Healing and Fun with the Internets

G'day all,

I am feeling much better now thanks for all of the good wishes I think it is really helping! I find out in the next day or two if I have the antibody that means I have Mono, but I am feeling so much better right now that I am secretly hoping that it was just an epically bad mutant penicillin resistant case of strep throat. In either case, however, I feel so much better! (it's amazing how much you appreciate swallowing once you can do it again) I also have the rest of the week off from school to heal myself and I am hoping to be better as soon as possible.

Teachers here are so sweet and accommodating about illness, maybe they just aren't as jaded about excuses as some of the professors from SC. My paper has been extended, and my painting professor gave me a five-step radius and told me to go straight home as soon as possible, and to let her know if I DID have mono so she could 'warn everyone.' I feel like a plague victim.

My biggest problem right now aside from the fact that I sleep a lot is what to do with the time when I am not sleeping. Although painting does not seem like it would be hard the prospect is exhausting to me and so I have spent a lot of time reading, watching my dvds (hooray for Pride and Prejudice, so good to me when I am sick) , and surfing the internet.

Oh, the internet. I think this is the first time in a while that I have actually expended all of my eagerness to waste time on the internet, and it seems that the minute I have tons of time to waste I have an incredible urge to be productive.

As senior year is approaching I have had the inevitable what am I going to do for the rest of my life questions and I am finding that my problems with that question are similar to my problems surfing the internet. I get really excited and passionate about one subject and have tons of ideas about what I could do should I go down that road, but there are so many things I want to try!

My latest internet adventures:

Cooking--Most all of my wasted time begins with tastespotting.com and i found these from the whistle stop cafe food blog, which brought me to other food blogs, which have all collectively convinced me to start a small herb garden and maybe a tomato plant this fall.


Painting--Tons of artists post their work online and I have stumbled on to many of their pages. How cool is this guy's stuff? His name is David Brewster and it seems like he does all of his paintings with a palette knife they are so vague but so easily recognizable. http://www.artnet.com/artwork/424080736/424035807/david-brewster-1guilded-sky.html

Mexico--I was despairing with Courtney as to how expensive travel in Europe has become. I was telling my Mom that I am buying some plane tickets to get around Europe and she said, but can't you take the train? One train ticket online from London to Paris for a youth (18-25) is $137 USD, or 137 Australian dollars for those of you who were wondering. I have found some tolerably cheap tickets to get around but I was remembering how inexpensive, fun, and delicious my family trip to Mexico was so instead of researching more European flights I spent about an hour looking at towns in Mexico. They rent whole houses in some places that could sleep tons of people for $1000 per week in off-season. That is $147 per night for a house, if we had 9 people then that would be $15 each! I inevitably spent time looking at small non-touristy places, this place looks great! Except, i don't know WHERE we would find the time....

Isla Mujeres
Couchsurfing—This is a new network I have joined with Lena and Courtney so that we might be able to stay with people instead of in hostels on my trip this summer. I was wary at first, but most people have extensive profiles so that we can see what they are like, and I will be with someone else the whole time. I would so much rather a couch than a dorm full of drunk college students!
Cake decorating—I have no idea how I came upon this idea, maybe stumbling, but aren’t these cakes amazing? They are covered with some kind of marshmallow icing that has that finish. It seems like every time I see something like this I want to start on it immediately. Couldn’t it be amazing if I made a cake with blue icing and then put wax paper flowers on it, then sprinkle the whole thing with powdered sugar and take the wax paper back off again? It seems like if you want to really do it right you need icing tubes, and gum sugar, and paintbrushes and special food coloring. Everything I want to try needs so much investment and special equipment! I want to do silver-smithing, and I would need an anvil and blow torch and tools and silver, same with glass, same with cakes apparently, very exhausting. Plus the cakes I bake would actually have to turn out… could I just use betty crocker cake and then decorate do you think?
This photo was on a page titled "Are You Ready To Turn Your Cake Decorating Hobby Into A Money Making Business?" could you think of anything more dangerous to read?

Stuffed animals—I enjoyed making stuffed animals for my cousin’s baby boy last year and the minute I saw these I wanted to do it all over again! Wouldn’t it be fun to have a craft stall for the rest of my life? But then I will need a studio and storage and I don’t know what else.

Isn't it cute? more in the gallery here: http://everylittlething.typepad.com/

Web Design—the project I am a part of that takes me to Tumut constantly has a website run by two people who are constantly busy with work. I have thought about learning to do this more since I really like messing with my site and the Hellions website, but there is so much to learn! And plus what I really like to do is design the look of it, but there are so many little things that you have to do to make it work! In my own site, for example, I had to write a new page for each painting I do and will have to do the same for jewelry should I choose to pursuer that, sooo much busywork!

Anyway, the website for the project is nice and I spent any length of time perusing it to see how it works, then looking at their other projects. God forbid I actually complete a bio and become a member of the blog like I was sposed to do a month ago…it has been so long at this point I feel like I am past getting an account though. Anyway if you want to see pictures of me in tumut you can look on this site although the navigation isn’t completely logical…

http://www.tumut.engagingvisions.com.au/categories/artists

Design in general-My roommate received a package from a site called threadless.com the other day so I had to check it out. It is a site where you can submit designs and get a lot of money if yours is chosen for a tshirt! I want to learn to use adobe illustrator and design tshirts asap, then learn to screen print, then begin to wear tshirts again...hmm. Here are some of the ones I liked…

It's Just A Summer Job by Mike Sayre aka mildish

In Pachydermic Fashion by Michael B. Myers Jr. aka slaterock

Robot Dance Contest by Cameron McEwan aka Ronin60

Please send me any wacky ideas you have for an illustrated t-shirt; I really want to try one!

Letters—all during the perusing I am listening to Daddy Long Legs, a novel I read when I was pretty young, free from the internet. It has inspired me to finally write my grandmother back (the letter isn’t finished yet grandma but it should come in, I dunno, the next month or two) The book is so funny! I must have been much less attuned to sarcasm when I first read it…

Anyway that is all off my internet perusing for the week condensed down and given to you in a reader’s digest format, with so many fun things to make what AM I going to do with myself?

PS didn’t quite finish this last night so I thought I’d add before I post it. I cleaned my room today, and vacuumed, AND did laundry! Thank goodness I did too because Mani’s sister is visiting us. I always know when I am over the worst when the piles of clothes and medication on the floor start to bother me. I am a little tired from the effort but I feel much better in a clean room. (AND I wore real clothes today!)

Anyway I am sitting in my room with all of the doors in the house and my windows open so it smells like fall. I simply must go grocery shopping now because I am tired of condensed soup and my potato soup did NOT thaw well unfortunately, it looks like swamp thing. How do people have such success in the freezer? My things are just never as good if I freeze them. Off to buy and bake chicken drumsticks with some green beans and baked apples, mmm I MUST be getting better…Cheers!