March the 22nd, 23rd, and 24th: Been an up and down few days...
And I don't just mean the weather! Honestly though, it started out chilly but fine Monday morning, was snowing by the time I turned in my negatives (forgot to bring them to critique, which I must say was the most useless critique ever, I said one or two things about each photo and only one or two people had anything to say about them. Made me want to do "Wait, you guys can't find anything good OR bad about these photos? Screw y'all, no help from here," but I didn't of course....). Walked over to class, overheard people talking about how they remembered it snowing in April last year, had class canceled (I thought it was because of the snow, my teacher lives another thousand feet up, but apparently she was sick), it was firmly snow not rain by the time I went to JCC (powerpoint on weddings in Japan, there were arguments between the various members of the club), no snow on the ground when I went to dinner (which was with Mandy and Emily again, it honestly felt a little awkward this week, maybe because I couldn't think of anything to say) and then there was snow covering the ground when I got out of knitting. Speaking of knitting club, they need new officiers next year (part of the club constitution and the fact that it's too much for one person) and one of them stared at me when she mentioned that they would need a new vice-president. And she was serious, so I guess if no one else volunteers I will at the next meeting as the next VP, but not my first choice of things to be. True it would be good for me to get used to working more with other people, and I am having a "sure I don't like being a leader but SCREW IT, LET'S TRY IT" moment (No I swear I haven't been watching too much DRRR). I get those every now and then and wonder what would happen if I did just take over. Actually, I know what happens, I ended up doing that my third year of Vacation Bible School since the other teens in my group were, um, "too cool" is probably the best term to describe it, to take over so I just did. Got praised by the adults too for really stepping up and maturing (not that I wasn't already mature, different sense) in the years I'd been there. But since I know I'm so strong willed and bossy I try not to do it too much, worried how I'll act to people, but I guess sometimes there is no middle ground to find.
Anyway, after getting back to the dorm in the mild snow I found that the paint for painting the lobby had arrived! Showed Olivia, the RA came out and said we could start working on it now (she just had to find the girl in charge) so Olivia and I set out to put down newspaper and make sure it didn't move from the wall. Finished that around 9-ish and went to read for history (dear sweet bejesus, I've read 3, 40-50 page chapters in three days and have one more to go!), wandered by the lobby again at 11 to switch off the hallway lights and found it about half painted already. !QAZ? Give a college student a roller and they'll paint the town red apparently, and I've been helping out in the past two days as well, after all the years of my mom re-doing the walls back home it's become a bit soothing actually.
On Tuesday I got down to business and started working on revising the pattern for Erika's dress. That had a few odd complications, like how the original pattern for the dress has three pieces int he front (two bodice that slightly overlap and the skirt, which says to cut just one), yet the two bodice pieces, even when you take the fold into consideration, are wider than the skirt is. And they curve up at the bottom as well (which reeeaallyy threw me off, I wanted to cut it as one piece in the end with another attached). So I eventually settled for tracing the original pattern, altering it with a flat bottom (so I can attach the patterns easily) to the shape I needed and that was fairly close. I'll fix that up tomorrow, alter the other piece, make sure the back will work as well (I think I might have to make it a little longer, which puzzled me until just now when I remembered that my torso is longer than most people of my size, my proportions are slightly odd, could explain my kid look too). Hopefully I'll be able to gauge this all from the patterns tomorrow, if I get super worried I'll grab some of my extra yards of white cotton (I've got TONS of it) and make a mock up. I think I've got it right but don't want to waist the knit, especially since the pattern didn't have sleeves so I also need more fabric for that (and need to grab another of my shirt patterns to make that work, but I understand the general shape of a sleeve so I think I've got that).
Had class (both of them) and looked up the courses for next semester. All six are being offered so that's good, but two of them have just one section (including Japanese which is going fast, ack!) so I'll need to register as soon as it lets me (so, after Japanese next Wednesday I run to the library, heck, I should just bring my laptop and squat in the hallway to make sure I get my classes, better chance of getting online anyway). Also looked up what classes could transfer from UNCG or GTCC and found that the public speaking course did for both and two of the art courses from GTCC. And after today I've found that only the public speaking course at GTCC is being offered this summer (at least I think so) so I'll probably register for that tomorrow or the day after so I'll only have 5 courses (two studio, two lecture, Japanese, maybe VP of knitting club, at least two, maybe three other clubs, plus hopefully a job and a time to sleep) next year. Yes I'm crazy but you know what? I haven't had a year this easy in, um, wow, even Freshman year of High School was worse. Not having a 45 minute commute really helps, being near friends is AMAZING (I finally understand the YA novels that have the characters all live nearby! But I still think the authors are being romantic about that), and not having classes back to back for six hours really saves your sanity. So I've had tons of free time this year with five courses so I think that having five courses (true one will be more work than I'm used to but that's just one), knitting club officer meetings probably won't take a ton of my time, I already plan for the clubs I'm in, and holding a small job shouldn't be beyond me. Don't want to set myself up for a fall but I'm afraid I'll just be bored next year if I don't try something difficult.
