"That was Yoko Ono's sister."

Lucky tries to figure out how to get a hamster out of its cage...to do what?

I know that my spring break isn't over yet.  It just feels like it is.  I think it is because I am back at school already, working on my thesis and other homework as if my last weekend of spring break didn't mean anything.  

Over the break, I spent a couple of days at Elon to volunteer, teach and work in the ceramics studio before helping my parents pack up the things in my room that I wasn't actively using.  I was kind of bummed that my cool blue Ikea bookshelves would be leaving, along with the books on them because I thought I would miss them in a room left with only the basics.  But, after moving tubs and boxes of books, clothes, shoes, odds and ends, and carrying a heavy chair, a bookshelf, a chest, my electric guitar (I kept my acoustic), my keyboard (don't worry, I kept my accordion), my television and my twelve foot long art easel, getting three hours of packing out of the way then instead of later, seemed like a very good idea.

Now I suspect that I have unpacked, give or take, three-quarters of my room!  All that's left are my spring/summer clothes, a guitar, an accordion, some lights and the artwork on my walls.  And my room still manages to look like a happenin' place to be.  

That night after moving, I went to my parents' hotel near Duke.  My dad had a meeting the next day and my mom, Lucky and I took the free day as an opportunity to walk around Chapel Hill.  I took my mom to the University Mall to show her where I taught Art-to-Art in addition to the gourmet grocery, Southern Season.  I also took her and Lucky on a complete walk of Franklin Street to Carrborro.  I pointed out Cat's Cradle, the hip place where I saw Tegan and Sara two years ago.  Then we walked back to Med Deli and met David for lunch.  We got the lebanese lunches to go so that we could enjoy them with Lucky, sitting in a park.

A sweet view from the school of the monument

The next day, I drove home with my parents for my interview at the Corcoran College of Art and Design in Washington D.C.  I've applied to the MAT in Art at the school and will hear back from them in one to two weeks.  I think my personal interveiw went pretty well, and I got to sit in on two classes with students from the program.  One was on museum and community arts education and another was some kind of seminar with four students that had prepared practice lesson plans.  I actually got to participate in the latter and got to feel what it would be like to be part of a class!

One side of the Corcoran

Also, you might find it cool to know that while I was being led through the halls of the school by the Director of the program, I held the door for Yoko Ono's sister.  She had her hands full and I didn't think twice, holding the door for someone like that.  When the woman had left, the Director turned and whispered to me, "That was Yoko Ono's sister".  I sillily blurted out, "Oh my gosh!  I HAVE to tell my mom!"

After my long day came to an end, my mom and I took the metro back and drove home.  While my mom and dad had dinner, I drove to College Park to visit Rachael and friends.  It was convenient that my friend, Jeremy, was stopping by for dinner.  I haven't seen him in a few years and was horrified to see that he too, like my brother, was now much taller than me and with a deeper voice than I was used to.  Reunion photo below:

Vote!

Now I'm back at school.  I just met with Mike about five hours ago to start another batch of sculptures.  By Sunday night, I will have fired twelve sculptures leaving one last big one and six or seven mini-sculptures to be fired the remainder of next week.  Speaking of next week, my cousin, Sarah, has decided to spend three days and two nights at my apartment for Easter weekend.  It should be fun, but I hope she realizes that we will be hanging out while completing lots of homework!

Love,

Monica

Ian Hobson and Black Hole

Last night, David and I went to see internationally renowned pianist, Ian Hobson.  He was AMAZING and INSPIRATIONAL.  I have never felt more proud to be not only a fan of classical music, but a player of classical piano. 

Random video of him playing...

The tall, English gentleman was visiting Elon for the second time in his life.  Last night he came to celebrate Chopin's 200th birthday and played this wonderful, glorious program: Ballade no 1 in G minor, Op. 23; [12] Etudes, Op. 10; [2] Nocturnes, Op. 62; & Sonata no 3 in B minor, Op. 58.  I almost cried.

Below, due to bordeom and "freetime", I have a video for you guys of my latest song cover.  I love the songs from the band She and Him and have recorded a cover of the song "Black Hole".  Sorry for the awkward video background, I just needed something to be happening while I sang:

Black Hole from Monica Huang on Vimeo.

Lyrics, so the world can sing along:

My eyes are so bleary 

I guess I'm young but i feel so weary 

I've tried to express it 

But I think its all a bore 

Its at the heart of me, 

A very part of me 

Speak slowly, I can't hear you 

My mind keeps spinning closer and closer to the rain on the roof, 

And the rain in my head, and the things that you said 

People take it further ahead 

And it just gets so foggy 

It's nowhere in here 

And its everywhere else that I don't wanna be, 

But I'm stuck here getting misty over you 

I'm alone on a bicycle for two. 

Speak slowly, I can't hear you 

My mind keeps spinning closer and closer to the rain on the roof, 

and the rain in my head, and the things that you said 

People take it further ahead 

And it just gets so foggy 

It's nowhere in here 

And its everywhere else that I don't wanna be, 

But I'm stuck here getting misty over you 

I'm alone on a bicycle for two.

