Final Project from Hell

Wow, first off, I can't believe it's been two months since I last posted something. This semester has gone by crazy fast, especially these last 8 weeks.
Anyhoo, for those who don't already know, I took an introduction to stage costume construction. A class I took for fun, and it was, up until the last three weeks.
For the most part, we would just learn sewing techniques in the lab, but then we had to apply them and make a garment for our final project. Our options were pajama pants (boring), skirts (but alas, no kilts) and vests (ooh, you have my attention). So me, being one of two people in the class with previous experience, decided to do a vest figuring it couldn't be that bad if the teacher suggested it along with pajama pants. Wrong. I ended up putting over ten hours of work (part of which was a non-stop five-and-a-half work streak) into the darn thing while people finished the pj's in three to five hours. I actually didn't get to fully finish it, so I have a bit of a project for winter break. Without further ado, the vest from hell.


On a happier note, the teacher finally gave back the mid-term exams along with the finals (yes, it took him half a semester to grade the mid term) and I got a 99% and a 100%.

I am a costuming badass.

CAL-lous defeat

Woohoo. So we beat CAL 42 to 27. We're now tied for first in the PAC10. Best part of the game, the student section rushed the field afterward. Gotta love it. I yelled into a few different TV cameras, don't know if I actually made it onto TV anywhere though. Good times though.
That would be the view of the scoreboard from center field. For those of you counting, I have now been on both the football field and the basketball court here at U of A. Who knows what's next!

College Life: Abridged Version

So yeah... not a whole lot happens that triggers me to think "Hey, I should write a blog post about that!" So I'm just going to shove a bunch of stuff that's mildly interesting in to one post, hopefully producing something of interest.
So probably the biggest thing worth mentioning is that I auditioned for, and was accepted to, the Improv and Sketch Comedy group on campus, Comedy Corner. They claim they are the oldest college improv/sketch group in the nation, which is pretty cool. It's an 7-8 hour a week commitment, so it's a nice thing to fill some time with. I don't actually get to perform onstage until next semester though, so I'm just "learning the ropes" right now, even though I've already done this kind of stuff. So that's probably the most interesting thing I've done all semester.

I'm somewhat reluctant to bring up intramurals, but I did play flag football. Our team went 0 and 4, scoring I think somewhere around 30 point total across those games, and giving up about 150 points to the other teams. So yeah... that was fun to an extent. I ended up having to sit out the 4th game because I forgot to wear shorts without pockets. D'oh. Soccer is coming up though, so hopefully that will go over better than flag football did!

The other big thing to do has been football games; we're looking like we might be a force to be reckoned with in the Pac10, so if you haven't been paying attention, start! Could be a good season.

Other than all that, classes are pretty normal, social life is pretty normal (non-existent), and I'm just living weekend to weekend. I'm definitely looking forward to this weekend since I've been busy every weekend for the past month or so. Gonna try and sleep at least 10 hours on friday night. Good times.

2nd Semester Moving In!

So yeah. Moving in. It went pretty smoothly by my standards. Room is nice, roommate is definitely better than last year's, and plenty of space. Just a couple pics from the room for you guys.
This is all before we moved things around.

This is us pretty much fully moved in. Much better.
So far this semester nothing that exciting has happened. It's funny how quickly college has become mundane. I'm already excited for the semester to be over and I'm only an 8th done with it. Although I did attend my first Wildcats football game, which was pretty fun. We ended up winning 70-0 though, so it wasn't really an interesting game to watch, just fun to watch our team destroy the opposition. It actually was postponed for an hour due to lightning, during which we stood in the rain. Good times.

New York: Day 6

The sixth, and essentially last day, was by far the best. We started out by heading over to the Met for some early morning art appreciation. The architecture alone there was amazing, let alone the artwork inside. We spent a few hours there and explored a good bit of the museum. The paintings were phenomenal, I was actually amazed at how many really well known paintings they had.Also super cool is this group of fully armored knights in action. Sure it was heavy as hell, but that armor is friggin' sweet. Even the horses are decked out. Must have been Middle Ages bling.
So after the Met we wandered over to Central Park. The size of the park is intense. It's big enough that you really don't feel like you're in the middle of a massive city, which is saying something. We walked all around, but I couldn't pass up a picture with the Mad Hatter. Pretty sweet. He doesn't really look all that kid friendly though.
And last was the absolute climax of the trip. We went to TKTS and stood in line for just shy of an hour to get discount tickets to Spamalot. Spamalot was actually our backup plan because Wicked was sold out. It ended up being an awesome backup plan as it was one of the funniest and most solid productions I've seen. It's even better than The Holy Grail. How many times do you hear about a spoof being better than the original?
All that's left was to wake up the next day and jump on the plane. Thus ends my trip to New York City!

