing right-side-up upon the city's activation. The ancient sites/steampunk mecha get into fights, and maybe fend off an alien invasion of feathered serpents.

I would be doing a 24-hour comic of that right now, before I realized, that's a really stupid idea.

The only panel I made.

Money Matters Matter, and the Lion King

I finished indexing the receipts that were in the shoebox today, and have begun cross-referencing them with my bank account reports etc. Exciting stuff. The reason it’s so important is because, not only does Prof Burr of my Business for the Professional Artist say it’s important to keep track of that kind of thing for a lot of reasons; but also because scholarship money is for school, obviously, and I’m tracking down exactly which money was spent where and hopefully straightening out how much of the money I have is personal and how much is strictly scholastic, to be spent only on school supplies and tuition and rent and stuff (I paid tithing last year on the scholarship and grant money I received, only to realize later that that may not have been entirely legal to do... so that’s another thing that’s hopefully going to get straightened out (and as much as it pains me to use the phrase straighten out twice in a row like that, I’m too tired right now to come up with my own idiom.))

I do know for sure, of course, that my plasma money is untainted by legal scholarship restriction and free to use, especially considering how I probably won’t need to pay any tithing on it for quite a while (that all being covered last year, with several hundred to spare,) and so I’m trying to stick to what’s there for a bit, until I’ve tampered down all the dust on everything else?, even though I do have a couple hundred dollars just lazing there in my bank account (and now you know whom to rob!). So that’s the story there. Everything should be (urgh) straightened out, I think I’ll have it, tomorrow.

But sitting in my room all day wasn't that great, like I only had a couple thousand steps all day for the most of the day, so not too long after clean checks and we passed, I decided to get the rest of my 10,000 steps in for the day, by trekking out into the cold and finding adventure someplace. No local cinema seems to be playing La La Land right now, which is weird (it must have slipped through the cracks, like when The Secret Life of Pets wasn’t playing at either theater for a few solid weeks there,) so I headed beyond Fatcats to see if there was anything interesting at the DI just a blockish past. And there was.

Apparently there was a Lion King board game published by Milton Bradley in 1993? The artwork is, as far as this kind of thing goes, absolutely jawdropping, and most of the pieces were still there, and in great condition to boot. The box is kind of beat up, but the cardboard standees are all in fantastic shape, whatever the heck the word for the quality of condition just under “mint” is. Seems really interesting.

Boardgames and Bunny Hops

2.0's been crashing a lot recently on me for some reason. Giving me the blue frownies, a couple of times today (or actually I think once was last night maybe,) and just now, just, crashing, and rebooting itself. And just now just now, I'm at 10% battery, so even greater motivation to make this post quick.

There's a board game design workshop here, and it looks like the first meeting was this evening, and it looks like it's taken it a while to get off the ground, but it's up and running now (and I joined some smaller group because nobody seemed to know where it was being held, "Manwaring Center dining area" being kind of vague and big and all, until I noticed someone humping a heavy old board game on their way to something else, and followed them, and went back and grabbed the rest of the group) but it looks like we're meeting every other Wednesday for the design workshop, but a board game night regardless each Wednesday. I played a game of Betrayal at House on the Hill and got turned into a vampire when the betrayer was revealed, and then we betrayers lost; and played a (very drawn-out) game of Bang! and died but actually still won because I came back as a ghost for one turn due to some event card from some expansion, and shot the sheriff. Another game night next week, and then the week after that a game night plus the workshop, which will be about the logistics of gamemaking, including playtesting and stuff. Two weeks after that, art I think, and then after that materials? Something like that.

The bunny hop is an incredibly inefficient method of travel, is the other thing I learned today. I'm not sure if other people seriously don't get the sudden urge to bunny hop all the way back home from class, if it never crosses their mind even, or if they just, totally want to do it (the natural thing to do) but let their fears of what other people think get in the way. But it's not something you see very often, either way, which, isn't much fun at all, is it.

A surprising number of people don't know the bunny hop when they see it, is another thing. Could it really be that obscure? If someone on some future Who Wants to be a Millionaire– fine, computer, you win, plugging you in– –okay this is interesting, somehow the power cord got stuck like through a hole in the corner in the shoebox all my receipts I haven't indexed are in, or rather were in, because now the shoebox is all spilt out seeing as how I knocked/tugged the box over through my grabbing of the power cord, but, seriously how does something like that even happen, I mean, it just went like through the flap or something– if someone on some future Who Wants to be a Millionaire wins a million bucks because they learned the bunny hop from me just randomly doing it past them all the way home, well, first off that'd be crazy, but second off I can just see them in some Slumdog Millionaire-style interrogation, like, how did you know the bunny hop, and, seriously at that point, I'd just go, ...you know what, you're right, I have been cheating this whole time, because there's just no way I could adequately explain that.

Receiptage

I've been doing very little since 4:00 this afternoon, but transcribing, with an autistic single-mindedness, all of my old receipts into an Excel spreadsheet (I keep them all in a shoebox. A big one.) My FitBit is none too pleased with me.

