buggin'

i'm still bugged by the robbery. i find myself looking at every group of kids as i drive down the road where she was robbed. hoping to see the 2 kids on bikes so i can take their picture or follow them or just watch them (would i actually do any of those things?). i'm looking around while i walk along the street or to/from any building. i make it obvious that i know who's around me at all times. i keep a firm grip on any belongings i have and i feel like i'm exuding this aura of superiority like, "i'm in charge." or "i can take you so don't even fucking think about it." i also feel slightly anxious if i don't hear from her every so often. being like this is annoying. i feel more tense and that's going against my nature. i know it's just a matter of time before i settle back into my comfortable self but until then, i wanna kick those guys' ass.

would that even help?

weekend

friday was fairly low key. had leftover pizza at my girlfriend's place. we watched more of america's next top model and a few episodes of jeopardy! before we snuggled in bed.

saturday i slept in while she got up to feed the kitties and check on blogs. she came back to bed and got about an hour of napping before i woke her up. we made a trek out to trader joe's for some groceries. we also made a stop at starbucks for breakfast (don't worry, i had hot chocolate!). we made plans to try and make some bread using her breadmaker over at my place so i stopped by safeway to get a few more items for dinner. we had the opportunity to be social as i was invited to a party at my officemate's house but i decided to play it lazy and have a quiet evening with my girl.
we did meet up in the afternoon for a trip out to my gym so we both got in a workout and that was good.
in the evening we made our tuna melt again. i tried to make the bread but it didn't turn out very fluffy. it was tasty but not fluffy enough to use to we went down to the liquor store to grab some bread (we got some cheap "country style" stuff). we had tried to be more healthy and bought some low-fat sharp cheddar but i seriously doubt if it was really cheddar 'cause it tasted exactly like swiss! back down to the liquor store i went to get real cheddar cheese. so even though we had a few hiccups during the production, the dinner was still quite good.
we spent the rest of the evening talking over wine and playing head-to-head solitaire.

got up in the morning and made some toaster waffles. they tasted like cardboard and were really dry. i guess we're just used to eggo's so the trader joe's version paled in comparison. we sat around chatting while her laundry was finishing up. talking about finances and stuff. she had plans for lunch so i took a walk around the lake and stopped at safeway for a sandwich. they have one that's pretty good but a little heavy on the oil/vinegar and i keep forgetting to ask them to go easy on it. plus i forget to grab napkins too! i took my sammich, some chips and a soda and sat under a tree by the lake. it was a beautiful day. the only scab was these 2 younger kids who threw their water bottles in the lake. i wanted to yell at them, and maybe i should have. their mom was oblivious. i got back home and took a shower then fell asleep in front of the computer. :)
i woke up right as my girlfriend called, she was needing some encouragement to go to the gym (yes, 2 days in a row!). i'm still sorting coins. i'm going through the nickels and taking one of each mint mark for each year and saving them. i'll probably do the same for all the other coins as well.
i'm feeling extra lazy now...

spf

i'm late to the party, i know.

the curator of things random and odd has asked to see these 3 things from us this week:

1. Something Big
2. Something Small
3. Half of Something

here's what i got...

1. something big
a pin


2. something small
that same pin in my hand


3. half of something
i went the easy route.

long pose

not much to say about this one. the model had to change the pose early in the session because her hand was falling asleep. after that, i focused more on a portrait as the pose wasn't as dynamic. this is another 2 week so we'll see if they keep the same pose or not. if they do, i'll have to find a more interesting location... or do a more close-up portrait? i dunno.



oh yeah, if her hair looks funny, it's because she had a mohawk. that's really hard to draw...

the most popular dish

last night i dreamt of a great meal!

imagine strips of a flour tortilla except it was really tofu kinda crispy looking, like chips, then spaced about an inch apart, add black licorice gummy bears on top. next, top it with a white cheese sauce. i don't remember eating it but i do remember that it sounded delicious to me.

i have no idea what the hell i was dreaming about. like i said before, sometimes i think it's a good thing i don't remember my dreams.