New York: Day 5

So day 5 was pretty relaxed. We went to Rockefeller Plaza again and walked around that area for a while. I actually missed the Atlas statue the first time, so I was glad I had a chance to see it.

After that, we went back and hung out at the apartment while Dom had a business meeting to go to. We pretty much just chilled and then went to dinner at the Corner Bistro. It's a small bar kind of place that only has 4 or 5 things on the menu. They're famous for their burgers, so obviously that's what I had. Good stuff indeed. They also had an ancient bar and ancient cash register which were pretty neat.The last thing, I don't even remember when I saw this, but it amused me. This is a call box down on the subway platform.
So yeah... that was day 5. Not really much, but we made up for it on the last day.

New York: Day 4

Day 4 was a lot of shopping and walking around some of the shopping districts and re-doing some of the places I had already been for Danielle. However, it was the first time I had gone in to any of the stores so it was cool to see the insides of some of the stores. During my New York trip, I made a lot of comparisons to my Japan trip, as Tokyo is the closest approximation to New York that I have. It was nice to see this, a merger of the two worlds.We had actually gone to a Uniqlo in Japan, so it was fun to see it here in New York. The clothes in the New York store were fairly similar, but there were more designer type clothes and edgier stuff than I remember there being in Japan. Either way, it was a fun place to go. Also ever-present during the trip were these mobile film studios. I think I saw 4 of them in 7 days, so they're very prevalent.
So these are just the dressing room trailers. There's a whole convoy that comes and sets up in the streets. Generally three or four trailers and then a couple vans for catering and whatnot. Y'know, cause streets in New York aren't crowded enough already or anything. It's funny though because obviously I found this really cool, but all the other people walking down the sidewalks didn't even think twice about them. It's amazing how differently tourists and residents of New York must see things. Like the Statue of Liberty, for instance.
We made a special trip to take the Staten Island Ferry, and yet some people take it every day as part of their commute. So some people literally see the statue almost every day of the week. It would be tragic to me to lose the beauty of this statue to the rigors of the daily grind.
Just another cool skyline from the ferry. Afterward, we had dinner at Otto, one of Mario Batali's restaurants. It had a really cool reservation system where you were given a city name, and when your table was ready, it showed up on an old-school train time board. And that was day 4!

New York: Day 3

Alright, so at first my reason for not blogging was a really impressive sunburn on my legs. After that, it's been because we've been watching the olympics every night. So, sorry about that.

Alright, so Saturday was all about Fire Island. It's a tiny strip of land off the coast of Long Island. It's about 2 hours worth of travel from Manhattan but you can't even tell you're a part of New York any more.
So Fire Island actually has different little villages, and Dom's house was in South Beach just off the bay side of the island. You have to take a ferry from Long Island to Fire Island, about 30 minutes give or take 5 depending on conditions, and then you pull into a small Marina.This is the marina, looking out across the bay towards Long Island. There isn't really much beach on this side of the island, the focus is on the ocean side.
And here it is, the Atlantic ocean. The beaches were beautiful and not very crowded. Unfortunately there was some kind of jellyfish orgy at some point and the water was filled with jellyfish babies. I ended up only wading in about knee-high into the water because of this. The jellyfish were harmless, but unpleasant. So we got to fire island around noon, and stayed on the beach for 3 or 4 hours (which is how I managed to burn my legs) and then walked around the market part of the community.There were markets, bars, restaurants, bakeries, just about everything you could ever need. It was really a nice lifestyle on the island. After walking around the town, we just crashed at the beach house and some of my brother's friends put on an awesome barbecue later on. After dinner, we caught the ferry back and headed back into Manhattan. Thus ending day 3!

New York: Day 2

So today was really low-key. Me and Dom just walked around a little more, but more just for a feeling of the city. We went to the West Side Highway, which runs along the Hudson river.
So this is looking across the Hudson at New Jersey. These are actually the only two photos I took today, I kinda slacked off. After this we just walked around what's called the Meat Packing district to check out all the popular restaurants and designer stores. After that, we grabbed lunch at John's Pizza which is Dom's favorite pizza place here. Super thin crust, coal fired, and delicious! Dom accidentally ordered pepperoni and mushroom so I rolled with it. I actually couldn't taste or tell that the mushrooms were there, so it worked out nicely. Then, we went back to the apartment and we both passed out for 3 hours. Not quite sure why. Anyhoo, then we went to Dom's friend's apartment to pick up an air mattress, walked around a little bit more, and then headed to the airport. After picking up my sister, we came back to the apartment and that's the whole day. Tomorrow: Fire Island!

