& pumpkin

Today not only included the first night of over 8 hours of sleep in who knows how long.. but also a farm! A bunch of CIAS honors kids went to Gro-Moore farms for some cow petting, chicken throwing and petting and pig races. All for the intent of getting pumpkin. Which we brought back and carved & then ate a tasty dinner which included the first pumpkin pie of the season (I've been eating pumpkin oatmeal every morning, fully taking advantage of the season).

 

I love love love having the new iPhone camera, makes me take so many more pictures! 

And my very nerdy pumpkin. It's an ampersand, in case you couldn't tell. 

design site

Lots of late nights & work later..

http://emilyokeydesign.com/

Still in progress, but I'm happy with it for the time being.

Pumpkin Milkshakes

The presence of both an ipad AND a new iphone in my life might mean it's time for more blogposts. Or at the very least, more pictures!


Let's just say that sleep has been little and far between lately. For some reason this has been a really hectic week seven. I can't believe we're already this far into the quarter! My design website was due today at 2pm so this week has meant spending a rather large chunk of time on that. As well as an art history paper due next week, portfolio projects, etc. But it's FUN! I promise.

You can see my design site [here] for now but soon (ie. when i figure out how) it will be switching over to www.emilyokeydesign.com! Yes, I know I had www.emilyokey.com before. That's far too long of a story. Basically I own that domain name but the company won't hand me the rights to it! So frustrating the number of phone conversations and emails I've gone through lately to figure that out and it didn't end up working!

I'm also getting to do a fair amount of freelance design lately as well as my normal admissions work. Working bright and early tomorrow morning at 7:30 am for Open House.

As for tonight, it's a rainy Friday night with a ton of homework on the agenda. I thought it would be in my best interest to make myself a pumpkin milkshake for dinner. (don't worry mom it has yogurt AND milk in it, plus pumpkin is a vegetable right?).

You might not want to look below, Mom.

Couldn't find the can opener for some reason and I was NOT going to go pumpkin milkshake-less. So this seemed like a good idea at the time. Still have all 10 fingers :)

Schedules

Really weird to think about the fact that this morning was my second to last time registering for classes..

and I FORGOT!

Goes to show I'm in denial as to how far into the quarter we are. Despite forgetting to register at 7 am, I got all of the classes I wanted because honors kids get to register a day early. Woo!

Here's the lineup: winter quarter schedule

Looks busy!

Calligraphy

This quarter I'm taking Calligraphy for the second time - and definitely not the last. 

On top of yet another quarter of calligraphy, next quarter I'm planning on taking a class called Typeface Design with Kris Holmes who is an RIT professor & famous for creating the Lucida typeface that is seen on your computers! Pretty cool! It's going to require a fair amount of movement in my schedule and possible a bunch of late nights but I think it will be more than worth it for the experience.    

To get into the class we have to show a sample of some of our best lettering so far. It's what were going to be basing our typeface on. Last night I worked on pulling that together and it's definitely going to need some tweaking but I think it's finally headed in the right direction.

Each quarter of calligraphy is a different hand. Spring = Foundational, Fall = Italic, Winter = Blackletter. 

I've been waiting since last year to take Blackletter so I'm pretty excited for that!

Art History Midterm

The big topic of the past 48 hours or so of my life has been art history. I have a 1900-1950 art history midterm at 12 today. 

As a graphic design major, we're required to take 3 quarters (what will be 2 semesters of art history) + 2 different art history classes of our choice. Since the 3 quarters left off around the turn of the 20th century, I thought I'd pick the next 2 classes to be more modern.

Now, I realize art history sounds totally intimidating.  Give me a sheet with 60 Slide Identification names and tell me to memorize their name, artist & date... quite daunting. And for someone who is rather horrible at memorizing things this is no small feat. 

Art history professors (and classmates) tend to be enormously helpful. My Survey of Western Art & Architecture professors used to hold (non-mandatory) breakfast study sessions on Saturday mornings the week before the exam. Since it wa a larger class (around 60) it was really nice to get a little bit more 1 on 1 time for questions. This quarter, someone in my class voluntarily set up a group study session in the library last night. Super helpful! Our professor had given us a full write up for a study guide- so nice! So we were able to talk through possible essay questions & some unknown terms.

