"Do you not realize I have had diarrhea since Easters?"

Easters. I mean... Easter. The holiday of eggs. What a scary, scary thought. Especially with a particular experience I had at work a few weeks ago still haunting my dreams. You get the privilege of hearing about it, since I think that sharing the experience might ease some of this burden for me.
So there I was at work, working hard (or hardly working... I can't really remember), when all of a sudden I am viciously attacked by a wretched smell that crept up into my nostrils without warning. I immediately breathed out the contaminated air, closed my airways and prayed for it to pass. What the heck?? That was nasty, and totally awkward for everyone around. And what's worse... it happened again about two minutes later. AND AGAIN another two minutes after that! On and off for twenty minutes the same thing kept happening, so I had time to consider (and reconsider) my options-- which I'm sure were the same for everyone else, including the perpetrator-- and the hypothetical consequences of those options.

Option 1. Start gagging and run out of the room, with eyes watering and my hand over my nose, either a) making some whimpering noises or b) mumbling some fake-cusses under my breath.

Consequence 1. The offender is unnecessarily overly-embarrassed and everyone at work realizes that I am immature and lacking in class and/or tact. I am shunned for the rest of the day by all but the offender, who will hate me for life.

Option 2. Look around to see if anyone else is also dying or perhaps looking guilty. Thinking of this option immediately put this picture into my mind (from Mean Girls... "he farts a lot"):

It makes sense at first to quietly look around, perhaps cluing the offender into the fact that he/she was not-so-sneaky in the release of certain bodily gases. He/she might get the hint and wait a few minutes, then take a trip to the bathroom or out the back door of the building instead of repeating the offense. Such is the consequence of Option 2 Tactic a. However, this feat is a tricky one, because should an attempt at this maneuver fail, you might find you have unintentionally pursued tactic b or c of Option 2, both of which have unfortunate consequences.

Option 2 Tactic b. You end up looking like the guy in the picture above (guilty), and/or overly confused as you glance around, leading others to mistake you for being the leaker. (I heard once that it's a sophisticated tactic to frame yourself... I'm not sure I believe that, or that it even makes sense.)

Option 2 Tactic c. You look a little too ticked and/or disgusted, turning the small incident into a large one, which is a known side effect of sloppy cover-ups. People assume you're trying to divert blame that is, in fact, yours.

Consequence 2. For Tactic a: the offender gets the hint and your co-workers praise your good deed. For Tactics b and c: you are shunned because people believe you are the offender. The real offender repeats the obscene and inconsiderate act (possibly more than once) and people hate you more and more each time since they think it's you.

Option 3: Do nothing.

Consequence 3a. Your coworkers think you have no sense of smell and envy you.

Consequence 3b. Your coworkers think you're the offender and are trying to ignore the situation away.

Consequence 3c. The offense is repeated and you suffer excessively on and off for the next twenty torturous minutes.

Option 4. Cover your nose with your t-shirt and wait until the offender leaves.

Consequence 4. People know it's not you and the offender gets the hint--unless it turns out to be the guy sitting behind you, who couldn't see you covering your nose and who ended up leaving twenty minutes after the first offense... with his noxious fumes trailing behind. Yes. I chose Option 4. And yes, I am very afraid for any smells I might possibly be bombarded with at work tomorrow morning. Maybe I'll take a nose plug... just in case.

Let's just say... you'd be dead.

All I wanna do is *bang, bang, bang, bang!* and *cha-ching!* and take your money.
Tiff, Steven, Brown and I took a stroll down to Caswells for some shooting. We started out small-- a little gun with little bullets and a little kick from twenty feet away. We all did ok with Steven's help. :)

We traded the little gun out for a bigger one with a stronger kick. Slightly scary at first, but pretty fun to shoot! We had to go to the counter about a million times for different supplies or targets or whatever--I felt a little too needy but the guys working there were cool. Here's one of my silhouettes. The eight shots in the chest area were from 45 feet away and the three in the head and two strays were from fifty feet! Woohoo! Not too shabby for my first time. Poor Tiff, though. Let's just say that there was a forty-five percent chance she'd hit the silhouette... from twenty feet. :P

Q: Pizza is round, so why is the box square?

On Thursday I took upon myself the task of fitting an extra large pizza box into our full refrigerator. At first, I just tried shoving the box in-- it didn't work. I then tried shoving a little harder. After a few moments I began to complain about how the dimensions of box and open space were incompatible. My dad, filled with years of experience and mounds of stored-up wisdom heard me complaining and said, "Pizza is round so the box is square." I stared at him for a few seconds, then I looked over at Bonnie and the two of us started laughing. We gave my dad a hard time about his genius revelation for the rest of the night. However, I told Tiffani about it later, and she explained the answer to the question I should have been asking all along: Why are pizza boxes square? I'll let you ponder on that while you read the rest of the post.

Mrs. Bonnie Gutzman paid the state of Arizona a visit this last week. She was here for all of three and one-half days. And what a great eighty-four hours it was! We saw Fred Flinstone...

[don't we look like we're getting along really well? :)]

...the Grand Canyon...

