Friday, August 31, 2007

Submitting for an artwork show at work......

Okay readers I need your assistance. The company I work for recently sent out an email asking for all serious hobby artists to submit jpeg’s of their artworks for consideration in an upcoming exhibition “SEI Artists” in the SEI Gallery. Works can be paintings, drawings, photographs, printmaking, wood works, craft pieces, etc.. A focused series of work and commitment to the medium is necessary for consideration. What they are concerned with interesting images, interesting content, etc.

Well I have decided to submit some of my photography and decided to do a nature series specifically flowers. Below are the pictures I have narrowed it down to but I need your help to pick out the top 5 favorites. (I got it down from 62 to 27) So please look below and leave me a comment letting me know which 5 you like the best and think I should submit… Help me pick the most interesting images. Let me know if there are any you do not find interesting at all. I will probably do something in addition to the flowers if I can figure out what I want that to be…. Feel free to add any suggestions you might have.

Thanks and I will let you know which ones I submit and if I get chosen or not. With as many people that work here I am guessing there will be a lot of people submitting things.

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Okay let me know your favorites, if you can't just pick 5 keep it to no more than 10.

Sunday, August 26, 2007

A new look


So I decided to see if I ould straighten my hair without too much work and sure enough I found something that works. I bought a Maxi glide and despite the really weird name it works really well on my hair. Here are a few pictures of what I look like with straight hair. Kinda strange to see when I am so used to my curls but it is fun to switch it up from time to time.

So what do you all think???



Friday, August 24, 2007

Update on school and some other little things

Well the second Summer semester at ursinus has come to a close. Another 2 classes checked off the list. So now I have 12 credits finished and 52 more to go. (Man that makes it sound like I am nnever going to finish...) I took 2 classes that are pass/fail and 2 that were graded. I received an "A" in both of my graded classes. I had the same teaher for 3 of my 4 classes this summer. Joe Vesey. Excellent teacher, My other teacher was Ron Bywaters who was also a great teacher. I have a class with him this fall, and another one with Joe.

Well Fall semster starts up next week. Guess I better get my book and my parking permit for the year...

For those wondering about what I decided to do about my laser eye surgery well it is still up in the air. I want to get it but I do not know yet if I qualify or not. I go back on 9/5 to find out one way or the other.

I am still working on my digital protfolio but it is slow going since I have so much else going on.

Not much else to report.....

My unexpected trip to Maine....

So I made an unexpected trip to Maine this past week. What I mean by unexpected is I was not planning on going anywhere this week, but my dad was sick so I went up to see him. I chose to drive up. I actually enjoy driving, when I am actually moving that is. In other words I hate sitting in traffic that is not moving, and even worse is traffic that is not moving for no apparent reason. You sit in it for miles then all the sudden it starts to move again. I did have lots of good music to keep me entertained though. I listened to quite the variety of things both on the way up and back.

Things I learned during my trip:

- Never drive to Maine on a Saturday. That is when all the Tourists are headed up there for vacations and as a result all 4 of the toll booths at the stop going into Maine are backed up for miles (To New Hampshire who also needs to learn about toll booth management. Yea they might want to look into adding a few more booths to handle all the traffic.
- NY has the worst roads
- NJ still sucks… Ugh the traffic was terrible on the way back, and for no apparent reason.
- It is a beautiful drive up to Maine.
- I could make the trip in less than 8 hours if I didn’t get stuck in traffic.
- Easy pass is a wonderful thing; I have no idea why I did not get it sooner. It would be even better if some states ran it better.
- I want to take more road trips; I forgot how much I miss them.
- Riding on a motorcycle is a lot of fun and a great way to experience things around you. (Okay I already knew that but I was reminded of it this trip.) I am going to have to get my M class license here before long. Maybe in the spring I will look into it once I see what my course load is like at school.
- NEVER point out a guy you think is cute to the rest of the family. They will not think twice about stopping him and asking his name and if he is single or not, some might even go as far as taking a picture when they are not looking. Poor Emily….
- Bobbi can’t go anywhere without running into at least 5 people she knows.
- Porcupines like to eat storage sheds
- When Emily blows her nose it sounds like some sort of wild animal
- When you get sick, doctors make you keep a journal of things going in your body and coming back out. Yep Dad has a poop journal.
- The French have some weird taste when it comes to their houses. The neighbors had a green garage and a BRIGHT purple door on it. Dad’s house was built by a French mason in the 70’s and there is a few really interesting things about it. Specifically the flower in the plaster of the ceiling where the ceiling fan is. Wrong, really wrong.
- My family likes to go out to eat.
- Just because you buy a Finch feeder doesn’t mean they will not come eat from your feeder when the neighbor has 10 hanging up.
- My dad will collect just about anything. He has a Subway booth in his carport.


