Thursday, August 20, 2009

two eyes, two ears, one mouth

A friend and I made a pact to stop swearing when its not necessary. it's rude, doesn't sound nice, and has no real positive impact on conversation.

Also, I wish I were more goal-oriented. I do semi-productive things (writing/painting/school work) when the feeling persuades me, but there's nothing I do with any real sense of commitment. I mean school work I guess, out of necessity. But seeing kids who are really into say music, or theater, and spend all their time in lessons and practice and shows or whatever, have aspirations and are doing something about it. My future is a big question mark that I am currently nursing with possibilities and fuzzy/unclear dreams. I'm thinking college counseling this year will help me hone my focus a bit, but meh. I just feel like the world is so big, and there are so many things I could do/would love to do/could potentially be good at, and I don't want to end up stuck with one thing. I want to explore everything and try all my options. But that means a. probably not getting very far up the ladder in any of those places, b. having to re-evaluate and change constantly c. having the ability to make said decisons and d. the possibility of never being comfortable in one place/ good or notable at anything because I never stuck with anything long enough to take root.

Basically the thought of trying to form a life of any sort or having to make any kind of major decision terrifies me.

I've been in a strange mood today, this is a strange post.
It is also a post that just ended.

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

sentimental heart

I just got home from seeing 500 Days of Summer. It was phenomenal and I enjoyed it a lot more than really any of the movies I've seen in a while. There were so many little creative segues and bizarre techniques or scenes that made it positively adorable/wonderful. However, in retrospect I did feel a bit targeted. Like the writer and director were sitting around going "heh let's have them meet over the smiths. And he'll wear a cardigan to work! Know what else I bet they'd love? little animated birds. Do you think we can have the characters quote shakespeare? We should try and make indie kids poop their little skinny jeans over this movie."
Also, the soundtrack was great. But my reaction to every song that played save one or two was, "aw man I know this! And I love this! Shit, I hope this soundtrack isn't a repeat of what happened to Juno's soundtrack..."
Also, I didn't like the girl who played autumn, or the whole concept of him meeting her blah blah. If you aren't gonna have a happy ending, don't have one. Just don't half-ass it.
Still though, I really really liked the movie.

Summary: woo.

Moving on. I'd really like a pet goat. I never realized how great they were as creatures until today! I was helping out with barnyard at camp, and I went in to help one of the kids with the goats. I kneeled down to pet one, and it nuzzled me with its head and like burrowed itself in my arms. It was like a cross between a baby deer and a really really adorable dog. Which is incredible. And they were all skinny and muscley like deer. But furry and cuddly and friendly like puppies. Gah.

Summary: goats are a lot less silly than I previously considered them to be, and are in fact, quite adorable.



Gah k sleepy this is all.
:)

Monday, August 17, 2009

Tedious

Whew!
Camp is over, though I might stop by once or twice this week to help out. I've never experienced week 8, and I'm a little afraid it will tarnish my idea of camp. I'm not even really sure why I think that, I just do.
I had a real nice day today. I work in my dad's office from time to time because it pays nicely and for the most part I get to invent my own hours. If I were a more work-oriented person, I would probably work there regularly, as I could make loads of money doing relatively easy work.
My dad's an art curator, kind of. Both my parents and 90% of my family are from and live in Louisiana. After katrina hit, my parents were forced to help my grandma go through her storage to see what was salvageable. They wore big hazmat suits and picked through all her bloated, water-logged stuff. However, a good portion of the stuff stayed relatively dry. Among these posessions were paintings she had collected throughout her life. She mentioned she thought she had a good amount - maybe 20 or 50 - of paintings from an artist well-known in new orleans: noel rockmore (not to be confused with rockwell!!)
They started to look through her paintings and 20 turned into 500 turned into 1000. By the time they were done, they realized she had an astonishing 1200+ pantings, in addition to hundredsof rare sketch books, letters , and correspondences with this artist. He was a very skeezy character, and he liked my grandma because she gave him money to support his drinking/painting habits and was always sweet to him.
Anyways, as they started collecting and cleaning the paintings, they started finding out more and more about his life, and collecting stories of all the people he had known and changed throughout his life. Soon they formed a huge network of people affiliated with rockmore. At first, they planned on selling all the paintings to support our family because my mom and dad had both recently lost their jobs. However, they made the decision to tackle a much more arduous but possibly more profitable project. Thus, the noel rockmore project was born.
http://www.rightwaywrongway.com/index.php?name=Sections&req=viewarticle&artid=15 this explains more in-depth what I just described. I could have saved myself some typing.

http://www.rightwaywrongway.com/ this is my parent's website.
Go to the website if you are interested in knowing more about their project I guess. Basically, they are trying to chronolog (sp?) his life/paintings and write a book/perhaps produce a movie.