I'm maybe a third of the way through, or a half, or, man I can't even estimate, receipts stacked in a pile have apparently better disruptive camouflage than do zebras. I do know that I've spent almost $2,000 so far. And I also know that Albertsons receipts are just really weird, like seriously there are some strange strange features on those ones. I like the thing Walmart does, though, them and not-enough other places, where they tell you not only the minute but the exact second as well, that your transaction goes through. That's a fun feature. Like having Google tell you how fast it received your results, or something...

Tuesdays are open for me; auditing myself was how I scheduled my time for this afternoon. Wednesdays are way busy, but maybe I'll be able to complete or even finish this little project on Thursday. My Thursdays, as you'll recall, are just as open as my Tuesdays, well actually more come to think of it, so. Last Thursday I took more than 20,000 steps; should make up for the only 4,086 steps I've taken today...

The Woods Are Lovely, Dark and Deep

"Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening" by Robert Frost resonates with me. I mean, not that much, or anything, but, you know, it's a well composed enough poem, pretty tightly crafted, but of course it's the ending that summarizes everything:

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.

But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep,

And miles to go before I sleep.

Obligations to get to. That's exactly it. I couldn't stay long (and how the snow was blowing,) but I still stopped to snap a few pictures (and I don't think I've needed to retouch a single photograph with this new camera, color balancing or value correction or anything I mean, and so far not even cropping.)

I'm finished(ish) with the project now, at least, anyway (https://pretzelizemecapn.wordpress.com/2017/01/24/module-3-project-1-finale-project-2/) and so we're onto something new. But I can rest now. So there.

I Discuss Hypothetical TV Shows and Then Rant About YouTube Marketing Techniques for a Bit, is the TL;DR of It

So I gave myself a haircut, and let me just say, there should totally be a medical drama-type show ER-style, only the emergency is haircuts? Like, oh man, this is a bad haircut, and they have to perform a risky hairstyling operation to hopefully fix it. But my hair looks good now. It's... a lot shorter. That's what I would have talked about last night, were I in the mood.

Really though, on the subject of what would make for good TV, I've got a great idea for a game show: by answering questions correctly you yourself get to ask questions right on back, about the answers to the questions upcoming or just whatever, so you can ask the statistical breakdown of how many upcoming questions have the answer of C, or what the answer to the million dollar question is, or if your opponent's character is Bernard... Yeah, so it's like Guess Who, as a trivia show. Came to me in a dream, I think maybe a nap dream, Fridayish morning. Pretty solid idea. You'd probably even get to pull some dope math stunts, as in the video below (you seen this yet?), doing all that logic-y stuff... (14:31.) (I haven't actually seen it in a while, but I think I would have remembered if there were any egregious cussage, so it should be good.)



A lot of caps there, in that title, and some really bold lettering in the video thumbnail... I'm sure it must be a newer thing, because I only started noticing it last year, on YouTube videos, where the video icon combines text and images, in a really clickable and usually really misleading way (you, Screen Rant! I'm looking at you! With your little red arrows and circles around things in the thumbnail, that you don't even mention in the videos themselves... I mean, your videos are better than WatchMojo's, but only by a little! That's not an excuse to still be terrible! Whatever, who even needs your opinions anyway...) Lists, of course, have always been a great clickbaiting thing, because, maybe you're going to learn something, or maybe they're going to miss one, or something, and of course they're going to miss one, they're going to miss a lot of ones, and then you'll have to go down in the comments section and interact and... I got really disillusioned with YouTube during the Summer of last year, but got over it right around the time that everyone else was becoming disillusioned with YouTube. So I could laugh at their disillusionment. Fun.

But I guess this ties into what I'd been going to say, because there was this job opportunity through Graphic Design class last semester, which of course I was not selected for, because portfolio matters, but the job was to design the video thumbnails, and I'm pretty sure also to write the inane video description in the doobly-doo, for YouTube videos for Studio C and the like? And, man, Studio C's doobly-doo just keeps getting more and more and more inane, like, seriously you read some of this crap... now that I know at least the basic behind-the-scenes, I can kind of tell it's written by a college art major, I guess... I just sound really bitter talking about this stuff, and I don't mean to, but, I just have this bile at the back of my throat right now that I just can't seem to get rid of, no matter how much generic puffed rice cereal I eat...

Job opportunities through school, anyway, that's what I really meant to talk about, before going on another tangent. You know what, you don't even have to read this stuff, I've just been rambling this whole time... Getting to the actual point by now would be too much of a tangent of anything else, just a completely different tone and everything, and the mild sense of deja vu I receive upon writing that seems to indicate that that's true, and I guess I'm stopping.

I Use the Phrase "Dragonpony Babythingy" in This Post, It's So Great

Alright so I finally managed to track down the Spike-and-Rarity-have-made-a-baby video that that little girl in the library was watching on YouTube that I mentioned in the post, Have a Doug'nut, Copper!. I can't remember why; it just seemed so important at the time. It's called "Sparity Labretto," and is an animation set to Newborn Baby from the Dexter's Lab episode, Labretto (you know, the one where Dexter's birth is retold in opera form ("ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh, what's this button do?")?) Apparently the video ends, like, seriously less than a second after I took the photo, with the dragonpony babythingy biting Spike's finger and Spike exclaiming, "Egad!" where Dad had apparently exclaimed that in the original episode because Dexter's noggin is so Buicklike.

