Summer Woes

So far, I've been lucky in that I've been able to stay away from loans for college and haven't had too many bad financial nightmares. Yes, this is mostly due to my parents willing to help out when they can, but another part of it is that I'm good enough with my money that I don't need any Debt consolidation, because there is no debt.

College is quite expensive though, and I'm always aware of other people's financial troubles because of it. When I decided I wanted to get my bachelors, I hoped that I'd never need Debt help because I won't go into it. I won't apply for any student loans unless absolutely necessary, and I won't ask for too much or complain that my parents don't spend enough money on me. That's silly.

That said, this summer has been my most feduciarily scary yet. My job, while I do love it, isn't paying me at all until the end of the summer. And when I do get paid, I'm not expecting much. Tis the trouble with non-profit businesses of course. Since I don't have to worry about a mortgage or monthly house payments, I'm not freaking out. However, I'm not positively ecstatic about the situation either.

Working at VisArts has given me a good amount of portfolio work, and I've got some great references when I need them. The lack of any sort of hourly wage does prevent me from coming in everyday. I also can complete a lot of my work from home, so I can save on gas, which, by the way, is also cutting into my funds. If I didn't have a place to stay, who knows where I would be living.




This summer is certainly not the ideal situation, but it's better than nothing and more appropriate than working retail. I am talking to my boss about getting some more money and outside commissions, so that should help. Really, I need more money to invest so I can prepare better for my future. I never want to be in a situation where I'll need Debt relief, so I need to prepare. Even when I'm making practically nothing, I need to stop thinking about the present and realize my future is more important. I can get through this summer just fine, it's next June that I'm really worried about.

Finished Half-Life 2!

Whoo!

I've finished another game. This has become the summer of Xbox 360 for me. With the goal of finishing as many games as possible and getting as many achievements as my fingers and eyes can handle. So far, I've finished Army of Two several times and now I'm working on finishing The Orange Box. You may recall that I finished Portal a while back, and I can't accomplish Team Fortress at this moment.

So, Half-Life it is! And on to chapter 1!

For the Love of Cooking

Lately I've been addicted to watching shows on BBC America. In the afternoons I love to just laze about and watch You Are What You Eat and Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares.

Frankly, I think Gordon Ramsay is a good chef and honest with his criticism. Now, I've watched Hell's Kitchen a few times too, but I think Ramsay is far more endearing in Kitchen Nightmares. He's not portrayed as a giant ass, and he really does appear to want to help the restaurant owners with their problems. Of course, he does swear but not as much and it's not nearly as bothersome as when Fox edits everything out.

I don't know, I much prefer the British depiction of Gordan Ramsay far more than the American Fox version. Do you agree?

Pretentious Abound!

This commercial sticks out in my mind for being one of the most pretentious bath fixture ads out there:



Now, I know there are people in the world who value their Kohler, Moen, or Delta faucets more than their children, but really, it's just a faucet. It's not even a particularly awe-inspiring faucet. What kind of house would this guy design that might make it stand out from all the others?

Unless he builds a house that looks exactly like their stupid faucet, there's no need to proclaim that your lives are so snotty that you derive your biggest inspiration from a bloody bath fixture.

PRK Experience a little over one month post surgery

Part 1- Pre-surgery

Part 2- Post-surgery

Part 3- day 2 and 3

Part 4- day 5

Well, I didn't post about my day 10 follow-up because it was quite short and I was told that I was healing nicely and my combined vision was about 20/25.

Today I had my 6th follow-up visit and I'm happy to report that I'm seeing 20/20!

It was another short visit, which is good. That means my eyes are healing great. I haven't been using the eyedrops quite as much, as my eyes don't feel as dry and I'm able to produce tears normally.

All in all, great news. My next visit is in about 6 weeks, and I imagine it to be much of the same. From here until my 1 year visit, I don't think I'm going to post anymore about my PRK experience unless something drastic happens. At this rate, I don't believe it will.

So, in conclusion, I'm very happy with my Lasik surgery and my experience has been more positive than I expected. LasikPlus has been wonderful and I highly recommend them if you choose to take that big step into better vision.

Ignoring the Distractions

I mentioned earlier that I'm working on yoga-ing up my life this summer. The freedom of working out in private without worrying about classes or other people or teachers, oh it's lovely. Quite lovely. I've never been the type to rely on diets or pills. I hate working out, but even moreso, I hate asking myself questions during the day like, "How many calories does that beef lo mein have?" or, "How many points is this donut from Krispy Kreme worth?" or, "does Ephedrasil Hardcore work?" or "What will happen if I quit using Alli?"

