"MO-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-OM! SHE'S TOUCHING MY SIDE AGAIN!"
(If you didn't know, they're trying to get the Health Care Bill through the House today. If delayed, it might take until Tuesday, and it'll be thanks to shit like this.)
- You Don't Know How It Feels:
amused
I honestly have no idea where this came from.
Miles the seagull and Penny the otter. Side characters to the "New York State of Mind" storyline. Popped kind of out of nowhere, obviously wanted to be drawn tonight.
- You Don't Know How It Feels:
sleepy
Playing with styles.
Also playing with the idea of an autobiographical comic.
No idea if this will go anywhere, though I have scripted out quite a bit of it...because it's autobiography and remembering ten months ago isn't too hard.
- You Don't Know How It Feels:
- The Last DJ:Josh Joplin Group - "Trailways"
So I went up to the school today to do some hunting around, to find out what I can do. Technically, if I'd just taken the 3-credit computer course, I'd be able to transfer 2 more courses to the school (as compared to the 1.66 that I can transfer now, since they won't take more than 70 credits and I have 65).
I was told that basically, I'd have to take the other computer course for it to transfer as anything but a non-elective. Likewise, the community college does not qualify your credits if you take both courses because they're so similar, so basically I will have 4 credits kind of floating there and doing nobody any good...though in all technicality, they did help me get my AA degree, so I can't bash the credits too much.
I've set up an appointment with the college's representative for next week to figure out the specifics of everything. I also learned today that the 3 courses I can take to transfer -- the computer course, a communications course, and a statistics course (ouch, math) -- are ALL available as 2-week classes in the beginning of January. Basically, I'd be in school for 12 hours a day for 2 weeks, but I'd have an even 70 credits to transfer before the Spring semester started, and all 3 classes would qualify as necessary classes, not just random electives.
(Plus, if I nulled out the 4-credit computer course, that's 4 more credits I could take as electives. Have I mentioned I love elective classes? It's basically why I go to school...I want to learn EVERYTHING.)
Looking at the college's Spring schedule, they have a LOT of accelerated courses, and the majority of their courses are available online. Which is quite possibly the best thing ever, and a lot of the reason I've chosen to go to this school...no matter where I end up in the country, and even if I do get a job, I'll still be able to be in school. Thank you, internet!
(One day, I keep swearing, I will go to a college where you have to actually sit through classes and BE there. Of course, at this point, that'll be for my Master's or Doctorate, and I've gotta get through this thing first.)
So, it looks like it will be a busy winter. I ponder how Spring will be -- stuff will change if I get a job, but right now, it looks like mainly my life will be focusing on getting edumacated and acquiring that oh-so-magical Bachelor's degree.
- You Don't Know How It Feels:
hopeful
Thanks to my being underemployed, and thanks to the cost of COBRA's health insurance coverage (which I need or I will die), I do not have any extra spending money. Basically, for the first time in my life, I haven't been able to pay off my credit card on a monthly basis -- I'm still paying the bill, of course, but not the whole of what's owed every month like I used to.
This annoys me in a way that I cannot express satisfactorily. I do not like being in debt, even if it's just a few hundred bucks.
The cost of gas is rising again, the cost of food remains higher than it was even just a couple years ago, and the cost of electricity around here is fuckin' ridiculous if I do say so myself. Even with
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
spay_away paying half the rent/electricity/water/cable bill and for some groceries, we are still just scraping by. I had to dig into my savings account the other week to pay a hospital bill. This did not make me happy.So this is more or less my way of saying: if you want to hang out, I'm sorry. I can't afford it. I would absolutely love to hang out for a day, see a movie, grab lunch out, poke around and generally enjoy what life has to offer.
But I can't.
I have to save my gas for going to work or going up to the college to meet with folks who are helping me get somewhere to get my Bachelor's degree. I have to save my money to buy bread and insulin (which, if you're curious, is what the debt on my credit card is made of...very little of that is money that shouldn't have been or didn't need to be spent).
Heck, even my commission money -- which used to be my fun money -- has been going to paying bills and my credit card.
So I apologize in advance for being unavailable for awesome things. I'm continuing my job hunt, and its depressing as all get out, and I've mostly been amusing myself at home with drawing comics and reading library books.
I know they say you can't buy love or happiness, but being able to pay the bills and buy groceries without worrying would be a real load off a lot of people's backs.
- You Don't Know How It Feels:
irritated
I think I'm just proving that I can interchange these guys between their furry selves and their human selves and there is very little difference outside of character design =p
(I actually am extremely fond of Johanna's human design, but I'm not sure if that's because I like her as a character/she's basically a fictionalized version of me. It's almost narcissism, except it's not.)
