Staycation! (Long post)

      What do you do with an extra week or vacation and no burning desire to go anywhere? Clean, of course! Ok, ok, I know that's not everyone's answer, but that's what we decided to do. We have a 10'x10' storage unit that we've been saying for a while needs to be gone through, and over the winter, things had sort of piled up around the house, so we blocked off a random week to deal with it. 

     For once, I remembered to take before shots of the mess to be tackled, and it looks like a pretty typical storage unit, full of just stuff. 

     We packed for a full day excursion, and arrived Monday morning at 10am, set up a table, and started pulling stuff out. That weird thing in the middle that's wrapped in plastic is a weaving loom my mother got me quite a few years ago. It is absolutely my retirement/"when I have time and room" plan, but I'm not ready for it just yet, and we can't stack anything on top of it. 

Dormancy

     Been a bit quiet of late. Some of that is that I've been busy getting things done, and some of it is that I'm simply becoming quieter. My opinion does not need to be given on every issue that comes my way, especially since I'm not completely informed on many of them. Unfortunately, since sketches are usually my opinion on things, that does mean I've done less drawing lately. It's not gone, though, no worries there.

     Anyway, as things are slowing down with the season change, thought I'd catch up here. In no particular order, here are things that I've worked on recently:

Sewing: Halloween outfit (Slytherin student from Hogwarts, and apparently this was the most people who've ever dressed up for Halloween at work), and work pants.

Exercise: Still doing boot camp two nights a week, and running twice a week at home. The Kenpo Karate class is on break until December; I'm enjoying that quite a bit.

London/Ireland Trip, part 2

(continued from previous post)

     Having successfully navigated London and Dublin, we climbed back in the car and headed out to see other parts of southern Ireland. After navigating out onto the appropriate highway, I learned two things. 1) The best way to get used to driving on the wrong side of the road is to be on an open highway for mind-numbing hours. 2) Drivers in less urban areas are rather nice, and pretty darn mature. We quickly picked up that the thing to do is to be in the left lane (slow lane) until you need to overtake someone. You move right, go around them, and then get back in the slow lane. We had zero issues with getting stuck behind some jerk going slowly in the fast lane and holding everyone up. It was quite pleasant.

London/Ireland Trip, part 1

   My gentleman and I recently went on a trip to London and Ireland - my first vacation in years, our first big trip together, and his first time off the continent. Overall, it was very good, and we had some serious soul-searching on whether or not to come back. The siren song of steady paychecks were what finally won out, but we have both agreed it will not be our last vacation together or abroad.

London:

   We intentionally flew out on Monday night, so that we could have a weekend before our vacation to prep and be relaxed from the start. In hindsight, taking an overnight flight with a connection at 3am was maybe not the smartest thing, but I did like the mid-week start. We landed at London Gatwick at about 9am local time, and hopped a cab into London. Somewhat expensive, but we were both pretty fried at that point. Moreover, even the cabbie got lost looking for the hotel, so I'm pretty sure if we'd tried it ourselves, it would have been a rough start. The hotel itself was nice, if typically British (i.e. very narrow rooms with high ceilings, as if height makes up for lack of elbow room). Breakfast was included, and we slept in both days we were there. 

Spring Break

     Spring break started, for me, this past Thursday. Given the usual irregularity of plane tickets, it turned out that leaving early would save me a couple hundred dollars in airfare, so I sacrificed a day or two of work in order to get the lower prices. The flight was bumpy as all get out, but at least it didn't snow, rain, hail, sleet, freeze, or otherwise get delayed. Sometimes, that's all you can ask for.

     The past few weeks have been pretty stressful with graduation looming over me. I try to be one of those people who plan ahead and are prepared for anything, so having an abrupt end to the entire way of life I'm used to is a bit unnerving. This weekend helped that no small bit, just by my gentleman and I being able to find an affordable place to live. It's not our dream place, of course, but since I don't have a job lined up yet (and therefor don't know where I'll have to commute to or what my income/ budget will be), we opted to err on the safe side. Still, it's a nice, open place that is roughly the square footage we were looking for, and in a gorgeous neighborhood with lots of walking/ biking paths, so no complaints!

Delays again!

     I know, I know, I've been really bad about posting updates the last few weeks. I am technically back in the states, but not really home yet. I've been busy meeting up with old friends and hanging out with family, so there's not been a need for updates; on the other hand, I haven't had terribly much downtime to plan out new post topics either, which is why things have been pretty quiet on the blogfront.

     I'm flying home this coming Monday, so I sincerely doubt there'll be a post up then, unless it's something along the lines of "what's wrong with airports these days, and what needs to be changed to return to a rational state of business." Lengthy title, but I may just have to do that one someday... Anyhow! Things should return to normal (i.e. Monday and Friday postings) as of this coming Friday, the 24th, with a return to FTPs. Until then, here's something to consider:

Weekend! (plus pictures)

     At last, at last, the weekend is here! Sadly, that means my time here is 1/4 done, but I still intend to make the best of it. We had a meeting this morning to sign yet another Russian document- we're all trusting Kirill (our Russian leader over here) to ensure that they're not selling off our firstborns or anything like that. Anyhow, that was at 11:30, lasting til about 12:30, and then we were free. I'm slightly ashamed to report that I slept until about 10:30, having gone to bed just after midnight. I don't know if it's the weight of the humid, denser air down here or all the walking we do, but I'm sleeping at least 9-10 hours every night. I'm one of the few who do, though, as most of my group is underage and delights in getting smashed at every opportunity, coming back home at about 2 or 3 am. To each their own, I'd rather be well-rested.
 
