Jam session

So this past weekend I was back in OB and hung out with Gerry and Phil at a friends house. I managed to take funny picture of Gerry, Phil, Brandon, and Joe jammin out on the keyboard and guitar, so I thought I’d stick it on here. Enjoy.

Things I can do this week that are free.

So this week I’ve been depressed about money. So here’s a short list of things that I can do that are free.

1. Shave
2. Shower
3. Watch movies/TV
4. Smoke my remaining cigarettes
5. Use the remaining gas in my car to drive around this little town
6. Eat at home until I run out of groceries
7. Write on this blog
8. Do homework
9. Listen to music
10. Clean my room
11. Shoot zombies
12. Wash clothes
13. Change clothes as many times as I want
14. Jog in place
15. Poop
16. Have great conversations
17. Jog in place until I have to poop, then have a great conversation while pooping
18. Nap
19. Google
20. Come up with get rich quick schemes.

See, aren’t you happy that you too can do all of those things for free?

Here’s to you, seth

This is the cig I spoke of.

New Porch

So this semester (next to last semester of college btw) I’m living with Clayton. We’ve got a kickin’ 2BR house behind a grocery store just a few minutes from campus. While our house is super nifty (and somewhat crappy at times) the porch was one of the main reasons we chose the place. It is a screened-in porch with wooden trim, and is pretty reminiscent of a log cabin. I feel like I’m on vacation in Gatlinburg when I’m out there. We have a pretty epic table out there: round, oak, lion paw feet, seats probably 6 people comfortably (if we had that many chairs).

Also adorning our porch area is the toilet that the renovation crew left there after re-doing the bathroom this summer before we moved in. Luckily, it’s pink. We could ask them to remove it, but it does provide pretty decent (and comical) seating. We have a pretty epic ash tray collection and a way to hook up the radio for some good tunes.

Porch pictures coming soon hopefully, I’ve been a bit out of luck with my camera battery lately but I suppose some pics from the camera on my phone would do for now.

Any help resurrecting this blog would be awesome. Keep chillin people.

Back from Italy

Well I’m back from Italy now, with all the city-hopping towards the end of the trip I didn’t have time to sit down and write anything really. But lots of awesome things happened, but now everyone can just ask me about it when they see me instead of me writing stuff down on here. I’ve got some pics of the trip up on Facebook, at least enough albums to browse through on a lazy summer afternoon. So check them out if you wanna, and hopefully I’ll find something new to write about on this blog soon.

Almost done…

It feels crazy that I’m almost done with this trip to Italy. Everything has been moving so quickly; after the first part of this week we’re packing up and heading to Rome. We’ll be in Rome for 3 days before we travel to Florence, where we’ll be for 3 more days. We then finish in Milan, and I catch my flight back home on June 15. Crazy!

Since everything is about to move really quickly and I’m not sure what my internet situation will be, this may be one of the last posts I have on here. But I’ll try to write more often this week to make up for that.

In other news, my teacher for the technical sketching class that has been the bane of my existence for the past few weeks decided that he was asking unfair things of me and Mamie (the other graphic designer on the trip with me). He said he felt guilty about changing up the class requirements when we got here and that most of the sketching the class was about to get into was beyond our abilities. Basically, he realized that there was no way to get decent work out of two people that haven’t spent the past 3 years studying architecture and practicing technical sketching (sucks that it took him 3 weeks to realize this, but oh well). So now me and Mamie are going to be putting together a book of the trip including the sketch work and the watercolor work that everyone has been doing. That way, we’re getting a possible portfolio piece that can also be a souvenir for everyone on the trip. We’re both incredibly excited and extremely thankful that we don’t have to waste our time (and our teacher’s time) doing bad sketches and practicing a technique that we’d never use again.

I also took a day trip with some friends to a lake last weekend. The funny thing about this lake was that it was a clothing-optional lake. The slightly more funny thing was that none of us had any idea that it was this sort of lake before we had already rented chairs for the afternoon. So we decided that we’d just make the best of it and enjoy the sunny day and nice water anyway. The only completely naked people were little kids, and even though the gross European bathing suits that the adults were wearing could barely be considered clothing, most people were at least wearing that. So maybe the more appropriate term would be “topless beach/naked babies” lake. Either way, it was a fun and relaxing time that was super awkward and super funny. We went back to the lake yesterday, and found a great sushi restaurant to eat at afterward. It was a really nice change from eating nothing but pasta and pizza for the past 3 weeks, and it wasn’t very expensive (although if you convert the euro to dollar amounts, it’s somewhat discouraging). But now I’m off to work on book design, hope “the sun is shining and the weather is sweet” back home, keep chillin. I miss everyone, but I’ll be back soon.

