Going Back & Looking Back

Made this in Blender. It's one version of something I made for J. It's the most obnoxious of them all!

So, break is winding down and I'm realizing that I haven't done... anything, really. I didn't get back to my high school, I didn't see anyone aside from J, and I didn't really accomplish any of the things I wanted to accomplish (like getting a cello... shut up, J).

But that's okay. I've done quite a bit of writing and learned a significant amount in Blender/GIMP. Break has been nice. Not having to do stuff is really nice, actually. So I just spent a good portion of my time letting the creativity run rampant. Oh, and video games. Did some good catching up on my excessively large backlog of games. Other than that, I hung out with J three times, and spent a bunch of time with my parents. Not too shabby.

Definitely haven't done as much blogging as I'd like, but I'm finding that pumping out a post a week is a bit of a challenge. I need to post when I feel like it... if that means two days apart, fine... if that means two weeks apart, that's fine, too.

As for going back itself, I'm not really overly excited about having to do stuff again. With that said, I get to see J again (it will have been two whole weeks since I last saw her!), and that's my favorite part of the whole thing. Aside from that, I'm going to fall back in love with the excellent university Internet connection and, I won't lie, I do like having some structure in my life.

I get back to campus on Sunday and classes resume on Wednesday. Between now and then, I need to start figuring out my sleep schedule. Last sleep cycle (I can't even use calendar days anymore), I was awake from 1:15PM to 8AM. That's just not gonna work! Especially since J has so kindly asked me to be her breakfast buddy this semester. That means getting up and being ready to eat breakfast by 8:20am.

This will be interesting...

- E.

Winter Break & Break from Blogging

Entirely unrelated: Burg-Eltz Castle in Austria. Looks cool; I like castles.

You know, I really haven't done as much blogging as I thought I would. I've been home for several weeks now and the blogging just didn't really take off. I've been busy nearly every weekend and I've somehow managed to fill the rest of my time with entirely useless activities.

Break has been pretty good. I've seen J a bunch, which is awesome. We've gone swing dancing, ran around the city, hit a museum, and saw Trans-Siberian Orchestra. I also took her around to some of the stuff out here in "boo foo land." I later found out that she liked it here more than she thought she would. Guess she'll have to come back sometime soon!

Quick thing on TSO: the show was awesome. Shut up, J, I did not sleep through any portion of it. I'm sorry that I only had like six hours of sleep. We watched two of the greatest movies ever, remember? Men Who Stare at Goats and Hot Fuzz? Yeah, it was kinda late when we went to bed. Anyways, TSO puts on killer live performances. Lights, pyro, lots of movement on stage, etc. Really fun, really entertaining. This one was titled The Lost Christmas Eve and the storyline component of the show revolves around an angel trying to find the human who is most like God's son. It develops in to something a bit more interesting, though, so if you haven't seen it... I'd recommend it. Word of warning: don't let the word "orchestra" fool you. It's loud. My dad said something along the lines of "If I had known it was going to be that loud, I would have brought earplugs." But if you're in to orchestral rock... well, it's probably right up your alley. (For those interested in seeing more: http://www.trans-siberian.com/)

Oh, and one more thing before I sign off. Since I last posted, you'll most likely have noticed we now have fancy artwork. I've got the tiny version in the upper right there and the bigger version as the blog background. A friend of mine is a programming student and he helped me out with a little HTML to keep the background fixed rather than scrolling. I think it looks better this way. As for the image itself, I used GIMP (akin to Photoshop, but free) to create it. Dark gray background... downloaded some fun brushes... had J pick out a nice color combo... figured out the font... and there you have it.

I really hope someone finds my excessively long posts entertaining, though. J is under the impression that less is more and I might be inclined to agree... but at least I give people something to dig in to. I also actually post on this thing, so y'know... there is actually stuff to read.

At any rate, late as it is... Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. Hope everyone had good times!

- E.