Being a bad blogger

Man, I SUCK at keeping this updated.

Here are a few lists of things I have been thinking about:

THINGS I HATE ABOUT TEXAS
cockroaches the size of a tennis ball
mosquitoes everywhere
mosquito bites
the itching that goes with mosquito bites
the swelling that goes with mosquito bites
smelling like bug spray & SPF 50
forgetting to put on bug spray
forgetting the bug spray at home

THINGS THAT ARE GOING PRETTY OK
I don’t have a dishwasher and I am doing ok at doing dishes every week!
I don’t have a washer/dryer and I am doing ok at hand washing everything I own every week!*
I have actually been going to the gym 2X a week!
I am not completely sucking at being a student!
I really like the BBQ here!
I worked** a football game and had a FIELD PASS and that was pretty okay!
I have been DRIVING in AUSTIN and that is AMAZING OKAY REALLY
I also made spaghetti last night and that was great
I have been going to happy hours with class mates and I have met some really really awesome people
I got an ENORMOUS couch and it is gray and I have yellow throw pillows and I love it.
I have been decorating my house and it is really coming together and I love my apartment so much. ❤

*minus jeans, slacks, and bedsheets, but you can't win them all.
**By worked I mean I stood on a corner and Looked Official and then went home. It was GREAT.

No, really, Texas is fantastic. And I’m not only saying that because I haven’t had a cockroach in my apartment for five whole days now. Count them. F-I-V-E. I’m sure I just jinxed it and there is now a spindly icky enormous cockroach wriggling its way into my apartment right now and that when i come home it will probably be somewhere terrible, like my bed, but whatever. I’m on a heckuva good streak right now and that is basically the best.

Classes are good. I’m in the midst of a multi-week series of Giving Presentations Every Five Minutes and that really sucks but it’s do-able… even though I am already reverting into being a Terrible Student again and I need to find a way to focus even though I feel burnt-out and braindead.

Like I mentioned earlier, this weekend I was a staff member at the UT v Baylor football game and while losing really sucked, it was fun to be on the field, watch the game happen live, and also to stand in front of Bevo the bull and wish with all my heart that I could pet his nose, just once.

ISN’T HE ADORABLE!??!?!?!

In semi-related news, I have yet to invest in any form of taxidermy while I’m here, but I still have time. I’m somehow going to get me a set of long horns even if it means I don’t get to eat for a month.

But really. Things are great. While I’m still occasionally overwhelmed by how distant everything I know is, I’m doing awesome and having a fantastic time. I’m thankful that I have Thanksgiving & Christmas break to look forward to, but in the mean time, everything’s coming up longhorns. Or roses. Or something.

diary 6-27-14

future dogs

Hi, I love dogs. I always have. I’m not sure why.

OH WAIT NO, I TOTALLY DO KNOW WHY.

It’s because they are hilarious.

Stupid.

Silly.

Cool.

And by personality, they typically love you.

I have spent most of my childhood and adult life daydreaming about the dogs I am going to own and what I am going to name them. Now, I know, I know, once you are presented with a living, breathing animal, names and intentions and personalities tend to throw all expectations out the window. But seriously, a girl can dream, right?

(photo by Chris Mallon)
If I ever bring home a Great Pyrenees, I’m naming him Aslan.
Or, possibly, a variation of ‘Tiny’.

(photo by boushh2187)
If I ever bring home some Mastiffs, I’m naming them Romeo and Juliet, because why not and also LOOK AT THOSE FACES OMG.

(photo by 5of7)
If I ever bring home a Great Dane, he’s being named Ferdinand (as in Ferdinand the Bull).

My list of dogs and names can go on and on and on and on, but the most important one to me, is my future pal:

(photo by Rayya the Vet)

Y’all, I really love Bull Terriers. I love their cocked ears and giant noses and silly eyes. I dearly await one day having a white-furred bully buddy of my own. My favorite name for a bull terrier is probably Gus-Gus. So cute! We would go on walks and he’d dig in the dirt and I’d constantly have to pull white hairs off of all of my black clothes, but man, someday, I will, and it will be great.