New York: Day 1

First of all, greetings from the future for those of you back west. First day here in New York and it's already off to a good start. We walked around the neighborhood, checked out the local restaurants and shops and then grabbed lunch at the White Horse Tavern. This place has been around since 1880, almost 130 years. Just thinking of the crazy amount of history this one place alone has is mind blowing. The crazy part is, New York is full of these places. There's an unfathomable amount of history around you at all times. We then proceeded to Times Square for a little bit, where I found two of my Meccas. First was the Toys R Us with the ferris wheel. Nice, big store. And sure enough, they had an RZone. It was funny how similar some things were to the store where I worked in Scottsdale. Lots of games and fun stuff. One crazy thing though was the stack of Wii's just sitting on the ground, unguarded.Weird.I thought this place was awesome, but then we found the next stop.

NINTENDO WORLD!

Yes, a whole store of nothing but Nintendo products. Shirts, wallets, figures, games, food. Everything Nintendo. I could write a whole post on the Nintendo store alone. They had an some stuff on display, limited edition units, and older stuff never released in America. They also had a famous original GameBoy.

It survived an explosion in the Gulf War. The exterior is completely toasted, but it still works perfectly. They actually have Tetris running on it. This is why I never worry about extended warranties on Nintendo Products. After Bush destroys the world, it'll be nothing but roaches playing Wii.
After all this, we headed back to the apartment for a little while. We then headed out to dinner for my brother's friend's birthday, so I got to meet some of his friends which was fun. We then walked back through SoHo and got caught in a sudden rainstorm. And now I'm writing this post. And since it's done, I'm going to bed. Goodnight from here in Manhattan!

Moving Out

Needed to get this out of the way so I can blog on the trip to New York, so I'm going to pretend that this post was made months ago within a relevant amount of time to my moving out. So here we go!The empty room, emptier than when I moved in, so sad. I have to say it was rather odd being thrown out of my "home" so unceremoniously. Just "oh, you're done with classes? Get out within 48 hours. OK, thanks, bye."
It was like having the van we always wanted! Lots of space, it was nice. Note the backwards hat, that means it's time to get to business.Seeing my entire life shoved into the van brought forth one thought, and one thought only. "If only we could find a river to park it by, I could be living in a van, down by the river."
And there's my sad, empty door. Closed for the last time, ending my first semester at U of A.

The most useless and most clever machine ever.

It has no use or point, but I want one so badly. How awesome is this thing? I guarantee it's worth the 29 seconds.

I went bowling... on accident.

This is a long, photo heavy post. You have been warned.

So, instead of sitting around like I would most Saturdays, I decided to go on an adventure. In the start, I was going to walk to a nearby park because there was a library there. I figured I could get some books to read and just chill at the park (the weather is awesome right now). Before I even got there though, I found a few amusing things. The first was some graffiti on the side of a newsbin.
Ok, first off, who picks "Snarf" as their graffiti tag? Honestly? Even if I didn't have another reason to think it's ridiculous, it would still be a terrible name. How can you even try to pretend to be "street" with a nickname like "Snarf?" Anyway, the real reason I had to take this picture is because "Snarf" is the name of the little pet/mascot thing from the old cartoon ThunderCats. See the picture below if you don't know what that is.
Yeah. This is Snarf. Not exactly your ideal thug. However, seeing the name Snarf in graffiti obviously led me to form this picture in my head, which made me laugh a bit to myself. Could this picture be any less thuggish, even if it tried?

Nope, this is practically an anti-graffiti ad waiting to happen.

Along the same vein, I came across Baggins Gourmet Sandwiches (you can probably tell where this is going.)To their credit, it is Baggin's and not Baggins. But do I care?
Nope, I'm goin' with Baggins.This is what happens when I get bored. This is why I like to keep busy.

