I love this:

Life is Beautiful

Before you read this post, read this post. In fact, don’t even read this post. Only follow that link and read that post, then, if you don’t feel immediately like getting up and doing something worth living for there’s something wrong with you.

So yeah, hey everyone! I’m still here, I promise.

My life is so different than it was a few months ago. I’m not sure I can actually put it into quantifiable terms. It just is. And it’s good. Very good. Maybe we can talk about it in real life next time I see you, but for now I’ll just reread A Million Miles In A Thousand Years and let my mind percolate.

Guys, I’ve met some really interesting people. Like, really, really, I-want-to-have-long-conversations-with-them-on-a-daily-basis interesting people. It’s pretty cool.

In other news, Nathan and I have officially moved in with the new roommates, Ryan and Kelli. (Two of the aforementioned people.) And it’s going really well. This apartment is big. As in, my old apartment was so, so tiny and this one is normal sized so it’s awesome. We have a fireplace. And a legit porch. And we’re on the bottom floor and our kitchen opens into our living room. And we have every video game console known to man. It’s pretty legit. I just kind of don’t want to leave most of the time.

My last final of the summer quarter was today. I’m glad to have a break this week. Especially because it begins with a Jenny & Tyler concert and a DC*B and Gungor concert and ends with my birthday! I plan on painting and doing lots of art in my free time this week. And doing lots of spontaneous, unplanned things.

As of Monday, Liz and I have been dating for FOUR whole months! (Hey, Liz, it’s been such a blessing and SO much fun, I’m looking forward to the future, dear!) Liz is a really, really wonderful person. Beautiful, fun, joyful, exciting, and unpredictable. I’m really enjoying this relationship.

Life is happening, things are changing, and it’s so good. I’ve had to do so many adult things in the last month that I never thought I was old enough or aware of things enough to do. It’s crazy. I’ve gone apartment shopping (and decided on an apartment, and filled out all the paperwork and everything) without my parents even being involved except for where I asked them to be. I’ve tried to get student loans, I’ve had to deal with defensive driving and getting a ticket, I don’t even know. It’s so cool to be able to do things.

Have I mentioned I’ll be twenty-one next Saturday? Not gonna lie, I’m kind of excited. It’s the last real age restriction besides being able to run for president. (which I don’t really have to worry about, ha!) But yeah, I’ve decided to start keeping up with this thing again. It helps me sort out my thoughts and keep some things in line.

What is everyone else up to?!

 

Today I went Kayaking with Kelli, Austen (both fellow baristas) and Mark (a guy who comes to our store a lot). And it. was. awesome. Guys! I can go KAYAKING in the middle of the city I live in! It’s AWESOME.

Then I went to First Thursday with my community group. Which was also amazing. Music, food, and art vendors all out on South Congress. The. Bomb.

Now I’m home eating cherries.

Success.

I love this city.

So.

So.

Much.

Though, I get to be in Houston this weekend! See y’all soon!

Preeeety Crehhsy

Redesign!

Bam.

This is what happens when I’m bored in my media business law class. ha.

Anyway, life is happening, guys! A.J. graduates next weekend! Graduates from HIGH SCHOOL. Which means he’s going to COLLEGE! In BOSTON! It’s crazy.

When did we all get so old?!

Molly and Joey are getting married. Mitanjeli and Jordan are getting married. Nick is going to junior high! (He’s doing drumline. He’s going to be so cool. haha.) I have a job. I have an apartment. When did I become so old?

So yeah.

Life is preeeeeety crehssy right now. In such a good way.

(and yes, Google Chat is a thing of beauty)

This weekend my family is coming up for Memorial Day. We’re going to Ink’s Lake, which will be great. Next weekend I’m going to Houston for AJ’s graduation (and I get to see Liz in real life! Don’t get me wrong, google chat it the bomb. but yeah.)

So that’s the next few weeks.

What’s going on with you?!

We Could Steal Time

So much is happening right now! I can’t believe that we’re playing at the BAFBC dnow in a week! It seems like it was two months away only yesterday!

Starbucks is going great. I still love it. Free coffee. Free food. Amazing people. Actually having a job. It’s the bomb.

Taylor visited last weekend and a great time was had by all! Saturday was seriously one of the best days of my life. Taylor, Nathan, Riley, Bethany (a friend from Ai here) and I all drove downtown and painted a piano together on a hill overlooking Austin’s beautiful skyline as the sun was setting (there are pictures on FB!) It was just SUCH an amazing, beautiful, joyous time. It was like breathing deeply after weeks of short, shallow breaths.

A week of two before that I went to see Jenny & Tyler again in Waco with Allison and Maritz Bitz, which was a blast. After the concert, we visited this amazing coffee shop called Common Grounds (I think) and it was beautiful and the coffee was great.

