Ceramics

Picked up my final three ceramics pieces.

This last one is my favorite out of everything I did.

J turns 2!

It has been over a week since the party, but maybe I needed some time to relax afterwards. It was really the best kid party ever, rockin' space tunes, space bowling, great decor and fantastic food...plus the cutest birthday boy. He seriously was loving it!

Story time with Harry and Horsie in space! If you can see the cover you might notice a slight resemblance to the birthday boy. I edited one of the drawings from the book to make this for the party.

Maybe a few to many sips of root beer!

J made rocket bowling pins and an astroid ball - here is the little J action shot.

Very pleased with himself for knocking over pins.

And just because she is soooo funny...Q!

California Museum

I've got to thank my internship (and my mother) for a crash course in illustrator. When I told the exhibit coordinator I could do some basic design, I meant REALLY basic, but I still got signed up to do some projects for the exhibit. I've had to learn quickly. Here is some of what I have done.

The first presentable one is a language map, that will go through a lot of edits, but basically looks the way it will in the museum.

The second one is a comparison of the sizes of various mammoths and elephants,

the museum will have a scale model pygmy mammoth this will accompany.

The colors don't show quite the same on the small version and also a lot of edits to go. As soon as I get something started another project is ready to start. I am amazed (and a little overwhelmed) that they are letting me do so much...it will be pretty great to have a little portfolio. And how fun will it be to have stuff I made on display in a museum!

Squash

Q graduates from rice cereal!

Little Bones

Q arrived last week all decked out for Halloween. Totally her brother's little sis, bones and what appears to be a mohawk...

those bones will glow in the dark if needed,

J was much more literary in his interests, here are he & roommate L reading on the couch in our living room.

Such a cute pair!!!

Crocker Library

This week I started volunteering at the Crocker library, they hope to get everything ready for opening the first week of November. The shelving only came in last week - only 2 days before the museum opening. The library is downstairs in a lovely little room. Right now the stacks are pretty empty.

That is a window alcove back there, filled with boxes of books.

The mountains of boxes that have been emptied already (there are slightly smaller stacks behind the two flat piles you can see the tops of), I was able to get Jessie to help me cart all the boxes out to the recycling bins the floor so was clear for a little while.

This entire wall of shelves are all books donated from one person's collection - and this is not even all of the books that were donated this is maybe half. It makes me drool, to think of her having that many art books of her own.

Here are just a couple that caught my eye on Friday when I was organizing them:

From inside:

It is wonderful to be helping in the library and getting to walk through the Crocker on my way in is wonderful! It really is a beautiful museum.

Teachers Pet

Alright, not really, but pretty close...after staying up ALL night last night to work on a presentation for class tonight I totally failed! Neglecting to explain all the fantastic miscellanea I collected in my research and was completely inarticulate, skipping over entire sections because I was running out of time and had prepared too much.

I knew it was a great presentation with amazing content, and did take me from about 10pm last night until 7am, 10 am to 1 pm, 4 pm to 6pm today to compile. After 14 hours it better be fantastic.

It was so fantastic...my professor asked if she could have it, three times over the course of 15 min. She LOVED it, "amazing" "I have never seen a presentation like that" "where did you find everything". My friend J was sitting next to the Prof said the entire time Prof S. was ohhhhing and awwwing over everything.

For not covering half my content and points, and not having my themes as organized as well I might want I will contest that it was still slightly epic.

And...I believe I have found my final project, drum roll.............

DICKENS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Graduation is getting closer by the day! If I can just get through the semester.

The Crocker

Tonight I skipped the first hour of class to go to the Friends and Family Opening of the CrockerArt Museum - where J has been working since May and who we are indebted to for getting her and her little fam out here. That reason alone makes me love the Crocker.

My love of the Crocker goes back to my junior year of high school in Davis, for extra credit I went to the Crocker to view a collection of watercolors that were visiting at the time and fell in love. Maybe it was the mansion, maybe it was the art, maybe it was the glass covered bookshelves and winding staircase specifically.

Opulent as some parts of the old building are, the big new beautiful wing has wonderfully clean lines. The collection looks fantastic. The Crocker is not so pretentious as to ignore any genres, which I appreciate.

It was nice to hang out with the Gibbs and the parents. The food was great, no one died when the champagne bottle was opened via cleaver knife, and I am sufficiently tired after walking almost the entire museum in about an hour and a half that I will sleep well tonight. Looking forward to going back soon!

GC Weekend

At home for conference - up until after midnight playing nerts with B, C, and G and up early making sourdough pancakes with C watching GC and catching the end of G's soccer game.

Soooo much homework to do - let's see how much I get done :)

Charming Children

Last Friday I grabbed Q and J to meet C and her nephew I at the park in Davis. Could these two be any more adorable? – I could eat them up.

Saturday I had the bundles of joy all day. Thank goodness L was home to help, you need 8 arms to keep hold of them.

J kept trying to climb in my lap and push Q out of my arms, not a promising behavior from one who generally adores his sister. We distracted him with an animated “Where the Wild Things Are” about 30 times and finally resorted to driving him around in the car to get him to take a nap. He protested vehemently when I tried to lay down with him multiple times – in the car her was out in less than 5 min. He woke up looking like he was coming out of a drug induced coma, he did finally return to his normal self.

The End...sort of

Today is my first official day UC Davis free. It feels great, I went into the California Museum for my first day, they have a small staff, so I don't know what the likelihood of my being able to get a job there in the future would be, but I really like it so far!

Additionally I have an interview for a low stress student job tomorrow afternoon and received an email today from the head curator at the California Railroad Museum letting me know I am also on their list to interview (this is the job I REALLY want). It is nice to know there could be a small trickle of income to help pay the bills in the near future.

In other news-now don't freak out-UC Davis has asked to hire me 10% variable so that they can call and ask for instructions and pay me for it. On condition that I never have to go to the office and that I can let Joel's calls go to voicemail and email my answer. And here I didn't really think I was as essential as I thought I was. I do know I am going to miss some of my coworkers a lot! But that is life I guess.

This week I am going to focus on getting organized, so I can open my closet without cringing and find a place for everything in my room. I figure it will take a week or so for the reality that I have actually left my job to sink in, I am still just too exhausted from the move, school starting, and the work stress - in addition to having to find some new work and the obsessive perfectionism that makes me want to really impress everyone at the museum with my internship.

On another note - the Program Coordinator I am working with introduced me to everyone as Kirsten - I was able to correct it with some of the people, but never when he was there, I don't actually mind but it makes things slightly awkward from my perspective.

Off to class...

Ceramics

This summer Laura and I took a ceramics class at the UC Davis Craft Center - the class was wheel throwing. As the course was one evening a week it seemed a little hard to make it every week. I ended up with 8 finished pieces - only 4 of which I have been able to find after their firing in the kilns.

Very first piece.

This one was supposed to be mostly blue - not sure where all the brown came from.

This one still needs to be glazed.

Hopefully once the center re-opens I will be able to find the other 4 pieces.

Headboard

This may be the longest I have ever taken unpacked my belongings, ever! In my apartment in Davis I had the entire one bedroom apartment unpacked and decorated in less than 48 hours. Chaos still rules here in Sacramento. Figuring out where to put everything in my room has been a struggle. There is one long wall entirely made of grey cement bricks - solution, a headboard.

Last night I went home and with Dad and J's help finished the headboard.

Now I just need to figure out to do with the rest of the room.