I decided about bridesmaids - YAYYYAYAYAYAY!!! I'm having 3 and a maid of honor. Geez. Sounds complicated doesn't it?

In other news, saving up lots and lots of money so as to get my fiance from England over here in October. Donations are accepted at any time. :)

It's freakin' snowing outside, like huge snowflakes. You know what the weather forecast predicted 60 F as the high today, it's 32 F. I don't mind snow, but don't you think all us blizzard survivors are rather sick of it at this point?

Found out this guy I don't like from my painting class lives in my building. His whole painting philosophy is, "my way or the high way." He believes there is only one way to paint, and also to get into specifics that mixing paint on canvas is a huge no no and no famous painter would have ever done such a thing. Many painters do mix a bit on canvas. Liz will come by and post and tell you so!

This actually interested me because I have quite a few friends who have spent time in rehab for drug rehabilitation. First off from the pictures Stone Hawk is in a gorgeous setting, but it also has one of the highest success rates across the US for those who leave clean and stay that way. 3 out of every 4 graduates leave and stay clean. They have a drug free approach so participants do not take any medications during their stay. Another thing I think is really positive about this place is that they don't preach to the participants morals and laws. They just try to teach them how to live a lifestyle without addictions. And actually a lot of the staff work there after they finished the program.

drug rehab

Usually my apartment isn't entirely clean, like say I stuff some stuff in the closet until futher notice as I'm having a friend over, or like last week I couldn't keep up on my dishes since I was working all week. Or sometimes it's Opal's toys she's ripped apart and shredded in the living room. Or it's the huge pile of laundry in my bedroom or the bathroom needs a good scrub. In any case usually one of them is never done. I really would like to have the entire place fairly clean. I like it clean. Today I did ALL the laundry I've had. And believe me I've been putting off the loads with sheets and stuff like that because I didn't have enough quarters. Well I went out and got some, did all the laundry and am determined to keep up on it. Then I cleaned all the rest of the apartment and set out some things like, I'll vacuum on this day or I'll do laundry on this day every week. Maybe that'll help me not fall behind in one spot.

Opal is going through a major shedding stage though. I need to get me one of them things to get dog hairs off my clothes.  It's driving me nuts. For those of you with dogs of one color - consider yourselves lucky. I have black hairs on my light clothes and white hairs on my dark clothes. Gotta love them Dalmatian spots. Even if she's a shedding terd and getting hairs all over the carpet too I still think she's the most adorable dog in the world. I can't even step outside without everyone on the street wanting to come say hi to her and see how cute she is. Harhar.

Tired today. Working 40 hours this week on top of full time school =not good. Nothing has happened. If I'm not in school, I'm a work, and if I'm not in either place I'm asleep. *yawn* I have an hour break before I go back and work again tonight - goodie! I can't wait until this weekend I have time off.

Parents want me over for easter. Not only do I not celebrate easter, but since I've been busy this week I REALLY must spend Sunday catching up on school. Saturday no I refuse to do anything on Saturdays. Me time. I get to do what I want. So besides the non-easter part, the schoolwork part, I just for one am not that close to my parents to want to see them.

I think I'm going to go to class while they take attendance and turn in paintings and then leave and skip the rest of the morning. I'm exhausted, my body spent a good part of yesterday rejecting any food I put into it and now since I haven't eaten since Saturday I'm just tired.

Technically I'm not allowed any more absences in that class, but I have a few swear words in mind for that. I missed one for vacation - that was pre planned, one because of a death, and one for illness. This has been one of the hardest times just normal life wise, the classes have been a joke. I honestly could care less if I get a B instead of an A because I missed class four times instead of three.  I'll go and try to pretend like I care, if they notice that I've left oh well. I just need to eat some food and sleep it off.

Feeling a bit blah today. I did work on a painting I have due tomorrow for my figure painting class. However this time we were asked to paint a figure in a landscape and the figure could be any size, the professor says. Mine is a landscape and the figure is about an inch tall. I dislike figure painting - some people enjoy it.

