寒い

みんな、こんにちわ。ひさしぶりです！
わたしは元気です！あなたは？
あきはきます。あー、しあわせ。。。
さむいてんきがすきです！（＾０＾）

I'm still studying Japanese and memorizing kanji as much as I can, even though schoolwork takes up most of my time during the day! I just wrote that part above on my own, so hopefully it's grammatically correct! I'll probably have Takeshi check it for me when he gets home.

The plants my friend gave me about a month and a half ago haven't died yet, so I think I'm doing much better with my plant-care this time around! My goal is for these plants to have a long, long life. ;)

For this month of September (following the finance plan we set up), we've been able to save about $600! We're very happy, because every little bit counts. Part of the plan calls for not eating out at all, but I do stare longingly at the 'Sakura' Asian restaurant, and the Chinese restaurant in town, every time I walk by them! I wish the most for some sushi once and a while. But that kind of meal doesn't come cheap, most times. I know that when birthdays and holidays come around, we'll probably make an exception!

Here are some recent random photos!



Takeshi drying out some of his sage

Schoolwork and a snack

Photography class - blurry because I was still tampering with it!

Interest and Frustration

I am sitting in my college's library at the moment. It' freezing cold in here, as is the rest of the building. I believe in that's issue of the college still having the air conditioning pumped up, since we're just getting over summer, but seriously, you could really use some of the classrooms as meat lockers instead. All of this traveling from freezing interiors, to warmer exteriors, makes me feel all achy, as in "I might be coming down with something"-achy. Or I might just be coming down with something. :(

A professor told us today, that there's now a reported 40-ish-something cases of swine flu at the neighboring college in town. I think we're supposed to have a serious "meeting" overall about what they plan to do if people start catching it here as well.

I've been taking a multivitamin, but I'm about to run out of that bottle. I'm sure I want to stick to that particular brand of multi-vitamins, since I bought the damn thing at Walmart. When I think of a good place to get vitamins, I don't think of that store.

Takeshi has brought in the herbs we had sitting outside the front door, since soon enough it will be getting pretty nippy during the nighttime. I just hope he didn't bring any bugs into the house, with the plants. They've been sitting outside for about a month now, and who knows what kind of little bugs decided to make a home for itself in and on the herbs. So far I haven't seen anything crawling around.

My frustration with a few classes so far, has gotten me in a semi-defeated mood. There's been two classes (one including the Monotype Printing class I just came from), where I have totally (in my mind), botched my initial concept designs for different projects. Either I sketched some thumbnails in entirely the wrong size, or misunderstood the directions, and was a few concepts short. But I keep on keeping on. I'll just go home, regroup, and come back with another shot at it.

Random annoying people in some of my classes. I'm not trying to offend anyone in anyway, I'm just going off of what I've experienced but - it seems that in all of the art colleges I've gone to, there is this same type of girl. I have one of these in my classes right now, and she's downright annoying and I've seen her exact personality in other girls. She's very short, very overweight, and is loud, and outspoken. And this girl right now, has this very bouffant haircut that sticks out and up about 6 inches from her face. It looks amazing. The other day I was watching her and thought that she reminds me of a little fat hen. She's loud, she's short, and pudgy. And her cleavage is humongous! I hope she has another backbone handy, to help support those things.

Anyway, I'm off to another class - Photography! I've brought my Nikon D60 today with me, as required. Hopefully I'll enjoy this class, more than my last class.

Pile on the Work

Homework to be exact. And more issues and things to worry about, in my head. But this is college! And my senior year.

I don't mind classes at all - what I hate it getting up early. I'm not a morning person.

This morning I really had to force myself to eat my usual breakfast of oatmeal. The whole portion of it. If it's too early in the morning, I don't want food near me. I just can't eat a meal that early!

Classes are going well so far, even though there's not much to talk about yet, since this is still the first week of school. Today was Wednesday, and I think of it as my "Non-graphic design" day, since I don't have any classes that have to do with computers, designing, etc.

I had my Monotype Print class, and my Basic Photography class. No laptop required. ;)

I still have my Thursday and Friday classes to go. Tomorrow I have 3 classes to attend, and I stay at school from 10am until about 6:45pm. Thursdays will always be my longest days in the building. On Friday, I have only my History of Graphic Design class, which runs from 10am til 1pm. Yay for a short class day on Fridays!

On a totally different topic - I miss watching Japanese TV. American TV cannot compare, I believe. I miss watching the "Language Channel" with Takeshi on weeknights, and watch programs on learning French, Arabic, and Italian. I miss watching owarai comedy pairs, like Downtown. Now I see channel after channel of reality TV shows, and average or below-average movie reruns.

Maybe someday in the future we can order some Japanese channels for our TV! That would be nice. It would also be just another thing to remind me of my wonderful time in Japan. Bring a little bit of home back to us. And that Takeshi could follow his country's own news without having to read it online!