As of a few minutes ago, I've cut the 60 images down to only NINE ones that have been tripping me up! Not bad! Plus I still have a few hours to go before test time. The nice thing about the study session last night was that I felt that I could actually talk through topics rather than just rattle them off the top of my head = better memory. 


-- From my RIT blog post

Learning to Run

Let's start this story out by reminding everyone how much I hated running.

I would never in a million years have considered myself a runner in any stretch of the imagination. Maybe if I was being chased. Or that forced mile for volleyball in 90 degree weather. Sounds fun right?

Except then I got to thinking. Running is a sport I could do on my own, determine the time spent, and involved nothing other than a decent pair of shoes (and well, an inhaler).

I got this crazy idea in my head that for my 21st birthday, my present to myself would be running a 5k. Yeah... I pick cool presents, be jealous.

So I started working at it, slowly as to not discourage my "can't run a mile" self. Eventually after a few weeks of running at 7 am even with my struggles to want to stay in my toasty warm bed, I worked up to 2 miles and finally to 3.

Despite my 6th-8th grade P.E. teacher and the River Hill volleyball coach's efforts to remind me that I sucked at running, I managed to prove them wrong.

But more importantly, I proved myself right. And I can actually say that I enjoy running. For real (mom).

As in. I ran 3.1 miles.

And I lived to tell about it. Let's just say, this won't be the last.

The sub-40 degree temperatures yesterday morning along with wind & rain put a slight damper on the run as well as a hint of blue on my legs.

Jon came out for some moral support and much appreciated body-heat stealing as I waited for the race to start. It. was. freezing. Plus I can pretend that I have my own personal photographer :) -- pictures to come later maybe.

Now Here

365q

Internet Changes

There have been a HUGE number of changes to the web lately. Between Facebook, Amazon, Pandora, etc... and now Blogger! If you haven't checked out my actual blog site yet (if you're on google reader, etc), you should probably mosey on over and let me know what you think. I'm not 100% sold yet but I definitely like the new more modern (and ipad friendly) layout. 

Still chugging along on the school front. This year is flying by (already!). I can't believe it's already week 4. Yikes. I've got to get moving on some of these design projects that are on my to-do list. 

Been kind of a weird week for classes - three of them were cancelled! Which seems like a nice idea, but I really like the structure of going to class so I'm struggling a bit when it feels like I'm just doing homework for hours on end. It's been really helpful to have another graphic designer living in the apartment (working on the same projects) for motivation! 

Tomorrow is basically an all day conference on Social Media - I'm really looking forward to it. Clay Shirky is the keynote address in the afternoon and a few others are going to be speaking at it so I'm going to go check out some of those. 

Last weekend Mom & Dad and Nana came up for a short less than 24 hour visit. Always good to have family up here - especially when they come with cookies and other deliciousness :) And my winter coats! 

Figuring things out: Life outside of Graphic Design

Clearly this is the year of figuring out what I’m going to be doing after college. As seen in my frequent posts lately on design lectures and week one. I can’t even begin to count the number of times I’ve been asked what my plans are.. Come back and ask in say.. May? Might have a better idea then.

I came in 100% sure that I wanted to be a graphic design major. No doubt about it.

As I’ve progressed through college, I’ve started learning about new areas of work that I could potentially pursue and they started tugging on my once definite career decision. One of those being social media & higher ed - which I found by working at none other than the RIT Admissions office! Go figure.

I fell in love with Twitter and came to see it as more than just a platform for talking about my peanut butter and jelly sandwich but rather a place that has definite results & impact on companies and organizations.

This summer I interned at a place in downtown Rochester called We Make Nice Websites where I got to help out with a bit of social media consulting. I liked explaining Twitter & sharing my love for it... Oh hey there new potential career path.

But then I see information graphics and oh goodness.. they’re beautiful.

