So let's talk very briefly about rock climbing. And I do mean very briefly, because I'm quite exhausted and due to be quite sore very soon, so I'd rather go to bed before that latter part sets in.
We've got this awesome new indoor climbing and fitness center in Atlanta called Stone Summit. It's the biggest indoor rock climbing facility in the nation. Yeah. Today was the second time I've gotten to go, and I'm completely in love with it. So in love that I bought myself a membership today ^-^ (this is my super pumped face).
For those of you who have never been indoor rock climbing, GO. That's it. You have to. Make like Nike and Just Do It.
Reasons I love rock climbing:
1) the odds of you getting hurt are low. Really, like, three hundred bagazillion to one (yes, I'm sure it's a real number... sheesh)
2) conquering a wall just makes you feel awesome inside
3) it's really cool to watch. But seriously, if you sit and watch rock climbers who have any experience and any confidence in what they're doing, it just kind of looks like they glide up and down the wall. It's so awesome. You're like "woah, is that dude even touching the grips? He so looks like he's just gliding. Awesome."
3.5) I imagine the above quote in a stereotypical California surfer-dude voice
3.75) the voices I imagine don't usually sounds like a stereotypical California surfer-dude
4) climbing is a really great workout for people who don't actually want to work out, like myself
I've actually gone bouldering the past two times I've been to Stone Summit. Bouldering is climbing, but without ropes. No harness, no ropes, no belaying. SO HARD CORE AND DANGEROUS, RIGHT?! Not really. There are always height limits to the walls that are used for bouldering, so you're not hoisting yourself up a 40 foot wall - gonna be more like 15 or 20 feet. But it's still really fun and really cool, and qualifies under all of the reasons listed above.
This was just on my mind right now. I could write a lot more, and maybe I will tomorrow night, because yes =^) I'm going again tomorrow afternoon. And yes, I'm trying to make myself miserably sore.
Night!
Tuesday, June 19, 2012
Sunday, June 10, 2012
A Bit on Garage Sales
As the title says, here's just a bit on garage sales...
So this morning, my parents woke me up to let me know they were heading out to go "garage sale hunting." I grunted my acknowledgement and promptly went back to sleep. About three hours later, once I was finally dressed and out of bed, they got back home. My dad dropped my mom off in our driveway and then drove away. Mama rushed into the house explaining to me that they'd found this big multi-house, neighborhood-wide garage sale over by my old high school, and at one of the houses they'd stumbled across a great find. They'd rushed back home to go to an ATM and get more cash, and my mom had been dropped off so she could make herself and my dad some lunch so that they would waste no time in order to promptly go back and buy this magnificent piece. Now, I'm not a shopping snob, and I understand that there's nothing like a good garage sale, so when they extended the offer for me to come along with them for the adventure, I was up for it. Not like I had anything better to do anyways.
Less than thirty minutes later we were in the car driving back to this person's house. Sure enough, our newly discovered and highly cherished item was still there, awaiting our return. We loaded up the car, paid the nice people, and proceeded down the street on to the next sale. At least eight houses and at least as many awkward conversations later, I was minorly disappointed and minorly sunburned.
To be fair, I'm sure my parents didn't feel nearly as awkward as I did. But first off, I was imagining a scenario something like the following: driving down a street, seeing happy residents of all ages from every house displaying their goods at the edges of their driveways and lawns, excited shoppers meandering between rows of tables and bookcases and stacks of neatly labeled boxes, younger children looking through bins of toys and games while adults take more interest in the classic books and organized racks of clothes and furniture items...
Okay, typing it out, it does seem a little ridiculous. But I at the very least expected a bunch of yards to be filled with a bunch of stuff. My family had a garage sale right before we moved, and we had a bunch of tables filled with a bunch of stuff, so it's just how I remember yard sales working. What we actually found was about three or four houses participating per street, and, for the most part, each house having a few rather empty tables not very full of an assortment of unimpressive items. I did make an important discovery though - garage sales awkward me out.
Seriously.
One lady was selling old bras o.O Eww. Just, eww.
I just feel extremely uncomfortable walking up someone's driveway and looking through their old stuff, judging it in my own way and deciding if it's worthy of my time, attention, and, most importantly, money. And then I feel really uncomfortable when I look around and walk away without buying anything. Especially if one glance shows me there's nothing I want to buy. I always feel obligated to at least wander for a few minutes. Otherwise I feel like I'm indirectly telling the people that they have nothing of interest to me. Or directly telling them. Either way, awkward situation. And then some of them try really hard to sell you stuff. Stuff that you 98% of the time don't want at all, and they know you don't want it at all. But they want to get rid of it and you're morally obligated to feign interest. It's just an awkward situation.