It's just not worth it to spend all that time questioning and being so self concious. I'd much rather just take an hour a day spent on Vinyasa and Ashtanga yoga. That's far more fulfilling.

Questioning Costner

Quick question:

How does Kevin Costner even see anymore?



The older he gets, the more his face appears to swallow his eyes. He used to look like this:



At this rate, in approximately 5 years, Kevin Costner will loose his eyesight completely.

He is slowly turning into a mole.

Reunited and it feels so good

Listening to audio commentary on The Simpsons merely solidifies why I love this series. Really, the commentary is just as entertaining as that of Futurama. Which means something, considering the whole reason I got the entire Futurama series is because of the commentary.

I've become such a DVD commentary junkie, how sad is that?

I do truly love hearing the behind the scenes story though, for any DVD.

Walk for A Cause 2008

The annual Alzheimer's Memory Walk is back and ready to raise more money than ever for this great cause!



Walking for a cause is always a great way to participate in a charity without feeling like you're being guilted in. It's a healthy, pleasant, experience and you feel great afterwords knowing that just by walking 2-3 miles, you've made a difference in somebody's life. The Alzheimer's Memory Walk is the United State's largest fundrasing event for Alzheimer support and care.

There are more than 600 walks that occur throughout the US, and the Alzheimer's Association is always looking for more team captains. If you're a team captain, you can start your own group and invite family and friends to walk with you. You can gain sponsors as well to help with the cause. These walks are held on weekends in the Fall all over America, so you don't even have to worry about taking time off from your Mon-Fri job!

It requires very little to commit to a walk for Alzheimer's, but it means so much to the cause.

Slow Going

Well, the new exhibit is up and running, I'm pleased to say. We had a lovely opening night and now hopefully it'll be smooth sailing for a month until the exhibit closes. I've been busy anyway with graphic design projects for our other events and upcoming shows, but I'm expecting some particularly slow days ahead.

Recently, I was told of a chance to design a t-shirt for a restaurant. Now, my usual intention is to create funny t-shirts, but I imagine that will not fit the client's dream. Oh well, the fact that I'm getting this offer is good enough, and I'm quite glad that VisArts is providing me with all of these opportunities.

Illustration future?

I have a friend who took a course about illustration children's books. Her idea itself wasn't exactly....kid oriented, but she did some fantastic illustrations. Being a children's book illustrator is quite a good business actually. My friend, who is an illustration major, has said that she would love to do book illustrations, and that there is a big market for them. Personally, I don't know how much I would enjoy drawing for kids, since my humour is a bit more...adult, I suppose. But if the story's good, I'll do it.

Pondering a Purifier

One reason I'm glad I'm not in Savannah is the terrible air. There's a plant down there, a paper rendering plant, that completely stinks up the town at random intervals. You can't predict when it's going to happen, but you know that the smell will seep in without fail. As soon as you venture outside, BAM! stinky Savannah hits you like a dumptruck of rotting fish tipped over right in front of you.

Often during these stinky moments I wonder what would happen if I bothered to get some sort of air purifier, like Austin Air air purifiers. It's that bad, but really, I don't think it would help much.

Generally, I never get very far in considering this option as I move on to better, more interesting things. I'll always wonder though...

Video Addiction

Thanks to YouTube, we have the ability to create and post personal videos online. This internet phenomenon has created several different types of video sharing sites. There are all kinds of websites devoted to the always intriguing internet voyeurism. While there are sites that will cater to you news, social, and naughty preference, there aren't really any out there that will reward you for posting.

Getting cash for videos is a dream come true for the viral poster. There's a bit of pride that comes with posting your own crummy video and finding out that 25 million people want to view it.

There is one site out there that strives to make the poster's and the viewers happy. Viddiction.com offers monthly competitions with cash prizes ranging from $50 - $500. Youtube doesn't offer that, neither does Google video. These competitions rely on video views to decide their winners, which means that the poster of a possible winning video must try their hardest to get a bunch of pageviews. Judging by how addicted we all are to personal videos, this shouldn't be a difficult task.

Viddiction's title in itself summerizes our attitude towards online video posting quite well. It is an addiction to web videos. We may not all admit it, but inside is a voyuer, wanting to peer into other people's lives without censorship or acknowledgement. Personal videos on social sites such as Viddiction provide that glimse into the real personalities behind a sea of faces all over the world.

