don't worry

I made this so that I could hang it up in my room. Need to be reminded of it everyday.

old notebooks

My first college class ever was History 120: American History. Thus began my college education at George Mason University. It was August 30th, 2004. The summer Olympics had justed ended, and Michael Phelps broke all sorts of records in Athens. For my history notebook, I cut out newspaper articles and made a collage:






I took English 302 my junior year. It was after I quit the forensics team, which was hard. It turned out to be a great class with a great Professor. It was also the time when I stopped wearing contacts and started wearing glasses. I love the class, and I love the notebook I made for the class:



I love the lobster over the ice cream, such a disturbing juxtaposition. I also love the word "kumquats" at the top.

Comm 300: Rhetorial Theory, was a terrible class - only because we had an awful grad student as a teacher. It was unfortunate, because I love rhetorical theory. I learned more about rhetorical theory from Peter Pober, my forensics coach, and giving speeches, than I ever did from this class. But I liked the notebook I made. I like the old bottles of alcohol to the right:



The story behind the last two notebooks was that I had cut all the pictures of food out of Bon Appetite magazines. One day I was sitting on a bench outside waiting for my lit class to begin, and this really cute guy basically came over and convinced my to give money to his frat/buy a subscription to a magazine. Because I didn't want to look like a stupid girl and subscribe to People or something, I chose Bon Appetite. I doubt it impressed him. I never read it. But it did make for some great collages.

Philosophy and Literature was a great class. I used advterisements from my old 1900's Sears & Roebuck catalog that I found at the Fort Belvoir thrift store. Don't worry - it was a reproduction catalog. Very cool, nevertheless. I tried to do a musical theme... They sold some very interesting things back then! This notebook is crica 2005:



I took Comm 320: Media Criticism during the last semester of my senior year (*tear*). This was the best class ever. Great professor, fascinating subject. I loved this class because we didn't use a textbook - instead, we read articles written in academic journals and the like: Andre Bazin, Sergei Eisenstein, Karl Marx, Ghraham Murdoch, Stuart Hall. We watched "Andalusian Dog", "Rules of the Game", "Battleship Potemkin", "Triumph of the Will", "Why We Fight", "The Simpsons", and "Snow White", to name a few. I learned so much from this class, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I think it was appropriate that my most favorite notebook I ever produced was used for this class. I consider this my crowning glory of collages (so far). I made it out of illustrations for The Economist. I love that magazine. Wish I still had a subscription. Here it is:

Illustration #1

Today I decided I would become an artist. I've always loved making collages, and I recently discovered that you can actually be a collage artist. Better than that, a lot of children's books are beautifully illustrated with collages. So here is my first illustration for my first children's book.

free donut day

This past Friday was National Free Donut Day at Dunkin' Donuts. I found out about this occasion in the afternoon time, and resolved to stop by on my walk to the Metro on the way home to collect my free donut. I even had to walk on the other side of King Street to get to the store. I was totally going out of my way to do this.

The man at the store gave me a hard time about receiving a free donuts. I'm still not sure if the deal was you had to buy a cup of coffee and then you would receive a free donut, or if you were entitled to have a free donut regardless of any other purchase. At any rate, my heart was set on obtaining a free donut, and so I talked the man into handing the pasty over. I couldn't have bought a cup of coffee anyway, since I was riding the Metro home.

All the way home on the train, I was looking forward to enjoying the donut with a cup of milk, or perhaps I would even brew a small pot of coffee to drink with it. The suspense was building. Arrived at Franconia-Springfield. Got to my car in the garage. Drove down the Parkway. Exited. Got home. Place the bag with the single donut on the kitchen table. Proceeded upstairs to change out of my work clothes into something more comfortable. Looking forward to my free donut.

Walk down the stairs. What do I see? Riley's snout in the bag, donut GONE.

Anger. Did Riley even care about the great lengths I went through to get this donut? Did he appreciate my bargaining skills in persuading the man to give it to me without having to purchase coffee? Does Riley have to go to work every day to earn money to buy donuts? Could Riley even enjoy the taste, texture, smell of the donut? NO!

This is coming from the girl who once gave away her credit card information to receive a free medium pizza from Domino's one time. The girls who rejoices over Free Cone Day at Ben and Jerry's. Boy, do I get excited over free food!

I was mad Riley until Saturday afternoon. That dog is just so darn cute and affectionate, it's hard to stay mad at him. You have to wonder though... God uses even pets in our lives to teach us patience, contentment, and self-control. Amazing.

media placement

Saw two McAuliffe ads, one Common Sense Virginia ad (against McDonnell), and one McDonnell ad all during ABC's 7:30-8:00pm prime access slot, "Jeopardy", tonight. It's that time of year!

rum punch

When I was at Gadsby's Tavern Museum this weekend, I read about a poem Ben Franklin wrote describing punch (rum, sugar, fruit juice, water):

"Boy, bring a bowl of China here,
Fill it with water cool and clear:
Decanter with Jamaica right
And spoon of silver, clean and bright.
Sugar twice-fin'd in piece cut,
Kni[f]e, sieve and glass in order put,
Bring forth the fragrant fruit and then
We're happy till the clock strikes ten."

-Benjamin Franklin

franconia-springfield

Usually I drive to the Franconia-Springfield Metro station every morning to take the blue line into work. It's a very pleasant ride up to the King Street stop, about 12 minutes or so. This week I am house sitting for some friends who live off of Franconia road up in Alexandria-ish area. I was all excited because I could try something new and take the YELLOW line train into work, which I never get on. The plan was to ride the yellow line from Huntington to King Street. This was something I was greatly looking forward to - experiencing a whole new station stop, a whole new set of commuters, different drivers announcing different station stops, etc. It would be out of my normal routine, and it would expose me to the things yellow line passengers experience on the Metro.

With my Google map in hand, I left their house around the normal 8:03am time I would leave my house, expecting to get to work nice and early this morning. On their website, Metro indicated that it only took like 3 or 5 minutes to get to King Street from the Huntington stop. Nice, I thought to myself.

Major traffic on Telegraph road. Of course. Duh! I'm so used to my pleasant jaunt up the Parkway to the Metro station. Sure there are lots of cars on the road then, but none of this we're sitting still for 15 minutes babbish. I had to get re-acquainted with this. Argh, I thought to myself.

As I'm sitting in traffic, I'm hoping that I am in the correct lane I need to be in to turn right on Huntington Ave. I get all anxious about these sorts of things. We were literally all just sitting there. I didn't know if I needed to get over or not. Once we started moving again, I resolved that I would just go with the flow of traffic and hopefully find my way there.

I totally missed the turn for Huntington Ave. Wasn't in the most right-handed lane. Thankfully, I noticed the Masonic temple. Really close. Then I realized that, DUH, I'm right next to Alexandria and practically at work already. It just so happened that I successfully continued on Telegraph until I got to a part of the street I recognized, and merged over to head towards Old Town. Got on Duke Street and knew where I was going. Another thing to be thankful for was the fact I had cash on me to pay for parking in a parking garage as well.

It didn't hit me until I was sitting there on Telegraph and saw the Masonic Temple that it would have been ridiculous for me to go to the Huntington Metro, park, take the Metro, and then walk to work. I just didn't realize how close I already was. This is a good thing, but I am really bummed that I will not be experiencing the yellow line this week. Oh well... maybe some other time?

The other slightly disappointing thing was that I discovered that the VRE does not run on the weekends. There goes my grand idea of taking it up to DC one day with my sisters. One weekend, I should say. Because I WORK during the day!

Waiting for my Metro t-shirt and mug to arrive in the mail. Obessed? Yes.