All the Activities Went Crazy

Sorry for the late update. The week was really busy.

Not with classes. No, those are going normal.

The real thing that kept me going crazy thins week was all the clubs I’m in and extra things that had to get done.

This year I’m in 4 clubs, that’s 2 more than last year, and it seemed that this week they all had something crazy going on.

Ministry of Magic had a fundraiser on Wednesday selling butterbeer and t-shirts. That lasted from 11-3 but thankfully it wasn’t that hot of a day. 

After that I went to see my counselor to keep her in the loop about graduate school. I brought the binder I had made with all the school information organized as well as the notebook with the summarized notes. She was very impressed with the amount of research I have done, my organization, and my timeline for the next year concerning application. I will be more or less applying to all the schools I find.

By the time that was all done I had 3 hours of down time before going over to the Goldstein Kitchens and helping the AIGA club bake cupcakes for the fundraiser sale that was happening the next day. It lasted another few hours and by the time we were done we had 168 cupcakes and I had very sore feet.

Moving on to Saturday I had a very early morning. The acapella group was doing our first community event by signing the Star Spangled Banner at the beginning of a heart and stroke foundation walk. We had been told that we would be singing at 7:15 so we wanted to meet as a group to drive over together at 6:30 meaning I was up around 5:45am. Normally I’m up early for a college kid - 8:30 - but this was insane.

We got to the location and found out that they changed all the times and we weren’t needed until 8:30 so we decided that we would go down the street to the farmer’s market to get some food. Somehow our conductor started talking with this old man who found out we were a singing group. He asked us to perform at his little restaurant for his wife and that he could get us some good community exposure. In the end we promised to stop by if we had people after the other event.

The Star Spangled Banner went well but our numbers got cut in half as 3 out of 6 cars left to go back to school due to work deadlines and the already hour delay. Nearly half the people left were new-bees and we didn’t know any of the arrangements. In then end we had 15 minutes to learn the some Some Nights before we headed back to meet the old man.

We did surprise his wife a lot as we just walked through the door singing. Only one table had people but she was so happy that it didn’t matter. We latter learned that it was the couple’s anniversary.

Saturday night also has anime club and so my day lasted until 1 am - ending up o be about 20 hours. The good thing was that we had 7 new-bees there that stayed the whole time! Things are looking up for this club.

Finally I got to Sunday. A meeting with my partner for some light Design homework, acapella practice - we started learning a Harry Potter song - then supporting the Mixer club and my friends in it by buying some fried rice at their Maid Cafe fundraiser.

I hen had to get dinner ready. This week we had baked chicken parmesan, penne pasta with sauce and some french bread. For dessert I made a cookie that was a peanut butter dough with smashed pretzel combined with a chocolate chocolate chunk and caramel dough baked together. There was nothing left. 

So yeah, the clubs are killer sometimes but really, I’ld be so bored without them.

It's Only Been a Week?

If I had to sum up the week in one word it would be LONG. Honestly, looking back it seems crazy to think that some of the things only happened a week ago.

First off let’s start with school.

Not interesting really.

Art History is boring - modern architecture is ugly in my opinion. Animation is slow - we started making animated postcards but everyone got really confused in about 30 seconds so we had to slow down. Concept is nothing - we’re going over how to do a good 1 minute pitch. Psychology is non existent - since it was 9-11 this week we talked about what everyone was doing that day. And finally Design which is just confusing - I like my branding designs one minute, hate them the next, fix it, love it again, think it looks to student like, then change it again. It’s a crazy cycle.

Anyway, I mentioned 9-11.

Yeah I know, with all the talk it has gotten it’s getting to be a bit old...well I think it is.

We talked about it a bit in Psych. Our teacher brought her husband in who talked about loosing his brother - he worked in the second tower a floor above where it was hit. We then went around and talked about what we remembered from that day. It really depended on where you were from. Those of us from the tri-state area remembered those from Florida or the West Coast. On top of that we were in what 4th, maybe 5th grade. Soon college kids won’t even remotely understand since they were too young to remember.

For my family we’re just happy. Happy that my Grandfather is alive. He was suppose to be flying that day - on one of those planes I think too - but his boss pulled him over a day earlier at the last minute so he wouldn’t be flying on his birthday. 

This year he turned 78.

