Surprise! I got married. ^_^ This in no way means that I am leaving the site or that my intentions to shoot more sets have weakened. In fact, my absence this time is due entirely to school, which I will be done with in just a couple of quarters. Excitement! Imminent free time to fill with things like photoshoots!

Any theme suggestions?

I've officially had an actual, IRL social life for two whole months! Unfortunately, all the catch-up I've been playing has resulted in a nasty bit of piggie flu, so I'm housebound for at least a few more days.

Odd to stalk this site after so long away. Perhaps I'll even start shooting more sets in the near future...

Holy hell. School has taken over my life. I....er.....check the blog for vaguely recent updates.

Soooo....anyone know of a decent job or 2 bedroom rental home in Portland? Because I'm moving there in, like, a month and have none of those basic necessary things taken care of yet. Craigslist is offering some help, but it doesn't help to ask residents, right?

I can't seem to shake off this pre-school excitement. It has to be something to do with the amount of time that I've spent in a self-indulgent slump, but whatever the cause, I think that by this point I've thoroughly irritated everyone around me with my incessant bouncing exclamations of "Guess what?! I'm going to school!"

Before I start up at the AI I'm taking one term of lower division general ed stuff at the local community college. I've already registered, paid, gotten my textbooks (which I promptly brought to work and spent five hours poring over), and beefed up my rapidly-becoming-too-loose-on-me* wardrobe. For the next nine days I'm in full denial mode in preparation for what has been unanimously declared a suicide mission by my family. To make that a bit clearer: I'm going to work full-time while taking 17 credits. Nobody's quite worked up the nerve to tell me that I'm going to die, but I can tell they're all thinking it.

What else have I been doing? I've been knitting too much, as usual. If you're really curious about that and want to see some half-assed pictures, check out my flickr account (my name is Alukh over there too). I may even go so far as to post about it on my super-neglected knitblog, but don't hold your breath. Actually, you may want to pop over there just to listen to my mini-playlist of current favourite music; I got a widget for the sidebar and everything.

I also went to see Gogol Bordello at the Crystal Ballroom in Portland a couple of weeks ago. It was lovely, aside from a near death experience involving everyone in the pit trying to get to the almost-front-row where I had carefully positioned myself 2 hours before the show started. After putting up with getting elbowed in every imaginable spot on my torso for the sake of some decent pictures and the opportunity to scream along with Not a Crime, I held onto my ridiculously tall friend for dear life as he shoved a path through the crowd to the relatively calm sidelines. All the pictures from that night are on his computer, so I'll have to show them off a bit later.

i just made and drank an awesome smoothie. ^_^

My hair is officially too short to pull back. Don't worry: I've been told it looks very good on me. It's much longer in the front and has a flufftastic amount of layers in back. I'll take a picture for you when I've groomed myself a bit.


*Oh, by the way, I've been running every other night after work. It is the most grueling, miserable thing I've ever done and I loathe every second of it, but I'm definitely losing weight. Things that make this even more fun than I'm letting on include:
-the discovery that I have flexible flatfoot and the resulting search for running shoes to accommodate my freak arches
-the utter absence, so far, of the fabled "runner's high"
-a sports bra that's almost two sizes too small (apparently breasts stop at a C cup around here. Either that or only waifs exercise.) supplemented by a built-in-bra tank top thing covered by a tight t-shirt, the combination of which makes it difficult to breathe at times

Dear lord, I've neglected this blog. In my defense, I've been rather distracted recently because guess what:





I'm going to school! ^_^







This is more exciting if you realize that I've been sort of stagnant and lazy for the past few years and have been getting increasingly frustrated by the enormous gap between my creativity and the skills necessary to fully express that creativity in.....er....wearable form. SO: I'm going for a bachelor's in apparel design. Wish me luck.

Soooo....the barbeque didn't work out so much, mostly because the grill I borrowed proved impossible to set up, especially on my table-free walkway. In the end I borrowed just the......er........actual grill part (the piece you set the food on, damnit), cleaned it because it arrived in a positively filthy state, stuck it on top of a cakepan, and baked the fish. The sandwiches still turned out damn tasty, and it was still great fun, but it was not out with the fairy lights, so I have no pictures.

Later on we watched a midnight preview showing of Spiderman 3, which was uncomfortable (stupid full theatre) but awesome in a way that had everything to do with the venom symbiote. Not so much the Topher Grace venom, because he was sort of a pussy, but the emo-spidey venom was thoroughly entertaining, despite the hair. And the eyeliner.

I've been craving marinated grilled tuna steak for, like, two months now so - today being my day off - I am going to borrow a grill from a coworker, hit the seafood and hippie markets before they close, and have a fucking barbeque on my third-story walkway (which is the closest thing I have to a porch or balcony). I'm starting to realize why I left my purple twinkly lights up after the holidays because, if I get around to it, you'll get some decent pictures featuring their gently flamboyant glow.

WOW canes leave some lovely welts. Actually, the worst one I have right now is from me testing them out in the store. I honestly wasn't expecting that 1/4" cane to, well, hurt so bloody much. Because it's skinny, right? The thicker canes are supposed to bruise much worse, but I fucking beg to differ.





~note: I was hiding behind a display stand when I did this; it's a good thing because when I hit myself hard enough to cause that I almost fell over and had to spend a couple of minutes taking very deep, quiet breaths without whimpering or cursing loud enough to alert the four employees sitting across the room.

~another note: I really do enjoy this sort of thing. I'm just amazed at the marks I acquire sometimes and thought you would be too.

Ugh. I forgot how much fun it isn't to fill out rental applications. That's right, I'm trying to rent a house. This whole "downstairs neighbors hate me when I have sex or try to work out" thing is getting old. Plus we have a fledgling band and our current practice space is 45 minutes into the middle of nowhere, which kills any chance we might have at spontaneous jam sessions.



Oh fuck. I have so much stuff to pack. >_<