art but no photography ...

I finally decided what classes I am going to take this spring. Only five art production hours (design 2 and quark/indesign) and no photography classes this semester. In addition I am taking visual language, principles of marketing and children's literature. The marketing course is going to help me decide if that's what I should pursue in Grad School or not. And the literature class is just for fun.
So after this semester I will still have to take drawing 1, drawing 2 or figure drawing, photoshop 2, digital photography, artificial light, color photo and I think at least one other photo class. I plan on taking one of the drawing and possibly a photo class this summer. But I think I am planning on starting grad school this upcoming fall and I want to take 2 classes there and at least one photo class. At times it seems like I am wasting my life away in school but I am determined to finish this degree in less then four years as its only 68 hours.

why didn't we think of this ...

a million dollar website ... now that's my idea of money

A $1 million Web idea, one pixel at a time
British man dreams up unique way to finance university
LONDON - If you have an envious streak, you probably shouldn't read this.
Because chances are, Alex Tew, a 21-year-old student from a small town in England, is cleverer than you. And he is proving it by earning a cool million dollars in four months on the Internet.
Selling porn? Dealing prescription drugs? Nope. All he sells are pixels, the tiny dots on the screen that appear when you call up his home page.
He had the brainstorm for his million dollar home page, called, logically enough, www.milliondollarhomepage.com, while lying in bed thinking out how he would pay for university.
The idea: turn his home page into a billboard made up of a million dots, and sell them for a dollar a dot to anyone who wants to put up their logo. A 10 by 10 dot square, roughly the size of a letter of type, costs $100.
He sold a few to his brothers and some friends, and when he had made $1,000, he issued a press release.
That was picked up by the news media, spread around the Internet, and soon advertisers for everything from dating sites to casinos to real estate agents to The Times of London were putting up real cash for pixels, with links to their own sites.
So far they have bought up 911,800 pixels. Tew's home page now looks like an online Times Square, festooned with a multi-coloured confetti of ads.
"All the money's kind of sitting in a bank account," Tew told Reuters from his home in Wiltshire, southwest England. "I've treated myself to a car. I've only just passed my driving test so I've bought myself a little black mini."
The site features testimonials from advertisers, some of whom bought spots as a lark, only to discover that they were receiving actual valuable Web hits for a fraction of the cost of traditional Internet advertising.
Meanwhile Tew has had to juggle running the site with his first term at university, where he is studying business.
"It's been quite a difficulty trying to balance going to lectures and doing the site," he said.
But he may not have to study for long. Job offers have been coming in from Internet companies impressed by a young man who managed to figure out an original way to make money online.
"I didn't expect it to happen like that," Tew said. "To have the job offers and approaches from investors — the whole thing is kind of surreal. I'm still in a state of disbelief."

toys ...

that make noise should be banned from existence. I have heard the ABC song sooo many times this past week between Andrew's learning tool bench and table. UGHHH I just want to scream as they are just annoying especially when you have this horrible headache. Thus no toys that make noise for his birthday ... please he got enough for Christmas (watch me say this and be the first to buy he some loud annoying toy like this for his birthday.)
I don't think he likes his chasing monkey toy though because he keeps picking it up and throwing it at me. Its actually kinda funny because he will go to wherever it is pick it up and walk over to me and when he is about an arms length or so away he throws it to me like I should play with it. So I of course not wanting anything to do with his toys put it back down and once again this process takes place again. It went on forever until I finally got enough of it and put the toy under the tree out of his reach.
If you thought Christmas was along day the day after seemed even longer.

All I want for Christmas ....

is my two front teeth. And surprisingly that is just what Andrew got it. Let's just say if teething is this bad with the rest of his teeth and they were with his two front teeth the next year is going to be loads of fun.
Besides getting his teeth Andrew also got tons and tons of toys. Yesterday was a long day and the only nap he got was when we were eating at my grandma's house. The morning started out with Andrew looking at the snow, it was so pretty before it started to melt into an icky mess. I wasn't allowed to let him see what Santa left for him because we were running late and had to get to my sister's for Christmas breakfast. But he did get to look in his stocking which was filled with some roll arounds and peek a blocks, some books, a monkey rattle and a sippy cup.
At my sister's we ate then opened presents (and yes he did say presents) he loved the tree house toy that grandpa got him and the sports center from my sister. The tree house came with these roll around balls and my brother decided to teach him how to throw (he did a pretty good job at it as later that night at home he was throwing them all around). Besides that their were lots of clothes and books. Grandpa also got him this neat little fire truck book (its a stuffed fire truck with a book attached.) My aunt gave him this little blue car that he played with for quite some time. And my grammy gave him his present early as she made him a stocking and gave him a baby's first ornament. After that we attempted to clean up and get Andrew to take a nap.
But like Andrew is that nap didn't happen till we got in the car to go to grandma's. There he got to play with the cousins and it was fun time. Especially when the confetti was thrown all over the room. The Andrew (10 months) and Emyle (14 months) had a ball throwing this at each other. He got this little fire truck ride along toy that my cousin Emyle wanted instead and he actually enjoyed hers more. He also got some blocks and caterpillar roll around toy. It was a long three plus hours at the grandparents and by the time we got ready to go Andrew was fussy and being a crabby baby.
When we get home we brought him straight into our room so he does not see that Santa Claus was there while we were gone. When we tell him that Santa came by and left him presents his eyes lit up and he got all excited. We walked down the hallway and I let him go about 10 feet from the tree and you should have seen how he ran to get there. It was so funny. The first toy he picked up was his chasing monkey and since he couldn't figure that out he left tit be and went in his monkey crawl towards the learning table (which he loved I eventually had to take it away from him so he could open his other presents.) He got some baby Einstein Cds and DVDs (don't watch baby Santa as it is horrible) lots of books, some space Pjs, some weebles, a huge stuffed puppy dog and this stuffed fire hydrant that when you open it up has about seven other stuffed toys inside. By this time Andrew was getting pretty tired but still had a ton of gifts to open so we kinda just opened them for him. I have to say the best part of the night was when he curled up with his bottle laying on his puppy dog and feel asleep.
Yesterday was a long day ... but in the end very fun as I think Andrew walked more yesterday then he has thus far.