My afternoon was not totally unsuccessful though! One couple did have a really good selection of movies, we just already had a lot of them. The lady also had an awesome pair of linen overall-shorts; I actually went inside and tried them on, but alas, they were barely too small =^( It was quite the disappointment. The lady was sweet though, and she had a cool house and two adorable huge dogs. At another house I did find a couple yards of really awesome fabric (and when you're into sewing, multiple yards of decent fabric for dirt cheap is a gift from God), a book of Edgar Allen Poe short stories for 25 cents (I have a love for Poe...) and a really epic straw hat. No, really, it's absolutely epic.
And it was fun to wander around with my parents. They're cool.
So that was my Saturday. It was more entertaining than most of my Saturdays, so I thought I might share it. Hope your Saturday was a good one too!
So this morning, my parents woke me up to let me know they were heading out to go "garage sale hunting." I grunted my acknowledgement and promptly went back to sleep. About three hours later, once I was finally dressed and out of bed, they got back home. My dad dropped my mom off in our driveway and then drove away. Mama rushed into the house explaining to me that they'd found this big multi-house, neighborhood-wide garage sale over by my old high school, and at one of the houses they'd stumbled across a great find. They'd rushed back home to go to an ATM and get more cash, and my mom had been dropped off so she could make herself and my dad some lunch so that they would waste no time in order to promptly go back and buy this magnificent piece. Now, I'm not a shopping snob, and I understand that there's nothing like a good garage sale, so when they extended the offer for me to come along with them for the adventure, I was up for it. Not like I had anything better to do anyways.
Less than thirty minutes later we were in the car driving back to this person's house. Sure enough, our newly discovered and highly cherished item was still there, awaiting our return. We loaded up the car, paid the nice people, and proceeded down the street on to the next sale. At least eight houses and at least as many awkward conversations later, I was minorly disappointed and minorly sunburned.
To be fair, I'm sure my parents didn't feel nearly as awkward as I did. But first off, I was imagining a scenario something like the following: driving down a street, seeing happy residents of all ages from every house displaying their goods at the edges of their driveways and lawns, excited shoppers meandering between rows of tables and bookcases and stacks of neatly labeled boxes, younger children looking through bins of toys and games while adults take more interest in the classic books and organized racks of clothes and furniture items...
Okay, typing it out, it does seem a little ridiculous. But I at the very least expected a bunch of yards to be filled with a bunch of stuff. My family had a garage sale right before we moved, and we had a bunch of tables filled with a bunch of stuff, so it's just how I remember yard sales working. What we actually found was about three or four houses participating per street, and, for the most part, each house having a few rather empty tables not very full of an assortment of unimpressive items. I did make an important discovery though - garage sales awkward me out.
Seriously.
One lady was selling old bras o.O Eww. Just, eww.
I just feel extremely uncomfortable walking up someone's driveway and looking through their old stuff, judging it in my own way and deciding if it's worthy of my time, attention, and, most importantly, money. And then I feel really uncomfortable when I look around and walk away without buying anything. Especially if one glance shows me there's nothing I want to buy. I always feel obligated to at least wander for a few minutes. Otherwise I feel like I'm indirectly telling the people that they have nothing of interest to me. Or directly telling them. Either way, awkward situation. And then some of them try really hard to sell you stuff. Stuff that you 98% of the time don't want at all, and they know you don't want it at all. But they want to get rid of it and you're morally obligated to feign interest. It's just an awkward situation.
My afternoon was not totally unsuccessful though! One couple did have a really good selection of movies, we just already had a lot of them. The lady also had an awesome pair of linen overall-shorts; I actually went inside and tried them on, but alas, they were barely too small =^( It was quite the disappointment. The lady was sweet though, and she had a cool house and two adorable huge dogs. At another house I did find a couple yards of really awesome fabric (and when you're into sewing, multiple yards of decent fabric for dirt cheap is a gift from God), a book of Edgar Allen Poe short stories for 25 cents (I have a love for Poe...) and a really epic straw hat. No, really, it's absolutely epic.
And it was fun to wander around with my parents. They're cool.
So that was my Saturday. It was more entertaining than most of my Saturdays, so I thought I might share it. Hope your Saturday was a good one too!
Sunday, June 03, 2012
Summertime = art time
I love being creative, and any creative person knows that creativity can take many different forms. This summer I've started attempting to channel it through painting. Me, paint? HA! Yeah, I never thought it'd happen. But I've had a couple opportunities to try it out in the past week, and so far I'm not too disappointed in myself.
