Before work this morning...

 

Self-Portrait

Although I am not at liberty to say what is causing this quite yet, I thought you might appreciate a blog with some of my self portraits of today.

Yeah, mostly that last one.

Elephants 101

Melissa is an artist. She draws elephants. Beautiful elephants.

Then she asked me to draw an elephant for her. The result?

Weee! That's me on an elephant!

Monica took pity on me and showed me how to doodle one that didn't look like a dog. Her version is on top. Mine... well, it's not so much an elephant as it is, ya know, a mutant with a mohawk.

PS: I drew this stuff on Monica's iPad2!! Ooooo. Anybody wanna buy me a Julymas present???

This is love.

Real doodles, on real paper.

Clearly, I haven't had proper time to blog in a while so I think your next surprise post will be a conglomeration of unimaginably random things that have happened to me over the last month. It's going to be, in a word, AMAZING!
Until then, I thought you might enjoy these doodles that I drew in class.

Exhibit 1: I think this was supposed to Monica with a ponytail.

Exhibit 2: I was sad that day...

(My favorite is me with crazy eyes, next to me... skydiving? Holy crap, you guys, look how SAD I was!!! 

And that bottom right picture-- was I haven't a seizure??)

Exhibit 3: How come you guys didn't sign me up with a shrink or something?

(Number 3 is how I feel when I say "emo.")

Exhibit 4: Monica clearly distracted me with talk of travel. As you can see, I made up my mind.

Exhibit 5: Oh, and Deyhana was there, too, but she was ignoring me, setting up a birthday party or something.

Daydreaming

Class starts in about 45 minutes. All my 8,000 papers have officially been submitted. This is what I'm thinking:

We aren't in Tuesday today, but Wednesday is cancelled.

This was me last week.

This is me today (Monday.)

As you may have learned, I have this horrible affliction called "grad school." It's destroyed me.

I used to be like this.

But then one day, I decided I didn't have enough debt and I had too much time and happiness in my life, so I thought it would be cool to get my Masters degree.

This happened.

At first, professors lulled me into a false sense of security. I knew more than they were teaching, assignments were a joke-- grad school was easy!

But then they realized what they were doing.

They put their evil forces together, just like in that Batman movie where Chris O'Donnell played hot Robin, only I have no hot Robin. I have these guys:

(Love you guys!)

Once Evil united, I was pretty much screwed. It went like this:

Hence:

You'll see a lot of that blank expression, I think.

Oh, and because I don't think my picture was clear enough, here's a breakdown of my life before:

The Great Barkini

Jeff wishes he had a dog.

A magic dog.

A magic dog whose magic poo magically disappeared.


His name would be the Great Barkini.

The Great Barkini and His Magic Poo

The Post of Important Things

You know when your friends are really into something that you don't know anything about, but you try to follow along because they're your friends' interests? And sometimes you get really into those things, too, knowing how important they are to those friends, but you still don't really understand what it is you're looking at?

Today [eg. the day I started writing this post (2/6)] was a pretty epic day for things like that.

A few years ago, my best friend Marcy moved to Green Bay. Each time I visit her, we swing by Lambeau Field for photo ops and lunch, and she's even taken me to a few games (which is awesome, just so you know.) I don't actually know anything about football-- I get the whole "1st and 10" thing but not much more than that-- but since it's important to her, it's super important to me too.

This is us at Lambeau:

One time, Jamie came to Green Bay with me and we went on a stadium tour all together.

This is us:

Pretty!

I guess here I could clarify that Jamie and Marcy are my best friends and they're both pretty. We don't talk and see each other as much as most best friends, but I totally love them.

But anyway, back to today/the day I started this post.

"Today" I got a text message that I've been waiting for for ages. Jamie had her baby!

Now, I don't know nothin' 'bout birthin' no babies. And not just birthin' 'em-- I don't know anything about babies period. I should be embarrassed to admit that I'm nearly 28 and I've changed one diaper in my life, and truthfully I called someone else in for back-up on that. (Feces is gross.)

But this is Jamie's baby. If this kid showed up orange and had a tail, I'd love him. [OMG, he'd be like Puzzle Popple!] I'm not a baby person but I've been pretty excited to meet this little dude. He's already the coolest.

So after that excitement, something else happened: it was Super Bowl Sunday! You know, between the Steelers and the Packers.

It went something like this:
Score: Green Bay. Score: Green Bay. <Football, football, football> Score: Green Bay

In the last 5 minutes or so, the Steelers came back and were only 3 points away, but in the end, the Packers won.

Do you know what that means?

That means that both of my friends have had fantastic days!

Of course, I recognize that my other friends have interests in things I don't know anything about either.