I'm back

I just rolled into Elon after spending a week and a half in MD for Christmas, a week working and New Year's at Camp Royall and some change at David's house catching up on sleep.  Getting my textbooks for my winter term class (Plants and Civilization) was an interesting experience because one of the books is a cookbook full of delicious recipes!  Maybe our homework will be to cook (doubtful).  What is more likely is that I will be reading and writing a lot of papers because class only lasts about three weeks and I have four good-sized textbooks from which to read.

In other news, the fish are alive and Orange is EVEN bigger than I remembered.  With the Christmas money my parents gave me, I will be able to buy them a bigger tank for their long futures (koi can live many, many, many years).  And in one short week, I will be starting a 12-week long Autism volunteer-ship in Chapel Hill.  The program I will be volunteering with is called "Art-to-Art" and is the drama program run in collaboration with the Art Therapy Institute of Chapel Hill, the ArtsCenter and Paperhand Puppet Intervention (I'm pretty sure that the phrase "paperhand puppet intervention" sums it up).  I am soooo excited!

Okay, now off to clean my room and read for tomorrow's class (I don't think teachers should be allowed to assign homework before the term has even started).

Love,

Monica

Big wheels keep on turnin

Franklin-stein Street

This past weekend, David, Stephanie and I went to Chapel Hill to visit Elisabeth (from camp!).  We did lots of walking back and forth between cars (because of strict parking rules), hung out at her characteristically-high-ceilinged dorm room, played bananagrams and had dinner at a conveyer belt sushi place all before changing into our costumes.  Elisabeth was a Jedi Knight (probably a young obi one), Stephanie was a sultry devil and David was one of those endangered, yet plump bumblebees.  As his girlfriend, I played his flower counterpart by wearing a flower-printed dress and stapling flowers that I cut out of an old Georgia O'Keeffe calendar to a green cardigan.  All of this was topped off with a flower smack dab in the middle of my head:  

Then we walked Franklin Street...

What I DID NOT know was that Franklin Street is basically a giant party in the road.  Plus lots of drunken girls in small animal costumes and boys wearing anything from pizza boxes to Elvis garb.  

I'm exaggerating, of course, but maybe only a little.  Here are some of the highlights from the night:

Fun for all the ages!

Everyone wants in on the picture!

I am proud to say that I got the cone reference.

These are my friends!

This guy was cool.  He asked me where I was from because he said it was what he asked when people said to him, "Can I take your picture?"

I saw the balloon kid at the very beginning but he got away before I could take a picture.  Luckily, I was OBSESSED with finding him and snapped a shot of him on his way out.

Believe it or not, he was not the only peacock on Franklin Street that night.  And I thought it a pretty original costume.

This guy had a dance-off with himself.

Swim team? or Triathletes stuck in the swimming portion of a triathlon?

Octo-mom!  And Franklin Street isn't just for college kids anymore...

"Oh my gawd!  A Big reference?  It isn't every day that you get a Big reference!!" --really drunk guy who saw the Tom Hanks classic 

First costume I saw that night, and the reason I love group costumes

Oh, and this is what I meant by pizza box earlier.

After all of this craziness and more, we went back to Elisabeth's friend's apartment and watched creative people build halloween cakes for $10,000 in prize money.  We would have gone home after that, but with the extra hour from daylight savings, we decided to watch Corpse's Bride, a movie witch (haha) Stephanie had yet to see and ended up sleeping through.

Now, life is moving very quickly.  I'm busy working, of course, on my thesis and am trying to keep myself out of trouble (and by that, I mean keeping myself from adopting furry little animals).  My dad came to visit yesterday, installing a nice little blinker for night-driving safety along with much-needed new brake pads.  I've got babysitting this Friday for six hours and will be helping out with some kiln firings on Saturday with the other claydogs.  I've also got to greet the jurors that I selected for the Juried Student Exhibition this Sunday .  With all of that on my plate, I can say for certain that I am looking forward to a relaxing matinee showing of Kiss Me, Kate at Elon on Sunday.

Love,

Monica

For Mommy (Fall Break and Update on life)

So, while life has not actually started to slow down, I have gotten some big presentations out of the way.  I spent fall break in Cary, NC this year to show my stuff at a day-long final interview for TFA (Yes, that's me in a suit of sorts to make a good impression).  It felt nice to look all sleek and put-together.  My roommate, Stephanie, is a business major and always knows how to dress up professionally.  I'd say I felt a lot like her. 

Because I spent most of my short fall break preparing for the interview, I spent the rest of it catching up on neglected homework while attempting hibernation.  Some highlights were Indian food, shopping w/David, making dark chocolate chip pancakes from scratch in the late afternoon, taking Gizmo to the dog park, and going to see Michael Moore's Capitalism: A Love Story (I cried).

The break in general, though, was filled with lots of cute animals.  That's Gizmo above wondering what-in-the-world I'm doing, flashing at him like some paparazzi.  I'm basically obsessed with getting him to like me, even when I'm not holding food in my hands.

And here's a very recent picture of Irina (who came to David's home with me).  She's still alive and kicking (not to mention biting).  In just a couple of months I will have had her for one year!  It's exciting, but also a little depressing because I think her breed is only supposed to live for about 16 months (and she hasn't grown that much since I got her).  She, too, was curious about the camera.