sculpture - session 2

blech. the instructor made us do some gesture poses for the first half of the class so an hour that i could have been working on this was imo, wasted. she usually lets me opt out since i've taken the class for such a long time. not this time. i think it's supposed to help us see the overall pose and whatnot but i had already missed one class and only have one left so there's no way this guy is going to get fired. i'll have pics but he'll hop into the trash bin as soon as that's done. (not that i'm excited by this pose anyway)
but i'm making progress on the face. the features are starting to come together and the proportions are starting to gel. there's almost a likeness to the model from the profile but still a lot of issues with minor things. of course, there's so many minor things wrong that i see. i am somewhat of a perfectionist. i'll admit it. :) here's hoping next week i can blaze through and be happier with this one.

the weekend...

my girlfriend was robbed at gunpoint on friday evening. WTF? i'm extremely happy she's okay. but i wanted nothing more than to run around the neighborhood looking for the guys who did this. it wouldn't have been pretty if i had found them. grrr.

saturday, we had signed up for a 10k. i wasn't sure if she'd be up for it but we woke up at 6:00am anyway. it took a little over an hour to get to the race and we were still pretty early. we stood on the beach for at least 30 minutes waiting for it to start. it was windy and a little chilly.

we both did pretty well. the 5k was entirely on the beach while the 10k & half marathon went inland a little and followed a trail. it turns out that we should have signed up for the 5k 'cause we would have totally kicked ass! out of our age groups, we did well in the 10k but were pretty shocked how many other people were running it. if we decide to do this one again, we'll probably do the 5k just to stroke our egos. :) we got back to her place, ate the leftover thai food from the night before then took a much needed nap. for dinner we made some spaghetti, a ceasar salad, and bread. it really hit the spot and we both cleaned our plates while watching a couple episodes of america's next top model. we also watched a show called "you're killing your kids" but it was just a sad look at a family where the parents didn't have any control over their kids or what they ate and not only were the kids fat, but the parents weren't that healthy either. it's not a good show.

sunday we woke up kinda early because i told her i was going to escort her to ikea (she hates the place) right as it opens as that's the best time to get in and out without too much of a hassle. of course we spent a good 20 minutes trying to find a chair they said they had in stock but had no idea where it was. she did end up getting a few things she's been needing for quite a while so it was a successful trip none the less. before ikea, we stopped at a place for breakfast. it was tasty. i had a couple of eggs, sausage, toast, and potatoes while she had a veggie scramble thing.

we got back to her place and spent some time assembling her new stuff (one of the more fun things about ikea furniture if you ask me). after that , we made some chocolate chip cookies. i'd been threatening it for a few days so it's good that we finally got to it. about half of them have red pepper flakes this time. it's a great addition. one odd thing, we used the recipe on the ghiradelli package instead of the toll-house package. i think i like the toll-house version a little better. these were flatter and chewy. that's not a bad thing, i guess i was just expecting them to be a little more fluffy?

after that, another needed nap then i went home. well, kinda. i actually got out and walked the area where she was robbed, looking for her purse. i searched all the trash cans, recycle bins, and dumpsters i could find. sadly, i didn't find it. my guess is a homeless person already found it friday evening and took it. she had picked that one up in spain and was really sad to lose it. hmmm, that picture of the cookies is making me hungry.

Roger Ebert's 101 movies meme

swiped from overread, This is Roger Ebert's 101 movies you must see before you die.
bold for the movies i've seen. italics for the movies i own.

...i need to see more movies!

