24 posts tagged “daap”
This is it, kids, we're going to live forever. We're part of the story now.
In twelve hours, I will be staring at a podium. I will stare at that podium for two hours, with only the occasional break to look at my friends and share a knowing smile or a glance that manages to sum up "God, when is this going to be OVER?!" in a split second. I will get up from the chair, I will hear my name, I will walk across a stage, it will all be over.
And when that's done, I'll pose for pictures, I'll give hugs, I'll meet parents. I will do it all as a different person.
I will do it as a college graduate.
I have spent the past two months of my life living like someone I don't even recognize. I spun in and out of bars between 32-hour design benders. I double-fisted PBR and screamed that I was going to live forever, and though the words were a joke, I kind of meant them. I was ten feet tall, I was bullet-proof.
I was scared. I was defeated. I stayed in one chair for 32 hours not because I wanted to work so hard on my thesis, but because I knew I was going to break down as soon as I left the room since I lost the job I really wanted. I hurled my keys across the studio, I cried, I collapsed in a heap in a friend's arms because it was finally too much to take.
I finished my thesis.
I detached from the entire world around me and made new friends. I shot what felt like a hundred games of darts. I forgot how to hustle at pool. I played in a Friday poker game because I thought it was easy money and good practice and then I bought everyone beers with the money they had lost to me.
When I wake up tomorrow, I will look in the mirror for the last time as a college student. When I go to sleep at night, even after a night of dancing and screaming at the top of my lungs, I will be a college graduate. I can't figure out if the phrase I want to use is "I just want it to be over" or "I wish I could do it all again".
I would give anything to re-live the last five years of my life. I would do some of it differently if I was convinced I could come out the same way, but I know I couldn't. I am five years of mistakes in the making, but every single one of them led me to where I get to be tomorrow.
I have been privileged enough to spend these five years in a room with 18 of the most creative, talented people I can ever imagine meeting. It seems only appropriate to end with a toast. So here's to the last five years - to dollar nights, to euchre, to bolt actions and sniper rifles and camping. To riding rockets, flicking caps, Abe Lincoln, to Bone. To 4 a.m. recording sessions, to hard drive crashes, to moving cross-country every three months. It's been a good run - here's to the rest of it.
The DAAP Digital Design capstone process is a funny one. We meet with our adviser once a week in the winter quarter, which is based around research and concept development. At the end of Week 8 (out of 10 weeks in the quarter), we meet with a panel of professors and give a 20 minute presentation of what we've done so far and what we plan to do in the next quarter.
Twenty minutes isn't terribly long, especially if you're someone like me that doesn't know how to shut up. My presentation lasted about 15 minutes, which only left 5 more minutes for them to discuss my topic with me. Instead of "discussing", it was more of a rapid-fire series of questions that I didn't get any time to respond to. I didn't mind, really. If we only had a few minutes left, it's much more beneficial for me to listen to them talk than for me to spend another few minutes telling them what I already know.
The problem is that I walked out of my review feeling less confident than I have in the two months I've been developing my topic. The general consensus is that they're worried, and I guess they have good reason to be. My topic is huge, and I haven't made any decisions as to how I'm going to accomplish my project. Do I make one three-minute piece? Do I make a series of little PSA-type pieces? Is it video, motion graphics, 3D, some hybrid of all of it?
I graduate college in three and a half months. It's sort of starting to set in that this is really my last project that I'll ever show at DAAP. My second-to-last quarter is over in two weeks. I'd ask where all the time went, but I know that answer. It went to five years of incredibly hard work, late nights, angsty tears over coffee, and happy times over beers with friends. Here's to the rest of it.
P.S. Thank you so much to everyone who responded to my last fitness post! As an update, I've lost 9 pounds total, and I'm kind of at another plateau. I have a feeling this is going to be a long struggle, but it'll all be worth it when it's over. I'm still going to the gym like crazy and making changes that I think are really going to benefit me. Also, I'm taking an extended hiatus from my job, which gives me all the more time to try and develop a healthy lifestyle. (And more time to face my elliptical nemesis.)