(Is that where draconequii come from? because I was thinking about that just like yesterday evening, Discord's species is named but he's the only one of those we see. Is he then a mule? No little Discord Jr.'s running around ever?)

It's appropriate for kids or whatever, I guess, that one, so yeah I guess that girl won't be scarred, but, I'm not hosting the video or linking to it, because it's just one of many, as I have seen things in the pursuit of Sparity Labretto (there's, like, a gajillion pregnant ponies videos on YouTube, and like all of them are ostensibly for kids. Children are, just, fascinated with pregnancy, apparently. Which TOTALLY makes it less disturbing!!)

I'd originally been going to write about more than that, but, I don't feel like doing much of anything right now, aside from gently weeping myself into a terror-induced sleep.

Milderpeople

I actually missed Hunt for the Wilderpeople this evening, because there was a game night tonight, and I can always catch that movie later but game nights are once in a lifetime. Did check in down there at the Spori dungeon; place was absolutely packed. It's a big lecture hall, but they actually had to bring in chairs, and there were still people left standing.

Turns out though that "game night" just meant like charades and Never Have I Ever and stuff. And I really wanted to play Tikal again too...

(Also Catan. Haven't played that game in years, and I really miss it sometimes... I genuinely wouldn't have minded the original non-Europe Ticket to Ride, I mean...)

...And Like Everything Converges Around Cats Don't Dance, and I Just Don't Know Why...

So I saw Sing, and it was really good, and it made me realize what makes movies good, and now I'm super psyched for Rock Dog next month and then past that Spark, though I confess I hadn't heard of the latter until today, and I haven't seen any trailers for it or anything, but it's hitting the States in April, and will hopefully succeed in the places where the Ratchet and Clank movie failed?

I'm kind of planning on refraining from discussing Sing until I see La La Land, the last movie of last year that I need to go view, which viewing would holy crap wrap up my seeing all the musicals of the season to be sure so that I can fit Trolls's weirdness into perspective (from La La Land to Trolls to Sing to Moana I guess,) but also wrap up my seeing all the movies about vintage Hollywood that came out last year throughout the year (La La Land, Café Society, and Hail, Caesar!.) And having watched Singin' in the Rain yesterday, which is also of course both a musical and about vintage Hollywood (I mean come on it's the musical and the movie about vintage Hollywood,) I guess I also need to rewatch Cats Don't Dance, which is also also all of those things I just said, plus like that other stuff I was talking about above what with the aminals which can biped and speech and stuff, so like, yeah that's the other movie I need to get on watching, before going into too much depth why Sing rocks so hard.

...For some reason lately I guess Cats Don't Dance has become an animated classic out of nowhere, like seriously when did this happen, I mean look at these exactly two YouTube videos, which came out within two days of each other last year, I mean yeah I remember it was pretty good, and this was my opinion back when I had terrible taste in cartoons (read: I didn't like them so hot,) but seriously, that's just surreal how a movie disappears off of the face of the planet for two decades and then suddenly becomes relevant again, for absolutely no reason political or otherwise... (First video 10 seconds, second video 15 minutes.)

Motion Design, Information Design, and the Perils of Planning Ahead

Motion design is everywhere, and I can't unsee it, man. Education kind of ruins you. All the really impressive-looking motion designs are actually super simple to make, I mean the fancy type motion designs and everything, and the shapes and most of the stuff in the ads that you see all around us, from those annoying GIF sidebar ads to the ads actually on TV. The CGI 3D effects, well they aren't always even necessarily in 3D, but when they are, that's, still relatively simple actually, though it does *usually* require more advanced programs than just After Effects. Usually.

So I'm thinking of doing motion comics or something?, it wouldn't really be difficult to do at all, just make some art, extrude the art into layers (2.5D, it's called,) and then individually manipulate those layers, slide 'em around each other or whatever. Seriously that insultingly simple, and it looks great. Figure it's a combination of some of both my passions and my strengths, and technically counts as graphic design so could maybe even make good portfolio pieces/a direction for my field within graphic design. Because it's a broad category, a big field that encompasses a lot and continues to grow to encompass even more, and having a specific field of interest and speciality is way more likely to get you places (such as a BFA.)

So I don't know. It's something I'm looking into doing anyway, and we'll see how it turns out, and if it can go into any portfolio or something. Seems like a pretty good idea I guess. If I don't seem that convicted, it's just because I like to keep my future options open?

