...okay, maybe that was the SECOND-to-last post of the semester.

Yeah... kind of feeling like crap right now (I've been sick since Sunday and have missed two days of classes--today and Monday--so far), so instead of actually going up on campus and doing school stuff I'm pretty much stuck down here in my apartment.  Which means I have time to post stuff here, for once.

Anyway... Thanksgiving break actually went REALLY well this year.  I think it was the first time that I actually used it as a "break" from school--I can't really remember what I did last time (I think I went home for a bit, but mostly stayed at school?), and the time before that I went on a Travel Study trip, but this time I just went back home and stayed there the whole week up until Saturday night.  Had a good Thanksgiving dinner (which included trying stuffing for the first time--it was actually pretty good--and also having some homemade cranberry sauce, made by my little sister), got to spend some time with family members (and kitties!) for the first time in a while, and after Thanksgiving itself was over I ended up going out to eat with my dad and sister a few times.  So there was a lot of good food involved.

And absolutely no school work--aside from a tiny bit of painting (just finishing up a page I had already started before break), I didn't even touch any of my projects over the break.  My original plan was to finish at least one or two paintings over the break, but... my original plans didn't take into account "hands hurting" or "feeling like I'm slowly being killed by homework overload," so it turned out that I barely did anything over the break.  There's absolutely no way I will get 10 paintings done for either of my classes this semester--so far I have 5 done for one and 4 done(-ish) for another, and it seems extremely unlikely that I'll end up with more than maybe 7 or so in each.  Maybe 8, but even that might be pushing it.  Plus I'm supposed to do a final project for 3D Design... I may just end up asking my teacher for that class if I could skip the last project, at least if it wouldn't murder my grade too badly to get a 0 on it, just so I can have enough time to actually get other stuff done before the semester's over.  Either that or turn in a completely half-assed final project, but I've already done a half-assed project in that class once (the most recent one, with light) so I'm not sure I'd be able to do that...

And finally... yeah, I'm sick, as mentioned above.  Started Sunday, kept me awake until after 2 AM that night (which meant there was no way in hell I was going to be up in time for my 9 AM class the next day)... and then I ended up sleeping through not just my first class, but my second one at 11:00 too.  Managed to get out to the post office to get a money order in time to pay my rent at least, and also took out the garbage... but aside from that I really didn't feel like even leaving the house.  Yesterday was about the same--lots of coughing, sore throat, runny nose, generally feeling crappy.  Sleep worked better Monday night (and Tuesday night) than Sunday at least, but still not as well as I'd have liked.  No idea if I'll be feeling well enough to actually go to classes by Friday... I'm supposed to have a meeting with one of my teachers tomorrow to figure out some stuff for Senior Show, so I hope I'll feel at least somewhat better by then.

Possibly my last post of the semester...?

I'm not sure if I really want to keep updating this thing anymore.  There just hasn't been a whole lot going on in my life lately, aside from classes and endless piles of painting-related homework.  Probably the last things worth mentioning were the movie a couple weeks ago (the new Superman movie, Man of Steel--the school was showing it and I went... I can't remember if I already mentioned this in a previous post or not, I've forgotten just how long it's been since the last time I updated this thing!) and the Multicultural Festival thing the school had last Saturday (which I went to most of, only leaving later on because they everyone moved into one part of the room and things got a bit too crowdy for me, especially without having anywhere to sit and watch the stuff that was going on.)  I also went to a friend's birthday party, where there was a lot of goofing off with party hats--people ending up with multiple hats on the same head--and watching The Hobbit in weird green colors because we had a messed-up projector.

Unfortunately I was not able to see the play that was going on the past two weeks (Hello Dolly), mainly because everyone I knew pretty much went the first week (or Friday of the second week, but tickets were sold out before I could get one) and I was planning on going the second week... the only reason I even bought a ticket the last day was because someone claimed they would sit with me to help with crowd issues if I went that day... and then they didn't, they plopped down right in the middle of a row where first of all there wasn't even room for another person, and second of all... I couldn't have sat there anyway because it was the middle of the damn row.  Seriously, I specifically said "I'll probably have to sit toward the front, on the edge of a row"... and when looking for a place to sit, right after seeing me there and saying hi, she goes straight for the middle of a row in the back.  Okay, if you're not actually planning on sitting with someone, please do not offer to sit with them.  I ended up having to leave (even though I had already wasted $7 on the ticket!) after that point because there was just not anywhere I could sit; the rest of the audience was pretty much all total strangers, and what few people I knew were around were all crammed in the middle of rows, too (or they were people I didn't know well enough to sit with comfortably.  or both.)  So yeah... that pretty much sucked.  I doubt I'll make any more attempts to go to SVU plays and such after this, at least not if I don't know for sure that someone I know pretty well is going and will actually be okay with sitting next to me to prevent crowd-freakouts.

Speaking of stuff that hasn't worked out this semester, I haven't been on a single date this whole time.  Several times earlier on I had thought of asking someone on one, but every time something came up--usually it turned out that the girl I was thinking of asking (there's been two so far) was going to be busy with something else pretty much any time I could think of asking her to come do something with me.  I'm almost wondering if I should just completely give up on dating here at SVU, because it feels like it's just going nowhere, between the lack of dates this semester and the whole "everyone here is Mormon so they probably wouldn't want to date me anyway because of annoying, outdated only-date-within-your-religion BS" issue.  That, and I kind of feel like I'm slowly starting to drift away from someone I've liked for a long time here... I don't know, maybe it's just that I haven't seen her much this semester (especially the later half of this semester), but it's getting harder and harder to imagine anything ever actually happening between us.  But, weirdly enough, I really don't want to lose that... even if my chances are terrible, at the same time I really don't like the idea of not having those feelings for her anymore.  I'm not really sure how to explain it, so what I just wrote probably makes no sense to anyone reading this (...ha! someone actually reading this! no way that'd ever happen)... but oh well.

Wow. I *REALLY* am not keeping up with updating this thing this semester...

Yeah... this hasn't been updated in half a month now. XD

Which is weird, since I actually have (occasionally) had stuff to write about.  I guess I've just been so busy with these mountains of painting homework that I haven't really been able to get around to posting anything up here.  And yeah, I have had a buttload of homework this semester--so far I've finished three big paintings for Advanced Watercolor (and have gotten some good progress in on a fourth) and two for Senior Show (and I need to get working on a third one today, and maybe a fourth by the time Monday rolls around so I'll have 4 done in both classes before next week.)  Added to all that, of course, is all the work for my two less-stressful classes, 3D Design and Astronomy.  Mostly 3D Design, since Astronomy is like... barely any homework at all, maybe a half-hour of work (including reading) every other day during the week, with the occasional extra assignment here and there.  No big deal.  It's definitely the art classes that take up most of my time, as always.

But anyway... since the last time I posted anything up here, a bunch of stuff has happened.

I went to the Homecoming dance... for about half an hour, because for some stupid reason they decided to cut the SAC in half with a big wooden divider thing and what would normally be a room consisting of "crowd -- empty space -- tables" became just "crowd + tables."  Needless to say... crowd-freakout definitely happened, and I had to leave early or I would've been completely miserable the whole time.  Which really sucks, because there were a lot of people there that I knew and I'm sure I would've had plenty of people to dance with throughout the night if it hadn't been for the awfultastic room setup (unlike previous dances this year which were pretty much flooded with random freshmen I've never met before)... but anyway, Ruth ended up wanting to leave early also, and rather than just disappearing on her own she mentioned this to me, so we ended up going back to my apartment and playing Super Smash Bros. for the next 2 or 2-and-a-half hours.  So basically... it turned out to be simultaneously the worst dance ever (the actual dance part), and one of the best ones (after leaving.) XD

Shown here: the only picture I took at the Homecoming dance.