Personally I don’t remember much. Kids got pulled out of school when they weren’t expecting to be picked up. The teachers kept walking in to each other’s rooms and talking quietly. Dad was waiting for us in the doorway when we got off the bus. American flags were on everyone’s mailbox for a week. No one told us what had happened for a while.

A few years later I found the middle school and high school kids all watched the live footage...that must have been hard.

Okay enough sad talk. Good things happened this week too!

I had an interview for a babysitting job. The parent’s were looking to find someone to be their regular go-to sitter. A quick - and I mean quick - interview at Starbucks later and I have the job! No dates yet but they said soon.

We also had 3 people come to anime club on Saturday and stay the whole time! Now they just have to do it every week.

The new season of Legend of Korra started on Friday and we’ve added it to the cue in anime club. If you haven’t seen it yet I would recommend it.

Ummm....that’s it? I think so. 

Okay, so it might not seem like a lot, but really 5 classes, 4 clubs, homework, research, Sunday dinner,.... it’s a lot.

A Simple Week

This past week was actually quite simple.

There was no history since I only have it on Mondays and it was Labor Day. Animation basically didn’t happen either. The first lesson of the week was on Monday - again, Labor Day - then on Thursday it was decided that we would go watch the animatic thesis presentations by the seniors. Only one person was where he was suppose to be though. We also had it confirmed that our class will have to do two different thesis’ - one in the fall and the other in the spring of our senior year. I don’t really know why. Something about how the seniors last year said they got board.

Anyway, moving on.

In Design we have been working on flushing out our icons and starting to design stationary headings for our ‘companies.’ Concept has been simple with refining the concepts for our InDesign files.

Finally there was Phycology. We watched a movie. No, not more Phineas and Ferb, the  movie from over the summer, Now You See Me. I saw it in the theaters but I still enjoyed it.

Other than that....I had a meeting with Ed, my department head (yeah I know it rhymes) about graduate school. It has always been the plan to get a masters right after undergrad, the only questions were for what and where.

We talked and made a decision. Since I would love to work at Disney Imagineering he thinks that I should look at Game Design master programs.

I makes sense when you think about it. Imagineering is about designing rides, theme parks, parades ... with game design I would focus on environment design - how to make it interesting and more a person through it with fun interactions. That, coupled with Motion Design, I should be set.

So while I didn’t really have homework all weekend I spent about 8 hours looking up schools for both animation and game design master programs. So far I have a new book with pages on some different colleges. I have location, length of program, tuition, and application process all written down. I have also started organizing a binder to keep print out pages that go more in depth.

Over all I have 8 places I know I’ll be sending applications to next year. I’m not going to let my portfolio hold me back this time.

Not much else happened. I had meetings for 4 different clubs during the week and made Belgian waffles for Sunday Night Dinner with the new waffle iron my Mom bought us at the beginning of the school year.

Honestly, if every weekend is like this I’ll be happy. I could finish all the prep work for grad-school and even work on some personal projects I’ve been planning.

I can only hope.

Labor Day 2013

The last week has flown by really fast. 

All of the classes are actually getting into work, so I have already started doing homework up until 12 midnight. Not crazy late yet...key word: yet.

Brief overview:

Animation: started getting a bit more into Nuke, not that we have actually done anything yet. Still just learning how to put things together.

History: Not really interesting. The best part is that she puts on a film or something after break and once it is done we get to leave. Therefore we normally get out early.

Design: Sometimes it seams like I completely understand, then 2 seconds later I have no clue what Dorian wants.

Concept: Nora is really great with telling us exactly what she wants. This past week we have been learning a rhetoric and how it is used in ads.

Physic: We’re learning about Id, Ego, and Super-Ego so I convinced our teacher to put on an episode of Phineas and Ferb that actually talks about it.

So there are all the classes. I also had my first meeting of Ministry of Magic - no one new showed, first meeting of AIGA - coming up with a bake sale soon, and the second meeting for Anime club - had about 10 new people!

Our department also had their meeting and mixer party. It’s really boring after a few years but you get pizza. 

Labor Day also just happened - summer is now even more over. Our school didn’t have classes so a few friends and I went to see The Butler at the movies. We all really enjoyed it. 

Not much else happened to ‘celebrate.’ Finished up homework and applied for a dozen or so babysitting jobs...we’ll see if anyone replies but I don’t have my hopes up. 

First Week of Third Year

So the first week of classes has gone by and already I can see long nights in my future.

