and i'm off...

right now sipping some delicious lemon tea and working on burning my portfolio & resume to CDs. for some reason this feels so 90s. CDs were so yesterday. i, however, am not ahead of the times and don't have oodles of flash drives laying about. so this will have to do.

today was spent sleeping in (sort of), going to work (which involved trudging through incredible LARGE amounts of snow), printing out business cards & a resume (which required two trips through the snow to the printer), a hockey game (where they lost 2-5) and finally rather last minute laundry, dinner & packing (ie. started all of that at 10:45pm).

flying out to portland tomorrow, luckily we don't have to leave until noon which gives me some leeway in terms of sleep & finishing everything. on the account that it is now going on 2 am and i have yet to shower. good planning.

week eleven left much to be desired. mainly in the sanity & sleep departments. but it is finished so we won't focus on that. but will instead begin to get incredibly excited to fly out WEST! spring break... in a place that just got snow. but that's okay because we got 12 inches in the last 24 hours or less and snow trudging was a wee bit fun. i may or may not have gone out of my way to jump in extra large snow piles. just maybe.

can't really promise any updates from the road as i'll be sans computer but we'll see. i think you can hold on until saturday. i'll try to take a few pictures.

enjoy your last two days of february, where in the world did this month go?!

joey the junior reporter

it's not christmas but I think you can ignore that small fact & watch this adorable video.

or this one:

Hint Hint, Nudge Nudge

It's no secret that keeping three blogs is a tad overwhelming. I can't possibly have that much to say. The issue is that I cannot really condense them as they are all for different audiences.

And I know I've mentioned this previously but I thought I'd do a lovely reminder as I have just begun posting some design work from the quarter on my other blog.

RIT Blog -- mostly for prospective students & families

Shenanigans (this one) for whoever -- except not really professional enough for employers. plus lots of food updates! and some design/random nonsense.

Call the Serif-- slowly morphing into what my idea of a design/process blog will be. where I will be posting the majority of my design work and project process nonsense. and portfolio.

I change my mind almost daily about what I'm going to do with each, so pardon the dust.

Watch for Falling Objects: Week 11

Week 11 is one of those times where you need to be on the look out for falling objects. It tends to be the week where all hell breaks loose and anything goes. Pretty much a time where you need to allot a good four hours to get anywhere because you never know when some giant moose will jump in front of you. Okay, maybe not a moose.

More often than not, I find it's stressful nature mildly amusing, just on the look out for the next thing that will blow up.

And this week is like any other week 11, if my head were not attached to my body, I'd lose it.

Sometimes it's the little things, like getting stopped not once but twice by the same train in a 5 minute period.

Or times like when my windshield wiper decides to fall off while it's snowing & I need to go by matte board for a project due the next morning at 8 am. And then the "check engine light" comes on.

Maybe it's when I forget my flash drive in the lab after I'm already halfway across campus at the printer and I need to run back and grab it while praying hard that no one took it. Did I mention my entire life is contained on a flash drive right now?

Let's have the apartment across the hall throw a huge part on Saturday night before finals week complete with not one but 3 smashed beer bottles, pot smokers who decided that it was too cold outside so inside would have to suffice, and one apparently (super drunk?) and crying girl. Did I mention that it was 3 am? But then campo busted it, I went to bed and all was well.

Or like when my flash button decides to break two nights before my final is due and four hours of deleting code, changing things and last ditch attempts don't fix it.

Heck, let's have no hot water in the apartment for 24 hours and then when the people come to fix it, they do it wrong so it floods all over the kitchen.

And while we're at it, let's forget the locker combination while being watched by a lady who must have been convinced that I was attempting (and failing) to break into someone else's locker. It was real pathetic. I just walked away and pretended like turning the dial was my intent all along.

Goodness gracious.

But then there are nice things like the super awesome dude at the advanced auto parts store that installed my windshield wiper (for free!) when I looked helpless.

Or the fact that I have a fantastic roommate who spends lots of Sunday on the phone with maintenance getting them to come (SIX times) to fix the great flood of week 11.

And I finally remembered by locker combination, only about 3 hours too late for it to actually be helpful. But nevertheless, I figured it out... now maybe I should write that down for next time...

Happy week 11! Now only two finals and three more days until I'm headed off to Portland! More on that in another post...

54 and counting

54 pages of a paper that is.

and i'm not finished yet.

who knew I had 54 pages of things to say? crazy, right?

i've been doing nothing other than homework and sleeping since friday night. more so on the homework than the sleep. worked a solid day from 11 am yesterday until 3 am this morning only to fall asleep and get back at it.

Good news = I'm almost done!

Bad News = I have a website due tomorrow at 12:30 and it's broken. As in so broken it took me 4 hours last night to figure it out except it still doesn't work so that's not really figuring anything out. Hopefully I can figure it out tonight. We'll see.

The other good news, after tomorrow night at 9 pm (hopefully) I will be 3/4ths finished with my finals other than actually going and turning them in and in class critiques. Which seems much easier.