There was also a bunch of Halloween stuff going on.  First, I went up to the Lofts one day with a few friends and saw all the Halloween decorations they had put up there...

The paintings were decorated too (...except the one of Jesus.)

...and also a bunch of little kids who had come in trick-or-treating.

Such as this little guy, who's dressed as an AIRCRAFT CARRIER!

After that, I ended up going to the "Art After Dark" thing they had going on in the library, where a bunch of people got up and read poetry-type things they had written.  People also had drawings/paintings/prints/photos/etc. set up around the shelves, and there was not-quite-free food as well.  And after that, I found out that there was a Halloween party going on over at Chestnut House, which I hadn't been aware of until that day (which unfortunately meant that I didn't have anything resembling a costume to go in.)

It was a little crowdy at first (so many people were crammed into the room where the snacks and such were!), but once the crowds cleared out as most of the total-strangery people moved over to the room where a movie was being watched and the food room was left with just a half-dozen or so people I actually knew (with others occasionally moving in and out), it worked out pretty well.

During the week of Halloween itself, I had some stuff to do also.  I unfortunately was not able to get my "guy with Beard Card" costume together (as Wal-Mart had run out of fake beards by the time I went to get one), so I wore my squid hat around all day instead.  That's sort of a costume, right?  Anyway, on Halloween there was a Halloween party thing going on in the ballroom...

Minions!

Scariest costume of the night right here.

Not riding a horse, just clopping coconuts together to make the sound. XD

Also pretty intimidating: a 6-foot Maddie with claws. XD

 Yeah... I took a TON of pictures at this thing.  Lots of really neat costumes around (as you can see above), and of course snacks and other random things.  After hanging around there for a while, I stumbled across someone who was willing to pay for me to go through the haunted house thing they were doing on the upper floors of Main Hall (they only took solid money, not student ID card money, and I had none with me at the time), so I went through that also.  I didn't really get scared at all, but that's pretty normal for me in haunted houses; one of the girls in the group I went through with was FREAKING OUT pretty much the whole time (funnily enough, before we went in she was the one who really wanted to go and she had to pretty much drag one of the other girls in with her.  Once inside, she was freaking out and the girl who had to be dragged in was fine. XD)  There were some neat effects, though--a roomful of floating ghost/mask things, for example.

After Halloween was over, well... November started.  So weird to think that the semester's more than halfway over now... it really doesn't feel like it's been multiple months since this one started.  Except at the same time it sort of does.  It's weird how time seems to pass both super-slow and super-fast at the same time here sometimes.  Anyway... shortly after November started, there was a Washington DC trip for my 3D Design class, which I went on.  The ride over was pretty miserable (I had to get up at 6:30 AM, which I do not do ever, and then I was lonely and bored the whole way over), but once I actually got into DC things started looking up.  It helped that I had someone around to talk to the whole time, thanks to the first-ever actually helpful instance of the "buddy system" rule.

As always, a picture of the giant-pillars-and-fountain room.

The Native American museum, I think.  We didn't actually go in.

The empty haz-mat suit says hi.

In the Air and Space Museum.
Seems that guy's taking a picture of me, too...

Shown here: the National Archives.
Also, the person who cured my boredom that day.

And here's the fountain where we had a water-fight and both ended up soaked.

 But yeah... I bumped into a friend up there (who had been way in the back of the other bus on the ride over, so we didn't see each other until after getting off the buses) and she basically grabbed me and dragged me off to go see as many museums and such as we could fit into the day.  She'd never been to DC before, and I don't think I have ever seen anyone as excited to go to Washington DC as she was--she was basically bouncing-off-the-walls hyper for most of the trip.  And I think that actually helped--I was feeling so crappy from the ride over, and I think being around someone who was actually excited about the trip kind of "cured" my lonely-and-boring-bus-ride crappiness.  It helped that she was someone I actually knew, of course (I don't think an excited random stranger would've really helped much, if it all), but still.  Before too long I had completely recovered from the bus ride, and we went through the National Gallery (and its gift shop) for a while before having lunch (which was really good, but a bit more expensive than I would've liked.)  After that was a brief visit to the other side of the National Gallery, then heading outside to find the Air and Space Museum where we stayed for a while.  I don't think we got around to nearly everything in there (since it is a huge museum) but after seeing a bunch of the space things and the Wright Brothers exhibit, we left that one and wandered off across DC for a bit, eventually ending up at the sculpture garden once we figured out that the Lincoln Memorial was too far away for us to be able to reach it and have time to get back.  After that we stopped by the National Archives (which I don't think I'd ever been to before) and got to see things like the Constitution and Declaration of Independence under their thick protective shells of glass and such.  Also, the elevators, which actually do look like the ones in National Treasure.  After that, we headed back toward the National Gallery so we could look around at the modern art section for a while before the buses were ready to leave... but before we went inside, a random water fight broke out next to one of the fountains, and before too long we were both pretty soaked (the right side of my shirt was still wet by the time I got home. XD)  By the time that was over we only had a little over an hour to look around, but I think we managed to get through most of the museum exhibits that we hadn't seen yet by that point and got back to the buses with time to spare.  Overall, it turned out to be a really good trip, despite the bad start.

Oh, and the day after that trip, DST finally ended, meaning that clocks stopped pretending it was an hour later than it really is (and I suddenly have a much easier time going to bed in the 12:30-1:00 AM range, and getting up in the 8:30-9:00 range, than before.)

This week so far has been mostly uneventful, aside from some unexpected long talks with people (which are always appreciated!) and free pizza (also always appreciated) last night after the meeting for the ILP program, where people can go to China, Mexico, Russia, etc. to teach kids English.  I doubt I'd be able to go on something like that (lack of money, no financial aid after this semester, etc.) but it still sounds like it'd be really neat to do.  And they were giving out free pizza (they had so much pizza there, but hardly anyone showed up, so I got to take a full box of it home with me afterward!), which is pretty much a guarantee that I'll show up at some point.  I've had several really odd dreams lately, such as one where Bleach characters Zommari and Kenpachi were fighting (Kenny was too slow to actually hit Zommari, but it seemed like Zommari's attacks weren't really hurting Kenny much... and for some reason he had this giant laser gun thing with tiny lightsabers on it in addition to his regular sword) and another one where I bought an old copy of Pokémon Red and found the box to some NES games (and they were games that don't actually exist, too) hidden away inside that box, somehow.  Later this week there's going to be a movie showing in the SAC, the new Superman movie Man of Steel, which I haven't seen yet.  I'm planning on going, and it seems like I won't have to worry so much about my usual "finding a seat that will actually work" issues this time, so Saturday night should be a pretty good one.

Strange week...

Yeah... this week has just been really odd, in several different ways.

One of them being me consistently forgetting to update this thing. XD

Last weekend on the other hand was surprisingly good.  Spent most of Saturday in town for Buena Vista's "Mountain Days," which is basically the BV equivalent of the Fall Festival in Clifton Forge back home.  Got a jar of this really good three-onion spice mix, some Cajun peanuts, and a German duck (with Oktoberfest-type outfit and beer mug) while I was down there, and also got to try free samples of two kinds of fudge and three kinds of honey.  Also saw honey bees for the first time in forever; apparently the honey jars attracted every bee from nearby, and they were buzzing around that booth all day trying to get into the ones that had been opened (...and occasionally doing weird things, like following me and Ruth around for 10-15 minutes straight or landing on my chin and crawling up over my lips before flying off.)  Bumped into a bunch of people I know, talked, goofed off, ate, saw all kinds of neat stuff at the various booths and such down there... it was a good day.

Honeybees! And not ones that are slowly dying of fungus, either!

Ruth looking at some artwork and deciding which one to buy.

BIBLE DUCKS! There were so many different ducks at this one tent...