First of all, I would like to thank those of you who have responded to my internet-wide call to give me your thoughts on "women and numbers". Your responses meant a lot to me and every single one was presented to my professor, who was impressed with the number of responses I received and the amount of thought that clearly went into them. Since some of you have asked, here's a little more information about my project. I'm in the process of putting my presentation together to give to my classmates tomorrow, and a refined version will be given to all my professors next Friday, so this seems like the perfect time to ramble out some thoughts about it. How it started Last quarter at my job, I was working on a store targeted mostly at young teenagers - think "Limited Too" generation. (I can't say much about it, because it's still very confidential information and this is the internet. Professionalism and whatnot.) I work in 3D animation, as some of you know, and I was seeking pictures of merchandise to use as reference images. I ended up at Limited Too's website, looking through their clothes, and realized that these clothes were definitely not the clothes of my youth - they were things my mother would have grounded me for. Padded push-up bras. "I left my brain in my locker" t-shirts. Low rise jeans. None of this is to say that I'm some sort of prude, or that I don't remember what it was like to be that age. Of course I do. But somehow it just got to me. I'm an adult woman, or close to it. The reason we wear padded push-up bras and low rise jeans is to make those parts of our body look more attractive, and whether we're doing it to feel good about ourselves or so that other people will notice it, these are not things that ten-year-olds need to be doing. If I had a daughter, I wouldn't keep her locked up in the closet until she was 18, but I would try to give her the sort of environment that allowed her to explore who she was as a person without feeling like she had to be pressured to be sexy before she was out of double digits. And she sure as hell wouldn't be wearing a t-shirt that said she left her brain in her locker. I started wondering where all of this comes from. I can remember a friend of mine in middle school who was the first one of us to buy anything at a junior's store instead of a kid's store. She had this little jumper that was from 5-7-9, and it was a size 5. For whatever reason, she thought that was important - it was a size 5 - and I still remember it over ten years later. I remember it because it might have been the first time I thought size was really important. When shopping for outfits to wear to an eighth grade dance, I remember my friend Claire not being able to find anything that would fit her because it was all too small. Me, I was trying on medium and large shirts. I wasn't a big girl when I was 13, but I wasn't tiny either. All of a sudden I was ashamed of my size, and it didn't have anything to do with Claire. She helped me look for shirts and cute things to wear and I don't remember her ever passing judgment on me for one second, but I was so unhappy to be looking at a totally different rack of clothes than she was. And to be honest, she was a tiny, tiny girl. She had a sort of metabolism that I will never see in my adult life that was totally natural for her. We were different body types - but I didn't really understand that at the time. I read heartbreaking stories that day at work. The killer was a teenage girl who said she wouldn't ever wear a size 6, because boys wouldn't like her anymore. A woman who bought a dress she hated just because she was so happy to fit into a size 2. These are not numbers that anyone sees. They. Do not. Matter. I got to thinking about one of my biggest pet peeves: beautiful, healthy girls that stuff themselves into pants two sizes too small because they're convinced they have to be that size, and therefore make themselves look much, much worse. But it's not entirely their fault - they really believe that a 10 is not pretty but a 6 is, and they're clinging to the days when they were a 6, and hey, they can fit into it, so what does it matter? The more I read, the more people I talked to, I began to realize that this isn't just about a dress size. It's about numbers. It's about people feeling "old" on their birthday as if a whole year just passed, as if they were more than a day younger yesterday. It's about tying your health to a number on a scale instead of how good you feel or what a doctor tells you. It's about uploading your picture to a website and basing your self-worth off of how people on the internet "rate" you. Where I am now Through a ridiculous amount of revising one or two sentences, I decided to focus on "women and numbers". I'm fascinated by the way women define themselves by numbers. I "am" a size 12, rather than "this dress is a size 12". We take on these numbers as a characteristic of ourselves. That's why it's so hard to let it go when we try on the 12 and all of a sudden it doesn't