vacation | authoraiINK.

Posts Tagged ‘ vacation ’

landings & returnings.

Listening to: Suzanne Vega — World Before Colombus

Break is over, too soon. Now I am unpacked and sitting alone in my dorm room, drowsy on Dramamine because when planes land I break into a nervous sweat. Tomorrow is class and then more class for two more months, and it’s only just starting to sink into my head that I’m back at school, I’m back at school and I have to work and learn and wake up before midday Finally, after what felt like an eternity of carpal tunnel syndrome, I’ve finished typing the sequel to my novel (which I have yet to tell you where I’ve posted it), but before I did that, Blé and I took a screech appreciation moment to enjoy the early-spring weather that somehow feels like fall.

2011: 03/27
CATEGORY: news.
photography
1 comment

under the great blogging muumuu.

Listening to: Black Box Recorder — I.C. One Female

Well, actually, I do not in fact own any muumuus. But I’m wearing school-bookstore sweatpants, so there’s my full lazy-blogger outfit for you.

So. Spring break. Would probably be a bit more exciting if there was someone else nearby whom I know who was on break as well. Ah, well. I’ve spent all of today watching the first half of season two of True Blood, eating frozen Frango chocolates (which actually aren’t as appetizing as they sound, mind you), trying to write, and listening to Black Box Recorder. I’m kind of on a BBR riff right now. I dunno why. The song “Brutality” is stuck in my head, and it’s annoying because I don’t even know all of the lyrics yet.

No interesting/ new photos at the moment, since I’m waiting for my models to have some free time/ Blé to return my stalker calls. But, in other news, I took a “What Do You Taste Like To Cannibals?” quiz last night, and apparently I taste like undercooked fish. I, being a good teenager, posted this news on Facebook, and soon was told by my friends (I say “friends” because most of my friends on that social network are my friends IRL, to use that hip vernacular) that they would be glad to eat me — with sauce — if that meant I tasted like sushi. So, dear blogging readers: should I be touched that my friends think I’m delicious, or should I be creeped out that they’re actively contemplating eating me?

2011: 03/11
CATEGORY: misc.
3 comments

sometimes a lie is the best thing.

Listening to: Evanescence — Lithium

It’s been nearly a week, so you people have got me feeling like I owe you something. (Have you been checking out The Ridiculous Things Store, like I asked? As I said, it’s stocked more often.) This week has been the longest week of my life, no lie, even longer than preseason at the beginning of the school year. The payoff is near, though: Saturday morning I’m getting on a plane to Middle of Nowhere, USA, and getting out of here. I’m already beginning to have flight anxiety: Where am I going to put my cameras? And my lenses? (Did I mention that my dad left with my backpack when he came to visit, so for the past week I’ve been pack-less?) What about flying with unexposed film, for crying out loud?

I’m really twitchy right now. Might be from drinking diner coffee this morning, might be burgeoning spring fever. All I know is, I’ve been trying to find NyQuil all week and all I’ve found so far is 1) potheads who tell me drugs are bad 2) generic-brand Advil 3) stronger drugs that I value my health/(semblance of) sanity/scholarship too much to accept. Not to mention, shit’s expensive (or so I’ve heard). But turtles don’t do drugs, my dear readers: hugs, not drugs. (But you must understand the boundaries of “personal space” and the definition of “bad touch”.)

As you can probably tell by my excess of parentheses, I’m kind of lacking the focus to write a blog post at the moment. I also have a really annoying crick/warm spot in the center of my back, so if anyone knows how to make it go away, it would be muchly appreciated.

2011: 03/03
CATEGORY: misc.
4 comments

a shameless manipulation.

Listening to: Eluvium — Reciting the Airships

Usually, I don’t do much manipulation on my digital photos. Sure, where necessary I’ll touch up on brightness and contrast or fix some really ugly yellow light, but I DO not airbrush or extensively ‘Shop in things that are supposed to, well, actually look like photographs. So, when I stumbled upon Nirrimi’s Color Shop, I just had to stop and think for awhile. Now, we all know that most of fashion photography is a shameless manipulation, but — really? Seeing how you can make even the most mediocre of photographs amazing with the click of a button makes one wonder what’s the photographer’s actual style behind the lens and what’s made to look a certain way post-production. (And also — $35 per action? An action that I could make myself in two minutes? Well, I guess that nothing’s too expensive if there’s someone willing to pay for it.) I’m not against the process, really, or even the Color Shop itself — Nirrimi is still one of my favorite contemporary photographers and a huge inspiration for young artists — but the whole thing, I dunno, just shakes my faith a little. Makes me wonder.

But I was so fascinated with the concept that I spent a bit of time making a few of my own curves/actions on the GIMP, one of which I used on the photo above (does that change the way you think of that photo? because it does for me). Here’s a really low-quality GIF that I spent oodles of time making for comparison:

So, what do you think? Yay, or nay?

–> So, we’ve been kinda surviving the Snowpocalypse over here. And by “kinda,” I mean that our school set classes back until 9am yesterday (even though it was a half day and all the games were canceled, they refused to cancel classes), and half the school called left because the ‘rents thought that OMG MY SNOOKUMS IS GOING TO FREEZE. Break actually starts today, so once I finish packing I’m leaving for the city.

2011: 02/03
CATEGORY: news.
photography
1 comment

not sentimental, no.

Listening to: Vampire Weekend — Holiday

I’m good at missing dates. authoraiINK’s birthday was exactly one year and 14 days ago, on December 9th, 2009. Yay for a year of procrastination!

Speaking of procrastination, it’s two days ’till Christmas and we just finished building our Christmas tree. Yes, I said building: We have a much-abused, 12+ year-old artificial tree which was looking kind of misshapen because I sort of tossed (read: threw) its pieces carelessly from the box. Then I almost set our carpet on fire because I didn’t realize that one of the large bulbs in our string of lights had shattered.

