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

Life Lately.

Does anyone still read this? haha.

Lately:

I’ve been pouring myself into laying out this book of poetry for my publication design class. We have full-sized galley’s due Monday, along with four ideas for the cover. Here is some of the art that’s going into the book:

The first is for a poem by Ryan, the second is for one by Trey. Third: Eric, I think. Fourth: Trey and Eric. Fifth: Katie.

Lately:

I have been enjoying my new, non iPhone, cell phone! It’s an android, and I am enjoying it immensely. And, interestingly enough, it fits my personality: It’s called the Inspire.

The weather has been fantastic.

I’ve been working on a website for my art, design, and information about myself. I’m kind of excited because I’m coding it myself (with the help of my Web Layout II Prof.) It’s going to go live this weekend, and it’s REALLY cool. Though, it’s not even worth looking at if you’re not running Chrome of Safari. Just saying. So prepare yourself. (Can we say CSS3?) Spoiler: Each page has a title with scrolling images behind it.

I took Riley’s pictures and AJ’s senior pictures, both of which I need to get a move on editing.

I got a legit old film camera with two lenses from a family friend in San Antonio. It’s a Nikon FG from the early 80′s. It’s all manual from what I can tell. I’m excited to try it out.

Anyway, that’s what I’ve been up to. It’s Nick’s birthday today, too! He’s 11! Also, I’ll be in Htown this weekend.

Relocation

Hello, four people who ever read my blog!

A lot has happened since my last post, friends. For one, I’m now living in what has proven to be one of the most beautiful cities I’ve ever been to. Austin, Texas has been my home now for almost three weeks and I’m definitely enjoying it. So far, I’ve just been settling in and looking for a job (I’ve applied to a bunch of Starbucks, haha), getting my apartment all set up, finishing up my online Art History class, and hanging out with some of my friends who live here also. The fall quarter for the Art Institute of Austin begins on Monday (the 4th), and I’m really excited for it!

Let’s see, I’ve also very much enjoyed The Austin Stone Community Church. And I’ve pretty much decided to make it my official church, I just need to get involved in their small groups now.

In other news, I’m going to turn 20 on Friday! No more teens! I must say, I don’t think I’ll miss being a teenager. Also, I’ll be in Houston this weekend to celebrate my birthday and my mom’s too with my family (because hers is the 7th).

Anyway, I miss you all!

California, Days 1 & 2

Well, I’m currently driving through the mountains with my dad headed for Santa Cruz, where we are going to step in the Pacific so we can say we have this summer. Then, we’re going to drive up Pacific Highway 1 and stop at Half Moon Bay.

Such has been our trip to California so far. We’ve been staying In the San Jose area, which may very well be the most beautiful place on earth. There are mountains in all directions and flowers blooming everywhere. All the architecture in fantastic. They have the whole stucco villas thing going on with some modern architecture thrown in and it’s amazing. They have entire hedges of Lantanas and there are places where they have huge beds of what I think are Agapanthas (they’re like bluish purple balls of flowers on a long stem). Also, there are so many different types of trees together! Evergreens and those ones with the white bark and there will be hills with random flowers growing all over them, it’s amazing. Also, its beein the 60s and 70s the whole time.

Anyway, Friday, the first day we were here, my dad, AJ, and I got a tour of Google from my dad’s AdSense rep. (AdSense is Google’s advertising thing you can out on your websites.) But yeah, Google’s campus is crazy. They have about 293746297364 cafes, and out tour person kept trying to get us to eat every time we passed one, haha. There is a volleyball court in the middle of their main buildings and also a dinosaur skeleton, which was covered in pink lawn-ornament flamingos when we were there.

Friday evening we drove out to half moon bay for a bit then drove back to the hotel and slept because AJ and I hadn’t slept very much since we had seen Toy Story at midnight the night before.