Between those two events, I was in Houston for almost a week to stay with my brothers (mostly Nick) while my parents spent their 25th anniversary in northern California. I’m pretty jealous that they got to go, but it was great seeing everybody back in Htown, AND getting to play Sunday morning with Kevo, Katie, Andrew, and Mr. Bill was a blast. PLUS, Mel, Liz and I went of a photo excursion to do a double-exposure experiment with color film that turned out pretty cool.

Anyway, Gungor concert on Sunday and I’m PUMPED.

Also, dnow in a week! And I’m SUPER PUMPED.

I’m pretty much pumped to be alive right now.

Also, did I mention one of my design professors this quarter is Marc English? He’s fo real. Google him.

.Zach

Beautiful Things

These are some beautiful things I saw a Barnes & Noble today that I thought were worth sharing. Enjoy me judging books by their covers:

I really like this sketchy style that has been big with journals lately. I like more realistic sketchiness more than this, though.

I WISH I could buy this. It’s pretty much awesome.

Also, I absolutely love all of Barnes & Noble’s classics that are designed like this. I was going to buy the Jules Verne compilation today, but they didn’t have it in stock.

Aside from having a horrible title (“Aurorarama”) this book looks awesome. I literally only picked it up because the spine’s awesome design caught my eye.

This is the inner cover of the Grimm’s Fairy Tales compilation from the fancy B&N classics. I want to die.

I love these Shakespeare publications. None of them are actually white, but slightly off-white to match the color of the letters. It’s great.

Another beautifully laid out Shakespeare publication.

I bought this tea today with a giftcard I received for Christmas. I’ve always wanted to get one of these teas because the tins are amazing. Also, it smells SO GOOD.

Maybe a Job and A Downtown Adventure

This week has gone by really fast. It actually started in Houston, but I drove back up Monday morning.

Monday I had Editorial Design, where we presented redos of magazine covers we though were laid out or designed poorly. For some reason, last weekend I spent a LOT of time fixing my two Macworld covers, and it really paid off. My professor liked them I think. Then, after presentations, she felt the need to tell me that she hadn’t picked anyone for a job that she had told us about a week of two ago. I think that is a good sign, because I still haven’t found a job. And, she had said that originally the job would not be design-related, but that it definitely had the potential to lead into a design job. So that’s reallllyy exciting.

Tuesday was my long boring day.

Wednesday was crazy. And cold, rainy, and windy. Which was a nice change from the usual heat. Plus, I got to wear a scarf. I usually drive up to the Ai for my Art History II class on Wednesdays at 1 pm, but this week we were going to have a non-mandatory field trip to the Blanton Art Museum on MLK on the UT campus to see the exhibit called “Turner to Monet,” which I was excited about. Oh yeah, and Wednesday was also the day my mom woke me up by calling me at 9:30 and was like TYLER FROM JENNY AND TYLER COMMENTED ON YOUR PICTURE ASKING TO BUY IT FROM YOUUUGYUBFD!!! Which has to be one of the best things ever to wake up to in the morning, haha. Anyway, we were supposed to meet at the museum at 2, but I was running late and got there at like 2:20. When I was walking up to the museum, I walked past my professor going the other direction and was like, wait, are we touring the museum today? And she said that she waited and I was the only one to show up and she had other things to do so she would give me extra credit. And I was like, okay! Then I called Riley, JM, Megan, and Lindsay, and they were all busy. So I went to the museum by myself. The exhibit was a bit confusing, because even though it was called “Turner to Monet,” I can’t remember actually seeing any Turner or Monet paintings… Then I went and walked through the Roman art section, and the Renaissance art section, and the Modern art section, and the random line art section that was cool. All the exhibits were pretty good. They didn’t have very many impressionist paintings though, which are my favorite. After that, I picket up Megan Hanlon and we had lunch at the Mellow Mushroom, which had great pizza. Then we walked all over the UT campus, saw Sid, found out that every tree on UT’s grounds has a small metal circle nailed into it with a number on it, and climbed #2148 I think it was. Then we walked to a starbucks.

At this point it was like 6:30, and Megan went back to her apartment and I went and had dinner with JM in Jester (his and Riley’s dorm). Then I went and hung out with him and RIley until like 10:30. It was good. I haven’t talked to them really since the weekend Trey was visiting. So yeah, then I drove back home and painted a shirt for my Thursday class. Then Thursday morning I finished my piano sculpture thing. Or, at least, made is presentable enough to turn in. I think I’ll probably change it up when I get it back.

Oh, also, I found the perfect tree in the greenbelt behind my apartment complex. Score.

Anyway, that was my week, and I still have this weekend! How was your week?

I’m Shaking With Anticipation

Or maybe it’s that I just had two cups of coffee.