A friend of mine who is a painter said to me today that she wants to use her paintings to change the world. I don't, I want to change the world by recycling, buying products that aren't tested on animals, etc. I want to use my artwork as escapism. It's an escape for me and I want the people who view it to escape too. For me personally there are better more active ways to work on changing the world, than to show it in my work. I want for people to all try and do the earth some good, but at the end of the day after they do and when they come home. I want them to have a nice work of art to look at and feel pleased. I'm quite different from many of my fellow artists in my university in that respect.

My puppy missed me while I was gone, she jumped around like crazy when she saw me when I got back, and now she follows me around the house all sad and afraid I will be leaving her again. Silly puppy.

Update on life:

It goes, other than my exciting news detailed in a private post nothing much else is going on. Blizzardy snow finally left us and we have real ground here again! Weather is warm and I'm loving being outside.

I'm also going in to get officially diagnosed for being OCD - it's about dang time. I've known I was OCD for years. We'll see how that goes.

Trying to figure out a budget for saving for a spring break trip to england and I am quite a bit short. BF and I may have to pull our allowances together and see if we can budget for it together. This also means I may have to turn into  PPP maniac and really get some stuff flowing in. Although I wish I had started to sooner I mean I could have had a lot more saved up to sit on and I don't at this point. I could hypothetically back into my loan a couple hundred, but since that goes through to my family's bank account and I have to get them to transfer they're not going to be happy about it. Maybe I can think up some major excuse for it. I'm just screwed. I hadn't anticipated on going anywhere, and if I don't I'm extremely well set off as far as budgeting and saving, but as it is deciding to go this last minute makes me wish I hadn't been spending anything the last month at all. Had I decided in December I was going to go I'd be much better off. Gah, I am going to need his help on this one, and hopefully PPP can get me somewhere too. I just hope we don't need to dig into his end of the funds too much, as he's saving to move back out here and he needs to keep as much as he's got. He's got laid off a job right now and if he can get a new one soon, then we'd be fine for funds, but if not then we're gonna be pushing it a lot.

Dear Ted,

Woe is me! I must tell you my story! I am an art student of many mediums, one of which is photography. I love taking photographs, especially of where I live, in the beautiful Rocky Mountains. I love to work with film, black and white or color and develop it all in the photo lab at my university. However, I work mainly with a 1980s entirely manual Minolta camera. While it is a lovely and inspiring piece of equipment for my work what I could REALLY REALLY REALLY use to further my education is something more in keeping with today's technology. I want a digital camera Ted!

Not only do I need an update in my life from this piece of technology I have I must also inform you that I am truly not able to develop my own film anymore. This is my true sob story. I am allergic to the chemicals used to develop photopaper and can no longer use my manual camera to develop my own photos, unless of course I want to take them into a photo lab. But what fun is there in that? If I had a new digital camera, a new update to my life I would not only be able to take photos with incredible detail and color, but I would be able to use my computer to develop them how I wish and best of all I could print them out on my own photo printer. This is definitely a dream for an artist.

My dear friend Ted, please get me hooked up with HP photo gear!

Sincerely yours,
C

HP sponsored this post.

digital photography

One big blizzard last week with about 3 feet of snow and another one coming in 3 hours with another 2 feet probably. Loverly ain't it? I best head to the grocery store to stock up like everyone else.

In other news girlies and I are probably going to play D&D soon. First quest in 4 years for me I think. It's been far too long. I still insist I don't like change and want to play 3.0 version. I can't decide between psion or bard so I'm making both characters to see which I like better. We'll see. Anyway it got me and Jessie so excited last night we spent like 6 hours making characters and reading all the books again. It was SOOOOOOOOOO cool.
Jessie, Erin and I all went to Eragon too (my second time). I REALLY like Jeremy Irons. 'Nuff said!

Got scheduled for a 10 hour shift the day after Xmas. Not fun. Considering who in their right mind is going to be coming by the rec center in town when they're still celebrating? Nobody. Especially in the morning, in the afternoon it's open to teen members, but while one or two might stop by that doesn't explain while I am here at 8am doing nothing. My boss explained it to me that our supervisor believes that some may stop by to do registration but logically that would be impossible. Consider that our recreation catalogue with all our classes comes out seasonally. This season has already ended, there are no classes left to sign up for until the next catalogue comes out - in a couple weeks. Soo...there's no registrations to be done. I've sat here all morning and bored my eyes out and I still have a bizillion hours to go. Meh.