Saturday we woke up and found breakfast at a nice little shop in Palo Alto. Then we drove to Stanford. When we got there we waited in the check-in line with AJ. It was really long but at the front of it we could hear cheering for a random name every 30 or so seconds, and it turned out that the ‘mentors’ for each dorm area were standing at the entrance to the main area and were cheering in every student for the 5 Hours that check in was open. It was pretty cool. After that we got AJ settled in to his room and he gave us a tour of the amazingly beautiful Stanford campus. Seriously, it’s amazing. I’ll post some pictures.

We then got some Jamba juice smoothies (it is, after all, California!) and listened to the Associate Dean and the counselor people introduce themselves. To our great joy, 8 of them said that the had attended the summer college like AJ, and are now students at Stanford. Then we said our goodbyes. I think AJ is going to have an amazing 2 months there. He’s taking a Comp. Sci. Class and Calculus.

I’ll blog about today later.

A Wonderful Day In All Aspects

Today, simply put, was a wonderful day from beginning to end. I decided some things I’ve been pushing away, I spent time with some of my favorite people (though not all of my favorite people! haha.)

Instead of going to the church picnic and outside service this morning (gasp!), my family went to Denny’s together for breakfast like we used to do when AJ and I were in elementary school and went to the Saturday night service at HNW. It felt like old times, which is odd to say, but it really did. Let me take a moment to just say how much I love my family. We fit together so well, and it is wonderful. Of course we aren’t perfect, but I love us. Being at Denny’s on Sunday morning reminded me of when I was still a “kid” (and of course I’m still pretty much a kid, but you know what I mean hopefully). It reminded me of when my knowledge of the world was on a local scale. My mind only really saw the Earth on the plane of my neighborhood, church, and school. It was before I thought much about anything outside my ‘sphere of influence,’ if you will. Of course there’s a time in life when that’s no longer a good thing (and I’m pretty sure I’m almost if not definitely in it now), but it was just a nice start to my day. Especially when it’s the day I decided that I’m going to be in Austin by the Art Institute of Austin’s fourth Quarter. Yep, there you have it.

Shortly after getting back from Denny’s, AJ and I left to go to the church picnic to see if anyone wanted to go with us to see the Narnia exhibit at the Museum of Natural Science in Sugarland. I convinced Mitanjeli to join us and we had a freaking blast. The HMNS in Sugarland is in the middle of this really scenic and fancy neighborhood/subdivision. It had manmade lakes and bridges and trees that perfectly leaned out over the roads and names like “Lakewind” and “Homeward Way” and other pretentious and precocious and precious names like that (and probably every other pre—-ious words, too). But anyway, the actual museum was really small, and looked like an early 1900s boarding school house, but it fit a relatively large amount of stuff. The Narnia exhibit was on the second floor and was pretty legit. They had like every costume and piece of set from both movies. I was excited. And also everything in the gift shop was like 97 cents. I was also excited about that. I bought what I thought was an appropriate magnet for my life that quotes Aslan from the second movie (psshh, movies. Books are better!) saying, “All that you know is about to change.”

Afterwards we had some extra time, so we typed Dairy Queen into AJ’s phone and took the directions deep into the heart of the aforementioned, scarily-perfect neighborhood. But it said there was a Dairy Queen halfway down one of the streets where there were only houses. It was odd. We figured it must be a franchise that doesn’t have a sign for tax-evading reasons. So we knocked on the door and headed on into the people’s house for ice cream-y goodness.

Just kidding about that last part, we had to find one that was not a house, so we drove like 20 minutes to find it. We got ice cream and it was wonderful except when the manager gave us the wrong one and when we pointed it out he stared at it like “How DARE you tell me you got the wrong pie-based blizzard when I have to put up with all these IMBECILE workers every day!!” or maybe it was more like, “Curse you meddling kids!” Idk. Anyway…

We got home after that and I went to Shindig. It was very productive I felt like. There wasn’t ministry night after so we got to talk a lot afterwards which was cool. I got to say some things I’ve been wanting to for a while and we decided finally on the Food for the Hungry thing. Which reminds me: I need to go get that made official! Also, Mrs. Weise made pancakes that were delgit, which is a word I just made up that is a combination of delicious and legit, because they were. Also, I love the Weise family. Well, I don’t really know Jeremy and Daniel all that well, but I’m sure that through the transitive property or by osmosis or transduction or D) all of the above, they are also awesome and I’d probably love them, too.