Well, internets, it’s been almost two months since I last blogged on here. (I posted a short blurb of art I’ve been working on over at mere, but other than that the blago-well has been quite dry.) Anyway, since my last update I’ve made many a life decision. Or at least one.

Internet; I’m moving to Austin.

Not to be melodramatic (but hey, it’s so much fun!). But yeah, I move in two weeks to a place that I am honestly more ready for than I no what to do about it. It’s all I can do not to pack up everything right now and just sleep on the floor for the next two weeks and hope it flies by. Alas, then my books would be unavailable and that would make the process move much more slowly.

But I digress.

In case you were wondering, I got the last keyboard on the list in my last post last week, and she plays like a dream. My family and friends have apparently decided I need to name her–we’ll see about that one. I’m terrible at naming things on purpose. It would have to just fall into my lap and be automatically perfect. Anyway.

I’m slowly amassing things necessary for an apartment. A vacuum. Appliances and cookware. towels and a desk. Have I ever mentioned how much I like organizing things? Oh! Did I tell you Nathan’s gonna move in with me come December? Oh, the musical history lessons I’m going to unintentionally get…haha.

I think I may have a few blogs coming down the pipeline for mere, yet. So watch for them!

Even though I know your heart is breaking
for a little while still you must be whole.

If this was a tweet it would be followed by “#melodrama.”

Forgive me!

Currently Reading:
Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons
The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Perilous Journey by Trenton Lee Stewart
Grace Walk by Steve McVey

Currently Staring at:
Coquelicots (Poppies) by Claude Monet
A tiny map of Narnia on a magnet.
A very large amount of notecards and envelopes with which I will be writing letters.

I Have Been Turned Into A Lobster.

A very, very happy red lobster.

With this weekend coming to a close, I can’t help but be a little down. I’m afraid I’m going to get dangerously nostalgic like I did last year summer. The thing is, I’m a bit more experienced now. I now know that things will not just end like I expected them to at the end of last summer. Of course my schedule changed, and I started seeing some of my favorite people much less and some of my other favorite people much more and meeting new people, but it was all okay. I just have to remember that things change, but that doesn’t have to be a bad thing. God will provide.

Anyway, this weekend was so much fun.

Friday was the other Shindig guys’ (not including JM) graduation party, which was cool. I enjoyed hanging out with everyone, and it was great to celebrate the end of high school and the beginning of college for friends that I’ve known for so long and had the so many similar opportunities with over the past years. I’m not gonna lie, I’m really excited to write in all of their senior book things at church.

Prom. Prom was so much better than last year. Exponentially. It wasn’t stressful, I didn’t have to worry about the people in my group, because I pretty much trust them all. It’s very comforting to be in a group of people who you know you can trust. Liz and I went together, and it was very enjoyable! Liz, you were a great prom date! I had so much fun! Also, you looked wonderful. I picked Liz up and we both were picked up from my house by group’s bus (which we all turned into a party bus be merit of our excitement). We went to Ashley’s house for pictures. All the parents were there and I’m pretty sure we all had sore cheeks from smiling. haha. But anyway, From there we went to the Maddox’s house, where we had Carabba’s catered (and La Madeleine desserts) and then played the first two rounds of the name game.

After that we went to the Berry Center for the dance. We got there 45 minuted after it started, but were the first people dancing on the dance floor. It was legit. There was of course a coffee bar (woo!) and a chocolate fountain and there was fruit everywhere. (the theme had something to do with tropical locations…) The best part of the dance was when they played Don’t Stop Believing which melded, at the end, into I Gotta Feelin’. I was very impressed with the DJ’s skillzz. Except for the part where he played mostly rap. But otherwise, yeah. haha. Liz and I got to do a little bit of swing dancing, haha, and I did the robot some (how could I not?) and Trey even danced some! I was very impressed.

We rode to IT’z for SNAP (best idea ever) and it was much much better than Funplex. I may have ridden the spinny ride like 6 times in a row, which was great. Also, they had pizza all night, DDR (YES!), bumper car things, and lots of other fun crap. It was a great night.

I managed to get a little over an hour of sleep between then and church, and relied on a sucker infused with 200mg of caffeine to keep me awake (which it did, fairly successfully!) Molly, Andrew H, and I played In Christ Alone, Yearn, and Revelation Song, which went very well. I love playing in the college service.

After sleeping for many, many hours after that, 9am Monday we left for the Stewart Beach in Galveston, and (despite the fact that I am now sunburned as if the sand there was actually just some sort of gritty stove) it was, again, so much fun! That group of people in very fun to hang out with. We played volleyball, threw a frisbee around, swam around in the water, and ate peanuts and sunchips (which are now housed in the loudest plastic-y bag known to man). Then we ate at Yaga’s Cafe (I had a breakfast burger, which was delicious.), walked around the Strand some, and drove back home.

SUMMER = VERY YES.

WOO.