Easter

My cousin, Sarah, came over this weekend to spend some time with me until Easter Sunday. We watched many movies, ate lots of good food and enjoyed the beautiful weather all while getting lots of homework done. I even taught Sarah how to throw a pot on the wheel! Here are some photos from our attempts at making rainbow, hard-boiled eggs for the holiday (without any vinegar):

Sarah, finally sinking her teeth into (and wiping away) the burger she was craving...

Calico Farm

Today, Jenna took me and Stephanie to a place called Calico Farm (I actually saw a Calico cat there.  Inspiration, perhaps?).  Jenna had first discovered the place on a class field trip.  She had since brought back some fresh, homemade butter and milked some cows.  After telling Stephanie and me (two cheese-enthusiasts) that the farm made delicious, melt-in-your-mouth, fresh, homemade cheese we penciled in a quick outing to the farm.  Here are some photos from today:

Their mascot, a little camera shy...

Picking out cheese, Jenna: Fresh feta and ranch dip, Stephanie: Fresh mozzarella and skillet cheese, Me: Cheese curds and Roasted Red Pepper and Garlic Cheese dip

Stephanie making a friend

Hungry cows in need of milking

I almost took this little, fluffity guy home with me.

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

Antlers

I want this bike!

Tonight, Stephanie and I stopped at Harris Teeter to pick up some dessert.  It was rainy and kinda cold, so I guess we parked pretty quickly and without thinking.  I say this because when we came outside we saw that we had accidentally parked in a handicap spot!  We laughed so hard and sped out worried that someone had seen our little mistake.

For: Stephanie

From here

No model

Drawing II today.  So far we've been exposed to (or exposed by, depending on how you think of it) two models.  One is a trim older woman who I adore.  She's always in a good mood and very friendly, talking to the students during break.  The other is a woman who is probably a little older than the average Elon student.  She's a dancer and when I found this out at the beginning of the year, I thought that she was going to be able to pose in very elegant ways and with the strength of an ox or something.  However, she doesn't really seem to know how to model.  Not to be mean or anything, but she can't hold her poses for very long and needs inspiration/direction about what types of poses are appropriate.  She's probably trying her hardest, though, and that's what matters.  I actually haven't had that much of a problem with her until recently.  

Recently she started arriving very late to class.  My professor likes to start the class right on time with the model (I've walked into class before with the model already posing naked on the podium!).  But my professor can't always start class because this model is late.  One time she was twenty minutes late until she called to tell us that she was sick and wasn't going to make it.  Today, though, she was scheduled to come again and was late (or so we thought) as usual.  We're learning how to really exaggerate foreshortening so we started using our own images in the mirror to do this while we waited for her (we put our arms and hands out infront of ourselves so that our hands looked bigger than our heads for an effect like this, this or even this).  

As you can probably guess, she never showed up.  No phone call, no nothing.  She was a no-show.  Because of this, my classmates became the models (clothed of course)!  Four of my classmates got to take a nap while laying down in the center of the class on a podium covered with eggshell foam padding.  I'd be lying if I said I wasn't jealous.  My class is from 1 - 4 p.m. and this is prime nap-time.  It's really hard to sit still and draw for three hours and sometimes all I want to do is take a nap (I've often fantasied about switching places with the models).  There is a nice heater that my professor points at the models so that they don't get cold, so it wouldn't be that bad. 

In other news, Stephanie has been cooking a lot and tonight she made a delicious meal of Salmon with brown sugar, yellow rice, salad and herb bread.  It was yummy!

Love,

Monica

cora, stephanie's rat