Reality and fantasy

When I was young, I knew I had pretty bad eyesight, but I did everything I could to get out of wearing glasses. Given that my last name starts with an A, I got lucky and was typically sitting in the front of the class, a fact that helped me cover up. I also got very good at reading the shapes of words, rather than letters themselves, a fact that still gets me into trouble now and then, especially with unusual names (example: it took me 10 years of reading the Oz books to realize the Gnome King's name was Ruggedo, not Rodrigo!). However, eventually I got caught- a teacher decided to sit the class by first names, not last, and my grades were terrible in that class until an optometrist caught me with one of those eye charts with lines instead of letters. I could tell that they were horizontal or vertical, but not where the single bar was, and failed horribly. (Also, by then, I had the letters chart memorized, but the lines one was new to me.)

Cycles

I have a bad tendency to need goals in my life. As a student, however, goals are pretty hard to come by when classes aren't in session, and while you can make random goals to get through, those don't last long around me. I made 'em, I can break 'em, because they're meaningless. And when I get to thinking like that, I fall into this pattern:



I know, I know, I'm still no artist, bear with. What makes this particular cycle a little more interesting is that I got the idea to draw this out, and that was enough to break me out. For now. It did what it was supposed to do, however, which is fill my time with something interesting. I started this at about 8pm, while staring, unmotivated, at my computer screen, and it is now 10pm.

I also, incidentally, have a desire to go Office Space on my scanner, as it decided it is smarter than I am, and I wanted only parts of that drawing scanned, rather than the whole thing. That alone took the better part of twenty minutes- trying to find what silly little setting in what drop-down was preventing me from getting the whole picture. In the end, I had to show details of the scan, and drag the selection of one small area to encompass the whole thing. It solved the problem, but also thought I wanted jpegs of the other little bits it particularly liked, so now I'm off to clean up my picture files before going to bed. Sorry for the mildly down tone of this post; blame it on a Monday and crummy scanner. Cheers!

Weather

I know I'm no artist, but here's my take on the recent weather patterns of Colorado.



Thanks, Colorado, thanks a lot. And if you intend to make beaches for yourself with all this rain... there's a good chance you'll do it, but I kind of like the rest of the US, I'd rather not have it all under water.

Update: For those of you who haven't' been there, it rains every afternoon in Hawaii. Unlike Colorado, it is usually a light rain rather than a deluge, however. I think Colorado got a little too enthusiastic.

I got a bike! (Part 2)

So I'd discovered this past month that parking near campus and walking could make for a very lengthy walk indeed, and this was without students moving back into said residential neighborhood, and the possibility of 2-6" of snow on the ground. Time to revise the plan a bit.

Being as that my college is in one of the most bike- and pedestrian-friendly cities in the US (or so I believe), I decided it was time to get a bike. Since new bikes these days start- for a cheap bike at a general store- at about $120, I decided to take my search to my old friend, Cragislist. If you don't use Craigslist, I highly, highly recommend it. Within a week, I had found a mountain bike (for snowy days on campus) for just $40. It wasn't particularly fancy, but it had the basics that I needed: two wheels, two pedals, steering and brake mechanisms and gears for going up and down hills. That's good enough for me.

I got a bike! (Part 1)

Yes, as the title explains, I have bought a bike- and that's a bicycle rather than a motorcycle this time. It is substantially cheaper that the motorcycle was, even without the whole crashing-on-the-first-drive-home thing. Anyhow! In case you don't know why I decided to do this, despite being about as athletic as a panda bear, read on. If you do know the story already, skip ahead to the next post where current events resume.

For the last two years, I have forked over $174.25 per semester for what I believed was the privilege of having a parking spot on campus, and even in the same zip code as my classes. True, it was typically on-the-street parking, I would have to drive in circles til someone pulled out or I decided yes I really could fit my Honda in that spot, and I had to walk uphill to campus just to then walk downhill to where my classes were, but still, it was fairly convenient parking. This past semester, however, taught me all I need to know about campus parking, and the process by which parking admin officials' hearts slowly turn into shriveled husks of coal rather than warm, loving flesh.