Then again, websites like this could also be popular because watching a cat continunely flush a toilet is darn funny:

Summertime Addictions

Ahh, getting into the swing of things is kind of nice. Having 4 days off of work is also quite nice. It's giving me time to work on stuff I want to. Such as important tasks like...gaming.

I've really gotten into Army of Two this past week, it's quite fun. I'm also working hard to meet my goal of over 4000 in my gamerscore on XboxLive. So far, I've got less than 1000 points to go! I'm quite excited.

Army of Two is really addictive. I just love killing and getting money. Oooh it's quite nice.

Any New T.V. is a time to celebrate!

I'm so glad I've got an LCD tv. I don't have to worry about any sort of converter to play basic television in Feb. 2009. My grandmother, on the other hand, does. So my parents are going to take her t.v. shopping and finally replace that old UHF crapbox in her sitting room.

I have faith that this new t.v. will be used far more (as in, acutally used) then her computer which she can't bother to figure out.

Witcher Enhanced Releases in September!

Short little snippet here, but I got an email a little while ago anouncing the date that The Witcher: Enhanced Edition will be released. I've held off on reinstalling that game because I want to play it at its full potential. Originally, Bioware was supposed to release everything in May, but oh well, September 2008 is good too.

They're working on improving a lot in the game, including re-recording all the dialogue, in 10 different languages. Bioware's trying their hardest. I can't really fault them for releasing the game before it's "complete", since a lot of companies do that. It doesn't mean the full game isn't done, it just needs a tad more polishing.

Ahyhoo, Septempber should be fabulous.

Tis the Season

Something happens around this time of the year. Something, happens.

With a presidential race in full swing, children freshly out of their American History classes in school, and a nation of grumpy grownups who don't want to bother with the recession, it's the right condition for a special something to bloom.

Tis the summer of political comedy.

It's a long-standing tradition for comics to rag on the current political affairs of the United States. We tend to cherish those special folk that agree with our point of view and bash those we think evil. This style of comedy, while it tends to be dry and not very ridiculous, does have a large audience. Especially here in DC. This large demographic is partly how Air America came to be, it's a political radio station and features comedians such as Al Frankin and Janeane Garofalo. We also tend to have comedy groups like Second City and The Capital Steps begin their summer nationwide tours. Also doing nationwide tours are individual comedians, like Glenn Beck, who is also a blogger.

Glenn is a fairly funny man, on the liberal side, and runs a great little political blog. He's touring at the moment, but if you can't make it to see him in person, his Dallas show on the 17th of July will be broadcast in select movie theatres around the nation.

If you have never seen a politcal comedy show, an individual comedian is a great way to start.

For the Love of Laptops

If I had the choice between a laptop and a desktop, at this moment, I'd still take the laptop. I know it's weird, since desktops are better for the graphically/game inclined. However at this time, I value transportation over modification. At this moment, I prefer to be able to relax with my laptop in bed and be able to carry it around while at school. It's more comfortable.

I imagine when I have more than a room to call my own, a desktop will be quite welcome, but I'll still keep a laptop around to keep by my side.

Slooooowww Going

Ugh, Photoshop is being bitchy lately. It's taking about 5 minutes to start up again. I don't understand why, honestly, it's not like I don't have enough memory in the computer. I got the "out of memory" error message again too when I was working on a photo edit. I've got 2 gigs of RAM in this baby, so I was quite confused.

It doesn't seem to matter if it's HP memory, dell memory, or Apple memory, I'll always get that evil little message that doesn't make any sense. I guess I'll just have to live with it.

Why Adobe, why must you be so cruel?!

Back to Basics

I got my yoga books finally, a few weeks ago, and I'm quite excited because that means that I can now practice the yoga I've always wanted. I'm all for losing weight naturally, not having to rely on weight loss pills like Alli, or hoodia. I believe that those products work, but only if you keep using them consistently. I think it's the same way with diets like Weight Watchers and jenny Craig. All of those will definitely help you lose weight, but as soon as you stop taking the pill, or quit the pre-made meals, you'll go right back up to your high weight. Perhaps even higher.

This reason is exactly why I stay away from any sort of diet. I don't want to have to rely on changing my habits drastically to get an appropriate size. I'd much rather do it in a way that's not going to make me hate food.