carnival of desserts...I'm gonna get real fat

Summer is starting to pick up a bit. This is the week that many of my friends are home so I've been having a good time visiting with them. Unfortunately, by monday most people will have gone to summer school or are out of town. The other day Lexi and I went on a grand adventure to Mel's Diner. For some reason we couldn't find the Sunset strip and ended up on an hour long detour towards Malibu. Yesterday I went down to UCLA to visit connor, scott and stephen who are still at school. They were having a Carnival of Desserts where they had all these booths set up and were giving away all sorts of desserts. We waited in line for a caramel apple, but they ran out before we could get to the front of the line. I think I'm a little too obsessed with caramel apples for me own good, but it is definitely my favorite dessert. So instead I got a cotton candy with its sugary goodness. After the carnival thing, we all decided to go see Star Wars. This was my first time going to the movies since early March. It's amazing. It's gotten so expensive that I only go when there's something I really want to see and there just hasn't been anything to peak my interest lately. I'm glad I went to see Star Wars though. I liked it better than the other two prequels and I still believe that Hayden Christensen is very cute, even if his acting is pretty flat. My only regret is that I decided to break in my new shoes the day I was going to ucla. Their campus is so huge and spread out and we walked a bunch. My feet hurt, but they feel fine today and I think the shoes are sufficiently broken in now.

In the meantime I've been reading a lot and have wanted to bolster my portfolio seeing as I have this month off. I'm really in need of a slide projector to do this cool art project, so if anyone has one I can borrow, please let me know!! I guess I've been rejuvinated by the idea that I may need to put together a portfolio if I continue on with school, or even if not then I'll need one for interviews. I think I've figured out my grad school dilemma. What I am going to do is apply to all the grad schools I'd want to attend, then I'll hear back in March, then if I get a scholarship or if it's somewhere I can't pass up I might go, and if not then I still have plenty of time to find a good job. The only thing lost if the application fee, and that's worth spending I think.

This is one of the graphic design pieces I've been working on this week. It's a 360 panorama of my freshman dormroom which I am painstakingly illustrating in photoshop. It's driving me crazy now, but I think it'll be worth it and look nice when it's done. It's not complete yet, obviously. I'm not sure what size it'll appear as here.

I'm going to quit and join the circus

Now that it's summer time and I've settled into the routine of doing nothing, inevitably all I can think about is school. Well not school exactly, but what I'd like to do as far as school in the future. So when I entered into undergrad I had decided that the job I want to get doesn't require a graduate degree and is based mainly on what kind of design you can do and the portfolio you have. In the back of my head I know that. Going to grad school would be adding on two extra year's tuition for a job that I probably could get with a bachelor's. I kind of want to go though. It dawned on me that I only have two years of undergrad left until graduation and going into the real world and it scares the crap out of me. All of my friends will be going to grad school so I would be the first one out working. Places like this and this keep going through my head. It doesn't help that the other day I mentioned to my mom that it would be really cool to go on to grad school and she said easily "Sure, go for it." I don't think she realized what kind of financial committment that is though. The tuition money, however, is a really big consideration that I dont think I could handle, especially for a degree which might not even be important. I can't put myself into a $40,000 debt just on the whim that I want to continue school. I think this will take more research than just a pro and con list so here's the plan. I want to be able to teach graphic design in a good university one day (not high school!) so I'll have a chat with my design teachers next fall and see what they did and if they went on to get a master's or if they just established themselves in the field. I'm also going to check with my graphic design friends and see what they're planning to do. I also have contact info for some students who just went through the Yale MFA program so I may email them and get their thoughts. Can there really be an academic side to graphic design that merits going on to school or is it something you just pick up along the way? I guess this will take a lot more time to figure out, and I know no one really cares because everyone else has their own schooling crisis but it helps for me to get it all out.