So here is a brief run down of what I did while up there.

The visit was nice. Dad had no idea I was coming so He was quite surprised when I pulled in the driveway and walked up the front walk. I was glad I could surprise him. We went out to Longhorn the first night I was there. Of course Dad and Bobbi knew all the wait staff and the managers in the place. You could tell they eat there a lot. The food was really good. Then it was back to the house and just relaxing for the rest of the night since dad was still not feeling the greatest.

Sunday was the day Susie flew in. So dad and I went to Portland to pick her up while Bobbi went to teach her Sunday school class. Her flight was late and she was dead tired by the time she got in. She was able to catch up on a little sleep on the way home. Once we got home it was lunch time, and after that Me Susie, and Dad all ended up taking naps. I love a nice Sunday afternoon nap…. For Dinner We cooked out on the Grill and had steak and chicken. Emily came up and Bobbi’s brother and his family came. It was very nice.

Monday was a gorgeous day. So us girls, Susie, Bobbi, Emily and I, headed down to Boothbay Harbor for the day. We could not have ordered up a more perfect day weather wise. We went to See Uncle Brett’s Rock store, It is a little jewelry shop called Harbor Stones. Very cool stuff. We went too a few different T-shirt shops and I got myself 2 T-shirts and a sweatshirt, well I should Say Bobbi got them for me, since Dad told her to buy them for Susie and I. The we walked across the foot bridge to go have lunch. Susie Got her shore dinner which was clams and Lobster, or as we now call it, Clams and Bob. We went on a harbor cruise to see seals, we saw their heads bobbing in the distance, so not many seal sightings but a nice cruise. Everyone but me was freezing when we were out on the boat. Despite freezing while on the boat we all had to go for Ice cream afterwards. Yummy!!! It was a fun day.. So glad Emily was able to stay the night and go with us.

My last night in town we decided to go out to eat at Ruby Tuesday’s. We were able to track down the cute manager that Bobbi says is Emily’s type. They spotted him when they were there having lunch the other week, but poor Emily was having a nervous break down that day. Bobbi wanted her to talk to him but there was no way she would do it. He helped our waitress bring our food plates to our table. So dad seized the opportunity to ask him his name, Chris, and then Bobbi explained why and then asked if he was single, turns out he is engaged. It is a good thing Emily wasn’t there; she would have been under the table hiding from sheer embarrassment. We also found out that night that the cute guy that works with Brett is living with someone. Back to the drawing board…

Coming home was a big let down. But it was great to have a real break for a few days. It was the closest to a real vacation I have had all year. Yes I went to Vegas twice but I really didn’t get to do as much relaxing as I would have liked, or needed to do.

Here are all the picture I took while in Maine..

Wednesday, August 22, 2007

My Family is Nuttier than Squirrel poop

Yep they are nutty but I do love them. I just got back from an unexpected trip to Maine to visit my dad who had been sick. Luckily he is on the mend... It was good to spend a few days in Maine and I will have lots more to say about the trip later but for tonight I wanted to get something short put up on my Blog...

