More catching up and Cell Phone Photos

A lot of people like Twilight, a lot of people hate it. I like it. Watched Vampires Suck the other day... meh. It could have been a LOT funnier. Twilight and the haters out there have resulted in soooo much potential for fodder, and the movie just didn't choose its jokes well enough for me. Speaking of Twilight fodder... a while ago I was reading a Twilight parody at Walmart while waiting for fried chicken, (I get sent on errands a lot. Mainly because I don't normally mind. Give me the money and tell me what to get and whatevs.) and I only got ten pages or so in to it, but I really wanted to finish it. And it saddens me because I don't remember the name of the parody, and it's not there anymore. I shall now have to wander over to the parody section of some bookstore and see if I can find it there. Do you know how many parodies there are of Twilight??? Bah humbug.

Okay, so catching up some more. I think this will actually be a pretty looong post. If it isn't, I'll go back and delete the previous sentence. Ha.


First things first, I hated my monitor. You could see my old pretty black monitor in a picture from this blog post, and I grabbed a picture from that post to put here so you could see the current monitor.
See it? Of course you see it. It's HUGEMONGOUS. Takes up the entire flippin' desk. But honestly, that's not the reason I hated it. I hated it because it's ugly. The color. The keyboard too. UGLY. My old monitor was black, as was my old keyboard. MUCH preferred. So at the beginning of last month, I had an epiphany. Why not paint them? I guarantee I will be the last person to use this monitor. NO ONE wants this honkin' huge piece of uglyness in their room. So I did. Rather than paint it a nice green color to match my nightstands, I went for gold. A... er... steampunkish theme.

Along the top of the monitor, I had covered the "Trini" in "Trinitron" with a pink peep, and called the monitor Peeptron. Behold, Peeptron 2010:




DFTBA=Don't Forget to be Awesome. I made the gears, wings, key, and golden peep out of clay. Woot. And the keyboard:





Very happy with them. Took me FOREVER to paint the letters, numbers, and symbols back on to the black keys, but meh. Some of my more used keys are chipping on the edges even though I did put a sealant on, but I don't care, a little gray showing through looks a lot nicer than the entirely gray keyboard.

(You may or may not notice some of these pictures have timestamps. They were taken on my dad's camera, which I borrowed for a day in November, and a day in October.)


So on November 10th, I wandered in to Chicago. One of the people I watch on Youtube, Dan Brown, went on tour and was going to be in Chicago that day, so away I went.


I like being early when I go to things, and this time was no different. Except, this time I was going via train. I wanted to be an hour early. And the train schedule that day only allowed me to either be just on time, or TWO hours early. So I did the latter. I ended up having to park in a metered parking lot because the train station lot was entirely full. I paid for an entire 10 hours, even though I expected I'd be back in 7.
That's Chicago.

It only took me half an hour to walk to Millennium Park, and even though he didn't specify WHERE he was going to be yet, I guessed it would be the Bean.

To the left there you can see some dude's painting. It was pretty neat.


Luckily I brought a book. Goblet of Fire ftw.

The seat I was in was NOT comfortable.


I liked this pigeon, because he was a different color than his black and gray brothers and sisters.



He actually got there almost an hour late.




But he ended up staying over an hour later anyhow, so it was awesome:

Pretty Bean at night is pretty


He allowed me and another to go with him and his gf when he left, because they were headed towards the Sears Tower, and the other person and I were going to the train station, which is along the same route. The most interesting bit during that short walk was some dude commenting to Dan that he heard there were a lot of mountains in Montana (Dan was wearing a Montana hat) to which Dan replied: "Yeah! I think Montana means Mountains in Portugal." It was a short walk because a couple of blocks in, Dan and his gf Danielle decided they were stopping for drinks, so we departed. Luckily I had the other person to walk with still, otherwise I might have just taken a cab back to the station.



I made it back to my meter with TWO MINUTES to spare. WIN.



He of course made a youtube vid about his trip, it can be seen here. Approximately 7 minutes in to the film is when he talks about Chicago. Can you see me in the video? Haha. Consequentially, I made a boring vlog about it as well. It can be seen here. I made the rubik's cube shirt to get it signed by Dan, because I have a vlogbrothers shirt signed by one of the vlogbrothers, so it seemed fitting. One of Dan's earlier videos, and probably the one that got him the most attention back then, was "How to solve a rubik's cube" (17 MILLION views. jeebus).


