Nov 29th 2006 12:40:10 pm

Look at these beautiful roses! My sweet mom & dad sent them to Travis and me as a Thanksgiving greeting. There are 4 dozen roses in the bouquet! More roses than I have ever received before… I put them in my largest vase and even in there they seem a bit cramped. Maybe when it comes time to trim them and change their water I will divide them into two smaller bouquets. I just love them and it was such a nice surprise to get flowers at my doorstep. Thank you, Mom & Dad! Roses are just the thing I needed to pull myself through these terrible last two weeks of class…

I really am drowning in school work. I should be working on one of my many papers instead of writing this post, but I have too many things to share!

First, It snowed here Monday night and yesterday. (Travis took the photo out our front window on Monday night.) It hardly ever snows here, but we had about an inch or so accumulate before it all melted yesterday afternoon. Today the snow is all gone and it is grey and cold outside.

Second, I woke up and went out to the office this morning and found this lovely hippie van parked outside our front door. (I took the photo through our stained glass window in the front door… kinda like a spy… so that the van’s owners wouldnt see me!) It is an old church van with curtains in all the windows. I guess someone converted it into their home-on-wheels. There are a lot of do-it-yourself RVs in Eugene. Sometimes they are connected to actual houses, like an addition. Anyway, we have a free parking space – meaning not marked off with yellow curb paint – right in front of our house. It really isn’t a problem because it isn’t even always being used, but sometimes we get interesting parkers. The hippie van pulled away about two hours after I took this photo… Places to go, people to see!

5 Comments » Categories: Family, Feeling Happy, Home, Just for Fun

Nov 25th 2006 06:28:38 pm

Last week Travis and I got the bad news that his grandfather had passed away. It was something that we knew would be coming eventually, but it was still a shock. Last Saturday we left for Southern California to spend time with his family and attend the memorial and burial services for his grandfather. Even though it was a sad occasion, it was still good to be with family and remember a sweet man that I am happy to have known.

We stayed for the week and celebrated Thanksgiving at Travis’ grandmother’s home. (There are pictures from the week in my Flickr set.) We did a bit of shopping and a lot of eating over the course of the week. Travis helped clean out his grandpa’s garage and assemble some new furniture for his grandma. I helped with a few things around the house, but mostly just chatted with everyone. We took a walk down to the beach (which is just a few block’s from Travis’ grandma’s house) on Thanksgiving. We got to see a beautiful sunset and look at all of the fancy beach houses. The weather was gorgeous.

I didn’t get a chance to post for NaBloPoMo over the course of the week, but I am ok with that because I had a lot more important things to do. I am also glad that the blogging pressure is now off because I have a TON of work to do for school before the term is over in two short weeks!

5 Comments » Categories: Family, Travis, Trips

Nov 17th 2006 10:02:13 pm

Tonight was the internship and ePortfolio presentation event for the Arts & Administration program. Since I am a student in the program, and I did my internship over the summer, I was a part of the presentation. The night was actually a lot of fun. We did the presentations in a more casual and interactive format. We all brought laptops and the “audience” got to walk around the room and visit with each of us and explore our ePortfolio websites. The photo above is of all of the AAD students (1st & 2nd years) and all of the faculty. A big, beautiful group!

No Comments » Categories: Friends, School, Website

Nov 16th 2006 11:24:55 am

Tonight was my very last letterpress class. It is a short course since it as technically conidered a “workshop”. Anyway, I am sad that is is over. Even though I am totally busy and I really shouldn’t have taken an extra class just for pleasure, I am so glad I got the chance to learn some basic type-setting and printing skills. Plus, the instructor was totally fun, and brilliant, and a little wacky… but in just the best way.. and all of the students were so refreshing and creative. (And I am not only saying all of this because I gave out my final project which includes my website address on it.) It is just so fun to be back with the “art kids” even if it is just for one class. I have never been 100% acepted into the “art kid” world, but I am happy to be a spectator. It is inspiring to be around people who think independently. It is so cool to see everyone’s personalities shine through in their work…

Sooo… I traded prints with almost everyone and I got the best group of cool artwork! I am really excited about it. You can kind of see everyone’s stuff in the photo above. Some people did little books, some did posters, some did poetry. It is a good mix of interesting stuff. I made a little folded book. No binding or anything. It is somewhat silly, but like I said, everyone’s personality shines through in their work!

It is cute and I am happy with it, but I definitely made some mistakes in this final project. I was just so rushed. I really feel like printmaking is a time-intensive art. You can’t do it well in a four hour block between class and work. Anyway, I am glad that the letterpress class is finished so that I have more time for my other studies and what not, but I will miss it.

