home, james.

i freaking love hockey. end of story. 

tigers lost tonight 1 3, which puts them at #2 in the AHA behind Air Force. it was a pretty intense game with lots of cheering and orange! 

headed home to maryland in the morning (with ashley! and amanda will be on the flight too!). we get to wake up bright and early at 4 am, woohoo. can't wait, see you all soon! 

strawberry shortcake, banana split

RIT TIGERS BEAT AIR FORCE 6 4!!!

cupcakes.

oh my goodness.

please take the time out of your day to look at this

NPR Cupcake Story

i'm a little jealous that i'm coming home a day after it is taken down. 

life feels good

finals are officially over. 

and apparently i lead an exciting life? 

i got stopped in the elevator today by someone i only kind of know who said "i hope this doesn't come off as creepy but i saw your pictures on facebook and it looks like you guys such cool stuff i'm really jealous i wish we could be friends" haha! 

yesterday ashley and i went on adventure to the end of nowhere. this week is pretty much do what you want, when you want so i woke up around 12:30(!), went to lunch and then we headed out to the car for our adventure. the stipulations of this "Grand Day Out" were that we were going to stop, turn or look at anything in our path that was cool and we would do everything without a map, gps, tracking device, sundial, compass, etc. we drove through downtown, stopped around at high falls, somehow ended up in charlotte, greece and ogden and the beach!! honestly, we don't really know which roads we took but we made it back in one piece with no maps! we fully intend on going on the adventure again, except next time to pittsford and fairport. 

there are pictures below as well as 185 if you click the album below.

Rochester Adventures

tonight is greys anatomy, tomorrow is a hockey game, saturday is a hockey game then home on sunday! oh yeah, and we moved our room around again!! pictures to come later, for now i need to go get my laundry before someone steals it-- there has been a run on machines today.... 

i feel icky

i feel ickyyyy oh so ickyyy i feel ickyy and stuffy and grosssss.

[sung to the tune of i feel pretty from anger management]

my allergies have decided to explode this week which has resulted in a yucky feeling me. it started out last friday when i felt a little funny and had a headache. since then every morning that i wake up (which is every morning :P) i feel progressively worse. it's wonderful!... not. i won't go into details of anything but basically it feels like someone has put wine corks in all of my airways and ears and then stuffed cotton balls in. it's a really great feeling that your head is going to explode. 

in non-gross news, i've been enjoying spring break week one here in rochester. we technically have finals this week but my artistic lifestyle just doesn't believe in those things so i get to relax. for all art classes we had "finals" last week which consisted of final projects and an in class critique. i've just been hanging around mostly, i'm currently working on a flash movie but it's teaching myself how to use it and making it at the same time so i can't promise any spectacular results. yesterday i ended up going to the gym at 8 in the morning. it was so cool to be working out and see a blizzard completely surrounding the building.. cools ya down :) after the gym i went out to lunch with dave and ashley before going to work. ended up working 2 hours longer than i thought because of all of the mail coming in but thats okay it means i dont have to go in today. yesterday after work ashley and i decided to go out to dinner to red robin! and see twilight at the dollar movie theater :) 

banff

woke up this morning feeling kind of yucky and we had already decided that today's goal was to do absolutely nothing! rolled out of bed around eleven, found saturday morning cartoons and a bowl of cereal and we were set. today was the first official day without any burden of classwork on our shoulders. last week was week ten and next week is finals so we didn't even feel guilty doing nothing. i kind of dozed in and out of sleep throughout the morning. my head is feeling really congested and yucky but i'm hoping that it's just allergies. 

went to gracies for dinner around 6 and then we went to a film festival. two of the guys who we're actually going to be sharing an apartment with next year are really into rock climbing and outdoor extreme sports in general. a while ago they had mentioned in passing this film festival and apparently we agreed, so tonight we went. i didn't really have any expectations, of course, i didn't even really know what it was. turns out it was the annual banff mountain film festival. and it was really, really cool! it was roughly 3 hours long and consisted of 6 short films (15 ish minutes long) and one long film (55 minutes). it was everything from extreme mountain biking and base jumping to extreme skiing.

in hockey news, the tigers tied tonight in their game against Army (1-1) in sudden death overtime. which puts them two points above Air Force in the AHA standings and guarantees at least a second place win. they won 3-2 in a close game last night also against Army. next friday and saturday is RIT vs Air Force which should be an awesome game. 