Next, we'll spend a moment talking about my hair. In case you haven't already noticed, (via youtube, twitter, or ED Forum picture) I decided to dye my hair pink. It all started on Halloween. When I wore that pink wig. I thought hmm.... why not?! So two weeks later, I did it.

This pic was taken moments before I did the Dan Brown vlog, just an hour or so before I started the dyeing process.


I immediately decided that I hate hair bleach. It's hot and itchy and smells and you're supposed to cover it and then it acts like its own little steam room and the steam collects in the cap which then drips on you.... bleh


The first bleaching. I read in most places that if you want to PROPERLY bleach your hair, it would take three weeks. I, being an impatient person, refused to consider such a thing. I'm dyeing my hair PINK for Pete's sake.


However, I did miss some spots, so I went back and re bleached a few bits


And then, after


I looooved the pink dye. It smelled nice and didn't burn or itch. Lovely


Me right before Harry Potter, you can see the earrings I made.





My hair shows its roots now, and the pinkness might be fading a smidgen, but meh. I'm still happy with it. And... yep. Okay, moving on.

My friend Sara got a new puppy


For a week or so, he was nameless.



He has a name now though, it's Scotty. Hee.


So I follow author Maureen Johnson on twitter. She spoke of getting two christmas trees this year, her normal one, and a twitter christmas tree - which would feature ornaments sent from twitter folks. So I made her an ornament.


Linny's holding it for me

And there's a quarter to help with scale

It's a Fail Whale.



Check out my mayple buttons:



Okay, so I hate taking pictures with my cell phone. It sucks. The quality sucks. But, occasionally, I do take pictures. I just deleted some of them, but first I emailed them to myself, so now I'll share them . Hoorah



Here's Percy, you can see his eyes are a bit orange, it's cuz I lit a candle in him. Of course, it's day time so yeah, you can't tell very well. I forgot to take a picture of him at night. Drat.






And there's me in my Halloween outfit. I was texting the pic to a friend, since I was staying home and passing out candy.














Here is where you see the radish I used as a reference when I was making my earrings.













And there's a pic of me in full gryffindor gear. The earrings are supposed to be "drigible plums" - or Luna earrings











This is JUST before I started bleaching my hair. Brave face on. I believe hair is hair and it will grow back, but you know, it's still a big step.










Me texting a pic of my new orange hair to a friend.














Again, me texting the newly pink hair to a friend.















I dropped a 12 pack of soda down the stairs. A week later I dropped me down the stairs. Looking back, I was more scared of the soda breaking than me breaking...










I found this guy just laying there in JC Penney. I felt bad, so I went to find a better place for him to live.








I found a place on a christmas tree. Hee.















And the last picture, from earlier today, is my milkshake. I felt like having one, despite my lactose intolerance. I was dreading having to go out in to the freezing cold for a milkshake though. So before I went, I checked to see if we had any strawberry ice cream and milk. We did.


Topped with whipped cream. 'twas lovely. Yep.



Okay, so one more day will do it for me. Tomorrow or whenever will NOT be image heavy, nor will it be long. I have just noticed that I am using 43% of my space in my picasa account. Hmm... over a year later and my album isn't even halfway full. Guess I'll worry about that once I reach 90%. lol.

Oh the joys of catching up

Um... so yeah that pic's way too big to be an icon really, but hey whatevs. I loved that movie. I watch it every now and again. Heh.

So anyhoo, still on the catching up. Yep. Fascinating stuff.

This is a picture of some trees. I took it because we were passing a cow farm and I was like oooo I want a picture of cows! But the cows were too far to picture. Settled for trees.

I finally got around to making another set of toothbrushlets. This time I did not break any.

Although I purchased these at the same place, in the same package, only one week after I purchased the first batch, they were quite a bit different from the first. The first on the left, second on the right.

This is a closeup of a sticker on the back window of my friend Sara's car... well, what's left of the sticker. No idea what it used to say.


I subscribe to Sorted Foods on youtube, and one day they posted a recipe for Scotch eggs. It was right around breakfast time when I watched it, so I scampered down that very day to make myself some. They were yummy.