fit. We panic at the BMV and lie about our weight as if anyone other than bartenders (and perhaps the occasional police officer) will ever take one look at the license. We can tell dirty jokes at bars and tell embarrassing stories about ourselves, but people aren't allowed to ask how much money we make or how old we are. We're jealous of people who can fit into a size 2, even if we're a perfectly healthy, fit size 10. There are a couple things I want to make sure of in my approach. Number one, I want to make people laugh. Because honestly, the more I think about my own capstone topic, the more ridiculous I think it is. A woman actually spending money on a dress she hates just because the label says it's a size smaller than she's been able to wear in years? It's laughable! Who does that? People do it. She left the store that day feeling like a million bucks, like she finally did something right. She got to define herself as a size 2 that day, but nothing had changed since she woke up that morning. I want to make people laugh, and I want to make people feel comfortable. I don't mind talking about this, but I know a lot of people do. I'm creating a motion piece that will be somewhere between 3-5 minutes long. If there's a group of people sitting in a room, and they're all different sizes, ages, etc., I don't want someone to see it and think "I wonder what so-and-so is thinking?" just because they're bigger. I don't want that bigger person to think "Oh my god, I wonder if everyone is looking at me?" Priority number two is all about being comfortable with who you are and doing things for the right reasons. That's the whole point. I think we've lost focus of what's really important. I'm all for being healthy - I've been to the gym four days in a row this week, I drink my 8+ glasses of water every day. But I'm not going to the gym to fit into a different size dress. I couldn't care less what it says. I'm going because my knees hurt, because I hate being out of breath after three flights of stairs, because I know I'm unhealthy and I'm sick of having no energy. There is no fantasy in my mind that I'll ever be a size 2, because I just don't have the body type for it. But I can be healthy. I can be pretty, and confident, and I can feel good about myself. My job is a lot of fun and I'm proud of how I do it, no matter how much money I make. I can talk about all this for hours, of course, but I'm starting to lose focus here. Once again, thanks to everyone who gave me such great information. If you want more information, stay tuned here, or you can check me out for periodic updates on twitter. (You'll also have to sift through a lot of babble about my job, the gym, and food.)
Five weeks are gone out of my ten week quarter. DAAP doesn't really have "mid-terms", per se. We do, but they happen around the eighth week of the ten week quarter. No, it doesn't make a lot of sense to me either.
Through much deliberation and mental anguish, as well as being an annoyance to everyone around me, I have a capstone topic. I'll be creating a motion piece based on the idea of women and numbers. Vague? Oh, maybe. It makes a little bit of sense in my head, and I have three more weeks to work it out before I get thrown under the bus in front of a panel of professors. I'm not terribly worried. Just a little worried.
It's my experience, in my clearly so-many-years-as-an-adult life, that women tend to define themselves by numbers. Even smart, successful, amazing women have that occasional voice in the back of their head reminding them how old they are, how much they weigh, what size that skirt was that they couldn't fit into yesterday, how many calories were wasted on lunch, how long they'll have to spend on the elliptical to overcompensate. We create websites based on giving a woman a numerical rating, as if someone can be defined by one picture of themselves uploaded to the internet. Sure, some people think it's all in good fun, and I won't pretend I haven't looked through them with friends and had a good laugh or two, but what does that honestly do to our view of ourselves and one another?
If anything comes to mind for you when "women and numbers" is mentioned, feel free to drop me a line. Comments here will be seen by everyone, of course, but you can feel free to email me at rizzo.jen @ gmail.com if you'd like to share your thoughts with just me. I'm compiling information from everyone who's willing to give it to me. Your thoughts will contribute to the final project, but your identity won't be used in any way.
Other than that project, nothing terribly notable has been going on. Work has been a little slow, teaching has been great as always, and I'm working on a diabolical plan to book three vacations in the near future. (Kansas City in April, Sarasota in June, Kansas City again at the very end of June for the graduation party spectacular.) It has left me complaining to anyone who will listen about the price of gas, hotels, airline tickets and renting a car when you're under the age of 25.