Last Sunday even turned out good, surprisingly enough.  I walked all the way from here to the Food Lion out on the edges of Buena Vista city limits (or maybe a little bit past them?) and then came back with a pack of new batteries, a new water bottle, and a can of Lysol to spray down my stinky couch with and possibly de-stinkify it a bit.

The week itself... eh.  It was just weird.  There were definitely some good parts (got to know a few people better, for example), but there were also bad parts and just-plain-strange parts mixed in there, more strange parts than usual.  Several days this week I forgot what day it was for almost half of the day; Wednesday I thought it was Monday for most of the day, and Friday I even thought it was Monday up until a certain point... even though I should've known otherwise since my schedule's different on Fridays.  About mid-week, I ended up getting put into one of the most awkward and uncomfortable situations that I've ever been in; one of my friends came up to me and tried to convince me to ask one of her friends to go to the Homecoming dance with me.  Problem: I don't actually know this other girl.  Like, at all.  We may have met once or so, because apparently she knew who I was (even though I had absolutely no idea who she was), but... I seriously can't ask a near-total-stranger to go to a dance with me.  Especially not with less than a week's notice--if I had been told this two weeks ago, then maybe I'd have time to get to know her a little and be at least slightly more okay with the whole idea... but less than three days? No way.
Plus... I don't really even want to ask people I actually know and like to go to dances with me.  Taking a date to a dance is just a weird situation for me because if I go with someone, I'm going to feel like I'm bringing her down the whole time due to my inability to ever do any of the fast "random wiggle dancing" type stuff (and it's especially bad if I don't even know whether she'd be interested in that anyway; worst case scenario here is if she's the type to try and drag me out there against my will and ruin my night just because she wants to do it.  And since I don't know her, of course I don't know if she would be or not!)  I'd actually be more okay with going on a "normal" date with a near-total-stranger than I would be with going to a dance with one, because at least on a regular date (as in, to someplace where you're not constantly surrounded by loud blasting noise that makes it difficult to talk) you can at least get to know the other person better if you don't really know them already.  But anyway... this was a really bad position for me to be in, because first of all asking someone to go to something with me is a really hard thing for me even if it's someone I already know (with a stranger it would probably be impossible, and probably wouldn't work very well even if I did manage to do it), and second of all not doing it would make me feel pretty crappy about things because apparently this other girl wasn't going to go to the dance at all if nobody asked her.  Supposedly someone else might have asked her, from what I remember someone saying the other day, but still... that is not a good position to put someone (especially me) into, and I'm a little annoyed at the friend who did this because of that.

But anyway... the week got better (a lot better) after that whole situation disappeared.  Yesterday I went down to the SVU fields for the homecoming bonfire, which actually turned out pretty well thanks to the fact that there were a bunch of friends there for me to talk to and goof off with.  (There was also hot chocolate, which was good.)

Early on, when most of the total strangers hadn't shown up. XD

Afterward, I ended up walking back up to the Lofts with those guys and watching Corpse Bride, which I just misspelled as "Corpse Bridge" when I was trying to type it the first time.  That would've been a very different movie, I'm guessing.  But anyway, that was a movie I'd never seen before--always good to fill in some of those gaps in the list of movies I'd seen (which is generally made up of more gaps than movies, at least when it comes to things that came out after 2003 or so.)  But yeah... turned out to be a really good night, one of the few times I've ever actually had stuff to do and friends to talk to and goof off with later on on a Friday night (Friday nights are usually the start of the typical weekend boredom and loneliness for me here, so having one that was completely the opposite of that for once is definitely a welcome change!)

Earlier today, I headed out to the fields again, this time for the homecoming barbecue (which was pretty disappointing due to its lack of edible food--and worse, the food was both inedible and cost $6.00... yeah, $6.00 for what was essentially cafeteria food.  Blech!)  Thankfully, it wasn't just the (inedible) food; there was other stuff going on down there and a decent bunch of people I knew and stuff to do.  There were bags of popcorn and Oreo-like cookie/cracker things around for free, so I at least had something to eat in place of a real lunch.

There were also balloon critters being made, such as my shoulder-frog here. XD

After that, I... went home and did a whole lot of nothing for a couple hours.  And then headed down to Original Italian and got a veggie pizza for combined lunch+supper, which was pretty good (and will probably end up being supper for tomorrow, since I have two big slices left in a box in my fridge.)  The only thing left to do today is the homecoming dance, which should either be great or a completely awful boredom disaster depending on who's there and how things go.  I guess if it's looking pretty awful after it's halfway over I could just head over to the art building and finish the 3D Design project (tower of creepy zombie hands!) that I started on Friday, but I really hope I don't end up having to leave early.  It's impossible to know ahead of  time... SVU dances are so inconsistent.  Homecoming has been a good one in previous years, though, so hopefully that pattern continues for this one.

Fairly uneventful week... until the end

Yeah... classes-wise this week was pretty empty (no Astronomy homework all week, no new painting assignments.)  We had to order supplies in watercolor class, which for me meant a new 50-sheet pad of paper and about a dozen new colors of paint to add on to the 12 or so that I've been using.  Which turned out to be around $10 short of the $75 limit we had put on us, so I've got an extra 10 bucks left over to spent on... something later on, I guess.  Maybe more paper if I somehow run out, though I doubt that'll happen (I have 4 sheets of the same paper left from my last pad, plus 50 new, so... I'd need to do a whopping 27 paintings in both Advanced Watercolor and Senior Show to use them all up.  And that's... probably not gonna happen. XD)

For once, the weekend actually had more stuff going on than the week for me.  First, someone actually ended up contacting me on that online dating site that I've been on since last spring.  Oddly, when I saw that she'd viewed my profile and I looked through hers, I thought for sure that she wouldn't message me, that she'd be one of those people who just gets put off by something I said and wouldn't want anything to do with me.  Not sure why, just a feeling I got from things here and there.  Turns out that, as usual, online profiles and text-only communication don't really match up with actually talking to someone--while her profile was making me say "I dunno...", things went a lot better after she sent me a message and we got into talking about some stuff.  Three messages later we end up exchanging Skype contact info, and later that night (after I got back from a really long walk to the far corners of Buena Vista, where I found such odd things as an incomplete wooden foundation built into the side of a hill, the front of a tractor trailer truck, and a schoolbus) we ended up talking over Skype video chat... for an hour and a half.  That's happened with people I've met in real life before (I think my record is around 2 hours of talking with someone I'd just met), but never anyone from online.  We seem to get along really well, telling each other weird stories from our lives and laughing about things and just generally goofing off and getting to know each other.  Didn't hear from her yesterday, but found another message from her in my inbox this morning when I got up, apparently sent at 2 AM (right after she got home from somewhere she had been earlier.)  Which led into us talking over Skype again after I got home from going out to eat with my dad and sister, only stopping around the 45 minute mark because some of her family members had shown up and she had to go.
She seems really nice, an interesting person who's fun to talk to, and we've gotten along pretty well so far.  She lives pretty far away (in Richmond or nearby, I think), but that's seriously the only problem I've seen so far.  And even then, Richmond is a whole lot closer than Illinois or North Carolina or someplace halfway across the country, so...