I was so confident about what I wanted. What happened? I read an article in Time magazine a few weeks ago called "Meet the Twixters" which I think contributed to my grad school freak out. It was about this new generation between youth and adulthood where people are not growing up as fast as they did 30 years ago. The article posed the question "What are they waiting for? Who are these permanent adolescents, these twentysomething Peter Pans? And why can't they grow up?" Maybe unnecessarily, but it sent me into a bit of a quarter life crisis. I come home a lot. I'm close with my family. I don't date all that much and am nowhere near having a serious boyfriend. Very soon I'll be graduating and entering into a mundane world of cubicles and scenes from Office Space. Deadlines! The article went on to talk about how "In the past, people moved from childhood to adolescence and from adolescence to adulthood, but today there is a new, intermediate phase along the way. The years from 18 until 25 and even beyond have become a distinct and separate life stage, a strange, transitional never-never land between adolescence and adulthood in which people stall for a few extra years, putting off the iron cage of adult responsibility that constantly threatens to crash down on them. They're betwixt and between. You could call them twixters." They were mentioning that this one guy went to school for 6 years and came out with a degree in cognitive science and couldn't find a job so he had to become a waiter. Is that going to be me?

I guess the meltdown is a little dramatic and not warranted because things seem to have a way of working out, but it's something to be thinking about over the next year and something probably a lot of people have to think about.

Dream of silver screen quotations

I was driving around the other night with no destination in mind when I got a call from my mom at work saying that it was a really slow night at the hospital and if I wanted to come in for a few hours to visit it would be a good night for that. So I headed to the hospital and went to the nursery. I spent a few hours feeding newborns and hanging out with my mom. Then around 2 am the lady who was in labor gave birth and I got to be in the room and observe it! Sure, we told the patient I was a nursing student, but she didn't mind that I was there. Plus, I think when it's your 3rd kid you could care less who is there. So i was standing quietly in the corner trying to stay out of the way and be invisible when one of the nurses asked me to come over and help her. I did and she said "Here, hold the patient's other leg back because we don't have enough people to do it." So I did! I was freaking out because I didnt want to screw up. The doctor had just come in from home and the labor had progressed so fast that he didn't even had time to change so he was wearing a polo shirt and a floppy hat and had barely gotten his scrub boots on. He was a little intimidating. So i got to see the birth right up close. The chord was wrapped around the kid's neck too so the doctor had to cut it and the kid had to be put on the bag that they do to babies who have trouble breathing. It was scary, but kind of what I expected a birth to look like. Painful! I'm not looking forward to going through labor and having babies in the future, but I don't think seeing what it looks like with stop me. Anyway, it was very interesting.

Yesterday, my family and I met my roommate Nana in Chinatown to celebrate her graduation. She's going on a month long trip to England, around europe, thailand, and to australia. Lucky girl. I think that would be a really fun thing to do after graduation. Except I would probably go to England, Ireland, Scotland and then around Europe rather than Thailand or australia. I guess I better start saving now. haha.

I've been home for a while now and have soaked up about as much relaxation as I can handle. I'm usually a busy person and I like it. But I'm in the mood for a drive down the coast to Santa Barbara. Maybe when more people come home and it warms up, it'll be time for a beach trip.

I'm a charlotte now

Congratulations! You are Charlotte.


Which Sex and the City Character Are You?
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So I've transitioned from being Miranda to being Charlotte. It's fitting seeing as my attitudes about things have changed over the year.

Oh, HAPPY BIRTHDAY KRIS! You can officially say that you're in your 20's...scary thought. I hope you had a fun birthday.


In other news, I went on a bike ride this morning with my dad. I am so out of shape! We rode down the bike path by the wash. After getting a mouth full of bugs, it got really hot outside and on the way back I started to get really dizzy. This continued and then I started to feel a little sick so we headed home. I fainted a few times in high school due to either being too hot, dehydrated, or not eating well so I know the signs so I sat down for a few minutes and all was well. I'm feeling much better now, but I think I'm gonna start hitting the gym (with air conditioning) more often this summer to get into shape. Especially when summer school starts and I have the frustration of sitting through 6 hours of oceanography a day to work out.

