Susan Pevensie

Uh oh! I gave my website address to my boss lady! Should I be worried? Is she reading this right now? OH GOD! What ever shall I do? I guess I could say hello. Hello Boss Lady!!

I’m not sure if anyone has ever heard me talk about my kids mattress on the floor that I slept on for about 3-4 years, but it’s finally gone! I’ve been in need of a bed for so long, but I could never afford one and my parents couldn’t either. So I’ve always slept on this thin kids mattress that’s hurt my back for years. Fortunately for me, my co-worker was getting a new bed and she offered me the bed! Woot, right?! So I got the bed for $60 USD and now it’s in my room. It feels like it’s been forever since I’ve actually owned my own bed. I love it.

I’m so excited! Finally after months of waiting I got a one bedroom apartment. They painted all the walls, and shampoo’d the floors before they let us move in! It looks so nice in here now. The only bad part about being in this new one bedroom is that we are sort of in the basement so we have some smaller windows and there’s no balcony to go sit on — but that’s something I’m willing to give up. I think the windows let in sufficient light anyway. I’m already unpacking all my stuff. I’m just waiting for a new shelf unit so I can get all my books unpacked. Here is the new layout. You can see the old studio apartment in a previous blog post. It’s a lot more roomier here!

I visited my family this last weekend in Missouri — it was quite fun. I stayed at my grandma’s house which is where all the grandchildren stay when they have no where else to stay! It brings back a lot of memories of being a child and growing up there. Spending the night with my cousins, staying up late trying really hard to pull and all-nighter, playing the NES until the sun came up, running around the house and building forts with chairs and sheets. It was all good times — there wasn’t anything that stood in our way. Although, it is quite different there now that my grandpa passed. Usually, when you wanted to do something that needed permission you would ask him. He would moan and groan about it but eventually let us do it.

“Can you take us on a ride on the four-wheeler?!”
“Can we go down to the pond? We want to throw rocks in it!”
“Can we go to town?!”

We are all grown up now, however. My cousins are all graduating high school or going into college now. Some of them even have children now and are married. Crazy stuff to think about when it just feels like yesterday we were playing keep-away from the youngest cousin.

It was good seeing everyone again and I’m going to try to make it an effort to go down for at least a day once a month. I think it’s a good idea — plus I feel like I’m almost forgotten down there since I barely only visit twice a year.

So, one thing I hate about this apartment is the layout. It has a horrible problem — the doors are too close together so they hit each other. I’m only in this studio apartment for another week or two and then I move into a 1 bedroom apartment which is much larger.

I went out to the local store to get some more garbage bags for the kitchen and when I came home, I unlocked the door, but I couldn’t open it. Why? The stupid doors! The closet door was open all the way so it just kept the door pushed shut. Take a look at the below diagram to see what I’m talking about.

It was like this because my father must have opened the closet before going to bed. He must be a heavy sleeper because I banged on the door and tried to get his attention. Lacey, my cat, was meowing at the door. She was trying to let me in. I could tell she was telling me, “I have no thumbs! Sorry, Josh!”

I finally got in. Luckily I got the mail beforehand and I ended up using the magazine to open the door. I stuck the magazine under the door and pushed the closet door shut. Needless to say I no longer have a readable magazine. It’s all ripped up now. It took me multiple attempts to shut the closet door.

So I got in the apt and here I am writing this.

Good night.

So I just recently watched Bridge to Terabithia and I thought it was a pretty good movie. It starts to make me think, though. The main focus of the movie was to keep your mind wide open.

It’s better understood if you actually watch the film. Basically if you keep your mind open and believe in what you see, you can create anything you want to create. This is, perhaps, the most inspiring concept I’ve ever heard of.

I think this movie has honestly changed my view of the world.

Click on the button below to listen to an excerpt from “Seeing Terabithia” on the Bridge to Terabithia soundtrack.
seeing_terabithia

These past few weeks I’ve been talking with Vince De Quattro and David Nethery about animation and visual effects. I never thought I’d be talking with such accomplished individuals in the industry — it’s just mind blowing. We’ve had discussions about how to really succeed in the industry but most recently we discussed how to actually jump right in.

For the past 4 years I’ve been thinking I’m never going to find a job in animation in the midwest. All the jobs are on the west coast, right?! That’s what I thought too. Vince brought up a good point, though. My long term goal is to land a job at a studio that produces feature films. Isn’t that everyone’s dream though? I’ll make it there, someday, but I’m never going to if I don’t get any experience. I need to get some smaller jobs here and there to build up a good resume and maybe even add some more things to my portfolio. Vince seemed to think there were jobs everywhere for animation and visual effects. Foolish man! Doesn’t he know I lived in the midwest? Not too foolish, I suppose.