Also, yesterday I ended up going to one of the General Conference sessions with a few of my Mormon friends.  It was okay I guess.  There was some of the usual talk about missionary work that I just kind of zone out on because it does not apply to me at all, and a few parts that had me going "well, you kind of have a few good points here, but there's better ways to word it than that."  And a whole talk where the guy kept emphasizing how guys and girls are sooooo different (...supposedly) and that society is trying to make them less different in the name of equality (...again, supposedly.)  Except, y'know, about the whole "society is the whole reason why there appear to be so many differences in the first place" thing.  Religious people tend to conveniently forget about that when they're levitating somewhere high above the clouds on their "in the world, but not of the world" high horse--guess what, Mormons?  A lot of the things you think are innate features of male and female are actually molded into us at a young age by--gasp!--society.  Oh, and guess what else? Religions are part of society too!  Religious influences on kids growing up ARE society's influences! You are not some unquestionable "other," you are very much a product of the society you developed in (and that's both the form of society that the religion was originally founded in, and the forms of society that its current members grew up in.  All kinds of influences going around there.)
Oddly enough it was this talk that had the "good point, but needs improvement on the wording" bits, hidden among all the "no really, we really do see women as equals, honest, I swear! you know, separate but equal!" stuff that made up the rest of it.  One good bit: equality shouldn't mean "women can ALSO go crazy with the promiscuity just like men are currently expected to by society."  Of course, the point derailed a bit after that when it skewed to the other extreme (basically "men should be super-ultra-virgins forever until marriage and be held to unrealistic standards, too, just like women are now what with the whole 'anyone who has sex before marriage must be a slut' thing.")  But the original point, that equality between the sexes shouldn't just mean "oh, you can go be just like how society expects men to be now," is definitely a good one.  What society (and, if you trim out the sex-crazed bits, that includes religions like the LDS church too) expects men to be like now is pretty much horrible.  Guys should not be overcompetitive, sex-crazed, self-control-lacking douchebags who simultaneously see themselves as being better/tougher/etc. than anyone less "manly" than them and able to get away with things by virtue of the old "just boys being boys" excuse.  Guys are not naturally like that, not any more than girls are; it's society teaching us that kind of crap since shortly after birth that encourages a lot of guys to go down that path.  When "be a man" means "be an arrogant douche," of course you're going to have a lot of male kids growing up to be arrogant douches and thinking "that's the way things are."  The less of this "this is how guys should be" mentality we have, the better off we'll be, and that applies to both males and females.
There was also another good point in that talk, but unfortunately I can't remember what it was.  I think that one was legitimately a 100% good point, and it didn't even derail off into some one-extreme-or-the-other craziness like the one above did shortly after making the good part of its point, so it kinda sucks that I can't remember it now.  I guess that's one good thing I can say about those people who take notes on these sorts of things--when they hear something and think "hey, that's actually kind of a good point!", they won't forget them because they'll have them written down. XD

I've also been working on finishing up Okédoké! La Leyenda Mexicana lately.  So far I've gotten a huge chunk of Chapter 6's final dungeon done, compared to where I was before the semester started.  The basement floors and the first two aboveground floors of the secret Alaskan base are completely finished, and you can fight Darth Cheney, Dubya (in both normal and "Ultimate Dubya" forms), and the last of the game's many optional bosses, "Ghost of Racist."  Who is, of course, the ghost of the now-dead Chapter 5 boss Captain Racist.  That means there is literally just one boss battle left.  As far as mapping goes, I've also got two of the three maps for the third floor done; I still need maptiles for the final boss's room, but other than that I have everything done maptile-wise.  Graphics for the final boss are not started yet; that's another big thing I still need to get done.  And of course, there's a few more scripts to go before the game's completely done (one when Señor Death explains what's been going on upon reaching a certain room on the 3rd floor, one introducing the final boss, and one last script for the escape from the Alaskan base at the very end of the game.)  Once all that's done, all that's left is to make the ending.  And when that's done, Okédoké will be my first true completed game since freaking Frankfurter's Quest for Soap back in 2003.  It's about time!  It'll be great to finally get this thing done.  Maybe then I can finally get a demo release of Fnrrf Ygm Schnish: Alleghany Hell School done, or come out with a new version of Puckamon.  I dunno.  Better to not think about that so far in advance, and just focus on getting Okédoké done instead.

This semester is now the worst-case scenario in terms of class schedule...

Remember how, during the "force Eddie to graduate early" meeting last week, the school people said that I would be doing my Senior Show combined with my Advanced Watercolor class so that my later assignments for the watercolor class would go toward my Senior Show project, too?

Turns out it was all a big fat lie.  My watercolor projects and Senior Show projects are in fact completely separate from each other, and I'm going to have to do the full (absolutely huge) workload for both of them at the same freaking time.

In other words... I now have two regular art classes plus Senior Show, all crammed into the same semester.  You know, just the absolute worst class schedule I could possibly have (okay, almost the worst--having my 4th class be Senior Paper would be the only way this could be worse.)  The exact same kind of class schedule I had been trying to avoid when I figured out how my classes would be set up this year--my last two "normal" required classes and a couple of extras this semester, another Spanish class, a couple of extras, and Senior Show next semester... so I don't have more than two art-related classes at once and don't have to worry about homework overload ever being even worse than it was during my "two art classes and Senior Paper" semester a while back.

But no, SVU's administration apparently doesn't consider "exhaustion and/or death by homework overload" to be a problem.  They didn't even give me a choice as to which of my two non-required classes to drop; instead of letting me drop Advanced Watercolor to make room in my schedule for the Senior Show workload (dropping my most homework-heavy class and replacing it with another one), they went ahead and dropped me from Marriage and Family instead (which was a non-required class, but not so heavy on the homework, just a quiz every now and then and a couple of projects later on in the semester.)  Of course, like I mentioned above, they had originally told me that Senior Show would be mixed in with my watercolor class, so of course I couldn't just drop that one... until it turns out that Senior Show is not mixed in with my watercolor class, it's a separate class entirely (meeting at 3:35 on Mondays, causing M/W/F to be my absurd classes-all-day days even more so than  before.)  Of course, they weren't nice enough to inform me of this sudden change of plans (on top of their previous sudden change of plans) until today, after I had already returned the Marriage and Family book I had rented and gotten a full refund for it.

 Yeah... me and SVU are not getting along so well lately.  The students are great, it's the people in charge that are the problem, and I suspect it'd be so much better if they would just get swapped out for someone else (maybe they should go administrate BYU or something, if they want their students to be a bunch of perfect little mindlessly-obedient Mormon children.  Of course, I've heard BYU has a lot of Mormon kids who are going around doing non-Mormon-approved college kid activities behind the scenes... but it's not what they're actually like that matters to the people in charge, it's the fake happy-happy-perfect-obedient-Mormon-kid image they put on out in public.)

This whole situation reminds me of a bumper sticker I saw once, comparing politicians to diapers: they need to be changed often, and for the same reason!

First visit home since... before I moved in. XD

Yeah... Dad and Julia came by earlier today and picked me up from my apartment, bringing me back to Mom's house in the middle of nowhere (but only after stopping by Victor's in Clifton Forge to scarf down some delicious pizza, of course.)  This has been an oddly productive trip home; since getting back, I've gotten my mom's Internet to work on the desktop computer we still have here (previously, it wouldn't connect to the wireless and it was impossible to run a cable directly from the computer to the router because the computer's ethernet port was busted... she took the computer in and got the port fixed this past week sometime, but still couldn't get it to work... probably because she's not so good with computers. She claimed it kept asking her for an "IP number" when she tried to get it working before.  Yeah... pretty sure they're called "IP addresses" and nothing ever calls them "IP numbers" and you don't need to enter them manually pretty much ever.  All I actually needed to do to get it working was check the cables on both ends to make sure everything was plugged in right and then run the router setup program. I have no idea what she had been trying to do) and also set up a Skype account for her so we can talk through the computer instead of eating up my phone's minutes every time she calls (or I call her.)  Skype is pretty simple to operate so hopefully she won't have any problems with it.  I did have to plug in a second pair of headphones (because it has a built-in microphone), because the computer wasn't made with a built-in microphone like all the laptops are... but still, should be easy enough for her to use.

Also got to see the cats again after a month of being away, which is always nice.  Buddy has gotten huge since the last time I saw her; she was one of the smallest ones before I left and now she's almost as big as Buttons (who is also slightly bigger than before.)  Callie has gotten bigger too, though it seems to be mostly around the middle in her case.  Shy unfortunately hurt her eye somehow and it's now infected, but Mom's been putting some sort of ointment on it (that she got from the vet, I think) so it should heal up okay.  Other than that the kitties seem to be doing fine.

