Scrawlings of an Random Mind

I am tired. Let me rephrase that: I am exhausted.

My internet still sucks balls. It drops like the pants of a chronic flasher in the middle of a Santa parade.

Room mate situation is still tenuous at best. Weird and uncomfortable really.

I have been spending anywhere from 7-13 hours at the shop, in classes and on my own time trying to get my homework done. We're first years so we're slow.

Apparently this program has the highest drop out rate of all the programs at the college. It also has an amazing community of people all working together, everyone is so friendly and supportive really. It's amazing. I love every minute of it. The materials are expensive, but I can apply for a scholarship from the school of $1000 to help me through the semester.

When I'm not at the shop I'm at the gym. I weigh 165, when I thought I weighed around 175 at the beginning of the semester. I've lost the little pudge I was starting to get from laying around the house doing nothing.

I'm exhausted when I come home, and I have never slept so soundly in my life.

This is such a change from everything, I'm actually excited to do the work...involved, stimulated. Aside from my bouts of depression over missing my friends, I find myself feeling content, productive, fulfilled. Sometimes the thought pops into my head of "maybe I'm not good enough to get through this program..." but my mind has decided it has no time or energy to spend worrying over that thought and instead fills itself with what needs to be done and I do it.

It's so...weird, to be held so totally enthralled with what I'm doing that a lot of my insecurities and doubts have no time or place in my head. It's like an obsession that's taken me over, I think about shop when I'm home and everything I do is working towards shop. I'm barely ever home except to shower and sleep.

Today I remembered that there was stuff I wanted to buy, something I had totally forgotten in lieu of shop that it felt like such an alien thought to me. Where before I would feel a strong desire to own this material possession as my own, now becomes a lingering after thought.

I want an MP3 player now, but only because it would help make shop a lot more bearable when I'm one of the only ones left behind at night.

My head is full of thoughts of annealing, pickling, bending, twisting, filing, sawing, measuring, drawing out metals to be longer, square, round...thin as wire. Ideas of what to make this stuff into.

Already I've been filing a silver ring to have tiny teeth on it. I'd take a picture but we still need to buff and polish these rings, and the camera I have can't catch the detail in it. The ring is small. I'll try though.

Anyways. That's my update. I'm really fucking tired (exhausted,) and I still need a shower.
I miss my friends. I need to sleep though. And shower.

G'night.

I've already become obsessed with my program.

We've already learned how to solder, cut and thin metals. Mostly copper at the moment, but we've already started using brass as well.

I also got a gym membership at the college because it cost $30 a semester (fuck yes!) and I've already gone a little crazy with it. I've super missed the gym, and this program is exactly the kind of thing I wanted. I go back to my room and I sit there realizing all my homework is done in the shop and I'm left wondering what the fuck am I going to do with my free time? Which just makes me want to be back at the shop doing stuff.

The materials are expensive, but it's worth it. Especially if I do things right.

My only regret about going back to Windsor this weekend is that it means I can't work on my first project until I get back to Barrie.

I wanted to have money for tattoos, except now I want money for my own tools and materials so I can make things on my own time. Tools are expensive and so is silver and gold. Next semester we learn casting, which gets me super excited. I already have some ideas about things I want to do.

I've never been in a position where my homework was exciting to me, and where I wanted to do it now instead of putting it off until the absolute last minute. Well, except maybe the filing. But I can handle it. Our first project was to saw a brass triangle from a square, and the sawing and filing hurt my hands, but it was satisfying to churn out this perfect traingle (ok it's not perfect it's 0.2mm off from where it's suppose to be.) I have to go and file it very carefully so I can at least get two edges perfect (it's suppose to be 40mm x 40mm x 40mm.) They talked about having the jewelers curse in class - it's the problem of a jewelers that because they work in such tiny measurements they can spot imperfections without even trying in the smallest degrees. They tell us that the measurements we use will probably seem tiny until we start working in them and what was once tiny will start becoming huge to us.

I can understand completely how that happens.

This is an amazing program. I am hungry. I need to eat. I'll probably be making school my home which is such a huge difference from my past experiences with school. I'm actually passionate about this which hasn't happened in a long time...it's, awesome and humbling.

