As I sit here and type this, the weather has since turned cold and rainy, I'm sipping on a hot Starbucks holiday drink, the Muppet Christmas Carol is on tv,  and pretending I'm a jedi by wearing the comforter from our bed is now a staple in my wardrobe.....but that won't stop me from blogging about our last trip over the summer.  Yes, I'm a tad bit late with this post, but I don't care because it's my blog and chronology means nothing here.  Along with most forms of logic and basic competency.  Welcome to the Thunderdome or PeeWee's Playhouse of the blogging world.  Any of you old enough to get those references?....................moving on......

During the last days of summer, Whitney, her parents, and I decided to join her aunt and uncle at their beach house in Long Beach, Washington, for a much needed 4 day weekend.  Growing up, I spent just about every summer at my family's old beach house in Lincoln City, Oregon, which I absolutely loved, so I was excited to relive a bit of my childhood with Whitney, as I had heard that Long Beach is a lot like Lincoln City as far as beach towns go.  If you can't tell from the above picture, Whitney and I went bananas at the candy shop that was in town and bought about 5 pounds of salt water taffy.  I'm not too big on taffy, because one day when I was about 7 years old I I decided to stuff my face with as much as I could and spent the rest of that day pleasantly puking it all up....but all the brightly colored taffy we saw at this shop was just too distracting for my short and easily manipulated attention span.  It was like eating a rainbow!  But then realizing that rainbow wasn't very flavorful.

I also bought Zotz......lots and lots of Zotz.


It was about a 4 hour drive from Seattle to Long Beach, mostly through beautiful wooded highways....Whitney made sure that she drove the entire trip because she gets car sick easily unless she's driving, giving me plenty of opportunities to catch her bopping out to Taylor Swift or the Weepies, which she doesn't like me doing, but she's just so darn adorable when she does it!


As soon as we got there, the puppies had to explore their new and unknown surroundings and smell every smelly smell that smelled....here's Whitney and Momo in action!




This is the view from the deck of the house that we were staying at.  It was only a 5 minute walk from the house to the beach!



The beach was gorgeous and perfect!!!  What I hated about the beach in Lincoln City, was that there was always some loud idiot who, despite how empty the beach was, would sit as close as possible to you and ruin any serene enjoyment you planned on having.  That was definitely not the case here, considering how vast and open the beach was.....although if that situation were to somehow arise during our Long Beach vacation, I was fully prepared to take that person's belongings and throw them in the ocean.  They can consider it a generous donation to the underwater city of Bikini Bottom and it's King, Aquaman.

We stopped at a local drugstore, where Whitney found a cheap plastic kite that she was so excited to fly at the beach, but ran into a few bumps along the way:




No joke, those were the exact directions.  Granted, it is just a kite (not to mention the simplest form of a kite) and shouldn't be too complicated for two highly educated adults....but we must of just had a momentary instance of poo-brain because we put it together wrong multiple times.  We're an accountant and a freelance artist, not kite makers.

After many hours of intense brainstorming and over-thinking, utilizing complex mathematical theorems, we finally got it right and enjoyed and exhilarating 3 minutes of flying it until we got bored with it.  The end.





I took it as a challenge to see how far up I could get the kite, considering it came with like a mile worth of string.  I mean, why give you that much string, if not to use all of it?  That's what I do, I push the limits and ask the real tough questions in life....and I get results damn it.


Well it turns out there was only about 10 feet of string....but that's pretty extreme too.........extreme enough to boost the current level of fun at the time from "non-existent" to "moderate."  Look out!  There's a scary pirate on that kite!  He's saying "Arrrrgh!  This kite be high, says I."


Whitney and her mom also made an awesome sand castle!  They're a couple of Apollodorus's of Damascus, those two!  The oculus is a little off and the top two spires on the dome kind of make it look like a crab, but other than that, it's like being at the doorstep of the Pantheon itself!  Or so I assume.





A couple of weeks earlier, Conan O'Brian posted a picture of himself on his Twitter, standing in front of this giant frying pan in Long Beach....so walking past it, Whitney knew she had to take a picture with it!  It was like meeting the Flaming C himself!!!

The rest of the trip was spent eating burgers, watching UW football, playing board games, spotting local wildlife, consuming massive amounts of discontinued candy, and going on some of the most enjoyable walks in my life with Whitney and the puppies.  In between all of that however, I was attached to Whitney's iPad the whole trip, trying to beat the game Army of Darkness Defense, based off of the third and final movie of the Evil Dead trilogy (Bruce Campbell and that movie is such a huge part of my childhood!!!).  Other than that, I was fully immersed and one with mother nature.

It was nice to get away for a long weekend since Whitney and I have been working extremely hard for more than a year without any breaks really (Thailand doesn't really count for me).  We've already started planning for our next vacation sometime in the first half of 2012, and so far we have narrowed it down to San Diego for comic-con, Hawaii, or Disneyland/Disneyworld!

I hope you enjoyed our little reminder of summer!  Anyone out there have plans for their next vacation?  We would love to hear what fun you'll be getting into!

This woman is a great inspiration to me

My penguin was selected!!!!

So after trying to wedge the project in the middle of two finals, 250 art images, 20 pages worth of art history papers, and internship applications all in about 3 and half weeks, my penguin for Woodland Park Zoo's Penguins on the March project was one of the 6 (out of 62 or so) that was selected to be auctioned off at the 33rd annual private auction event hosted by Woodland Park Zoo, Jungle Party.  As stated, unfortunately its a private auction, so Seattle big-wigs only I guess, but I heard it was something like $350 a plate.  Anyways, I'm happy it made it to the auction so I can add the project to my resume and I hope it brings in tons of bids to support the Zoo's field conservation program.  Thank you to my mom for talking me into doing it and helping me!!!!!!!  (More info on the project in an older post below

GRIFFEY HOMERUN!!!!!!!!!!!