"...all the voices of the wind..."

i love the wind. i enjoy being blown from side to side and not being able to get to class in the ten minutes that it's supposed to take. i really like when my legs get so frozen that I can't even feel that they are attached to my body anymore. and i especially like when there is sleet involved and it hits my face straight on. it's such a good feeling!

[/sarcasm]

anyway! one class and one final to go then it's spring break! woohoo! that's a lot of exclamation points! 

i'll have some more work from this quarter to put up in a while, i have to get around to uploading it first. next week is looking like oodles of fun. movie night tonight. concert at the bugjar in downtown rochester tomorrow. some outdoor adventure movie thing on saturday. coffee downtown with art kids on sunday. work monday/tuesday. dollar movie theater tuesday night. strong museum of play for kids and lunch downtown? on wednesday. work and a final on thursday. hockey vs air force on friday/saturday. then flying home early sunday morning! 

(thanks mom for finding the comic!)

one of those days

toothpaste for dinner

Happy Valentine's Day (a day late..)

"Being grown up isn't half as fun as growing up:

These are the best days of our lives.

The only thing that matters

Is just following your heart

And eventually you'll finally get it right."

[The Ataris- In This Diary]

(left to right: gage, me, ashley, dave, mark, julie, evan, trisha)

Went to Ihop for dinner yesterday with Dave and Gage, unfortunately we didn't think to take any pictures but it was delicious!! Yumm pancakes. We had a rather interesting waiter who did not appear to want to make anything that we ordered but that's okay we left her a tip in the shape of a heart. Came back and laid around to listen to the hockey game on the radio again. Tigers won 3 1!! Air force lost to Bentley last night too which means the tigers are # 1 in the AHA now! :) Another unfortunate event is that I just realized that I'm going to be in DC for the finals AHHHHHH not good. Oh well :\ After listening to the game we all headed over to Ritter for some Disco Ice Skating. As seen in the pictures above. Came back around 1 am to watch Dumb and Dumber! I'm so glad the weekend is two days long because we ended up sleeping in until 1:30 today to catch up! 

Tigers Win Again!

Although their 11 game winning streak was broken last Friday, the Tigers came back to win last Saturday and again last night! Unfortunately it was not a home game (they were playing in Massachusetts) so we couldn't attend despite our attempts to mapquest and plan out a trip. Week ten is just not a good time... Anyway, after dinner last night Dave and Gage came back to our room and we sat around listening to the game on the radio (yeah, old school ;) ). I have to say it's not quite as exciting but we still did some of the cheers anyway. They ended up winning 6 0!!! How's that for a good game? They scored two of the goals in the first minute and a half of the second period. 

In unrelated news, did you get a chance to read CNN, or really any other major news source yesterday? 

http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/02/13/missed.flight/index.html

That kind of hit a little too close to home.. I know a few people whose parents or siblings were supposed to be on that flight yesterday and weren't for whatever reason. Kind of scary to think about. It doesn't really make me want to fly on a plane anytime soon... 

Be careful what you say.

Learned that one the hard way. Yesterday I updated my RIT blog with a post about the weather... it was almost shorts weather yesterday! Aside from the little bit of rain in the morning it was a super nice day. I wrote about how the weather this winter hadn't actually seemed all that bad... and then today hit. I'm quite a fan of gravity because if it were not for that I probably would have landed somewhere in the middle of Kansas. It was so rainy, windy, and nasty out. By the time I got to work my pants looked like I had just taken them out of the washer soaking wet and put them on. It was so windy at times that I would just blow sideways instead of forward and to top it all off, it was sleeting directly into my face. Real nice. 

