Catch Up 3: Everything Else

So, the past two days I covered everything from the holidays that I'd missed, today, I'm just going to finish it off with everything that happened between January and May.

First up: I learned to knit!

On my way back to Ames for the Spring semester, I stopped at a Barnes & Nobel, where I found a really cheap knitting kit on clearance. I had been talking to a couple people about how I'd kind of wanted to learn, so I impulse bought it on sight.

And I made a scarf!

After I started knitting grandma found this (very) old skein of yarn in a desk and gave it to me. I took me well over an hour, maybe two, to untangle it. :p

Then I started buying more stuff and started a new scarf.

It was done in just a couple of weeks!

I was pretty happy with it!

Then I got some ring looms to help me knit hats.

These were for Shaina, and she loved them. :)

There was a flock of Canada geese on central campus one day!

They just made themselves at home.

There was a lot of melting happening, so maybe they thought it was a lake?

In late January I came home for a family get together, (where I took no pictures) but since I was going to be home, and since we'd had so much fun at the last one, and since we'd already been planning to binge watch the brand new Netflix Series of Unfortunate Events, my cousins decided to throw another themed tea party.

It was not quite as themed as before. No real decorations or costumes.

A lot of it was just stuff they wanted an excuse to make. Like more scones. :p

And eat. :p

Some of the sandwiches had mushrooms on them.

And some had horseradish.

If you've read book 11, then you know why these things are appropriate. :p

I don't think the tea was themed. I just wanted a picture of my cup. :)

Peppermint cream cheese bon bons.

Peppermint being the themed ingredient. Book 3, the Baudelaires were allergic. :)

We also had cold soup. (See book 3 again. :p)

These were basically Little Debbie cakes with gummy snakes frosting'd on.

A nod to the Incredibly Deadly Viper from book 2. (And 13!)

And that was that event. Like I said before, I didn't take any picture at the family thing I'd come home for, but Jackson was with us too, and I did get a couple pictures of him. :p

He was getting swaddled. :)

So cute! :p

The next big thing might be news to you if you haven't seen me in awhile: I got contacts!

I've had glasses since I was 6, so this is kind of a big deal.

This was a picture I took to text to Shaina when I first got them.

The next event was another trip to Minnesota. I was doing a job shadow at my cousin Kyle's workplace, and Shaina and Sasha came along for the ride so we could visit Mandi and Co. Sadly, I again neglected to take many pictures. :( I did take a bunch this one night though. :)

Trinity decided to bury Shaina alive. :p

She wanted me to document it.

Shaina found it hilarious. :)

Then Trinity decided that wasn't enough.

She wanted to model.

And then she wanted my phone. :p

And proceeded to take pictures of everyone and everything.

Most of them were of the floor and halves of faces, so I pruned before posting. :p

Mandi knows what kind of kids she's raising: Goofballs. :p

Awesome goofballs. :)

My last big event was another job shadow, and I did take a few at this one. I was applying for an internship at IPTV. (PBS) I didn't get it, but I had fun that day anyway. :)

I sat in on two episodes of Iowa Press.

In the first episode they were interviewing former governor of Iowa and former US Secretary of Agriculture, Tom Vilsack.

It was so interesting learning a lot of behind the scenes stuff!

They had these guys standing in the offices.

I think I remember them from PBS pledge drives when I was a kid!

And that's pretty much it. I didn't photograph much else. I am however photographing a LOT of things this summer as I am building a portfolio of my work, photography and otherwise. To do that I'm going to lots of different places and taking a ton of pictures, hoping I'll get just a few awesome ones I can show off in a portfolio. But that means I have tons of other pictures that don't quite make the cut that I can just post on my blog for fun! So stay tuned! I've got lots of stuff coming! I'll leave you with this one picture I took after I got back to Harlan this summer. :)

TWZIA (The Warp Zone Is Awesome)

The Warp Zone has been KILLING it these last few months with their a-capella theme covers, so I just had to make a whole seperate post to feature them.

To start, I posted this once awhile ago, but Gravity Falls is probably my all time favorite cartoon, and I love their cover, so here it is again.