I'm eating a lot of ramen lately. Trying to save up my money for this bad boy, donate $100 and get an exclusive t-shirt out of the deal, plus that whole chance-to-maybe-meet-Wes-Anderson-and-be-in-one-of-his-movies thing. Thought I'd have enough saved by the end of this week, but there was some stupid scheduling thing at the plasma center, where it's been a year since I started there and so it was time to get a physical, which I thought I'd scheduled but it turns out that that only got put into the computer system and never got written into the official analogue appointment schedule, so it didn't count as getting scheduled in the first place, and so I missed the plasma money opportunities of all of last week (which included a $10 bonus,) and so there was $50 there I spent on groceries last week I'd thought I'd more than make up for but then the scheduling thing happened and so like I had a bunch of unnecessarily non-ramen groceries (I'm also getting in frozen vegetables)... So it'll be like the week after next when I'll have enough money again, but I'm just $10 off from having it by the end of next week, which is terrible because there's $10 I did not actually spend on groceries actually only spending $40, and getting $10 cash back, then using that $10 last week to buy a ticket for TCM's special presentation this evening of Singin' in the Rain at 7:00, which turns out to have been the time there's this Google Hangouts thing for Information Design, which I thought was at 6:00 so yeah totally I'd be able to do both, but that turns out to mean 6:00 Pacific time which is 7:00 here, so there I was waiting outside Paradise Donuts next door to Paramount 5, in the cold, with the laptop open, and the webcam on, using the donut place's wifi, at 7:00, as Singin' in the Rain began, waiting to see if anyone else would enter the group, which it doesn't look like anyone did, so I could go catch the beginning of the movie. And I got the ticket because I love the movies, but I needed that $10 I actually spent also because I love the movies, and there wouldn't have been that conflict of interest in the first place had I not bought that ticket last week, and I wouldn't have bought that ticket last week if I hadn't been planning ahead.

So don't plan ahead. It only winds you up in stupid places, like webcamming outside of a donut shop in subfreezing temperatures as your movie's starting.

Lemons???

My hands are on fire a little, because lotion gets into cracked skin. But the fire's dying down, and lotion is a wonderful thing to have in this weather. Which is to say, cold. It hasn't snowed in, a few days I suppose; whatever gizmo they put into you to gauge time was never put into me, but it was definitely between the start of this week and the start of the semester.

It's, well I guess I don't see it often or ever, but it's well engrained in my mind enough to call it something of a cliche, let's settle on "trope" then, that everyone driving faster than you is crazy and everyone driving slower than you is a moron; those more devout than I are zealots and those less devout than I are nigh godless. Given. Has this principle, though, ever been applied to character generation/character interactions? Should give it a shot sometime; I wonder if there are defined general categories those would be in, or if that kind of thing applies to different specific traits that would vary from person to person, attitudes on various actual things. I guess I'll just have to pay attention to my own attitudes on people with different thresholds from my own, and try and quantify what those thresholds may be...

Alright, so, today was kind of not-very-productive for me schoolwork-wise, not that it had to be. I should zebrasnatch (zebra collective nouns: herd, dazzle, zeal) if I want a headstart on actually doing stuff tomorrow, so... g'night.

When the Bushes and the Bombs Are Pretzelized

So hey it looks like there's a new post up on Pretzelize Me Cap'n.

https://pretzelizemecapn.wordpress.com/2017/01/17/module-2-project-1-refinement-1/

The module itself isn't that great (I misspell my own name, and the grid system does weird things to the layout of the photos,) but I'm caught up in that class now (thanks Dr King!), so I have time not to rush it next time, and the design itself that I'm working on is fairly, pretty good I guess? I don't know, I kind of like missed posting the first module, a week ago, so I never got feedback on the first drafts but I think they were pretty good, and this one (a refined version of one of them) is even better, so, maybe?

Tikal

There's only two ways of scoring in Tikal, whereas I'm used to games where there are at least three or more methods of raking in points (seriously, Terra Mystica, with its "only" three scores to tally up at the end, I find a bit simplistic), so I wasn't really prepared for how intense a game it actually turned out to be. There's more photos than the one below, but 2.0's SD chip reader is butts, spontaneously ejecting SD cards at random intervals but especially when one is about to access the file one wants from off of the SD card, so I'm lucky I managed to drag this one off of it... but on the other photos, you can just tell, the expression on everyone's faces just grows more and more and more intense. This photo was the best of all of them, taken after final scoring at the end (Ryan won, but you can pretend I won if it makes you think higher of me (I did come in second,)) so I can't really complain.

You get points for treasures owned (with bonus points for having multiples/a complete set) and you get points for having the majority of workers at a temple site. And those are the two. But majority is a slippery thing, and treasures can also swap hands, and you need to consider carefully what you'll be doing with your 10 action points allowed, especially on scoring rounds. So yeah, pretty intense.

I'm not sure I learned anything about Mesoamerican art or culture, but the game sure didn't make me lose any brain cells on the subject like some of the activities on the Mesoamerican art class "approved" list would do to you (one of the films we can watch, Aztec Mummy vs the Robot, is on the IMDb top 100 worst films of all time list.) So I'll just have to give it a good think, and maybe come up with something for my report about it.

Foxy Palm and Neighbors

Taken 11:25 at night on the last day of May, 2016, I think that the last image captured on the old original SD chip is very telling. 

I must have been painting something, I mean, I was definitely painting something but can't remember what now, probably something fox-colored, and I think lacking a paper towel wiped off the excess paint onto my non-dominant hand? Even though I'm technically right-handed? I liked the effect, for sure (it's a common enough occurrence for me to say this with certainty,) and decided to record it for posterity. 

