It's been awhile, again. I suppose I've gotten out of the habit of blogging.. Most of my scantly touched personal life comes out on my deviantart journal ( http://inqy.deviantart.com/journal/ ), so I suppose it feels redundant to come over here and say something as well.

I do keep this up sometimes, though, and it's mostly because I don't feel like I can get too personal on my DA account. Whenever I have something overly personal to convey, I still come back here for some reason.

That's not to say I feel comfortable blurbing my personal life in any sense to anyone. But perhaps it's when no one human could possibly convey anything helpful to a situation that I resort to the familiar comfort of a blank page, to mark my thoughts without the interruption of advice and condolences.

Roland lost his job yesterday. Construction altogether in Sarasota has died, and Roland was a construction plumber. I'm happy he had the experience at this current job to become a service plumber as well, but once more the company he was with is on the verge of going out of business, so he finds himself without a job. I'm worried. We can't survive on my paycheck alone, so if he doesn't get a job in the next week, we will seriously be hurting. I've been thinking about how to cut corners, and even that isn't going to be easy. The first thing to go will probably be our cable service at home; then my monthly website hosting. Then we'll have to find a cheaper cell phone plan (not an option to get rid of them, since we have no home phone). We can pay off the truck with Roland's CD, and all that might break us even with my paycheck alone.

I can't pick up overtime anymore. The overtime at my job has dried up -- we have quite a few new people, and they did away with required overtime, since people were being canceled from it left and right. The only hours available now for overtime are usually from 3am to 7am, and as much as I might have to in the future, right now I just can't feasibly make myself wake up at 2am.

I still have my freelance work, though that's been trickling slowly to a halt. It's difficult to do too much freelance, anyway, with so much else to do. I'm into my senior-level classes at school, more labor intensive and difficult than they have been in the past. And while I'm extremely happy that I'm finally there, I'm also worried that I'll have no free time to continue doing freelance work to supplement our income.

This quarter, I'm taking computer modeling 3 (finally), intro to special effects (which should be visual effects, not special effects), digital 2d animation (my favorite this quarter), and 3d animation 2 (my least favorite).

I love animation, but Animation 2 is my least favorite at the moment due to the teacher, who doesn't know the first thing about Maya. She's a 3d Max professor, teaching an animation class to animators (not game designers), who primarily want to use Maya. I've spoken with my program director about this, though, and he was kind enough to offer to tutor me himself in Maya once a week, so that should be a great help.

I'm down from three days a week of that long drive to two days a week, and gas prices are down, so that should help a little. Quitting school is not an option. I'm three quarters away from my internship, and if I have to crawl my way there every morning, I'll find a way to do it. There is no other option for me. It's been too long and I've come too far and I can't fall down when I'm so close.

I think I've really hurt myself by not making a list of all my freelance work. My program director told me that I might want to list all the freelance work instead of grouping it into a clump like I have on my resume now (i.e., "2003-08: freelance art for various clients"). I could go back and try to remember, but it would take me so long that I'm dreading the organization of it all. Plus I don't remember client names that well, and sometimes my only contact with them has been through e-mail (a few of them never even told me their names, but they still paid for work). Oi.. I'm going to do it, it's just a question of how long it will take me, and how many hairs I will lose from the frustration. Do I list client names if they're individuals and not companies? I have no idea. This is information that I've put up publicly now ( http://inqy.in/effable/resume.htm ) so I don't want to list people if they don't want to be listed.

I went through a website re-vamp in the last month, then resorted to my old design, with only a few minor tweaks. The other one was more aesthetically appealing, but there were way too many browser issues (it worked perfectly in firefox and horribly in IE). I couldn't easily fix any of them, so I opted to simply update the old look, which was a bit more compatible in IE. I still need to go through and add my newest work, but at least the portfolio pages are up to date. I also need to make my demo reel more cohesive... though I do like having it in individual sections, as I think it makes it easier for a potential employer to browse through it. Perhaps that's just me.

I'm being kicked back to evening shift in a couple weeks. Someone on evening shift with more seniority than me decided suddenly that they wanted to work days, so I'm being bumped back. It won't be so bad, except that I'll have no family life again. I'll go back to seeing my daughter all of two days a week, and having no relationship with my husband. Maybe it's what I need, though, to focus more on my artwork for the last few quarters of college.

I feel like a horrible person for trying to look at the optimistic side of that.

There's also the issue that I don't get along with some of day shift. I don't generally speak to many people at my work -- I like keeping to myself, because it makes for less gossip. But I was subjected to the gossip every single day for as long as I've been on day shift now. When I was on evening shift, I didn't have an opinion of about 80% of the people up here. After being on day shift, I can say one thing I don't like about 95% of people here. Evening shift is happy to serve the firefighters / paramedics. Day shift has made me feel like a second-class citizen in the emergency services world -- not because of the firefighters, but because of the people I work with, whose attitudes and opinions about the firefighters and paramedics could not be worse. I feel embarrassed to be doing my job, and I never used to feel that way. I miss actually feeling like I did some good in the world.