There's a boy i think is interesting...I haven't liked anyone since february or so, but I'm tired of pursuing things with people so if this happens then I'll be happy, but if not I'm fine as well and I won't have to be embarassed because I acted retarded pursuing a relationship that was one-sided. No big thing. In the meantime, lots of swing dancing.

I think I've got my hands full with leading this unitarian group at usc next year. Each new student gets mailed a brochure about the various groups on campus and then they can go online and check which ones theyre interested in learning about. I got an email from the reverend at the office of religious life saying that they'll start receiving web based inquiries about various groups starting in June. They'll forward me the contact info of people who checked my section or anything having to do with unitarianism and then I'll have to respond to them with information about meetings, information, etc. Scary! My fall schedule is going to be so hectic, especially at the beginning of the year with sorority stuff, so looks like I should start pretty soon putting together meeting times, places, and programming so I don't have to do it later. I have a lot of good ideas though about different meetings. Eeeek, I really want the group to do well, i guess I'll just see how it goes.

In other things, I finally finished moving out yesterday. Yep, it only took me 3 days. It wasn't a smart idea to go there yesterday either since it was the official move out day and apparently nobody started doing anything until yesterday so students were running around crazy trying to get everything done. We squeezed about 20 people into the elevator too. And then I had a hard time getting everything to fit into what we lovingly call "Big Red", my mom's tiny little red Ford Fiesta and I smacked my head really hard on the door trying to cram my bike in. But i made it! Congrats to Nana who is graduating and boldly going out into the real world. I can't believe I'm already a junior.

Absolutely nothing else going on. I think I'll go back to sleep. Dang, I'm boring.

Summer is officially here

I'm at home for "summer" which is about a month and will be heading back to school on June 27th to start summer school. Everything worked out. I was able to rearrange my summer housing contract to start later, registered to take Oceanography this summer which i needed to get done at some point, and am pretty happy to have this month off to relax. I'm not the happiest at the way things worked out, but I suppose things could've been worse and I'm still going to be getting a lot done. Bring on the 105 degree temperatures, ugh.

Home is nice. I guess I got out earlier than most people. I had my last final, Record Production Management, on Friday and kicked ass on it. It was only a 2 unit class, but with all the copyright jargon and laws I had to memorize, I was worried I wouldn't do well on it. I spent yesterday packing up all my apartment stuff and taking half of it to the storage unit. The storage place had this horrifying rickety freight elevator you had to take to get to the 8th floor. It was the kind that you manually operate and have to stop at exactly the level of your floor. I was worried I was gonna fall out and plummet to my death.

All my finals went pretty well I think. I got an A- on my French oral exam which is nice seeing as I bumbled my way through conjugating and it took me about 5 minutes to spit out a sentence. I guess they are pretty leniant with us. I think I'd get some strange looks if I went to France and actually tried to speak. I had to write 3 essays about postmodernism in art and various things for my Visual Culture Final. Even though I brought most of my stuff to storage, I have filled my living room with even more bins full of clothes and apartment objects. I don't know how I accumulated so much junk. I need to economize.

Not much is going on. I know it sounds boring, but this inbetween week when people are still finishing finals is such a nice rest. I will probably spend the next week or so laying around like a braindead blob, then when I snap out of it I'll work on seriously getting this sorority website done and online, organize some UU programming b/c apparently I'm leading this group at SC next year, and go out with friends (swing dancing anyone?).

Oh oh! I almost forgot. My family is getting a puppy. We found this breeder up near sacremento and we placed an order for either a creme or an apricot colored toy poodle. The litters are being born probably this week and then they stay with their moms for a few weeks, then we get to drive up and pick him up. He'll probably pee on me on the drive back. We're all really excited because since Taz died, we've really missed having a dog around. I think we might name him a strange russian name because I'm really tired of seeing dogs named "Fluffy" or "Butch". We're leaning towards Mouska (not sure on the spelling) which means something like "Little dear one". I always hate when people do the traditional poodle haircut with the puffs around the legs, we prefer to let the dog get as fluffy and unrecognizable as possible.