One of my other favorite cartoons in recent years has been Steven Universe, and I absolutely love the music from it. So many people have been covering the music, I may end up doing a Steven Universe post by itself, but for now, here's the theme, as sung by The Warp Zone. Also please ignore the costumes. They seem to find it hilarious to look their worst when they sing female parts, (See Mabel above) and the bulk of the cast of Steven Universe is female. (Though that doesn't explain Greg, {bottom left} who they've somehow managed to make look far worse than the female characters)



As you can tell, they always dress up like the characters from whatever piece of media they are covering, and when a piece of media has a prominent female character, they will sometimes bring in a guest singer, like this cover of John Williams' Harry Potter theme, where they brought in my favorite YouTube baker who also sings, Rosanna Pansino. :)



And from one John Williams theme to another, (I swear I didn't plan this!) my all time favorite Star Wars theme, Duel of the Fates!



One of my all time favorite shows (that only premiered last year) is Stranger Things, and I love this cover of the theme music. :)



And last but not least, from one Netflix show to another, my latest absolute favorite show, (And I'm not being hyperbolous, I love this show SO MUCH) the theme to Netflix's A Series of Unfortunate Events.

9

So, there's this thing going around Facebook, where people post a specific number of little known facts about themselves. At the end they say, "Like my post and I'll give you a number!" And then, you're supposed to go make your own. Normally I steer clear of these things. I don't like doing what's popular, especially on Facebook, (Whatever, I'm probably a hipster.) but I did decide to comment on my cousin Mandi's post, and she asked if I wanted a number. For some reason I agreed. (Whatever, I'm not THAT much of a hipster. :p) But since I'm still too cool for Facebook, I decided to turn it into a blog post instead. But unless someone BEGS me, I won't be passing out numbers. I still don't like following trends. :p The number that Mandi gave me was 9, so here are 9 things about me that you probably didn't know. Unless you're related to me. :p

1. The nature of the conversation that got me into this list was a discussion of My Little Pony. So I thought it fitting to use my first "Fact" to reveal that I was a brony before it was cool. (Wow. I sound so hipster...) Although I wouldn't call myself one now, I don't watch the show, don't have any toys, when I was a little kid, I loved them. This was mainly because I loved horses. I had a ton of realistic horse toys. I also loved bright colors, as most kids do, and My Little Ponies were both. I don't think I saw them as "Girl's Toys" I just saw rainbow horses, and they were cool.

2. This fact is easily followed by the fact that I liked other things that one would consider girly too. I liked Lisa Frank stickers, I played Barbies with my cousin Shaina, though I used non-Barbie toys, and she had the dolls. (My Lion King toys were my all time favorites at that age.) I did want a Ken doll though, because I thought that would be the boy equivalent to a Barbie. I was breaking down those gender barriers at such a young age. :p

3. My next fact is that I have been a fanboy since I was about 10. (For those of you who have never heard the term, a fanboy, or fangirl, is someone who obsesses over something, a movie, a TV show, a book, a singer, pretty much anything that can qualify as a fandom) My first series that I obsessed over was a PBS show called Wishbone. I had other shows that I had liked a lot before then, Carmen Sandiego, The Magic School Bus, Zoom, but this was my first legitimate obsession. I tried to tape every single episode, I bought the movie, I bought the books, I even bought a stuffed Wishbone plush toy. I couldn't get enough.

4. In addition to television shows, I have gotten obsessed with various book series over the years, and my first big obsession was a series called The Boxcar Children. I loved those books so much. My cousin Shaina and I even made up a club in honor of them, called The Boxcar Children Club. We even made up our own theme song. No I will not sing it for you.

5. Let's move on to more recent years for the rest of these. Over the last couple of years I have lost around 50 lbs. I've always had health problems that have made losing weight difficult, but in the last couple of years I've started to manage them a bit better, and because of that, I've lost quite a bit of weight. I think that it is still coming off, even though the scale hasn't shown it recently, because for the last couple of weeks, I have found it increasingly difficult to keep my pants up. Apparently I need to start wearing a belt...

6. A lot of people get really personal with these things, and I've been debating with myself whether or not I should do so as well. So I don't get TOO personal, I decided to just do one single entry. I don't usually like getting very personal, so it remains to be seen if I will even keep this in the post. Over the last few years I've changed my views on a lot of things. I used to be a die hard Baptist/Republican/Conservative/Fundamentalist/I'm right/You're wrong kind of a person. Not so much any more. I came to realize what kind of a person that kind of a harsh, judgmental attitude made me, and I didn't like it. I decided to leave it behind. Now I don't claim any denomination, or political affiliation, and my life has been infinitely better since then. I am now one of those people who doesn't like to discuss religion or politics, because I know what those kinds of discussions can do to relationships. Especially on Facebook. You can post one innocent comment and someone will jump down your throat like you were the devil himself! I've found it's much better just to let people think they're right, and salvage your relationship, rather than prove them wrong and have them hate you.