     Anyhow, decided to walk around down on Nevski Prospect- the incredibly wide street that runs almost the length of St. Pete's and has an amazing number of restaurants and shops. I went again to Dom Knigi and managed to find the kid's section this time, coming back with two books of fairy tales that I hope to be able to improve my reading skills on. Along the way, I ran into a display of Navy (as far as I can tell) vehicles that were parked on the huge walkways. For some amount of money, you could hold rifles and get your picture taken with two rather un-war-like females in skimpy dress, but I refrained.

FTP 12 - Endurance

     This week saw the last of finals for me, and the first of seven weeks of nothing to do (well, other than work and dance). In the past, I have usually managed to survive this by being productive for the first week, then getting bored with everything and whining to everyone who will listen to me about how I have nothing to do. Almost a year, ago, however, I found this quote from More Notes from the Universe, drew it out, and hung in on my wall:

     At the time, I thought it was referring to some of the bad feelings I'd been hanging onto from past experiences, and focussed on getting them dealt with and set aside. I'm thinking it's time to apply it to other habits though, such as the "I don't have an immediate goal that furthers my life's plan, so I will become bored and whiny" one that I've had for so long. What about you, what would you like to change?

Recovery week

     St. Patrick's Day is finally behind us, and now it's time to work on recovery. The last two nights have been spent with both ankles and both knees in wraps and braces, and I've slept over 9 hours each night. Fortunately I have semi-decent memory, because when I woke up today, I realized that, not only had I not prepared a post for today, but I also have a meeting with my advisor on campus in an hour and a half.

     With that in mind, here's a thank you that was sent to all of us from a preschool class that we went and danced for. I'd like to say that next week's post will be more comprehensive, but I'd be lying, since it will be spring break, and I will have a guest over. Here's hoping your week is a little less crazy than mine has been!

Surfing and skydiving

     Oh, look, another blank page. Having spent the last week staring at an unfinished, 10-page literature paper that is due tomorrow, I hope you'll forgive me for being slightly unenthused about looking up to see another unfilled document. Fortuitously, however, this one requires neither citations, nor research, nor reading yet another dry, morbid, depressed critique on yet another societal injustice. Instead, let us consider surfing and skydiving. Random, I know, but roll with it for a moment...

     Back in 2008, my life was pretty decent. I had a solid (I thought) job, that I didn't utterly hate and allowed me to put money in the bank to save for those rainy days that came sooner than planned. I had no real ties or commitments to anything, no real debts, and few hassles. As such, I felt that there was no better time than the present to try out a few things that had been on my unwritten bucket list. During the summer, I tried out surfing at a camp in California. While I made a very good friend there, I was still pasty white girl, and the very first day saw me with severe enough sunburn that I was limping the entire week, and decided that surfing was not for me.

This, but all over. 

Back into the swing of things

     When I was a teenager, I remember looking at the world and being offended at how most adults were such creatures of habit. Day in and day out, they had their routine and stuck to it, rarely changing anything or looking around at the amazing world around them (at least, from my perspective, that was the case). It looked like such a dreary, boring, grey life, and I wanted nothing to do with it.

Monday (that's me in the middle, watching)

Filler #3!

     Last filler post, honest. Technically, I did get home yesterday, but the plane should have gotten in (not sure exactly when it will, but that's time-travel writing for you) at 8:15pm, and I have to be ready for a class today, so... one more filler and back to full-length randomness this Friday, I promise.

     This is something that happened to me when I was working at a temp job for a government contractor. I didn't really have an office, per se, so they tucked me into what was basically a corner, gave me a computer and a scanner, and a couple million (ok, maybe 50) boxes of files to be scanned. Not exactly a highly

Filler #2!

     Being as that I'm still on vacation (well, I will be when you read this post), here's another random sketch from the ones that didn't make it. This was started when I was doing the post about the picture of myself on the wall- I think I was going to try to draw myself small and having an attitude, yelling at me for putting me on a box on the wall or something. For some reason, when I started drawing it tho, the picture itself wouldn't behave, and eventually turned into me sitting on a bench in a park, eating ice cream. No idea how that happened, it just didn't want to co-operate (story of my life, eh?).

Filler #1!

     As many of you know, I am on vacation from November 19th to the 27th, visiting family and friends I've not seen in about six years. Rather than just let you guys suffer from a lack of stories, however, I've dug up some older sketches that never quite made it on here, for one reason or another.

     This one was supposed to be a complaint about a particularly heinous day I had. When I woke up, it was literally freezing outside and my heater had decided not to work. When I got home, naturally, it was