- You Don't Know How It Feels:
- The Last DJ:Eddie Izzard - "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite [Beatles cover]"
I make no promises on if I will ever start it (though all the characters have their own little storylines, I just haven't written them down -- I'm doing that now, though)...but I am curious:
Poll #1479368 Fuzziness
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 28
If I ever draw the comic "New York State of Mind," which should the characters be?
As humans, the comic would be more marketable...but let's face it, these guys are a lot more fun to draw as people with animal heads/tails. I'm pretty sure I know what the majority will say here, but it's worth putting up a poll just to confirm it =)
About the only thing that would change, character-wise, is that since Adeline would be a human female instead of a hermaphroditic snail, I'd lose a lot of "changing gender" jokes. Otherwise, everything would be pretty much exactly the same.
I need to get back to the City. Man. I'm craving a cup of hot chocolate tea from The Chocolate Bar.
- You Don't Know How It Feels:
creative
Tonight, for my work, I taught a bread baking class at Whole Foods. I've been gathering recipes and working on stuff for it since Monday, which isn't a lot of time in advance, but that's how I work best. I made little booklets with the recipes and tips on yeast, baking powder, and baking soda, and we made 5 (count 'em: FIVE. The class was originally set for 4 but I crammed another one in there 'cause I'm awesome) types of bread: focaccia, calzones (we used premade dough for this, but I explained about the slow rise time & development of flavors...and I demo'd the long kneading process as well -- 20 minutes on a Kitchenaid is gonna be an hour by hand), pumpkin bread, cornbread, and quick cinnamon "rolls" (they were really biscuits; no yeast!).
I got to the store at 4:30, after gathering things together at my work, and got to work. By the time the class started (7), I had all the ingredients measured and laid out, a sample batch of focaccia ready, and everything ready and rarin' to go.
The woman at Whole Foods, B, was amazed at how utterly organized I was. She also agreed that the lack of wooden spoons and spatulas (which apparently get stolen!) sucked. Fortunately, I had brought spatulas from home. Also, I brought my baking stone, which is still there because it had to cool down...I'll pick that up tomorrow.
(The ovens there are awesome enough that you really don't need a baking stone, probably...wonderful heat distribution.)
All the recipes were big enough that they could be split between the 4 students, which was great -- everyone got to take a bit of everything home. The last thing out of the oven was the cornbread (I wanted to do it earlier, but we ended up working 2 batches of focaccia for everyone [that was great; there's nothing quite like start-to-finish bread], and the pumpkin bread takes an hour, so I had to wait for the oven -- still, pretty amazing the amount of stuff we did in 2 hours with 2 ovens).
After everything was done and the cornbread was in the oven, with the pumpkin bread finishing up, B set up a table and chairs and plates and everything, and everyone sat and ate the food they'd made...not to mention that they had sangria in the fridge, which was a lovely addition! I pulled the pumpkin bread out just as everyone was finishing, and the recipe made 5 small loaves...so everyone got their own, and one got sliced up and eaten as dessert.
It was...pretty awesome, actually. Pretty darn awesome. B was pleased at my professionalism and organization, the ladies in the class seemed pleased at both the recipes and my knowledge of all things baking (I made recommendations of Alton Brown and Harold McGee when it comes to science in the kitchen). Not one question was left unanswered, and hopefully everyone left full and happy.
So. Yeah. I guess this counts as my first night as a professional baker? And teaching it, no less. B said she definitely wants me to come back and is putting a good word in with her boss about it.
That's pretty cool.
- You Don't Know How It Feels:
good
This will be the last page I post here for a while because the current plan is to get a whole issue done and either start posting it online or publishing it, or possibly both. I guess the question is more, Would anyone actually buy it? Since it's black-and-white, shouldn't be too expensive to produce or purchase...
Either way. I'm trying to keep up with drawing 3 pages a week, so we'll see how that goes.
- You Don't Know How It Feels:
If I keep up a pace like this, these things might be worthy of their own website.
Sooner or later.
- You Don't Know How It Feels:
The drawings aren't perfect. They're wobbly, and I'm sure it will come to bother me as I progress through this.
Right now, though, I don't care. I'm actually getting something done. That doesn't happen too often.
- You Don't Know How It Feels:
calm
As a rule, I have no idea what I'm doing.
- You Don't Know How It Feels:
Not a final logo.
But getting somewhere.
- You Don't Know How It Feels:
The thing that bugged me about what he said (and I swear I was not trying to change minds or start an argument, though I did apparently, which always happens what the hell) was on the topic of the wages in China versus the wages here. He brought up factories at the turn of the last century; Henry Ford's famous $5-a-day revolution (he seemed surprised that I knew about this; if you don't know, Henry Ford felt that his employees should be able to buy the product they made. Wouldn't it be nice if people still thought that way?). Apparently, this is what China has going on right now.