Went to a Mariners game for Whitney's birthday  a few weeks ago and was able to catch on my phone Jr's homerun on the first pitch he sees to help them in their 8th inning with 2 outs comeback to beat Arizona (which Whitney called 2-3 innings prior, so good job Whitney!!!).  The highlight of the game however was when I knocked Whitney's birthday hotdog that her friend Trisha bought her, out of my own hand somehow while I was holding it for her.  The video is from my phone, but you get the gist of it:

My Whitney....

I cannot put into words how much she means to me and I thank God everyday that she is in my life

Fozzie is ok too....

Penguins on the March

"Woodland Park Zoo and Greenwood’s shared creative work space The Greenwood Collective launch Penguins on the March at two corresponding exhibits on June 12th starting at the base of the Space Needle in the morning and closing at The Greenwood Collective in Greenwood-Phinney. 

Sixty-two Seattle artists of all ages and experience levels painted, embellished and decorated fabricated penguins as a community celebration of art and wildlife conservation, inspired by Woodland Park Zoo’s brand new Humboldt penguin exhibit, which opened in May. 

After its June 12th launch, Penguins on the March will begin migrating by June 15th into Ballard, Fremont and Greenwood-Phinney, where you will find individual penguins prominently featured in front of neighborhood businesses in July, August and September. 

After migrating through Seattle, the penguins will be auctioned off to benefit Woodland Park Zoo’s field conservation program. Woodland Park Zoo supports 38 wildlife conservation projects in 50 countries worldwide, including the Humboldt Penguin Conservation Center at Punta San Juan."

The project is not only for a wonderful cause, but it was absolutely fun to participate in.  I was privileged to be one of the artists selected to decorate a penguin and I'm glad I did!  I was about to pass up on the opportunity because the due date for it landed on the same time as both of my finals, plus I had a 15 page independent study to do as well.  But, my mom talked me into it and she helped out a whooooole lot to make sure it got done on time.  I wasn't able to go to the launch event at the Space Needle, but from what I hear, my penguin was a hit with everyone else.  I'm hoping it goes in the private auction so that it can a good amount of money towards the zoo's conservation program!  Pictures of all of the decorated penguins can be found here. 

My first idea for the back didn't quite work out, I was going for a Tron look, but ended up not prepping the surface properly:

Final product before varnish:

Hello....

Welcome to my blog! Seeing as how this is my first official post, I'll take the opportunity to introduce myself. I'm from Seattle, WA, I watch a lot of cartoons, and am a complete nerd for comic books. As a recent graduate from the University of Washington with a degree in art history, I have witnessed my interest in art explode into a multi-dimensional and multi-faceted passion for everything that art entails, giving me an aspiration to pursue a career in the field of art. This however, is not currently my highest priority, as I have gone through some dramatic changes recently.

Realizing that I am about to embark on a major transition in my life, the cloud of uncertainty about my future also brought perfect clarity. Suddenly I understood my life, my role, and the individual aspects that contributed to both. Through that perception, I gained an instant recognition of my own wealth; I was richer beyond anything I could imagine, implicitly accumulating in value towards what my life had and will become. My parents who bend over backwards and have sacrificed everything that they can so that I may have every opportunity that life has to offer. My grandparents, whose constant love and support has shown me I can achieve anything. My girlfriend, who has shown me what it means to adore someone beyond words, have true friendship, and confidently know that you are meant to spend the rest of your life with that person. All are the intrinsic components of the totality of my wealth.

None of this, however, would have ever been realized if God had not grabbed me by the neck and revealed to me that I was not on the path he intended for me. With an informal inclination towards a somewhat atheistic mindset of secular humanism, anyone that knows me closely understandably would say I was not the religious type. God to me was ineffective and irrelevant, nothing more than superstitious belief for those who didn't have what I had. And why should I care? Their problems did not compromise my contentment or happiness. I justified my behavior and actions through the self-righteous mindset that I was a good and moral person who did the right thing. Though I did not realize it at first, God revealed himself to me in the most powerful way possible. In the depths of my sin, God's metaphysical manifestation was planted in my heart and rapidly grew outwards, creating change within me I can't explain, let alone grasp. My pride was crushed, my idols destroyed, and my contentment replaced with guilt. From then on God gave me new desires, new vision, and the strength to repent of my sins, and I have not looked back.

My distorted rationality of the world within the context of my closed consciousness was shattered by the abrupt awareness of all that is truly wrong with it, plagued by injustices, corruption, and death. That is what God showed me, and that is undoubtedly what I am called to address. I am deeply affected by (but not limited to) issues such as hunger, disease, homelessness, child abuse, and animal cruelty, all of which provide us the opportunity to make an immense and monumental impact, whether it be in an individual or the world. Though I don't fit the usual philanthropist mold (being rich), I understand that helping those that are in need starts with creating awareness and educating, largely supplemented through volunteerism.

Which is why I have decided to start my own blog; to not only create awareness of specific issues, but to also provide ways that we can all help. With that being said, I will sporadically be doing posts that feature wonderful (and most importantly, credible) charities and organizations located in the greater Seattle area and across the country.....AND I want to encourage those that come across my blog who feel strongly about a specific charity that they support or an issue they are compelled to address to please contact me and I will feature it on here and help spread the word! The blog is also meant as documented account of my own journey to make a difference in this world and the evolution of my life, while also introducing and reviewing art, artists, art books, and the arts in general (music, film, photography, etc.)....gotta keep it interesting!

There is a lot of work to be done.....we are all able to help, so ask yourself why are we not willing?