The most popular question of 2013

Guess what my most popular question of the year was?

Go ahead, I'll wait....
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Ok, I'll tell you: "How do you like your new place?"

As you know, I moved out of my friend's house in April into my very own, all alone, by myself apartment, which I liked at first, but later loathed more than my mothers dinner of liver and onions. If you missed it, you should read my last blog about my last days in that apartment.

So, just before Thanksgiving, with the help of a few friends that live close, I moved into a new apartment in the same complex. It still squeaks, but in just two places in the living room and not nearly as much, as loud or as annoying as the other place. I think this is because my new upstairs neighbor is a single lady who seems more considerate of people living beneath her floor. I do hear her walking around on occasion, but she doesn't stomp and she doesn't wrestle hippos and she doesn't listen to her shows and movies at ridiculous volumes. Even when she has people over, I'm still not annoyed!

When the power went out due to the ice storm in early December, I went up to ask the chick above me about the electricity and she said "yep, out here too, but I built a fire so if you get too cold come on up."
She came to my door one day to say she was going out of town for Christmas and I said "Me too! Have a good trip." She looked at me sort of puzzled at first, but I think it was mostly because I had a turkey on my head.

I introduced myself to my other two new neighbors one at at time. One upstairs neighbor, who has a little son, I met while I was laying on the sidewalk taking pictures of my suitcases (an assignment for that Digital Photography class). She looked at me and smiled when I rolled over and said, "Oh, hi! I'm Vicki, your new weird neighbor."
The guys that live across the sidewalk from me don't speak English, only Spanish. They are hardly home, but no complaints about them when they are home.


The lady that lived here before me had a dog that I think never went outside to relieve himself. My living room still has a faint smell of dog pee that I catch a whiff of every now and then, and wet dog smell still lingers in my bedroom. I figure that will take a while to get rid of. One of my new neighbors suggested spraying ammonia on the carpet. I haven't done that yet, I just got some incense to permeate the carpet for now. Also, my refrigerator smelled like a huge rotten onion, which made my ice stink. I mean, who wants to drink rum and coke with stinky onion ice? I cleaned it out with hot water and baking soda and then unplugged it while I was gone for Christmas. No more stinky ice!

Anywho, no feelings of wanting to stab anyone in the face, so that's a good thing, right?

And then a whole bunch of ill shit happened...

So I realized that about 4 people actually want to continue reading about my life here in Dallas. That's great! For them, I will now continue to blog.

I know I didn't write anything about school this whole last semester, so I have arranged the topics by subject so you can scroll down and just pick what you want to read about....Mmmm-Kay? Here we go:



Classmates and other friends:
With the guidance of my friend, Tori, I discovered Bitstrips and made myself into a cartoon character. I've since been Bitstriping everyone! Tori says, "I gave you too much power."

I went to a 3 year-olds birthday party. I gave her a box of M&M's. I thought, "well, I know she likes them, and she's 3, so it should be okay." Then I saw all the cool stuff she was getting from people with money like a cool jacket, a bad-ass tea set and funky boots. I felt sad that I couldn't get her anything cool, but then later that night when her mommy put her down for bed I was told this in a text: "So I put Zara down for bed and she said, 'Mommy can I sleep with one of my presents?' Of course Mommy said 'Sure baby, which one do you want?' and Zara said 'My M's.'" The text ended with "Damn you Aunt Vicki!"

Halloween was just okay. I dressed up and drove to school in my costume:

I thought it was a good idea, but nobody got it:
devil horns and a tail, a wig and disguise glasses....
I'm the devil in disguise!

That night I was gonna go and pass out candy, but I ended up laying on my couch and just passing out instead.

I discovered S'mores dip and made some. Invited people over and we all ate it. Here's a video:

I went to a Halloween scary movie party at my friends house of Tony and Sergio. I drank some wine, everyone else drank lots of wine but we all watched a few movies: Nightmare Before Christmas and something else that wasn't really scary.

I ate at Applebees for free on Veterans Day with my friend Jerrad, who was totally unaware of things like this. I always feel bad and out of place for taking discounts or free stuff because I'm a veteran. I feel like I'm taking advantage because I never went over seas, I was stationed in Florida and had it pretty easy. Still, everyone tells me thanks for my service even though I tell them this, so OK then, thanks for the free stuff.

My friend Bernardo stopped by, unexpectedly, as usual, with someone else in tow. He called me from the train station: "Willis! hey is it ok to crash at your place tonight? I got so-and-so with me. oh and can you make me some food?" I don't mind this, I actually like it, and it's not like he does it every week. He's funny and I learn a lot of YouTube stuff from him. I know if I'm ever in the "ghetto" area of Dallas, known as Oakcliff, then I have someone to call on!

I discovered that crayons fit in a glue gun! So I invited a couple friends to try this with me and this is what happened:

We are taking turns sharing the finished piece. Right now I have the said canvas we named "Captain Bebop".

Work: Nothing of consequence happened there. I pretty much just carried on with my life.

Classes: 

Print Production: I made a travel booklet about the Shenandoah Valley. I think it turned out pretty cool. I'll try to post a picture of it one day in the section "Stuff I made (check me out!)" I learned more about using InDesign and further discovered I can not math because the measurements for my die-cut brochure never did come out right.  My final grade in that class is an A-, so I'll take it!

Conceptual Imagery: This class was taught by a teacher I've had twice before, the one I like to have a beer or three before class. I finally convinced a classmate of mine about that idea and he finally did go out and have a few rum and cokes with some people one day before this class and he said it made all the difference in the world! So, see there people! I DO know what I'm talking about! 