Now, all random silliness aside. Ok, maybe not all random silliness. But no more sandwich wielding hobbits, I promise. So I ended up getting to the library after all this. I walk in, and it's... quaint. It's one room, not very big, and I'm the only college age person there. Everyone else is 40+ or under 12. Obviously, I felt a little out of place and ended up leaving almost instantly. I realize Scottsdale has spoiled me, but this place was really old-school, and the cliental were an interesting group of people. I then walked around the park for a bit, very large, very green. Pretty much what you imagine when you think of a park. Don't know quite what I was expecting, but I was a little disappointed.
Then, I left the park and saw a video store. But what's that? They carry video games? Be still my quivering heart! So obviously I ran there as quickly as possible.Even better, it's an independent establishment. Inside was awesome. In one section, it was just like a Blockbuster, but then they had all the old VHS classics and all these great shows you can't really find in physical format any more. The video game section was severely lacking, but I applaud them for at least offering something. But then a bright yellow sign caught my eye. There was even more upstairs. But wait a second... what's that long word on the sign?
Oh my god. It says Japanamation. I haven't heard that word used in years. Ok, so maybe it's just an old sign they haven't replaced. The term anime has been in use since early 2000 and this word is plain archaic. So I checked out the section to see what they had.Sure enough, there it is. Another sign, of the temporary sort, sporting the same word. Again, I give them props for carrying the stuff, but at least use a better word. This word is borderline offensive to some. Also, a true mark of the independent establishment, was the adult video section. It was right next to the entrance and checkout desk, so I couldn't sneak a picture, but it was there. The thing that irked me though, video games and dirty movie rentals: same price. That doesn't seem right to me.
Anyway, having reached my destination, I was going to turn back. But I kept spotting cool little independent restaurants, cafe's, stores, and businesses. So I just kinda kept walking. And walking. And walking. I spotted this sign at some point, it made me laugh. Thought I'd share. Since I'm such a great photographer, I cut off the part of the sign saying it's a car wash
Are there really people questioning when they're going to get a new detail service? Was there some technological breakthrough in the car wash world? I just cannot wrap my head around how this sign would be necessary. And then I walked some more. And then some more. And then "Holy Crap! It's the bowling alley!"
Now, the idea of a bowling alley doesn't surprise me. However, it's 3 miles away. I walked 3 miles without even thinking about it. So I figured I'm never gonna get out here again, I might as well check it out. So I walked in, checked out the prices. Oops, I just paid for 2 games. Oh well, it sounded like fun anyway. I ended up throwing a 125 and a 140. Could not throw a consistent ball though. Having your own bowling ball is kind of a curse, because you can't bowl properly without it any more. Darn you dad!
Then, I noticed a music/thrift store across the road. *Gasp* it sells video games too! Only this place sold retro games. NES, SNES, Genesis. Awesome! It was as close to Japan as I'll probably ever get in Tucson. Was too amazed to take any pictures, sorry. At this point, I realized I really needed to head back. But on the way back, I found an Arby's! I didn't know there were any near campus, so I grabbed lunch there. Delicious. Anyhoo, then I really did head back. The last thing that caught my attention was a cool fountain sculpture.
Pretty cool. It's outside a church, hence the theming, but all the symbols on it were pretty cool. Wait a second...What's that just below the 6-point star in the center? At worst, it's a depiction of why Clinton got impeached. At best, his groin is just worship-worthy. Either way, can't say it belongs on a church sculpture. Unless his groin is holy, in which case it's totally cool.

Comedy Corner

So, last weekend (I know I'm a bit late on this one) was the S.I.C.K. (Southwest Intergalactic Comedy Kermis) event here on campus. There was a free improv performance on Friday in the Student Union that one of my friends from ASU came down to perform in. So I was able to hang out with him for a while and I got a free comedy show from three different comedy troupes. And, I found out there are actually two improv groups on campus, the one I tried out for, and then Comedy Corner. So hopefully, between the two groups, I'll be able to get involved one way or another. Then, on Saturday, there was another performance put on by Comedy Corner and Second City. I had no idea who Second City was, and this event cost $10, so I almost didn't go. Then, I got there, and Comedy Corner did a pretty long sketch that was pretty disappointing. At this point, I wasn't too happy about paying $10 for something my sketch troupe in high school could have done. However, it turned out Second City was a professional, touring comedy group and they were amazing. So it ended up being worth the $10 in the end. On a side note, before I went to the Second City performance, I got dinner at Taco Bell, and got the best order number ever. This is mostly for Doc, so don't feel bad if you don't get it.
So if you don't get it, "335" is the sequence
used to morph in Power Rangers: In Space/Megaranger.

Crazy people sure like Jesus

For the past 3 days, there has been at least 1 person standing in front of the administration building, Bible in hand, praising Jesus and preaching to pedestrians. Do these people not understand how ridiculous they appear? The first two days weren't so bad, as it was one person. Today, there were 3 or 4, including one holding a big banner with something to the effect of "Warning to Masturbators, Adulterers, Liars, Drunkards, Cheats, Sluts, Homosexuals, The reckoning is coming!" which I found especially funny because that pretty much covers everyone on campus. Also, the first two days, everyone pretty much ignored the people. Today, whoo boy. Big crowd surrounding him, the whole day. Don't know if the people are actually interested in his evangelism or just looking for entertainment, but either way, they're giving him exactly what he wants. Crazy stuff. I've already had religions hawked at me 3 times since I've been on campus, it's actually pretty annoying. I don't go around inquiring about other people's religions, so I wish they would grant me the same respect.

This is actually the smallest I saw the crowd today.
The preacher is there in the white shirt next to the chair.
He was here from at least 10 AM to 6 PM.
Doesn't he have something better to do? Like a job?

Also went and wrote an essay in the library, which turned out to be a good choice, cause I pumped out a 1200 word paper in about an hour. Went to the top floor since I figured it would be the least busy, and was greeted by a decent view of the stadium. Just thought I'd share.