Spring semester is underway, which means you’ve stocked up on campus foods to fill those dorm room cupboards.  I don’t live on campus, but I’ve heard that an important item to have is ramen noodles.  I decided that I would share one of my best recipes with you.  All you need is a bag of ramen noodles and a box of food dye.  I call it Rainbow Ramen Noodles.  Creative name, huh?

Once you’ve gathered your supplies, you must cook the noodles.  I am using Oriental flavor, but you can really use whatever you want.  It doesn’t matter.  Fill your pot 3/4 the way with water.  It doesn’t really matter how much you put in, since you will be straining it later.  (You can also cook this in the microwave if you want.  Just cook it in a bowl with some water instead.)  Once you’ve filled the pot, let it reach a boil on your burner.  You can add the noodles whenever you want – before or after the boiling begins.

Once the noodles have pretty much softened up, remove the pot from the heat.  Divide the noodles among several bowls.  The amount of bowls you use depends on how many different colors you would like.  I use five.

After dividing the noodles into the bowls, add a bit of the remaining water from the pan to each.  Next, add the food dye to the bowls.  Put in several drops.  I’d say eight or ten.   Let the noodles mariante in the dye for five minutes or so.  It really doesn’t matter.  The longer they sit the better the color will be.

After they have set, strain them from the water and put them back in the pan.

Now, add the seasoning and mix together.

Voila!

Rainbow Ramen Noodles.

I can’t  believe another semester is upon us already.  I just realized the other one was over when I started getting those e-mails saying: ‘You haven’t signed up for classes!  Do so today!’  Eventually, after deleting a handful of those e-mails, I signed up for classes.  I am retaking a couple from last semester that I didn’t do well enough in and also pulled on a couple new ones.  I am leaving myself a little breathing room this semester, though, in hopes I won’t cave and drown in all the unfinished work like before.  I also have a new job, so I am trying to fit that in as well.

Classes have started off smoothly, I guess.  As smoothly as the first week.5 can.  I am only on campus for one class, Design II, so it really isn’t too difficult.  I think the online classes I am taking started this week, so I should probably take a look at those sometime soon as well.  Tomorrow will be my first evening off from work in ages!  I am excited.  I will be going bowling.  And maybe doing some of that online work I just mentioned.  Hopefully the homework is to go bowling.  Now wouldn’t that be convenient?

I am enjoying a nice, warm cup of coffee at my favorite coffee shop in town.  I have told you guys about it a thousands times, I think, in previous posts.  It’s raining outside.  Very cold, slushy rain.  It makes my feet hurt and wish they had some actual shoes for the cold times.  I am putting off investing in boots or something warmer and more water-resistant than mocassins.  I am also putting off investing in a coat.  I mean, winter is almost over, right?  We have two months?  Or something?  I think I will just continue to layer my socks and my sweaters to keep warm and free of freezing slush.  I’ll use the dollars I don’t spend on that stuff to buy some neat rocks or new markers!  And then I can draw pictures of coats and boots.  What a good idea…

I have to go to work now, unfortunately, but I will post again later.  I have something you should all mark on your calendars, though.  Be sure to note that February 20th Bela Fleck will be performing at the Holland Performing Arts Center in Omaha at 8 o’clock.  You can get the crappy seats for 19 dollars.  I am going and you should too!  I have been listening to him a lot lately.  He’s fantastic.  Here is his offical page and here is a sweet song called Big Country by him and his band, the Flecktones:

Gotta love it…

It’s finals week and everyone is knee-deep in last minute homework, studying and … SNOW.  There is so much!  Finals were postponed for today and tomorrow, I think.  I don’t have any finals this week, so I don’t really know.  I get those text alert things that the college sends out, though, which are really quite helpful.  I wouldn’t know these things otherwise.  You guys should sign up for it if you don’t already have it.

Anyway, the snow is so deep!  The roads are terrible, too.  I live maybe a 30 second drive from my work, but it took 18 minutes to get there today.  Worst thing about it, though, is that RIGHT when I pulled into work they called me to tell me the place was closing and I didn’t need to come in.  Ugh.  Not a terrible thing, I just wish I would have been notified before I dug my car out and put on my uniform and all that other business.  I also shoveled all the snow off of my stairs and deck a few hours ago.  I went out twenty minutes ago and it didn’t look like I had touched it at all.  There is so much snow… It’s beautiful, but not snowball-making snow.  It’s not wet enough.  It doesn’t compact well.  So, that means it’s significantly more difficult to make snowballs, snowmen, snowfort, snow-ramps for sledding, etc.  But like I said, it’s beautiful.

I put up some Christmas lights and a tree yesterday.  They look quite festive.  Here is a picture of the little tree:

I hope the semester went smoothly for everyone.  Good luck on your postponed finals and last minute homework.  Keep warm and I will write to you again in 2010.