36/101

"2001: A Space Odyssey" (1968) Stanley Kubrick
"The 400 Blows" (1959) Francois Truffaut
"8 1/2" (1963) Federico Fellini
"Aguirre, the Wrath of God" (1972) Werner Herzog
"Alien" (1979) Ridley Scott
"All About Eve" (1950) Joseph L. Mankiewicz
"Annie Hall" (1977) Woody Allen
"Bambi" (1942) Disney
"Battleship Potemkin" (1925) Sergei Eisenstein
"The Best Years of Our Lives" (1946) William Wyler
"The Big Red One" (1980) Samuel Fuller
"The Bicycle Thief" (1949) Vittorio De Sica
"The Big Sleep" (1946) Howard Hawks
"Blade Runner" (1982) Ridley Scott
"Blowup" (1966) Michelangelo Antonioni
"Blue Velvet" (1986) David Lynch
"Bonnie and Clyde" (1967) Arthur Penn
"Breathless" (1959) Jean-Luc Godard
"Bringing Up Baby" (1938) Howard Hawks
"Carrie" (1975) Brian DePalma
"Casablanca" (1942) Michael Curtiz
"Un Chien Andalou" (1928) Luis Bunuel & Salvador Dali
"Children of Paradise"/ "Les Enfants du Paradis" (1945) Marcel Carne
"Chinatown" (1974) Roman Polanski
"Citizen Kane" (1941) Orson Welles
"A Clockwork Orange" (1971) Stanley Kubrick
"The Crying Game" (1992) Neil Jordan
"The Day the Earth Stood Still" (1951) Robert Wise
"Days of Heaven" (1978) Terence Malick
"Dirty Harry" (1971) Don Siegel
"The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie" (1972) Luis Bunuel
"Do the Right Thing" (1989) Spike Lee
"La Dolce Vita" (1960) Federico Fellini
"Double Indemnity" (1944) Billy Wilder
"Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb" (1964) Stanley Kubrick
"Duck Soup" (1933) Leo McCarey
"E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial" (1982) Steven Spielberg
"Easy Rider" (1969) Dennis Hopper
"The Empire Strikes Back" (1980) Irvin Kershner
"The Exorcist" (1973) William Friedkin
"Fargo" (1995) Joel & Ethan Coen
"Fight Club" (1999) David Fincher
"Frankenstein" (1931) James Whale
"The General" (1927) Buster Keaton & Clyde Bruckman
"The Godfather," "The Godfather, Part II" (1972, 1974) Francis Ford Coppola
"Gone With the Wind" (1939) Victor Fleming
"GoodFellas" (1990) Martin Scorsese
"The Graduate" (1967) Mike Nichols
"Halloween" (1978) John Carpenter
"A Hard Day's Night" (1964) Richard Lester
"Intolerance" (1916) D.W. Griffith
"It's A Gift" (1934) Norman Z. McLeod
"It's a Wonderful Life" (1946) Frank Capra
"Jaws" (1975) Steven Spielberg
"The Lady Eve" (1941) Preston Sturges
"Lawrence of Arabia" (1962) David Lean
"M" (1931) Fritz Lang
"Mad Max 2" / "The Road Warrior" (1981) George Miller
"The Maltese Falcon" (1941) John Huston
"The Manchurian Candidate" (1962) John Frankenheimer
"Metropolis" (1926) Fritz Lang
"Modern Times" (1936) Charles Chaplin
"Monty Python and the Holy Grail" (1975) Terry Jones & Terry Gilliam
"Nashville" (1975) Robert Altman
"The Night of the Hunter" (1955) Charles Laughton
"Night of the Living Dead" (1968) George Romero
"North by Northwest" (1959) Alfred Hitchcock
"Nosferatu" (1922) F.W. Murnau
"On the Waterfront" (1954) Elia Kazan
"Once Upon a Time in the West" (1968) Sergio Leone
"Out of the Past" (1947) Jacques Tournier
"Persona" (1966) Ingmar Bergman
"Pink Flamingos" (1972) John Waters
"Psycho" (1960) Alfred Hitchcock
"Pulp Fiction" (1994) Quentin Tarantino
"Rashomon" (1950) Akira Kurosawa
"Rear Window" (1954) Alfred Hitchcock
"Rebel Without a Cause" (1955) Nicholas Ray
"Red River" (1948) Howard Hawks
"Repulsion" (1965) Roman Polanski
"Rules of the Game" (1939) Jean Renoir
"Scarface" (1932) Howard Hawks
"The Scarlet Empress" (1934) Josef von Sternberg
"Schindler's List" (1993) Steven Spielberg
"The Searchers" (1956) John Ford
"The Seven Samurai" (1954) Akira Kurosawa
"Singin' in the Rain" (1952) Stanley Donen & Gene Kelly
"Some Like It Hot" (1959) Billy Wilder
"A Star Is Born" (1954) George Cukor
"A Streetcar Named Desire" (1951) Elia Kazan
"Sunset Boulevard" (1950) Billy Wilder
"Taxi Driver" (1976) Martin Scorsese
"The Third Man" (1949) Carol Reed
"Tokyo Story" (1953) Yasujiro Ozu
"Touch of Evil" (1958) Orson Welles
"The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" (1948) John Huston
"Trouble in Paradise" (1932) Ernst Lubitsch
"Vertigo" (1958) Alfred Hitchcock
"West Side Story" (1961) Jerome Robbins/Robert Wise
"The Wild Bunch" (1969) Sam Peckinpah
"The Wizard of Oz" (1939) Victor Fleming

spf

kristine had commanded that we show her our initals. instead, i have decided to give you my full name. whee!

