In a few hours I will be on a flight to California with my brother and my cousin. I’m excited about this first step into my vacation. I will take tons of photos and video footage to remember this voyage. Coachella, here I come! Hope everyone has a great week. You’ll get through those Finals. I promise!
Go Heat!
Oh Miami. Where did you go wrong? Was it the seduction of your beaches? Was it your love for streamlined shades and chick mohawks? Where is your indie scene? I thought I would see you on Thursday night but you let me down. You missed an amazing performance by Band Marino, the indie-folkrock band from Orlando. You also missed a great performance by the opening acts Sir Majesty (Miami) and The Empties (Athens, Georgia). They made music that would’ve had your toes tapping and your heads rocking. Was it the venue? Was it the price? Couldn’t be the price. Eight bucks is a damn good number, easy on the wallet. Maybe it was Band Marino’s album art:
“Nope. I just want to get this over with already.”
“Same here,” she replied.
Well it appears that all the weeks of slaving over this project were worth it. After a month and a half of sketching, redrawing, tight pencil renderings, color-comps, layouts, brainstorming, phone calls, emails, sighing, stretching, and wincing at back pains, we were told it was the best presentation they had seen to date. Now, I should probably explain how this whole presentation was structured. Picture The Apprentice, with less cameras, less Trump, and a lot more kind things to say about teammates. There were two teams: The Manhattan Project and Team Apple. Cattia and I were the art directors for Team Apple. The project was to create a poster for the Chrysler Building in New York City. The illustration had to be hand-made. No digital illustrations for this one.
The challenge was to create the best illustration, poster, and a collateral piece that would tie in the illustration to the product. The winning team would receive an extra-credit A for a semester that only had 3 (very time-consuming) projects. It’s an important A to have.
Well, I’m sad to say that my team didn’t win the competition. But, as the panel explained, we were very close. All the posters were amazing. What tipped the scale in the end was the craft-work in the collaterals of The Manhattan Project. Their products included t-shirts, shot glasses, playing cards, matches, and an ashtray. My team’s collaterals included a notebook, a travel chess set, a postcard set, a 3d frame of the poster, and a collection of wine bottles which incorporated one of the illustrations on each bottle.
What matters is that it’s over and that the panel was impressed.
And now for the exciting news. Today I had braces installed onto the top row of my mouth. I was glad to finally have it done after waiting quite a few years. The bad news is that I have to refrain from certain hard foods… for two years. Oh well. It’s a small price to pay for the straight teeth I’ve been dreaming about. Right now I can’t really chew anything because the pressure is extra hard on my mouth. So I treated myself to soup, pudding, and a milkshake today. I’d say it’s a good week so far.
Next week will be an eventful one. I will have finished my illustration class, turned in an essay I haven’t begun, had braces installed, and taken my science final. I look forward to it with joy and relief. It will be the beginning of the end in a sense. I wonder what 2 years of having metal in my mouth will feel like. Gotta run, class break time is over.
This appears to be the most stressful week I will have to encounter. I have such a heavy load of homework that I’ve asked for the week off of work. I even asked my brother to take care of some of the load for me. Two nights ago I hardly got any rest, 2.5 hours to be exact. Last night I made up for it by sleeping 13 hours. That’s a first. But now I’ve got to catch up on some more hw. Hope everyone else is enjoying every hour of sleep and socialization. I’m gonna catch up on that soon, too.
Only two more weeks, my friends. Two more weeks until my liberation from the full nelson that is the Spring Semester. Two more weeks until I finally receive my Associate’s Degree (is there some sort of ceremony I’m not aware of?). Two more weeks until I can wake up at 8 in the morning on consecutive weekdays again. Two more weeks until I can finally hang out with friends again. Two more weeks until I can go to church more frequently again.
But until then I still have two more weeks of projects. Two more weeks of essays. Two more weeks of late nights in the office. Two more weeks of rising before the sun does and zigzagging through traffic just to get to school an hour early. Two more weeks of having to turn down concerts and any kind of social outtings. Two more weeks of sacrifice and jealousy.
Hope everyone else is enjoying themselves, at least for my sake, at least for these next two weeks.
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