P.S. –  Don’t miss the 2009 Geminid Meteor Shower!  Click here to see NASA’s predictions and thoughts on it!

Thanksgiving break is over and final-time is underway.  I am dying.  I have way too much to do.  It’s my own fault, though, so I can’t complain too much.  I am mostly just bogged with painting assignments.  I finished one of four last night and I am dissatisfied.  It’s okay, I guess, but it is not as good as I would have liked.  I don’t even know if it meets the assignments requirements.  In my defense, though, I started one that totally fit the assignment, but it was painfully boring so I quit.  It wasn’t bad necessarily, just boring and stupid.  I will turn it in, too, half done to show I actually tried to follow the rules.  I have to work tonight, but I will continue to paint after I get off of work.  This weekend will be paint-filled and terrible.

So lately I have been watching a lot of HGTV– Home and Garden Television.  It is one of my favorite channels, next to Nickelodeon and Disney anyway.  I like Cartoon Network and Comedy Central, too, but they’re hit and miss.  Anyway, I can’t get over how much I love watching home-remodeling shows.  Just, wow.  I could watch them forever.  I don’t really care for the dialogue and stuff between the ‘before’ and ‘after’ of the room, though.  I just liking seeing it finished.  Anyone else watch HGTV?  It’s great stuff.  It really is.  Also, cartoons are great.  I just thought you should know what I watch on TV.  I am watching a show right now on HGTV where people are looking for a house in Hawaii.  Lenais are cool.

I have to start thinking about what classes I am taking next semester.  I have to retake a couple that I bombed this semester, but oh well.  What can you do.  Other than those, though, I want to take some more art classes.  I am thinking design and painting.  I also thought about looking in wood-related stuff.  I think there’s a class in woodworking or something at IWCC.  Or metalwork.  That’d be cool.  I wonder if you have to be of that major to take them, though… I will look into it.  Anyway, I have to go to work now.  Time to make sandwiches.

There’s nothin’ quite like having the first cup of coffee at the beginning of the week.  It’s dreadful, but pleasant.  The barista’s face says, “Here’s the first of many this stressful week.”   I have a lot of homework to do this week.  I have been slacking off a lot in a few of my classes, so break will be catch-up time.  I can pull it off, though, I am sure.  For the professional procrastinator, some late school work is easy as pie.  However, that statement could be misleading.  Is making pie really that easy?  I have never made a real pie, just pudding pies and stuff, but I think it might be kind of difficult.  To get it just right, anyway.  Some pies are real fancy, too… gotta be at least kind of a little bit hard.  I will make a pie sometime and tell you just how easy it is.  I hate pie, though, so after I tell you the level of difficulty to make it, I will give you the pie.

You might have noticed that I have yet to post a blog with pictures of my newly painted apartment.  Here’s what happened: I took the pictures and put the memory card that they were saved on in my pocket.  I was wearing pants that I don’t normally wear because I do not like them, so I quickly changed my pants as soon as I was able.  I forgot the memory card was in the pocket, and washed them.  So, now my memory card has traveled to electronic heaven.  It is not alone up there, though, because yesterday I found out that my camera also traveled there sometime after I took the pictures.  It has passed on for good, I think.  I am going to try to revive it, but I don’t know if I can.  I am very sad, it was a great camera.  I tried hitting it on stuff to fix it, but it didn’t work.  Usually that works pretty well.  I am afraid its wounds are deeper than ones that can be fixed with smashing.  I will post pictures as soon as I find another camera and a new memory card.  I’ll let you know when the funeral service for my beloved camera is.

I don’t remember if I have told you where I currently work.  I might have mentioned it before, but I will tell you again.  I work at a local sandwich shop.  I have worked there for quite awhile now– nearly four years.  You’d think that I have stayed for so long because it is a fantastic job, but that is not so.  The pay is crummy, but it is pay, and the hours aren’t fun.  Work is work, though, ain’t always fun, I guess.  But sometimes it is.  Let me show you what I do when I am not making hungry people sandwiches.

Above are pictures of a piece I created out of meat, cheese, a little spinach and some sauce.  I call it “Meat Mountain.”  When I am bored I make things out of the meats and cheeses and veggies.  I made a great picture of a vampire in my first year working there.  I lost the picture, though.  I like to draw pictures with the sauces the most.  I also like cutting the cheese into very intricate designs to put on sandwiches.  I think it is safe for me to say that the sandwiches I make for myself are the coolest lookin’ sandwiches around.  It’s all I can do to make the pain of working in a sandwich joint bearable.

