New drawing!

Click for full view! (Highly recommended by your friendly neighborhood Spiderman)

tfa

by Virginia
What can I say, I feel fantastic.

(1) I got more hugs than I could ask for over the last two days just because.
(2) I got myself a three-inch memory foam mattress topper, waking up with absolutely no back pain whatsoever.
(3) I've got my Spanish down pat for the midterm tomorrow.
(4) I love my camera and have decided to name her Adele.
(5) I saw 500 Days of Summer and was not displeased. I liked how there wasn't really a feeling of sadness at the end despite everything.

PS: Need some good background music for homework without getting distracted by lyrics? Use Explosions in the Sky as your new Pandora station and you'll be set to study.

Over and out.

by Seth Fitts
In order to be considered for medical school, I need to bring my GPA up only 0.031 points. How ridiculous is that? Well it means I need to get some A's, which means that I need to focus more on school and less on work, since I haven't gotten an A ever since I've been working and schooling at the same time.

The other day I had my two weeks' notice in my pocket when my manager suggested to me to ask the store manager about limited part time before throwing in the towel. Long story short, I'll now be working 12 hours per week on Saturdays and Sundays alone instead of at least 25 hours per week for any five days a week. This way, I'll have much more time to study and won't have to stress about scheduling time for when I can work on my homework. Horray! And then, once I graduate in December, I won't know when I start medical school if I manage to get in somewhere and so I'll at least have this job still there for me in these harsh economic times.

I was commissioned recently to draw a portrait of this man's wife who found out from my mom that I draw since they both work together. I haven't gotten a photo of her quite yet, but I hear that she is a black woman. That's something I've never done before--drawn a black woman--and I realize that yes, there will just be more shading. I really prefer to have the least amount of shading possible when drawing portraits, because if I don't then I'll have to worry about the striations the pencil makes when shading, etc. Who knows how it'll turn out. We shall see.

The park had a few flowers sprouting up in places, so I dragged my brother along with me after grabbing some Jamba Juice. I got a couple of nice photographs.

Ah, trumpet, I love you.

by Leonid Afremov
There's a couple of things that I just cannot stand about some people. One in particular is how people destroy the spines of their books by leaving them open upside down on a table. I don't really know why this irks me so much? It just does. A lot.

I'd like to share a favorite author of mine that my mom had shared with me when I finally started to appreciate reading in my early teenage years. His name is Arturo Perez-Reverte, an author from Spain, and apparently has a great translator. Here's a bit of prose from the first book I read of his, called The Flanders Panel:

She'd lost all notion of time, feeling the music drift slowly through her brain with the fumes from the vodka and conscious of the warmth of her bare thighs and knees against her arms. Sometimes a trumpet note would rise up amongst the shadows and she would move her head slowly from side to side, following the rhythm. Ah, trumpet, I love you. Tonight, you are my one companion, faint and nostalgic as the sadness seeping from my soul.

Perez-Reverte writes very clever mysteries, and beautifully. He has a way with words. This particular book is about an art restorer named Julia who is forced to grapple with fifteenth century paintings and chess in order to solve murders from the past and present.

Lastly, I've taken several more photos with my camera with some flowers I bought from the market. It's still winter and nothing's growing!



Or check them and others out larger on my DeviantART.

Saving breath.

by Markie2K
So... I was just catching up on reading some blog entries, but I completely forgot that I had my chocolate milk sitting there on the nightstand this whole time and now it's no longer cold. Waaaa.

It's been raining quite a bit this week. It's kind of funny how I love rain when I'm watching it bullet down from the sky in buckets, but when I'm being rained upon I feel utterly depressed. Not when it's just sprinkling, mind, I mean a good amount of rain. Anyway. It's making my car look dirtier, too.

Lost has become my new entertainment obsession, whereas it used to be Naruto Shippuden episodes or Harry Potter fanfictions. And I'm sure I'll find something else once I catch up to the new Lost episodes, as well. There's always something. (Thank goodness.)

Oh, wow. I almost forgot about my birthday. Well, my mom took me to Macaroni Grill and I had an awesome honey balsamic glazed chicken while my mom, brother, step dad, grandparents, uncle, and cousin joined me to dinner. I got about two pounds of chocolate, for freaks sake! And... $900 in birthday money, part in contributing to the purchase of my new Canon Rebel Xsi. It's my new baby. I suppose I've got to give her a name. At least I've already decided on a gender.

There are a couple of new photos I've taken today that are now among my favorites (click for a larger version):


Other than that, nothing's going on, and it'll probably stay that way for... several months. I mean, honestly, what could happen?