I'm also cooking up a plan for dinner on Valentine's Day. (Pun entirely intended.) We're a little strapped for cash thanks to one of us finishing up our education and dropping to less-than-part-time hours, so rather than going out for a pricey meal, we've decided to do a nice, quiet evening at home. I have no idea what I'm going to come up with, but I wouldn't be surprised if some sort of seafood was involved.
It's been awhile since I've written about anything, and my only excuse is that I'm busy. And, of course, who isn't? Here are the best excuses I have to offer, though, and I can only hope everyone will let me slide for a little while.
Capstone. For those of you unfamiliar with UC or the capstone process, a capstone is similar to a senior thesis. Ours can be completed in small groups (2-3 people) or individually. I'm not much of a team player sometimes, and I'm confident I can't stand working with one person for six months straight, so I'll be doing mine on my own.
Capstone is funny. For four years, our schedule is dictated for us. We have classes all the time, we have daily homework assignments that result in very large, very difficult projects, we have little time to ourselves. Then your senior year hits. We have one fifteen minute meeting once a week with the head of our department to discuss our progress. The other 167.75 hours per week are up to us. (Not entirely true - we have one multi-disciplinary studio on Monday and Wednesday, and we have a discussion class on Friday mornings. As far as our biggest project of our educational careers go, though, that's it.)
It requires a lot of self-motivation. I'm doing the best I can, and I think I'm pretty far ahead of most of the people in my class so far. Still, I feel like I'm doing nothing for the class. "Researching" and "gaining knowledge" are big things, but they're things I honestly do every day. I don't feel like I'm working when I'm googling, or reading books. It's just what I like to do. So while I'm sure I'm doing lots of things, it feels like I'm completely unproductive. I hope I get over this soon.
Work. I kept my job at FRCH, for a lot of reasons. Number one, the digital department is no longer teaching Cinema 4D, and FRCH really needs someone to step in on day one and know how to do everything they do. This isn't conducive to hiring another co-op. They need me, even with my limited availability, and I need them, because they pay my credit card bill. I'm also keeping my fingers crossed that there will be a full-time position in my future with them, but we'll see what everyone's needs are at that time.
Work was a little frustrating for awhile, because I was just showing up and checking my email and didn't have any actual work to do. This week was nice - there were some design changes made to our plan for Hampton, so I was able to help out on some of the visualization for that. Now I'm back with nothing to do, hoping that a project will come up and they'll need me to step in and do some things. My boss has been nice enough to pass off some of the 3D work that comes our way to me so that he can work on some different things, and I'm hoping that system continues. I know there's enough work for everyone, we're just trying to find a healthy balance.
Teaching. I've been a teaching assistant for the freshman digital classes for the past three years now. This is my fourth and final year to be a TA for them. This usually means that I show up on Monday evenings and watch the big lecture that their professor gives them, and on Fridays they hang out in smaller groups with a bunch of us. They work on their projects and we're around to give them help if they have any questions.
The system is a little different this year. Instead of having 25 people in a room with three random TA's, there are 25 people in a room, and 8 of them are assigned to one of the three TA's. We're able to develop more of a one-on-one relationship with them as a result. I'm not sure how I feel about the system just yet. My first afternoon with them was last Friday, so I don't have a lot of experience with it. We'll see how it all works out. They're also much quieter than any classes I've had in the past, which makes me a little uneasy. It was a slightly boring three hours.
I've also been offered the opportunity to lecture to the whole group, and I'm really excited about it. I think it'll just be for a few minutes per lecture when they're learning 3D, but it's a really fabulous opportunity. I won't know more about it for a few weeks, but I'm looking forward to it.
Graduating. I'll be graduating in a little less than five months. It turns out that's a pretty big deal. My friend Ian and I will be the digital representatives coordinating our final show (DAAPWorks). We applied for graduation this week. My mother is throwing the graduation party to end all graduation parties. Me? I'm just trying to keep it all together. It's a lot to handle.
