Summer Update

A pretty empty update for now...most of my projects are crawling along as a lot of my time is sucked up by my writing class, my summer research, my efforts to learn Japanese before my trip to Japan in August, and my terrible afternoon-nap-habit (I blame the heat...it makes me drowsier than usual).

One thing I did start doing again this week is cooking (after weeks of eating out or eating PB&J sandwiches). Earlier this week I made pasta primavera (with fried red & yellow bell peppers, fried yellow & green squash, and red, yellow, and orange tomatoes to garnish it) and also tomato-cilantro soup (tomato-basil recipe with a substitution). I like cooking, so next week I am going to try my hand at a chicken-liver paté.

I've also been decorating and cleaning my new place. Allen left his plants with me so I could babysit them over the summer, and I don't really want to give them back, though I do want to put them in nicer planters. This is a glass of green tea with fresh mint from my garden.



The coaster is a mosaic I made at the Getty Villa. I couldn't pass up a chance to do some arts & crafts, even though everybody else at the table was under the age of 12. If you can't tell, I tried to depict a stylized skull, since I had just seen the Aztec Pantheon exhibit. It's an exhibit worth seeing unless you have already visited/plan to visit the Museo Nacional de Antropología in Mexico City (that's where all the pieces came from). If you're into blood and gore then you can get a kick of of the sacrificial stone, sacrificial knives, and sacrificial stone eagle with a hole in the back for burning the hearts of the sacrifices.



After mosaic-ing I remembered my plan to make a large mosaic to cover a portion of the wall of my parents' courtyard. I scouted out a tile store and will be preparing some photoshop mockups in the coming months.

I mistakenly bought some plaster of paris before realizing that mosaics require a different sort of adhesive and also grout. Since I don't feel like returning it Asher will most likely be enjoying a homemade birthday piñata (inflated balloons are coated in plaster of paris to make the body of the piñata) and eventually I will have to try my hand at sculpture.

Coming soon:

• My FM transmitter works, but is waiting on me to order a 7 segment display and level-shifters so I can run it off the car's outlet.
• When I get a camera I can show off my newly decorated home
• I got hit by the LED art bug again and am designing tiny lamps (but so far I've been coming up with the wrong pairings of batteries/bulbs and nothing lasts as long as it ought to)
• When school starts up again and I can gain access to the School of Architecture's laser cutter, I will attempt to learn some basic AutoCad so I can make the Settlers of Catan plywood board

Finally here is another shot of the painting, coming along very slowly.