No Comments » Categories: Art, Cute Things, Friends, School

Nov 15th 2006 11:08:05 am

I had another super-long day today, and another one planned for tomorrow. Not much else to report… except I got to eat a pizza tonight that had apricots, ricotta cheese, potatos, broccoli, squash, and a bunch of other stuff on it — the chef’s special. I went to the Pizza Research Institute with some friends. It was tasty!

oh… and Travis’ football team won the Championship!

2 Comments » Categories: Just for Fun, Travis

Nov 14th 2006 11:20:36 am

Did I ever work hard today! Twelve hours on campus and I am feeling it.

Got up early. Travis took me to Dutch Bros. Went to work at the Bulletin for a few hours — only two more stories left to write! Went to Historic Preservation class and the speaker brought us all sorts of cool stuff about historic buildings in Eugene… maybe I will post about it on Eugene Cottage… Went back to work on the Bulletin and scarfed down an apple and some Nancy’s. Went to the computer studios to scan some slides for the Bulletin. Walked to the other side of campus to turn in the latest version on my reasearch proposal. Swung by the campus market on my way back to Bulletin office to pick up one of those soy smoothie drinks. Worked on the Bulletin some more. Helped my boss with a power point presentation. Went to Letterpress class and worked for three hours on my big project that is due on Thursday. Finally, Travis picked me up at nine and we went home to eat soup and cornbread for dinner. Whew!

Rewind and replay it all again tomorrow.

3 Comments » Categories: School, Work

Nov 13th 2006 02:23:22 pm

A while ago I thought about blogging some of my favorite quotes from my required school reading. Well, I haven’t been very diligent about it, but I am going to try it out again.

I am currently reading Restoring Women’s History through Historic Preservation, edited by Gail Lee Dubrow & Jennifer B. Goodman, for my Intro to Historic Preservation class (my favorite class!). It is quite interesting and fairly easy to read for a collection of scholarly essays. It talks about all sorts of exemplary preservation projects that focus on women’s history. (I am currently writing a paper on that very subject that is due tomorrow!) Anyway, one quote from the reading keeps coming back to me… It is somewhat of a “Duh!” statement, but also a bit profound:

“Remember, women’s history is not minority history nor the history of a ‘special interest group.’ It represents the experiences of over half our population.”

- Edith Mayo, in the essay “Putting Women in their Place: Methods and Sources for Including Women’s History in Museums and Historic Sites,” page 127

I think sometimes even women like myself are fooled or misled into thinking that the female contribution to history is just not as important or interesting as the male contribution. I am glad that there are people out there working to debase that incorrect assumption!

1 Comment » Categories: Books, School, Thinking

Nov 12th 2006 10:30:57 pm

ooooo! So scary, I know! Travis and I bought the first season of Millennium on DVD a while ago and it is finally starting to get good. I never watched the series when it was on television, but I remember wanting to. I think it aired on Friday nights… It was created by Chris Carter, the executive producer of The X-Files, and it is about some of the same stuff. It is about evil and the devil manifest in human form, and about the people trying to combat it. It was on tv from 1996-1999 during all of the millennium hoopla. Anyway, I think I would recommend it, but it is definitely scary. If you didn’t like The X-Files, you probably won’t like Millennium. I am sure we will buy the two other seasons on dvd at some point.

3 Comments » Categories: Television

Nov 11th 2006 11:15:36 pm

I am not supposed to officially reveal it until Friday evening, but I will give my special blog readers a sneak peak of my super-awesome internship website! It is a requirement of my program to create a website that is a part of our ePortfolio sites that describes our summer internship experiences. (I personally don’t think anyone but my parents really want to know THIS much about my internship, but whatever…) I am just amazed that I managed to get the site finished so far in advance of its due date! Check it out here.

2 Comments » Categories: School, Website, Work

Nov 11th 2006 12:41:08 am

One of the main reasons I signed up for my letterpress class is because the course description said that we got to make photopolymer plates. Photopolymer plates are plastic sheets that you expose to light to make raised images for use in a letterpress. Anything that you can turn into a negative transparency, you can turn into a plastic letterpress plate! It is one of the main ways that contemporary presses make all of the cute letterpress cards you see at stationery shops.

Well, I was planning on drawing something super-duper awesome for my plate… but we only got two days warning before we were required to have our artwork ready. With all of my time spent at school and work, I didn’t have much time to create something super-super. I settled on scanning a bunch of my doodles. I picked a whole bunch of cute ones and put them together (as seen above). The full plate is six by nine inches, and I am able to cut it a part and use each drawing separately. We exposed the plates on Thursday night and I think mine turned out ok, but I scrubbed a little hard on one of my doodles while cleaning the plate after exposure. I think I broke some of the lines, but we will have to see how it turns out when printed. I am going to try to print a mini book of doodles and sayings that will also include all of my website and contact info. If I can make enough, I will hand them out as cute business card/portfolio combos things. We’ll see if I can do it… the project is due next week!

4 Comments » Categories: Art, Crafts, Cute Things, Projects, School