And this is a picture taken from my powerpoint presentation (yesterday).  I had to give my "Presentation of Progress" for honors.  I went first and despite my nerves everyone said I did an outstanding job.  It was actually a really nice opportunity to get 15 minutes to tell an audience (some, complete strangers) about a project that I've almost been working a year on now.  The other presenters in my group were wonderful too.  I was lucky to be in a fun, creative, enthusiastic group.  There were eight concurrent presentation sessions spread across two floors and grouped by like-majors so that all of the 37 honors students could present within two hours.  My group had an art major (me), an art history major (my talented and genius friend, Nichole), a Music Technology major (rock n roll Andrew),  a Theatrical Design and Production major (cute and confident Sarah Linn) and a Music Theatre major (Topher, who was wearing his signature vest).

Nichole is doing a presentation comparing perceptions between flat, abstracted paintings and their realistic, 3-d (using perspective) counterparts (Flat Can Be Deep: A Perspective on the Valuation and Common Perceptions of Two-Dimensional Artworks).  Andrew is busy writing, directing and composing music for a Rock Opera with a story line comparable to Westside Story (Beautiful Disease: A Rock Tragedy).  Sarah Linn is stage managing the spring musical (State Management for Musical Theatre: An Artistic Presentation of Elon University's 2009 Fall Musical, "Kiss Me, Kate").  I loved learning a lot about what goes on behind the scenes and I will never look at her in the same way now, knowing all the hard work that she is doing.  Lastly, Topher is writing the script and lyrics for an original musical (Finding "i.d.": Developing an Original Musical within the Workshop Process).  I'm really excited to see Topher's musical in the spring because last spring I went with some friends to see a preview and the writing was hilarious as well as the music fantastic and inspiring.  In a sentence, his musical revolves around a young woman with dissociative identity disorder whose father has just died.

Speaking of fathers, my dad is coming on Tuesday.  I can't wait because he's going to take me to a bike store to get a rack which I can use to tie a milk crate to.  Kind of like this:

Love,

Monica

P.S. David and I might venture out to the football game.  That might change, though, as it's Homecoming weekend and crowded like mad.  Our back-up plan is to see the lemurs at Duke.

Found on my camera

Poll

I'm starting to think that no one reads this blog.  

If you're out there, please watch these videos and comment with which song version you like better.  This afternoon, while avoiding my thesis, I recorded both of these covers* of the song "Why do you let me stay here" (She & Him) with the program Audacity.  All of the vocals are yours truly and the guitar (that's been distorted by too much "noise removal").  While I won't tell you which one I like better, I will say that I think I sound better in one of them.

Enjoy:

#1

#2

Tomorrow I get to go back to Camp Royall and make up for all of the Autism I've missed the past month!  I'm sooo excited.  David's going to come and volunteer too :)

Love,

Monica

*And I acknowledge that I may have screwed up the lyrics in the song...

Last One-A-Day

Day 4

Now I'm off to babysit!

More One-A-Days

Day 2

Day 3

Hodgepodge post of three unnecessary things

1) This is one (of a tentative four) of the "one-a-day paintings" that I am making for David to hang on the naked white walls in his new dorm room:

2) JFF (just for fun), this is what I would look like with blue eyes (a bit freaky):

3) Me trying to entertain but just being awkward, instead:

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY MOM & DAD (hope this doesn't ruin it)!

A good, good day in pictures

First we hung out downtown and shared the panini special at a cute, petite Italian deli.

In the late afternoon, we walked to the LaMancha goats.

She's my favorite, you know.

I fed them mushy blueberries but, also, fresh cherry tomatoes from my mom's garden.

Have you ever wanted to give a farm animal a breath mint?

After eating all the fruits and vegetables I brought, they turned to the hard-to-reach, out-of-bounds, possibly-poisonous plant.

David helped them reach it.

Then we went to Lighthouse Tofu with my parents and got bubble tea for dessert.  That's honeydew (left) and taro (right).

When we got home, I made homemade ice cream to cope with my nostalgia for camp.  Tomorrow, after I get my wisdom teeth pulled, I could probably eat this stuff too!

Mmm- Ah went the Little Green Frog

Last night, when my mom was getting the guest bedroom ready for David, she found a frog in one of the mouse traps.  How?

"Good morning, angels"

Last night, David defeated me in a game of scrabble.  In my defense, I was distracted by a Charlie's Angels marathon (in honor of Farrah Fawcett).  We also watched about five or six of Michael Jackson's music videos (and then the Weird Al parodies of those videos).  And just as I was starting to feel a little less depressed about everyone dying, a news reporter announced that Billy Mays had died at the age of fifty.  And I proclaimed to the heavens, "OxiClean!  Noooo!"  My mom and I were such big fans, with all of his products in our cupboards.  

But now, refreshingly, I'm home in Maryland.  My room has been re-arranged and I feel like I'm staying in a hotel (in a good way).  The food in the refrigerator does not even feel like part of my territory, so I've placed a bag of melted whoppers from my car on one of the shelves.  I'm slowly moving back in, you see.