In the Swing of Thing

Obviously it’s been weird trying to get back into the swing of doing classes and there blog updates. Sorry. I’ll try to be more regular.

Not much has been going on. I’m getting use to my new class schedule as well as my roommates. So far my favorite classes are Animation 2 and Artists’ Books. Least favorite is Concept 2. Big surprise.

So. What am I doing in this?

Well, in a class called Arts in Concept we’re comparing music and literature of a time period and sees how it evolves. Kind of cool.

Design 2 is split. Half the time we work on icons and the other half we work of type - this time with it animated and put to audio. The teacher is slowly turning into my favorite teacher here.

Animation 2 is cool since we finally started to work with a 3D animation program called Cinema 4D. Right now we’re finishing a ball bounce. Fun.

Concept 2. Jill. She and I just don’t click. On top of it all year we’re working on branding. Completely not a thing I’m interested in at all.

Artists’ Books is fun. Basically the class is book binding. Yeah, I took one at Moore College, but this on is more focused and has a smaller class. Currently our project is to take a book apart and use the parts to make a sculpture of something that reflects back to the book.

Other than that not much has happened.

I dragged a bunch of people out to Cold Stone the first week because I was craving it all day. 

Cold Stone after dinner.

Sunday night dinners started up the first week with just ordering pizza. Of course even though I call at 3 for a pick up at 4:45 they didn’t have it. Not that it wasn’t ready, but that they didn’t even put the order in so dinner was half hour late.

This late Sunday we celebrated Kevin’s Birthday since we missed it before. We had spaghetti, sauce, and meatball with some rolls and veggies. Then homemade ice cream cake and VEGAN chocolate almond “buttercream” cupcakes with raspberry glaze. Turned out well.

So yeah, not much yet, but things should be picking up soon.

Until later.

Winter's End - For Me at Least

Winter break is basically over now and since I’m about to go back to Florida and warm weather, the winter season is basically over as well for me.

I take off in less than 24 hours and for the first time ever I find that I’m not looking forward to the start of a new term. Normally around the last week I start to get excited and want classes to start and work to come. This year - nothing.

The break was fun, but crazy. Re-doing the house, intensive cleaning, catching up with friends, Christmas, shopping, visiting Philly, seeing my grandparents, going to the movies, New Years, bing with family, Seeing Eye puppy party, New York.... NEW YORK!

Okay, so my grandparents got us tickets to see Newsies on Broadway for Christmas so on Thursday we went up to meet them at my other grandparent’s house. (Dad’s mom hurt her back so my Mom’s Dad - a doctor too - was doing a house call). This way we could see my Dad’s parents before we left.

Anyway, we got up to New York and took a taxi to 51st and 5th - basically St. Patrick’s Cathedral. We toured the different alters to be warm then ventured outside to see the tree in front of Rockefeller Center. 

A few more blocks and we were at Broadway and where we were having dinner - the revolving restaurant called The View. It was really cool and the view was amazing along with the food.

We got out though with only 20 minutes before the play was to start. My siblings and I weaved through the crowds to get in line to enter and by the time our grandparents got there we were almost at the front.

The play was great! The boys were cute, they could sing and dance, and our seats were right in the middle in the 5th row of the ground floor. What a night.

Overall I have to say that it was a good break. Though if I could change anything it would be that day 2 weeks ago where I let Minnie (the cat) go outside. Not a day goes by without me regretting it. I’ve done everything to make it better - posters, Facebook search events, called all the vets in a 25 mile radius, had a friend search the animal shelters, looked in the back yard - she just needed to get to a human that would take her to a hospital. Honestly, between the cold and the storms we’re starting to give up and accept that she’s gone. I’ll still pray, but I don’t have high hopes.

Sorry, to end it on a sour note, but such is life. I hope if you’re in college that you too had a good break. And Happy Epiphany (All King’s Day - Jan 6th)

Christmas Week

Sorry for the lack of photos, my sister has yet to get them to me.

Anyway, Christmas with our families is crazy to say the least. 

The 23rd we did our normal Christmas Eve traditions at home which meant watching “It’s a Wonderful Life” and doing gift exchange between siblings.

The 24th we woke up early to go up to my Mama-Lou’s house (Dad’s side of the family). With my Papa Tom not doing great anymore we went up early to help cook. We left to attend 4:30 mass at the church my parents got married in, then returned for dinner at 6 o’clock.

Being that this family is all Italian we had lots of sea food. Clams, muscles, oysters, scallop, shrimp, lobster, and cod. My one cousin is allergic to shell fish though so he had chicken made special for him and promised to eat it all - of course he didn’t realize that there was a second platter not on the table.

There was too much food in general, as normal, considering the 10 lobster. We only had 3 courses this year as opposed to the usual 4 and by the time everything was cleared and all the gifts opened it was around 11:15.