anywhere but here ...

enough said

Finished ... for now

Remind me never again to try and take 14 hours of classes (8 of which where art production classes) in one semester. I am finished though ... finally and somehow I managed to survive with decent grades 4 A's and a B. The B is in photography which sucks because I know I am capable of A quality work but I don't have the time. As far as next semester goes I haven't signed up for any art production classes yet only visual language and principles of marketing. Well I gotta go clean up the art mess I left lying around the house this morning before I went to class.

I actually killed the wheels not the tire

So my tires are fine ... the wheels are the other hand are not. I killed them yes all four of them needed to be replace. That and my brakes - and possibly the ruthers (but I find this hard to believe because my car was just inspected two months ago and nothing was wrong with the brakes then). I didn't make a claim to my insurance for this either because my deuctible is $500 and the new wheels are $700 so a $200 claim isn't worth an increase in car insurance. Because brakes are not covered in accidents.
So there goes my savings again ... I think I am cursed to never be able to save up enough money for the digital camera I want.

killed the tire ... could have been much worst

I really don't know what happened one second I was switching lanes to get off at Grand from Market/Forest Park and the next I was hitting the divider head on. I am lucky that all I did was kill the tire last night as the tire suggests it could have been a lot worse.
I pulled over to the side of the road and it didn't seem like there was any damage but it was really dark so I pulled into the "ghetto" shell station (its actually not so ghetto anymore but that is what it was called when I was at SLU). All of a sudden before I even get out of my car to check for damages in a lighted area I have about four homeless people approach me and offer their help. They seemed really nice but I have had experience with homeless and tire changing before and I wasn't about to experience that again.
So I drove down to the Village apts. and there my friend Stuart and his awesomeness helped me change the tire.
It was pretty bad and I destroyed not only the tire but the rim as well. But like I said it was only a tire I could have killed the car or much worse myself.

I wanna a vacation ... From life

I would like to just pack my bags and leave. Go anywhere but here. I need a vacation from life. But I also know that I can't do this so I am stuck in St. Louis trying to figure out what I want to do.
work is my love/hate relationship there are times when I love being there and then there are times when I would rather be anywhere but there. I have worked my ass off for this job and I really am starting to question myself again as if it is really worth it. My school work is suffering because of the job as I have missed so many classes. And the promise of full-time in January is a no-go. I wanna write or take pictures but I am unable to find a job to do such this. Taking pictures on the weekends is great but that is what I would like to consider my social time as it is the only time I ever get out anymore.
I am so stressed out and at times I feel as if I am living in someone else's life. So I can in my vacation ticket ...yet?

ick

I HATE cold weather and even more I HATE the snow. In addition I hate St. Louis drivers who already don't know how to drive when it is snowing. So in he end the sun can come back out again and get rid of this white winter wonderland.

My life - the next week

This is more for my own knowledge so I need to know what I still have to do:
Media -
Major assignments #4
News and Cultural Context
Exam 3
Business
Final
Photo 3
Drunk Driving
Final Project (no clue what I am gonna do here)
photoshop
Poster - Drunk Driving
Five series prints
Design
scrapbook
face project
ughh ... I hate the end of the semester and when I asked off work for Wednesday It was like why do you need off.

Quark and Indesign = The Devil

These programs are the devil.
Quark and the IMac - Even though I was saving the updates to the Winter session about every 15 mins or so. The IMac was not saving the changed thus when I would shut down the computer at work for the day everything would be lost and I would start back at square one. After threatening the iMac to become a causality on Page Blvd. it decided to behave and we haven't had any major problems since. This project will be finished tomorrow as I have three ads still to place and two spreads to change. I plan on redesigning the brochure for the spring sessions but I didn't have the time to do it for the Winter as we are already about two weeks behind production schedule on this one.
InDesign - I am no artist and can not draw to save my life thus I decided Adobe would be my friend to make my final project for Design class. And it was until a fatal error occurred and the program shut down. In this fatal error my scrapbook was lost and is unrecoverable. This means a semester long project that is 61 definitions (so almost 80 pages) is gone, lost, unable to be recovered or opened. I need to have it done Friday morning so I can get it printed as it is due by the end of class Saturday.
Why me? Why now? Well I guess I am gonna stop complaining and go back to working on the book.