Verona and other stuff

So this past week we took a day trip to Verona. It’s similar to Vicenza in how the city feels, but is quite a bit bigger and more modern in some areas. It also has one of the larger coliseums in Italy, I think it was either the second or third largest behind Rome (of course). The Killers are playing in that coliseum on June 8th, and I might go if the tickets stay cheap. The only conflict would be that we might be getting to Rome on that same night, which would drive the cost of train tickets way up from what they are from Vicenza. From here to Verona is only about a 45 minute train ride, and it costs about 3 euro. So we got to Verona and toured a sweet museum that had been redone by Scarpa, a famous Italian architect. After that, we broke for lunch and I had a heavenly kabap and a gelato mix of lime and orange (crazy good).  Then we went to a bank that was also designed by Scarpa, and it was pretty crazy too. After that we played around in a giant garden  for awhile before deciding to head back to Vicenza. We walked an absurd amount to get to all these places in Verona, so after all that we decided to just go to bed early.

This weekend was pretty fun, we just watercolored or sketched all day and then went out at night (still to the Art Bar, because it’s just easier when the people speak English sometimes). I did try the flaming shot because someone bought one for me; it’s called something that sounds like “sambuche” but that probably isn’t the way you spell it. It was weird but at least I can say I did it now. Quite honestly, it tasted like I had just accidentally swallowed some Listerine instead of just swishing it around and spitting it back out. My mouth was actually numb for a few minutes, which made talking pretty stupid (and funny for everyone else listening). But anyway, I’ve still got more sketches to do in the incredibly hot sun, so I should go do that now. Keep chillin, and don’t take air conditioning for granted. Ever.

Great weekend….

So much stuff. I just spent the past 4 days in Genova and Cinque Terre, both of which are located on the mid-western coast of Italy. We got there on Friday at around 3:00 after a fairly long train ride. The fact that we started out on the east coast and went all the way to the west coast for like 15 euro is pretty mind-blowing to me. But anyway, once we got there we took a walking tour of the city of Genova, which is a port city right near the Mediterranean Sea, and is also built up into mountains (similar to Cinque Terre, but I’ll get to that). We stayed in a villa there that is owned by Clemson University for their architecture program, and it was absolutely gigantic. It was around 4 stories, and had huge marble columns inside the house as well as marble floors. Nuts. The villa was about 3 levels up from the “ground floor” of Genova; we actually had to take giant public elevators when we wanted to go down into the town (that’s after walking about 350 stone steps straight down a hill). The city is huge and there are WAY more people than here in Vicenza (there are over 600,000) and it’s one of the largest cities in Italy. There was lots to do and the pictures I got to take from our villa can’t even really capture how ridiculous the view from our balcony was during the day and night.
On Saturday we went to Cinque Terre, which was the part of this whole trip to Italy I was most excited about. It did not disappoint, to say the least. We got there around lunch and ate at a cool bar that had good sandwiches and all the waitresses spoke perfect English. I ordered a glass of the famous Cinque Terre vino, which is basically the registered trademark wine of the whole area. It is only made there and it even has its own authenticity seal. Needless to say, it was the best wine I’ve had on the trip so far and better yet, it was only 3 euro for a glass.
We had taken the bus to the fourth city of the Cinque Terre region (it means “five lands” in Italian, so there are five main cities). This was Manarola, and that’s where we ate lunch and all. So after lunch, we decided to go on the trail that runs between all five cities (it’s around 12km, however many miles that is). It was absolutely absurd. One of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen in my life actually. We took several hundred pictures between the 6 of us that went on the trail, and even though they might all look similar they mean more when you know where each one was taken. We hiked to Corniglia and Vernazza, and then took a boat across to Monterosso, which is the first town. We chilled there on the beach before going to an awesome restaurant and having some more of that wonderful wine. There are 3 main things that Cinque Terre is known for: vino bianco, olive oil, and anchovies. So I thought I’d go for the full experience and try all three at once. I got a pizza that was actually called the Monterosso, and it had pesto, olive oil, mozzarella, pomodorro (tomatoes) and anchovies. I’m not gonna lie, the anchovies were really really good. I loved them actually, and decided since those are supposedly the best then I will never eat anchovies again, considering that they’d apparently be worse than the ones I had.
So the rest of the weekend was pretty chilled out, and I really had fun there but am glad to be back in Vicenza. We go to Verona tomorrow, so no real class! I’ll put the 18 billion pictures I’ve taken recently on facebook soon, so until I get to write on here again, keep chillin… It’s summertime!