Another old house randomly got torn down while I was gone.  Not out on White Rock Gap Road where I live, but in the Low Moor area nearby.  I don't think this one was even in very bad shape, so I'm not sure why it got demolished... but now it's gone, just an empty field in its place.  Weird to come back and see things like that change... makes it seem like I've been gone a lot longer than just a month. XD

My sister Julia drew a really detailed realistic-ish picture of a Pwubba and a K'hyurbhi during this last week, and colored it in (with colored pencils) and everything.  It turned out really well.  I was planning on making Pwubbas a bit more mammalian than they used to be, but her more-reptiley Pwubba looks really good.  Her realistic-ish K'hyurbhis look a lot better in color than they do as pencil sketches--I thought her version of a K'hyurbhi just looked a little off the first time I saw one, but in color I was like "whoa! that's a K'hyurbhi!" rather than "wow... that looks weird."  Even with the extra facial hair (which most K'hyurbhis have very little if any of), it still actually worked this time.  (She also gave him blue shoes, which fits in nicely with the most recent K'hyurbhi design having actual feet and those usually-red oval things being shoes that they wear... so they don't need to always be red with black marks anymore, they can be all kinds of different colors and shapes now.)

Have made progress on Okédoké, too.  2nd and 1st basement floors of the secret Alaskan lab are both done, all the various lab stuff is functional (there's poison chemical spills on the floor in spots, you can ride around on conveyor belts, there's a switch that causes certain pairs of doors to alternate between open and closed, and there's teleporter tiles!), and you can even fight the first (out of three, plus one optional) boss, Darth Cheney.  It took me roughly 23 minutes to explore the outside of the lab, enter, fall down to B2F, and then explore that whole floor (up to the start of B1F right before Darth Cheney's appearance), so this should turn out to be a decently long chapter if the other floors take even half that long.  B2F may be the longest one in gameplay time, since it's a little bit maze-like with the conveyor belts going all over the place and one teleporter tile that takes you back to the start instead of further along, but the others are big enough and full of enough stuff that most people shouldn't blast through them too quick, either.  Plus, if you go through too fast and skip the room with the door switch, you'll have to backtrack to B1F to get beyond 1F.  Next up would be making some readable stuff in the big library-style bookshelves scattered around the lab, and also finishing up 1F so that I can move on to making 2F, which leads up to the second of the lab's bosses: George W. Bush, the President of the United States of America (...this game takes place in 2008, so yeah, he's still in office.)  It turns out that he knows Kung Fu, can do his own version of Naruto's clone technique, and has a few more even stranger tricks up his sleeve...

But yeah... for the first time Okédoké being a finished game is actually looking like a real possibility.  It'd be nice if it's done before 2013 is over, but I think it'd make more sense to set the "deadline" at "finish playable portions before summer 2014, and then make the ending sequence during the summer."  Heart of the OHR 2014 entry? I guess it'd count as an "OHR Legends" entry at this point in its development, since it was part of HotOHR 2010 already.

Hmm... rhymes with "go to hell." How appropriate.

So... apparently I'm going to graduate in one semester instead of two.  School ends for me in freaking December instead of... next April, I guess?

I guess for a lot of people this would be a good thing, but considering the reasons WHY my school is shoving me face-first into a big steaming pile of early graduation, it's really not a good thing for me.  I won't go into the details out here in public where the Facebook stalkers can see (it wouldn't surprise me if SVU had a Facebook Stalker Brigade specifically set up to find anything remotely negative said about the school or the people in charge of it, so they can overreact to THAT too and cause even more unnecessary problems in people's lives), but I'll let you know what's going on in messages if you want.

But yeah... apparently I'm graduating in December whether I want to or not (the only other option is "don't graduate at all and leave school NOW," so... that's only a "choice" in the same sense that somebody putting a gun to your head and saying "gimme all your money or I'll shoot" is a "choice.")

Apparently my watercolor class this semester is going to be jury-rigged into some sort of mutated half-watercolor/half-Senior Show monstrosity, so I can get all of my required classes out of the way before then.

And my paperwork for my apartment relied on me staying here until April (or was it May?)... so I guess I'll be living in Buena Vista in the spring even though I won't be going to school anymore.  Or, I should say, even though I won't be *taking classes* anymore, because SVU is where most of my friends are and I don't want to just leave right away and go back to that horrible lonely boring place they call Alleghany County where I'll most likely never see any of them ever again.  I guess I'll try to get a job of some sort in Buena Vista in an attempt to make enough money to pay my rent for that whole time.  Which will probably be easier if I don't have to take classes at the same time.  Maybe I can finally move out of Mom's house for good? I don't know how likely that is or how well it'll work, but it's bound to be better than "just go back home and die of boredom alone for the rest of your life" at least...

And on a weirder (but also not-making-much-sense) note, apparently the school thinks that I'd declared a double major (art and liberal arts.)  I know I don't remember this ever happening, to the point where everyone I've talked to about it agrees that I've never even so much as mentioned a double-major as a possibility, but apparently they had me on record as a double-major.  Would've been nice if they'd actually told me about that before today, since I was apparently the last one to know!  And in further "incompetence from SVU staff" news, apparently they STILL don't have my senior paper on record, even though I've literally turned it in twice.

Aside from that: had a good sub at Subway today, and a nice moderately-long talk with a good friend (which really helped with the whole "SVU randomly shoving me into early graduation and then trying to fake nice by constantly claiming that they were 'on my side' or 'trying to help' when actually they were doing the opposite" situation--thanks again, if you're reading this! I know I already thanked you like three times, but there is no way to thank you enough.  Seriously.)  I've also gotten back into working on Okédoké!, finishing up the lower floors of the secret lab in Alaska--I just added the battle with Darth Cheney in yesterday and was testing it out earlier, and everything seems to work fine (though he seems a bit easy even with characters at only level 12, so I might pump him up a little bit.)  And now... time to work myself half to death with painting homework.  And also take a shower.

Friday the 13th -- never actually unlucky for me. XD

Yeah... today was a pretty good day to (sort of) end the week on.  Went to see the play that my school was showing (A Servant of Two Masters, actually a show from all the way back in the 1700s), and while there ended up sitting with one of my favorite people, who I also got a chance to talk to for a little bit after the play ended.  I really haven't had enough opportunities to talk to her this semester, so every little bit helps, even if it is just a short walk back to her library-mod house and a bit of talking outside before she had to go in to tend to her ever-growing pile of homework, club duties, and a full text-message inbox that needs to be cleared out at some point.  Hopefully I'll be able to ask her on a date of some sort sometime soon... I still don't know if I actually have a chance at all of ever being anything more-than-friends to her, but I figure I should keep trying, at least as long as I continue to like her so much (...especially since I only have this one last year here... she'll be here again next year, but I don't know how easy it would be to come back over here and see her next year... so I'm guessing that if anything's going to happen at this point it needs to happen pretty soon.)

Now if only it was actually the end of the week, and not just the start of the weekend which (like all weekends where I don't really have anything special to do) will inevitably be crammed full of boredom, loneliness, and especially homework... (the idea that my watercolor class wants not one but two paintings--and two little essays to accompany them!--from me on Monday still kind of pisses me off.)

Anyway... things have been going fairly well lately, not just today but most of the whole week.  Homework hasn't been weighing me down too much (though I am worried about the painting stuff coming up...), I haven't had too many (if any!) days where there just isn't anyone around to talk to, I've made a buttload of money on eBay thanks to the fact that Ducktales 2 for the NES is apparently really hard to find now (to the point where someone's willing to pay $220 for a copy of it that doesn't even come with the instruction manual!), and I now have a vacuum for my apartment.  Yeah, the landlady literally just came by one day and asked me if I wanted it, since it was a smaller, cheaper one that doesn't quite do the job well enough to cover the sorts of messes that a 4-year-old tends to make.  Should be fine for one guy living alone, though!

