sunday, october 31, 2010

dear granny,
Today’s halloween! Hope yours is going well and that you’re actually getting trick-or-treaters brave enough to come up to your door. :] I sure wish I could have some of the leftover candy I know you’ll have… haha kidding (I actually have quite a bit between the candy mom got me to hand out and the candy Ian’s mom gave me).

This week was crazy. Lots of stress, lots of upset me, but I lived and I’m doing well after this weekend. Homework is getting the better of me, sometimes, and the fact that I didn’t get that quad I was trying to pick up had me on meltdown mode on Wednesday evening. Mostly I was just tired all week, which had me getting set off by little things every night. But since I got more sleep this weekend, I’m doing much better.

I had to be CPR trained on Wednesday, too, and that was super high stress because I panicked about not being able to do it (rest assured, I’m actually not bad at it now, I was just unfamiliar/unpracticed at the time and felt WAY too much pressure in front of a room of all the other RAs and our bosses)

Anyway, moving on to the weekend. Halloween means I dressed up. Aaaaand I’m a power ranger! :] The Red Ranger! No girls are ever the red power ranger, and I’ve wanted to be that since I was a wee child watching power rangers with the other neighborhood kids.

This friday was Haunted Hall in St. Joe’s and the other power rangers and I went to it after the staff meeting. Basically, the first two floors (Ian’s being the first floor) set up their halls like a haunted house and tour people through them as a major staple event of Halloween on AQ’s campus. You start from the ground floor, on the back of the building. There’s a wee entryway with a bit of scariness (like three people) that you go upstairs to the main lobby by the desk (not scary) then you go down the first floor hallway.

I was already panicking in the entry thing. Then I made it upstairs to the light and the relative calm and everyone (the other power rangers) kept going toward the hallway. It was DARK. I physically could not make myself go down the hallway. Even when someone was pulling on my arm, I was holding the door and not going after them. Then someone who goes down the hall after each group to scare them from behind with a creepy mask and a squeaky bike horn came up behind me and about gave me a heart attack. Aaaaand that’s when I wussed out and sat in the lounge and painted mini pumpkins and did coloring pages until it was over and Ian and I could hang out. I mean, once the lights turned on he walked me through and told me what went on down the hall (which is apparently how I can handle scary things, hearing a summary) because he was a tour guide for it.

Well, that was an eventful night, but I was glad it was over. And then it was Saturday, which was fun, too. We went to take books back to a library, walked to a Biggby’s (not for coffee, for a nintendo wifi download because AQ’s internet won’t let us do it here), and got jimmy john’s and watched Star Wars and all kinds of other fun stuff. :]

Today I got up and biked to a donut place, but then it was closed so I had to go get it from family fare. Then I played video games with people, and then did homework and such. Now I’m working on art and a bulletin board (they’re due at the beginning of each month) so at least it’s work I WANT to do.

Mmm. and now I can smell the pizza we ordered. I’m gonna go now, so have a good week and I’ll write again next sunday!

in the meantime, here’s a picture of my halloween costume, complete with the other 4 power rangers!

love,
marah

Sunday, October 10

dear granny,
Hi! It’s been a while!
So, this coming week is the 8th week of classes, which means midterms for most people. I don’t have any tests as far as I can tell, so that’s reassuring, but I have 2 or 3 papers (one is really only a short little essay/write up, which I’ll probably do right after this to get it out of the way) and a speech.
This’ll be lovely if I can get it all done without tearing my hair out. I mean, I will eventually get everything done, however my sleep schedule will get caught in a death spiral if I’m not careful. I’ll manage, though! :] I always do!
Yesterday I went to Art Prize with Biz, Tiff, and Ian. Biz and I have to go to different art-y sort of events for our art class and do short essays 3 times in the semester “reacting/responding to the pieces” we see there. I feel like being a smart aleck in mine sometimes, but they are pretty simple assignments to do, so they’re not actually so bad. The art class I’m in is 2-D Design, if you forgot. I finished the project that’s due tomorrow on Friday, so that made this weekend’s productivity on art even more of an accomplishment, ’cause now I’m ahead for Thursday! :] I’ll bring home some of the stuff I do so you can see it. I kind of like a lot of it.

Other classes are going well, too. The 60′s class I interviewed you for has a lot of reading sometimes, but it’s easy enough to keep up. I get to do a paper about Star Trek for it, too! woo! My public speaking class is alright. I did a speech on German Soccer and Miroslav Klose last thursday and it was excellent. At least, compared to my first speech, which was a total train wreck because of how little I’d practiced it. And my theology class is… improving. (Bible as a Story) I actually stay awake for most of the class, now. (oops).

Life is fantastic, too. I need to find some more creative/me time (and yes, more sleep time) but I do manage to find creative outlets in all kinds of other places. Art homework helps, and so do RA tasks that require creative thinking or design skills. (I helped design the newsletter, a big bulletin board in the front of the dorm with all the RA names and info, several sets of door decorations, and a hallway bulletin board already, and that’s not even counting all the posters and such for programs I’ve put on.)

Anyway, I should get back to that essay about Art Prize :] Have a good week! Can’t wait to be home for fall break! See you on Friday!

<3 Marah

Art Prize 2010

portrait made with rubik’s cubes! :]

 

4 seasons thing in DeVos place. It was made out of thread or something, I think! I liked the colors!

 

another thing in DeVos place. Huuuuuuge sheets of paper with all kinds of cutouts. I thought it was fascinating. And it reminded me of some of my 2D Design assignments!

 

aaaaand my favorite art prize exhibit to visit! The toast haikus! People texted in haikus and the artist made toast and painted the best ones on the toast! they were displayed in a window in a business along Fulton street. I guess I wouldn’t vote it to win, but it was the funniest, most resonating art prize exhibit for me.