A Week in the Life: Thursday

3:39 am: Working on the boards for our project in studio. You can see my friend and groupmate Kraemer in the background. We've been buddies since freshman year here at ISU (eep-that's 5 years ago!) and took the same studio together this semester and happened to be placed into the same group for our project.

4:27 am (duh, silly): Arrive home! Yay!

9:18 am: One last, longing look at my bed before heading back to studio 5 hours after I left it.

11:46 am: The start of a rendering.

11:46 am: Breaktime. Dark chocolate M & M's Premium break time, that is.

2:15 pm: Heading back to studio after art history class, some good ol' Caribou Coffee in hand. My body has ingested more caffeine within the past few days than in the last few months combined...

2:19 pm: Rendering, middle stage.

2:36 pm: Realize that except for the handful of delicious M & M's I had earlier, I have not eaten all day. Yogurt covered pretzels to the rescue!

5:03 pm: Dash home to grab my glasses and my car. Take another longing look at my bed. I am pretty sure there is a Shannon-sized spot in there...

7:08 pm: Finished rendering. Yay!

At 1:48 am I am still here...no new pictures...this Thursday wasn't too exciting...but at least it involved chocolate and Caribou!

A Week in the Life: Wednesday

Well, it may be after 2:00 in the morning, but here I am...still at home studio. As there is a slim chance that I will be going back to my apartment anytime soon, (to people grilling again?), I decided to post up my photos of Wednesday now:

10:12 am: Eyeshadow in the morning...

10:31 am: ...before my daily dose of Bible. Today: Exodus 3. "I AM who I AM..."

1:19 pm: A delicious cinnamon crunch bagel from Panera, lovingly brought to me by my friends Jennie and Chad. :)

3:15 pm: View of my rendering wall in studio. I probably look at this wall about 1,340,987 times a day as a reference for our hotel.

5:53 pm: My lovely roommate Crystal has come to get me so we can watch our Pre-K kiddos at church.

5:54 pm: She even brought me dinner! Taco bread that her mom sent with her last weekend from home...and it was scrumptious!

5:55 pm: And here she is, ladies and gentlemen, in the flesh. This is probably the best picture ever taken of the lovely Crystal Ann. Did I mention that she is my maid of honor? And I am hers in July? Actually that will make her my matron of honor...but she doesn't really like to hear that title too much...maybe that's why she is making that face right now...

6:40 pm: Here's those darn cute kiddos I was talking about. They thought I should be able to fit into their 5-year-old-sized dress-up clothes...as you can see, it didn't quite work out...and though I have always wanted curly, red hair, this is not quite what I had in mind. Good thing Gavin was there to get it out of my face. Thanks buddy!

8:33 pm: I looked down while I was at a red light and noticed that my car was at exactly 97,900 miles on it's odometer. Not quite a significant milestone, but I thought it was interesting anyway.

That's it for today...I wish I had a photo of my bed in here...or just a bed in here...I'm afraid I will be rather bleary-eyed for photos tomorrow!

A Week in the Life: Monday

Years down the road (or maybe mere months down the road...) I know I am going to look back and wonder, "What the heck did I spend my time doing for 5 years in college...?" As such, I am documenting one random week out of my college life in pictures, day by day.

So...what did Monday, April 5, 2010 hold in store?

12:41 am: Yep, AM. I started out my day (quite literally) in studio. Note the energy drink strategically located within arms reach on my desk. As we have a critique this coming Friday, I have a feeling that a lot of my photos this week will be from this exact same vantage point...

9:29 am: Woke up a little later than usual. Getting ready at my sink...my side is the right half. I like to think that it looks slightly more organized than the left. ;)

10:08 am: Arrive back at studio 8 hours after I had previously left it. Slightly surprisingly, since we have a critique this week, I am the first one there.

10:29 am: Dive right into work. First up: study for the Art History exam that I have tomorrow (Tuesday).

11:49 am: Lunch time! I dug right into my turkey, lettuce, green pepper, onion, provolone cheese, and ancho chipotle sauce sandwich (purchased conveniently from the Design Cafe) before reluctantly getting back to work...

5:26 pm: I was so engrossed in studio (class time from 1:10-5:20 pm) that I forgot to take any pictures until the end. I spent a good portion of that time working on this rendered elevation of our hotel bungalows (it's about half finished here) before dashing home to grab my car and some quick dinner.

5:51 pm: So, you may ask, what does such a busy design student eat? No surprises here. Only 3 minutes to cook, and you get your week's worth of sodium intake! How can you go wrong?!? :P

5:57: Before rushing off to study and go back to studio, I took a moment to, quite literally, stop and smell the roses tulips, ones that Tyson surprised me with this past week. Gotta love that boy!

8:17 pm: Rendering with those markers is messy business, especially if you dig in and blend it together with your fingers. Too bad that can lead to leaving fingerprints all over your pretty pictures...frequent trips to the bathroom are necessary to prevent that from happening. :-/

11:05 pm: Tyson calls, probably wondering why I haven't called him yet. I have been a busy bee, that's why! On a side note, this is how sexy my hair looks after sitting in the same spot for hours on end, continually running my hands through it and putting it in and out of ponytails while I am working and thinking...

12:20 am: I suppose this should technically be on Tuesday's post...but here I am leaving studio. Besides, it's not really the next day in my mind until you go to bed. This leaves me plenty confused when I pull all-nighters...

12:21 pm: My car! Slightly hidden and blurry, due to Chad's huge monster of a truck being in the way, and me walking and trying to take a picture at the same time. Anyway...it got me home sweet home, where I am finishing typing this up, and then ready to finally call it a day (er...night).

24 Hours

What can be done in 24 hours? A lot of little things: household chores, shopping, watching TV, making and eating multiple meals, working out, sleeping. Even some big things: hosting a party, driving to another state, having a baby.

Or...

One really big thing.

Above: The second level of our floor plan for Dillard's, hypothetically located in North Grand Mall. Yes, that's right, I have been working on this rendering for the past 24 hours. I have printed, sketched, drawn, measured, markered, inked, colored penciled, re-markered, and re-inked every single line and every single stroke on that page. To put this to scale, this drawing is approximately 3 feet wide by 2 feet tall. (Very thankful that we downsized from originally having it be 5 feet wide by 3 feet tall...It would have been as wide as I am tall and I would still be working on it!)

Note that I also said second floor, meaning that right now, after I finish this blog post, I am going to whip out the first floor and do this all over again.

And what's a huge rendering like this without having a little fun? Below: a close-up of the lower left corner (near the customer service desk in our plan) of some Christmas trees and a Santa Claus (and yes this is a plan view, so it looks really awkward but Santa is sitting down and you are looking from above). What's a department store without a Santa Claus to visit and ask for all the goodies around you?

Tis the season (or very nearly)!