Also capturing, in my doing so, a record of my desk and its environs at the time the photo was taken. Toothbrush pack, (Tootsie) roll of change, interior lid for a deodorant roll. Dollar bill, crumpled. Reciept. Bookmark, Queen Chrysalis art project. Dan Wells novel. Torn-out box top, blue bow tie. Miscellaneous scattered laundries. And so forth.

Cup and Spoon

As I was walking away from Mesoamerican art class this morning (pre-classical era today, clay figures from Tlatilco and Chupicuaro,) Brother Franson walking the other way recognized me and told me that they were handing out free cups of hot chocolate on a certain corner. Sweet. (It was a cold morning.) It didn't strike me until a few hours later that he was heading into the Spori to do the morning-after-seminar art demonstration (paper folding techniques,) which I totally spaced on and missed. But at least I still got that cup of hot chocolate from him, sort of. (Along with the cups of hot chocolate they were handing out coupons for haircuts if you wanted one. Brother Franson, it should be noted, is taller than his hair, so I wonder how that went.)

I later used the styrofoam cup and plastic spoon to eat cereal from/with, mostly of utility but also a little of a sense of continuity between the present and the past, something that continued to tie me to the demonstration this morning and the seminar and the open house of the art exhibit, yesterday evening. The way I sort of, refrained from eating, after Adam dired. It was both easy and convenient, and an act of scarification, commemorating the wound, honoring it by refusing to let it heal. Not that the past is always a wound, but it is always a sort of a cut in a tree, with the present being continually grafted onto it, melding into it as it takes strength therefrom. Real life, as Cailin would say, procedurally generates history. This semester's had me scrambling and falling behind, but I think I'm catching up a bit. I hope I'm catching up a bit.

SD Card Found Again

I've been really good at being tired at nighttime lately. The internet's not working on my laptop either, so I guess I won't post up any photos right now. Just write this from mah Kindle. But I found my SD card chip today (I say chip because the electronic part fell out from the plastic part,) cleaning my room a bit for inspections. Which could've gone worse, not that I was around for them (art seminar, then the open house of Brother Franson's exhibit,) so that's good. For a bit there I was just using Ryan's SD card in my CoolPix (it's got a buck of his mission photos on it,) and now of course there's the new camera and the new SD card, but the SD card that has like all the first semester stuff on it, like Fandomonium[!] 1 and everything, I thought that was lost.

I started using Ryan's, May 13, I recall, because that was the date of BLFC day 1 last year, the same day I desperately needed that photo op with the elephant whom it turned out I know, and I was scrambling around for a camera... no wait, that was for the camera itself, not the SD card... Well, I suppose I could check the metadata on the photos, because, that's wrong...

So yeah, I've got a bunch of photographs now that I thought wee lost, some of which I was thinking about only today, in fact. Like the partial tail brushing over the low stone wall, as I mentioned I had in Fandomonium: Animal Farm. Soo fluffy...

My Brother's Keeper Keeper Keeper Keeper Keeper Keeper Keeper Keeper Keeper Keeper Keeper Keeper Keeper Keeper Keeper Keeper Keeper Keeper Keeper Keeper Keeper Keeper Keeper Keeper Keeper Keeper Keeper Keeper Keeper Keeper Keeper Keeper Keeper Keeper Keeper Keeper Keeper Keeper Keeper Keeper Keeper

Mondays and Wednesdays. Those are the busy days for the this-semester me; the days on which I've got three classes. With the conclusion of this Wednesday, that's every day of the week experienced this semester. As long as I've got my work done, these weekdays aren't that bad- the two ones I've had at least?

I've already had big stuff due, in my online course; I'm not going to say much beyond that other than, it was due Tuesday instead of Monday like it'd normally be, because the semester's just begun, so I'm bringing it up to say Tuesdays would make a pretty good workday for Wednesday stuff.

The fact that Mondays are a busy day, which also have the Information Design blogging usually due, means that I've made it a goal, which I completely ignored last week because I'm a moron, to have my Information Design stuff done on Saturday.

Looks like no classes on Monday next week, though, and with Thursdays and Fridays having only one class each, really easy ones to boot (but still good and super useful/fascinating!), it looks like it's basically time for a, five-day weekend. Which is the last thing I need right now... alright, I suppose I can self-impose a little structure. And not having those three classes to sweat over sounds like a good time to me.

So

Sushi, Seminars and Cinema

I know the schedules for both the Art Seminars that are going to take place this semester, and the International Cinema films that are being screened this semester. Well, first of all: today was the first day of a couple of my classes, Foundations of the Restoration and Motion (Linear.)* I now have been to each of my classes I'm taking this semester, barring one I signed up for last week which I'm taking the second half of the semester and which I'll tell you about later.

So I was out racking up a few hundred more steps and some good stair climbs for the Fitbit challenge, when I came across, in the hallway outside of Brother Raish's office, the poster telling the films being shown this semester for International Cinema. I tried taking a photo of the poster... I had on a coat which happened to have my old Coolpix in the pocket... but it didn't have its SD card in, and the few slots that are on the camera's internal storage were all used up. I checked to see if I could delete any of the photos to make room real quick... and it turns out I couldn't. Not that it was physically impossible, like the trashcan button didn't work or anything, but the photos stored there were too precious to delete.

