First charcoal drawing ever!

This is my first attempt at doing a charcoal sketch. I have done some art, pretty casually before, but i've never used the medium of charcoal before. My sister got me some materials at Christmas. I know it isn't amazing, but I do like how it turned out, esp my hair. I think the next object will be a couple of studies - like spheres with light sources, etc, to get used to the shading and the materials. I was thinking it also might be fun to go to the park and draw a couple of the trees.. The subject matter is basically endless. I'll keep you updated!

Mardi Gras 2009

So on Saturday I went down to Galveston for a Mardi Gras parade. It was the first time I had been to a mardi gras celebration. My friend that I went with went to New Orleans last year for celebration, he said that there was more kids in Galveston than in New Orleans... a little bit of a different clientele. This is a picture of me with my beads I caught off at the Parade (I didn't get a picture of me at the parade). My friend said that I was popular. Basically whenever I would put my arms up and cheer then I would get beads thrown at me... I responded, "Well I'm hot, what can I say?" Gotta love the arrogant self sometimes ;). I was impressed with the floats. They were quite ornate. I wonder if they would have been even more ornate if there hadn't been a hurricane a few months ago. The part of Galveston that I drove through looked back to normal, but my friend said he saw some boats in parking lots while we were driving, and we didn't go off the touristy areas much... and it def hasn't gotten its business level back up. There is even talk of closing the hospital down there. Anyways, back to mardi gras. So an example of the floats is seen here. Some had different themes - this one was a pirate obviously. Others included, 'under the sea' and '007'. In the parade there were also a lot of good marching bands (I've decided that being in a marching band would be very difficult). And lots of good dancers and baton spinners and flag twirlers. I enjoyed it.. even though it was a chilly mid50s temperature with a wind.. thank goodness for coats! Yes, before you say it, I admit I've acclimated and am currently a temperature wimp! Anyways, Happy Fat Tuesday!

Alumni meet 2009

So I decided it was pretty bad form letting my 2 regular readers down by not writing enough posts. I mean both Mom and my sister have told me that I need to do posts more regularly. So I thought I would give a little update about the alumni meet.

I went to to california to do my alumni meet at the beginning of Feb. It was super fun. I was debating about not going this year, but I am glad I decided to go instead. It was also nice because I shared a hotel room with Kristen one night and Kristina the next night, so I was able to spend a lot of one on one time with both of them. I like my track friends.

Anyways so the meet went well. I didn't throw that amazing... but it has been 6 years and in college I wasn't ever a super star. But I did get my friend to film me on the one good throw I had. My coach said that it was about as good of form as I had in college. So that was nice to hear.



As you may have noticed I had short hair in that video. Yes it is true, I cut of 10+ inches and my hair is currently on my fridge in a plastic bag ready to donate to locks of love. I'll get around to it eventually.

Anyways, I'm glad I went down to Claremont for the alumni meet - even though it was kinda chilly. Here is a list of a few of the things I miss from college:
1. The Motley - it really is great to have a place to hang out, talk with friend, have a good drink, and stufy if you'd like to.
2. The dining halls - The dining halls on campus, esp on Scripps, really wasn't too bad. And I def like having food prepared for me everyday right when I want it when I'm done with work. I mean I do like to cook, but sometimes when you're just home and starving cooking food just isn't what you wanna do.
3. Living next door to all my friends. I like living by myself and having my own space, but having the oppportunity to be within a couple mins walking distance from all your friends is quite desirable.
4. Having a workout prepared for you everyday. I love being outside, and though I have a hard time doing my own work outs, I do love to lift weights. And track work outs really were pretty great.
5. The absurd amount of spoiling Scripps does - I walked through the new field house - HOLY CRAP! it is like a resort. I don't know how you wouldn't work out if you lived at Scripps now.


Well that's enough nostalgia for now - there is plenty of other things about Claremont and college that I like, which is why I get so excited when I meet someone who went to Pomona, Harvey Mudd, Pitzer, Claremont Mckenna, or Scripps. And luckily I have a chance to meet up with some 5C'ers every year. Here is a shout out to the alum and current CMS hammer throwers.

if only i had taken...

AHHH!!! sometimes being a grad student in an interdisciplinary field is so frustrating... I consistently think something like, "if I only had studied engineering then I would have a wide range of exposure to mathematics in an application mindset.. that would be so handy," or "if only I had studied physics, I would have had plenty of math classes, and stats classes, and any number of other classes that I could easily utilize", and today I've thought, "if only I had taken more computer science classes... I could write code so much easier and not spend all day doing a 'simple' automated calculation!" I know this is a very pessimistic outlook.. I should instead say, "well at least I have taken so many computer science, biology, physics classes, math classes, stats classes so that I could catch on to the material that I have to learn," or, "I'm glad that I took lots of humanities classes to fill my time because it really was interesting to learn about history and religion and all those other things.. it helps me have something besides science to think and talk about," or, "even though I took a lot of math classes where proving theorems was the dominant subject matter, and I don't use that much anymore, I did learn how to break up problems logically, make an argument, and think critically with creativity." However, I tend to have a pessmistic outlook when it comes to me and a positive outlook when it comes to everyone else. I guess I'll need to try and change that... in the meantime... I hope my little computer code works and does what I want to soon...

whoooohooo... time to decorate!

