Info and pix are coming about Memorial Day, but waiting on more photos first so I'll leave you all in suspense....

but I'll give you a hint...

Lone Star Park...

Jaydee...

and a former 3rd-string quarterback for the Cowboys.

Plus just started school tonight, so that cuts down on my bloggin time. (Yeah I know, oh how sad)

Huh...?

Proof that our town has too many Mexican food restaurants...

More on school junk...

So like I said yesterday, registering for the summer session turned out to be a pain in the arse. I stated not long ago that I'd be taking one govt class the first half of the summer and then 3 others the second half. Well, I came to find out that you can only take a limited number of hours for each summer session, so I had to rearrange my whole schedule and decided to take Computer Illustration.

Then yesterday morning I checked on my schedule online, and good thing I did because they cancelled the Illustration class! So in a fit of hurry before going to work I had to again rearrange my schedule. Since the classes start Tuesday most of all the required courses have been filled, so I had few choices that still had open seats.

Here's where it stands as of this weekend:

Session I
US History to 1876 ....Mon-Thur 8pm-10pm (this was the only available time!)
Intro to Psychology ....(television course... I can also rent the video kit for $15 to watch at my leisure, which I will do if they're still available in the bookstore)

Session II (starting mid-July)
Art Appreciation ....Mon-Thur 10am-12pm
Life Drawing ....Mon-Thur 12:30pm-4:30pm

At least I can put off the government class this way!! (who me? put something off to a later date?? nahhh... not like me to do that... *wink*) But I do enjoy history so I might like that class. And then I still have the art classes for the second part, and I'll definitely enjoy those.

One more note, that means I'll be leaving my job by July at the latest. Heck I might leave by next week. But it's just so hard to give up that regular income, as much as I hate the job. I even feel guilty planning to leave... here we have this new training manager (no he hasn't quit yet!) and he's projecting all these plans for a training program and he doesn't know I'm not going to be around. I'll feel bad walking in and telling him he'll have to revise his plans by promoting someone else to the spot. This facility has mostly unskilled workers, so let's just say there's not much of a pool to draw from to do the job. In fact, far too many times my coworkers have asked me, "Angela WHY do you work HERE? You got skillz!" I would just tell them I'm a glutton for punishment, haha. But still, I'll feel guilty when I go...


Oh yeah...

I received an email from the college that they want to put one of my artworks in a publication they're coming out with later in the year. Plus, they're having a student art show that will include the works put in the book, so they want me to submit 3-4 artworks for the art show which starts in October.

Here's the work my art instructor submitted to them for the pub, a silly toy firetruck sitting on a wooden beam, with a hand-dolly in the background and various other junk on the table (not my favorite, but my instructor liked it):

What comes around goes around...

I don't know what the rest of you all believe, but I believe somewhat in the ying-yang theory... it seems certain periods of life have had bad luck and then all of a sudden things get better again and go good for a while and then changes to bad again. Luck constantly fluctuates up and down, daily, weekly, monthly and yearly. Lately things haven't been great, stupid little things like Jeep starter going out, then a flat tire, a tree falling on the other car, school registration being a pain in the arse (I'll explain that later), we'd gotten behind on the mortgage, need to pay property taxes, yada yada and more things that make you wonder each day "What NOW??".

But what comes around goes around... do something nice for someone and it comes back to you with good luck.

Today was a good day. First, the check came in the mail for the college financial aid, after the classes were paid $3000 was left over for "living expenses", and a little more coming in Mid-July for the second half of the term. So, I went to the bank with that check.

Then, I went across the street to the Fina station and while buying beer etc I bought a scratch-off lottery ticket. There's one game I like to play, a $3 ticket where you scratch off a crossword. By the time I finished the game I nearly fell out of the car... I won $500. WooHOO!!

So what do I attribute the good luck today to? The bicycle. Do something nice for someone, and God smiles down on you. What comes around goes around. Hopefully our luck wil stay on the upswing for a little while now... but if not at least we had this ONE DAY to help catch up on things.

Anyone else need a bike built? haha

Bike delivered...

Here's Falconer and son Sam enjoying their new custom bicycle. Apparently the measurements on the legs were a bit off, but he doesn't appear to mind!

Anyway, were're glad to make them happy :)

Bike finished...