After I post this blog, I am heading to the pet store to get a new filter for my fishtank.  I am about to start my first aquarium.  I worked with them all the time when I worked at that pet store for 8 months and learned a lot.  They are pretty easy, if you know what you are doing.  I think I can handle it.  I have a fish right now, a betta named Pavo, that’s just in a regular container.  Nothing fancy, no real filtration or aeration, so I think he will be pleased with the new setup.  I have big plans for this tank.  I am going to make my own figurines to put in it.  I want to have a 6 legged giraffe, a statue of me so my fish can worship it, an alien or two, maybe a wizard and a unicorn.  It’s going to have space in the background, too, so it’ll look like this crazy scene will be happening somewhere far, far away.  Pavo is such a great fish, too.  He’s beautiful.  I am going to get a few more fish to keep him company, too.

My coffee is almost gone and I’ve got a thousand things to do today.  I hope everyone has a good Thanksgiving and break from school.  Mine will be filled with turkey, stuffing, and homework.

As usual, I am sitting in the coffee shop enjoying my daily cup of coffee.  It’s actually my second cup, but my first one here.  I made some coffee at home earlier.  Sometimes I just can’t wait.  I’m sure you coffee drinkers out there understand.  Gotta love the dark roast in the afternoon.

This week passed by pretty quickly and unnoticed.  Last I realized it was Monday.  Now it’s Thursday.  Where do the days go, my friends?  Where do they all go?!  Maybe in another dimension in this same world I am still living Monday.  Not that that accomplishes anything for me in this dimension, but still, it’s a neat thought.  What do you guys think about alternate dimensions?  I don’t really know enough about the topic to form a concrete opinion, but I do know that it would be extremely cool to have different dimensions existing without my knowledge.  Maybe there’s just this other world that we don’t even understand.  One that exists, completely unrelated to this one, amidst our own.  There’s a thought.

I had a geology exam on Monday.  It went well, I think.  I love geology, though, so learning and putting my knowledge to the test is fun.  I’d say that geology is my second passion in life, other than art.  I’d be persuing it now if I didn’t put all my eggs in the art basket already.  I hate wasting eggs.  Metaphorically.  I was bored after the test, so I used my time wisely– I took some pictures with my phone!  They are terrible pictures, poorly taken, but I didn’t want the instructor to see.  I also drew a comic about plate tectonics.  It’s a romance.  I don’t know if I can post it, the subject may be inapporopriate, but I’ll post it anyway.  Suppose it will be removed if it is not allowed.  Here are the pictures and the comic:

The first picture is the view from under my table looking towards the kid ahead of me; the second is the bottom of my table; the third my shoes; the fourth is the word “MONEY” that someone scratched into the desk; and the fifth is a sad, three-eyed face I drew on my hand.  Comic below:

And now you know a little bit on how mountains are formed!  Probably not really, but oh well.  It was fun to draw.  My notes are very helpful, I know.  Sometime I might have to share my other class-subject related drawings with you.  I am not much of a note-taker.  I’m a note-drawer, though.  Tons of drawings about the things I should be noting.  They don’t help too terribly much when studying, though, I won’t lie.

I am going to finish my cup of coffee now, play some kind of online game and then go play in the forest until class at six.  Does anyone else like to play in the woods?  I love exploring.  I like to pick a forest somewhere in town and wander through it.  However unsanitary this is, I like to pick things up that have made their way into the woods over the years.  Like old cans and papers and parts of things.  I call them ‘forest treasures.’  I use to give them to my friends, but I have stopped.  They never seem to like my gifts… I like gluing tons of random things together and giving them to people.  I make them close their eyes, prepare for a wonderful present, and then I give them a glued pile of junk.  Who wouldn’t love that?  Being so excited for something and then oops, it’s nothin’.  Be my friend, you’ll get stuff.  Also go exploring, there’s all kinds of interesting junk left in weird places.  It’s fun to think about how the stuff made its way into the woods and who had it before mother nature.  Anyway, coffee calls.  Here are some links to fun games online; play them!

Well, it’s Thursday evening.  Did anyone else thank the sun god today for the glorious beams it gifted us with?  It is a beautiful day.  Easy, comfortable — excellent.  I have the evening off from work and all is right with the world.  If I forget about the growing piles of homework, anyway.

On days like these, when I don’t have work and weather is good, I find myself at the coffee shop.  What kind of college kid doesn’t love a good cup of coffee?  I suppose the kind that don’t drink coffee, but those that do, I have a tip for you.  It’s a tip you’ll want to remember and probably do something about.  Down the street from Iowa Western, straight down Valley View, is the town’s most excellent coffee shop.  Good coffee, good atmosphere, good prices.  It’s one of my favorite places to go and just relax and have my daily cup of coffee.  I get the same thing every time, they know my usual now, a large dark roast over ice.  Guess how much?  Two dollars!  It’s incredible.  I will sit there for hours sometimes and sip my coffee as I doodle something, browse Facebook or work on homework.  I recommend the coffee place to everyone.  Even if you don’t like coffee, go there.  They’ve got smoothies and tea.  I’ve never had a smoothie, but my friend likes them.  And the tea is exquisite.  I like the chamomile.  Quite wonderful.  They’ll even give you it in a teapot, if you’d like.  How neat is that?  A tea pot, just for you.  Go there.