What’s on my mind – first week of September

Well, I’m still settling in, still without internet, still needing to buy last-minute items (silverware, a pot, another bowl, maybe a drain plug) and mostly just figuring out my new routine with 2 extra hours in my day and my own space that is mine, all mine.

• This link has been going around the tumblrs a lot lately, but Mica Hendricks collaborated with her 4yo daughter on some portraits and they are basically the best and cutest ever.
• 
  Words to live by.
• You may not know this, but I love kaleidoscopes. So I am EXTRA THRILLED to present to you, the Catleidoscope. Don’t stare at it too long, you might get kinda dizzy.
• 
  Huskies are the best.
• My featured flickr contact today is Depression Press. This photostream is full of neat old letterpress blocks, advertisements, book illustrations and illustrations, as well as current creations.
• Yesterday on my walk home, it rained and rained and rained and RAINED!! Portland has the reputation of being a rainy city, but our rain is very different than what you might assume. I feel like we have more of an endless drippy-damp-misty-wet season, as opposed to real, hard, RAIN. But last night it POURED and it was kind of awesome. Because of that, this morning, even though next week the weather report says it’s going to get hot tomorrow, I feel like wearing a scarf and having soup for dinner.
• In conclusion, I want a print of this old magazine cover because it is awesome:

  
  And everyone knows that her image was just as “fixed” in the darkroom as they fix models today. Only you can still see her ribs beneath the skin. I love that. She could be my best friend’s badass grandmother, she could be me.

What’s on my mind, last week of August

I got a phone call.

I got the apartment!!!

I move on Sunday.

So my answer to the question of “What’s on Neigh’s mind?” really comes down to packing.

PACKING PACKING PACKING.
PACKING AND FLAILING MY ARMS AROUND.

I’m really excited and a little overwhelmed. I have to call the electric company and the cable company. I have to sign papers and look for cracks in walls and document them. I have to coordinate my parents helping me out and find more boxes. I have to check underneath my bed and try to figure out which kitchen utensils are mine and which belong to my roommates. And these are all things that are PRETTY NEW to me which is SHOCKING I KNOW but hey there’s a first time for everything.

Here are future pictures of me from this weekend:

And here is a picture of how awesome the parties at my new studio are going to be:

IN THE MEANTIME, I got work to do, y’all.

Of course the gifs aren’t mine. And Maru belongs to Maru.

Rampant Consumerism

Remember my “Stuff I want to buy” post ?

Well, this is a related post. This is ME reminding MYSELF that even though I FEEL LIKE I have been good and not gone impulse shopping and spent a ton of money on silly things that I want… that I have still gone shopping, albeit restrained shopping.

Things I have bought in the five weeks:

• A fantastic pair of fake rough crystal (?) earrings
• This beautiful kitschy purple cow creamer. She vaguely reminds me of the cookie jar my Grandma Mary had when I was growing up.
  
• Walt Disney’s Robin Hood on DVD/ Blu Ray. Disney’s Robin Hood happens to be my sister and I’s favorite childhood movie. It is probably the most worn-out of our collection of Disney VHS’s. (Followed closely by Bedknobs & Broomsticks!)
• Some antique dishes!
  
  One of my dreams/desires for when I have my own, tiny, dishwasher-less studio, is to use stacks of mis-matching and beautiful china instead of a standard collection of plates. I picked up three of such plates this weekend and they are all beautiful! I love looking at racks of china, though I don’t have much use for fancy sets just yet.
• A little tigerseye tiger
  
  (This is not the tiger I bought, I’ve had this chubby guy for awhile now.)
  I found another stone tiger last week! My zodiac sign is the tiger, and tigers are also my favorite animal, so double-whammy on the awesomeness scale, right? (Although honestly I do not have many non-favorite animals….) I have a small collection of wee stone tigers (now three) and I love all of them in their teeny tiny goodness. He measures about 2 inches long and has a great little stone face! I haven’t bought a new tiger in ages and he fits in my slightly-Japan-themed corner of my room quite nicely.
• A lovely teal coffee table
  
