Old Faithful and a New Semester

I regret to inform you that I am indeed back in school. I know. Believe me, I'm as devastated as you are. Due to Mr. Uskoski being on track in the Spring I didn't think it would be too polite if I went home for the summer leaving him here. So long story short, I got onto Fast Grad (go all tracks until you graduate) and am now in my very first spring semester experience.
I'm taking an incredibly full load that may break my brain in the end but will allow me to graduate this coming December. I don't know how I got done so fast, but I did.
My classes this semester: Advanced Illustration, Head Drawing, Oil Painting, 20th Century Art History, Readings (Art theory), and Doctrine & Covenants.

The worst part about going to Spring semester is being denied the free time I would have had to do awesome activities. My roommates Kristy and Kalee told me that they usually go camping and do a ton of fun things so that made me feel better.
Our first fun thing: Yellowstone! If you want amazing pictures and way cooler stories about Yellowstone please refer to Megan's blog because my experience is nothing compared to her. But now I can say that I have finally been and saw Old Faithful!! I can see why my brother-in-law is in love with the place. It is absolutely GORGEOUS!!! We saw a bunch of caribou (or as the NW native americans call them "wapatee") and a lot of buffalo.

I'm expected many more mini-summers in my not summer. And now for pictures: enjoy

on the way

Kaylee and Me

in love at Yellowstone

roomies!

my very first Yellowstone buffalo!

Old Faithful!!

hey wait... what's adam lambert doing in Yellowstone......

Pictural Anecdotes

First here is the latest in Creative Perspective. There are our 2 point perspectives. The first is an interior with the theme of Villian's Lair. We could use an already existing villain or create our own. I had fun with this one and the class loved it.

Then we had to do a 2 point exterior. This time the theme was construction/deconstruction. I chose to do an abandoned monastery.

Saw this at the store when we were checking out cheap steaks. Not sure who would want to eat this...

Saw a flier of this at Horkley's (local gas station that sells super cheap fountain drinks). Tell me if he looks like anybody to you...



Was walking in the Hart Building (P.E. building). Saw this and thought it should belong on failblog...

I have this red knitted scarf that Megan made for me. I didn't even know it was lost until I went into my figure drawing class and saw a really trendy looking bust...


Yesterday Cody and I got New Fong's (our Chinese restaurant that's right across the street). While we were eating Cody was talking about how he only wants to get rich so that he can eat our whenever he wanted. I just said that every now and then I like to have the treat of eating out. 5 minutes pass and we open our fortune cookies...

My fortune:

Cody's Fortune:

I think the cookies were listening to our conversation..


Now it's on to the last two weeks of school that include major projects and tests and papers. If I survive I will then get to go back to my family whom I miss very much and am not looking forward to going another 3 months without. Prayers are encouraged. Believe me, I'll need them.

art update

Creative Perspective:
This is from two assignment ago but it got hung up on the wall (only 4 in the class got the honor). He put up our new assignments so naturally this one had to come down. I would show you the other assignment but that one made it up on the wall also! I can't tell you how good it feels to see something you put so much effort into displayed for others to see it. And it's also nice to know that the teacher thinks your work is worthy also. I'm excited to show you my last assignment (the one currently on the wall), the theme was villain's lair and let's just say I had a good time with it.
This is our one point exterior. I decided to do a giant cat jungle gym.

If we were going to include characters they had to be a seperate piece of vellum overlay,
so this is with the cats included

Figure Drawing......
Is killing me. Our teacher, to put it in simple terms, is a poop head. The hardest man to please and the toughest grader. Nobody really likes him. He's an adjunct which means he teaches a couple classes, not really a real teacher. Our midterm was to find an old masters painting and do a figure drawing with finished lines. This got me a B.