Oh, and today actually felt sort of like a warm day in fall, rather than somewhere between an oven inside a volcano and the surface of the sun like the weather has been lately.  I didn't roast even during the day (it was a bit warm outside the shady spots, but even then not too bad), and I was able to go for a decent-length walk at night without even getting sweaty.  I don't think I'll even need the AC on tonight, I can just keep the windows to my bedroom open and I should be able to sleep with no problems.

Today was basically the inverted version of how my luck usually works.

Meaning, it started out not-so-great and got better later, after which it continued to be good all throughout the rest of the day!

(And even the not-so-great parts weren't that bad.  Just having to wake up at 8 AM really sucks, and I kinda wanted to go to the first Forum thing of the year... but crowdiness and not knowing for sure where I'd be able to sit were a problem as always, and plus I would've had to go in, get a seat, leave to get my drink from the art room where I left it, and then come back and be late for the thing.  So of course, I just left instead.  That was pretty much it.)

Anyway... after that whole thing was over, there was lunch (where I ate... rice, and then later ice cream), and I got to really talk to Ruth for the first time this semester!  I'd say that was definitely worth paying for a second dining hall meal to go back in after I had left before (...and I got ice cream too, so it's not like I paid to get in and then didn't even eat anything. XD)  Yeah... I really missed actually having friends around to talk to, goof off with, etc. over the summer... but now I've managed to see at least most of my friends from previous semesters who are still here at this point.  And the first week of school isn't even over yet; it's nice to not have to go around for weeks wondering where someone is before finally bumping into them.

After that (and my last class) I took a walk down to the post office and shipped one of the three NES games that I've sold on eBay recently.  The buyer for the other two paid later today, and requested some pretty specific packaging (both of the games in a box, with padding so they don't knock around and get damaged), so it'll take a little longer to ship them than previous ones... I'll need to actually find a decent box, plus some padding material of some sort to put in it.  Plus I'm not sure if the post office is even open over the weekend, so I probably won't be able to ship it until next week.  And I should probably wait for the "E-Check" (not sure what that is... it's the first time I've gotten a message about waiting for an "E-Check" when someone bought some of my stuff... possibly using a slightly different payment method because it was so much more money than most?) to clear so I know for sure that I'm going to get the money without any problems, which should happen sometime around Sept. 11th (so mid-next week, which leaves Thursday or Friday open to actually ship the things.)
On the way back from that trip, started getting hungry and decided to stop by this little restaurant that opened up in the spot where Franks for the Memories used to be.  Had the best chicken nuggets I've ever had (actual chicken breast meat! not nasty ground-up nonsense! oh, and the breading stuff on the outside was good too), then headed back home for a bit before going up to the Institute social thing.  Bumped into a few people I knew last year there (most of them very briefly, though I did have short conversations with a few), but spent most of my time hanging around with someone I just met this week.  Apparently she has the strange and amazing talent of reciting the scripts from most episodes of Avatar: The Last Airbender (complete with the right tone of voice, emotions, facial expressions, etc.)  After a while we ended up going up to the Lofts to play ping-pong, with a couple of other people I just met this week following at first but then randomly staying behind after a while.  I'm pretty sure I was up there playing ping-pong, talking, and just generally goofing off for around two hours with several new people who weren't at SVU until this semester.  And now, after bumping into them two or three times, I can actually remember their names! XD

Also, I really like the fridge at my apartment.  Yeah, that's really random to mention, but oh well.  It keeps my milk really cold, but doesn't partially freeze it into "90% of a gallon of milk, 10% giant ice shards" like the ones at the Library Mods and Carriage occasionally did (mostly when the other guys in the house pushed my milk all the way to the back of the fridge to make room for theirs.)  It does look a little empty with nothing but milk, tomato sauce, Parmesan cheese, soy sauce, and a random (so far unopened) jar of pickles in it, though. XD

Another unnecessarily snarky reply from someone you don't even know? Nahhhh.

About the title... well, all I'm going to say is that "unfollow post" is a great button.  So glad Facebook has that button now.

In other news, first real day of school is tomorrow (well, technically "today" since it's after midnight.)  9 AM class, the earliest I'll have in my entire time at SVU.  I can make it to the art building in 10 minutes walking, so I shouldn't have to wake up any earlier than 8:00 or so to have plenty of time for breakfast, tooth-brushing, and becoming fully awake so that I'm not a zombie when I get to my class.  It would've been nice if the 9 AM class was the one that was Monday/Wednesday instead of M/W/F, but no... only the art classes with 11 AM time slots that would prevent people from going to Forum get Fridays off.  Oh well.  It's not 8 AM or earlier, so I should be able to manage it.

Also, I drew Kurb and Thunotsu some more today... first just them standing still from different angles (front, back, side) and then a bunch of different facial expressions (Kurb's are easy to come up with, but Thunotsu isn't as expressive... and plus he only has one big eye and no eyebrows, not even the "appears only when needed" cartoony kind that Kurb has, so it's harder to do a variety of expressions with him.  So Kurb ended up with 30+ of them, while Thunotsu only had 18), and finally the two of them showing off some of their Kihlah attacks.  I think I drew Thunotsu's Zzzter Shield and Zzzter Orb differently this time than I usually do; not sure which version I like better, I'll have to go back and find a drawing of the old version to decide.

And I'm working on a game for the most recent OHRRPGCE 8-bit Contest.  I'm not sure just how much I'll have finished by the deadline (Sept. 8th), but so far I have a bunch of maps done and the basic mechanics of the game set up... and not a huge amount else.  Well, I've got a lot more now than I did before I moved in at SVU, at least.  I only have one regular map left to make, and that one can't be reached until later in the game anyway.  The first dungeon is almost done, all I need to do now is add some items to the treasure chests and do the scripting stuff that lets you freeze ice-bridges across some narrow sections of water (after you learn how to do ice magic, of course.)  Ideally I'd get all five dungeons finished before the demo release, but that seems unlikely unless I go absolutely nuts working on this thing during some of my "no-school" days, especially since it's taken so much testing to get the boss of the FIRST dungeon to work right.  Hopefully I'll get at least the first three of them done (technically the one I have done is "first," but you'll be able to go to the first three in any order you want) before the 8th.

Classes haven't quite started yet... but school seems to be off to a good start so far

Yep... first few days back in Buena Vista have gone pretty well.  Even though I haven't seen people I know too often yet (a lot of those who are still at SVU this year are here, but I think at least a few haven't gotten here yet) I haven't gotten to "dying of boredom" levels of boredom even when sitting alone in my house yet (and the one time I got close to that so far, I remembered there actually was something going on up on campus right then, so it didn't go too far before I found something to do.)

Friday (the day that got boring, mentioned above) I ended up going to the "Knight Games" thing that they have around the start of every year.  Turned out pretty good, at least mostly due to the fact that I bumped into a bunch of people I know up there (including a whole lot that I had not seen or talked to at all since the end of last semester.)  And of course, I got to see people get thrown off of a mechanical bull:

On Saturday there was the first dance of the year, which I wasn't expecting to be anything special (due to some people not being back yet, and the first dance being the one that nearly all the incoming freshmen go to as part of orientation... which means lots of total strangers hanging around.)  It actually turned out pretty good, though! Bumped into a bunch of people I knew throughout the time I was there (including some I hadn't seen before then), danced a little bit (during which I found out that I still remember how to do the cha-cha despite not practicing for months... and also one time a complete stranger actually came up and asked me to dance, which was a real surprise--I rarely even have people I actually know ask me to dance, let alone people I've never met before in my life!), and got to know a couple of new people.  There were a ton of complete strangers (I'm assuming mostly new freshmen, or returned missionaries that left 2 years ago or something...) there, though.  I wasn't expecting there to be that many, especially with the Mormons lowering the mission ages (I figured there'd be basically no 18-year-old guys coming in this year, since they'd all go on missions instead.)  The new people I talked to seemed pretty nice overall, though unfortunately one of them pulled out the early stages of a conversion attempt on me almost the instant she found out I wasn't Mormon... Okay, kids, I know your church has been pushing that "every member a missionary" thing a lot lately, but seriously, telling someone to pray about things and hoping they convert to your religion is not the best way to give a good first impression to people you've never met before in your life, or make them want to get to know you any better.  That sort of thing is kind of obnoxious even when my friends do it (and has, several times in the past, distanced me a bit from friends... none quite as bad as the one from way back in 2005, but still, there were a few people last year that suddenly become a lot more uncomfortable to be around after they went all converty on me), let alone people that I've only just met.