This term I couldn’t sign up for classes to take just for fun, it just wouldn’t fit into my schedule. Instead I’m taking my three core classes plus two classes that fulfill graduation requirements.

Let’s start at the beginning shall we?

First class that I go to is Animation 3 which is being taught by a teacher named Dante. He’s really fun and easy to learn from. He also loves Christmas music and Disney in general! Anyway, in his class we’re going to be learning how to use the compositing program Nuke. We’ve only done a small exploration and I already love it a thousand times more than After Effects.

Next on my schedule is History of Modern Architecture. I need to take 3 advanced Art Histories to graduate with completing my minor and this one sounded interesting. The class is okay. I’ve only had it once so far and we watched a documentary about a modern bridge being built... The teacher is old and likes her order in her classroom. Other than that I can’t say much, I need a few more classes.

Up next is Design 3 with Dorian again, he’s still as easy going as before. So far we have started on one of our first projects about branding and just finished up presentations about the companies we created to design for. My company is called Artillery Squid. I’ve changed my mind a few times so it is either a cookware company or a jewelry company that makes it’s stuff from shrapnel. I’m still debating.

After that comes Concept 3 and no Jill in sight! We have a newly hired teacher named Nora who is very organized. Again, we haven’t done much since it has only been one week but it does seem like the term will be spent more on finding new concepts rather than getting a style frame to look right.

Finally I have Phycology of the Arts with a teacher named Poppy. So far we have built small lego statue to introduce ourselves. It was really fun and a good way to remember who is in the class. We didn’t really get into what we will be doing for the term but it seems like it will be interesting.

Other things have been happening to as it was the first week back.

Everything with the Anime Club had to be signed and turned in to the new Organization Director. We have already met a few times since our club is so different and doesn’t want funding. We have a meeting this week to discuss it since she doesn’t really understand how we could be considered a club if we don’t fill out financial records, do fundraisers, go to leadership meetings, and attend SGA meetings ... all things you have to do to keep you club recognition up.

We have meet once so far though. On Saturday, after the club’s fair the night before, we had our first meeting and actually had 6 new people show up. I don’t know if they will all come back, but I hope at least one does.

We have also started Sunday Night Dinners again, though this year it will be at 6 pm instead of 7. For the first cooked meal I made a 3 cheese sauce from scratch witch was then combined with pasta an bits of ham and baked. I also made a quick tomato mozzarella salad and chocolate almond buttercream cupcakes (again from scratch). It was fun cooking again but the hours on my feet were long and painful.

Oh, my feet.

So you might remember the set back I had before with the stitch abscess. Well that area finally closed up and I just finished my antibiotics when another area got troublesome.

A bit further down the incision was a spot that early in the week was squeezing out some fluids. I kept a bandaid on it but on the day I got off my medicine it started squeezing out a thicker fluid that was no longer fairly clear. After pinching it to get it all out I found another stitch come out too.

Great.

I had to make sure that that was everything from the new hole before calling home. Needless to say that the next few hours were spent going back and forth between my Mom, Grandpa, and even my doctors father (who works with Grandpa).

In the end it was decided that these stitches were the ones that are left in to be absorbed. My foot didn’t like s few of them so decided to push them out rather than dissolve them. I now have to keep it bandaged as it heals over and have been put back on antibiotics again.

Fun.

Well, I think that’s about it. Not much else here is that interesting. 

Last Two Weeks of Summer

Sorry again for the 2 week update but a lot has happened.

These were the last 2 weeks in my summer and because of that everything was going on. 

Michael, Katie and Amanda all went tubing in the Delaware River. They said it was just like a lazy river ride at a water park but with paddles.

I went with Dad to drop of a Grease car in North Jersey and saw my old baby sitter, Lea. She was at Union High School when my dad was working there and we lived with my grandparents. She did stage crew and was one of the people Dad taught everything to and brought to help him when he had work at other places. I was maybe 6 last time I saw her.

This past Wednesday was my last doctors appointment and we finally figured out the trick. On the occasions where we got there early the office was over an hour behind so that day we got there just on time. I didn’t even have enough time to get out of the bathroom after checking in before we were called.

To bad it couldn’t be that simple for the whole appointment.

They took the bandages off and I noticed that a small area had blood stains. I told the doctor and after he removed the remaining stero-strips we found the problem. A stitch was still in the incision and created a stitch abscess. Basically he had to find it, remove it, clean the wound, and bandage it. He used some silver nitrate - felt really weird - and another stero-strip with a band-aid that I have to change every day.