So my title was a lame attempt at sounding like a ghost haunting my apartment. But let's talk about how much fun it is to buy decorations and decorate the apartment! People are always so surprised that I decorate when I live by myself and have no kids... but I am going to enjoy my life in whatever stage I'm in... and I enjoy decorations. So this year I bought some new decorations - the tree, the 3 tombstones (they say beware, spells, and rest in pieces). I also bought a 'wooden sticks wound into a pumpkin decoration', but its the centerpiece of my table - so at a different part of the room and not in the picture. I think my little bit of halloween looks pretty good though. I think that it is funny how my decorations have become 'scarier' now that my garland of skeletons have lost some legs and feet and arms - can you see the skeleton lacking legs? It's like some horrific attack occurred in my closet where my decorations live - maybe I shouldn't keep the door closed all the time ;). Anyways, I'm excited for Halloween... maybe i'll let you in on my future celebratory plans!

Artwork excitement!

So when I was in New Mexico I went to the Georgia O'Keefe museum in Santa Fe. I was very impressed with her artwork. A few paintings really struck me. Luckily they had a print of one of my favorites, and for only $10!! and it was an 11x14 print, I was quite impressed with that cost. So I've been looking to find some matte and frame to complement the artwork. I just got back my custom matte the other day and I am so impressed with my choice. It looks super great! I am so excited to get it framed and hung on my wall. The matte made the dimensions a 12x16, so it's a little harder to find a frame for it. I envision a metal blue frame.. I don't really want to do custom framing, but I might go that way if it needs be.. I also decided that a frame that is the color of my table wouldn't look bad... So I guess taking a picture of the artwork has at least 2 main benefits - I can show off the amazingness AND I learned that a neutral brown frame would be a good second choice! Anyways, let me know what you like and if you find a metal 12x16 blue metal frame ;).

Thar she blows! - or rather he, since its name was Ike.

So the other day, Friday the 12 and Saturday the 13, I experienced Hurricane Ike. It was pretty exciting. All day Friday I was like, what can I do to prepare... I had a high level of stress the whole day. The anticipation was killing me. I ended up taking all my pictures off the walls - in case the windows broke and made them fly around with all the wind.. I covered or put my electronics in case of windows breaking or leakage.. made my little hurricane center in my bathroom and hallway. Where I live I basically have a wall of windows all along my apartment. So I didn't really want to sleep right under it, in case it broke from the hurricane winds or any tornados that were spurned. So I actually slept in the hallway away from windows in the middle of my apartment. Danny made fun of me for it, but I figure it was good to be prepared, and my other friend didn't think it was a dumb idea. Plus besides the safety issues, since it was away from my chimney and windows it was quiet so I could actually sleep.

So my power went out at 1am on Friday. I was expecting this though, but I did not expect the speed at which I got it restored - only 17 hours later! And this is when there were like 2 million people in Houston without power. I was one of the first to get it restored and I got internet with it. Danny never lost power, but his internet still isn't working. Also lots of my friends were without power for almost a week... some haven't gotten it restored yet. There are whole parts of town without power, you can see it from the freeway - whole business districts, restaurants, houses, etc.. Some of the grocery stores still run out of perishable goods, and some opened their doors to sell goods with all their perishable goods covered since they weren't for sale because they perished. I've walked around and driven around. Houston doesnt seem like it was too badly hit, there were definitely a lot of trees down, some car ports crushed cars, some messed up traffic lights, some brick walls fell, lots of down shingles (at my apt), and there was definitely damage, but then the lower lying places and those near big water sources (lakes and bayous), and galveston really got hit badly. They still haven't opened some spots that were under mandatory evacuation to the public and people who live in these areas. But in Houston there was a mandatory city-wide curfew for a week (just got lifted on Sunday the 21), and there are some really dark areas with no power and some roads and freeways were flooded for a day or two after the hurricane... it was quite the experience. Since I was back to normalcy pretty quickly, and there wasn't too much damage around me, and it was kinda cool to have a hurricane experience, I'm glad I stayed, but in the future if a strong category 3, cat 4, or cat 5 hurricane is coming my way, I'm not sure I'd stay. Ike only hit us as a cat 2 (though they say the storm surge - like at galveston and such was as bad at like a cat 4 or 5 since the hurricane was so huge - I mean on satellite it looked like it covered the whole gulf of mexico!). At my apartment and area around me they had gusts of wind at about 90 mph and about 8" of rain... And that would only get worse with a stronger storm... and I saw the damage that it caused... Anyways, I've been meaning to write in my real journal about this for about a week and a half.. but I haven't gotten around to it yet, so I thought I'd document it somewhere, maybe if I can figure out how to post pictures I'll post some on here... or maybe I'll just link you to a site where they are at.