In my Digital Entrepreneurship class we had a speaker (RIT Grad) come in and talk about his line of work and how he’s become so successful in business. One of his major points was that if you’re not excited and bounding out of bed in the morning to work on something new, you’re in the wrong major (or career). Point taken.

So here I sit with all of these lovely new things vying for my attention, I prefer to simply think of them as “options.”

(taken from a recent post at RIT Admissions)

Operation Smile

Unrelated to anything else, but this totally made my day.

Bruno Monguzzi

There are definite advantages to living on a campus with 16,000 other students. It means there are things to do all of the time. It always makes me laugh when we get people on tours asking “Is there anything to do on campus” -- makes me imagine 16,000 people sitting around twiddling their thumbs.

Being in college (and well, being a nerd) has gotten me to attend some events that I might have never even thought about in high school. Since when was it “cool” to go to a lecture that was not required by class. Ha. I surprise even myself sometimes.

Tonight after a few hours of class and work there was a lecture by a designer named Bruno Monguzzi from Switzerland. I was debating whether or not to go and part of me wanted to go home, make dinner & get started on homework. The other part of me (thankfully) realized that this was one of those “once in a lifetime” kind of events and I should get my butt over there.

Good choice.

Bruno Monguzzi spoke for almost an hour and a half on his life, design career & specifics on the thought process behind designing posters. Saying the lecture was “awesome” would be an understatement.

He spoke about how graphic designers need to be both good people & more importantly good communicators. Went over dynamic vs expressive typography. He talked about how we should “Disobey rules when they don’t allow you to reach your goal”.

Probably the biggest point I took away from it was the idea that “You have to be in love with the problem”. Maybe this was because he was about 2 feet away from me screaming this by that point. Quite the enthusiastic speaker. But it’s a great point, there’s no point in doing something and working on it unless you’re 100% behind it.

I actually had the pleasure of hearing another lecture today in my Digital Entrepreneurship class today as well but more on that later because this is long enough!

(taken from my admissions blog post today)

Last First Day

Today is my last first day of school. Ever.

Unless I have some total change of heart within the next year or so (and a surprise full scholarship to grad school) or decide that I miss homework. Unlikely on both accounts.

(mom & dad suggested that I wear plaid like day numero uno way back when)

(this picture was not day one of school but it was kindergarden)

Within the past week I've been asked not once but THREE times how old I am & what year in high school I'm in. Clearly I need to start wearing professional clothes or something. Haircut? Giant sign on my shirt with my age? Of course everyone apologizes and says that I'll appreciate that in 30 or so years. For now I don't like being chunked in with the 12 year olds.

Off to go celebrate labor day with 7 hours of class. RIT really knows how to spend holidays - At least Thanksgiving falls at the end of the quarter so they're required to give us the week off :)

Chocolate Chip Cookies

This summer has felt both ridiculously long yet short at the same time - if that's even a possibility.

I've managed to fit in a solid month at home, a trip to New Jersey (with a side trip to NYC), long weekend in Wisconsin for Grandma's belated 80th birthday, and almost two months of an internship & working at the admissions office.

Classes start in just four days and I'm trying my best to rest up & get ready for the whirlwind that is Fall Quarter. For some reason I'm more anxious than ever to just get this quarter started with - it feels like a giant hurricane coming thinking about all of the projects & homework that are going to be completed in the next 10 or so weeks.

This week wasn't going to pass without a bit of last minute summer fun though.

Jon & I decided to take the day off yesterday & drive 3 hours up to Toronto (Canada). Originally we were going to leave around 7 am, however we didn't get out the door until almost 8.. oops. Made it across the border with no problems even though I have to try ridiculously hard not to crack some joke with border patrol. Their questions make sarcastic answers just so tempting.

Basically the theme of the day was parks, walking along the lake & looking at houses for when dual citizenship is acquired.

We ended up stopping just short of Toronto at Lakefront Promenade Park to walk around. Went a bit further & found a lunch spot at Marie Curtis Park overlooking Lake Ontario. A walk through the water left my pants rather soaked & I discovered a new fashion statement of high-rolled jeans.