ANYWAYS. What I do around the office changes, but usually it consists of me doing one of the following (WARNING, BORING THINGS AHEAD, SKIPPING THE FOLLOWING MAY PROVE USEFUL):
-re-titling photo files. they photograph my grandmother's and other's rockmore paintings and are organizing them into a giant time line. What this job consists of is looking at various photographs of prints or paintings, determining the title (often difficult based on the quality of the photo/legibility of his handwriting), the date (often VERY difficult, based on photo quality/hand writing), the owner of the painting (my dad usually helps with any questions here), the print number (usually easy as they tend to photograph this part seperately) and any other noticable differences. This gets easier as I start to remember years/titles of certain paintings, and when there are multiple photos of the same picture or multiple prints of the same drawing. That's when copy paste comes in hand! A title will generally end up looking something like this: 80.12.4 - Death on Decatur print 12/56 - FCD - close up of signature .jpg
-organizing a time line. this is where those titles come in hand. Covering every wall in the office, there are big sheets of paper, each with a date at the top (80-82, 83-85, etc.) We will print out sheets with tiny versions of all the pictures. I have to look at each thumbnail and cut them out, then tack them up under the appropriate year based on whatever that first number is in the title. This often gets mind-numbingly tedious, but my dad insists that its important to view his life not just through events but through his art as well. I guess that makes sense.
-organizing pictures. my parents are trying to organize all the best-quality photos of what they deem to be his "best work" all into one master folder. It's my job to look through these files, delete duplicates, search through the databases for clearer/different versions of the same paintings, and replace any poor-quality pictures.

So. My work today consisted of the first and last tasks only, which I was grateful for. The first task is the most fun, because it often involves creativity. For example, when works are untitled, he has me write a quick 2-4 word summary of the content of the painting. This is always fun. Plus, as was the case today, I sometimes get files with a lot of different prints from the same work. This allows me to get a good rhythm of copy/pasting and only changing a few numbers or key descriptors. It's great.
The other nice part is that he lets me bring my laptop with me. Because I don't have a functioning ipod, this is the only way to listen to music while I work. It's kind of terrible, except for when the other employees leave. When I'm by myself, or it's just my dad and I, I get to unplug my headphones and play music loudly/sing along while I work.
Also, his office is located in mashpee commons, which makes it nice to go out after work/go out to lunch.
I spent the day today listening to a really great playlist I made last night, it made me really happy.
I got to see some friends I haven't seen for awhile after work. I went out for an early-ish dinner with Katherine, then we played whatever strange breed of pictionary they had at starbucks. I wonder how many people actually utilize the board games they provide there.
I also got to see a good friend of mine and his girlfriend for a little while after, which was really nice. They are so adorable and are both such lovely people that it just makes me happy to be around them! ha.
Also, I scheduled all my driving hours today. I'm not sure who I have as an instructor yet, and I was a little disappointed that I have to wait until september to start, but it will all be alright. Also, there are 2 weeks in october where I have driving hours all morning/afternoon every day of the weekend, but it'll be worth it to get my license ASAP. Not having a car can really shit all over your life sometimes. Especially because I value independence so much, it really blows to have to rely on other people constantly to get places.
I'm really nervous to drive on the highway! I messed up rl bad driving on one the other day. I ended up getting off at the wrong exit and having to make nine thousand endless terrifying loops in order to get back. The whole prospect is very intimidating.

It's been a really full, busy summer. Bonnaroo (amazing!!!), theater camp (slightly less amazing but still great!), drivers ed (surprisingly enjoyable!) and CIT-ing (tiring but phenomenal!!), but now I have to start focusing on doing the reading/studying for AP US History (APUSH just looks silly as an acronym), and cross country pre-season is mere weeks away. The nights are coming on sooner and colder, and summer is dwindling away. Nothing happened as I expected it, but then I didn't really know what to expect. Anyways, I'm happy.

Gah! I should get to bed early if I'm waking up for camp tomorrow.

but here's that update I kept promising! ha.