Anyway, I ended up making a cool infograph for extreme couponing using squirrels as my main image, which I made in Illustrator from actual photos of squirrels.  The teacher loved the squirrels and I named the piece "Squirreling it away: is couponing worth the trouble?" He loved that, too! My final grade in that class: just an A. I'll take it!

Design Marketing: I had no idea what this class was about, but it's on my curriculum for Graphic Design Advertising so I had to take it. The teacher was ok, even though in the syllabus it stated we must dress appropriately: office casual. Not a problem for me since I still had clothes from when I worked at the court. I wondered what would happen to those who didn't. Turns out, he gave us grades for attendance, which also included the dress code. I heard one girl had taken that class three times and I was thinking, "Shit, how difficult is this?" Turns out, all you have to do is just attempt the assignments, turn it in on time, show up to class and dress semi-appropriately. That's not difficult! So how can she not pass -- three times?!? She doesn't care because Mommy and Daddy must be paying for her. Big thumbs down and middle finger up for that! 

I discovered from the material in the class that I have no head for business and couldn't care less what happens to what I design after it leaves my desk. I do understand that what does go on afterward is important in making a design that will catch the attention of the target audience though. One of the assignments was to write about building a better (proverbial) mousetrap. The comments from the teacher were, "Missed the point, but very creative." I'll take that because I value my creativity! My final grade in that class: An A and I'll take that, too!

Digital Photography: My teacher was the best part of this class. He's an older Chinese man and still has a very thick Chinese accent, so at times he was a bit difficult to understand and it made me laugh. One of his favorite things to say after explaining or pointing out something was "Am I right?" to which we all usually said "I guess, you're the teacher." 

We learned how to use a Cannon Rebel Digital Camera. He's lecture on the subject and give us a formula to follow on the settings then we had a week to photograph and turn in 10 shots. I asked my friend, Sergio, a photographer, to accompany me on my first assignment. He was a great help in showing me the settings on the camera and a few ideas. I soon learned I hate fiddling with the controls; I just want my point and shoot camera!

In class, we would show our pictures and get critiqued. Alphabetical order, so of course, I was last. One day in class, we went through two peoples sets of photos and the teacher kept clicking through going, "No. No...what the hell are we looking at?" Then, exasperated, he said, "Let just go to Victoria picture, she usually get it right." That made me feel so good! I told Sergio about that and he said he was proud of me! 

My final grade in that class: a B, but I'll take it! Everyone else got less than that and my friend Nick said when he took the class he got a D. Here are a few of my faves I took:

for Stop-Action assignment

another for the Stop-Action assignment

for the Blurred-Action assignment

fun with my toys: Short Depth of Field assignment

Selective Focus:  Miss Scarlet in the Library (?) with the revolver

Long Depth of Field: Pioneer Plaza downtown.

I forget what this was for, but I still like the picture

Short Depth of Field at the Dallas Arboretum

for the assignment Exaggerated Focus

Love Life:
I got closer to a guy in one of my classes, we got intimate, but now we are just friends again. *sad face* Next?

And now: I'm gonna be in Virginia for Christmas! So excited to be able to see my parents and sister again. My friend Marci will be watching my apartment and getting my mail so don't think you can cruise over and party at my place with out me!

Til next year: Peace out Girl Scout!

A tale of elephants who wrestle at night

As many of you know, I am severely annoyed with my upstairs neighbors at all times. Not only do the  floors squeak so loudly that I can be awaken from a sound sleep by them, but the people that live up there are the most inconsiderate asses I've ever had the displeasure of living under - ever.

The week I moved in, I heard the floors and a bunch of ruckus, so I went up to introduce myself. "Maybe they don't know someone moved in," I thought. So I let them know that I was living down there now. I guess, me being silly, assumed that they would use some sort of consideration and think "Oh, ok, maybe we shouldn't turn up our surround sound here in the 600 square foot apartment so loud, now that someone lives down there. Or, maybe we could hold our elephant wrestling tournaments until later in the morning and not at 6:30 a.m. like we have been. Or maybe we should not have our computer monitors or tv plastered to the windows we leave open ALL the time so the crap we have up at unbelievable volumes won't travel out and bother everyone outside our apartment at odd hours of the night and day."

None of that happened and that is why I call them inconsiderate asses. Because any time I went up to say "Hey, I'm trying to sleep (or read or study) can you turn down your drive-in movie theater quality sound system while you play Call of Duty or whatever you're doing?"- they kept doing it, as if another day meant I couldn't hear them. They would say "It's normal apartment living noise."

Really? Because any time I've ever lived in an apartment (or dorms), sure I hear some stuff, but it's not enough to complain about. So if I'm complaining (religiously), that means you are exceeding the allowable noise limit for close quarter living and that makes you an inconsiderate ass. The videos I made and put on YouTube do not even come close to doing justice in showing what I deal with.
I posted on Facebook about it a lot and at one time I had a whole committee of comments and suggestions on what to do. It's nice to know my peeps got my back.

Now, after months of this going on, I told management that I can no longer live under these beings for fear of me going to prison for stabbing them in the face.
I don't know if that was the comment that pushed me to the head of the line or not, but they eschewed my lease penalties and I will be moving into a new, squeak-free apartment November 22nd. I know I will be dealing with a new barrage of noise, like cars passing by, but that is noise I can handle.

If anyone would like to help me piecemeal my move, let me know. I'll make a casserole.