And then moving on to portfolios/business cards/resumes and all things Portland!

pizza break

Sometimes you just need a break... and some pizza.

Officially finished with all classes for the quarter on Thursday (minus finals) but that's close enough. Friday was a fantastic 60 degrees in Rochester which = short sleeves & sun roof down. Wonderful. Except this morning we woke up to 19 degrees, horribly windy & 3 inches of snow. Go figure.

Yesterday spent lots of friends time.. between breakfast at Bruggers, apple store trips for broken computers (not mine this time! although i sadly recognized half of the staff there... not a good sign) and dinner with my lovely roommates. Kara kindly offered to let us borrow her hardcore pizza making supplies so we gave them a try...

Ended up making 3 different kinds of pizza (veggie, chicken & dessert pizzas!). All delicious.. well, i didn't try the chicken one but I'm taking their word for that one. The veggie was was so tasty (peppers, onions, mushrooms, spinach & ricotta) on whole wheat crust. And bonus is that there was so much we have leftovers!!

Dessert pizza was our best plan yet... apples cooked with cinnamon, brown sugar & a wee bit of butter then put on a pizza crust with pomegranate craisins & almond slices. YUM!

We also took some rather goofy photos last night, those will be up once I steal them from Remy :)

"Hippie Loaf"

I've been in the mood for something more substantial lately after my week or two of salad eating. My roommate Remy & I have been talking about making dinner together forever and just never got around to it since we've both been so busy. Go figure, I choose week 10 to test out new recipes! But it was a nice break from homework.

So I tested out "hippie loaf" which is basically just a vegan meatloaf but loaded with protein & veggies -- quinoa & black beans! Yum!

We both gave it the thumbs up & would definitely make it for dinner again. Served with potatoes & peas of course. Hooray for well-rounded meals.

• 15 ounces black beans, drained and rinsed
• 1 whole onion, diced
• 2 whole garlic cloves, minced
• 1 whole carrot, minced
• 2 whole celery stalks, minced
• 1 cup mushrooms, coarsely chopped
• 1 cup quinoa, cooked
• 1 tbsp italian seasoning
• 3 tbsp brown rice flour
• 2 tbsp low sodium soy sauce
• 2 tbsp ketchup

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 350F. Grease a standard bread pan and set aside. Mash black beans in a large bowl and combine all ingredients until evely combined. Transfer to pan and pat down firmly and tightly using a spatula. Bake 45 minutes to one hour, until firm and browned on the outside. Allow the loaf to cool and firm up before serving, about 15 to 20 minutes.

[recipe from happy herbivore]

birthdays

To round off the weekend of celebration (of which i was unable to partake in)...

Happy Birthday Mom! I love you!

Aren't they cute? :)

---

In other non-celebratory news, I'm busy. Real busy. Hence the lack of regular posting.. or sleeping. Blogging will be back as soon as I get my to-do lists in order. Which might be never, judging by the size of them.

Two more weeks of classes and final until SPRING BREAK! We had a meeting this morning to discuss final Portland/Seattle plans and I can't wait! Looks like it should be a lot of fun.

Hopefully I'll get a project wrap up or two on here as well once thing calm down. I, however, currently have a 25+ page paper & a 30 minute presentation due at 8 am tomorrow morning so I should quit my procrastinating.

il etait une foi...

stories of blood & other fun things

one of the things on my lifelong to do list (which isn't very long yet) was to donate blood.

clearly i'm a capable human being filled with blood but the very thought of being stuck unnecessarily with needles seemed silly. except that it could save someone's life.

okay fine you got me. we'll give this a whirl.

my friend katherine and i talked about this months ago and decided to donate this past friday. i got past the finger pricking part (which didn't hurt at all for the record) and the enormously long list of questions they ask you. then came the sticking part.

i politely informed the blood taker that i would be ignoring her for this portion. to which she responded "that's usually what happens.." good. i got to squeeze a fun looking foam blood drop and we were off.

about 5 minutes into it she informed me that her shift was over and that there would be other people around to look after me. away she went... with my arm all hooked up & i was lying on some table. uhmmm? i asked the nearest guy if perhaps this machine shuts itself off or if they just keep taking blood. luckily it has some shut off valve. phew.

the guy kindly removed me from said wires and bags while i asked him about how many people passed out that day. "why, are you feeling bad??" actually it felt quite lovely although apparently i was loopy... because i informed him that i was going to get a yellow tattoo in the shape of the yellow mark that the iodine left on my arm.

i went over to that little table thing where they make you drink juice and what not except i was feeling so great that they gave me water and said i could go...

... 1 minute later...

"uhmm guys...."

i remember sitting down and getting a rather dizzy feeling and next thing i knew i was on the floor across the room on this weird stretcher thing with about 6 people standing over me throwing ice & other things at me. whoops! i did wake up laughing uncontrollably though :)

also, to make matters funnier/worse there were 6-8 friends from IV who happened to be on a balcony overlooking the place watching me pass out. perfectttt.

so fun times. i can donate again on the 25th of march! hopefully no more monkey business next time.