Pieces of October

Text goes here.

Nah, I should really throw a quick something to go with the images.

I put a stop to the whole “condensation” series because I no longer had to catch up. Only took me four posts and fifty-five photos to tell all that’s happened since the end of July and until the end of September. I hope I don’t lose track again, or at least not two months’ worth of track.

As is usual with the world, the Christmas ads came early. Not as early as July, as I think has been the case in the past, but starting this current month. October 31st is yet another day for us, as things such as Halloween and Samhain are generally not observed here, so all businesses go straight for the December holiday offers.

My nephew started school yesterday (Tuesday). Well, pre-school. Not sure what level he might fall into, as he is just one year of age. The point is that, with his being at that place for most of the day, not as many schedule adjustments are required in order to take care of him, and I get a bit more alone time, which is good. It’s good because it’s only when I’m alone that I feel like cleaning up (which I did the Sunday before last) or doing a bit of work and I’ll be able to do some things until college starts up again.

Speaking of college, it seems as though I just have to assume that my monograph request will be accepted and I’ll only be informed of anything if there’s something wrong with the request. I was told last month that I should call to check the status of my request and they said that they were still getting those and had not yet begun going through them. At the bottom of the form I had to fill, it says that a list of accepted requests will be published on the web site, so I’m checking it almost every day.

What else goes here … okay. To save me a bit of time, I’ve added most of the web sites that I check every day into Google Reader. I only had a handful of those before but, now that they’re all there and that I can see the number of unread articles, I realize how much time I wasted by visiting them separately, even when there was nothing new. Serious waste.

As I mentioned before, I cleaned up a bit. I was alone in the apartment, and my brother had organized his side of the closet (yeah, we share the room), so I decided to do my part and tidy up my site of the bookshelf. My mother came home as soon as I was about to start, so I gave up on it. She had brought this iced coffee thing that I hadn’t tried before and, besides being incredibly delicious (Droopy liked it, too), it seemed to have given me enough energy and motivation to clean up … one quarter of my side of the bookshelf. Surprisingly, that’s all it took to fill up that huge garbage bag. It was so full of old college work –drawings, paintings, illustrations, even old notebooks that I had recycled from school– that I had no use for that I couldn’t even tie it closed.

In addition to that, I’ve also begun deleting things from the computer’s hard drive. Not random things, because I’ve not gone crazy (yet), but I’m getting rid of things I’ve downloaded over the years and are just gathering digital dust. It’s surprising how much unnecessary junk has accumulated without me caring much, and how I don’t miss them once they’re gone (since I didn’t notice them much, anyway). One can never have enough free hard drive space, and …

Wait, I said I would write a quick something. How little do I know about the “quick somethings” that I write, after more than a hundred posts.

Here are some photographic highlights of my October.

That’s the end of October’s posts, I think, and it also happens to be the end of my photo folder, as that last image is also the newest one worth showing.

I don’t expect much else to happen for the remainder of the month, so I decided to publish this now and continue to sleep through what’s left of it.

Perhaps November will bring along something interesting …

College things

Now, I’ve realized I haven’t done some serious college writing in well over a month. Not that I look forward to writing about it, but that’s something that’s been left behind, despite the tag cloud on the right suggesting otherwise. Here goes nothing.

I’ve got a three-day week when it comes to college. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. I can’t say that enough times, because it leaves me with a comfortable four-day weekend (can’t stop saying that, either!). Everyone should have four-day weekends.

On to the actual part of me being at college … things seem to be going well. The “degree seminar” class is probably the strongest point, as my our work earned 48/50. The teacher’s got an unusual way of grading this one, giving 50 points for the first draft and the remaining 50 for the final thing, instead of the standard 35/35/30 system. I can’t complain. 48 points? That means we only need 22 points to pass and I think we are way past that. We’re supposed to defend our work (being a bit of a thesis and all) but, even if we don’t, something that would take away some points, we still pass. Yay for us.