I'm going to go eat now and probably read. I've already finished two books since I got into Barrie. I started a third one yesterday on my bus trip from Barrie. I have a feeling that next to the gym and school I'm going to be getting a lot of reading done there, which is good as I have a lot of books I've had that I haven't gotten around to reading yet.

Anyways. That is all.

Happy Birthday fleeting_image!! I hope it's a fantastic one, whatever your doing! I'm sorry I can't be there to hang out. <3<3

I've had this pillow I've been lugging around for awhile now and I finally did something with it. It was suppose to be one of those normal sized pillows, except that it got tossed in the dryer on a normal heat setting so it melted the fibers together.

So I took the side of the pillow in to give it more substance, tried to tear and fluff the stuff as best as I could to make it more pillow-ish and made a cover for it out of fabric I had leftover and lying around. I screen printed it too just because I can. I decided to use the print of the raven I made for fleeting_image as the print because it was the one that appealed to me the most out of all the prints I've done so far...I also don't feel like making anymore screen prints until I can do it with photo-emulsion.

So now we have a pillow for the couch.

Annnd...that's all I've done today that was actually sort of productive. The last thing probably before I leave for Barrie.

I think I have a problem, I see the worst in people.

I see the worst in people which, makes me naturally distrust them which in turn makes me not like them. Even people I like I can only stand for certain periods of time before I've had enough of them. I want to like people but there are so many things wrong with them and I can't help but see it all.

My handful of closest friends are generally exempt from this rule.

It just...strains my relationships and makes me unhappy and like I want to tell everyone to fuck off sometimes.

I signed up for classes, which was both nerve wracking and exciting for me.

Once I read the descriptions of the compulsory courses for all classes I have to take that aren't actually required for my degree, I almost laughed. It's kind of like being thrown back into high school again. I would have taken the German Language and Culture class (a bird course for me as I took German in university,) except that I somehow anticipated a group project and class presentation somewhere. Which are both things I hate and try to avoid. Instead I settled on a Basic Darkroom Photography course and hopefully that will avoid either one or the other of those two things.

I have no interest in taking courses about Personal Finance, or Psychology 1 (I took a couple of first and second year psychology courses in university,) and frankly the rest of the courses that were available to me were mostly classes on pretty basic stuff. If I wasn't learning something that was so hands on as my basic program, I'd consider going back to university.

I'm actually going to talk to the prof(?) teacher(?) about my college communications class too, and see if maybe they would give me some sort of allowance for going to University and doing a few years in an English program there (worse comes to worse I just do the class and it's a bird course for me.) I don't think they can give someone an allowance for already having prior education in the area but it never hurts to try. Who knows, maybe they'd allow me to show proof of my education then give me a test?

Ah well.

~~~

In other news. I'm priming the badly made mirrors to paint on. I finally finished the first frame I was painting.



Two more pictures are under the cut ( Collapse )

~~~

Trying to find a way to get my futon up to Barrie from here so I don't have to sleep on the floor or on a blow up mattress.

I'm budgeted about $300 at the beginning of every semester for books etc. If I had bought all my books through the college bookstore I would have gone over budget by about $50. I found on amazon two of my books for cheaper, one book about $69 cheaper and another only about $20 cheaper, and even with shipping I was saved about $66.34...so when I buy my other books I'll definitely be under budget for that .

The nice thing about going back to school is that I can claim it at the end of the year too. And hopefully I'll be able to get a fucking JOB goddamnit. I was a little worried at first about going back to school after being out for 6 years but I might be selling myself short. I just think my brain needs some exercising.

That's really all. School and art.

I started another painting. This time it's on a wooden frame I've kept around for a long time, I bought a pair of handmade mirrors from Value Village a few years ago intending to decorate them. The mirrors became damaged over time, I think there was very little silver used in the making of the mirrors themselves because there are dots that appeared that I can't clean away or do anything about. So instead of throwing them away I decided that I'm just going to prime the mirrors and paint over them.I started painting the frame of the first one.

Originally I was just intending on doing comical little skulls, with different expressions on their faces and a rose vine wrapping around the entirety of the mirror. Then I decided against it and thought of something different to do with them instead. I actually LOVE how awesome this idea is turning out and I'm really glad I went this route instead of the previous one.