In other news I need to appy for new jobs still.

Happy Holidays and best wishes to everyone no matter what you celebrate!

I saw Eragon, not quite like the book, but I don't care. The movie was still good and fun to watch. It was filmed very much like the LOTR style, but eh I don't mind. Besides Jeremy Irons is one good lookin' man he has a great voice for the first part of the movie where he's narrarating. I think John Malckovitch is a good actor too. I always liked him in Man in the Iron Mask too. Anyway it was still good.

The wee doggy is named Opal, she's a sweetheart. We've spent the last week playing and getting to know eachother and exploring the house and neighborhood. Anyway here's a cute picture of little Opal and another one.

FINALLY! I'll be probably getting her tomorrow. She's an 8 month old dalmatian puppy and she's super sweet and mellow. I'm super excited. Tomorrow the dalmatian rescue locally is coming by my apartment to do a home visit, the last step before I get her. Then I'll hopefully and probably get her later that day! Either way I'll likely have her by Thursday. Anyway she's super sweet and I'm psyched to have a walking and hiking buddy, although she gets cold easy so she won't be much good for snowshoeing. We'll have to get her some doggy socks and a doggy fleece. I'm probably going to name her Lola. As in, "Whatever Lola wants...Lola gets..." from Damn Yankees the musical.

However, people are really annoying me with all their comments about getting a dalmatian. If you are under the unresearched and unfactual opinion that they are NATURALLY hyper or incredibly dumb and ditzy go read up online about them. I've done the research for a long time and always knew I wanted a dalmatian. They are among the most intelligent breeds available. They are only hyper if you don't exercise them often enough - like most dogs. They are not naturally hyper and certainly not stupid. So if that's what you belive - don't post it.

Recently I decided to do a bit of decorating in my apartment and my favorite things are like wrought iron candle holders and sconces and wrought iron mirror frames and stuff like that, but it's not very common to find in your average Linens and Things. I enjoy the old look of it all and it really matches my bed and the rest of my apartment. I found this store online, Metal Wall Hangings and they have some really interesting and neat looking wrought iron decor. What I really like best are the neat looking wrought iron candle lanterns that hang from the walls. I could totally use one of those for a present this holiday season! The wall cande sconces are also gorgeous. I love how long and vertical they are and with unique designs too! Check them out, the link is above!

At work from 8am to 6pm today. Bleck - no break cause there's no one to cover me. It's finals week and I'm scheduled for 35 hours - which is ridiculous. Anyway I have no serious finals until Thursday which is logic - which I'll fail anyway, study or not I get the same grades. And Friday morning at 7am is art history. I'll be glad to get that class done. I think the professor is way too uptight for my liking. So tonight I have to get some notecards ready. I'm writing out my logic notecards tonight and my art history ones wednesday night so they're all done ahead of time. Then after I write out art history tomorrow I can study the logic ones and on thurs night all i'll have to do is review the art history ones.

Yesterday I had a painting final - turned in a crappy painting and will probably get an A. Tomorrow I have a three minute group presentation. One girl I'm doing it with wants to pick three chapters and each talk about a chapter - in one minute each? Sounds dumb to me - I'd rather do something a bit more exciting.

I know that many of us round here are travellers and as am I. Here's a good website that can give you all sorts of useful information about travelling. This website lists the top fifty websites about travel. There's websites about individual travel, some about group travel, hotels, and tips. The website is called, 50 Travel Sites - courtesy of Luggage Online. It's really a great resource for anyone looking for great travel deals and discounts. What I also liked is that in their top 50 section they had a listing of websites you could take virtual tours of travel destinations and check out images. That's always very useful if you don't know where you're headed. For those of you who get larger paychecks there's also the luxury travel section as well.

A little panicky about an odd final tomorrow. I've been hearing rumours about how it's meant to be done so I'm running around trying to clarify. I thought that we were supposed to bring in a sheet of our answers to questions that he's given us all semester and then copy those onto the scantron and that was our final. But now other people are saying we actually have to study the questions and he gives an actual final...two VERY different things. I'm trying to figure out if I need to study or not :P