Pumpkins scream in the dead of night

I think I'm getting old. This is Halloween weekend and homecoming and there were about 1,000 possibly fun places to be each night, and I got completely worn out before I hit saturday evening. I ended up staying in my room last night watching episodes of Arrested Development with my roommate and drinking tea. Friday night we had a Halloween/Homecoming party with Kappa Sigma, who we were paired with for homecoming. Each year I end up thinking about a costume I want to wear for the following Halloween and the whole year I was thinking I might be a harlequin. It's a ballerina type thing with black and white costume and i was thinking how cool it would be to get really into it and whip out the ol' pointe shoes and dye one white and one black. Of course, I wake up two days before the halloween party realizing that I haven't put together a costume and I ended up being a plain old fairy and joined the ranks of the billion other girls who were also fairies.

This is what a harlequin looks like minus the weird goth fairy thing going on:



This is what I ended up as:



The halloween party was fun and then Saturday I went to the Wash. St vs. USC game. My brother and 3 of his friends came along which was nice, but way too early in the morning. I always enjoy when my family comes down for the games. In fact, next weekend my entire family is coming to Stanford. My dad has never been to a game and he really liked going at the University of Colorado so I think he'll have fun. I discovered that Mamosas may just be the perfect morning game drink if you're wanting to drink before the game but don't like beer or want to get trashed by drinking jack and coke. eww. Even though I drenched myself in SPF 45 before the game, I still came home with a bad sunburn. How does that happen? After the game there was an 80s party to go to but I was too tired and decided to be a hermit for the evening instead.

I missed out on a lot of things that I like to do for Halloween though. Being my favorite holiday, I love to go to a pumpkin patch and pick out pumpkins and carve them and bake the seeds. Skipped it this year. I also like to watch at least two halloween movies...haven't done that yet, but I might pop in Nightmare Before Christmas later. I had plans to go to Knotts Scary Farms but I got really busy this year, which probably wasn't the worst thing since I'm terrified of haunted houses and I don't know why I subject myself to them every year. I usually help out at the Halloween carnival for kids on the adpi lawn, but i had class so i couldn't do that. I think we're at the middle age where you can't really do the halloween stuff you enjoyed as a kid until you have kids, so for now it's all about parties and wearing the most scandalous costumes possible. So all in all, Halloween passes without much ado and I guess I'll be looking forward to Christmas.

I found I could say things with color I couldn't say any other way...things I had no words for

Perhaps the thing I love most about being a design major is that when midterm time roles around, it's never a chore in that class. There aren't hours of cramming and studying in the library. Sure, I've got french and bio and other academic classes I've got to cram for so it's not all fun and games, but design midterms, even if we have to write an essay, always make me happy. For my design class this semester, I have to write an essay about some articles we were supposed to read. The first was about creativity and what methods we employ to inspire creativity. We also have to talk about the state of today's design awareness and how that hinders the ability of today's designers to create effective work. Isn't that quite possibly the easiest midterm you've heard of? I think that's how you know you've chosen the right major...when even something that's supposed to be tedious and overwhelming makes you excited. As I was reading this article about the process of design and creativity, I saw a paragraph that made me so excited that i get to be a designer. It said:

"It begins with deep digging. You're the excavator. Archaeologist. Explorer. You peek under the mundane to find the magical. Others can sit at desks and study demographics. You sit at Starbucks and study people. Others search archives. You search antique shops. You haul up buckets of data and information, but you're mining for insights. You don't just want ages, genders and zip codes. You want to know about their theme songs, water-fountain gossip and favorite hangouts. You don't just want to hear about personality sets. You want to know what makes them laugh, cry and scream. You stop, look and listen. You explore."