Drove further through downtown Toronto (past the Hockey Hall of Fame!) stopped by Coronation Park to see all of the boats and planes taking off. Met a couple that was biking over 1,000 miles all over Canada. From there we headed to yet another park called Ashbridge's Bay Park up on the north part of the city.

So many volleyball courts.

This one included a considerably longer walk along the sand & rocks. In the parking lot on the way out Jon asked a guy for a good local food recommendation. He gave us directions to a bar/pub as well as a hole in the wall burger place not far from there. Unfortunately we couldn't find them (we did most of the day without a GPS or map - success!) even with the GPS so we found a cute restaurant called Red Moose on that same street. Great food & it had an outdoor patio with blue skies and everything.

After dinner we wandered through the neighborhoods looking at awesome houses & officially decided that Toronto is on the list of job searching. Or I might just not wait and move there tomorrow.

my face at the thought of leaving Canada.. or just waiting for Jon to balance photo-y things.

We eventually (rather reluctantly) left Canada and headed back to Rochester but not without a stop at the Canadian side of Niagara Falls. I've only ever been to the American side before and oh my goodness.. commercialization overload. Especially after an entire day of nice beaches, walking and hanging out in parks, the flashing lights, hotels & casinos were a bit much but it was definitely cool to see the falls.

Finally made it back just after midnight & promptly fell asleep. Well worth the drive up north, we're already talking about when we can go back next :)

eat

EAT from Rick Mereki on Vimeo.

Stuffed Shells

I tend to get lazy cooking for myself sometimes because after all, one person can only eat so much and after 40 billion days of trying to finish something I made up.. well, it gets tiring.

But sometimes I just feel the need to cook....

And to convince my roommate that she needs to be a model because clearly she's missed her calling.

Which she quickly got tired of when she realized that she was my only subject!

I actually didn't really take any semi decent photos of dinner because well... I was hungry! The Kristin photoshoot was just me waiting the 30 minutes for dinner to cook!

I made Vegan Stuffed Shells which were SO delicious. More delicious than the picture made it out to be. Don't let the tofu part scare you, it's tasty & protein filled. And adding sauteed onions from the public market on top makes it all the better.

Vegan Stuffed Shells

Ingredients

• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1.5 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon oregano
• 16 ounces extra firm tofu
• 2 cloves garlic
• 1 tablespoon nutritional yeast
• 10 ounces frozen spinach, defrosted
• 1 box jumbo shells
• 1 jar of your favorite marinara sauce

Instructions

1. Drain the tofu and pat dry with paper towels. Crumble into the bowl of a food processor or high-speed blender along with olive oil, salt, oregano, garlic and nutritional yeast. Process on high until smooth and “ricotta-like”.
2. Add the defrosted spinach to the blended tofu mixture.
3. Cook shells in boiling salted water until el dente. Drain
4. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Pour about ½ cup pasta sauce into the bottom of a 9 x 13 inch pan. Stuff shells with 2 T of filling and place in pan, seam side down. Repeat until all shells have been stuffed.
5. Pour remaining pasta sauce over shells, cover with foil and bake for 30 minutes. Serve!

Number of servings (yield): 6-8

(this is what they were actually supposed to look like in all of their color-balanced glory! photo from PBS)

Peanut Butter.. or lack of.

This past week, I ran out of peanut butter... I considering calling for a state of emergency.

If you've ever seen my shelf in the pantry, I usually have no less than 4 jars of peanut butter. I wish I was kidding. It's probably some kind of incurable sickness. In my defense there are so many different kinds of peanut butter that makes deciding on one jar simply impossible.

The only thing that made this situation better was knowing that I had this puppy waiting in the fridge. And it's full of peanut butter.

(Still didn't stop me from going out the very next day to restock.)

My original intent for this was looking for a bread recipe that would be easy & protein filled for taking to work (and not messy because we tend to be eating lunch while we're still working). Unfortunately I don't think this is going to cut it so it's back to the drawing board but it was tasty anyway! Just not particularly healthy enough to count as lunch.

