Okay. One Hour Photo just started playing at the Camelview in Scottsdale. I know some of you wanted to go see an evil Robin Williams, but I can’t remember who. If you’d like to go see One Hour Photo with Edison and I, please call me or email me ASAP so we can make plans. I know many people are going out of town this weekend, but I’m busy weekdays now, so it has to be on the weekend. Perferably this weekend.

Let me know.

So in arbitrarily picking Drawing for my MW class and 2D Design for my TTh class, I managed to not only get both classes in the Art Building (Apparently the bulk of the core classes (ie: freshman-level) are not taught in the Art Building but instead in the Tower Center. Go Figure.), but also to end up in the only 2D Design course offered with an emphasis on computers. The required text is a website. All the assignments are online, and the first one is my choice of physical or entirely digital. It happens to be something that my digital art experience (and computer hardware at home) is particularly well-suited for, so I plan on doing it all digitally. Sort of. I have actually begun working out some ideas on paper to get a feel for what I want to accomplish. Still, the bulk of the work will be directly digital using the graphics tablet I paid so much for for so little use to date.

The teacher is pretty forward-thinking when it comes to computers, though he doesn’t expect the class to have advance knowledge of how to use them. My impression is that a lot of the class will take place in the computer lab instead of the regular classroom, which suits me just fine. The lab is, of course, a Mac lab, being for Art students. Which suits me just fine. Everything is on OS 9. Which is okay, I guess.

Also, I don’t seem to have to lug a lot of stuff to the 2D design class, which I appreciate, since I have to lug so much to the Drawing class. I even managed to buy an expensive drawing board in the wrong size (likely because I trusted the sales clerk instead of triple checking everything, and was pretty frazzled and late at the time) to fit in the large portfolio (20″+ by 26″+) I bought, so I get to carry those two things and a tackle-box-like device for art supplies back and forth to class Mondays and Wednesdays. I think everything I need for 2D Design will fit in my backpack at the largest, except for that tacklebox full of pencils and stuff, but that’s a lot more reasonable to carry than two items larger than 20″x26″.

So, that’s all well and good and so far, I seem to be doing fine, although I haven’t got any feedback from either teacher on the work we’ve been doing in class. In Drawing class yesterday, I followed along and did what I could to create some Mass Gesture and Line Gesture images, and the teacher was walking around the whole time giving feedback to various students, but never got to me. Now, in a 1hr class, I could understand easily that there simply isn’t enough time to work individually with everyone, or in a 30-seat class, sure. This class is 3hrs long and there are 14 students.

I’ll probably get feedback when I turn it in next week. We’ll see.

“You have to give up. It is only when you’ve lost everything that you are truly free to do anything.” -Tyler Durden

Tyler’s voice has been bouncing around in my head for the last day or two, repeating the same few phrases over and over again. It’s in that part of the memory you usually have a song repeating in. It got there by being part of a “song” for a “video” on the Fight Club DVD that I’ve seen probably a hundred times (I used to put it on repeat). It got there recently because (get this:) I recently redesigned the Beer Club Merchandise, which got my brain going on all things Fight Club.

Feeling pretty low and having a voice repeating “you have to give up” over and over again in my head is maybe not the best thing that ever happened to me. Not the worst, either. I really hurt the last tow on my left foot late last night when trying to get to the washer/dryer to more some laundry around, and it hurts quite a bit. Did you know you can’t limp on a bike?

I also seem to have stopped shaving (my face, my head) a couple of weeks ago. Something about feeling this way makes me feel too tired to go through those motions. Like my arms are too heavy to lift all the way to my head to drag a blade across it.

There’s always a good excuse, too. Well, maybe just a ‘good enough for me’ excuse. Last night’s Drawing I left me physically exhausted. We were creating gestural art which requires thousands of large, whole-arm & body movements, and I was using charcoal that was a bit too hard, so I was having to press pretty hard to get the right effects from it. Not sleeping enough lately may have helped. Tonight, I think I’m going to skip Beer Club in favor of sleeping as soon as I get home from class. Which means I won’t be shaving then, either. Maybe next week.

Do you have any idea how difficult it is to actually get your hands on human adipose?

Take a look at The Onion’s Home-Buying Tips, including such helpful tips as this:

“The first step in buying a new home is having much more money than you do now. “

AND

“Make sure the neighborhood has a good high school, one close enough to see with a telescope.”

PLUS

“Avoid purchasing a home that is on fire or underwater. “

I’ll certainly keep tips like these in mind when shopping for a home next year.

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Today was my second day of classes, which meant that today I found out whether I would be able to register for both classes or only one, and what art supplies I would have to buy just to take the classes. It also meant that i had to scramble to try to get all the art supplies before Drawing class tomorrow, despite my lack of transportation and the bulk of the materials required. So tonight after class I found an open, local art supply store (Wet Paint on Forest just North of University) and managed to get all of my art supplies for the low, low price of $303.58. I had to split it between two cards because of recent overspending and poor choice of credit cards for certain transactions. When I came home freaked out about spending so much money, I opened up quicken and started playing around. Assuming that the rent payment that I plan to make Saturday or Sunday doesn’t clear before Friday (not unreasonable, considering how long they’ve taken to clear rent checks in previous months (not less than 5 days past the first)), I won’t even have to activate my overdraft protection. If next month’s rent payment doesn’t clear until at least the 4th, I will have plenty of leeway to apy all outstanding debts without going below zero or above the credit limits of any of my accounts at all, accoring to currently understood debts and incomes. If I get bonuses every month (expected, to a certain degree) I will be able to do things like spend a little more on the vacation I will be taking in Hawaii next month (airfare and hotel covered by a prize package, food and incidentals covered by me and Angela) and pre-pay on some of my accounts sooner.

Anyway, I came home from class and from shopping and was feeling pretty stressed out and awful (worse, considering the near-migraine I had right before leaving work (subdued by a few appropriate pills)) and realized that I still had 5 alcoholic malt beverages (approx. 5% alcohol by volume, each) in my refrigerator. I started with two twisted teas, and then by the time I was halfway though the Captain Morgan Gold that followed, I finished finessing my accounts into a reasonable balance and didn’t feel as bad. I’ve had the DNA Incredi-blu and part of a regular DNA since then, and I’m somewhere past a buzz now. I’ll be going to bed soon, and we’ll see how I feel in the morning. Right now I mostly feel numb. Not worried about money, and whether that’s because of the alcohol or because I made some graphs look like I would have enough money for a while, I don’t know.