If you recall about a month & half ago Hubby started a project called "A Bike for Sam", in which he was building a bicycle for a 3yo boy in Illinois with cerebral palsy... his daddy wanted to be able to take him for bike rides where he could sit in the front of the bike. So Hubby stepped up to the challenge and custom built the bike for them. The whole story and progress and photos of each step of the build are here on the Broncos Orange Mane website... ("Falconer" is the boy's father and "bronco610" is Hubby)


Here is the bike when it was completely finished and assembled last night. The boy has very little motor skills, so there is a harness in the front seat to hold him.

Here was the bike the previous day in the sunlight where you can actually see it, minus the seat. Pretty sharp huh? Enamel car paint and clear-coated.

This is a side view of the seat with the stickers that were applied on the side. You remember in the Broncos Super Bowl where Pat Bolen held up the Lombardi trophy and said "This one's for John" (Elway)... well that's why he put "This bike's for Sam".

Vinyl reflective stickers are everywhere. Also, check out the steering mechanism, it was one of the engineering dilemmas during the build but what he made works wonderfully... it's a bad view, but turning the handlebars comes down and swivels a lever in the front attached to the fork.

More stickers... it's clear-coated over the top of the vinyl stickers so they won't come off.


Since Hubby was burning plastic for the seat, he also molded this football-style helmet. (He used a bowling ball for the shape, haha) The boy he's doing this for has a tiny head and normal child-sized helmets aren't small enough. But here it's being modeled by Ashton our neighbor's 6-mo old... ain't he cute? He even has his mouthpiece in place...

So now as I write this Hubby's driving the bike up to Oklahoma City... from there another guy from the Orange Mane is going to meet up with him and drive the bike the rest of the way to Illinois to give it to the father. A LOT of folks from the website pitched in to help, mostly with donations to the project to offset the cost and some purchased a few items themselves and mailed them to us. Without their help it couldn't have been done.

But yay, it's finally finished!!!

Oh yeah...

But I did take the time this busy weekend to watch the Preakness. Once again Andy Beyer gave his commentary on ESPN about why Curlin wouldn't run well in this one... all the more better that the horse won. :)

And one more thing on the Preakness coverage... you know you have too much time alloted for a live program and are scrambling for time-fillers when they're resorting to interviewing the TRASHMEN. Whose bonehead idea what that??? The poor announcer doing the interview was really struggling to keep the guy from saying dumb things, but didn't quite succeed... the college party crowd was in the track's infield and the trashman got a bit crass discussing things people were doing... you could just see the announcer dancing around trying to change the topic, hehe.

On school...

I stil have another week & half before school starts back up for the Summer term. The summer is split up into two sessions- the first session will be boring as hell because I'm only taking one evening class, Texas Government. Ugh, I hate politics and goverment. I know I should be interested to be a responsible citizen and make informed decisions about who governs us and the laws for regulating us, but I just don't give a flying flip.

Second session I take more interesting classes- Life Drawing, Psychology, and Art Appreciation. I'm sure looking at art and analyzing it may not be your idea of fun, but it's up my alley. I'm even somewhat interested in the Psych class. But what will really be different will be the Life Drawing class. In short, it's drawing people. I decided to take it because I've never really learned to draw people well, and this will teach about body proportions and such. And the interesting part? Yes we will have live nude models. Male and female. From looking at the drawings on display from the class this last semester I have a pretty good idea of what I'm in for. There's obviously a younger woman and an older woman they use as models, and a man who appears to be a child molester from the way students keep drawing him. Sounds silly I know, I'm sure the students probably didn't intend to draw him to look like a pervert, but it just comes across that way in the pictures. The drawings of the women make them look all elegant and sensual, but then there's the drawings of the man sitting back spread eagle like in a lounge chair or something. I swear you think he's sitting in a bean bag chair on shag carpet, room darkened and lava lamp glowing, with Barry White mood music in the background... funny how art can fill your mind with an image that's not even on the paper...

More Idol thoughts...

She was robbed. Melinda Doolittle by far was the contestant with the best voice on American Idol... she has more talent and experience than Blake or Jordin. What killed her chances was marketability... she wasn't as young and cute. Of course she'll still get a record deal from all this, but she should have won too. If only her neck was 2 inches longer she might have had a chance...

And Survivor...

Yauman also got screwed. Again, the best competitor doesn't always win. Nice guys come in last, it makes for good tv. Too bad.

Another day, another new manager...