It's delicious by itself. Or with peanut butter spread on top -- if you haven't run out.

Peanut Butter Sandwich Bread

makes 1 loaf

Ingredients:

3/4 cup chunky peanut butter

1/2 cup sugar

1 1/2 cups milk

2 cups flour

1 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp salt

1 T baking powder

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and grease a loaf pan well.

Cream together the peanut butter and sugar until well combined. In another bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, salt and cinnamon. Set aside.

With the mixer running on low, slowly alternate between adding the milk and the dry ingredients. Mix until smooth.

Pour batter into greased loaf pan and bake for one hour. Let cool in pan for 10 minutes before turning out on a wire rack and cooling completely.

Time:

1 hr 15 minutes

These were blueberries from the public market. I did not do anything with them other than transport them from their container in the fridge into my tummy. Sometimes they made a pit stop on top of my oatmeal. Still, they deserve a picture.

And this.. I'm contemplating giving up my love of peanut butter for this.

So. Good.

cookie dough

So, I wasn't originally planning on sharing this because, well, at first I wasn't entirely sold on it.

But then I let it sit in the fridge for a day.. and then another...(testing it everyday of course)

And then came the third day. And oh my goodness.. delicious. It was FANTASTIC.

On carrots, graham crackers, zucchini. You name it, I tried it. A spoonful works too.

“Blondie Batter” Dip

• 1 1/2 cups chickpeas (1 can, drained)
• heaping 1/8 tsp salt
• tiny bit over 1/8 tsp baking soda
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/4 cup nut butter (or even a combination of applesauce and oil, and then use less milk)
• 1/4 cup plus 3T nondairy milk (or more or less, as needed) (I used skim milk...)
• Sweetener (used agave)
• 1/3 cup chocolate chips

recipe link

I would have taken more photos, but uhm.. it's gone.

I also need to find a photo alternative to this 3 megapixel nonsense that leaves my carrots looking horribly orange. On that note, Jon informed me yesterday that I eat so many carrots I might turn orange.. I disagreed but after seeing this camera's coloring of them, I might change my mind.

Also in love with the Rochester Public Market - well all of Rochester in general but that's another story. Went yesterday morning with Kara and picked up all sorts of delicious fruits & veggies. As much as I'm looking forward to fall coming, I'm not ready to give up all of the things Rochester has in the summer (like sun! and blueberries!).

Another week of working, splitting my time between the internship & admissions still. This upcoming Friday & Saturday are College & Careers part 2 so looking forward to another weekend of exhaustion ;) Park Ave Fest is also next weekend so I'll definitely be checking that out.

More recipes coming soon.. as soon as I can get non-orange pictures of them.

Predictable Commute

Dad might be amused by my morning "commute" as it's only about 20 minutes long (what seems to be his warm up lap around the neighborhood). But I'm actually finding that I'm enjoying it!

That is.. after I found the safe way.

You see, Rochester is a great city. But it's a city. Which means there are tough parts.

Those tough parts unfortunately fall in the shortest path between here and work. After two days of double (and triple) checking that my doors were in fact locked, I found an alternate route. One in which, if I were to say.. forget to lock my doors, I might still make it in one piece.

What I like best about it is the predictability of it.

There is always a woman walking to work on the side of the road with her ipod on. There's always the large dump truck ahead as I pass over the train tracks (the train which thankfully does not delay my route). I always turn the corner onto Genesee St. around 8:46.

And there is the bus... the lovely bus that happens to ALWAYS be in my way. Apparently we have the same schedule.

Plus I've figured out that if I leave at 8:33 on the dot, I pull in the parking lot with 4 minutes to spare. That, of course, is displayed nicely on the fancy black clock by the parking lot as I turn the corner.

10 minutes later, an Amtrak train passes through on the tracks by the office.

Predictability, I like it.

Erie Canal

Weeks here seem to be flying by. Between working at WMNW & the admissions office, I've been super busy. It seems like I come home and it's time to do a little more work & all of a sudden, it's bed time!

If you want to hear about what I did this past weekend [here]. I take the easy way out and only blog about things once :) Saves time.