Catching up…

So it’s been a few days, I apparently suck at doing anything in a consistent fashion. The sheer amount of homework we have to do is keeping me from fun things like writing on here and talking to people for very long online, but it’s not all bad. The watercolor class I’m taking is pretty sweet, and really relaxing. On the other hand, the technical sketching class is terrible. I like sketching, but not this “dry” and “correct” sketching. For some reason there is very little appeal for me in drawing something exactly as it is, or breaking it down into even more boring straight or precisely curved lines to show the thickness of walls and width of entrances (blah). Where’s the shading, the interpretation of perspective, and the fun??? Gonzo.
On a different note, I’ve met some pretty crazy people since I’ve been here. On Thursday night I went to the Art Bar, a little hole-in-the-wall place on the way to our apartment that plays American music (predominantly Rage Against the Machine and other music from that genre). They have pretty cheap beer and the walls are covered in U.S. license plates and comic strips, so it is right up my alley (I even got to sit at a table made of Spider-man comics from the 80s and 90s haha). Most of the crazy people I met were all from the U.S. Army base that’s a few minutes outside of town. They’re all huge (except for one little guy who’s 18, and by little I mean my size) and have tribal tattoos. They’re typically douche bags but they know it so it’s cool as long as you aren’t a woman. Then it isn’t cool because they use terrible pick-up lines that are straight off TV sitcoms or Keystone boxes.
I also met three people who taught me some Italian while I was there. There was a blonde girl who had lived in California for a little while who spoke perfect English; a funny Italian guy who spoke Italian, French, and some Russian but no English; and a Russian guy who spoke French, Italian, and of course, Russian. The only English he seemed to already have down were curse words and offensive hand gestures. He was hilarious though, and even after the other two left he stayed behind and hung out with me and my buddy Walt (since we were the only two from our group still at the bar).
We went back there on Saturday night, and I didn’t stay very long that time, just had a beer after doing homework all day then left to come back to the studio for more homework. I did stay long enough to witness a few people I was with take the craziest shot I’ve ever seen. First, you get a lemon slice sprinkled with coffee grounds; after you eat that, the bartender lights the shot of whatever it is on fire; she then covers the shot glass with her hand WHILE it is still on fire; when the fire goes out, it creates a vacuum that suctions her hand to the shot glass which she then lifts off the bar and shakes back and forth; after that she slams it down and peels her hand off of the glass, tells the person to grab the shot but not to drink it; instead, you pour the shot in your mouth and swish it around for around 10 seconds; after that, you swallow the shot and suck air through clenched teeth until you cough. That concludes the most complicated shot ever invented as far as I’m concerned. Watching people take these was enough entertainment for the whole night.
But now on to more homework, I’ll try to do a better job of keeping everything up to date. Keep chillin over there in the U.S., I miss everybody!

Un Caffe

So the past couple days have been pretty cool but very stressful. I am definitely not an architecture major, and we started drawing technical versions of buildings in profile, using variant scales, and then drew plans, axonometric sketches, and attempted some sectionals. Know what that means? Me neither.
So hopefully there will be more explanations later. Me and the other graphic designer in the group we frustrated beyond belief today, but I think we started to get it towards the end, maybe.
But in other news, I had an awesome breakfast the past few days, the traditional caffe and brioche, which is like a danish type pastry. One day I got chocolate and today I got marmalade, so I’ve been eating good. Mostly pasta or pizza the rest of the day so far. And tonight, I ordered an entire liter of wine without thinking how much wine that would actually be. It’s somewhat difficult to do much homework after a quick liter of wine.
But tomorrow is the last day of class for the week, so hopefully I’ll have some time to gather my thoughts and chill out a little bit. It seems like I’ve been constantly moving since I got to Italy, and it’ll be nice to just sleep in and move slowly.
So until then, move slowly for me, and keep chillin.