For some reason, though, the conversion-attempt girl's name is the only one that I remember.  It probably helps that I have no idea how to spell the other girl's name, and due to how ear-blastingly loud it was in there when I was talking to her I'm not even 100% sure how to pronounce it either (it was only after the end of the dance that I talked to the other girl whose name I can remember, so there wasn't absurdly loud music blaring in my ears the whole time.)

But yeah, the dance turned out pretty well.  And apparently there's another one next week, so hopefully that one turns out well too.


Unfortunately, it's looking like I won't be able to get a job for this semester after all.  The good thing, though, is that I might not even need one--now that I'm selling my old NES games on eBay, I might actually be making more money a week than I would have made from an actual job anyway (at least assuming that I was only working low-end part time hours.)  So far I've gotten about 80 bucks from my copy of Megaman 5, and I currently have DuckTales 2 up for auction... and the high bid at the moment is over $100 (with 3 days still left to go! O_O)  Along with two other games (one's been bid up to around $20, the other still at $10.)  Hopefully that should be enough (combined with my financial aid refund check and what I've already got in the bank) to pay for rent and electric bills.  If not, I've always got my main bank account back home to fall back on, but I'd rather not drain a bunch of money from that to pay for rent...

Back at SVU once again (and it's my last year!)

Yep... the day before yesterday I left Middle of Nowhere, VA in a crammed-full old hippievan...

...and once again headed over to Buena Vista to move in for school.  This time I'm living in an apartment near SVU rather than a dorm or some other living space that's controlled by the school, which means I've finally escaped from the clutches of SVU's evil on-campus housing system.  The SVU website took a while to actually acknowledge that I am not coming back to Carriage "how is this 'on campus' if it's further away than most people's off-campus houses?" Mod 335... but as of yesterday it seems to be (correctly) not showing any school housing assignment for me.  Let's hope it actually sticks this time (three times during the summer the MySVU page randomly reverted to last semester's housing assignment, rather than showing the "--" that indicates "this guy got the hell out of on-campus housing before it drove him crazy.")

Apartment seems like it's going to be pretty nice so far.  It came with a fridge, stove, sink, microwave, and bathroom stuff, and I was able to get a couch, table, and chairs that previous tenants had left behind... so the only major piece of furniture I needed to bring with me was the bed.  And a dresser, but since it had mold on it when I picked it up from Dad's house (we were able to get it off with this cleaning spray stuff he had, but still) I probably won't be using it for much of anything until I can be sure it's not going to mold up really bad again.  I have plenty of room for my clothes without it, though, so it should be okay either way.  Air conditioner works well, and since the room stays pretty cool during the day even without it I probably will be able to save some money on my electric bill by not running it during the day, only at night when I'm trying to sleep (if it's too warm to just open windows and cool off the place that way, anyway.)  Oh, and speaking of bills, the electric bill is the only one I'll actually have to pay--all other utilities (water, sewer, wireless Internet that's around 4 or 5 times faster than what I have at home, etc.) are included in the rent.  Carpet's a little grungy (my feet get darker colored on the bottom just from walking around barefoot in there...) but I should be able to borrow a vacuum and clean it up a little bit sometime.  Here's what the living room/kitchen area looks like now that I've unpacked:

I've also managed to order one of the two textbooks I need online, though it will probably be late coming in (the website I ordered it from said it probably would take 18 to 24 days to get here... why, I have no idea.)  Regardless of the "guy riding on a giant turtle" shipping speeds, I did only have to pay $68 for it (instead of the $170 they charge in the school bookstore!), and that's including the shipping cost, so... yeah, saved a BUTTLOAD of money on that one.  The other book I need was about the same price online as it is in the bookstore, though, so I rented it from the bookstore for half of that.  That means I've got some extra money now, since Dad gave me $300 to pay for books and I only needed about half of that, plus 10 bucks for a trash can, salt, and dish-washing materials from the dollar store.  That's always nice to have, especially with me having to pay rent and all.

On a less-positive note... don't ever buy headphones from the dollar store.  They'll suck.  Okay, the actual headphone part of these is fine (they seem to work pretty well, and unlike most headphones I don't have to turn the volume on my computer way down to avoid hurting my ears)... the problem is, the plastic part that goes over your head was so crappy and fragile that the thing broke literally minutes after I got them out of the packaging last night.  When I  tried to get the things to stretch to a size big enough to go over my head, some part of the left side broke and now the left headphone is permanently detached from the main plastic-thing part (which is now in two pieces, due to the left side mostly breaking off.)  Yeah... I probably should've just brought my cheapo years-old-already-but-still-working pair from back home (which are duct-taped in two places to hold them together!) instead of buying these new ones.

Next on the list is trying to find a job.  The two possibilities I'm really thinking of are the school bookstore (though it seems unlikely that I'd get a chance to work there, since they probably already have everyone they need, I figure I might as well check while I'm up there) and the dollar store just a couple blocks away from my house... but unfortunately, it seems the dollar store isn't hiring anymore, so that one isn't going to work.  Apparently Burger King is also hiring, but... I know that one guy from SVU that I don't like being around worked there last year and may still be working there now, so I don't think I would want to bother with that.  If neither of the possibilities I'm really considering works out, I might end up working in the SVU dining hall instead... though I don't know, since I never heard back from them after filling out that form a while back.  There's also Domino's (who may be hiring sit-in-store employees in addition to delivery people; I can't do delivery without a car, so I'll need to check on this one) and Aaron's, a furniture place (who are hiring people to move stuff into trucks and into people's houses, stuff like that.)  I'd really rather not work in the dining hall if I have any choice, but I'll probably need a part-time job this semester to build up enough money to pay for all my rent next semester (and a job next semester is just out of the question--I have Senior Art Show next semester and there is no way I'd be able to do both at the same time.)

Another semester done.

Yep... I'm back home in Middle of Nowhere, VA again... left East Mormonistan yesterday, after sending over half of my stuff home with Mom the night before since I knew we'd be in a rush to leave Friday (since Mom had to work later that night.)

Though in a lot of ways this was kind of a crappy semester compared to the previous three, the last couple weeks turned out so well that I'm not sure whether to consider it my worst semester or second-worst anymore.  It might have actually been better than the spring semester of last year, if only because of how well the last couple weeks went.  Here's what I ended up accomplishing this year...