first out of the blocks are my Jeans.


next up, a drink i haven't tried yet, but know a few people who spent most of their college days mixing it. Amaretto.


this little guy i saw as i was leaving my girlfriend's place. Yellow Jacket


beautiful Flowers my girlfriend gave me on saturday


my freezer hated me for this shot of Ice.


i love indian food and this was my dinner last night. Saag Paneer.


at the end of the pack we have Hearts.


i think that spells jayfish. what letters did you take pictures of?

lookie here! sardines!

a great way to get clean?

with the foam factory! 55 cubic feet of foam in under 3 minutes. whee!

sculpture - session 1

since i got called out of class last week, this was the first week i was able to get my hands into some clay. i'm not terribly excited by the model or pose so i opted for a bust/portrait. today's work went on pretty fast (roughly 20+lbs of clay). hopefully i can kick it into high gear for the 2 remaining sessions to get this one looking okay. the bird on his head was just me being silly. my teacher almost expects it from me so i have to oblige. :)



i actually dragged myself out of bed this morning for a workout too. it had been four days and i was starting to feel too comfy by not going. too soft in the middle as well. i'm also trying to track what i eat for a while. i want to get a better idea of how many calories i'm taking in. i'm all about data! whee!

grand total

this is how it looked after i counted all of it and here's the rundown:

6729 pennies ($67.29)
382 nickles ($76.10)
2454 dimes ($245.40)
4104 quarters ($1026.00)
5 half-dollars ($2.50)
50 dollar coins ($50.00)
---------------
13724 total coins

$1467.29 total value

if i took them to the coinstar thingy, it would take $130 as a "counting fee". i'm going to call my bank today to see what kind of fee they would try to pry out of me.
i like playing with coins, it makes me feel like a pirate. ARRRR!

** update: my bank won't charge me for depositing coins! yay! ...but there will be a fee since it would be considered a teller transaction and i have an ATM only account. another bonus, they'll give me the paper rolls for free! whee! anyone want to come over to roll a few?

coinage

loose change. we all seem to have it. what do you do with it? i have had the luxury of not having to raid my piggy bank to eat in quite a few years so i've amassed a pretty large chunk of metal. i'd say this is roughly 6 years of change.



does anyone want to guess how much is there? how about if you can guess the exact dollar amount, i'll send it to you! :) yesterday while at my girlfriend's house, she showed me her coin collection. she likes bicentenial quarters and dollar coins. so after i went home, i decided i'd pull out my change to see if i could find a few for her. we ended up sorting this pile all night (and getting pretty drunk in the process). she's the first girl i've known that not only didn't mind helping me sort but also wanted to keep going until it was done. i'm smitten! this is how the pile looked after sorting.



i've got it all counted now and i'm rather surprised at the total. 13639 coins. now what the heck do i do with it?

in honor of leafgirl

i;m b.logging drunk. the hottie and i made a woooonder ful dinner and sorted my coins. yea, we sorted coins. i'll even piost pictures after i'm done counting them all. she made me drink a lot of stuff. 2.5 margaritas and a couple glasses of wine. and we didnt ger to be until 2:00am wheee! i think this might be the first time i'll vbe sick in the mornging. hehe.

nightie night

oh yeah, i made her blush and we went to target this morning. i bought soemcleaning supplise and easter candy. they have cheap wine ya know....

girlfriend is passed out now hehe.

incredible machines

these are amazing! i wish i had the creativity to make just one!
from a japanese kids show. (there's 12 minutes of them!)

rainy reprieve

we woke up this morning to a rainbow:



i figured it meant that i needed to get out for a run around the lake. so i did. yay!