One more class tonight and then it's the weekend! Dave brought over some pink flowers today so between those, Ashley's pink light and sheets and all of the heart decorations our room is VERY valentines-y. There is a special "valentines" day dinner at Gracie's complete with heart shaped ravioli...  I think Ashley and I are going to go check that out before class at 6. The guys are busy tonight so I think we're just going to do a girls movie night :) Working tomorrow from 10-4  and then it's the REAL weekend! No hockey games though-- we talked about driving up to Massachusetts tomorrow afternoon to see them play but it's week 9 so it's not really the best time... I don't know what we're going to do without our hockey fix! Saturday I think there is a group of us going to ihop for valentines day dinner. Working on Saturday too and working on projects-- one more week until finals....

Nothing But Pictures

I realized last night that I have milliions of pictures on my computer that I have not yet put online. Oops. So here, I'll dump them all now. 

above is a picture of the path way on which i usually walk to class... yeah that's right. it's nonexistant at the moment...

if you look in the distance my dorm is the smaller of the two buildings on the right. 

walking to class...

hockey!!!!!

the rest of the pictures are from last night hanging out on the guy's floor & outside. above is mark and evan.

climbing doorways

just hanging out between the door frame.

ashley and i outside with NO COATS!

view of the world from on top of a picnic table...

playing volleyball with an extremely wet nasty volleyball..

boys being crazy..

playing with lasers

the whole gang

Nice Day # 2

These nice days are pretty fantastic although I'm thinking that I wouldn't enjoy them as much if it was always this warm. It's 37 today and it feels like spring! No coat needed and when we went on our walk I was actually burning up. Went out to breakfast this morning with the guys-- we managed to wake up at 10 despite going to bed at 3:30 and being rudely awoken at 8:45 to some super loud, super annoying noise in the room next to us that went on for a good 30 minutes. 

Last night we went to hockey game number two of the weekend... and after the sad loss on friday... the TIGERS WON! We even got our faces painted and apparently we were on TV cheering? 

evan and mark 

dave, gage and the pep band

go tigers! 

(left-right: mark, ashley, francesca, me, evan) after getting our faces painted! 

the girls... (minus amanda because she's lame and didn't come! just kidding :) )

After the hockey game we did movie night number 3 of the weekend and watched Sweeney Todd! 

photo credit goes to Ashley, i've been really horrible about remembering to bring my camera along with me.. oops! 

FIFTY ONE DEGREES!

I'd like to take the time to point out that it is currently 4 degrees warmer here in Rochester than it is in Clarksville. IT'S FIFTY-ONE DEGREES!!! Do you know how freaking exciting that is? Ashley and I woke up, opened our window and then decided to go frolick around campus in our PJs... with NO WINTER COAT. The only unfortunate thing is that when 12 foot piles of snow melt it produces a ridiculously large amount of puddling and mooshy muddy yuckiness.

Last night was excellently fun. After work we went to the Rail Jam to watch people snowboard down the piles of snow which was actually cooler than expected. Wandered back and met up with Francesca and Amanda for dinner at Gracie's before the HOCKEY GAME. The first period was seriously the most exciting thing ever... Tigers were up 3 2. They scored two of the goals about 15 seconds apart, it was crazy. Much to the disappointment of the fans, coaches and entire team, the Tigers lost 4 6 to Sacred Heart *big sad face*. It broke their 11 game winning streak and they've dropped to second in the AHA, one point below Air Force.

Today sets the record for the latest that I've ever slept in while in college... 1 pm! I guess going to bed at 3 last night made me tired super tired :) I was a good kid last week though and finished all of my homework on Thursday night that was due Monday!!!

Anyway, time to finish getting ready and such before going to another hockey tailgate and then the game! Movie night later tonight, perhaps? Last night we headed over to the guys floor again and watched Happy Gilmore.