• Made a comic book in Spanish about Señor Death.  This was my Spanish IV final project, and it turned out really well.  Check out my other blog for links to every page if you want to read it (it's also on Facebook, but... eh.)
• Drew pictures for some of my friends leaving SVU.  Unfortunately not all of them (or even close...) because I was so busy these last weeks, but I did get seven or eight pictures drawn and given to people who won't be coming back next year.  Sorry to the other 16 or so people I didn't manage to get to before then... I really wanted to draw stuff for all of you, but I just didn't have enough time.  I should've started on them earlier...
• Made a Muppet.  A Muppet that looks like my dad, to be specific.  This was a project for my Sculpture class this semester.
• Did a buttload of other art stuff.  Mostly printmaking, but I'm pretty happy with most of my prints from this year (swirly Yogurt Snail, girl walking away from crowd of creepy featureless people, and the watercolored pineapple especially.  The Parupoos were pretty good too.)
• Played Scrabble for 3 hours.  DEATHTANKS: unfortunately not a word.  Yeah, that was random. XD  I wish there were more of those days where you just have tons of time to do random fun stuff with friends, but that hasn't happened too often this semester, between everyone else being busy earlier on and me being busy toward the end!
• Won 2nd place in the Heart of the OHR contest with The K'hyurbhi Lands.  Technically I did this last semester, but the results didn't come out until early this semester, so I'm going to include it here.
• Signed up for off-campus housing.  No more having to put up with 7-8 other guys in the same house! No more 15-minute walk up from Boredom Hell every day! I'll finally have my own apartment, with no RAs breathing down my neck all the time! Oh, and I'll have a mailbox down there in addition to the school one, so I'll be able to get my mail without walking up on campus (assuming it gets delivered to that mailbox and not the school one, anyway.) Again, this really applies more to next year than right now, but... I did the paperwork and such this semester.
• First ever checking account.  Yep.  I now have a checking account (and a debit card to go with it... but no actual checks so far. XD)  There's only ~50 bucks left in it now, but once I get my housing deposit back from SVU that will change.
• Explored odd places in Buena Vista.  I'm guessing I'll have walked pretty much every street in this town by the time I graduate.  This semester, I discovered another whole chunk of the place that I didn't know about before, with roads that go up and down really big hills.  I also re-discovered the spot where you can climb down into this weird little concrete "creekbed" under a bridge (no water anytime I've been there, but I guess it's a flood prevention thing?) that winds around several areas in town.  I had stumbled across this before, but forgotten how to get there.
• Lost 5 pounds.  Not sure how I did it, but apparently I am down to 235 (last time I weighed myself I was hovering around 240.)  This must have been pretty recent since the last time I got on a scale it was during Spring Break, and I was still 240 then.

Wow... that was a great end to the week

Yep... as weird and sometimes crappy as this week has been, the dance last night actually turned out really well!  There seems to be a pattern of dances that I try to ask someone to and then don't succeed in asking (or do and get a no) turning out really good... the Honor Ball last year, Homecoming last semester, and now this year's Spring Formal were all that kind of situation and they all turned out really good.  Lots of goofing off with Ruth, Elle, Michelle, and Clarissa this time, and I managed to ask a bunch of people to dance and somehow never had any problem doing so (I even managed to teach Ruth how to do east coast swing! and waltz, again.)  Took a bunch of pictures, too.  Never felt lonely or left out pretty much the entire time; when a bunch of friends went off to random-wiggle-dance, I just wandered off to take pictures and talked to other people who weren't dancing and there was no problem.  Probably the only downside is that it didn't last longer than it did, since I got there 45 minutes late... but then again, I wouldn't have wanted to miss any of my random Jonzzey's conversations from that day, that Italian BMT from Subway was pretty good, and I definitely wouldn't have wanted to go to a dance without taking a shower first.  So it would've been kind of hard to get there much earlier.  Also, I have a sunburn now, though I don't think it's too bad; mostly on my neck (only hurts if something scrapes it, otherwise just feels hot), though my arms are a little red too.  I should probably have gotten sunscreen on that last Wal-Mart trip... XD

And besides, even though the dance itself ended at 11:30, the random goofiness didn't! I ended up going up to the Lofts with a bunch of friends and we sat around talking, listening to random music from several people's phones/MP3 players, playing with balloons, and just generally goofing off for another hour or so after that.  I added so many things to my random quotes list last night... XD

Also, it turns out that the girl I tried to ask ("tried" because I ended up freaking out really bad when I tried to call her, to the point where I couldn't quite form sentences...) didn't actually get any of the three text-messages I sent her after the freakout, so... she had no idea what had been going on until I explained it to her when I bumped into her at the dance.  The version of my explanation in text-message form was a lot more awkward and filled with repeated apologies, so it's probably better that I ended up explaining what happened in person instead of her having to see those.  She didn't seem too freaked-out by the whole thing, and we ended up talking a bit and dancing once, so I think that whole situation turned out better than I was afraid it would earlier this week (my first thought when I don't get a reply back from a text-message is always "she reacted badly to something I said and is ignoring/avoiding me," made even worse by the fact that I didn't see her all week... what actually happened was "her phone is being weird and she never got that text." XD)

Roasty weather

We've had a lot of it lately.  It's been in the 80s the past three days.  And, surprisingly, I haven't been miserable; it's actually been kind of nice most of the time, though I do get really overheated and worn out if I have to walk a lot out in the sun during the day in this kind of weather.  It's easier to deal with when the wind is blowing, at least, and it cools off at night and becomes really nice walking-around-outside type weather.  Too bad everyone's so busy with homework lately, or I'd probably end up asking some girl to go for a walk around the area with me sometime.  Might still end up doing that, depending on how busy I am next week, since I won't be quite as homework-overloaded as I am now (at least, if I make some progress on my Printmaking stuff before this week's over... still no ideas yet, unfortunately.)

Yesterday was a pretty good day for the most part... until the very end.  I pretty much screwed up then... there's a girl who I've been thinking of asking on a date or something for a few weeks now, and last week she actually asked me if I had asked anyone to the dance that's coming up yet.  Which was especially weird considering that this was almost two whole weeks before the dance; she's asked me this in the week immediately before a dance before, but never that far ahead of time.  So I kind of interpret that as a "hint" she's trying to give me, like she wants me to ask her, and several other people I asked about it agreed.  Then the problems start.  I don't see her at all for two days at the start of the week after deciding that I will actually try to ask her.  And then, late at night on the second day, I try to call her and ask her that way.  And... it just doesn't work.  I get way too nervous and start freaking out and am unable to even form complete sentences.  I can't even explain to her what's going on, and I definitely can't manage to ask her to the dance in that state, so eventually I just end up hanging up the phone and wishing I had never tried.
And then it gets worse.  She sends me a text message asking if I'm okay, I guess assuming that I called her because something was horribly wrong rather than the call itself being what went horribly wrong.  I basically tell her that there wasn't anything going on before, and that I was going to try and ask her to the dance but I'm terrible at doing that and I freaked out and couldn't get words to work.  And... no response.  I never got another message back from her after that.  I mean, it was pretty late (after 12:30) by then so I thought it could just be that she went to bed, but... all day today, still no response.  And I haven't really seen her or talked to her at all since this all happened, so I don't know if I messed up and freaked her out with all that or if she's still okay with me after it or what.  I mean, I'm definitely not going to be able to go to the dance with her at this point (first of all, it's pretty much already Thursday and the dance is on Friday so it's pretty much too late to ask anyone; second of all, when something goes that badly the first time, I don't try it again), but I want to at least explain the situation better than some dinky text message could do and make sure we're still friends and she hasn't been scared off by that.  I don't know, I might just be worrying too much about nothing, but I can't help it.

Okay, on to better news.  There were actually people around on campus tonight.  Seriously.  All this semester nobody seemed to ever be around, and tonight I kept bumping into tons of people I knew just hanging around at 9:00, 10:00, 11:00... pretty much whatever time of night I happened to be wandering around.  Bumped into some people studying on a picnic table outside the library, then a bunch of the girls from the Library Mods hitting a volleyball around in the field there (I joined in for a while), then some more hanging around just sitting in the grass somewhere, and finally there were some more people in the art building working on a Senior Show project.  Actually got to know a new person there tonight; I think I've seen her around once or twice before, but never really talked to her until today.  She also gave me a ride down to Carriage, so I didn't have to walk all the way down for once! That's always good.