Anyway, amidst all of this working I've managed to fit in a fair amount of outside time. So much so that I actually have TAN lines. Shocker. This has happened.. uhm, never.

By far my favorite place to explore is the Erie Canal. Especially if I go by myself, I'd much rather drive the 15 minutes east to pick it up in Pittsford. Smart thinking.

This past weekend I made it all the way to Bushnell's Basin. Which isn't particularly far for a bike ride but I was walking it so I'd like a little more credit!

I got to get up close & personal with some ducks too. Unlike the annoying geese on campus, these ones you can actually walk up to.

Already planning my visit back here for the weekend. Between that, a visit to the public market & some more design work it should be good :)

I'm blogging, you just can't tell.

I started interning at We Make Nice Websites, a web design/development company in Rochester at the beginning of the month. I was brought on as a design intern but I'm slightly obsessed with social media. That might be an understatement.

Needless to say, I'm now in charge of 4 Twitter accounts and 4 Facebook accounts. Tweetdeck has become my best friend. And when I'm not tweeting or facebook insight stalking... I'm blogging. For them, admissions or my personal blogs (which have kind of taken the back burner).

You can read the posts for WMNW here: http://blog.wemakenicewebsites.com/ The ones tagged with my name are clearly written by me. Or just note the sarcasm ;) Can't run away from it.

I'm also getting to work on some sweet design projects. All web work which was frustrating at first until I discovered Google Web Fonts. Partyy. We're in the middle of designing & launching a new site for them. Pretty neat. And I recently designed a website for a preschool. In less than 24 hours. It involves lambs. Lambs are awkward animals, I have discovered. Also, I lack inspiration for preschool websites but I think I managed alright. Working on a super secret project too. Which will hopefully be launched soon? More details later.

Basically all fun things. I switch between the two jobs. When I'm not working on one, I go to the other. And when I'm not doing that I'm working on some wedding invites for a friend. Or brainstorming my personal website.

Or tweeting. Oh, social media.

I think I picked the right major. I realized that as I was working 9 hour days in between 2 jobs only to come home and think more about them. So. Much. Fun.

And I also might have a shot at not having to live in a cardboard box in a year. All good things.

It Be Hot.

Just needed a reminder of the cold.



Today was the hottest it's been in Rochester since 1993.

For real.

I'm all for breaking records. Heat is not one of those I wish to break.

My car showed temperatures I wish to never see again.

I was not pleased.



Especially considering my internship has no AC. And work required carrying heavy boxes outside.



So I came home and looked at pictures of snow.

Working all day tomorrow and Saturday for College & Careers. Outside, giving tours. Luckily it's supposed to be a "cool" 92 degrees. Melting might occur.

week with mom

Since last Wednesday Mom has been in upstate NY hanging out with me! Sarah had a volleyball camp over at Cornell so it made sense for her to just come hang out with me for a few days until that was over.

It was nice having my own personal coffee barista :)

And dinner preparer! (note: that beer isn't mine.. it is however a Rochester one with a label done at a local design place around here that won a big design award for it. very cool.)

We tested out some new Rochester restaurants.. like John's Tex Mex in South Wedge that had delicious tofu burrito bowls. Yum. And a funky restaurant.. too bad we had to wait for what seemed like forever to get our food.. I think our level of hunger led to us being even more impatient.

Checked out a free concert up at Park Point. An ACDC cover band.. totally not our scene. We decided that getting a few tattoos and a motorcycle might help us fit in a bit more. Still nice to sit outside for a while.

Ate dinner outside at Global Village in our own personal outdoor living room (there are sweet outdoor couches & no one else was around!)

(that's my roommate Kristin, she came along for some company)

And mom took lots of pictures, although I have yet to get those from her so all I have are these grainy ipod pics! Ooops.

Definitely nice to come home from work everyday and hang out. Mom might argue that going home will buy her a wee bit more room in bed because apparently I choose to only sleep directly in the middle of my bed here :) Whoops.

On to week number 3 at work... more updates on that later. And more pictures once I get those.