I don't want to look like a jerk playing favorites here (although I totally am) so here's some things I think you guys might like:

Sara likes to sew things and make quilts. I lack the ability to work fabric.

Karen knows all about animals and nature.

(Note: Real-life Karen says the one in the middle is a swan and the other two are white canaries.)

And, of course, all my friends at school who like various arts things that I don't actually know anything technical about. (This would be Jessica, Deyhana, Joannah, Monica, and Rachel.)

If I think about other random things that people I know like, I'll post more.

Until then, learn to love things like this! Woo!

Wakeboarding + Frosted Mini Wheats + a Golf Course

Pop quiz, everyone!

What do a golf course club house, wakeboarding, and Frosted Mini Wheats have in common?

I know: this is just like when you're at the store and the person in front of you is buying Ziploc bags, shaving cream, and a 20lb bag of cat food. What on Earth...?

So, any ideas? If you guessed my dream the other night, then you're either an incredible guesser (bravo!) or I already told you (boo). I also had a dream that I discussed miniature lanterns and plain M&Ms versus peanut M&Ms with Sasquatch, but that doesn't really pertain to this question.

You may have guessed that my dream took place at the golf course. Good job! I'll save you from guessing the rest...

It all started when Karen and I decided to take up wakeboarding. This itself may amuse those of you who know us in real life. I'm not sure about Karen's watersporting past but I can truthfully say that I have no experience with large bodies of water or sports performed on or in them (though I've looked at them a lot...) That said, I don't really know that my dream definition of wakeboarding is the actual definition of wakeboarding, but we'll go with it.

(Note: I just Googled it. Wakeboarding in my dream isn't wakeboarding in real life. I was really bodyboarding. Heh.)

So. "Wakeboarding." We're on it.

Turns out, in Dreamland there's a wakeboarding club just down the street from me. How fortuitous is that?? Even in my dream I realize that this can't be a common thing in Michigan.

Not being a professional golfer either, I had expectations of what the inside of the club house would look like.

What I imagined was this:

What it really looked like was this:

Yeah, it was basically a mud cave. Regardless Karen and I busted into that place totally stoked.  I was already in a wetsuit (and no coat in January.)

While Karen was putting her stuff on the "beach" (ie. muddy bank), I ran into the water like, "Eeeeeee!!!!!!"

It was so awesome, you guys! Yay!!!

So there were these small waves, then a large one, then suddenly the waves stopped and the water started receding.

Noooooooo!!!!! I just got here!!!

I chased the water toward the back of the room, then down this muddy tunnel/hallway, and into a smaller wading room.

The smaller room had to be a kiddie wading pool or something, which is ridiculous because little babies would have to get through a huge wave cavern and swim through a long hallway to get to it, but whatever. I'm not an architect.

Back in that little room, I noticed that some little kid left their bag of Frosted Mini Wheats behind and it had spilled out onto the muddy floor. I was thinking about people not picking up their own trash (losers) when the water started up again. I out-ran it all the way to the "beach" where Karen was. (She never got in the water. I don't really know that she even brought a swimsuit. Maybe she was sitting there reading? Or crocheting?)

Karen = unimpressed. Heather = absurd giddiness.

The water rushed back. I turned to jump in and--
And awr.

On its way back in, the water had brought that spilled bag of Frosted Mini Wheats, which had somehow multiplied into a billion little bite-sized pieces. The water was muddy brown and full of cereal. It looked like Mini Wheats in gross chocolate milk.

Ew.

And that's why I'm not a professional wakeboarder. Or bodyboarder.

Yet.

In a perfect dream world...

Since I'm fairly positive my astounding artwork is why most of you visit my blog, I thought you'd like to see a bit of my creative process.

Step 1: Talk to Karen. Inevitably I say something completely moronic or we discuss things so amazingly random that it inspires great art.
    For this example, our computer guru asked if I really needed Photoshop on our new/replacement computer in the back. Since Karen usually uses that when she's at my building, I told him yes but called to confirm. He told me to ask, "In a perfect dream world, what would she have on the computer?"

Step 2: Send an email to anyone about that conversation. (Lots of inspiration in my Sent box.) It also helps save details that will be important later.
   An excerpt from my sent email: She said in a dream world she would like “marshmallow unicorn ponies” that sparkle and flitter around the screen. So really that would be like a horned Pegasus… Or something… “But a little one. I don’t want a full-sized horse. That’s just stupid.”

Step 3: Draw.

Attempt 1                                          Attempt 2

                 Attempt 3                                  Attempt 4*shudder*

                                                                 (give up and draw dragon-demons)

                                                                 (I friggin' hate horses!)

Attempt 5 (YAY!)

Step 4: Color!!