Alas, the long-awaited post is here. As you well know, I haven't posted in over a month, and there are numerous reasons for that, which I will get to in due time. So much has happened since then. These past 4 or 5 weeks have been full of highs and lows (mostly lows), and have been pretty much the craziest month in my entire college career. I've been trying to figure out the best way to convey all that has happened, and I think the best way is to just go chronologically as best as I can remember. So enough with the introductory paragraph, lets get on with it.
Around the time of my last entry, I was taking photos for my photography project on depth of field. That particular project was a lot of fun because I took pics of my cat, Sam, one of my favorite subjects. As usual, he was somewhat difficult to photograph, but I ended up getting some pretty nice pics of him. As it turns out, one particular photo of Sam was chosen as a 'Best Of' and was shown in class. As soon as it was shown in class, all the girls went 'awwwwwwww' so I had to wait a while before I could speak about my photo. Once it quieted down, I said it was my slide, and when everyone heard my voice, everyone started laughing. I guess they were expecting a girl or something. It was pretty funny and cool to see Sam so huge from being shown on a projection screen.
For the next project, I called up Lindsay to be my model and luckily she agreed. We met up at Mt. Bonnell and I shot an entire roll of her (plus some of a second roll). It was a lot of fun and good to hang out with her since I haven't seen her in forever. She mentioned that we've known each other for something like 8 years. It didn't seem nearly that long. Time sure flies. It made me feel old. Sadly, none of those pics I took made the Best Of's, but I got some pretty good shots.
I think it was about that time that I bought Burnout 3, which is one of the coolest games ever made, as I mentioned in my previous post. Since then I've just about beaten it and unlocked almost all of the cars. Awesome game, go get it now. That was also around the time I returned SRS and rented Star Wars: Battlefront. It sounded like a pretty cool game, so I had to check it out. If I had to sum up the game in one word, it'd be 'ok.' It took me a while to get into the game, but once I did I had a lot of fun. Unfortunately the game had a few setbacks that made it kinda lame. One such setback was the AI. The bots were pretty retarded and would do the stupidest things, like grabbing the vehicles and flying/driving around and crashing or going straight up to the enemies and dying immediately. The other bad thing was that the game was too easy and short. It only took me 2 or 3 days to beat and after that I didn't have any motivation to play it anymore.
After that is when things really started going downhill. My Evo Psych class starting having (6 page minimum) papers due every week and that alone was the biggest thorn in my side. What made it so bad was that one weekend I had to work on a paper for that class, a project for my Computers & Writing class, and a book review for my Photography class. While that may not seem so bad to some, it presented a huge problem. Since I have work or class every day until 8pm, I can't shoot photos during the week. I can't even take pics between work and class because the only gaps in my schedule just allow enough time to walk to class/work or eat before going to class/work. Therefore, I have to shoot all my photos on the weekends, and shooting is very time consuming and really eats up my weekends. So on that weekend where I had all those things to do, I ended up skipping one of my Evo Psych papers even though it was 20% of my grade, in hopes that I could make it up on the rest of the papers. That was a huge mistake. Once my TA and professor saw that I didn't do the paper, the professor was just about ready to kick me out of the class since my chances of passing were slim. Since it's a class I need so I can graduate, I began to really stress out over that stupid paper. For two weeks straight my chest hurt from all the stress and I couldn't eat or sleep right. All I could do is just worry about not graduating and it made me rather depressed. On top of all that, I still had more papers in that class to worry about and photography projects as well. Since I have such a crammed work/class schedule, I have to do everything on the weekends and there just isn't time for all that, so I started doing crappy on my photography projects. I skipped one, whose grade I'm replacing with 3 book reviews, but I got an F on the next project after that since it was so crappy from not having time to be running around taking photos.
So all of that was really wearing me down and for a while I didn't know what to do and was so depressed that I was planning on going to see a counselor to try and get help. In thinking about it, I realized it was more than just work and school that was stressing me out, it was at home. My parents decided to sell our house, which we've lived in for the past 9 years; longer than any place we've lived before. I really don't want to move because I hate packing/moving with a passion, and I don't want to leave this place. On top of that, we had to really clean up our house to make it look nice so we can sell it. Cleaning took a long time, much of which took place on the weekends, which coincidentally is when I have to do all my school work. So, even more of my time was eaten up by all the stupid cleaning, contributing my overall lack of time for anything. So, between work, class, cleaning, and some other personal things, I was a mess.