In the end about an inch of the incision was still open that day.

Before I forget, here are some before and after shots of my foot. Look how straight it got!

(The left foot is still swollen but you can see the difference.)

Friday, my last day at home, was crazy.

Amanda had been at band camp all week - 13 hours a day - so Friday was the ‘End of Band Camp’ party at 3:00 after their early dismissal. I was allowed in the pool and actually went down the slide (that was a stupid move since I hurt my foot) but I spent the whole time on a floaty since I couldn’t kick.

Lost of people came. Three of my friends and about 50 people from the band. The food was good, the day was nice, the only problem was that the people wouldn’t leave. It finally got to be 11 pm when we went down to the pool (my friends and I had gone inside) and more or less told everyone to go home. 

Regardless, it was nice to be able to go in the water.

So Saturday comes and my mom and I have this plan: get on the plane, get the rental car, pick up my car from the storage unit (most likely jump it), check into school, pay the tuition, and move into the room.

Basically everything went wrong.

The plane was an hour late, a guy ahead of us for the rental cars was an ideate who took almost half an hour, my car was dead but after using the rental car and a guys big pick up truck we still couldn’t jump it and had to move on. At the school I could check in but couldn’t pay for the term since the offices were closed. AAA came to the car, got it working but found that my battery was at 0 charge so got to the car shop to re-charge it fully. There they tried to save it but it was beyond dead so I needed a new one. We finally get to the room, get help with the boxes, and I only have an hour before my feet feel like they would fall off. I went with mom to the hotel for the night, took off my shoes and saw that my left foot was nearly twice its normal size.

Yeah, not a fun day.

Today was better though. After breakfast we went to Target and BJ’s to get everything for the ‘apartment.’ Then we went back and mom worked on the kitchen while I did my room. A break for Panera and 2 more hours before everything was done. We even had half an hour to relax before Mom had to leave to get to her flight home.

As it is Sunday we had Sunday Night Dinner. Just pizza since we were all still settling in, but it was great. We also had a cake from BJ’s to celebrate Paige’s Birthday. 

Everyone hung out for 2 hours and it was nice to see everyone again. While I do have to start classes tomorrow I don’t start until after lunch. I’ll tell you all about it next week!

Week at the Beach

Okay, really sorry about the late post...2 weeks late I think.

Not much happened the first week. Doctors appointment, a few more walks, hanging out with mom and Dad. Same old stuff.

Now the following week is where it got interesting and in order to make this post less than 6 pages long I’m going to take a page out of my sister’s book and tell you with the pictures.

First off let me say that the beach is beautiful especially when the sun is rising. I say it nearly every day last week with the number of early risers we had there.

Every morning from about 10 am to 1 pm or so nearly everyone would go down to the beach. I unfortunately couldn’t join them with my foot still wrapped but I just did other things with them. Amanda got back from her 3 week camp and joined us at the beach on Tuesday. She says she had fun.

One morning a mini golf course was having a tournament so Michael, Katie, Uncle Patric, and my cousin Caitlyn went. Mike and Kate got the worst scores and actually got a prize for it - a golf ball.

My Aunt Jenny had been trying to have a kid for 8 years and after something like 6 miscarriages gave up with news that her body couldn’t do it and went for adoption. My cousin Oliver was adopted little over 3 years ago on the day of his birth and everyone thought that was is. Then a month ago she tells us she’s pregnant and during the week she found out the gender and told us with a cake. Oliver is still convinced its a boy though.

My brother’s girlfriend, Tatiana, stopped by on Thursday since it was there 1 year anniversary. Of course it was the one rainy day so they couldn’t even go on the beach, something the little girls weren’t thrilled about. We had to find another way to entertain them so bracelet making and Disney movies it was.

Victoria’s birthday is actually today but we celebrated it early so it would be with the family. It’s weird to think that she is 15 now, I was there to see her the day she was born.

My Grandma, who won’t even go onto the sand let alone in the water, went parasailing. Needless to say we needed to get some photographic evidence.

Long Beach Island, Beach Haven. Seriously if you’re ever there during season you have to stop by the Show Place. The ice cream place that makes you sing. And make sure you ask them “What flavors of ice cream do you have?” No, I don’t care if it’s on the menu, ask it if you want to smile.

And what beach week isn’t complete with a few books read.

So there it is a week at the beach.