Saint John the Baptist by Caravaggio

Pottery:
This is the funnest, most relaxing class I have taken. I feel more like it's play time than a class. I have a coil jar that I handed over to Cody that I need to take a picture of, but for now all I have is a picture of a vase I did. We worked on throwing and making cylinders. Once we made 3 good cylinders we got to shape them into vases. There's only one for now because I can't seem to find my other one to glaze. This is orange shino glaze on the outside with stoney white on the inside. When it came out (you never know how they're going to) I was happy to see that both the inside and out were speckled, which tied them nicely together. And now I have a cute vase to hold my pens and pencils in on my desk :)

the value menu experiment

The Contestants

Cody and I have always talked about starting a seperate blog on our cuisine experiments. We both extremely enjoy food, but mostly when we get to experience it together. We love finding new and interesting restaurants but also finding places we can call ours. Our dream career would be to be food critics, I mean, paid to eat, does it get any better?... (I submit that it cannot).
We've scoped out Rexburg and know the good places, but still have some to test out. We have our chinese (fong's), mexican (taco bus), thai (original thai) and sandwich (quiznos) places. Well last night I was really craving a hamburger. But Cody and Jessica don't just go to the closest place to get a hamburger. No, no, no we make an experience out of it, we call it the value menu experiment.
Task: Go to each burger place in town, order their dollar hamburger and dollar fry and see which one is best. (best being price, amount of food, quality of each).

Establishments: Wendy's, Jack in the Box, Sonic, McDonald's, and Burger King. (Dairy Queen didn't have a value menu and we didn't want to get sick from Arctic Circle)

(Click to Enlarge)

Results:
Hamburger (Ranked on Scale of 1-5; 1 =best 5= worst):
Cody: 5- BK; 4-Jack; 3- Wendy; 2- Sonic; 1- Mc
-Cody was a little partial, his reason his #1 was mcdonald's was because it tasted like childhood
Jessica: 5- Mc; 4- Sonic; 3- Wendy's; 2- BK; 1- Jack
-BK would've won, but this trip the buns tasted burnt. Sonic would've ranked higher on my list but I didn't care for the ton of onion bits). Jack's ingredients were by FAR the freshest

French Fries (Same scale as hamburger): (the fact that these fries were not fresh when we ate them was taken into consideration, they might rank differently fresh and eaten at the restaurant)
Cody: 5- Wendy's; 4- Sonic; 3- Mc; 2- BK; 1- Jack
Jessica: 5- Sonic; 4- Wendy's; 3- Mc; 2- Jack; 1- BK
-Sonic and Jack's fries had a very natural taste to them. Tasted like potatoes not fried grease. Sonic's fries came with a packet of salt, and you needed it. We didn't know if that was on purpose, like season to taste or not.

Cheapest: Wendy's... $2.06 (The rest were $2.12)
Best Deal: Sonic, you get way more food for the money
Hamburger Details (What comes on it):
Wendys: Ketchup, Mustard, Pickles
Jack: Lettuce, tomatoes, mayo (little or no ketchup, needed to be dunked, I like ketchup with my red meat)
BK: Lettuce, Tomatoes, mayo, no ketchup, bun way too overcooked (not normally burnt, usually my favorite but that darn bun)
Sonic: Large patty to bun ratio (stuck outside of bun, compared to most with ton of bread with itty bitty patty), tomato, lettuce, pickles, onions, mayo
Mc: Got cheeseburger, due to no hamburger on their value menu, results may change with hamburger, pickles, ketchup and mustard, cheese
-Sonic made us wait the longest, but had the fullest bag + mint!
-Mcdonald's folded their bag to hand to us (more efficient)
-BK- no napkins in bag, SMALLEST fries, like barely any, but best tasting...
-Jack- Most pleasant night shift worker
-Sidenote, nobody gave or offered us any ketchup with our food... odd...

..... Guess which is from where...

Cody's Winner: Jack
Jessica's Winner: Wendy's
-This was odd that Jack ranked so well because normally I never even consider eating at Jack in the Box, but they did very very well in our opinion. Well done Jack, but I'll still go somewhere else. haha.

All Gone.

Keepin' it Real....Simple.

I love the magazine Real Simple. Love love love! If there was one magazine I would get a subscription to it's this. My favorite part of the whole magazine is there amazing recipes. They have really creative, easy and super yummy meals (Megan can attest to this). One day at the grocery store I saw the little guy and just couldn't resist to buy it, especially since it was boasting recipes on the cover. So Cody and I have decided to make one of these recipes each week.