My mom left her house and moved into an apartment. She could have tried to sell it, but in her neighborhood, every single house (I do mean every house within a 3 block radius) has a for sale sign on it. No one can sell. She's already gone bankrupt due to other factors that aren't really her fault, and as she put it, 'I could stay here for years trying to sell something and barely breaking even with mortgage payments, or I could just let them foreclose and get something cheaper. My credit's already ruined, and I need money to eat.'

We took a day off last week to go help her move, and she gave us a bunch of furniture and other things she was trying to get rid of. Some of it is really nice -- we were able to replace our dining room chairs and table, both of which were stained and falling apart. We have a couple new book shelves to replace the dilapidated ones in our living room, and a few things here and there that will help our house look less like a shack.

Though that still doesn't help with the Star Trek memorabilia.

What else... Oh, I suppose I could post up my vaguely recent artwork.

( artwork. )

Okay... well. There are many others, I just don't have the energy to filter through them right now. You can find some of them here: http://inqy.deviantart.com/gallery/#_browse

And the rest will be up on my website, hopefully in the next couple days if I have the energy.

-flop-

I've been incredibly busy lately, so I'm sorry for whoever nudged me (I went back searching for the e-mail and couldn't find it).

But here's an update! Eheh.

I'm currently sitting on the bottom bunk of an 8-bedroom dorm in a hostel in Los Angeles. I've never been to LA, and I came for the SIGGRAPH convention here. It's a very interesting experience -- I've learned something new every time I try to drive anywhere. Like apparently there are lights that 'meter' the freeways and highways, and you have to stop at them and wait for them to turn green, but you don't have to pay or do anything except wait. It's odd. It's like a toll booth, only... free.

And also, it's expensive to drive anywhere. The lowest I've paid for parking is 8$, and I have to pay that every day to the lot beside my hostel. I also have to be out of their lot by 7am every morning. That's not too bad, as 7am is my usual 10am, so it doesn't let me get used to the time zone here.

Other than that... hm. I walked a mile and a half yesterday to eat at the Osteria Mozza (one of iron chef Mario Batali's restaurants). The food was divine -- everything I expected and more. I took pictures on the way there, and halfway through my meal my camera died, so I took out my sketchbook and sketched the rest of my dishes. I'm weird, I know. I also sketched a lady sitting near me, and the waitress -- the latter of whom was kind enough to sign beside her picture.

On the way back, I noticed the "Hollywood" sign in the distance. That was an unexpected and amazing surprise. Everyone here that I've talked to has been very friendly -- I got lost twice while walking around, and had to ask for directions.

Several others from my school came to SIGGRAPH, but we've only met up a handful of times. I've had one incredible experience after another at the convention, from the classes to the 'birds of a feather' meetings to the usergroups to the job fair and exhibits. I talked to every booth in the job fair, whether or not they had to do with my industry or area of expertise. I met a lot of awesome people, many of whom were kind enough to flip through my portfolio and give me dozens of ideas for how to improve it. I also managed to impress a few people with it, and I will hopefully have an internship or a job very soon as a result.

I want to thank everyone who has supported me in my artistic endeavors. This week has been (and still is being) an incredible experience that I will never forget. There's such an energy to the entire conference, such an uplifting feeling to meet so many people who not only are passionate about art as much as I am, but who have made it their entire lives and lifestyles, and who wish the same for me.

I will write a more in-depth post about everything SIGGRAPH-related in another journal soon. But on to things not-SIGGRAPH-related.

I made a Twitter account, so if anyone is on Twitter, my name is "wickedalchemy."

I also made a LinkedIn account, so if you're on LinkedIn, please add me! My name is Angel Yates. I'll have to update it soon and complete my profile. ;D

That's it for now. Tired, and another long day tomorrow. <3

Don't you hate it when you work your tail off for something, only to be told by the teacher 'oh nevermind, I'll just collect it next week.' ?

Yeah, I was ready to kill things.

But oh well, at least it's done and I don't really have anything major due in that class this week. So I get a breather I suppose (though it doesn't feel much like one with the amount of work my other classes are requiring x.x).

New to-do lists! (I like these. It really helped me remember stuff last week.)

(homework) things to do
QA for online class - 100% completed.
Texture photos - 100% completed.
Website review - 100% completed.
Animal still life - 100% completed.
Sewing pattern - 100% completed.
max 9 homework - 10% completed. (and so it shall stay, unless somehow I magically get max 9 in the next week. anyone wanna buy me a copy? xD I'll draw you a piccur!)

(non-homework) things to do
Twilight commission - 75% completed.
Dominus commission - 0% completed.
Jonathan commission - 0% completed.
1111 sketches (2) - 50% completed.
Pirates - 0% completed.


e-mail: still swimming with the fishies.