Scheduling

http://schedule.csh.rit.edu/?s=mDJQzrI

It's rather hard to believe that it's already week NINE of winter quarter. That means one quarter and two weeks until the end of the year. Pretty crazy if you ask me.

Anyway, the link above is to my schedule for next quarter, it's the easiest way to see it. I'm taking 3d, drawing, elements of graphic design, vector imaging, intro to psychology and intro to philosophy. Should be a good quarter :) I'm going to be working Monday, Wednesday and Friday's too from 12-4. Yay packed schedules!

I'm almost positive that I'm declaring a minor in Psychology. I'm also pretty sure that I'm going to end up double minoring in Journalism and Psych. We'll see how that goes. I tried to fit in a double major with a minor but some advisors told me that I would need to stay for an extra year or so. I told them, only if you pay for it :)

Room Change # 4

Yep, we moved our room around again!

We got back from class last night around 7 and the guys told us that they wouldn't be ready until 8 so we had an hour to kill... it ended up taking almost 3 :) Whoops. We called them around 9:30 and told them that they all had to come over right now because we really needed help moving something... but we had it all done! I think it's pretty awesome looking. And yeah, we have a lot of hearts up-- thanks Nana! It looks rather festive in here. We basically triple bunked our beds so Ashley has a matress on the floor, i'm in the middle and all of our extra suitcases and stuff are all the way at the top! Had a movie night last night, watched Step Brothers.. not exactly the most educational movie ever :) but it was a good end-of-the-week-lets-hang-out-and-act-stupid kind of movie.

Worked this morning from 10 until almost 2. Came back and bought hockey tickets for tonight! We wandered over to the Rail Jam. They basically just set up large piles of snow for people to snowboard on over by the library. It kind of helped that we already have 16 ft + piles of snow just lying around. In a little bit we're meeting up with a bunch of people at Gracie's for french toast!! Mmm. Then a hockey game tonight! Woohoo. Go Tigers! 

Week Eight

(as posted on RIT blog...)

Week eight is stressful no matter which way you look at it. Projects are due, there are tons of events on campus, new projects are assigned, class registration takes place... and the list goes on. I've been trying to avoid spending anytime relaxing (not that I have that kind of time) just because I didn't want to realize how much I was actually packing into a day. I was just sitting at dinner with my roommate and we were talking about things that had happened this morning except I somehow thought it had been last week. Who knew 24 hours could feel so long.

Just to give you a feel for what all is going on, we'll start with last weekend.. After work on Friday I began the weekend with a trip to downtown Rochester to see the RIT Tigers take on the National U18 Hockey team. After the game my roommate and I came back and went over to a friend's dorm for movie night! -- The pick of the night was Austin Powers. When I told them I had never seen it before they immediately jumped up, put the movie on and said "WATCH NOW". Apparently it was ridiculously shocking that I had never watched this before. I guess there are also fair amount of movies that I've missed out on because they promised a weekly movie night so I should be caught up by the end of my 4 years here. Saturday I woke up at noon -- did I mention that I love weekends? Went to breakfast at Gracie's and worked on some homework. One of my friends who plays on the club hockey team mentioned that they were having an orange and white game on Saturday afternoon so I went to check that out because I just can't pass up hockey. An orange and white game basically just means it's practice but they split the team up so they can play a full game, if that makes any sense? After that a few of the ambassadors got together for movie night! We watched Burn After Reading which was actually a really good movie, I think my favorite part about it was that it takes place in DC which is really close to where I live! Sunday a group of us went out to brunch and then went to see Little Shop of Horrors! The cast did a really great job and the songs have been stuck in my head ever since! Sunday night was also the Super Bowl Party and the Student Government organized a party in Clark Gym which was super nice because we got free pizza and got to watch the game on a massive screen.