  You can barely see it under all the stuff piled on it! But it is TEAL and it was $14, and it fit in the back of Jessica’s car.
  This table is perfect! It is a style I continually admire (a rectangular coffee table with a smaller, raised rectangle on one side) and it is the in-color right now. It almost matches my teal bookshelves and really matches my sense of style. I put a gold deer and a coaster on it, and it fits perfectly in the nook beside my bed.
• A new gray sweater. I found it at Goodwill for $2.49 and it is hella cute! Aww yeah, bargains!
• At least 10 milkshakes The only thing I have wanted lately is milkshakes.
  Milkshakes! Peanut butter or chocolate or pineapple or raspberry. This is the summer of the milkshake. Hopefully this unhealthy craving diminishes soon or I’m going to have to increase my “bigger pants” budget.

In conclusion, SHUT UP, PART OF ME THAT FEELS LIKE SHE DOESN’T GET TO BUY STUFF.
Buying stuff isn’t all that there is. And you do enough of that already!

What’s on my mind, 2nd week of August

Man! This week flew by! I took Friday off so I already feel the FREEDOM OF THE WEEKEND!

• This morning I went out to breakfast to the Original Original Pancake House. It was pretty good, if a little crowded! I have to think that breakfast is my favorite meal to eat out at restaurants and diners. I mean, fruit crepes, pancakes, bacon and eggs are really just so, so good.
• I just finished a 30 day self portrait challenge on instagram & using the app #abeautifulmess ! It was pretty fun. I lost interest in the last two days, but am pretty happy with how most of them turned out.
  
  Taking that many self portraits of myself made me think about what kind of photos I want to take, instead of just thinking about how I look in the photo. That was kind of neat.
• My featured flickr contact of the week is ROA graffiti.
  You should totally check ROA out. These are amazingly detailed giant portraits of insects and animals and skulls on the sides of buildings!
  
• Tomorrow I am going on a short mini vacation with my best friend! The plan is to go antiquing and listen to loud music in the car on the drive to our B&B.
  Coming up with road trip music sometimes is hard. This is my current favorite song to blast loudly with the windows down:
  
• This week, my friend Laura at RubyBastille posted a super good article about one of her experience in confronting someone in public. The hollaback project is actually a super awesome website about this very thing! Street harassment has been a THING I have had to deal with since I was about nine years old. It is a weird and awful thing to deal with, especially at a young age. How do you deal with it? Usually, I just roll my eyes and try to move on with my life, but generally speaking it makes me feel super defensive and unsafe. I am super lucky that it doesn’t happen to me often, but it is a shame that so many people don’t understand how dehumanizing street harassment is.
• This art series, Sit by Haiiro No Kaze, is DECIDEDLY BEAUTIFUL. I love how their abstraction makes the motion of their drawings even more dramatic and violent.
• And finally, antigravity cat says hello:
  

What’s on my mind- 4th week July

• This article from Forbes discusses the meaning of work-life balance, and finding the right balance for your life with some really awesome life-evaluation questions. I really think that it’s good to take a moment, sometimes, and really think about this sort of thing. I know it helps me out, and I have a super crazy life.
• I might need this as a tattoo:
  
  Pet all the Dogs by Nation of Amanda
• Did I mention that I saw Pacific Rim? AND THAT IT WAS FANTASTIC?! Because it was. Fun, not convoluted, great special effects, good angles, decent acting. The point of the main relationship was to save the world, not to make out, and that was also awesome. Sure, it’s not going to win any Oscars for Best Drama, but you know what? I hate movies that win Oscars for Best Drama. So, uh, yeah, I mean, keep that in mind. However, it is incredibly fun and I suggest you give it a try. I really loved it.
• Here is Pinky dancing the flamingo flamenco:
  
  
  You’re welcome.
• This article is what the Perfect Women’s Magazine would look like. And you know what? I totally agree.
• This week I read The Blade Itself and whooooa talk about amazing new fantasy series to read. So much action and intrigue! The fight scenes are written very well and Joe Abercrombie writes morally gray characters with style. I would definitely suggest it to anyone looking for a new fantasy series.
• I took a photo of a flower basket that I thought was pretty and realized that I am turning into my mother. (which is ok! 🙂 )

See you next week, lovelies!