I have been doodling a lot lately.  Mostly in class, I have to admit, but I worked on one at the coffee shop today.  I was drinking my delicious coffee while observing the other Thursday coffee drinkers.  This guy sitting across from me had a cool eyelid.  It had nice wrinkles.  So, I drew it.  And it turned into a big doodle.  I didn’t tell him I was drawing him, of course, but I bet he was a little weirded out when I kept glancing at his eye.  I would have told him, but what would I say?  “Excuse me, I just wanted to let you know that I think your eyelid is fascinating and I am drawing it.”  I do not want to have hot coffee thrown on me.  At least not on this fine Thursday.  Anyway, the doodle turned out pretty nicely.  Check it out below.

I don’t know if I have mentioned this to you yet, faithful readers of my blog, but I am going to school for art.  I don’t know what I want to do with it yet, but I know that it’s what I should do.  Honestly, I don’t know if it’s what I really want to do or not, but I think it’s my calling.  Like I would feel like I am cheating myself if I don’t do something with it.  I am not an academic artist, though, just so you know.  I don’t really care about figure drawing or landscapes or anything like that.  I can do them if I must, but it’s not what I want to do.  I have never been one for scholarly art.  I am good at realism, but something about it makes me die a little inside.  I think because I am not pushing myself, my brain, to create something more.  That’s the beauty of art, being able to create anything.  It’s limitless, really.  You can create any world you want to.  It’s a little scary, I know, but also thrilling.  Like my coffee friend with the cool eyelid; I could easily have drawn his eyelid as realistically as possible, but why bother?  It’s already there, existing.  I can already see it as it is in this reality, so why create it again?  I mean, it’s great as it is, like I said, but it’s even better when it’s on the weird face of the long-tongued doodle man up there.  Do you agree?  Just to show that I do draw realistically sometimes, below are some thumbnails of larger portraits that I drew half a year ago.  Click on the thumbnail to see the bigger portrait.

The portraits are of friends of mine.  The first is Kristin, then Olivia, Paige, Sam and myself in the next two.  The big portrait is my favorite portrait that I have done.  A self-portrait, executed well, I think.  I like it the most.  I still do portraits from time to time.  I am working on a couple for friends and family; Christmas gifts or something.  I must run to class now, geology lab, but I will post a few more doodles below.  Hope you love them.  (Click them to see them bigger.)

I wish I was a magician, because then my disappearing acts on this blog would be a little more impressive.  I haven’t blogged in awhile, as you might notice.  Unfortunately, I can’t say I was out learning magic tricks.  I wish I was.  I was working, a lot, and scrambling to get my life together.

MAGIIIIIIICIIIIAAAAANNNNNNNN

I am sure tons of you college students can understand.  I found an apartment in town recently.  Great place.  Good location, nice price, easy access to everywhere I need to go on a regular basis, and the best part of it — freedom.  I was living at my parents’ place until now.  I kind of just dove into the situation, afraid that if I didn’t make a move, I never would and someone else would roll in and steal this nice piece of rental property.  So I jumped in, completely unprepared and inexperienced.

I took on another job and killed myself working at least sixty hours a week, plus 19 credit hours at school — PLUS — getting this apartment ready for living.  Now, this might have been a stupid choice, but I decided to paint.  It wasn’t the most attractive place when it started.  I will post another blog with some pictures after this one later this week.  I’ll go into more detail then.  All I knew was that I had to change the place, or it just wouldn’t be worth it.  So, I squeezed in a couple hours a week to paint and work at the new place, along with everything else.  It was torture, it really was.  I usually worked from 4:3o in the morning to midnight every day but Mondays and Thursdays.  That’s when I had evening classes, so I could only work mornings.  Long story short, my days were booked and the things that should have mattered, (school work, blogging, etc.), faded into the background.  And sitting here now, typing this, I can’t help but feel remorseful and cheated for not doing what I should have been doing all along.

Although, the apartment looks FANTASTIC.  Like I said a second ago, I will post pictures in my next blog.  The times are better these days, more time for blogging, school work and other fun things.  I quit one job and am doing my best to pay the bills with the other.  Eventually I will get a different job, one that pays me actual money, and then everything will be right as rain.  And let me tell you, rain is about as right as anything can be.

I have some excellent things planned for this week.  Fun things!  On Thursday, the 29th, I am going to see one of my favorite bands play.  The Yonder Mountain String Band will be playing at the Sokol Auditorium in Omaha at 8 o’clock in the evening.  I recommend this show to everyone.  Watch this video and you will understand.  OK, you might not, but still watch the video.  If you like bluegrass, you will love it.