Archive for the ‘Travel’ Category

Romance in Italy, Part II.

Lovely Italia

I was here. Srsly.

I will be going to Italy again for the first 2 weeks of October. :D Words cannot express.

This trip will be a bit different. Last trip (in July), Mr Sailor’s leave was canceled, so he still had to go to work every day. That cut down quite a bit on together-time. Side trips were a bit hurried because of his schedule, so I felt a little robbed of our time. But this trip! He’s got leave and it shouldn’t be revoked again. 24/7 of together-time! I suppose this could be a test of how well we can stand each other for extended periods. :-o

I’m not too worried. We both value and respect alone-time. Even when someone else is in the room. It’ll be a good opportunity to get to know each other even better. Always a good thing.

… Right?

Back to school.

The exciting world of a new semester at university. Thus begins my second year at the U. My classes:

  • Design Technology I. The syllabus tells me this class is wayyyy below my skill level. At the end of the semester, we’ll be using Dreamweaver to code a webpage! :-O Gasp! The scariest part of that will be fighting every urge I have to re-code it by hand and blowing everyone away with my mad CSS skills. Gotta love spending many thousands of dollars on learning… nothing.
  • Typography I. This class will be interesting and fun. I’ve been excited to take this class since the beginning of last year, but they force you to take classes in a certain order instead of letting you actually learn something useful when you’re already way ahead of everyone.
  • Photography II: Alternative Processes. Another class I’m not too excited about, but if I want a Photography minor, I have to take it. It sounds like it’ll be an entire semester of printing photos in “cyanotype”. I’m not sure why they have alternative processes as plural since it’s just the one process. A whole semester of blue pictures. Excitement abounds. The teacher is a total crunchy-granola artsy type, which is extra annoying.
  • European Art History: Impressionism and Post-Impressionism. It feels a little weird to be excited for this class, but I love the teacher. In fact, the only reason I took this particular class (besides for my Art History minor) is because she was teaching it. She’s just so passionate about everything she teaches and makes it interesting. No drab history here. It sounds like I’ll be writing several papers, but I think I’ll survive.

Among beginning all these classes, I’m trying to plan another trip to Italy in October to visit my sailor while he’s on leave. Hopefully it can come together. I’ve emailed all my teachers about wanting to get anything due while I’m gone done ahead of time so I don’t have anything late or missing. Maybe I won’t get straight A’s this semester, but I think that’d be a small price to pay. As long as I pass everything. Two of my four teachers have responded positively. So, fingers crossed that it’ll happen! I’m missing him somethin’ fierce. And the pizza. But mostly the sailor.

Another semester: aced.

Looks like I aced all four of my classes this spring semester. Huzzah! I finally declared a couple of minors: photography and art history. Photography would be useful for taking my own decent pictures to use on websites. Art history not so much useful, I just find it fascinating as hell. More the history you can glean from the art than the art itself. I’d be glad never to see another Mary and Jesus painting or sculpture. Sheesh. Overkill.

Still on the hunt for web projects and/or clients. If you know anyone who needs a website, or some work on a website, or a sweet Flash animation… You know where to find me. ;)

Lately I’ve been trying to hash out an idea for a web project that I can make money with, and less on hunting up clients for whom to make websites. Nothing big in the works, but ideas churning. I’m also working on studying up my HTML/CSS coding skillz, as I’m a bit rusty. It’s all coming back easily, so I’m getting back up on shaky legs. Slow and steady.

I will hopefully be taking a trip to Italy in July. Fingers crossed! I haven’t been making much money for awhile, so it will be tricky to figure it all out. I’m studying up on everything I’ll need to have in place to go. And studying freakin’ Italian. Mi dispiace, non parlo l’italiano! If only I was going somewhere they speak Spanish. I’d probably still sound retarded, but I know more words than Italian.

I feel like a bit of an asshole. I was checking out the list of domains that link to my website through my analytics and webmaster tools stuff. Turns out there are a bunch of cool people linking to me, and I had no idea. So you cats are all linked up from my side now!

Fun video:

New York City 2010

Crazy Times Square.

Despite my recent unemployment, I still went on the New York City trip I had planned and had an airplane ticket bought back in March. I had a fantastic time! Exhausting of course. I tried to fill every hour with something so it all felt worth it. My first day there, I was awake for 23 hours because I had to get up at 2:30am to catch my first flight. One must experience the night life (comedy clubs, in my case) when in NYC!

My first day, I went to the Museum of Sex. Very fun and informative! Went to the Broadway Comedy Club that night. My first day, and I saw a 3-legged dog, tons of people wearing leggings (ew!), street and subway performers, and a girl named “Bermuda”. Second day, I took a bus tour and later visited the King Tut exhibit. I was mad because it appeared his mummy would be there – but it was a replica! Lame! Still cool to see all the real artifacts. Walked up and down Christopher Street, but sadly did not see any drag queens. :( Plenty of gays though (or Europeans, it’s hard to tell). Haha! Went to the Comedy Cellar that night.

Love the hilarious subway performers.

Naughty Picasso! I approve.

Third day, I took another part of the bus tour. Went to the Central Park Zoo, which was cute. Had my hot dog from a vendor in Central Park! It’s just not a visit without doing that. Then I went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Amazing! There was a big Picasso exhibit, which was quite enlightening. Turns out he was a dirty, dirty man, which I very much enjoy. ;) It’s like he knew me! While at the museum, I had to check out the arms and armor room (gorgeous), as well as the real Roman statues and Greek art. And of course, I would find pieces of art that I don’t think were meant to be dirty, but I found them dirty. Especially fun among the religious art. Comedy Cellar again that night to see Dave Attell, who I have seen on every trip now!

Lots of pics and a couple videos on my Flickr!