Tag Archives: observations

Free at last

The completion of a good show always brings a wave of intense satisfaction, spiced up with some other emotions that I haven’t classified yet.

Then there’s strike.

Collectively destroying a creation that has taken months of hard work to build within the span of a few hours is always somewhat tingly. It’s like Tibetan sand mandalas, only the destruction process takes much more physical labor than the wind whisking it away, and as such, the crew is by that time too exhausted to experience any meditative catharsis.

It didn’t help, I suppose, that I spent most of this last show curled up in a corner of the booth, crawling to my chair now and then for this or that light cue. It was the culmination of about a week and a half of peculiar body pain, which has been attributed to everything from carrying too heavy of a backpack to other people’s stress. Nevertheless, Jeff was kind to me in my strike duties, and afterwards while picking whether to come in the next day from 12-2 or 2-4 to finish up, Matthew and Squirt shooed me into the “not at all” pile.

So, no cast party for me, but I was instead rewarded with a long-needed recovery sleep of 12 hours exactly. As I woke up, the unusual body pain had been converted to a normal soreness that one tends to feel after a heavy workout (granted, I was half-awake at 10, and had trouble rolling over and opening and closing my hands, but 4 more hours of sleep processed that away). Of course, it does feel like my latissimus dorsi is going to suddenly snap away from my ribs with every movement, but it’s not the sharp, throbbing pain that it has been for the past week.

Today, then, begins the “Day of 10000 things to do to catch up with myself,” starting *sniff sniff* with cleaning my room and doing my laundry.

Dawww

Since I am only in my room at sparse, 15 minute intervals throughout the waking hours of the day, I rarely receive visitors. So it’s nice to have Jen Wolford as a hallmate, who frequently leaves me friendly messages on the whiteboard on my door:

“Lisa likes to chase the hamsters…
and snuggle with them…
and play with them..
and give them a false sense of security…
and then
BAMB!
she makes little hamster gloves.

You are a sick person, Lisa.”

My response is usually to draw a picture on her board, in this case, a smiling stick figure with dead hamsters on her hands ^_^ ::adds “BAMB” to her repertoire of sound effects::

Oh Wheeeeeeeeere is my Hairbrush?

I have misplaced my hairbrush, and thus have not brushed my hair in three days. Things are getting out of control.

In other news, today there was a large, inflato-bouncy slide erected on the lawn in front of our dining hall. It was significantly large, inflated, and bouncy (not to mention great fun). I think more colleges need large, inflato-bouncy slides on campus. If there were a permanent inflato-bouncy slide on campus, I believe student morale would skyrocket.

No word yet on the reason behind the presence of the structure, but who needs a reason! Too bad it was just for today.

Falling for the first time..

I don’t like finishing tests first. It’s almost as bad as finishing tests last x_x

I’m sitting down in the basement of Olin, 30 minutes before Comp Sci lab starts, mulling about how bad I feel for dashing out of that Calculus test so early. I know how it feels to be right in the middle of a fairly difficult test, working away, when someone gets up and turns theirs in. Panic! I must be doing something wrong! I’ll never finish in time! AHHH!!! I have no desire to make anyone feel like that.

So when I finish a test early I sit and wait and kick my legs, and do some checking (which is a good way to stifle my impatience and catch those ridiculous mistakes I make). Generally, I wait for someone else to turn in their test first, because turning in a test second isn’t so bad ^_^ But I am terribly fidgety and impatient, so up and off I went.

..but I didn’t want to talk about that today. I want to talk about autumn. I like it, it’s my favorite season, and I think I’ve figured out why I appreciate it so much. Autumn is very sneaky and fleeting around here, so when you catch it, you appreciate it all the more.

I don’t know if it’s the small region or the whole state, but weather here is a jumble of extremes. Sure, if you take the average all year, it *looks* like we have all four seasons. But really, the “fall” season consists of these days…Summer, summer, summer, winter, summer summer, winter, summer, winter winter winter, summer winter, fall, winter winter winter. It’s bounce back and forth, and if one day happens to land on fall, it’s rather lucky.

Sometimes it’s not even an entire day. It’ll be winter in the morning, then walking to lunch you pause and look about and sniff and notice that it’s autumn. Later that afternoon, it may turn to summer again, then bounce back and forth until it’s winter at night. Sometimes there are patches of night time which are autumn, and I find those particularly pleasant. One day you may look up and notice all the leaves have changed, then the next day they’ve all fallen.

Sneaky sneaky autumn, makes it all the more precious.

The moral of today’s story is..

Today I learned several things..

1) Regardless of how miserable and rainy the day is, if you refuse to refer to it as a “bad day” and instead just call it a “wet day”, it gets better quickly.

2) the 3×4 ft panel I’m making for this year’s extended figure study is a helluva lot bigger than the 2×3 ft one I did last year, and it’s intimidating me. This will be the biggest painting I’ve ever done.