In the last 3 months I've had a total of 4 bosses... the one that promoted me to the position last year (and was fired 3 months ago), another that only lasted 3 weeks, another that was from our corporate office and "just filling in", and now another that's specifically hired for the Training Manager position. What's amusing is that each new manager then takes me & my co-worker Maurice out to lunch to "get to know us". Each one acts like it's all their own idea, "Hey I know, why don't I take you two out to lunch tomorrow?" Maurice & I know damn well that when the expense account is given to the new manager the General Manager then tells him to take us out.

So there was no surprise that today our newest manager "Bob" said "Hey I know, why don't I take you two out to lunch tomorrow?" Here we go again.

He then said he'd take us anywhere we want to go. I blurted out "STEAK & LOBSTER!" haha He replied "Sure, anything you want." Sucker! This manager won't last long. Nice guy, but no cojones. He won't make it in our dog-eat-dog-management. In this company you have to fight to survive, and giving in to be nice is a sign of weakness. Sorry to sound so harsh, but you don't know this company.

Anyway, I predict next month we'll be getting another lunch...

Helll-lloooo, McFly.....

Today watching the races at Churchill on HRTV... I don't know these announcers... but in the 9th one of the entries was D Wayne Lucas' gray horse Corredor de Plata. The announcers were discussing the translation of the Spanish name:

Announcer One: Want to give this one a try?
Announcer Two: Uh lessee... Corredor means "runner" and... Plata means uh, hmm, "silver" maybe... I think... I never can remember if it's "gold" or "silver", but I think the word plata means silver... so "Runner for Silver"
Announcer One: ... so I'm guessing that means this horse often runs 2nd?

Hello guys, the horse is GRAY. I'm pretty sure the name means "Runner of Silver".

(By the way, he didn't run 2nd, he set the pace but then in the upper stretch faultered a stride or two, dropped back and then was eased.)

Eventful day...

Hordes of people everywhere, practically half the town was there, police directing traffic in the parking lot, cars double parked in every square inch of space... you'd think the Pope had come to town.

Nope, it was the grand opening of the new Arby's restaurant.

I took this pic as I was leaving, after the chaos had died down quite a bit. See the fire lane? Cars were parking all along it around the building and on the road. In fact, I was parked another 50 feet away from where I'm standing here. The drive-thru line wrapped around the building and went out onto the street.

Inside it was a madhouse, you couldn't tell where the order line started and who was waiting for their order they already placed. Half the high school was working behind the counter, kids flying around prepping and bagging while managers wearing ties were working the deep fryers and trying to keep their ties out of the oil. When I made it up to the counter I remarked to an important looking man with a tie "Boy, did you have any idea Keller wanted an Arby's so bad?" He replied that they had already set a company record for a store's opening day.

In reality, we're just glad it's not another mexican restaurant.

So after taking this pic I got in my Jeep and turned the key... *click*. And tried again, *click*. Then I cussed a little. The starter had gone out.

Called Hubby... he then cussed a lot more than me... and came to save me. Actually a neighbor came to help save us too, and with his new truck he towed us home.

Bought a new starter from O'Reillys auto parts, hubby put it in and it turned out to be a bad one... so he took that one back out and now we have to wait until tomorrow for O'Reillys to get one from another store.

Oh well, had an excuse to take a day off work today. :)

Finals finally finito...

In case you're wondering what kind of finals do you have for ART classes?

First is my final for the Drawing I class. The instructor put a whole hodgepodge of different crap set up on a big table, and we had to pick out an area to draw. In this piece I like the green teapot and wine bottle so I made them the main focus, made the lighting fade towards the back and the items in the back blurred some to show distance. I really hate the silly mannequin on the right side (and her arm missing a hand, how creepy is that), in fact I'll probably do surgery on this picture and cut that and the fruitbowl out, and put something in its place that fits more with the theme, like a clock on the wall faded/blurred in the background. The clear glass bottle on the left side I think came out quite nice if you have the picture in front of you, but here on the camera photo it doesn't show up as nicely.

Anyway, I got an "A" in my drawing class.

Then for my Digital Publishing I class, I had to make a poster, brochure, and commemorative ticket for this film festival they have in Dallas. There were 6 stock photo images we had our choice between, and I preferred this modern cowboy image. I created a film-transparancy-like piece, and put gradients on the top, bottom, and inside the notches on the sides to show movement, like a film on the reel going over the lightsource. The logos at the bottom were stock, but all the other text I put together from info we were "given by the customer". Again, it looks better in person than shrunk down here on my blog (but I have little choice of size on this blog or else it distorts the tables of the webpage.)

I still don't know what my final grade was for this class.

