I am still looking for the sheet of paper for that assignment. It could be fun to have people I know write down random words and then that is what I need to represent through pictures and create a story out of. I also saw a book about how beauty or design is in the little things in life or something to that effect. That could be fun to do something on as well. The photography would be interesting--to photograph something we're so used to seeing every day in a different way so that you don't recognize it at first. For some reason, I've been thinking about the imagery first for this project. Maybe I should focus on the other content, like what I'm going to write. I guess I could write about the things I just listed. Especially if I decided to make a story out of the pictures. I think it would've been fun to have written the mystery out about the project I did this summer. I had a continuous dialogue going in my head while I was drawing so that I was always thinking about how I wanted to convey the mystery through the drawing. We could also only use one spot color...I don't know if I would do that for this. I've always liked writing fiction, too. And I haven't done that in awhile. I was going to take one this year, but I decided to work more instead. The last time I wrote creatively was probably my senior year of high school. That's sad--I should just start writing again, but I feel sort of rusty now. Maybe if I find some old assignments I can try writing them again now.

Well I think the Blizzard is officially over. I was supposed to go home yesterday, but that didn't happen. Closing the highway kind of put a stop to it. I checked the Iowa Department of Transportation website and it basically said 'travel at your own peril.' So that is fine. I think I'll do laundry today. I should have enough quarters. I have a lot of laundry, though. I'm not very domestic at all. It's my hope that someday my domestic genes will kick in and I'll be able to cook and finish my laundry without it being a big ordeal. I know plenty of guys who cook better than I do. Or maybe it's just that they're willing to put more time into it. I get irritated when my TV dinner has to heat up for 5 minutes and 30 seconds with a cooling time of 2 minutes.

Lately I have had the weirdest cravings. The other day I really wanted some tomato soup. And now I've been craving scallops for at least two days. I have no idea why I am so hungry for scallops. My roommate has been wanting a BLT, so if we could find a restaurant that serves BLTs and scallops, we would probably be eating there right now.

My friend has random pictures that his sister took from the top of a touring bus hanging on his wall. That would be cool to create a collection of random shots from different things. In drawing class this summer, we had to take random shots representing different things and then put them in some sort of order to create a story out of them. That was really fun. Mine was a murder mystery involving my roommate. She was kind enough to help out with my project. That would be really fun to recreate somehow for this project...

Dancing

There are certain politics to life that you learn as you grow up. People politics. You don't really realize when you're little how much they are a part of life. Take family relationships, for instance. Who you invite to a family event may not just depend on what type of relation it is. It also could depend on whether they invited you to the last event, sent a card or didn't send a card, saw you in a store and made an effort talk or ran away instead, and the list could get more and more detailed. And then you can't really invite an aunt without inviting her kids, unless her kids did something to obviously snub you at a past event, in which case everyone would know why they weren't invited... It's all just very confusing. Our family's not even that complicated and we run into these politics.

It's almost like a dance. You have to learn the correct way to react and handle certain situations--because there is a correct way. One wrong step in the 'dance' and you might upset the cycle and cause the politics to start, even though it was an accident.

Snow

The snow is amazing. As much as it makes travel difficult...and walking, it can look amazing outside. I had to drive home the night it was really snowing bad and when I turned to go down a side street there was a huge branch that had fallen and was spanning the road. I felt like I was in a movie for some reason. Nothing else exciting happened while I reversed back out of the road, though.

Tonight

Tonight I have nothing planned, and that is very exciting. It's times like these when I think I'll finally catch up on everything--homework, cleaning, movies. It usually turns out to be a movie and then that takes up most of my night, but I'll at least attempt to work while I watch. Tonight, though, I definitely need to clean. My room is always a mess. I can keep other areas of the apartment clean, but for some reason my room has never been able to stay clean. I like to call it Creative Chaos because then at least it sounds positive. There's a certain cycle to it. Every few months I'll get really motivated and clean it from top to bottom, and then gradually it creeps back into chaos. Rinse and repeat. One would think that if you just put everything back from where you got it, it would never get dirty. I must not be doing that.

Aches, Pains & Fate

Yes well broomball was amazing, but I am paying for it today. I didn't even know I had some of the muscles that are hurting. This has really made me realize I need to work out more. It used to be better when I lived on campus because my whole floor would go to pilates or cardio together at the Bell Center, but now I have to rely on my own motivation to go by myself. That is clearly much more difficult for me.

Have you ever thought about fate? I've been having this discussion with my roommate lately. Some people believe that you control your fate. I think I used to agree with that, but I've been changing my mind. I mean, you can want something really bad and do everything you can to get it, and still not get it. So all the choices you make would be toward your goal, but ultimately you don't decide whether those choices will really make it happen. There always seems to be some element that comes in outside of our control. So maybe all we can really do is move in the direction we want and see what happens. I think the hardest part about accepting that theory is the fact that we can never have complete control over our lives. It means there will always be a deciding factor we don't know about, so all we can do is plan according to what we do know.

Broomball

I've realized that since I started writing this blog, I'm actually writing more in my journal.

Anyway, today I was in a broomball tournament, which was amazing. It is a hilarious game because the harder and more intense you play, the more you fall all over the place. They actually have special broomball shoes that you can buy. I can't believe such a non-major sport actually has specific shoes. Two of my teammates had them and they looked like moon shoes. I loved the team names, too. Ours was kind of boring, "Lexicon Ice," but some of the other teams we played against had names like "The Concussioners," "Team Shadiness," "THWACK," etc. Everyone got really into it. It was for Des Moines area businesses, so I expected to play professionals. Well, the first team we played was so drunk the goalie just layed on the ice and kept throwing the ball in the wrong direction. It actually became one of her teammate's job to yell at her before she threw the ball so she wouldn't mess up. And the games started at 12:30pm! At least it was the whole team I guess, and not just one player. I'd be a little embarrassed to show up on Monday.