The budget class couldn’t be better, and could be a lot worse. The teacher is a riot. She’s always making jokes, about things in general and about people in class, but no one is offended. Everyone laughs. There wasn’t a class last week because of Teacher’s Day (on which notable teachers were awarded things), and so we had quite a lot of work to deliver for this past Tuesday. I’m one of the few who actually did everything, but I got a number wrong on one of the last few tables, something that was bound to happen at one point or another, which resulted in the totals being different from the expected amounts. I explained this to the teacher and she told me that if she finds that to be the only thing wrong with my assignment, she’d let it go. Fingers crossed!

Then comes graphic design. Oh, so much can be said about that one final class in a string of nine (yes, it’s Graphic Design IX) that may determine all that happens after this term ends in August. I’m pretty sure I won’t fail this one, though. The project I’m working on is smooth sailing, more or less. I’m delivering everything on time, and the teacher seems pleased with my work, but it’s not the best effort I’ve made. The thing is that this project is rather intensive. I’ve got to design posters, stickers, billboards, radio and TV ads, a web site, a magazine and all those things using the same theme, which is environmental protection. Not a particularly exciting thing, especially because it’s focused on this country. The amount of online information about national parks, endangered species and all that jazz is rather limited, and the work I’ve created based on it is not really innovative and would probably not cause much impact if this environmental campaign thing were to become a reality. But, hey, at least I’m delivering things on time. Right now, I want the points!

And that’s the college update. What a strange journal, this is. Rather than writing about things on the day they happen (like a handwritten one would be), I let life’s things pile up and just throw them into a post or two when I feel like it. It’s a bit out of sync, but I think I’ve almost got that fixed. Just one or two overdue posts and I can go back to the usual day-by-day rants that drive people away make this blog a frequent read for anyone who might like it.

For now, I’ll just enjoy my usual long weekend. I’ve got no assignments for Tuesday, nothing big for Wednesday and just a bit of making things up research and summary work for Thursday. So, a worry-free weekend like few that I’ve seen since the month began. And to think that the halfway point of July is only a few days away. How time flies …

By the way, see that SocialVibe thing on the upper right? It’s not an ornament, you know.

A long day

While my mind is still partially occupied with the subject of the previous post (I can blame all the news and music sites/channels for it, can’t I?), I’m barely close to the halfway point of this five-day weekend. Yep. Another one. So, here’s the first half, or maybe one third, of the photos from June 5th’s awesome great long, annoying blackout.

The power went out around 9:30 in the morning. As I generally don’t wake up at such an hour, especially on an off day (no college on Fridays!), those first few hours didn’t bother me much. As our backup power doesn’t last very long unless we turn everything off, I couldn’t do much of anything. So, I grabbed the old camera. After a few shots of my bedroom window, and having nothing else to do, I got bored and went up to the roof to capture the view.

After making several photos of the view and things I found interesting on the top of this old building, I went downstairs again and photographed the patio (again). I was so very bored that day.

Once I got enough photos, I sat in the living room, waiting patiently for the power to come back, as I did the last time. The power company was supposedly fixing some things ever since the morning (“fixing something” is usually their excuse for the longer outages) and they said the power would be back by 5:30 or so, but at that time, something went wrong. Very wrong.

Slowly, the day turned into night.

Old Quisqueya Park, part three

I was thinking what to write and forgot there was a third part of this that had yet to be published. There are still more photos of that park thing! Whoops, sorry!

Like I said the last time, I was headed for the southern exit, but I turned back after realizing that it would be bad to not photograph the whole place in one go, especially when you consider that I just don’t make regular visits here (last time I came here must have been early last year).

So, I slowly gathered whatever bravery and confidence I could muster from the dark corners of my mind and took the westward road near the southern entrance. It’ s a bit of an uphill slope, and I can only remember the many times I walked down this road, but never up.

As I approached the little red gate that leads down to the cave, these two guys –one of then a little younger than me, the  other one just a kid– walked towards it and didn’t hesitate to go into the open space. As I wasn’t sure whether one could just freely go there, I waited patiently until they got away while getting more photos done.

They certainly took their time, as I made quite a few photos, including that lovely macro shot you see in the top row, as well as the back side of the Conservatory building, which I just find more interesting to walk around and look at than the front side, particularly because there’s only a small space between it and the open area, above which run some rails, which I’ve already shown.