On the subject of clubs, no anime club since we didn't have the room (seriously, our room has gotten taken three times this year....) so I went to the game night my dorm was holding. Learned how to play Texas Hold 'Em (I think that poker is a life skill everyone needs to know), some twister (apparently I don't do as well there since I try to respect people's personal space during the game, my mother brought me up to be polite dangit!), and some Clue. So all in all it was pretty fun, oh and I made Stonehedge out of dominoes when no one was using them, so night well spent IMO.
Wednesday, had class, discovered a Dollars-like chat on the internet and spent way too much time there, painted enough to start developing a small callus where my right pinkie joins my hand (I get hand calluses in weird places), and finished watching Kobato (with the spring shows ending, ekk, better finish up my cyberpunk review tomorrow, darn you Gankutsuo and Xam'd for being so hard to write about for the opposite reasons!). So, not very productive, but the sun was out again today (yes it went back up to 60) and I was enjoying my last minutes of free time for the week. Once the clock hits 12:30 I'm going to be running around for 6 hours straight pretty much, probably more on Friday and who knows what exactly is going to go down Saturday. At least it won't be boring, signing off!
Anyway, after getting back to the dorm in the mild snow I found that the paint for painting the lobby had arrived! Showed Olivia, the RA came out and said we could start working on it now (she just had to find the girl in charge) so Olivia and I set out to put down newspaper and make sure it didn't move from the wall. Finished that around 9-ish and went to read for history (dear sweet bejesus, I've read 3, 40-50 page chapters in three days and have one more to go!), wandered by the lobby again at 11 to switch off the hallway lights and found it about half painted already. !QAZ? Give a college student a roller and they'll paint the town red apparently, and I've been helping out in the past two days as well, after all the years of my mom re-doing the walls back home it's become a bit soothing actually.
On Tuesday I got down to business and started working on revising the pattern for Erika's dress. That had a few odd complications, like how the original pattern for the dress has three pieces int he front (two bodice that slightly overlap and the skirt, which says to cut just one), yet the two bodice pieces, even when you take the fold into consideration, are wider than the skirt is. And they curve up at the bottom as well (which reeeaallyy threw me off, I wanted to cut it as one piece in the end with another attached). So I eventually settled for tracing the original pattern, altering it with a flat bottom (so I can attach the patterns easily) to the shape I needed and that was fairly close. I'll fix that up tomorrow, alter the other piece, make sure the back will work as well (I think I might have to make it a little longer, which puzzled me until just now when I remembered that my torso is longer than most people of my size, my proportions are slightly odd, could explain my kid look too). Hopefully I'll be able to gauge this all from the patterns tomorrow, if I get super worried I'll grab some of my extra yards of white cotton (I've got TONS of it) and make a mock up. I think I've got it right but don't want to waist the knit, especially since the pattern didn't have sleeves so I also need more fabric for that (and need to grab another of my shirt patterns to make that work, but I understand the general shape of a sleeve so I think I've got that).
Had class (both of them) and looked up the courses for next semester. All six are being offered so that's good, but two of them have just one section (including Japanese which is going fast, ack!) so I'll need to register as soon as it lets me (so, after Japanese next Wednesday I run to the library, heck, I should just bring my laptop and squat in the hallway to make sure I get my classes, better chance of getting online anyway). Also looked up what classes could transfer from UNCG or GTCC and found that the public speaking course did for both and two of the art courses from GTCC. And after today I've found that only the public speaking course at GTCC is being offered this summer (at least I think so) so I'll probably register for that tomorrow or the day after so I'll only have 5 courses (two studio, two lecture, Japanese, maybe VP of knitting club, at least two, maybe three other clubs, plus hopefully a job and a time to sleep) next year. Yes I'm crazy but you know what? I haven't had a year this easy in, um, wow, even Freshman year of High School was worse. Not having a 45 minute commute really helps, being near friends is AMAZING (I finally understand the YA novels that have the characters all live nearby! But I still think the authors are being romantic about that), and not having classes back to back for six hours really saves your sanity. So I've had tons of free time this year with five courses so I think that having five courses (true one will be more work than I'm used to but that's just one), knitting club officer meetings probably won't take a ton of my time, I already plan for the clubs I'm in, and holding a small job shouldn't be beyond me. Don't want to set myself up for a fall but I'm afraid I'll just be bored next year if I don't try something difficult.
On the subject of clubs, no anime club since we didn't have the room (seriously, our room has gotten taken three times this year....) so I went to the game night my dorm was holding. Learned how to play Texas Hold 'Em (I think that poker is a life skill everyone needs to know), some twister (apparently I don't do as well there since I try to respect people's personal space during the game, my mother brought me up to be polite dangit!), and some Clue. So all in all it was pretty fun, oh and I made Stonehedge out of dominoes when no one was using them, so night well spent IMO.
Wednesday, had class, discovered a Dollars-like chat on the internet and spent way too much time there, painted enough to start developing a small callus where my right pinkie joins my hand (I get hand calluses in weird places), and finished watching Kobato (with the spring shows ending, ekk, better finish up my cyberpunk review tomorrow, darn you Gankutsuo and Xam'd for being so hard to write about for the opposite reasons!). So, not very productive, but the sun was out again today (yes it went back up to 60) and I was enjoying my last minutes of free time for the week. Once the clock hits 12:30 I'm going to be running around for 6 hours straight pretty much, probably more on Friday and who knows what exactly is going to go down Saturday. At least it won't be boring, signing off!