As it turns out, I ended up talking to my Evo Psych professor about the missed paper, and he allowed me to turn it in 2 weeks late with a substantial grade deduction. That alone lifted the majority of the burden I was carrying around with me and I was happy to just be getting points on the paper, regardless of how many. I am now back on track in that class and as long as I keep up with the rest of the papers, I should be ok. I still have a general lack of time for anything, as I still have to shoot all my photos on the weekends, making for some pretty crappy projects. I no longer have chest pains from all the stress, which is a big plus.
Since then I've begun to enjoy myself more; seeing some movies and buying/renting some games. Brace yourself, here come some useless reviews:
The Grudge - American remake of a Japanese movie series (just like The Ring). I went in expecting it to be crappy like The Ring, but it turned out to be pretty good. Better than I expected anyway. I recommend seeing the Japanese version first (called Ju-on) then seeing the American one. They're about the same, but with a few interesting differences which I won't go into (you'll have to see for yourself).
Team America: World Police - Holy crap what a hilarious movie! The music alone was hilarious, particularly the theme song. The montage song (from a certain South Park episode) was an added bonus. I can't wait for the DVD.
The Incredibles - Saw it just this past Friday. Pretty much anything by Pixar is awesome, so I don't really have to go into any detail about this movie. Just go see it.
As for games, after easily beating Battlefront, I returned it and rented Halo. Now I'm not a fan of console first-person shooters anymore, and I'm not all that crazy about Halo, but it had a few memorable moments. It only took a week to beat and it didn't change my overall impresion of it much, but I really liked the end where you have to race out of the ship in a Warthog with crap blowing up everywhere. Blowing up stuff with the Scorpion tank was a lot of fun too. :) Other than that, I don't really see what all the hype was about.
Dead or Alive Ultimate came out last week and it's pretty sweet. They basically remade Dead or Alive 2 for the Xbox, added Live support, and threw in the original DoA as a bonus. The improved graphics are amazing, not to mention all the extra costumes they added.
Sunday I returned Halo and checked out XGRA, which is the latest installment of the Xtreme G series, which first appeared on the N64 back in the day. Anyone familiar with Xtreme G knows it's a Wipeout ripoff except with motorbikes and is too fast to control. XGRA was the same but with better graphics and control. However the game was ridiculously easy, as I beat it in 3 hours.
Today I returned XGRA and rented Halo 2. Since I'm not gonna buy the game (and there was nothing else worth renting) I figured I'd check it out and see what all the hype on 2 was about. I played it for a few hours tonight and I have to admit it is at the very least better than the first Halo. On top of that, it has a gripping storyline so far that got me not wanting to stop playing. I refuse to admit though that I like the game, although I'm headed that way the more I play it. I guess we'll see how I turn out once I play it all the way through.
Coming off of my month of depression, I was in need of some emotional release, so I started listening to my Slipknot CDs every day and ended up buying their most recent album, Vol. 3: (The Subliminal Verses). That CD was just what I needed and is pretty damn awesome. It really got me wanting to go to a show (preferably theirs), but I doubt they'll ever play here unfortunately. bah.
So that about wraps up everything that has happened over the weeks. I'm feeling a lot better now most of my stress-causing issues have been resolved and I seem to be back on track again. One of my self-portrait photos made the Best Of today in class, which was a cool picture of my eyes with me dressed as a ninja. So I guess my Photography class is going better too, although my flash assignment was total crap and the next assignment sounds like it's going to be hell since we have to do a photo story on a person or group of people over several days to a week. I hate taking pics of people now. Not sure what I'm gonna do about this one.
Oh, I forgot to mention that I'm now hosting a new blog; old clanmate and friend of Harry's, Matt aka Tauntaun. He has probably one of the best and longest blogs I've ever read. So long in fact that I never have time to read it anymore. :) Check it out. I also reorganized this page to link all the blogs I regularly (or at least try to) read. If you have one and I didn't link it, drop me a url.
Ok, now I'm done. You can all stop bugging me to update now. You should also note that constantly bugging me about updates just makes it more of a chore to me and tends to make me not blog for even longer. ;)