Those guys sure took their time. Most of it was spent in the middle of the open space pointing at things in the oh-look-at-that manner, and I was running out of things to photograph. After they were gone, I approached the gate, looked in every direction for signs of non-plant, non-insect life and went down the first few steps, enough to be able to stand without anyone seeing me.

After snapping enough photos to leave me satisfied with my amazing bravery, I rushed back up. Not soon after, the same two guys, this time joined by what seemed to be the rest of their family (were those two brothers?), got into the cave by the southern entrance. Apparently, the guys from the park office don’t mind people going through here, even though the place is kept unwatched and there’s a high chance of someone spray-painting graffiti on the walls of the cave (it’s happened at this more-famous other cave that I visited).

Before I left, I photographed the two images you see above. This is near the south-western part, close to the open area. I’m not sure what that hole leads to. No sign near it or anything. It’s either a natural skylight for an even bigger cave that’s underground and is not available to the general public … or part of the drainage system. I’d like to believe that it’s the former.

And so concluded my visit to the Plaza del Conservatorio, the place otherwise known as Quisqueya Park. It’ll probably be a long while before I visit again. Maybe next year, if I’ve got a better camera (can someone please buy me one?). I went back home, after taking photos of buildings and streets (and that missing dog paper thing, I hope it’s been found), only to find Droopy doing what he does best:  napping.

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading these as much as I suffered enjoyed writing them. A lot of work and love goes into it, and …

What?

What is it?

Oh, right. I’m always so forgetful about these things. I’m pretty sure it’s age, catching up to my good memory. Here it is, a panoramic view of the caves.

Now’s for real. I hope you liked the photos! Enough of this park thing already …

Lazy days

Ahh … nothing better than a long chain of lazy days. I’ve spent the last two days in bed, watching TV or just browsing websites (thank you, StumbleUpon, thank you).

After next week, my staycation vacation will officially start, and most of that time will be lazy time. My homepage will see a redesign, sure. I’ll get that much-needed haircut, yes. But, oh, the mere thought of spending a long time doing nothing (after three weeks of doing everything) makes me wish I could fast-forward the upcoming week and be done with those two final exams and the graphic design presentation that are just getting in the way.

Next term, I’ll only have three classes. The final three. Easiest thing ever, I hope. I’ll have to take a couple of courses to make the rest of the required 60 hours in order to graduate and be done with the whole college thing. I can’t wait to see that time when my family will not have to bug me about getting an education, because school sucked for the most part, college is sort of meh and, if I’d had a choice, I would have liked to start working right away. But now, I’m tied down by student credit, which I’ll have to start paying after graduation.

Anyway, back to the whole lazy thing. This is the “Holy Week”, as they call it. Back in school, we’d get the whole week off, but all I get now is a four-day holiday starting Thursday (yesterday). Not sure if the school kids still have it the same, but they’re already lucky to have a whole summer of doing nothing, if they so desire.

I’m wondering what I’ll do following the upcoming term. I can’t do my final project thing until January (something about the September-December term being too short), so I’ll have four months for doing whatever my family wants I want. I hope I can use that time to become better at everything I want to become better at (especially Blender, because it seems I’m perpetually rusty when it comes to it), and use the remaining time to get a well-deserved rest of around 19 years of “education”. Too many years, in my opinion, and not everything (especially what was actually necessary) was well-taught.

As for reading, I haven’t done much of it since The Magic Mountain. Nothing of it, in fact. My motivation has suffered greatly with much of it (and my time) spent on college work, and some lazy time is just what I need, to allow it to replenish, as slowly as it ever does. Maybe after next week I’ll have enough motivation to pick up a pocket book or something.

I’ll see if I can take advantage of the city/town/thing being empty (everyone’s making the most of their long weekend) to take a nice long walk and get some photos. Photos are good. It’s the stuff of memories, second only to the mind (but even that fails sometimes).

Until then (if it does happen) go read some other blogs. They also want to be read, you know!