April 16 - April 30
Trout on Parade
4-16-02
I went to computer class and was delighted to find that we are doing web pages. Talk about easy homework. This'll be fun. Speaking of web pages, after my CS class I stopped at the SUB (where all the college kids eat and hang out) and drew this guy in the lounge. He didn't know it, of course, which made it fun. And to make it even funner, I thought I might leave him a note that said "Were you caught sleeping in the Leigh Lounge?" and then write a URL on it. I wrote an angelfire URL that I thought I could get, but then he woke up and I had to look inconspicuous. I followed him through the SUB to the food place and he stood and talked to a friend. I thought I'd give the note to the friend, but they talked for ten or twenty minutes. I had to wander around and look inconspicuous for a long time, but finally the guy left.
"Hi."
"Uh...hi."
"Could you give this to your friend later today?"
"What friend?"
"The one who was just talking to you."
"Oh - Will?"
"Yeah."
"Okay..."
"Thanks."
Then I made fast tracks outta there. I went home and started the page immediately, but found to my horror that angelfire would not let me use that particular name for this page. I made it, but it wasn't the same URL as the one I gave the guy. Rats. What a waste of time. Oh well. I found a girl later in the day and drew her and left her a note with the right URL.
I saw that the art people were setting up their bi-annual Art infusion celebration thing. This semester's theme was "trout". Various individuals and organizations decorated trout and they were judged later. There were some cool ones - one made of pennies, another of chips (fish & chips), Some of beer cans and some of beans, peas, and wheat heads. There was even a car that was made up like a giant fish. I decided to come back early before my Self defense class so I could eat their hotdogs. I had to wait in line in the wet grass which wouldn't have bothered me in most cases, but I happened to be wearing my hiking boots with the cracked soles. Did I mention that I hate the feeling of wet socks?
I wandered around after eating, left with more than an hour of nothing to do. So I drew the girl in the lounge and paced. Finally I broke down and went to my Self defense class early. I watched some maintenance guys move a two-story metal frame on wheels around then went to go get some toilet paper to clean the messy white board. When I came back I watched some tennis players a little and started to walk across when I saw the ball go out of bounds, but they kept playing and this guy with a white beard yelled at me across the gym,
"Wait until they're done!" I knew this rule already - I mean, I come there two days a week and longer including the semesters before. It would just so happen that the first time I didn't wait to step forward some grouch would be there to yell at me.
I went home and put a guestbook on my lounge site then some Mormon guys came to the door and I let them in. They grilled me, handed me a bunch of pamphlets then left, wishing me a good day. Mom came home and cooked us a lovely meal and then I called the film guy about the storyboarding and told him that I didn't feel right about drawing naked people throwing themselves at each other. There went my thousand dollars. Oh well.
I drew the cartoon and found that I'd lost some of my skill as a result of three days leave. Bleh. Well it's still better than my first one, heh heh.
Jars Hurt
4-17-02
I spent most of the day - 9 am until 1 pm in the ceramics room again, hunched over a dumb ole potter's wheel trying to make jars with lids. I got four done and three lids before I'd had enough. My back was killing me. There's probably something wrong with the way I hunch over the wheel, but like I said before, I just want to get it over with, not try to become an expert. I came home and ate leftover spaggheti, being sure to carefully pick out the mushrooms and giant chunks of tomato. Ick. I wrote for the Sodomerica story a little and wrote email, then went to fencing. I lost to Jake twice and talked politics with Garry then went home and played Monster Rancher. It's a pretty fun game in which you raise and train monsters. Then mom started to go to bed and I realized that I needed to do something for my journal. I thought I'd hit two birds with one stone and do a Sodomerica banner. So here it is. Rat and all.
FUN homework and tests???
4-18-02
Yes! It's true! I had fun homework and a fun test today! I only had to attend one morning class today too and that was so relieving that I decided to make cookies since I had all day at home. I made a triple batch of molasses sugar cookies (a variation of ginger snaps), and then Mertle, Jake, Pete and I ate about 2/3rds of them. Before, during, and after the cookies, I worked on my CS homework - making a webpage. Ha ha! What an assignment. Of course, I had to make it all flashy and cool which would have been a lot easier if I had had Flash or 3D Studio Max. As it is I only have a simple GIF animation program, so I had to do it all with that and Adobe Photo Deluxe (which can be a real bugger too). That dripping water alone (under the fish bowl) is made up of more than fifty frames. I would show the page, but is has my full name across the top (required for the assignment) and I don't know how many of my readers are psychopathic internet stalkers/swindlers. So you will have to be content with the dripping fish bowl.