One of the greatest evenings of my life was November 16th, 2014. I had just a few days left on my mission, and my birthday was coming up, and Elder and Sister Ejima who'd taught Japanese class on the mission invited the elders who'd attended that, and their companions, to their apartment for an amazing sushi dinner. There was rice and nori, of course, but for fillings there was everything you could hope for: egg, and SPAM, and sashimi, and cucumber, and crab sticks, and avocado... The food was amazing, the company was amazing ("you must turn on... the bubbles!"). I ate more sushi than I still think possible. Elder Ungerman ate more wasabi than anyone has the right to survive. It was a great time.

L to R: Elders Perazzo, Eyre, Robinson, and Ungerman

...Gosh. Look at me. I was, incredibly squishy, there by the end of my mission. Case in point:

squish squish

Not to mention how pale I was... that's gotta be the flash. Right? But anyway. 

I looked at the poster, and was surprised to find that I've actually already seen not two, but seen two and been told like a jillion times to see a third, films they're showing this semester. 11 days, now, and I'll finally get to see Hunt for the Wilderpeople, which my sister says I need to see and Carla says I need to see (Carla Jimison, my printmaking teacher last semester**, is the one introducing it.) Then there's The Boy and the Beast, which I've only seen dubbed so watching it subbed should be pretty great? And I've seen Samsara, which is pretty mindbending but I don't think anyone needs to see it more than once (alright, there's probably someone out there, at least one person, who'd need to see it more than once, but you know what I mean; repeat viewings are redundant, I think, once you've been exposed to what the film has to say.)

Grabbed my D3300 and got a pic that way.

Also on the Coolpix's internal memory was a photo of my notes I took during the seminar I attended my first semester here a year ago, without actually being in the art seminar class. And the photo of the packed stuff I was taking to school, before the semester started, which you may recognize from this post; that was also on there. But seminar stuff anyway, speaking of that...

The seminar schedule is just on the class's I-Learn page, which I stumbled across in Linear Motion class (which is awesome- we're animating in After Effects, and I've learned more in the couple of hours in that class than I've known from just teaching myself) trying to find its I-Learn page. So. A couple of names from this are familiar as well.

Brother Franson is speaking at the seminar this Thursday, and he's also got a solo exhibition going on at the gallery opening this week. Brian Kershisnek is awesome- one of my favorite contemporary artists. I am so glad that I don't have anything Fridays at 10:00 this semester, because I wouldn't miss the opportunity to do some after-seminar workshop with that guy for... well, I'd gladly miss it for the world, but, other classes, at least, definitely not those.

Night of the Living Social Media Accounts

With a third blog now, I made the first post in over half a year in my second blog. Figured it was time. I don't post to "a real thing." much, but the crazy thing is, there's so much to say there that I don't say, so many wild ideas that I have that always seem to fit perfectly somewhere into that little world. I never even got around to post the crazy ideas that were the whole reason why I made a post there today in the first place (the whole reason why, that is of course, besides that new-third-blog thing.) Didn't even come close to broaching the subject. The post just, wanted to be about something different.

That's pantsing for you...

So I'm trying to download the Instagram app, speaking of new accounts and all that, and it keeps telling me, this isn't the device associated with your email account associated with your Instagram. And I'm all, what? But there's a crazy story here, and it deals with not only my new social media accounts, but my old ones!

I realized today, yeah, that's right, it all goes back to the day I got this original blog in the first place. I got it because I had an email address I was forced to sign up for, making my dreams a reality from that blog-wise, yeah? And I got the email address, was forced to sign up for it, so I could join Facebook which I was also forced to sign up for. But that's not the whole story! Because I wasn't forced to sign up for those, so much as, I had them signed up for, for me. In other words, the device used to sign up for the email, used to sign up for Facebook, was not mine. It was the smartphone of some, friend I'm assuming, but I don't even remember which one. Just some guy...! He used that phone to sign me up for these things, that email and that email for that Facebook, and I used the Facebook to sign up for Instagram, and now that Instagram account is connected to that Facebook account is connected to that email account, both of which are connected to that device which isn't even mine, from half a decade ago!

So.

I could probably, like, fiddle with the diddlies, and change that, and it probably wouldn't be too difficult but I wouldn't know where to begin, and I don't think it matters much anyway because I can still use my Facebook to complete the assignments for which I got the Instagram in the first place. Looks like no 'gramming for me. At least, that is, no making posts. I can still follow people, though... James Gurney's supposed to have a pretty good one...

On Apartment Mates

I have a roommate. He wears headphones all the time. I wonder what he listens to. Sometimes he listens to himself play the electric guitar, with headphones plugged into it, instead of an amp there. I've never seen him eat anything that's not franks and mustard.