Interestingly enough, I am relatively sure that Henry Ford's workers were not supported by people from other countries. Relatively sure that a good deal of that money -- if not all of it -- was American. Which sort of defeats the guy's point entirely.
I didn't bring this up, of course, I let the guy go on on his own 'cause he's a salesperson and a salesperson tells you what you want to hear to get you to buy their product. What chafed me was when he commented, "I was an Economics major, I know this stuff."
...no, you don't.
Now, keep in mind: I am not an economics major. I'm not a huge fan of numbers. But I do know that we are at a point in our history in many ways, including economically, that we have never been before. Saying you majored in economics -- especially when it was ten or twenty years ago -- is not unlike saying you were an economics major in 1920 and it's 1931. Things change. No matter how much you've studied concerning the subject, things change when it's discovered that Earth revolves around the sun, not the other way around.
We have never been at a point in modern American history before the past ten or twenty years where the majority of our product is imports. For most of American history, product was made in this country. Then folks realized that it was cheaper to make things in other countries, thanks to various laws (or lack thereof) and monetary exchange. The countries that we support doing this realize that, and buy our debt to keep the cost of the dollar at a point where their costs still benefit us (the universal "us," referring mostly to businesses, not us personally as people) and we continue to use their factories and product. It would be a mutually beneficial relationship if it didn't effect our own product output, but it does, thus it effects our job and product market by diminishing both.
But again, I'm not an economics major: this is just what I understand by watching it from the wayside and picking up bits and pieces in news reports. If you know why our economy is fucked right now and it's not anything near what I said (note: I know there are other factors such as loans and credit and such [I read Paul Krugman], I just consider this a contributor), PLEASE tell me. I want to know!
I just think that standing by "I'm an economics major!" or ANY major in almost ANY situation is the most moronic fallback ever unless you're being satirical or using it sarcastically. In all technicality, I'm a psychology major: I could deconstruct this guy backwards just by spending three hours listening to him talk about product -- I know it's not him, but it certainly is the person he presents himself as. It doesn't mean I'm right, though, which is my point. Everything changes, time is entropy, time is chaos: the only definites are what's already happened (maybe I should major in history?), and no matter how much you've studied, if something changes in a way that's never happened before, it's gonna fuck stuff up. The economy right now is an example of that (hell, the government right now is an example of that; it's trying to change and people aren't letting it because they don't like new things and I'm terrified we're going to go back to 1994 all over again), and it bugs me that people aren't realizing it.
Anyway. I didn't say anything, I let him carry on, and I'm sure he convinced everyone there that life was better in China thanks to us and we're supporting their economy and everyone has to start somewhere and look what we're doing to contribute to the world and I bet he votes Republican.
But it still pissed me off.
Note: As usual, this is a random ranble (a ramble and a rant COMBINED), and nothing has been researched or studied and there's a lot more opinion than fact. This is an LJ, not a fact blog. I always welcome critiques, questions, and corrections, but yelling at me because I said something wrong and then not providing the facts and feelings behind it will get us nowhere. I welcome information and research on the subjects I talk about, especially if I am completely off-base and wrong (and I am wrong sometimes), and I welcome conversation that centers around what I talk about, but PLEASE, try to keep it civil and informative. Thank you.
- You Don't Know How It Feels:
annoyed
Alton Brown finds cooking interesting. Julia Child loved cooking (and eating) -- she also found it interesting, as demonstrated by the work she put into "Mastering the Art..." I actually can't think of an example of someone who loves cooking but doesn't find it interesting (housewives?), I suspect because it's a very scientific process. It's possible to be interested in something but lose your love for it; it's possible to love something but lose your interest in it.
(This is not to say that Alton doesn't love cooking; I just suspect he gets joy in life from other things these days. Actually, not so much suspect...he points this out in some interviews. He seems to have taken the concept of "You're doing it wrong!" and made it into a TV show.)
So I have determined that to decide what I'm going to do with the rest of my life, I need to do something that I find interesting AND that I love. This draws an interesting quandary; things that I love all tend to be artistic things (cooking and cartooning), and because I'm quite passionate about them I don't take well to doing them as work. One of the great things about working at the newspaper was because it allowed a bit of what I loved (art & design) but it wasn't plunging me headfirst into people telling me that work that I put my heart & soul into sucked.
Unfortunately, my "interested in" category is MASSIVE, which is why it's taken me such a long time to figure out what I want to do when I grow up. So I'm gonna limit this selection to my "love" category:
Art (cartoons, animation, paintings, art history, et cetera), cooking (baking, cooking, kitchen-related everything), storytelling (movies, novels, comics), and politics (including news & punditry).
In a nutshell, that's me. Now, it's not everything about me -- but a brief overview of the things in life that I would feel worse off without...though of course there are many more things, such as my friends and rock 'n roll, but I'm trying to focus on something I can major in at school.