7. Well, that was pretty heavy. Let's lighten this up a bit, shall we? How about this? Here's something that no one knows about me. Well, except for a few people I don't even know in person. I have a secret blog. Whoops, I guess it's not so secret anymore... Any of you ever heard of a little site called tumblr? Yeah, I've had a blog there since right before I moved to Ames, and I published the first official post a couple of months ago. I mainly use it as a place to re-post my fiction, and write about my fandoms. I'm hoping that I'll eventually find an audience other than my family and friends, who read my stuff because they actually like it, not just because they know me. So far I have 19 followers! Followers who found me and subscribed, without me asking them to read my stuff at all. They just came, liked what they saw, and kept coming back!

8. Which brings me to number 8. Why do I want strangers to read my work? Because eventually I want to be a published author. I have a ton of ideas for stories that I could write. Every time I think of a new one I open the "Notebook" on my iPad and quickly type it in before I forget it. I have so many ideas I don't know where to start. I don't even know if any of them are any good. A lot of them are just generic sci-fi/fantasy ideas that I want to put my own spin on. I can't decide if I want them to be serious, or if I want them to be funny. Ideally I'd like them to be similar in tone to Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events books. He has the perfect blend of laugh out loud funny, and deadly serious. I'm not really sure how to capture that without blatantly copying his style though.

9. Last, but not least, and probably the most unlikely of all my "Dreams" is that some day, I would like to be a voice actor. I have loved cartoons ever since I first watched Looney Tunes cartoons and Disney movies as a kid. If I could somehow lend my voice to an animated character, my life would be complete. I'd love to work on cartoons in general, but to actually voice a character, would be so awesome. :)

So, there's my list. I'm sure you learned at least one new thing about me. Hopefully you enjoyed it. If any of you are interested, you can find the link to my tumblr HERE. And if you know someone who you think would find my writing humorous, (They'd have to be quite the weirdo themselves... :p) share this blog, or my tumblr with them. I'd love for more people to be able to enjoy what I write. :)

‘Shopping

Perhaps it’s because I took a Photoshop class this semester, but I can no longer just look up pictures to use on my blog without seeing a whole bunch of things wrong with them. I simply must mess with them and make them better before I use them. All the pictures I used in my Latvia/Nepal post were all Photoshopped before they went on my blog. They all started out as just a random picture brought up on Google, and I nipped, tucked, and color corrected them until I liked them. There isn’t any massive differences, so I won’t go into too much detail, but I’ll share a few with you so you can see what I mean.

My favorite edit was the map of Latvia. I didn’t even do much, and I actually didn’t even have to use Photoshop. I just corrected some highlights with the standard software that was already on my computer, and I accidentally got this!

The map of Nepal was a bit more difficult. All I had was this little Thumbnail, and of course blowing it up to a usable size made it look all pixilated, so I had to do some major editing.

Another one was the Latvian Rye bread. The picture was ok, but I felt it needed something more.

See what a difference just a bit of cropping and color correction can make?

My other favorite was the Latvian dessert. That one I also didn’t do much, just some cropping, color correction, and rotating.

Just a little bit of editing and the addition of the border turns a regular old picture-from-internet into something just a bit more special I think. :)

Yesterday someone posted a picture on facebook that I found really funny. It wasn’t the picture itself that was funny, but the caption they had put on it. I though about making a blog post and just having that picture, but I usually don’t like doing that. I like my blog posts to have a larger point to them. Plus I thought the picture needed a lot of improvement. So I decided to severely alter it, and then share it in this post about picture editing. So, here is the “Before” picture:

Their eyes of course really bugged me. They look rather “dead” if you ask me, so that had to be fixed, plus I didn’t like that they were facing away from the blank space in the picture. Most people probably wouldn’t notice little details like that, but I guess because I am going to art school, composition is something that I notice a lot more now than I used to.

To make it better and get it to the point where I would want to share the joke on my blog, I did some pretty major editing on it. I cropped it, cut off their heads and flipped them around, painted their eyes in, and color corrected the whole thing. Here is the “After picture.

The final step was to add the hilarious caption.

Please tell me I’m not the only one who gets the joke. :D

 

“We didn’t see any crows get killed,” Violet said.
“’Murder’ is the word for a group of crows, like a flock of geese, or a herd of cows, or a convention of orthodontists.”