3) Tony II, of England adventure fame, said that I am “the deepest of the bunch” and that I have “a lot of interesting things rattling around up there (points to head).” Tony is wise and a good mentor, it flatters me that he has so much faith in me.

4) The days go by quickly, so you must milk them for all they’re worth. Every day, even the bad ones, even the dull ones. Make it the best time of your life each moment.

I’m going home for the weekend, I miss my cats.

When you swim in the sea and an eel bites your knee…

Sometimes I find it amusing that love is perhaps the thing I value the most, and yet there is a whole subset of love which I have yet to investigate. I wonder if that’s allowed? Anyhow, I take notes and take notes and take notes, and even still there are things I just don’t get. Crazy people! No matter.

In other news, we caught a big praying mantis in the hot shop tonight, and before taking it outside I ran it back to the office to show D.H. He was very excited, and upon the buggy’s release he informed me that it was the happiest part of his day. It’s nice to know you possess the ability to cheer someone up, especially someone as rageful and sardonic as D.H.

Wanted: One Sock

So I was going through my sock drawer, looking for a sock without a mate. I need a sock to cut up and transform into a protective forearm covering for glass, and you know how there’s ALWAYS that sock in the drawer with the missing pair. Well, not today, every sock was perfectly mated, the first time in nearly a lifetime. What the hell is up with that?? Fates playing games with me again.

Anyway, I need a sock. So if anyone out there has an interesting sock with a lost mate, but just *can’t* throw it away, I can give it a good home and a noble job protecting my arm from the heat radiated by molten glass.

The only qualifications, it has to be 100% cotton, as any polyester will melt and adhere to my flesh, which is generally considered a bad thing. It also has to be long enough to cover most if not all of my forearm, so long socks are good. And if it’s an interesting or cool lookin sock, that’s a bonus.

In return, I’ll make you a little sumpin-sumpin in glass, like a cup or a little animal or something. Any takers?

::sits against the wall with a sign, “Will blow glass for socks”::

Mizunch

2014 Lisa Commentary: Oh, early-livejournal, so full of random observations. I still wonder this kind of stuff all the time, I just don’t tend to write about it at length. Or at least, twitter has become a much more suitable repository for random one-off thoughts nowadays. Meanwhile, look at how I used to draw, haha! It only took me 12 years to learn to get rid of all unnecessary details 🙂

Why are packaged foods so much less appetizing when they’re smashed? I mean, there’s really nothing wrong with them, they’re still in their sanitary little plastic wrapping, and at most suffer from some mild pre-mastication. But when I pulled the squished oatmeal pie out of the bottom of my backpack I instinctively grimaced with an “Ewww, yuck.”

Of course, after some reflection, I went ahead and ate it, and it was still as tasty as it would have been without my calculus book sitting on top of it for most of the day. And yet, I’ve also been known to eat potato chips that had fallen on the floor of the glass studio, or chase a kiwi down a flight or two of stairs before I caught up with it to eat it.

It could just be me.

Meanwhile, plasma grenades suck.
http://storage.wertle.com/albums/lj/halo3-02.gif

Special thanks to Brendan for being a walking, talking onomatopoeia thesaurus

Numbing War Movies and Cartoons

I’ve often pondered the cartoons of my youth, and their inexplicable ability to parody the most unlikely movies to be seen by a child in my age group. Specifically, how Animaniacs, Eek! The Cat, *and* Tazmania all managed to do spoofs of Apocalypse Now, so well that though I’ve never seen the movie, I can give a decent rundown of the plot, characters, and general spectacle.

Now let’s think about this a minute. Apocalypse Now? WHAT?? Looking back, I find it strange that these cartoons chose to entertain the youth of my generation by making fun of a serious, dramatic, bloody Vietnam war movie. In that case, why did I find these particular cartoons so funny? I’d never seen the movie, afterall. Was Apocalypse Now so ingrained in the culture at the time that I just sort of soaked it up through osmosis, or did I piece it together after seeing multiple parodies that they were making fun of *something*, and apparently doing it well, so it should be funny.

It’s hard to determine after the fact. Kinda like how I got most of my understanding of pop culture through Muppet Babies. That’s how I knew what Star Wars was, afterall. It was a fundamental truth of life at the time, I never questioned where it came from, it was just *there*, and I’m certain that I knew all the basics of Star Wars before I ever saw any of the movies. Muppet Babies was definately an educational show ^_^

It’s interesting enough to think about this and look at current cartoons, and then try and deduce how this generation’s youth is soaking it all up. I also get to see things from a new perspective, I get most of the things being poked fun at. Now that I think about it, I can’t remember how my parents reacted to the Apocalypse Now parodies, it was something I just didn’t pay attention to.