So Vince asked me if there is a local news channel here. Of course they’re is! So why don’t I see if I can get a job doing some small work on their title screens, commercials, and segment animations? So I was wrong. I never thought that there were small things like that I could do. David even took it a step further and found something else in the midwest that I could do.

To my surprise, he googled “Animation Studios in Iowa” and the first returned result was an article about a guy who has opened an animation studio right in my back-yard. Well, about 2 hours away from my back-yard, but that’s beside the point.

So I guess there are more jobs out there than I originally thought. Perhaps I can go around to local businesses and make commercials for them. Lord knows they look horrible right now. Of course, I’ll have to wait until I actually know what I’m doing.

So I went grocery shopping for the first time for myself. I’m really not used to that. It really hit me at the store that I really am growing up. So I found a lot of stuff and of course went the cheapest route! Total came up to $31.02 so it wasn’t too bad. Thought I would just give you a brief update on things on my end!

So yesterday we spent the whole day moving the furniture to mom’s new house. We sort of moved mine into the corner since I’m not able to live here, but I will be living here until the 1st. Once October 1st comes around, I’ll be moving in with my dad. It’s really easy to say this is the least stressful thing I’ve had to do.

So here I am on my computer barely hooked up (Monitor, Keyboard, and Mouse) finally connected to the internet writing this.

This new house is really nice. It’s the neighborhood that I grew up in as a kid and the actual place my mom is living in now (the one I’m writing this from) is my childhood best friend’s old house. So just being in here reminds me of a bunch of childhood memories that I had growing up — it’s very weird.

The old house we used to live in over here is now occupied (after 5-6 years of it being empty and renovated) and the people who live there are jerks and are very loud, apparently. This is what our old neighbor says, anyway. She wishes they would move out. I was going to try to get that place to rent, but mom said I probably wouldn’t be able to get it so I didn’t even try. Apparently these people tried and they got it — how unfortunate for me. It’s a 1 bedroom house that’s small, but still quite large for a single person. The kitchen, dining room, living room, and bathroom are all very large. There is even a walk-in closet in a short hallway! Oh well, guess I’m stuck with where I’m at now — living with my parents still.

The only good thing so far that has come out of this is that I finally have a bed. For those of you who do not know, my bed broke around February this year. It was an old kids bed so I’ve just taken that mattress and put it on the floor and I’ve been sleeping on that since then. Well, now that we’re moving mom into her new place, we couldn’t get her mattress and box-spring to go up the stairs. It was too big as a queen size. So now I get that bed and mom gets my old mattress that just sits on the floor. In a way I feel really bad for her because that old mattress of mine is the most painful experience you will have to sleep through, but at the same time I’m kind of happy because I actually get a bed now.

I’ve successfully made it through my first module of school as tomorrow is my last day of our first lesson. This first lesson took 2 weeks — a little long in my opinion, but that’s just the first week. It’s probably structured like that so students can get the feel for online classes. The rest of our module’s only last 1 week. That should be nice because I thought this first week was dragging on because I was done with homework by the end of the first week.

Well, now you know how life is going for me — stressful. Have a good day!

So, what do you think I collect? Rocks? Quarters? Stamps? How about PEZ Dispensers? Well, I seriously thought about collecting the last one, but I actually collect something that not most people collect. It’s something that’s very valuable to me. Do you really want to know what it is? Hmm? Ok, fine! It’s Soundtracks. From movies to broadway to games, I try to get them all. I started collecting about last year when I first realized that soundtracks usually contain the music in movies that you don’t exactly hear as you’re watching the movie. You hear them, but never think anything of it while watching the movie. To give you an idea how how many soundtracks I own: I own about 112 albums on my computer and 44 of those are soundtracks. That’s 32% of my computer’s music. Here is my list of soundtracks. I tried to include the date on each of them, but not all of them I’m sure what the date is. For example, does anyone know the date for Disney’s Haunted Mansion ride in Disneyland/Disneyworld? I can’t find it anywhere.

I couldn’t tell you my favorite soundtrack, either. It changes depending upon my mood and what’s going on in my life. These soundtracks have dramatic, exciting, happy, and sad music. I think the most beautiful soundtrack is Casper with Mr. Magorium coming in #2 as most beautiful.

What do you collect?