Let them eat cake?

Arianna and I celebrated her birthday with her family yesterday, and they bought a giant cake. We’re talking two pounds of chocolate mousse filling. They didn’t want to bring it home with them so now we’ve got a good third of the cake left sitting on the counter.

We’re generally bad with leftovers, so I’m determined not to let this cake go to waste.

Basically what I’m trying to say here is that I’m eating cake for breakfast and I have absolutely no problems with it.

The waiting game.

Last week the Minnesota House of Representatives approved a bill to allow same-sex marriage in this state.

And today, in roughly three hours, the Senate will be discussing and voting on the same bill. Everything I’ve read about it (and let me tell you, I’ve probably read too much about it) has said it’s expected to pass.

I am all kinds of excited.

If we do pass it, Minnesota will be the 12th state in the country to do so. We’ll also be the third state to allow same-sex marriages this month alone.

So I will be sitting here in anticipation for the rest of the day, and then I will probably end up crying either way the vote goes.

Here’s to hoping they’re happy tears.

How I lost my mind.

I had a class this semester that was an administrative nightmare. Somehow, there were three different versions of the book floating around, and the professor didn’t have the book anyone else had. So when she figured it out, she told us we would never have to use the book again because it’s so screwed up.

And then came the final she emailed to us.

Four short answers, two essays, and each one asks for examples from the book. One asks for direct quotes from the book.

Naturally, I sold my books on Thursday.

You can imagine how happy I was to get that email.

Entirely unrelated to anything, I am super excited for Vampire Weekend’s new album.

If not for the music then for more fun music videos like this.

Why you shouldn’t tell that random girl on the street that she’s hot

Why you shouldn’t tell that random girl on the street that she’s hot

This post does a lot to explain how male entitlement works and why it sucks.

Just read it.

It’s important.

It might be insane, but I’m trying to get up to three jobs this summer.

Actually I’m just trying to find a job to replace the one I have right now, but I want to make it until August so I can take all of my new vacation hours from them.

But I might have a spot working in the art/design department for a company this summer. Crossing my fingers, since any and all internships I’ve looked into would mean I’d be in school an extra semester, an I really don’t want to spend 5 whole years in school.

Wish me luck.

Never give a child candy, when that child is your 20-year-old roommate.

As I typed that last post, Arianna blew raspberries on my arm and then laughed so hard at it that she started snorting.

She did the same thing a few days ago, when my grandma agreed that our family is run by an iron-fisted matriarch. And all she could say after was “matriarch” and then she started laughing again.

I’m basically living with a kindergartener stuck in an adult’s body.

At least it’s never boring around here.

Because I’m an art student, that’s why

I am extremely excited that I don’t need to buy more art supplies for class for another three & a half months.

For example, my final project in printmaking cost me

roughly $40-50

one broken flash drive

like $10 in ink

more time and frustration than I am willing to admit

I’m starting a fund. The working title is “you’ve been an art student for three and a half years and yet you still are surprised when you’re broke three weeks into the semester.”

I think it’s catchy.

Beards and 18th Century France

So I’ve been studying the rococo movement in France and Italy (well all of Europe which basically has amounted to France and Italy with little bits of other places like Russia and some Dutch influences but whatever) and I have had to memorize the académie royal de peinture et de sculpture’s hierarchy of genres.

For your reference it’s

1. History painting – biblical scenes, mythology, stuff like that.
2. Portraiture, which is my favourite kind of art ever in any medium. Just so you know.
3. Genre painting, scenes from every day life.
4. Landscapes & stuff.
5. And finally still life. Which ends up being like food and dead animals in most of the stuff I’ve studied.

And while I was contemplating studying for the final I have in three days, I started thinking about beards. Mostly because not being able to grow a beard is my one disappointment in life. But anyway.

I’ve noticed, in my perusal of the internet (in that I follow like 20 beard blogs on tumblr, it’s not even funny) that there is kind of a hierarchy in the beard photo world.

It’s a little more up to interpretation because maybe you don’t like beards, or you like different beards than I do, or you just don’t like animals or the outdoors or mustaches. But basically:

1. The highest on the hierarchy will always go to cute guys with cuter animals. You don’t even have to have a nice beard – just as long as the kitty’s cute the barest of stubble is elevated to position numero uno.
2. The street shot – classy looking guys in suits or fashionable plaid or suspenders. Usually taken as full-body shots from the front; in front of a wall, window, or by a busy street in a city.
3. Outdoorsy bearded fella. In the woods, on some rocks, or someone who looks like he might be backpacking some time in the near future. *
4. In the car – as either a passenger or waiting in the driver’s seat. Usually a selfie.
5. And finally the drinking/smoking pic. This is last because I’m not actually sure most of the guys who end up in these shots know that they’ll end up on beard blogs for college students to put into a hierarchy.

*at like 3 & a half there’s the “yeard” pictures, where you find out how long a particular beard has been left to grow. Not included is the webcam/phone selfie because

It’s that time of the year again

Once again I find myself at the end of the semester, entirely unable to catch a bus on time and wishing I had a new bike instead of my old mountain bike with a bent wheel that I haven’t bothered to try and fix since fall of 2011.

It’s the same every year. Like clockwork. The 7:08 bus turns into rushing to catch the train at 8:30 because I am about to cross the street when the bus whizzes by.

I think the only thing getting me through the rest of the semester is the promise of not having to wake up at 6 after working until 12.

That and a trip to Milwaukee in a few weeks. Somehow I got my mother to agree to get Arianna and me a cheap hotel room for the night. It may have been slightly manipulative of me but I don’t particularly want to drive all the way across Wisconsin to the cities at two in the morning.

I mean, I don’t particularly want to drive across Wisconsin in the middle of the day either, but it’s a necessary evil. (Although if more people/things came around Minneapolis/St. Paul it would be an entirely unnecessary evil.) I can only handle being in Wisconsin for so long before I need to get back to the cities and my own state.

But I suppose none of that matters because right at this moment, the sun is finally shining and my giant term papers are finished and turned in, and it’s a glorious thing to know I’m almost done. (For a few months, anyway.)