And quite frankly, I'd be handling everything a little better if my bedroom wasn't 62 degrees. I do not handle the cold very well. Even the cat is curled up under a blanket, glaring at me like this is my fault. We have four total rooms in this house - bedroom, kitchen, living room, bathroom. The living room, where the only thermostat in the house is, is currently 70 degrees. The bedroom, a mere 15 feet away with the door completely open, is 62. I don't think I get to win at air circulation.
So, stay warm, everyone. I miss you all dearly. I think I'll be taking an unofficial break from the online world for awhile, because I just don't have the time to fit anything else in to my life. You can always catch updates from me at twitter in the meantime.
And I … I got my inspiration back. On my way into the subway this morning, I passed a guy on his cell phone saying, “Good morning honey. I just wanted to hear your voice,” and I finally remembered that work is just a thing that you do when you’re not doing the things or people that you love most. It's what I do when I’m not trying to convince my mom that we are actually going to need to split a bottle, not a glass, of wine; when I'm not making silly birthday cards with construction paper and Elmer’s glue; when I'm not trying to bite my boyfriend’s chin, tease him about his lack of Scrabble skills, or invent absurd stories we can tell people about the way we met. It’s not your life; it’s just how you fund it. - Deb
There are parts of me that really want to be like this. But let's be honest here - I'm not. There are people out there, smart, strong people, who live that way. Those people devote their time to their familes, their lives, anything that doesn't involve work. They become different people when their feet hit the pavement at the end of the day and they walk to the train or their cars or whatever takes them to their homes. Me? I can't turn it off.
I won't make any statements that pretend to assume anything about the other people in this world; the people who are not like me. I hate it when people make assumptions about me based on what I do, so to make a sweeping judgment about certain professions that get to just snap out of it at the end of the day would be inappropriate. But stereotypes aside, you know and I know that there are jobs out there that people do just to make the money to get them through the lives they really want to be living. I think it's a newer concept that people my age are really trying to do what they love. Was the world like this forty years ago? Were people doing what they loved instead of doing what would make them the most money? I am a smart girl, and I could have chosen a lot of professions that would make me much more money than I do and will make. That's not to say that being a designer doesn't pay well - it does the trick. I will be comfortable and happy, but nowhere near wealthy. And that's okay - I don't think I'd know what to do with all that money anyway.
I didn't get into design to make money. To be honest, I didn't have a clue until about two years into my major how much money I might potentially be making. I got into design because I thought it was interesting, I knew I wouldn't be naturally good at it and I knew it would challenge me. I stayed in design because I no longer know how I would do anything else.
It isn't that my husband and I are workaholics, it's that design is so much a part of us that it is always in our minds, no matter what we're doing. We carry cameras around with us in case we see something inspirational. We can't walk through the grocery store without noticing that the type on our favorite crackers has changed, and we can't walk past them without critiquing them. We have been known to grab napkins and sketch out an idea while we're sitting at a bar with friends because we are smart enough to know that ideas don't come to you just between 8 and 5 and if we wait too long, we might forget it.
I have been known to wake up in the middle of the night and get up to write down an idea. I sit around and talk about typography with my friends. I once thought that we were boring and ridiculous for it, but the older I get, the more I realize that's just how our lives are going to be. We get inspiration from everywhere, including each other. Who cares if I learn something in the classroom or over my third beer, as long as I'm learning it?
I could have been done with class at 10:30 this morning, but instead I attended a lecture on interface design and then went to see a critique for the senior industrial design projects. I got home two and a half hours later than intended. This is just how we are. It's why we work late, it's why we sometimes go home early.
It doesn't mean we aren't living our lives, it just means that we do multiple things all at the same time. Just because I'm staring at the way a glass is designed doesn't mean I'm not out having fun with my friends - it just means that I don't know how to step out of what I do. I'm okay with it. I interviewed a professor a few weeks ago who clearly was who I will be in about thirty years. He said that we're just different, and that's to be expected. We don't see anything wrong with staying up all night if it gets the idea done. He remembered seeing a sign in a studio that said "Sleep, friends or work - pick any two." I think it's hard for the people who do know how to walk away at 5:00 to understand the mentality. That's not to say that those people aren't good at what they do or that they don't really care about what they do for a living, it's just to say that it's a little different for everyone.