[one slip and I was toast...]

...lots of cacti and some flowers...

[we basically risked our lives to get pictures of these flowers]

...etc. Then we visited Grasshopper Point in Sedona, where we saw lots of treacherous water and rocks...

[this is not one of the treacherous areas, obviously]

...a sunbathing skank (just kidding... but not really. but really, just kidding.)...

...and some really heavy rocks to have lifting contests with.

[Bo beat me, hands down]

Then we met up with my yang (Lindsey) and checked out southern Arizona. We went to an ostrich farm and fed deer...


...ostriches (FYI, you can say "ostrich" or "ostriches" for the plural)...

...which is a dangerous business...

[if you were wondering what I sounded like when Bo and I were hiking back up the Grand Canyon, listen to the ostrich at the end of the clip]

...as well as donkeys and parakeets.

We later met Lindsey's Alex (sorry, no picture available) and went to the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum. It was pretty cool, although Lindsey might have enjoyed the javelina part of it a little too much. :)

So... that was pretty much the shortest tour of Arizona ever. Although, you have to give me some credit since it went from the Grand Canyon (practically the top of Arizona) clear down to Tucson (practically the bottom... in more ways than one :P).

Now that you've had time to think about what this post is really about (pizza boxes, remember?) let's see if you figured it out. Why are pizza boxes square?

A: So you can fit ranch cups in the box, too. Duh! What's pizza without ranch?! Eating pizza without ranch is like seeing the world (which is also round) without a friend. It makes for a square experience.

End

Update on the BF-inA

So... I thought I had to wait until Monday to hear whether I got in, but they had the letters ready today! I was unprepared, but it was nice to know sooner than later that... I got in!

BF-inA review

I thought I would never be happy again in my entire life. The last couple of weeks I have been... minorly freaking out... about the BFA review, which was this morning. Since Friday I have been up until at least two doing work for classes and the review. There was church at nine and class at eight, so that was poopy. What's worse? No naps. Not enough time in a day, unfortunately. In fact, last night I didn't get to bed until seven thirty... in the MORNING... so I could finish stuff up for the review. :( We were required to turn in the five paintings we did for our Illustration 1 class, as well as up to 15 figure drawings from life and a sketchbook/work from outside of class. I suck at keeping a sketch book, so I found a bunch of things I had scattered everywhere and cut and pasted (well, taped) stuff into a sketchbook. I retouched the paintings for my classes (you might remember the bear I posted a while back) and figure drawings from my class and Tada! A "portfolio." I don't expect to get in. Hopefully that's just me being pessimistic so it won't be too much of a shock if I don't get in. However, I am quite far from being the best in my classes. There are very talented people in the program, and I'm sure most of them have been doing this type of thing for years. Buuuut, I try not to think about that. Anyway, I took snapshots of the first five paintings I've ever done in my life. They still need work, but whatever.

Assignment 1: Child Abuse



Assignment 2: Nursery Rhyme (Jack Be Nimble)



Assignment 3: Unhealthy Diet



Assignment 4: Conceptual piece for an article about masculinizing (sp?) church to get men to attend (doesn't look AS bad in real life)



Assignment 5: Book cover for The Rainmaker (not finished)

Oh so Sensuous...

Imagine walking into a restaurant and asking for a 24-inch sub... for just you... to eat right then and there... in the restaurant... with random people eating their three and six-inchers all around you. TWENTY FOUR INCHES! That's TWO FEET of bread, meat and cheese (at least)! You're pretty confident that you can easily cram that much food into your stomach without throwing up, so you have the shocked and disgusted girl behind the counter add mayo, lettuce and tomatoes to the already present ham, turkey and monterey jack. You settle down into your seat with your humongous sandwich taking up practically the entire table. A small cup of Dr. Pepper is squished in next to your sandwich in case you need to wash any of the sandwich down; you don't want to risk filling your stomach prematurely so you decide you'll be careful with your sips. You turn and nod to the lady at the counter and she starts the timer. You have thirty minutes to down it. Go! Makes you sick just thinking about it, huh? Imagine actually doing it. Now imagine doing it while sitting across the table from someone else who's doing it, too. Ugh. Just thinking about it brings back memories of that chokey, throwy-uppy feeling I got when I was on the last fourth of my sandwich and watching Tiffani take large, soggy bites of hers. All for a free t-shirt and your picture up on the "24-Inch Club" wall? Man. That's embarrassing. But at the same time, kinda cool. I ate twenty-freakin' four inches of bread, meat and cheese in less than thirty minutes (I only had 42 seconds to spare... it was a close one)! Here's the picture we got to tack to the wall with our names and times written on it. The shirts say "The second best thing you can do with your lips is eat a Sensuous Sandwich." How true that is...

B is for bear

We finally got our paintings back in my Illustration class, so here is my first ever painting! It got a B (for bear) so there's obviously stuff I need to work on before it's "finished," but yeah. There you go, Mom and Dad.

I thought while it already looks like I think I'm all cool --not true-- I would put up the "award winning" eggs since I don't think I ever showed it to you guys. Fascinating.