Good day. Thanks all that participated. I needed a day like this.

Lots of Music

Hello anyone who reads this! I haven’t updated in a while, and a lot has happened! So here I go…

Two weeks ago, Riley, Trey, Nathan, Molly, Katie, and I got the wonderful opportunity to play the spring weekend at James Roberts’ church! It was a ton of fun and such a blessing to be a part of. It was also kind of odd, because it wasn’t our church, so we didn’t have all of the extra responsibilities we usually have at camps, so we could just focus on the music and hanging out with all the students at the camp. It was so. much. fun! Good gravy. Anyway, there was wafflehousing. Something funny that happened was that all the guys slept in James’ living room, and Emily informed us (at 1 am when we all went to bed) that Hazel had just learned to turn on Finding Nemo on the TV and would do it at 6:30 in the morning. And it happened! And it made me laugh. The Roberts’ we awesome to us also.

Last Friday, CyCreek’s NHS held a Haiti benefit concert on the high school side of 249 and it want off almost without any flaws! I was highly impressed with all the acts and Trey, RIley and I played too, which was great. Old Knaves!

Skydiving (finally)

So, I went skydiving last Friday. A week ago TODAY. Oh my goodness. It was amazing. It was like falling through a Rothko painting. Except more blue and green and white. It was like falling through big blocks of color. There was the blue sky, the white horizon, and the grey-green earth below. It was beautiful. It was also very loud. Well, it was loud until we pulled the ripcord. Then it was quiet and wonderful. The tandem guy I was skydiving with showed me how to do spins and stuff, which was probably my favorite part. He pointed out on the horizon Galveston, downtown Houston, and the Galleria area. It was crazy! Ahhhh. If you ever get the chance to do it. DO IT. It’s completely worth it.

General Things

The 33Miles concert was better than I expected. They definitely sounded better in person. (aka less rascal flatts-ish) also, the guitarist was amazing. Afterwards he asked Trey and I what city we were in. haha. I was like, Nathan will so be like this guy…

<= I added an art page over on the left sidebar, so yeah!

I’m going to Austin this weekend to visit a family friend. Also, I’ll be visiting the Art Institute there, so that should be really interesting!

Not being on facebook is leaving a lot of time to read. (also, I have much less of an excuse to not do homework. haha.) I’m actively reading: The Church Can Change the World by Jimmy Siebert, Freedom of Simplicity by Richard J. Foster, Reflections on the Psalms by C.S. Lewis, and Becoming the Answer to Our Prayers by Shane Claiborne.

I’ve been listening to Stockholm Syndrome some more, what a crazy album! I like it though. There’s some good stuff in there.

I signed up for next quarter’s classes last week. (I’ll be a sophomore!!) They are tentatively:
Monday from 8a -12p: Form and Space
Tuesday from 1p – 5p: Digital Illustration II (which is basically the Adobe Illustrator class)
Wednesday 8a – 12p: Creative Writing (Hopefully this will be an interesting class!)
Thursday 6p – 10p: Layout I

I’m actually glad for the early classes, since this quarter will carry over into summer.

Panoramania

So I figured out (or rather, one of my professors showed me) that you can get Photoshop to put panoramas together with pictures you’ve taken. Needless to say, I was verrrryyy excited. It usually takes forever to put together panoramas! Please enjoy panoramic pictures I’ve taken over the last few years and have been too lazy to stitch myself: (as always, click to see a bigger version! and please let me know what you think!)