I have the next three weeks off, and I'm probably going to spend them reading, writing, and getting some illustrations done for friends. I'll be sleeping in every day, thank you, and I'll finally have time to go to the gym again. I couldn't be more pleased.
You know the other problem with buying a house? I have completely lost the desire to cook. Our lives are filled with purely ordinary food: spaghetti here, frozen pizza there. While I have no problems with either one of these things - in fact, I just this morning remarked to John that there will never be another frozen food more delicious than the frozen pizza - it is completely out of character for me. Ever since discovering the beauty of Findlay Market, I have no excuse to not cook. I should be in the kitchen constantly, because I made a vow to myself that I would work my way through each aisle at Dean's Mediterranean Market, and I have barely made a dent in it after I discovered the fresh feta cheese.
The only cure for a cooking rut is just to get in the kitchen and do it, but let's face it. It's hot. And when it's hot, I have no desire to do any cooking, and I most definitely do not have a desire to do any grocery shopping.
Since I'm clearly not doing any cooking, I've started doing more reading. Right now I'm working through this magnificent novel:
That quote on the front that you probably can't read very well starts with "part cookbook, part travelogue". If you love food, know a decent enough amount about food to not get completely lost, and wish you traveled more but alas, find yourself as a mostly broke college student in Ohio, you should probably read this. Those are my reasons for reading it, of course, so perhaps you will find your own.
It's not like I'm the first person to read this. Every food blogger that's ever lived has taken a crack at it. I always wanted to sit down with it, but I am nothing if not a girl with excuses, and so they've gotten in the way for years.
I am an incredibly fast reader, but I'm taking my time with this one. A few chapters a night seems to be doing the trick, and I'm a little over 2/3 of the way done. It might not be the inspiration I need to get in the kitchen and try out that pierogi recipe I've been sitting on for a few weeks, but it definitely is entertaining.
The book is my reward to myself tonight, because more than 36 hours before my massive paper is due for class, it is completely written. It's not edited yet, but it is written. I felt like I was terribly behind my classmates for awhile, but today I discovered that most of them haven't even started it yet. Take that, insanely long research paper. So tonight I get to sit and drink my beer and catch up on my book. Depending on how the home inspection goes tomorrow, I might just do the same exact thing again tomorrow night.
I had some introspective things prepared, because I've been a little down lately thanks to the realization that NYU's graduation was on Thursday. For those who haven't been with me over the last five years, it should be noted that I always thought I'd be going to NYU for college. Had I done that, I would have graduated a few days ago. So despite the fact that life is much different than I ever imagined it would be and that I really think it all worked out for the best, I've just been a little mopey for the past couple of days. (Winning at putt-putt last night helped a little.)
Some people love Christmas. Some people love summer. Some people love autumn when the leaves change and it gets just cold enough to break out the wool coat. Me? I love mid-March. Love it.
There are many reasons for this, of course. The first day that the weather is sunny and beautiful and above 60 degrees is probably my favorite day of the whole year. Cincinnati, for lack of a better word, is just disgusting in winter. Absolutely gross. It's gray and the sun rarely shines and it's cold and after the first snow, the gravel/slush mix stays around for the rest of the season. You never feel clean and happy until, well... now.
You see, I get about a week or so for spring break when all is said and done, and luckily for me, it falls at my very favorite time of the year. It's no secret that I'm a big lover of college basketball (Go Jayhawks!), and the tournament always starts just after my classes are over. March Madness, 65+ degree temperatures, and me being able to sleep in until 2:00 in the afternoon all happen at the same time - and those three things are among my favorites in the world. The high here today is 72. I will be stuck inside for most of the day finishing up projects, of course, but it makes me happy when I walk in the living room and see all the sun.
Kat and Zach came to visit last night - stopping by on their cross-country road trip. It was great to see them. What's even better is that Kat served as my human alarm clock, so I actually woke up at 8:30 this morning. We went and got bagels, which was positively delightful, and then I came back home to work. I worked for a couple of hours, then did yoga.