I think the thing to do, to walk the line between interest and love, to find something I want to do that won't break my heart and won't drive me crazy (and of course, this is all metaphorical; the job market sucks right now in about a million ways so getting an ideal job is even more of a dream than ever) is to find a major/career that is all of my "interested in" category and a slice of my "love" category -- something I love but, as I said, won't break my heart if I lose it.
Basically, I'd be majoring in my interest and minoring in my love; a combination like psychology/art or history/political science or roughly anything in the category of English and literature.
So.
I've finally got a starting point.
Now I just have to carry through with it.
- You Don't Know How It Feels:
awake
None of them.
Because I can't afford to.
The cheapest option would have been going into DC -- the only cost would've been Metro fare and maybe lunch. But, the more I read about the march the less I really wanted to go; I'm pro-gay rights, definitely, but reading Barney Frank's comments concerning the way Washington works (basically, "Follow the money"), I kind of feel that it would have been a waste of time. And believe me, it sucks that I feel that way; I used to believe in that kind of stuff. Like, last year.
The Comic-Con and Renn Fest, while wonderful options, also cost $15 - $20 admission, and of course a lot of the point of going is to purchase things while inside; you're basically spending money to spend money. And I can't afford that right now.
I can't afford anything right now, really: I've reached the point that's been coming for months where my income is now less than my monthly expenses thanks to the monthly bill for COBRA (since I paid a large chunk at the beginning of the year, I haven't had to pay at all until last month). That's $162 a month that I used to be able to save or use for fun stuff. Not to mention, I just paid off a $300 hospital bill...which would have been $2000 if I hadn't called both the hospital and my insurance company (one wrong code in the paperwork fucks everything up). $300 isn't really a lot of money, but it is when you don't have much. I had to dig into my savings account to pay it so it didn't go to a collections agency. Any extra money I make through commissions...well, that now goes to bills or groceries. I've had a steady amount of money on my credit card the past couple months; I pay off a hundred dollars here and there, but I keep having to use it for things like food and gas.
And of course, the dashboard lights in my car have gone out. I'm going to replace the fuse and see if that's it, but chances are it's the bulbs themselves and that's a whole other mess that I more than likely can't fix myself.
I'm so tired of living on a shoe string.
- You Don't Know How It Feels:
depressed
Fill this out: "____________ dressed as ________________."
I'll sketch the first three comments.
Obviously I prefer your blanks to be nouns (if you want me to sketch your character please provide references), but I don't think I've anthropomorphicized a verb or adjective before and that could prove mighty interesting.
- You Don't Know How It Feels:
This Sunday, though, someone asked to switch shifts with me, for they need Monday night off. So I will have the entirety of Sunday to myself. And there's too much to do.
So I turn to you, oh faithful internet!
Poll #1468878 Sunday, Sunday
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 17
What the hell should I spend my Sunday doing?
View Answers
The Baltimore Comic-Con
6 (35.3%)
The Equal Rights March in DC 3 (17.6%)
The Maryland Renaissance Festival 8 (47.1%)
I like how on the few weekend days I have off, tons of things happen on those days and choosing is always hard.
- You Don't Know How It Feels:
geeky
I find it amusing that so many people are astounded by this.
ziabandito555 has a great discussion going on the topic of this being premature. In the discussion, fuzzwolf provides a wonderful link: Process of Nomination and Selection for Nobel Peace Prize Laureates.So everyone spazzing out about how it's too soon and he's done very little, think about this: the latest he could have been nominated was February 1st. He'd been in office, what, eleven days? Pretty much nothing he's done as President contributed to the prize.
Of course, this leaves people asking "Wait, what the fuck?"
The current mindsets seem to be that he got the prize as a way of telling us, "Hey, America? Remember your last president? Well, we all thought he sucked. Keep electing guys like this one." Further to the right, the assumptions are more "Well, this is consolation for losing the Olympics" which shows how much research they've done into the process.
Common Misconceptions about the Nobel Peace Prize.
My opinion on this is still developing (Obama himself said, "I do not view it as a recognition of my own accomplishments. But rather as an affirmation of American leadership. ... I will accept this award as a call to action." which means hey, he gets it, neat). But quite frankly, I would like to congratulate our president for becoming a Nobel Peace Prize Laureate. He is the second sitting president to win the Nobel Peace Prize, the first being Teddy Roosevelt (other presidents have won it, including Woodrow Wilson and Jimmy Carter; neither was in-office at the time though).
I think that we, as Americans, should be honored that he was chosen...whatever the reason.
Edit: President Obama's speech concerning the award.
- You Don't Know How It Feels:
- You Don't Know How It Feels:
Profile
- tabbiewolf
- TabbieWolf
- vclarchive
Syndicate