Um... okay, not much of a feature but... this year we got a white pumpkin. So um... yep, I made a pumpkcow.

Named him Percy, which was the name of my pumpkin I made last year as well.


My brother and his gf went to an 80's party the day before Halloween, these were their costumes.


This year I decided not to go costume crazy. Just grabbed some bits from previous costumes and went as a witch. You know, like a Harry Potter witch, after they go to Hogwarts and junk.


It was too cold for my bro to wear his costume without sleeves, so this is his.


He also wore striped tube socks. I found it fascinating that the ball is only a blur when the flash is turned off. lol.

Jimmy wearing my hat.



This was my dad's costume. I think it was um... a sociopathic killer? Or something like that.


Wanna see what apple cider looks like just before I stir the cream I just pitched in to it?


This is a stalk of corn that grows along the side of my friend Sara's family's house.


And here's a bulgarian coin


A while ago, there was a shooting in Sara's neighborhood. Her door caught a bullet, but Sara and her roommate were both unharmed.


This was one of two shirts I painted. It's just acrylic paint, so I dunno how long it will hold up, which means I doubt I will wear it often. It was painted for a specific purpose, a subject that will show up in the next catch up blog I thinks.


This is the other shirt I painted. I was originally planning on just making the rubik's cube one, but then this idea got stuck in my head so eh. Beardlovers, or Beardlovelies, are what fans of WheezyWaiter are called. This is what happens when you can't afford to buy a real fan shirt. Again, no idea how long the acrylic will last. *shrug*


Finally, Hank Green posted a dream of his back in October. For simplicity's sake, I'll post it here:

~~~~~~~~~~~
I had a dream last night. I was at a high school re-union (though I only remember one random person from high school (who I haven't thought about in years) being there.)

There was some good music playing, but no one was dancing. I was frustrated. For some reason, we had "teams" and people in the teams had to do certain tasks. Also, we were going to be judged, and since I was "best dancer" in high school, they were going to be particularly scrutinizing me.

But I didn't want to dance by myself, because that's really awkward, so I had to get my team jazzed up to go dance. And I remember very specifically (and, in fact, remembered this in a later dream) what I said to them. It is one of the most coherent dream moments of my life.

"OK, so there's a cow" I began "and all that cow ever wanted to do in his life was dance. But he couldn't dance, because he was a cow," I was standing in the middle of a circle of people, slowly turning to address each of them individually, "and cows can't dance."

It looked as if I had everyone's attention, I continued, "and as time went on, that cow did what all cows do, he went to the slaughter house and died. And what do you think happened to that cow then?"

Someone replied "People ate him."

"What else?" I asked.

"Dogs ate him." Someone else replied.

"And what else do they do with dead cows."

"They make industrial lubricants," I am not kidding, I specifically remember someone saying that, though I'm not sure if it's true. (A quick Google search shows that it is ([link])

"Yes, they do," I replied, "but there's one thing you've left out," I was clearly building to something now, "They make shoes. And that cow, the cow that wanted nothing more to dance, he's in your shoes... Right... Now! So go out there, and make that cow's dream finally come true! GO OUT THERE AND DANCE!"

They roared as if going into battle.
~~~~~~~~~~~

I found this dream hilarious, and two days later, I drew a picture illustrating what I saw in my head.

Hee ha heee hee!

And then Hank had also mentioned previously to "Always start with a sketch...even if you suck and only ever draw on computers." So I also shared my sketch:


...yeah. The final changed just a smidgen from the original sketch. Hee.

I actually find this quite funny.... I've had a dA account for three ish years. (Though I didn't post anything til like, last year) I've got just over 1,100 page views. And one tweet from Hank gets me 1,900 deviation views for that final picture... in less than a week. Geesh! Hee hee. Well, at least I know Hank saw it. :)




And that's all for today's catching up. Just a post or two more I imagine. Depends on how many pictures I want to put in the next post. Yep. Most likely it will be a shorter post, of my monitor and keyboard, and of my one day trip to Chicago. I find myself more and more stressed to work on ornaments. When I say I've got three down, I'm making ornaments for five people, and preferably for each to have five of their own... ish.