Let the chaos begin

This journal is going to become primarily photo-related. Ranting will be relegated to a more private journal, and this will contain more sass, more photos, and more artistic / career related notes.

Classes start tomorrow.
My hair is growing longer.
I'm hellbent on my waist growing smaller.
I'm doing all I can to keep my various fall schedules straight.
I will not let any of this break me.

omg HI!

I'm back!! I'm sure no one was worried or seriously missed me, but I finally got my new computer cable today (after uhhhh 2 weeks. No I do not want to talk about how much I've missed my little Macky McMacMeister.) I have got to do Pete's graduation edits this weekend (I have some free time tomorrow afternoon and the majority of Monday night). The suite is fantastic, absolutely no complaints. I am moved in, as are the freshies, and I already love this class. They are fun and outgoing and not lame like last year's. They played games and weren't worried about embarrassing themselves, especially when all of us OC/OL/OAs were dancing our asses off during the various days - we've got a group of joiners, I'm thrilled.

I cannot wait. Let's get started. I'm ready so don't stop.

Brief as brief can be.

My grandfather died yesterday.
My power cord for the computer died today, with my computer's actual battery not far behind it as I type.
I'm packing nonstop for the next 3 days, attempting to move some things into the suite early (just in case), and going to NC with my mom for funeral arrangement type of things Friday-Monday.
I get back into Bing Monday morning, just to finish packing the car and drive to Caz by afternoon.

You won't be hearing from me much until school starts.
I have run out of time.

Alex

Today I shot senior portraits for a good friend of mine's younger brother. They turned out alright, I dunno if I'm jump up and down thrilled with them yet, I still need to go through everything in lightroom. I am happy with them, I took a bunch bouncing between a regular lens and my wide angle. We'll see...

In other news, drama drama drama. I cannot wait to be back in Caz.

No one panic. My links are all back (miraculously) - thank you Blogger, I was quite unthrilled with you.

In other brief news, I have a budget currently of $1500 to get me started with a solid pro camera and lenses (which, ps, is also my entire bank account, so I don't know if "budget" is quite the right term). I so desperately want the Canon EOS 5D Mark II, but it is currently another $1500 on top of what I've got, body only. It would seem wise to just continue saving, the issue is I'd have to save money that I'm not making while at school. I won't be working (as far as I know) so where am I going to suddenly have another $1500? I need a camera for school, specifically senior project, as my Rebel is dying more and more on me every day.

Ebay, here I come (unwillingly, as I don't particularly trust it).

Just a day just an.. ordinary day

Today is a boring day. I get to go grocery shopping for the apartment with Kyle when he's out of work, and I'm a huge nerd so I'm actually looking forward to it. I've been doing laundry all day, and I have done nearly nothing productive. Need days like this here and there. I'm going to try to work on pictures later tonight; if anything turns out spectac, I'll put them up.

What have you been up to?


[edit: cool. suddenly all of the blogs I've been following are gone. Completely. Awesome, thank you blogger.]

Discoveries!!

I did a whole mess of cleaning and organizing in preparation for going back to school (holy cow 2 weeks.) -- my room has steadily been taken over by things I need but don't use at home every day, and it needed to be packed up. I am a very particular packer, I do not want help packing my things as I can't stand how other people pack (not saying my way is fantastic or anything, but it's the only way that works for me).

I thusfar have a floor fan, small vacuum, bag of bedding (which includes an eggcarton foamy mattress cover, a fleece blanket, two comforters, a pillow, sheets, a loveseat cover, a Caz sweatshirt-material blanket, two bath towels, and a Snuggie. - see? only I can compact all of that into one bag that was originally meant to hold just one comforter), one camera bag, one pink milk crate of movies and entertainment, one tupperware bucket of misc stuff, and a garbage can. All I have left to pack honestly is stuff I can only pack right before leaving - toiletries, a suitcase of clothes & shoes, and my computer bag. Nice. I like being able to fit my life in my car. It just disgusts me how much stuff I still have sprawled across my desk and other various spots in my room.

I went through all of my camera supplies and gear since freshman year, and I discovered a misplaced flash meant for my Canon that I've been looking for for... two years. I also found the camera connector for my tripod, so I couldn't be more thrilled about that. I officially have three (working) lenses for my medium format camera that I didn't know existed, and more 35 mm black and white film than I know what to do with. Anyone in need? It's not terribly outdated. I do not need it, as I do not have a 35mm camera anymore (it broke after fall semester of my sophomore year and I love medium format so much I've never bothered to get it fixed).