The next day was Christmas at my Grandma’s house (Mom’s family) and there started off on a not so good note as the power to the kitchen went off for nearly 2 hours early that morning after the turkey went in. Thankfully my dad was able to fix it and we all went down stairs to open the presents. (It’s very different in this family since here all our 1st cousins are much younger and on the other side we are all around the same age.)

Dinner was set to start at 12, but with the power problems earlier it was pushed back to 1. We then faced the question of seating. Originally we were only having about 25 people for dinner. Then the phones started ringing and by the time everything was said and done we had 43 people siting there (though those 16 and under were set up in the kitchen’s breakfast nook.) 

It was crazy let me tell you.

We left that night to go home and the next morning we had our Christmas Day at our house and sent the afternoon with each other.

Over the following week I meet up with my high school friend, my brother had lots of people over, we saw Les Miserables (was good), saw The Hobbit in 48 frames 3D (awesome), played lots of games and just had fun being together.

I hope everyone’s holidays were joyful and I wish you all a Happy New Year!

Good News and Bad News

Right. So the good news is that we finished the house. We now have new carpet, new hardwood floors, new painted walls, newly cleaned rooms, and new carpet.

Of course this means that we can on longer be on the carpet with food or drink which is annoying, but by the time summer rolls around Dad should be fine again.

He also hadn’t wanted to put up a tree this year. 1) We got rid of our 15ft fake tree last year. 2) We haven’t found a new on that fits the new requirements. 3) Dad didn’t want a mess in the newly made room.

However, my sisters and I were adamant on getting one so decided that we would look for a real one and put it all up ourselves. All the boys would have to do is be quiet.

So we got our mom and set out. Of course though it was the 22nd and the roads were packed. First we stopped and got lights, a tree carpet, and water collector. We then set out to the garden shop we know still had some trees before trying the farms. We never actually got there though.

On the way we were passing by the old church were the Boy Scouts sell trees every year. They had just finished the day before, but 2 trees were still there. So we checked it out. Turned out that one of them was great - about 6.5 ft tall with no major holes. There was no sign, no rope, no nothing that indicated you couldn’t just take it - so we did and decorated it that night as a family. It has a few issues, but for a free tree it is great.

On to the bad news.

On Thursday the 20th I let out cat Minnie outside as normal. She is an indoor/outdoor cat and enjoys hunting so I thought nothing of it. That night she didn’t come back before dark (which she normally does in the winter) and we had a rain storm that night. We honestly haven’t seen her since that Thursday afternoon.

We have looked everywhere around the house, but with 55 acres in the back - about 50 of them being woods - it is really hard to even look. I’ve put up notices on Facebook, have the shelters on alert, sent out flyers to our neighbors, but we’re really worried. I honestly think she got hurt in the storm and is unable to get to us. Hopefully she can get to someone’s house and they take her to the vet (which we are contacting the day after Christmas).

All we can do is hope.

I'm Alive

Yeah, it’s been a while. Sorry.

Anyway, getting home was...fine, it just seems like I can’t travel without something happening. I had to fly out of Tampa and leave my car at school so as not to pay for a month of parking. So I scheduled a pickup from a shuttle service I used last year. They comforted it - 10:30 am at Publix - my reservation. My roommate give me a ride and we get there at 10:32. No shuttle. We waited, called dad, waited, and waited until 11 and gave up. Thankfully my fight wasn’t actually until 5 so my dad was able to go on a different shuttle at 2. Fun.

But I got home in one piece. Made my parents see Wreck it Ralph with my youngest sister and I, went out to eat, did some Christmas shopping, had a lazy day, and scheduled a time to see my girls at Moore College.

And that was what I did Tuesday. I took a train a bit before noon and got to the school by 1 and walked around waiting for someone to get out of class. I was very upset to see Moe Brooker’s name not on his door anymore (my Design teacher and the one responsible for me liking design) but he is only teaching Graduate classes from what I hear.

It was a great time. I got to see my old roommate and catch up with most of my friends I left (they were in the middle of finals so were a bit busy), toured the LOVE park with it’s Christmas fair with my old roommate, went out to dinner with some people, and just had a good time.

Originally I was going to stay in Philly, but with my one Grandfather not doing great I decided to take the train to his house instead. Meaning I had to take a train from Philly to Trenton, change trains then go from Trenton to Metro-park. Simple, I’ve done it tons of times when I actually went to Moore, but traveling is impossible for me this year.

It wasn’t big, just that the ticket machine wouldn’t take the debit card, or the credit card, so I finally used cash and got to the platform - only to see the train pulling away. Had to wait another half hour but oh well.

I only stayed at my grandparents house for little over a day but I still managed to help make several hundred cookies, decorate the tree, see my Aunt and Uncle in a small quartet recital, nearly finish a puzzle we have been doing for over a year, and help with Christmas shopping. What can I say, I love my grandparents.