So why is my family so crazy.... Well here is just a small sampling what makes them so nutty in my book...
Dad- He has has a motorcycle in the basement next to a large carboard cut out of Elvis.
Bobbi- and her sock bird feeder. (Emily she was sooo 215ing over that sock feeder)
Emily- who speaks in code that very few can understand or translate.
Uncle Ritchie- who is just plain crazy no explination needed if you meet the man.
Uncle Brett - who went from playing with sticks for a living to playing with rocks for a living.
Josh who calls home but doesn't want to talk to anyone but dad.
Susie is probably the nuttiest casue she wants her boyfriend Wade to come and meet her crazy family.. And she means the real family, not the family on their best behavior...
Okay I am beat. I need a whoppie pie then off to bed... (yes I meant to type Whoppie, not whoopie)

Will Blog more later for now enjoy a few pictures from my trip. More to come.

Thursday, August 16, 2007

What kind of flower are you...

Hmm so what do you all think is this accurate for me?? I am thinking yes...



I am a
Snapdragon


What Flower
Are You?




"Mischief is your middle name, but your first is friend. You are quite the prankster that loves to make other people laugh."

Help we are being invaded by GIANT ground hogs…

Oh wait, my bad it is just Verizon here upgrading the lines to the new FIOS service. Phew that was close because I thought someone had armed the giant groundhogs with spray paint cans. There are Yellow, red, white, and bright orange lines and arrows painted all of the place, in the street, on curbs, sidewalks, driveways and even the grass. Looks like graffiti done by a bunch of preschoolers. There are also huge holes all over the neighborhood, and holes with big orange cables sticking out of them, I was thinking perhaps the Ground hogs were using them to get air like a snorkel. Now they always say things will be put back the way they were but it is clear that is not going to be the case here, curbs have been chipped and cracked by the machinery, where once there was grass there is big patches of dirt, and speaking of dirt… it is all over the place. My poor dog is not happy about the influx of people near HIS house and barks loudly all day expressing his unhappiness about it. He is also very displeased at the holes being dug in HIS yard. He is especially happy about the hole by the mailbox which was his favorite patch of grass to tinkle on.

We have no plans to upgrade anytime soon so it is just a nuisance to us to have the front yard ripped up and the neighborhood looking like it has been invaded by giant ground hogs…

Monday, August 13, 2007

I wish I could run away for the day.....

Do you ever have those days where you wish you could be a kid again? I am having one of those days today. I want to just take all my stresses and cares and put them on a shelf for one day and go play.

I remember the days when I was not up visiting my dad or grandparents, and not with my favorite Aunt and cousins at my grand mother’s house swimming when I would go biking or putting my roller skates on and being pulled behind someone else’s bike down to a little creek where we would hang out for the day just skipping rocks, trying to catch tadpoles, wading in the water, and dreaming of what we wanted to be when we grew up. We had this bridge we would hang out near because it was shade on the really hot days and had some great acoustics when we would try to sing our favorite top 20 hits of the day. Lets just say none of my group had a future in singing. Of course none of our parents really had a clue where we were. ½ of us had parents that worked all day and the other ½ had mom’s at home that thought they were just at someone else’s house playing.

We always had our big cassette walkmans with us and would usually run the batteries down before the end of the day, swapping out our tapoes of music recorded off the radio. We would all bring our “lunches” with us. Now trust me the term lunch is used very loosely here because despite the occasional peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, or peanut butter and pickle in my case, there were usually a lot of snacks, mini bags of chips, fruit roll-ups, tasty cakes, pop tarts, little Debbie snacks, and of course someone always brought candy like pop rocks etc… Of course we all had out frozen Capri suns and juice boxes too, sometimes the occasional can of coca-cola. We all swapped and shared our treats with each other and I can’t recall anyone being able to eat a fruit roll-up without wrapping it around their fingers first. And thinking back to how grubby we would get I am sure today I would cringe at the idea of eating with my hands that dirty let alone wrapping my food around them then eating it off.