Fantastic little discoveries all day long. My bookshelf is so disheveled and in dire need of reorganizing but I think that's a feat I'll have to tackle another day.
Thankfully the new tower fan I bought is quiet and works amazingly now that I got the proper parts screwed together. Definitely worth the $20.

Yesterday at Michaels I got 5 frames for $4.99 each to finally start work on Kyle's bare walls. Elsie, a blogger I follow because she's just so free and crafty and fun, discovered a tutorial on how to create TTV (through the viewfinder) photographs in photoshop, and the outcome is so fantasic I cannot wait to recreate them for my photo wall masterpiece. I'll probably spend the afternoon messing around with textures. I cannot wait to get back to school to get back to printing.

Honestly? I can't really wait to get back to school at all. I miss my friends and my art necessities being at my fingertips. I'm looking forward to it far more than ever before.

Photography

I am caught in a tough situation when it comes to how I feel about my photography. I look at half a million pictures a day, and all I can think is "it's been done before." But then I can't figure out how I'd personally make them any better if I took them. It's like, a world of cliches in photography, all just being repeated, and what kind of photographer do I want to be? Vintage. AKA taking pictures a way that's already been done. Over and over again. I don't know how to make something new, and still have myself in it.

and the school year hasn't even started yet, how depressing.

As far as internship

...there really isn't much to say. I clocked in another hour today, but it's slow and there isn't much work for me to do at all. Good thing it's winding down and I've covered all my hours, I just don't feel like I'm finished is all.

In other news, I have been ridiculously sick since Friday. During the day, I was feeling extremely stir crazy, so I decided to be quasi-productive. I baked cupcakes and painted a picture. (I'm debating adding some text to it... not sure yet)

That certainly made me feel better until I got unbelievably sick to my stomach later that night (I have a feeling it had something to do with licking a shitton of raw egg batter...) That sick stomach lasted for the next three days, which put a damper on what otherwise would have been one of the best Saturdays of my summer (I'll elaborate in a moment). Saturday night through yesterday until about 4:30 pm, I had a killer migraine and ridiculously sore neck, to the point where I couldn't relax my neck to sleep to try to get rid of the headache. After this entire several day ordeal, I was so weak I was like a zombie most of yesterday. I'm finally feeling better today, and last night was the first in over a week that I slept the whole night through and didn't wake up with a headache. Win! Time to be productive again!

Satuday was the second day of Speidie Fest, the pride and joy of Binghamton. It was techinically the 25th Anniversary Speidie Fest and Balloon Rally -- basically it's a 3 day festival where all we do is eat local deliciousness and listen to either unknown bands or washed up bands (usually), and then watch big hot air balloons take off from the park. You can pay per day (bad idea) or buy a button for $15 that gets you in all 3 days and allows you to go inside the concert areas for "free" (otherwise it's $20 per day). I was planning on going, but had no one to go with, and this was a problem because The Veronicas were opening for Sugar Ray. I have been a Sugar Ray fan from the 90's, and was not about to miss out on this concert. Thankfully, Laur had nothing better to do and drove from Caz to Bing to hang for the day.(the little blonde one's my favorite, she screams a lot.)(and then she took her shirt off.) I treated Laur to speidies, and she ended up getting me autographs of 4/5 band members, because she's just the best. We were in the middle of 13 year olds for the first like hour and a half of the total concert (there were 2 other "openers"), but by the time Sugar Ray came on, we'd fought our way up to the stage fence.(It's cool, you're totally allowed to be jealous.)

It didn't help that by the end of the concert, we both felt really sick from the heat, too much sugar, and not enough water. She got better, sadly I didn't.

I attempted shopping on Sunday with my mom, which was alright for about an hour, but then I was feeling like death again. I got The Time Traveler's Wife because I want to read it before I see the movie; I hear the book is terrific. I also got two pairs of American Rag jeans for a combined $22 (I love sales on the jeans that fit me perfectly), 2 3/4 length henleys from the Gap (thanks to a Mr. Mikazeuwski's friends&family 30% off), and 2 plain tshirts from American Eagle. A few solid staples, much needed, and all quite cheap.

The bright side to not having a job is that you can lay on the couch for hours on end until you feel better, rather than exhausting yourself further with work, and taking weeks to feel 100% again. Today I have errands like mad, and then (crosses all fingers and toes) Kyle will be 99% moved in, and we can finish tomorrow. This apartment has become the bane of my summer.

(edit: for the record, only being allowed to upload 5 pictures at a time, then hand arranging them is bullshit blogger. It took me over an hour to finish this post. Fix it.)