The rat skull isn't finished yet, I still have to add little bits of detail here and there, but this is the start of the mirror.



Hopefully when I'm done these someone will love them enough to buy them. As nothing else seems to be selling on Etsy :P

Plastic shelvings units I was given painted:



Annnnd Skullface Styrofoam head.

I finally have a room in Barrie. Sunday and Monday both ended up as clusterfucks, so I'm glad that's done and over with. I have a room in a house with a family, the apartment that they're renting rooms out of is in the basement away from the main floor so that's nice. It's about a 20-30 minute walk from the college, and close to a grocery store and other amenities.

I've decided to switch banks...again. As much as I love the no-fee bank account with PC financial, my only problem is that I've needed tellers. So I was thinking of joining TD, but we'll see.

My summer is quickly approaching it's end which is both, exciting and anxiety ridden for me. Exciting because it means I get to start school, socialize etc...anxiety ridden because it means I move away, start school, socialize etc. I have slight social phobias I've tried to combat my entire life...mostly the feeling of pressure like everyone's looking at me. I realize that's not completely true, but I know I'm pretty, tattooed, pierced and I look different so all those things combined make it hard not to look at me and I've always known this and done whatever I wanted anyways. This will be interesting to say the least.

~~~

Picture post will soon follow. I decided to spray paint the white plastic shelves fleeting_image gave me awhile back and glue on leopard print cloth to the bottoms. I hate plain white things so...that was my solution to the problem. So far they've been super handy helping me organize a lot of the smaller crap I have.

I also finally painted a styrofoam head again, an almost exact duplicate of the one I made years ago except this time I sprayed it with a Super Enamel Spraypaint to lock in the paint and make sure it's unscratchable etc. It actually gave the head a nice gloss to it that I enjoy. I'm thinking of doing the next two heads as a zombie (I dug out some old fake halloween, witch nails I had, cut them in half and cut ridges into them etc then painted them white for the teeth,) and an anatomically correct musculature painting (or as close to as I can.) So hopefully I'll get those two finished before the summer really ends. If I can sell some of this stuff then it'll mean a) cash and b) I'm getting rid of a lot of this crap I've been hoarding over the years (FINALLY.) I just regret I didn't get my ass moving sooner, so much fucking wasted time.

~~~

I've been trying to get some of these books read that people have lent me. morellen lent me a book Necroscope and although I keep threatening to tell it lies about her until she comes and picks it up (which I have by the way! Lots and lots of fabricated, terrible, horrible, no-good nonsense! And it believes me by the way!!) Necroscope. I'm almost done it finally. On my trip into Barrie on Monday I had a LOT of time to read it (4 1/2 hours ONE WAY ON THE GO TRAIN,) and it's a great read. I definitely want to read the rest of the series at some point.

I also need to get around to reading two books that l8ty_velvet lent me.

~~~

I'm hoping that while I'm out in Barrie I get a lot of reading done, I have a ton of books at the moment I just haven't gotten around to reading just yet. I'm really going to try and buckle down while at school and get my shit done, I'm worried I'm going to struggle with the school work or even learning...but I hope not.

I've been sorting through my music folder too, trying to get all the stuff I downloaded labeled properly and sorted. I went through 50 folders yesterday, and I still have about 170 to go. Blarg. I'm almost at 1 terabyte of music (I have 99.4 GIGS) I should go through though and get rid of stuff I haven't listened to in a long time and probably will never again (like the video game music I have.)

My life is boring. What can I say?

I don't want to write anymore. I don't want to deal with people anymore lately.

The last while has been a clusterfuck of emotions, so I've been retracting from people painting and watching True Blood.

I've been finishing the painting on a jar I started months ago. I worked with what I had. I'm almost done painting it, I just have to add some bubbles (white dots) and white spirals at the bottom. Then I have to place it in a cool oven, turn on the heat at 350, leave it in for 30-45 minutes and bake it. I have to let the oven cool, and when both the oven and the jar are cool I have to take it out, then as an experiment (because a tutorial on instructables said to do this) try to section off the painted areas as best as I can and spray it with a Verathane spray (transparent) to try and make it extra durable. I hope to god that works otherwise I will destroy a few days worth of work.



Look at the other pictures for details here, at my photobucket album.