I have another roommate. His hearing is terrifyingly good. He can probably hear my bathroom noises. He probably knows everything. I'm so pooched. He can hear me through the bedroom door when I whisper out what I'm planning to say to him out loud, responding to what I say as though I'd said it to his face the first, and apparently not even noticing that I didn't. I said to myself this afternoon that I was going to take 20,000 steps today (I managed 12,000; people kept giving me rides) and he, though people don't always hear what I say even when I'm (to my own ears) speaking up, responded quite casually, as though I'd been saying it audibly for all to hear, that I'd probably need to walk to Walmart and back to get in that kind of mileage. But surely he must know that this is odd, otherwise he wouldn't act like he's the only one who can hear through walls, staying up until Ryan wakes, cursing pretty loudly at his video games. I wonder, since all he seems to do about them is bemoan his losing, if he actually enjoys them.

I wonder if he can hear what's going on in the headphones...

Chichen Itza, Yaxchilán, Uxmal, Tikal and Palenque

I woke up lateish.

Well, I splept in. And then woke up lateish.

But teachers tend to be forgiving on the first day of class or whatever. So that's good.

The only class I had today was Bro Raish's Art of Mesoamerica, or, uh, "Meso-American Art," as it's listed, but Bro Raish says that BYU-I is the only place in the world that spells with the hyphen and the internal capitalization. (It's kind of a rare thing. Attestations of that sort of thing elsewhere: Spider-Man. And that's it.) Mesoamerican art, anyway, yeah. Which class goes on this wise: we choose how we get credit, like we can watch documentaries on ancient Mesoamerica, or read books on ancient Mesoamerica, or watch movies on ancient Mesoamerica, or whatever.

The kind of cwazy thing is, the media you intake, doesn't really need to be all that accurate. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is one of the acceptable films to watch ("the plot revolves around Aztec-style crystal skulls that beckon the adventurer to a Maya-style pyramid in the middle of the Amazonian rainforest," the syllabus informs us.) The Aztecs story arch of the classic Doctor Who show, another one (at least Doctor Who was trying vaguely to be educational back then.) That one episode of Castle with the Mayan mummy ("whatever that is," Brother Raish quips)? It's totally one of the options. I mean, obviously we have to view these things with a critical eye, do writeups after whatever it is that we choose to do, but it's a pretty get-credit-however-you-want-to class, on top of the exams, which even themselves aren't mandatory but sure the cuss get you way more points by themselves than any other one thing does.

What I'm most excited for, though, out of the non-exam type ways of interacting with Mesoamerican art and culture, is the board games.

There's three that Brother Raish keeps in his office which we're free to borrow: Alan D Ernstein's Palenque, from Z-Man Games; the ancient pan-Mesoamerican gambling game of Patolli (the word "Patolli" itself is Aztec ("bean"!), but there's attestations of the game's existence before that); or, the one I'm definitely the most intrigued/excited to play, the 1999 Spiel de Jahres winner, Tikal. It looks incredible, all right: you're competing as archaeologists exploring the jungle, worker-placing, area-controlling, action-point-allowing all the way. There's hexes and wooden peg thingies and cardboard temple pieces you stack into pyramids as you explore them and it just looks amazing, and like something I would be relatively good at.

Tikal is apparently the first of a trilogy of games all of similar theme made by the same dudes (the "Mask Trilogy,") and I can think of a few other board games also dealing with ancient Mesoamerica (it's one of the Palenque dude's favorite subjects,) so out of all the Mesoamerican-based tabletopping in the world, it's disappointing but not surprising that Tzolk'in isn't one of the games Bro Raish keeps in his office. (Good luck getting students who'd check that game out not to lose any pieces or damage the moving parts...!) Still should mention it to him, maybe?

In other news, I don't know about you guys, but "A Skunk Is A Skunk" (Skunsek To Skunks?) is still stuck in my head... what makes it even worse is that originally I'd posted up that video on Wednesday, but the embed didn't go through for whatever reason so I did it again yesterday, and so that's three days of having that stuck in my ear instead of probably just one for you all...

First Day of Classes- New Social Media Accounts

I'd forgotten how good this show is...

I seem to be favoring Polish out of all the random video languages? Going back through it, let's see, French You Gotta Share, Croatian Mushroom Power (which appears to have been taken down now, sad,) French Pepper-Ann theme song, Swedish Nobody Else But You... and those are the only videos of random movie/television songs in foreign languages I seem to have ever posted up, actually. So French wins out; this is actually apparently the first video in Polish I've shared. What made me think- that's right, with Nobody Else But You I almost posted up the Polish version, but settled on the Swedish one instead. Well, I guess Polish gets its day in the limelight with this one. Yay.

Alright. Remember that one time I almost got a Twitter? This is like that. But for school. And it ends differently. Spoilers.

So in Business for the Professional Artist class, we're supposed to build and maintain a web presence, because that's how artists get got anymore. Each of us (and I'm sitting next to Mica, you know, the Webb, yeah they're in it with me, along with a few other familiar faces) has to post up some art of ours, at least one post each week onto social media, and using the hashtag #burrbiz (because it's a business class, and our instructor's name is Dan Burr.) The media platform in question, to post this work-of-art-a-week, could be Facebook or Instagram or whatever- I already have a Facebook, so you know what that means... time for me to get an Instagram!

https://www.instagram.com/e.c.perazzo/

I haven't posted up any, 'grams or whatever you'd call them, yet. Was going to, but Instagram's terms of use says not to put up any nudity or partial nudity, and maaan all the animals I draw go around without pants on all the time; I've got nothing. The art we post doesn't have to be recent or anything, or even of your declared field, or, anything, so I'll have something within the week. I've got years of personal art creation history to choose from, so yeah.

