blah

day off. i maxed out on vacation days so i had to take off today. this morning i came home from z's to find someone else parked in my spot! grrr. there's signs posted all over saying, " you will be towed if you park in someone else's spot" so, what did i do? i called the tow company. it turns out the tow company doesn't actually have a truck that has low enough clearance to get in the garage. grrrr. why the *@#$ do they advertise they'll tow if they can't even get in??

i feel so lazy when i stay at home on a work day. i have plenty of plans and ideas for getting out and being productive but do i actully do it? nooooooooooo. i just sit around and surf the web all day. damn that flickr!

update: just to clarify my day

1) i was holding open a door with my bag of stuff so i could kiss my sweetie goodbye. she has the key to the door since it goes to the garage in her building. we were literally 30ft away and a guy moves my bag out of the way and shuts the door. i'm all for security but it wasn't open for more than 15 seconds. z had to walk me back to the door to let me back in.
2) i was flustered by the guy shutting the door so i didn't kiss my gf goodbye very well.
3) guy parked in my spot
4) towing company couldn't tow the car
5) was going to return a few things but realized that z had paid for them and she had the reciept
6) 3 places i stopped didn't carry (cold) caffine free diet coke
7) i ended up buying caffine free regular coke on accident
8) didn't realize it until i got to her place (she asked me to bring over a soda and i actually had them in my fridge but thought it'd be easier to get one on the way to her place, that way i could pick up something for me too)
*just added:
9) stepped on my sunglasses

i'm kind of afraid to go out again for what might happen!

on the plus side, the guy that parked in my spot was apologetic and left a bottle of wine by my car. and it's wine i might even drink!

another plus, z took me out for dinner at an ethiopian restaurant and it was yummy! and now she's all snuggled next to me in bed. whee!

long pose

i tried the white on black again tonight. i was all going okay. i even had a decent stab at a portrait then i stepped back a bit and realized her head was way too big! sorry, i had to erase as much evidence of it as i could. this is a 2 week pose so there's a slight possiblity that i can add the missing parts in next week. we'll see. here she is folks, the headless lady! awwww, i just thought of something! turning her into a medusa! that would have been really cool! now i've got ideas for next time for sure...




on another note, i love love love the way my gf and i communicate. i'm still amazed that it can feel so natural and easy.

odd and funny

make one today!

last night

i was a dolt. i didn't plan very well and couldn't find a suitable card so i went without. bad boyfriend. no flowers. no card. i'm surprised she joined me for dinner at all! i did get her a gift though, so i wasn't totally empty handed.

we went to the "new" second location of a tapas place we like. it was pretty good. not better than our first date place but it warrants a second try, for sure. we tried the fried cheese, the zuchinni salad, the spicy tuna and egg sandwich, and had the sundae for desert (yummy but bitter chocolate).

z had a super stressful day and she had neck pain all day so she was happy to get home fairly early. i gave her a little bit of a massage before bed so she was ready to hit dream land before 9:30. amazingly, we got up early this morning to go for a run! the second time this week! yay us!


this was her present, a painting i'd been working on for the past few weeks. it's my first real attempt at acrylics and i think it turned out well.

find the 50 "dark" movies

in the m&m painting.

blech! this took me a looong time. and i had help from other people...

happy birthday

to the most amazing girl i've known.

long pose

i decided to try something different this time. i'd done this back in high school a couple times and liked the results but now, i think i'm used to the smooooooth bristol board so this construction paper felt really really rough. it's neat to try and see things backwards from your usual way of drawing. this is just white charcoal on black construction paper. i'll probably do it again sometime.

long pose

long pose was just eh. the pose was better than last week and i got a lot more done but once i kept avoiding her face. i don't think i liked her face. it wasn't interesting and didn't have any good lines or shadows. and really, her nose was terrible. so i pretty much avoided it. :)

i work slower than everyone else. i lay in my values little by little while everyone else hits their darkest darks really fast. i think i'm afraid of messing up so i go slow.