I have an academic advisement this thursday with my very scary and intimidating advisor. I like to go in with the classes I want to take already picked out so that I can get in and out of her office quickly without her biting my head off. Here's what I think I'm going to take in the spring.
*Writing 340
*Printmaking 1
*Advertising Design and Production
*Advanced Design Topics
*Digital Tools for Design

From fun to midterms

I'm avoiding studying for my french midterm with anything and everything that will distract me for a few minutes. I don't know how my week has come to this. Last week was so amazing. On Wednesday I went to see the Kirov ballet perform Sleeping Beauty at the Dorothy Chandler and it was incredible. The costumes and scenery were phenomenal and all the dancers looked really really Russian. A lot of the crowd was Russian too. Almost everyone I walked by during the intermission had a thick Russian accent. I felt displaced. The whole night was wonderful, the only down side was that our seats were in the highest balcony and I'm terrified of heights. The walk up to our seats was miserable because the walls in the lobby are covered with mirror from top to floor which gave me an even worse sense of vertigo and I ended up having to take the elevator when the rest of my house walked up the stairs without a problem. Having our seats that far above the stage freaked me out and once again images of me falling over the railing and plummeting to my death kept racing through my mind, but once I was seated for a few minutes things got better and I was able to enjoy the ballet. What a beautiful show.

This Saturday night after we kicked some Arizona ass in football, I headed to the Franz Ferdinand concert with Brigitte, Connor and Scott. We were late, but I don't think we missed anything with the opening bands. One guy in the opening band had an amazing Gandalf beard. It was out of control. I dont even know what band it was, all I could think about was his excessive amount of facial hair. I ordered a coffee at the food stand, but found a piece of onion in my drink...too gross. The theater wasn't even full because they had roped off the entire back two sections so it felt like a small concert even with a band as big as Franz Ferdinand. I had a great time. They played a lot of songs from their first album which I was glad about and their scottish accents and floppy hair were too adorable. Here are some pictures.



The view from our seats



Our attempts to concoct a new facebook picture for me by using Connor's recently purchased Franz Ferdinand poster as a background failed miserably, but at least we had a good laugh.

I would rather dance as a ballerina, though faultily, than as a flawless clown

It's been a long time since I've updated, but my life has mainly consisted of running to class and working on projects so you didn't miss anything. I had my sorority semiformal invite on Friday night and it turned out to be a lot of fun. Especially when I think about how bad it could have been. This time, I had a hard time finding anyone who was free that night, so after asking like 5 people, I gave in and asked one of the girls in my house, Lauren, to set me up. I hate blind dates more than anything. Not only do I clam up with people I don't know well, but what if they aren't nice or don't like to dance? Lots of things could have gone wrong. But luckily, everything worked out for the best. I went with the roommate of Lauren's boyfriend who was very nice and we had a good time. The venue was this club on Melrose, but it reminded me kind of a warehouse. It was next to a furniture store that specialized in rugs and a psychic with one of those neon signs outside that you always see at psychics. I ended up taking off my shoes right when we got there, which I do at every invite. It was pretty hot inside, so we both agreed not to dance all that much. Overall, it was a pretty laid back invite and I'm just happy that it worked out as well as it did. I would post pictures from the night, but I didn't like the way any of them came out, so use your imagination.

This week is going to be so much fun. Tonight I'm going to the ballet! I'm going to see the Kirov Ballet perform Sleeping Beauty and I couldn't be more excited. Last December, I bought tickets for my family to go up to San Francisco to see The Nutcracker so when my sorority mentioned that we were going to Sleeping Beauty, I was over the moon. Ballet used to be such a huge part of my life when I was younger, it's weird to think about it now. And I get to dress up. Whenever I go somewhere like a ballet or a nice concert, I always think about that scene from Pretty Woman where Julia Roberts goes to the opera. I'll talk more about how it was in my next post. This Saturday, my brother and one of his friends are coming out here to USC for the football game against Arizona. The game starts at 12:30 so I'm guessing it will be pretty hot in the stadium and I'll probably get sunburned. After the game, I'm going straight to a Franz Ferdinand concert at the Greek Theater. Connor got tickets presale or something and it's going to be amazing. I haven't been to a concert in a while and the Greek is really pretty. So my week is definitely looking up.

Other than that, I just finished my latest design project that's due tomorrow. We had to create an editorial layout that might appear in a magazine about a product or a person, so i decided to do mine on the band, The Shins. College is such a great time because generally I get to pick the subjects of my projects, but I know that when I get out of school, I'll probably be stuck doing advertisements for soap or something ridiculous like that. So here's what I came up with. You probably cant see the text, or the details, but you get the general idea.