We moved into our current house about eight years ago. Nine years ago? ... Eight or nine years ago. Ever since we moved, my mom has wanted to decorate our back porch with a theme. The first move towards accomplishing that goal was made just a few years back, through the purchasing (or receiving? they may have been a gift...) of a set of chip and dip bowls. I don't know what specifically, but something really lit the lightbulb, and all of a sudden Mom knew our porch was meant to Mexican fiesta themed. Or something like that.
So the steps following the inspiration have been slow-paced. Incredibly slow-paced. My parents knew way back that they wanted some artwork to put on one of the porch walls, and they were really hoping that my brothers and I would paint them. See, here's the thing. My brothers and I are all creative in our own ways. They draw. I sketch and sew. We're all musical in some way. But I can't remember any of us painting. They painted those intricate little Lord of the Rings figurines for a long time, and about fifty of those are on display in a case in our living room, but I don't think they painted anything larger than that. Except their bedroom walls right after we moved in. But you know what I mean.
I finally got motivated enough to attempt some paintings. It helped that canvases were on sale at the Michael's Arts and Crafts store ten minutes away from my house. After doing my best to get paints that matched the bowl colors, and after acquiring a 15 pack of really cheap brushes, I was ready to begin my mission.
For the first one I wanted to make a purple flower the focal point, but I didn't want to be so precise as to copy the flower on the bowl. So I aimed for abstract purple flower. It was a lot easier than I thought it would be. Once you eliminate your mental barriers, the painting gets a lot easier. I had drawn up a sketch for one of the paintings a few days earlier. It was pretty free-flowing, but still very rigid and exact in its patterns and shapes. I'm not sure what eliminated that idea (besides the fact that I could tell my mom didn't really like it) but I'm glad it disappeared, because I like the end result much better than the initial sketch.
I see a flower. My mom sees a peacock feather or something like that. I really don't care what it looks like, 'cause that's the point of abstract, right? I'm just happy with how it turned out. But I wanted to make another that had a shape more similar to the flower on the bowl. That was part of my first drawing that I actually liked. So the next painting started out with another purple flower, and I wanted to use blue as more of a base color than red. But after I started painting, I didn't like how solid the flower was, and it obviously needed more than just the blue border. I looked at the pot again and saw that the green part had a checked pattern on it, so I decided to add that on top. Then I filled in the empty space by following the flow around the edges of the flower.
Ta-da! Second painting! I'm happy with it too. So I had one canvas left and wanted to do something different with it. When I doodle on my notes during class I usually alternate between swirls and flowing lines and geometric shapes, so I thought it'd be cool to go geometric for the last one. I also wanted to include the criss-crossing that's on the bowl.
I scratched the pattern on using the back of one of the paint brushes.
So here's all three together! I'm really happy with the first two. Not quite sure how I feel about the third one, but I can always paint another =^)
We moved into our current house about eight years ago. Nine years ago? ... Eight or nine years ago. Ever since we moved, my mom has wanted to decorate our back porch with a theme. The first move towards accomplishing that goal was made just a few years back, through the purchasing (or receiving? they may have been a gift...) of a set of chip and dip bowls. I don't know what specifically, but something really lit the lightbulb, and all of a sudden Mom knew our porch was meant to Mexican fiesta themed. Or something like that.
 |
| one of those inspirational little bowls |
I finally got motivated enough to attempt some paintings. It helped that canvases were on sale at the Michael's Arts and Crafts store ten minutes away from my house. After doing my best to get paints that matched the bowl colors, and after acquiring a 15 pack of really cheap brushes, I was ready to begin my mission.
 |
| my chosen colors. I think I did a pretty good job ^-^ |
I see a flower. My mom sees a peacock feather or something like that. I really don't care what it looks like, 'cause that's the point of abstract, right? I'm just happy with how it turned out. But I wanted to make another that had a shape more similar to the flower on the bowl. That was part of my first drawing that I actually liked. So the next painting started out with another purple flower, and I wanted to use blue as more of a base color than red. But after I started painting, I didn't like how solid the flower was, and it obviously needed more than just the blue border. I looked at the pot again and saw that the green part had a checked pattern on it, so I decided to add that on top. Then I filled in the empty space by following the flow around the edges of the flower.
Ta-da! Second painting! I'm happy with it too. So I had one canvas left and wanted to do something different with it. When I doodle on my notes during class I usually alternate between swirls and flowing lines and geometric shapes, so I thought it'd be cool to go geometric for the last one. I also wanted to include the criss-crossing that's on the bowl.
I scratched the pattern on using the back of one of the paint brushes.
So here's all three together! I'm really happy with the first two. Not quite sure how I feel about the third one, but I can always paint another =^)
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