Black Coffee

Today in painting my classmate, talking aloud to herself, said, “my goal for next time is to get the canvas covered.”

Those simple words had a much more profound effect on me than I realized such an easy concept could. I forgot about setting goals and attaining them in such a bold fashion. I suppose goals are a very common part of my day, of everyone’s day, but i forgot how great saying them aloud can be. Saying them aloud makes them real. I tend to keep my goals quiet until they are realized - often when this happens I change my goals to fit what’s been accomplished when I’m ready to quit. Bad Habit. especially in painting. when our deadline is next friday.

“my goal for next time is to layer the bubbles and glaze the egg.” said aloud in class today.

I’ll post a photo of my current accomplishments soon.

Completely off topic, but it’s almost 5 o-clock and it’s quite bright outside. This makes me happy.

Feeling better about this semester. I can handle art classes. Pssht. — although I will be getting two first grades back on projects sometime early next week. We’ll see where I stand after that.

Broke again, sucks kind-of. Oh well.

Want to travel to so many places. Holly in SD, Beth again in NC, Joe in NM, Matt in CO.

I am traveling to Chicago March 31-April 4th, and to Missoula, Montana April 14-17 to present posters of my thesis. - which, in other news, is turning out to be pretty awesome. I’m analyzing my data at this point and am finding that my sample (N of 230) have been rating positively up to 90%. This is awesome news. I got scared after seeing some of the responses, people can be really really stupid and homophobic sometimes. For those who need a refresher, my research has been on how sex and locale affect homophobic attitudes. Students (230 of them) participated by survey and answered questions to gage their degree of homophobia. I am comparing males/females as well as people from rural areas to those from urban areas to see if it varies. So far, the males have played into my hypothesis and have ratings that are more negative than females. I should stop here since those of you reading this are probably one of two things: 1) have heard this before and are not longer interested, or 2) simply not interested. Both of which I can respect.

Anyway, I am beginning a new painting that *hopefully* will end up looking a lot like this:

only without the purple edges. Those were added so the square format was kept during the printing process at Walgreens. The idea behind the painting is narcissism. The colorful, playful aspect of it is representative of children and immaturity (i.e. child-like selfishness) and the forms looking into the mirror is a contemporary take on narcissus’ punishment to fall in love with himself in the pool of water, the bubbles help create the feel of water - and just look cool.

(i just made that up, convincing? hopefully)

I’ve been seriously considering getting a tattoo for a while now. Damn you dustin yocum

Spring 2010. I underestimated the amount of time I would be spending in studio with 2 art classes. Beyond that, it’s not bad so far. Once my thesis and grad applications are out of the way it will be cake.

Working 20 hours a week at the library is pretty rad. I’m off by 6 and 7 monday-thursdays and work 10-noon fridays — however, this is something I need to get used to. I tend to take more time than necessary to hang out when I’m finished with class/work because I’m still in workaholic mode from last semester (aka the hotel). I am only working one saturday every three weeks at the Holiday Inn, allowing me ample time to do shit. However, when I have a chance to sit down I will and I often forget that I have a lot more time than I used to to do this. I suppose it’s still early, I have time to adjust.

I am going to Montana and Chicago (respectively) to present my thesis project in poster form, which is pretty exciting.

I’m extraordinarily nervous about graduate school.

I am, once again, pretty broke due to the 500 some dollars spent on applying. 
Two applications to go - one due February 1st online and another due May 1st by mail (which will be turned in much sooner). My applications are done but my personal statements are not.

With future money saved, I intend to buy an external hard drive and a 160G iPod.

I hope you are all well, miss you.

Coming into work tonight, I had the assumption that it would be a relatively slow, easy night. 6 people to check in, typically a saturday in mattoon isn’t too terribly busy which was the case until about 6pm.

A man walking down the hallway alerted me to a pool of water forming from the wall, more specifically the corner of a room labeled on the outside “baggage room” but in reality it contains a mess of electrical wiring and etc. Things that are pretty crucial to the hotel electricity working properly.
After inspecting the pool, I noticed that the water was not coming from the ceiling above, it was, in fact, coming from the floor. Upon opening the door to said “baggage room” i stepped in to turn on the light switch and heard a small splash. “Woah!” was my exclamation at the sight of a quarter inch of water swooshing around the floor.

The door frame of the room was leaking water onto the floor and it had gotten high enough to begin seeping out of the lowest corner. I had not noticed the water from my position at the front desk as it was not yet deep enough to overcome the change in floor height leading to the front foyer.

I assumed that a toilet was running upstairs that no-one had noticed and it had begun seeping down. Not really knowing what to do at this point, I call my boss, Darci, and tell her that there is water dripping down the doorframe. She tells me it has to be either room 209 or 211 so I run up and sure be it, the toilet in room 211 is running and the water had seeped over the bowl and was collecting in a small pool behind the toilet. The only odd part about this scenario is that the bathroom floor was not covered with water, there was some hole that the water was falling into behind the toilet that was allowing it to drain down the doorframe below. 
Successfully plunging the toilet, I thought my troubles were over. Bev, our head housekeeper had been called to help me with the water troubles, I had begun reverse mopping the water into the mop bucket and everything seemed to be okay. However, when she came back down and said the toilet was still running and it was spewing water everywhere I thought differently. It was then that I noticed the water pressure of the drip had increased from a steady drip to a stream of water shooting off the frame towards a surge protector hooked to a nearby shelf. She had to turn the water off for that room and attempted to fix the rogue stool. Although her efforts were futile and the toilet remains off, the water never hit any electrical element and I was neither electrocuted nor forced to deal with a power outage.
The family of 7 that were currently renting the room were MIA for the beginning of all the mess, but as Bev crouched around their toilet in an attempt to fix it and avoid making them change rooms, they entered the room and she explained the situation. Thankfully they were very amicable about the impending room move and mentioned that they had some issues with the toilet earlier but distractions kept them from alerting me.

Now, it is 8 o-clock and I hope all my water issues are over. Now if I could only get some macaroni and cheese …