the 11th

yesterday marked 9 months of dating for me and my girlfriend so we went out to dinner (yes, i skipped out on drawing class, it couldn't be helped). we went to grasshopper, one of the top 100 restaurants according to the sf chronicle. we've been there a few times before and have always enjoyed the food but for some reason, this time the menu was kinda lackluster. we had the ginger & squash soup, the ahi poke, the spicy papaya salad, pork gyozas, & the fried sweet potatoes. oh, we also had some hot sake. funny, even after 9 months together, i just found out last night that she loves sake! we've never been to a japanese place because she's not really big on sushi so i never would have imagined that she likes sake. anyway, the sake was really good, the dishes all tasted great, it just seemed that there wasn't much of a selection this time around. there were plenty of meat dishes but we're both borderline vegetarians so our choices were slim.

still, it was a great evening and we got to talk a bit which it seemed like we hadn't been able to in the past week (she was on a business trip then i had family in town, so we were busy). we got back to her place, relaxed a little, got ready for bed then worked on the ny times crossword together (she's really good at them!). luckily, she bought a new coverlet over the weekend and is using that instead of her comforter. that comforter was hot! :) as we were sleeping/spooning, one of the kitties came under the covers and slept between us. damn chaperones!

i got to the gym this morning as well. yay!

poo

i got called out of sculpture class to do actual work. what's up with that? :)

faith

i just think it's weird watching how it gets around.

video --> faith the biped dog.

workout log

i went to the gym. i'm really enjoyig the speed interval program on the treadmill. and i'm going to say that gatorade really does keep me energized during my workout. much more than just water. (yeah, it's sugar water. i know... )

beautiful day

the weather report said it would be raining all weekend but mother nature decided to give us a slight break today. it rained a little overnight but by morning it had stopped and the nasty clouds were drifting off to the east. my girlfriend and i decided that we'd go for a run outdoors. i wanted to be in the city by 11:00 so i figured we had time. after the run and getting cleaned up, we hit traffic before the bridge (why is that not surprising?). it turns out in addition to the 3 or 4 conferences, there was also a giants game. needless to say, everyone decided that the bay bridge was the place to be.
originally, i was going to go to ape and my girlfriend was going shopping, then we'd meet up afterwards. since we got into the city so late, i decided to change my plans and follow her shopping. we ended up hitting crate and barrel, macy's, and ann taylor. she did pretty well and only spent a little bit of money. she bought a few things that she'd been wanting to get anyway so our trip was good.
on the way back to the east bay, we stopped at baskin robbins. i was craving ice cream i suppose, and baskin robbins was on the way home. granted, it's not the pinnacle of ice cream parlors but it'll do in a pinch. she got chocolate chip on a sugar cone, i got a chocolate shake (shouldda got a malt!). back at her place, we took a 45 minute nap (like kitties in the sun).

dinner was at cafe colucci with my girlfriend and my brother. ethiopian always seems to satisfy.

now, i just have to convince myself to get up kinda early to get to the city tomorrow to hit the convention. i might even go with public transit this time, who knows. but they say there's an even larger chance of rain. ugh.

hope everyone is having a good weekend!

good cartoons

i like these.

this one especially.

long pose

went well this evening. we started late but i ended up staying all the way through (10pm!). this is going to be a 2 week pose so we'll have the same model/pose next time and hopefully, i can add her face and work on more of the values.

**update** now that i'm looking at it, i see a lot of things i want to change. i may start this one over.

sigh

it's grey and drizzly
sculpture was cancelled
the store was out of cadbury mini eggs
my girlfriend left for a four day business trip.

must be a monday.

these times are a changin'

i think i like daylight savings time better but it's a bigger pain to switch. my girlfriend and i both forgot about the change until she was on her way out the door this morning. yikes! now we have to rush around to get all our errands done. why do we have the time change again?

even after a night of pizza and margaritas, i worked out. i even dragged her with me. hehe.

i expected this outcome...

Disorder	Rating
Paranoid Disorder:	Low
Schizoid Disorder:	Low
Schizotypal Disorder:	Low
Antisocial Disorder:	Low
Borderline Disorder:	Low
Histrionic Disorder:	Moderate
Narcissistic Disorder:	Low
Avoidant Disorder:	Moderate
Dependent Disorder:	Low
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder:	High
-- Personality Disorder Test - Take It! -- -- Personality Disorders --

i'm a sinna!

again, swiped from zerodoll

Greed:	High
Gluttony:	High
Wrath:	Medium
Sloth:	Medium
Envy:	Low
Lust:	Medium
Pride:	Medium

Take the Seven Deadly Sins Quiz