Wednesday, October 8, 2014

Autumnal Things


I'm here again for another mismatch of random photos that have nothing to do with each other, except for they were all taken either in September or the first week of October. This is Buffy, the cat we adopted in May who is a total gem. She's endlessly affectionate, clumsy, and never ever mean or grumpy.


This is Joey. She is prone to being a drama queen. But she's still sweet and I think literally anything she does is cute.


One day I was looking at my nightstand (which Paul actually made for me out of a palette) and I noticed the beautiful and strange assortment of things I keep by my bed.


This was an awesome day. Falling Sky, a wonderful local brewery and restaurant hosted the world's shortest bike race. They advertised on Facebook for weeks with slogans like "13.1 feet of hell," "two pedals to victory, "and "someone will win without even trying." I think over 100 people showed up and they did it in heats of five people. It literally took like 20 minutes, everyone was laughing and in a great mood, and afterwards everyone went inside and bought a beer. If that was the secret marketing scheme behind all of this, good job Falling Sky because it worked. The race course was literally 13.1 feet long. They gave away free t-shirts. Paul and I convinced our best friend Muhammad to come and he was really skeptical and kept asking questions like "what's the catch" and "why is this happening." He was convinced it was going to be straight up hill or that people would throw things at you. Nope. That's him on the right finishing second place in the leg of the race where you were supposed to go as slow as possible. So he was the second most slow.


My little sister just moved to Eugene to start college and she's so grown up and I'm so proud of her and we went to the farmer's market and, among other things, bought pumpkins.


I wanted to make a blog post about how orange is my favorite color. My bike is orange, my Keds are orange, my new messenger bag I bought myself because I have tons of hours at work this term is orange. Our bedspread is orange. My yoga mat is orange. My KitchenAid is orange. Probably other things too. So I wanted to take a few pictures with my bike and my bag and my Keds, and on the way to take the pictures, Paul sneakily took this candid shot of me walking ahead, but I ended up liking it most out of all the pictures. 

On the right is a very strange succulent. A few months ago, Buffy chewed it in half. So we kept the half with roots in its pot and we put the top half in a pot of its own.  It used to be just one stalk with leaves. But since it was bitten in half, all of these branches keep popping out of the main stalk and now it's this beautiful little tree thing.


I have lots of reasons to smile right now. I'm working the most I've ever been working. It's actually a little overwhelming. But I'll actually be able to start saving money because I'll be making more than just rent. I kind of feel like an adult. I still have another transcribing job on the side. And I just found out recently that I've been chosen as the artist to do the biological illustrations for a bone manual being produced by a very important biological anthropologist. 

This is a crazy cool opportunity that I stumbled into. I'm just a twenty-two year old who studied comparative literature, Spanish, and poetry, graduated, started volunteering in an osteology lab because I fell back in love with science, and drew some bones for my own benefit during a research project I was doing. People in the lab saw the drawings, liked them, paid me to put them on their conference posters, and a very important lady happened to see them and like them. I'm not a professional illustrator, but with an opportunity like this, it could kind of happen for me. So I've spent the last few weeks drawing at my kitchen table, either listening to the oldies or watching American Horror Story, with monkey bones scattered everywhere. 

1 comment:

  1. I always love your posts!

    I think cheerful outgoing people like the color orange. :) that bike race is hilarious!! congrats on the illustrating job - that is so awesome.

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