Meanwhile, also. In my Information Design class, the online one taught by Will Frohn, we need to post up our progress each week to a blog. I already have a blog, so that's convenient... guess that means it's time for me to get a WordPress!

https://pretzelizemecapn.wordpress.com/

I already do have a post there, which you can read. It explains in further depth my reasoning behind everything. I think I'm digging WordPress.

So anyway, in other news, also. You know how Brother Thomas is teaching my religion class this semester? Ryan has a Pearl of Great Price class this semester, and I'd inquired as to his instructor, but he didn't know the name off the top of his head. He had his first class of that today, though, and... well, you can probably guess. It's Brother Thomas! Isn't that great?

My Professors This Semester

So during the roadtrip there wasn't internet access on the road of course, but I did have access to my schedule- and looking at it it was kind of scary, because I only counted like 11 and a half credits there, and don't you need at least 12, didn't I have 13.5? So maybe I'd gotten booted from a class without realizing it or something, and now thus no longer met the requirement for being a fulltime student...? But hey turns out that one of my classes is online, oh yeah that's right, and thus wouldn't be scheduled on my class transcript, schedule, schedule.

I never told you about the art seminar where Will Frohn spoke, but he's totally the teacher for that. He works for Google, does motion graphics. Hasn't designed a Doodle, so far at least, but he has done loading screens for Android. Neat!

Also this semester, a few other teachers I'm excited for- Brother Raish is teaching the Mesoamerican art class. It's either he or Brother Toone who's retiring after this semester (I've heard it both ways, but it is one or the other- they're both equally great, so I guess they get confused for each other? Weird. I'm not sure which it is, but sad news either way.)

My religion class is from Brother Thomas, from whom I took Pearl of Great Price a year ago- I do believe I've already told you that, though.

Classes start tomorrow- I've got one class on Thursdays (not counting the art seminars which are also Thursday of course), Business for the Professional Artist. Sounds like it's going to be focused on, how to market your paintings sort of deal, but, whatever; it'd still be useful stuff to know even as a graphic designer or whatever, doncha know... *Sigh.* I guess I'm just saying that; truth is I'm more interested in the class as, a human being, who thinks that a business class would be useful, and as an artist outside of graphic design, because man I don't know how graphic design do.

Back Up and Running (First Post of the Year?)

Came home from a New Year's Eve party at like 8:00 or 9:00 at night, and totally conked out. Managed to wake up at exactly midnight, less than a minute beforehand, so I was conscious for the coming of the new year. Didn't even make enough of a stir, though, for my Fitbit to register that as anything more than mere restlessness. It occurred to me vaguely that I was missing making a post, but was too spacey to care. I told the others to wake me up when they got back, for a round of SeaFall, but everyone else was so tired too that they didn't bother.

New Year's Day, Blogger plum just didn't appear to be working for me. Spun its wheels, without getting anywhere. Oh, well.

Yesterday night we spent in a motel room on the way up here- weather was absolutely barmy (contrast that to balmy,) so we just found a Motel 6 around 5:30 at night (more like 6:30 we were so close to the time zone line,) stayed there. The room had wifi, but I couldn't get it to work for me. So no blogging yesterday either.

Spent more time driving up today, and we're finally back at school- I'm in the apartment, in my bedroom, as I write this. Woo. There's the wifi and everything, so my only excuse for not posting anything today would be, I'm pretty dang tired right now. Not New Year's Eve tired or anything, so there really is no excuse. So here I is.

Spent half the day in the car, but I made all the Fitbit goals for the day! Climbed at least 10 flights, spent at least half an hour being active, stepped at least 10,000 steps, burned at least 2,800 calories, walked at least 5 miles. There was some, time there, getting all-weather tires on the car, where there was a break and I could get in some running and stuff. Isn't that interesting?

2017 Backlog 8/15: Day 2

Another not so great thing about backlog is, you have to try to make it non-anachronistic. Maybe. Sometimes, like, you had an idea for a post, something had been going on that day, but maybe it prevented you from posting about it, or maybe you were prevented for other reasons, and, so there's this first world problem I'm boring even myself trying to describe, like how honest should you be with the fact that it's all backlogged. It depends on the situation I guess, like I don't think I had anything to say, being all asleep and everything, but, whatever. I guess this one is about process today.

2017 Backlog 7/15: Day 1

Doing backlog is interesting, because when you're going through life you've got so many thoughts, but when you're forced to have thoughts your mind just freezes up. I don't think I've told you about Elder Urena-Perez, but he was like that and it was hilarious. There was a, Disney trivia game we played once, that was in our apartment, him Elder Lichtenstein me and, I think I was with Elder Smith at the time, but we played it together and he froze up on the most basic stuff. Like, what species is Robin Hood, stuff.

Best as I can recall, verbatim his workthrough of: What species are Chip and Dale? [freezing up:] "Well, his name is Chip, and that seems significant... and why an I thinking of the television series Monk all of a sudden??"

And now I've shared that memory, and have a post for the day.