But anywho. Since I’m on vacation and such, I’ve been engaged in a few of my hobbies which were neglected during school, namely 1) stalking my neighbor and 2) reading. It actually works pretty well; I go to my neighbor’s house, eat her lemon squares, take a pile of her books, and leave. So far I’ve read Crescendo, the sequel to Hush, Hush by Becca Fitzpatrick; I’ve caught up on my current favourite manga series Alice in the Country of Hearts; and I’ve gotten angry that I can’t hate the ending to Cassandra Clare’s Mortal Instruments series because it hasn’t actually ended. It makes me angry because it’s like saying a heartfelt goodbye to someone you’re going to miss and then running into them again five minutes later.

Well, happy holidays and such. I have gifts to wrap, movies to see (The Black Swan), and Christmas trees to crush.

2010: 12/23
CATEGORY: misc.
news.
1 comment

everything is C-41 processed.

Listening to: Peter Bjorn & John — Objects of My Affection

Soooooo. Back home for the holidays. Yay? Lots of driving. I finally got the CDs that I put on hold at the local library (I had to dash in 0.25 seconds before closing), which means I had to choose four CDs to exclude from my next iPod syncing. I received the terrible news that CARINE ROITFELD IS RESIGNING AND WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO MY DREAMS and the lady at the CVS ruined my black and white roll of film, so now its sad corpse hangs from my bulletin board. But I still have two rolls of color film, one from my LC-A+ and one from my FM-10, to share with you, so all is not lost.

2010: 12/20
CATEGORY: Lomography
photography
3 comments

insert here something meaningless in korean.

Listening to: Stars of Track and Field — End Of All Time

…for the record, that nail polish has since chipped off, I lost my pencil and broke the clasp on my beaded bracelet. Le sigh.

But guess who’s done with exams? Yes, that would be me. I bought a PopTart at the bookstore and snatched a banana from the dining hall, so now I’m gonna sleep until I leave tomorrow. When I get back, the middle of the three sticky notes on my desk — the one that says “Happy Christmas” in Korean — will no longer be relevant, but it will aid in confusing people along with the other two written by the same messenger, the first of which says “THANKS SO MUCH From the Asian ” and the second, which contains nothing more than nonsensical Korean vowels. I wish I spoke a language that didn’t use the Latin alphabet.

But I got a new pair of boots. They’re actually kind of spiffy, so I hope they’ll fit when they arrive.

I’ll admit that I was kinda inspired by the current Urban Outfitters catalog to find a pair of tough-looking boots, even if it’s unlikely that I’ll ever wear them with a sequined party dress.

2010: 12/15
CATEGORY: fashion
misc.
news.
3 comments

organizational hazards.

Listening to: MIA — Paper Planes

I just finished my last radio show of this calendar year. It’s hard to believe that it’s almost 2011; already I’m slipping up and, conversely, writing 2012 on my assignments. Maybe I’m just eager for the end of the world?
But since it’s almost the end of the semester, I have a crapload of organizing to get done. I have to organize my binders for the teachers who like to make sure that good grades are backed up by neatness (even though, personally, organizing all my crap is going to put me a bit back on studying). I have to organize my room before I leave, and I was just told (read: in the last two minutes of my last photography class, to which my teacher arrived late) that I need to salvage a portfolio/photo dump of around fifty images by Friday. Since I’m doing that right now — well, sort of — I decided I’d share a few self-portraits with you. It upsets me that I can take self-portraits but fail epically at taking a simple outfit photo. I suppose it’s evident from these examples that I have issues with taking full-body photos, though…

Random note — the song that played right after Paper Planes was Paper Gangsta. My iTunes must be on the same wavelength as I am….

2010: 12/07
CATEGORY: photography
2 comments

airplanes.

Listening to: Christmas Music, GAH!

I’m back in Nowhere now, and all the radio is playing is Christmas music, while all I’ve been playing is my new Sims game. I walked into WalMart last night and it was the LAST ONE on the shelf, sort of calling “Anwa! I’ve been waiting for yooooou!”

But anyway, when I was on the plane I had a burst of cloud-induced inspiration, and I wrote a free-verse poem and a bunch of haikus. And since the writings. page desperately needs a update, here’s the free-verse poem.

airplanes.

heaven is a place in the cumulus clouds

without turbulence

and

from there you can tell that the rivers run

with quicksilver

but

the sky is so dark and the stars burn bright

too close.

….If only taking pictures in airplanes weren’t frowned upon.

2010: 11/21
CATEGORY: writings.
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friday foofaraw 19/11/2010: an apology for my procrastination that I’ll write… tomorrow.

Listening to: Blue October — Hate Me

Not that you should — hate me, that is. I’m just reeeealy busy and sort of lack dedication with regularity-type things, or something like that. In case you hadn’t noticed, the friday foofaraw feature kind of died. Well, maybe not died, per se, but it certainly crawled into a hole and went into hibernation for a long while. And for that, I’m sorry. The main problems with being consistent with it were the facts that I’m in schoolio and all and have tons of homework, and also because I often ended up sharing all of my cool interwebsy stuff the day I found it, aka not on Friday.

I’m leaving for (American) Thanksgiving break tomorrow, so I’ll probably have tons of time to procrastinate/ write/ play the Sims 3 Late Night/ finish reading Dark Divine and L’appel du sang, which I obviously haven’t finished yet. But until then, watch some stunt cats on infoMania’s viral video film school while I daydream about watching the new Harry Potter movie.

And! Also! My awesome Threadless t-shirt has officially been shipped. So hopefully it’ll be there by the time I get back!

…see what I did there?

2010: 11/19
CATEGORY: friday foofaraw.
1 comment

yeah, we went there.