tv

what's up with csi? why do you people like it? i watched a little of one episode and was laughing at all the "technology" they were using. so fake. i guess i fail to see the entertainment part of it.

i was watching tlc last night and they were running a bunch of shows about flipping houses. it was kind of interesting to see all these different people lose their savings while trying to make fast money. yes, a few made it work. i was almost thinking i would be able to do it. no, i don't have the money or savings or income to buy a house let alone put tens of thousands into it to sell it at a profit. but i thought it would be something i would be able to do. granted, it looked like a ton of work and you'd have to be really well educated about what it takes to make it happen but it doesn't look impossible.

also watched trading spaces. i know they're working with a really small amount of money but the designs they come up with are a little on the gross side. they just throw a lot of lumber, paint, & fabric at a room and hope it will stick. i didn't see anything on that show that looked good.

this is why i shouldn't watch tv.

popular movies

i've got a problem. i have a tendency to not watch certain movies because they get too much hype/good publicity. i haven't seen taxi driver, reservoir dogs, pulp fiction, godfather, etc. so i bought napoleon dynamite from a co-worker because everyone said it was really funny. i had high hopes and and open mind but really? it wasn't a good movie. it had a few somewhat funny parts but it wasn't as good as i was led to believe. have my tastes changed? whould i have been rolling on the floor 10 years ago? it seemed like a bunch of small thoughts thrown on the screen with only the consistent characters to tie them all together. i'll be selling that dvd on amazon today...

but back to my original thought, once a movie gets so much hype, it always seems to come up short when i see it and that's why i'll probably never see a good portion of current movies. i just had a thought though, i have found that the older movies that have lasted through the years as "great movies" have been enjoyable for me. casablanca, the maltese falcon, vertigo, etc. these actually are good movies.

but it was on sale

i walk in to safeway looking for food. my gf is away this weekend so i figure it'd be smart to get something quick and painless. the frozen food aisle is full of choices; pizza, tv dinners, appetizers, ice cream. there's always a sale on pizza but i notice that there's another on lean cuisine. i've never tried them but they always seem to look nice and have an interesting selection of meals (as long as you eat meat). i find plenty of things i'm willing to try and fill my basket. i walk around the rest of the store seeing if anything else catches my eye. nada.
in line at the checkout, i start to realize that i've got way more than i really intended to buy. the sale was 6 for $12 and for some reason, the number 12 stuck in my head and so i was piling 12 lean cuisine dinners on the belt and nothing else. i must have looked like a diet freak (and i'm a skinny guy). needless to say, z had a laugh at my expense when i talked to her later that night and now i've got her freezer packed to the gills with my food.

at least i won't go hungry while she's away.

long pose

not really anything to post for drawing class. i didn't get very far at all.
in the past, we would get dinner delivered around 7:00-8:00. but the past few weeks, it's been delivered right when we start at 6:00. in some ways, this is probably a good thing but after everyone eventually finished eating, and got the model into a pose, it was 7:00. so that was an hour kinda wasted. yeah, it's a pain to have your drawing groove interrupted by dinner but to have it start late is just as difficult. to top it off, we had the model on a couch so there were really just a few good vantage points. i was off to the side, thinking that i might have a slightly decent view but she was really cut in half. it took me a long time to get things blocked in and when i started going back in with some starting values, my proportions were all off. i futzed with it the rest of the night and ended up leaving frustrated. oh well, the pains of drawing, eh?
next week we have the same model and potentially the same pose. hopefully i'll have a better mood in me.


z is out of town this week and the entire weekend. i'll be watching her kids while she's gone but i'm already feeling lonely. okay, not lonely like i don't have anyone, more like lonely like i miss her. i guess these little separations are good for me and make me appreciate the time we have together more, right? bah. i'll see her for a short time tomorrow night before she gets on a plane early the next day so why am i bitching? she'll be gone for another week in october too.

back to the grind.

reason #103

she gets me to the gym when i have no energy nor any strong desire to do so. and i end up feeling really great afterwards.