The test was "The Parking Lot Test". It is the test that our Self Defense for Women/Safe Living class takes instead of some boring written thing. Basically we borrow the campus police parking lot, set up cones, turn off the lights, park cars, get padded up, and send one girl through at a time to get attacked. I was a ref, so I stood by a lightpost for two hours, fairly certain that I was acquiring a severe case of frostbite. I brought some of my cookies, but because I was out reffing the whole time I only got one and don't know where the rest went. When we were all finally done and I'd gone through myself, My teachers and fellow assistants invited me to go out for a drink at a local bar. Last year when we did this test I went with them to the aleworks place and had a big ice-cream type of dessert and some good ole Weinhard Rootbeer. This time, however, we went somewhere else and when the bouncer found out I was only 20, he kicked me out. I wasn't very happy because - well - I wanted a rootbeer. And I wanted to sit and chat with my friends. I guess they only served beer there or something. I suggested we move on down to our local coffee shop, the Leaf and Bean, and Henry agreed. But then when he went to look for the others he found that they had already ordered, so...
He walked me back to my car, said he was sorry, and wished me a good night. That's okay. I wasn't so hot on entering a bar anyway. Aleworks, at least, was a restaurant. So I went home thirsty and cookie-less.
Oh yes - and I added a few new attributes to the Characters page.
Plays with Friends
4-19-02
I slept in. It felt so good to be all toasty warm after such a cold, numbing night in a parking lot. I got up and drank some cocoa and ate some left over cookies, then Jake's friends came over - Pete, Peter, and Jesse. Jake made us all tea then they looked really bored so I brought out my SET game and taught Pete and Jesse how to play. Pete caught on quick and we tied in the end.
I spent nearly all of the remaining day updating my Vizon webpage with stories and other text. Made it all visually pleasing to the eye and spent hours pasting in paragraph breaks. How silly.
Later Garry came over to share his Scotland photographs with me and we ate poppy-seed bagels as we waited for Jake and friends to return so we could go see the play, "The Umbrella Man" - an adaptation from some Roald Dahl stories. It was really quite funny. One actor outshone them all. His facial expressions and timing were hilarious, and he had a very difficult script memorized to the letter. I drew the grungy man on the program during intermission, heh heh. Not very artistic today, I guess. No comic or big fancy badgers. Just a doodle. I want to do my cartoon tomrorrow instead because it is late and my brain is lagging.
Garry, Mom and I walked home and Garry and I finger fenced the entire way. He hung out a bit and we had tea and popcorn, then he went home. Now I must get rested up for the fencing tournament tomorrow.
Wish me luck!
Jo is a Big Loser
4-20/21-02
First I must apologize for not putting up my comic for two days straight. Sorry for letting you all down in your time of need. This weekend has been full to the brim with activity, and I've hardly had any time to do any drawing or internet stuff. Plus, Angelfire wasn't working. There are my excuses.
Saturday started out rather rough. Especially since I couldn't find the tournament. That was a bad start. I asked some people if they knew where it was, but they were no help whatsoever. I ran into Pete and Jake on the way back to the fencing barn and we drove back and forth and back and forth on a wild goose chase until finally we found Thin man in a parking lot. Someone contacted Maestro and we recovered our gear out of the barn then went to the gym where the tournament was being held.
It was depressing. I lost every single bout I was in. I tied once, but then I lost the tie-breaker. Then my glasses broke. Jace helped me wire the lense in, and then by some fluke I just happened to look down and find the missing screw on the gym floor. Pete won against Jake who wasn't very happy about it - but it was a good thing because Jake had to work at 5:00 and it was 4:15.
Then we all went to my house and ate toasted ham sandwiches and ice cream and played Mario Kart. Then O-man invited Garry and I to go play ultimate frisby in the park. We threw around this killer frisby that was more like a hard plastic blade. Instead of bouncing when it hit the ground, it'd slice right into the soil and stick there. This made us afraid to catch it, for fear that our hands would be severed. A nice guy said he'd get another frisby and drove home to get it. After ten minutes or so he returned with a nice friendly yellow frisby. I threw it and it hit the ground and broke in two. Upon recovery he said, "This is what I get for borrowing it without asking..." and he left. Eh heh...sorry.
We went home and played Moods and Mastermind and eight games of hangman. Pete had to leave during moods because his mother was mad because he stayed too long. I guess this Pete-directed anger carried through Sunday as well because he called and said he couldn't come fence with us.
Today we decided to go to the park and fence since we all had our gear. When we pulled up we found a bunch of people in armor whacking each other with broadswords. It was a strange coincidence that two different groups of swordsmen decided to duel at the same time at this particular park on the very same day.
We came home again after fencing and played more games and...that's about it. All in all I've had a blast despite being a destructive clumsy loser. Sorry again for being a bum.