For my Intro to Computer Graphics class we didn't do anything interesting for our final, it was just a simple text restaurant menu using the simple tools we learned this semester like how to use tabs, etc, and with a graphic we had to recreate in Adobe Illustrator using the bezier curve tool. It's too boring to show, really, fitting for the boring class it was. At least for the Publishing class we were able to do a "project". I don't have the grade yet for this class either.

For my Speech class I took the final test tonight online, got a 90, semester grade will be an 86 I think... damn, a "B". I was trying to get all A's. Oh well, there's a class I"ll never have to take again!

So... one semester down... seven to go...

Again, I like my little teapot... so here's a more detailed view of it...

By the way, you learn something every day... I was having a hell of a time with my red pastel, it was behaving in a way unlike the other colors... when rubbing it across the paper it would build up hard shiny patches, they seemed metal-like and would scratch the paper. I would have to rub the pastel stick across sandpaper to take the areas off so that I could use the pastel on the paper again for a few more minutes, then the metal-like areas would show up again on the stick. It was really weird, and only on the stick of red pastel... and it got to the point to where I HAD to find out what was going on. So I turned to the Internet and researched red chalk pastel... and what'dya know, they use something different to make the red pigment. FERROUS OXIDE This stuff is used for making magnetic strips, but they also use it in red pastels to make the pigment. That explains the odd metallic reaction.

Okay, I know... I'm a nerd.

Derby day...

Well, so Street Sense is our Triple Crown hopeful this year. It was a good race, and thank goodness it was uneventful (unlike last year's Preakness, etc).

"On The Rail Borel" sure got a lucky trip, holes opening up for him like Moses parting the Red Sea. The camera angle from above on the backstretch kinda pissed me off, I couldn't see the horses' numbers and could barely make out the colors of their sheets (with 20 different colors and the sun reflecting off them, it was hard to tell what was what). I also couldn't see who Borel cut off when he came off the rail to go around Hard Spun,

but there was no objection.

It was hilarious however the look on Borel's face, his giddy goofy toothless grin, I've never seen a happier Cajun.

One disappointment though... I was hoping Andy Beyer would be eating his words. He made such a point, not just in one media article but in two, about Curlin not having enough experience. I didn't get to see where Curlin was at the whole race to be able to tell what happened to him other than coming in 3rd. But it got annoying that Beyer kept harping on the historical failure of any horse to win the Derby that didn't race as a 2yo, ran less than 4 races, ever since 1897 or whenever, blah blah blah. What I found interesting was he hardly mentioned the Breeder's Cup Juvenile winner jinx, something that's normally beat to death by racing journalists each year. He was touting Street Sense as his choice pick, but was overlooking the Jinx fact while quoting defamatory facts disregarding other entries. So now Beyer's ego will be even bigger that he correctly picked the winner (even though his pick was the FAVORITE, and thereby also picked by thousands of other bettors. But hey, kudos to his handicapping skill!)

Oh well. So now I have to root for Street Sense in the Preakness. And if he happens to fend off shorter-running Hard Spun at Pimlico then I'll have to root for him in the Belmont too. We horse racing fans have no choice... we're always hoping for another Triple Crown winner, and will cheer on any horse to try it.

Go Street Sense.

A storm casualty...

The storms Wednesday night brought down one of the branches of our tree. At first we thought lightning struck it, but looking at it in the daylight we're guessing it was only a bad spot in the branch and the wind gusts were just too much for it. (There were reports of 90 mph gusts in Dallas.)



By the way, the car's fine. It has a blown engine anyway, it's been sitting dead for several months... don't ask me why we still have it other than Hubby having grand ideas of making it into a hot rod (yes, you heard me right, he wants to turn his old 4-door OLDSMOBILE into a hot rod... he's been watching the show Overhaulin' too much.)

Also in the bottom pic it's hard to see but there's 3 cats sitting on the car... they all think it's pretty cool that they can play in the tree without all the work of climbing...

Anyway, more firewood for next winter.

Blogger milestone...

Today May 1, 2007 at 11:26:37 am we hit a blogging milestone...

1000 hits on the sitemeter.

You mean a thousand times people have read this crap???

haha

And according to the sitemeter the lucky #1000 was none other than Mr. "swbell.net" from St. Louis, MO. Hey Jaydee I think that's you...?

Congrats, you've won a... umm... ah.... eh... a mention on a blog that's been viewed a thousand times. Enjoy your prize!

I need more sleep