There is no greater reminder in this world that you're completely out of shape than standing in your living room, watching skinny, perfectly proportioned women contorting themselves into positions you can't even imagine. 11:00 this morning, I'm throwing on a t-shirt and track pants and standing on a Bug's Life comforter, which was kind enough to sub in since I don't have a yoga mat. I subscribe to FitTV, which is a fitness channel. It's basically a joke that it even comes to my cable box - but from time to time, I sit on my couch and click over and watch people bounce around for thirty seconds or so, thinking about how cool it would be if I had that sort of energy. It's a sad state of affairs for me and my exercise regimen right now, mostly brought on by our good friends steak and potatoes. What can I say?
I did try the yoga this morning, though, which was nice. I don't understand how people can go to yoga and then bounce off to their daily routines. When I finish it, I feel like a slug. There is nothing energized and bouncy about it for me. My relaxation pose is wrapped up in a comforter on the couch.
Our end-of-quarter show is in exactly five hours. Before then, I have to finish my motion project revisions, fill out a few forms, drop off a CD at DAAP, turn in two forms in two different offices, and get some lunch. If you think that sounds like a full day, you're probably right.
When I lived with Lars, we watched a lot of Good Eats. I mean, a lot. He recorded it every day, and we'd watch it from time to time. Partially thanks to Alton, partially thanks to having a New York apartment, he beat the idea in my head that we are not unitasker people. There will be no appliances, no tools in our kitchen that perform only one task. I would sit there quietly as he would remind me of this from time to time. I don't think he reads this blog, and it's for the best, because here's what I've been hiding all along:
I own a quesadilla maker.
That's right. I own a very large machine that cost me around $25 at Target that has three ridges in it, has tortilla-sized plates in it that heat up when I plug it in, that effectively just melts some cheese. You put the tortilla on, add your toppings, put cheese on it, and close the lid. When it's done, you've got a quesadilla.
No one gets to tell me that I could make a quesadilla about nine hundred other ways. I own pans, I own an oven, I own many things that would melt cheese. But I take up space in my roughly 96 square foot kitchen with a one square foot quesadilla maker.
Admittedly, here's the reason - I really, really like quesadillas. I'd also appreciate it if someone reminded me that I haven't used it since I moved to this apartment a year and a half ago. The point is, I am never letting go of this stupid thing. That's my confession, and I'm sticking to it.
Life is busier than ever, but life is okay. I woke up on Saturday to find that Barack Obama was announcing his run for presidency. I made a chocolate cake that was tastier than any dessert I've ever had. I had a fantastic dinner with friends whom I love dearly. My husband is in the process of quitting smoking. It's been three beautiful days and he's working incredibly hard at it. I am being supportive as ever by staying in my bedroom with the computer and only emerging to refresh my food. It is paying off, however. I turned in a major project today, and as a result, I gave myself seven very special hours to sit in front of my computer and work on the things I wanted to work on: specifically, brushing up some of my 3D skills. You see, I have a very big interview for a very big 3D job coming up. I'm incredibly excited about it because it's at the top of my job wishlist, and they liked the samples I sent to them.
Sometimes I feel like I'm not learning very much, but then I look at my portfolio and think about how much I didn't know three and a half years ago. I graduate in less than 16 months and it's sort of unbelievable. I'm looking at grad schools, I'm assembling portfolio pieces, I'm trying to figure out what I need to improve upon to make myself a ridiculously appealing candidate for all the jobs I want approximately 17 months from now.
I've got so much I'd like to do on my own and simply no time to do any of it. School's officially out of my hair four weeks from tomorrow, and I couldn't be happier. The next month is going to be unfortunate, but with any luck I'll be getting my first choice job and not having to move when it's over. I'll stay here, work, make money, and perhaps even being able to relax with my husband who will have four weeks of not smoking under his belt. It's a good theory, anyway. I'll definitely have time to make more quesadillas.