Sounds Good to me
4-22-02
Another art day. I made lids for my dumb jars then started my puppet skeleton horse. I got its two front legs done in one hour, so I'm hoping that Tuesday I can finish the entire thing. Wednesday is the last day to work with wet clay so I'm sorta in a pickle because I need to finish the horse for my final, but there were many other things I wanted to make - including bookends for Mom. I think that even if I do make them before Wednesday, they will be so thick and heavy (as bookends are) that they will not dry fast enough to be fired before the class is over. Wow. That's not much time. School will be out in a few weeks and then I'll have to start packing and...then I'll leave. Far far away from family, friends, fresh air, and forests. To the big city of sweltering desert heat. Phoenix. I am beginning to get apprehensive.
Garry and I went to a surround sound seminar after fencing. It was interesting, and the introduction was really cool (thunderous base, dinosaurs roaring...music, sound effects, and all coming from different sides), but we could only understand half of what they were saying. It was heavily technified lingo that only the main speaker and the sound geeks in the audience understood. So when we had a break, we left and went home to have ice cream and play more games.
Woo-hoo!
Clay Horse Bones
4-23-02
Even though I had no art class, it was an art day. I attended my CS class, saw some abandoned ducklings at the duck pond and grabbed one to look at it closer, then spent the rest of the day in the ceramics room working on my skeleton horse puppet. Garry kept me company and made a pinch pot with handles and a lid and we finally quit after a while because it was getting late and monotonous (plus my back was starting to ache from bending over horse bones all afternoon and evening). Not a comic today, nor a very good picture, but give me a break - I was doing something artsy all day and didn't get home until after 1.
Carrots
4-24-02
Well it took until 2:00 in the afternoon, but I finally finished my skeleton horse. The spine broke three times and I had to remake a leg bone, but now it is all done and I hope that it holds until firing. I was hungry for breakfast in the morning, but I was running very late (as in I left the house when I was supposed to be in class) so I had no time to toast anything (if there had been anything to toast) or make up a batch of pancakes. So I grabbed and peeled a carrot and ate it. After 2:00 when I was done, I got my hair cut (only my bangs - no worries), and by the time that was over it was time to fence. I beat Garry and then I beat Aaron and all on the energy provided by one carrot. I was happy. Maybe I'm actually getting better! We'll see.
After fencing Garry drove me home and I started to make Polish sausages and french fries for supper. Garry had to leave to do a presentation on suburban migration patterns, so I finished cooking the meal and Pete, Jake and I ate it. I thought I'd made too many french fries, but then we ate all but one serving's worth. Garry said he should be back around 8 so I started sketching a picture to take up time. I drew a buffalo with suspenders and had artist's block. I thought maybe Garry would help me think of something for the bison to do, but he didn't come at 8 and he didn't come at 8:30 so I went ahead and added in a special military unit-type coyote and painted it. I figured that if herbivores walked upright on their hind legs and wore pants and acted like people, that they would be farmers and country folk, and predators would be high-tech hunters. It makes sense if you think about it because herbivores would only be concerned with crops and how much there was and eating them so they would only develop enough technology to grow good crops whereas a predator's sole focus is hunting and killing herbivores, so they would pour all their resources and knowledge into weaponry and advanced hunting tactics.
So then Garry came back and we both helped Mom finish her crossword puzzle that she was stuck on and then we hung out for the rest of the night playing Driver and stuff.
Wind and Pepper Spray Don't Mix
4-25-02
All morning I spent in front of a computer in the labs on campus trying to put together a Power Point assignment. It was funner than some homework I've had to do (like Excel), but it still took entirely too long. I got out of there and saw the big wind sculpture turning. It's cool because it's so gigantic, yet kinetic. I stopped by the SUB and thought I'd peek in the gallery. It was really cool - the artist used bioluminescent bacteria in the pictures so it's pitch black inside the gallery and all you can see are these fantastical glowing green phosphorous-like dots that form shapes. The glow is very very faint and you really have to stand in there a long time before your eyes can adjust enough to see anything, but when they do adapt it's really neat.
So I went home and wrote some email, then went on to my self defense class in which we were teaching pepper spray. Scott put up a photocopy of Osamo Bin Ladin's face on a tree and all the girls practiced spraying. It was interesting because the wind kept shifting and everyone would have to move. At one point we didn't move fast enough and everyone started coughing. We also had to keep warning people who were walking along the sidewalk to watch out.
After that I ran to my film production class because today was the day for our group to show our final film. We thought we might take a look before class since Haley and I hadn't seen it yet (at least not since the others started editing). After the dumb projector tried to eat it, we decided to play it safe and not preview it before class. My teacher said the editing was not so great because the scenes were cut so fast that it was hard to soak in what was happening. I had no hand in the editing, so I couldn't really say much about it.
So then I went home and ate hot dogs and Mom fed me so much apple pie and ice cream that I couldn't eat it all. That's a rarity. Usually there's only too much dessert when there's some sort of special occasion - like a birthday party or something. After I finished stuffing myself with sugar I decided to clean my room because it is a wreck, and then I drew these otters just because.
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