This week: Turkey and Been Chili. They spotlighted a turkey chili on the show Biggest Loser (one of my favorite shows) and I wanted to try it out myself. Lo and behold this issue of Real Simple had a turkey chili recipe. Ground turkey is a super healthy substitute for ground beef and way cheaper (we college kids like cheaper). It was quite delectable (just ask Cody who ate three bowls) and definately going to be a reoccurring meal in our lives.

This Blog Is Dedicated to My Dad

It's crazy but midterms for this semester are already here. Our shorter semesters are nice but it's crazy how fast they fly by. By the time we get settled into our schedules we're out of here (or on to a completely different routine).
Just in case you think all Cody and I do is sit around all day here's some things we've been up to:

-Valentine's Day-
Since this year it landed on a Sunday we felt low-key V-day was best. I had a "special meeting" in my stake (wasn't a ward or stake conference, just a special meeting with Elder Costas of the Seventy) which was very good. Our stake president is a wonderful man and we got to hear from the Rexburg Temple president and matron. Cody just attended his regular meetings which was nice because it gave me time to get things ready. The previous day we had bought steak and lobsters (that were on sale!) and some asparagus for a quaint fancy at home meal. And may I say it was delicious! We exchanged hand-made valentine's cards and Cody lovingly got me a heart box of chocolates.



-President's Day-
I drew this. See if you can name all the presidents.


-Peking Acrobats-
A couple times a semester we get a couple big name shows that come to our school. This was by far one of the neatest shows I've seen here at Rexburg. When I was in China I saw the Beijing Acrobats so it was awesome that I got to the see the other company. They did some ridiculously awesome tricks that scared the crap out of the audience and left us sitting in our chairs with jaws dropped. If there's one thing Chinese can do well, it's put on a good show.

a little racist but we couldn't resist doing our best chinese face

-Cody's Birthday-
Long story short we went to the Hard Hat Steakhouse (best place for prime rib) for Cody's birthday. His mom had called ahead and arranged that we be brought virgin daiquiris and she gave them her credit card number to pay for it. We went and they had our reservation but didn't bring the drinks and didn't have her number down, but it was no big deal, because it was still a good meal. Well Cody's mom was really disappointed because she wanted to do something for her son's 21st birthday so she called and talked to the manager who apologized and said that it was a communication error. He told her that he would send Cody a $50 certificate and call and set up the whole deal to be done over correctly. Cody got a very nice and apologetic letter from the owner and we called to set everything up. Well we arrive to a pre-set up table (table cloths which no other table had) and in a private room. The whole night we were treated like stars. We had our own waiter, and the owner checking in on us constantly. He kept insisting on us getting appetizers, salads and after our meal dessert. (He really wouldn't let us say no.) At the end he told us that the meal was on him and we could keep the $50 dollars for another night. All in all is was the best dining experience of both of our lives. We were so grateful and were very appreciative to the owner who really didn't have to go to such great lengths to please us lowly college students. (sorry that wasn't that short).

and last but not least, the thing I have been getting crap for the better part of the last month the fruit of my labors:
The studio classes I'm enrolled in this semester are Creative Perspective, Figure Drawing and Ceramics.

Ceramics: This is the first piece I've been able to take home. I missed the 2nd day of classes because of a brain mix up thinking that I didn't have class that day so I had to whip out two pinch pots in an hour-ish. Craftsmanship isn't that good but oh well. Instead of glazing our teacher let us do this cool thing with our first pots which is called Raku. This is where you take your fired piece straight from the kiln and put it in a metal garbage can (or any other large metal container) and drop it into a pile of sawdust and cover it in sawdust. The wood ignites and causes the ash to stain the piece. What you're left with is a neat matte black ashen look as seen below.

Creative Perspective: This was our first assignment called Dream Studio. We could be literal or take a more fantasy approach. It was a one point interior space. Naturally being a northwest-er I came up with this:

Figure Drawing: I'm sorry this is a lot of pictures. But that's what we do. For 2 hours and 45 minutes we draw two minute poses, three, five, ten, fifteen, twenty and forty (with a break in between). The best way to get it down is just to do it a billion times.