[e008] Monster #1 in Progress

Introducing: monster # 1. By the time this is finished, it will (standing straight) be anywhere between 5' to 5'10" tall. It has/will have movable joints in the shoulders, elbows, wrists, hips, knees, and ankles.







He's looking at you.

[e007] Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

I'm absolutely terrible at making layouts, so I decided to change to a another cute default one. I think it fits this blog well.

I am absolutely exhausted and should try to sleep, but I'm excited to be sitting here and typing away at... well, no one. I'm just happy to type I suppose!

[e006] Silly forgotten drawings, part 1.

I found this when I was cleaning during finals week:

"Pizza is red
chees is yellow
the spises are colorful
and so are you.

Love, Rebecca"

Even if I couldn't spell as a child... I was still awesome.

[e005] Countdown

3.5 more weeks until I get to retry keeping this maintained. Just you wait, universe.

[e004] "I went there because it sounded cool."

While this break hasn't been filled with as many exciting insect collection trips as I hoped, I did spend a few minutes hunkered down in front of a map trying to decide where I wanted to go in the [near] future. That was when I realized that a lot of the places I wanted to visit I had selected because they sounded cool.

For example: Coffeepot, Hellsgate Wilderness, Santa Claus, Cash Mine, Hidden Treasure Mine... I mean, who wouldn't want to go to Cash Mine? Or Hidden Treasure Mine? And how neat would that look on a locality label? I'm still debating if this is a good thing or not, to go somewhere just because it has a fun name. This new obsession started with Bumble Bee, which is where I went collecting about two weeks ago. The original plan was to go to Horsethief Canyon, but after getting such a late start and still having to finish off Christmas shopping I picked a closer trail: Black Canyon National Recreational Trail.

The trail itself is 79 miles long, "stretching from the Sonoran Desert lowlands in Phoenix to the high grasslands in Prescott Valley." Edwin and I, of course, did not and could not possibly walk the entire thing, though we were content with snooping around for beetles and then walking a good two miles afterwords. I don't think words can describe how beautiful the landscape was, even on such a potentially dreary day. The wind was like ice, clouds covered the sky, and the rain came sporadically. We were lucky to have packed raincoats... and even so, nothing could defeat my overwhelming sense of happiness.



How could I not be happy around a face like that?





Or walking around a place like this?

My absolute favorite thing about Arizona is that one doesn't have to travel far in order to find someplace scenic. Earlier in the week we had taken an afternoon to trek North Mountain, where we stumbled upon... Santa Cactus?



(Please note the coals for eyes.) I told him that this year I wanted a GPS for Christmas, and when I got home I traveled back in time three days and ordered one from Amazon. I think he used some sort of hypnosis on me, though I'll never be able to prove it.

Directly across from our spiny friend there was also a heavily decorated mesquite tree. The "top" - in quotations, because this was a broad/general area - had a solar-powered star that I couldn't successfully photograph. While many of the ornaments dangling from the branches were store bought it looked like an equal number were hand made. My favorite was easily this little Cupid:



He shot Edwin and I, and now we're even more studpidly in love, which I didn't even think was possible.

Well... it's about that time to scamper off to bed. Hopefully the dog will relinquish my pillow by the time I'm ready to fall asleep.

[e003] Sleepy Jabbering

Finals are all finally over! I can have a life again! The cockroaches all rejoice, and we join hands and tarsi together in a wild dance of flailing hair and antennae. I have so many fantastic ideas and plans for this winter break, some of which will be easily accomplished, and others that will undoubtedly turn into long-term projects, much like this little journal that I need to start updating regularly... there's something soothing about writing often, even just stream of consciousness, instead of awkwardly trying to punch out a journal entry every month or three in this public cyberspace. It's very uncouth, these hiatuses, and I apologize sincerely for them. I'll try to be a better Troll in the future.

After overwhelming myself with art projects in the last month I'm starting to feel at a loss of what to do first with my free time. There are some unfinished school projects, some pieces I want to rework, and then my own projects, unrelated to any class. Last week I had to stay up four nights (not consecutively, mind you, and each night had a two hour nap) to only get half way through my Drawing final. There were fun moments of microsleeps, in one of which I was convinced for about fifteen seconds that I was named Sally, and there were not-so-fun moments of art-comas immediately afterwards mixed with dreams inside of dreams and sleep paralysis. Now... there is a lot of free time. I still have a job that I regularly go to, but I also have about fifty more hours a week to dedicate to whatever.

Edwin (my fiancé) and I have been cleaning up the house nicely. If there's one thing that finals week proves every time, no matter if I'm taking biology finals or art finals, it's that every room I enter violently transforms into a war-zone. This is only amplified when it involves producing art. My little studio turned into a catastrophe: broken charcoal all over the floor and crushed into the carpet, scraps of paper and graphite pencils everywhere, previously completed projects abandoned left and right, and random articles of clothing strewn about. It's like I turned into the Tazmanian Devil from Looney Toons: I walked into a room, twirled around, and suddenly there was a cataclysm. Much in the same manner, suddenly there was artwork.


(The Comforts of Familiarity - Cubism piece [shown still in progress] with charcoal and pastel. Based off my sneakers, camera, cell phone, laptop, and keys)

Suddenly we have a clean house. Suddenly I'm sitting here, on my futon, after a wonderful evening with some friends, and I'm updating a journal I felt like I would never have a chance to use. I have this free time that I wish I could capture in a jar and preserve with ethanol to admire and use at a later point, when there is more of a dire need for it. Since time can't be captured in such a way I'll have to do the next best thing: spend it with the ones I love, indulge in gratuitous amounts of sleep, and let inspiration carry me away.

On that note: I'm borderline falling asleep typing this. Good night, world.

[e002] More reading

This has been a long, long semester filled with too much homework and not enough socializing. I miss being able to spend time with my friends without having to stress out over the assignments I could be completing. Final projects are sneaking up on me, and plans for changing the house around have been reaching a slow boil in my head. I’m really looking forward to the short break from this busy schedule around Thanksgiving.

School aside, I have been working on my 52 books in 52 weeks goal. This doesn’t mean that I’m in the place that I need to be for this to be accomplished, but all the same I’m not so far behind that it’s impossible. I’m on week 17 and have read only 9 books, the most recent 8 being:

(Angela Cater's The Bloody Chamber, John Steinbeck's Travels with Charley, Euripides's Medea, Stephen King's Misery, Everyman by Anonymous, Shakespeare's Richard II, Goblin Quest by Jim C. Hines, and Moliere's Tartuffe)

I’m almost done reading 3 others:

(Aphra Behn's The Rover, Goethe's Faust, and Robert Atkin's ArtSpeak)

I'm pretty sure that once I can start reading general fiction again I'll be cruising through this challenge.