Which brings us to this week. Monday and Tuesday passed with a blur. Went to classes, turned in projects, had critiques, got new projects assigned. Last night my roommate and I went to the gym for an hour and then played volleyball just because we needed a break from homework (and felt like exercising :)

This morning I set my alarm for 5:45 am for class registration! During week 8 of every quarter all students go through this process. It's all scheduled by your year (senior, junior, sophomore, freshman, etc.) from highest to lowest. You wake up on your assigned day at 6:00 in the morning and pray to the gods of the SIS registration system to let you in. Just kidding, it wasn't that bad this time around. Signing up for winter quarter was quite a bit more difficult, I probably sat there for a good hour and a half clicking and just hoping that the server would become unbusy so I could register for the classes that I needed. This morning, I had luck on my side and I was some how able to get in a full minute and a half before 6:00 am which meant that I was fully registered by 6:04! I climbed back in bed and slept some more until my 9 am class-- I think this whole sleeping, waking up, sleeping and waking up again was what made today feel so long. Either that or I had two 3 hour studio classes. There is something kind of fun about waking up so darn early when you know how many other people are in the same boat as you. It's really funny watching people's facebook status's change as they get in or are booted out of the system.

Anyway, I'm currently sitting in the library getting ready to do some hardcore homeworking! I figured that it would be a good idea to separate myself from the dorms so I could get some work done but then I ended up blogging instead :) After working for a few hours, I'm going downstairs to Java Wally's for Acoustic Night! It's something they put on every once in a while on Wednesday nights (twice a quarter, I think?) and it's basically just a coffeehouse for RIT students. Pretty neat!

Thank You SIS

Dear SIS Course Registration,

I'd just like to take the time to thank you for letting me in a full minute and a half before the server was supposed to open which allowed me to register by 6:04 am and then fall back asleep for another good hour and a half. 

Thanks,

A Well-Rested Freshman

------------------------------------------------------- 

(and while i'm at it...)

Dear Weather,

Would you like to stop snowing for just like 30 minutes? Kay that'd be great thanks, I need to carry my freaking cardboard chair 15 minutes across campus and I would not like it to get wet seeing as it's due in less than 3 hours.

Sincerely, 

A 3d Design Student with a Problem

--------------------------------------------------------------

(also...)

Dear Cousin Anna,

I just wanted to say HAPPY BIRTHDAY!! I have no idea if you'll be reading this but I hope you have an excellent day!  :) 

Love,

Your Crazy Redheaded Cousin Who Apparently Likes to Write Letters

SIS

Dear SIS Course Registration System, 

I'm writing to inform you that I am going to be setting my alarm for tomorrow, Wednesday February 4th, for 5:45 am. At this time I will arise out of a deep slumber, clamber down my lofted bed and sit at my computer. At the exact sixth hour of this lovely day, I would like you to let me into your freaking system without delay. Is that really too much to ask? 

Sincerely, 

A Freshman Who Does Not Want to be Stressed Out. 

Painting, Drawing and the likes..

So, I thought I'd give a little view of what i've been working on lately... Some of the stuff is work in progress, some is finished, some is photographed horribly and others are just test prints. 

First, the two eye drawings go together, I actually finished this like 5 minutes ago. It's for drawing, the second one is the final and it's supposed to show wrath. There's kind of an awkward shadow made by the flash on both, i apologize. The paint was mad fun to do but I kind of got a little on the carpet and a lot on me. Oops. 

This next is just an in class drawing, probably spent 50 minutes total on it. We were just experimenting with what would happen if we drew something, messed it up and then tried to fix it. By the way, all of these are 18 inches by 24 inches. 

Next is a 2d project done in color aid which is basically just itty bitty pieces of ccolored paper and you cut them up with an exacto knife and then glue them. We were supposed to turn one thing into another using a series of transitions so I changed a drop of water into a carrot. I have no idea why there are little pieces of white on the picture, you can't see them in person. And i don't know why this text is blue and underlined but it does not seem to want to change.

This is just another version of an in class drawing/painting. It's semi-hard to tell what it is because i painted over the entire thing with white paint. 

I'm also working on a cardboard chair which will be done by Wednesday, pictures to come later.