None of us had any idea of what time it was because even the few of us that owned watches at the time never wore them. We would just head home when it started to get dark. In late summer that wasn’t such a bad thing, in eerily summer though we tended to get home a little later than we should have.


So today I would really like to grab a can of coke and a peanut butter and pickle sandwich and a bag of Doritos and head off to some quite place by the water, with very few to no people passing by, and just kick back and skip some rocks with no cell phone or concept of time. I wonder if a blackberry would actually skip better than rocks do…. I would bring my ipod with me over the clunky cassette walkman I used to carry around. Oh and some anti bacterial gel for my hands too. LOL

However I don’t think I would be able to relax knowing that reality is still there waiting for me to com back so it can smack me around some more. Too much going on right now and too many responsibilities. Even if I could teleport back to one of those lazy summer days if my dad was sick I would still be worried, and if one of my best friends was still treating me like garbage I would still be hurt. (Of course back then I probably would have thrown rocks at said friend instead of trying to skip them) So even being a kid again really wouldn’t help much, but being an adult still is the less desirable situation sometimes….

Sunday, August 12, 2007

When it rains it pours.....

You know those days when you know something bad is going to happen. Well I have had about a week of those. Today was the final straw though. I just found out my dad is in the hospital and they don't know what is wrong with him yet. Hopefully they will know more tomorrow and that it is nothing serious. So with a best friend MIA, some other unfortunate things and now my dad I am hoping the coming week gets better.

Thursday, August 2, 2007

vote on my friends' Blog

My friend, Paul, is trying to see what he should do with his hair. I personally think another mohawk is in order, a pink one at that... Check out the pictures a few posts down if you wantto see him with a mohawk back in the day.

Vote Here

http://www.cprambo.blogspot.com/

Girls Camp 2007

So this year I only went to camp for 1 day instead of the whole week like I have done the prior three years. I still went as the photographer though and took about 700 pictures when all was said and done for the day. Camp was at a different time and location this year. The best thing about the new location was how much closer it was to home, so I could actually just go for the day. The worst thing was the food. The girls started to feel like they were at fat camp since the portions were so timy, not to mention the quality was no where near what they were used to. Luckily they did not have to worry about bears at this camp so they could bring candy and other snacks with them.

It seemed like a very calm year compared to some previous years. No where the drama that we have seen in the past. the girls all seemed to be having fun and enjoying camp as much as they would allow themselves to enjoy it. The crafts this year were really fun, the sports were diffferent and challenging for the girls, and there was a pool instead of swimming on the lake. The bad thing was the boats they had for boating had holes in them.. The cbins had bathrooms in them and there were not as many GIGANTIC spiders as seen in the past. I have included just a sampling of the pictures I took this year.

decisions decisions

So this week I finished my 3rd class since going back to school, and in 3 weeks I will finish my 4th class. I will have 12 credits down and at least 52 more to go. UGH!!! It seems like so much but I keep hearing the time will fly by. I sure hope that holds true. I am now looking at a dual major which is really going to make things crazy for me this fall not to mention expensive. Instead of taking just 8 or maybe 10 credits I am going to be taking possibly 16. 8 of which I will most likely not get reimbursed for from work since they only cover to a semester. I am looking into it though since I would only be taking 2 classes at a time since a lot of my classes do not follow the normal semster rules. I am waiting to hear back from the benefits department on how they are going to handle assistance now that more and more schools are doing accelerated programs with classes lasting 7-8 weeks instead of the traditional 15. The Fall was going to seem easier than this summer but not it might be that much tougher. I have a week or so to decide so any input from my readers would be greatly appreciated.

Going this summer has been tough with everything else going on. But I have stuck it out and given it my all despite wanting to throw in the towel more than once. Now I just need to decide if I am going to do the dual major and bulk up on classes this fall or stick with the single major and bulk up in other places for classes.