The rest of the week was okay. My sister and brother came home from college on the weekend, we’ve been finishing up the house so all the walls just got painted, carpet is going in today, new furniture comes on Saturday, my youngest sister is starting to learn how to drive (scary), trying to find a tree before Christmas, doing some last minute wrapping...the usual holiday crazies.

For those who care, I really am working on getting online this set up for my work, just half of my work is on the external drive I left in Florida - so it will be a while. And incase I don’t update in time - Merry Christmas!

No More

Finally, finally I get to go home. Well, tomorrow at least.

The rest of the week from the last time I wrote wasn’t that interesting. Since I was getting so much sleep I kept thinking it was the end of the week since the past 2 have kind of blended together.

After Monday I only had animation left and for the first time in nearly a month I didn’t have to go into the labs until after noon. 

We knew we had a lot of layers (20,178 not including the lights and cameras) so in order to export it properly I had to finish the animation on Tuesday.

Therefore Wednesday was dedicated to rendering.

Karim’s job was to figure out how to do it and started at 8 before his morning class. I came by at 12 to help babysit the computers.

We had 7 computers running and it still took 17 hours...

But it went well. The client liked it and the teachers loved that we were actually able to get it out. They talked to us the longest and didn’t even comment on how it looked, just trying to figure out how it was done. We even had our classmates asking us questions. I bet at least 85% of our final grade will be biased on the fact that we got this out.

20,000 + layers, come on, we deserve an A.

A screenshot from the animation. Over break I'm getting vimeo
so you can look at everything then.

Anyway, that was my week. Today was just packing, cleaning, and saying goodbye as people started to leave.

This time tomorrow I’ll be back in Jersey, but for now I have a ‘party’ to get back to.

The Week You Never Want Again

It has been a week? Really? It feels like 2 days and at the same time, a month. That’s what happens when you hardly sleep at night.

But that is what finals are all about.

Let’s break it down shall we.

With this combine project in Motion Design it means one final for three classes which has smaller (but no less important) passes. Then there is the Fine Arts final, and Bio final which is a project.

And guess what! They all have a due date on the same day. December 3rd. (Animation had a pass 2 due Thursday and pass 3 due the 3rd).

On top of that we had spring registration (finally), the Christmas party on Sunday (for which I still needed a present) as well as maintenance coming by to finally fix our sink.

So I needed an attack plan. I had an animation to save and fix, 5 sculptures and objects to make, a nature project to come up with, maintenance to check in on, a present to buy, dinner to make, and decorations to put up.. This is where no sleep comes in.

Basically everyday I would wake up at 9 and opened the door for maintenance, settled them in and got to the labs around 9:45 taking a break for lunch at 11 (unless a morning class which means up at 7). Continue working on animation until 6, dinner, then work on Fine Arts until a sculpture is made (normally done between 3 and 4 am). 

That was the schedule for the week days where I was able to make 5 figures in 4 days. Our sink finally works right without water coming back up, and I registered alright. Got some classes I wanted, one not.

What it looks like in the end. 

The weekend came and so did me going shopping at Home Depot, Jo-Anns, Dollar Tree, Kohl's, Michael’s, Target, and Publix (plus a stop at the beach for some nature).

Saturday was devoted to creating the objects for Fine Arts, painting the figures, and creating their environment. Here was the excitement for the day. I was cutting the basal wood with my box cutter in a very wrong way and slipped cutting my finger. Being stupid I out it under water (it wasn’t deep but angled and bleeding a lot) and the blood wasn’t clotting. Then my sugar level jumped off a cliff (I hadn’t eaten all day) and very nearly passed out. I would have if my roommate didn’t notice and get me an ice pop. 

Fun.

Sunday came and so did the Christmas party. I had to get up at 8 to put the pork in the crock pot and threw some laundry while I finished FA. I wanted to make biscotti and it took 3 tries to get it right. By then it was time to kick out my roommates and decorate. I was running, but I did it.

Pulled pork, pasta, baked potatoes, and biscotti. 14 people, secret santa, dinner, dessert. Perfect.

We had a lot of left overs even with everyone stuffing themselves so I brought it all up to our labs and gave it to those still working (we finished on Friday so we had time to render - my partners job). They were all happy and there were fights over who got what. 

Back to the rooms and I make the last thing for FA (a tinny bouquet of flowers) then do all of Bio. Originally I was going to compose a picture frame with different nature and make a second one with stuff from NJ, but that was boring. Instead I got some empty ordainments from Michael’s and filled them. They look great!

Fluffy beach plant

Acorns

The Beach

Dunes

Spanish Moss

Berries

Plants form the beach

So it is now Monday and I’m still alive. Finger hurts, animation still needs helped, but FA and Bio are done for the year! Only a few more days until I go home!