Making of my Kirby Chess Set: Part 2

I finished the evil side of my Kirby chess set! For the Kirby side, see Part 1. This side was a lot more colorful and a lot more difficult to make, since all of the pieces were different!

Making of my Kirby Chess Set

I made a Kirby chess set out of polymer clay.  The idea actually came a few years ago, when I was watching my friend play chess and doodling at the same time.  I ended up drawing each of the pieces as Kirby.  My friend reminded me of this recently, and he told me I should actually build the chess set.

To make the pieces, I rolled balls of aluminum foil as the centers, and used polymer clay around it.  The bases were polymer clay circles with nickle-sized openings in the bottom.  I waited until I sculpted all the pieces to paint the faces on.

Crying Yourself to Sleep

I never understood how one can cry oneself to sleep.  I don't know about everyone else, but when I cry, my nose gets all stuffed up and then it's incredibly difficult to breathe.  And when I can't breathe, I find that I also cannot sleep very well.  It's kind of like when I'm sick and you have a stuffy nose... it's hard to sleep.  So what's the deal with crying yourself to sleep?  I guess it's just an expression... for crying right before you go to sleep and then falling asleep from exhaustion after you stop crying and can breathe again.

Clouds in California!

A couple of weeks ago it rained pretty hard.  There were thunderstorms and everything.  And since this is a rarity in California, I had to go outside at sunset and take pictures of the sky.  Because there are never clouds in California... but clouds make the sunsets so much prettier.  See how they reflect the red like that?  So pretty...

On a completely different track, today at the grocery store we saw these "Medium Tomatoes."  Those aren't medium... they're Ginormous Tomatoes.

Mystery picture!

Guess what this is!

When my dad saw it on my camera, his guess was an exploding helicopter.

I took this picture a while ago. I had been playing with my dog outside, and suddenly he sprinted into the chicken wire of my mom's garden. As he got there, I noticed a the fluttering of a bird's wings in the chicken wire. I was too late to stop my dog as he jumped in and grabbed the bird in his mouth. I ran and untangled my dog; he was holding the bird in his mouth triumphantly, refusing to let go. After a while, I finally got the bird out of his mouth. I had thought that maybe there was a chance for it, but then I realized that what was in my dog's mouth was only the body of the bird, and the head was still in the chicken wire.

So I gathered both parts... and then took pictures. I was a little fascinated with how it looked... but that's not what I was going to write about today.

What I wanted to write about is how suddenly death can come. For that bird, it probably had no idea that it would die a few seconds after landing in the garden. It was living its normal life, ready to do other things in the near future, and then WHAM and it was dead. It can happen like that with us too... we make plans with our friends for next week, but sometimes death comes suddenly and without warning, and those plans never happen. It's a little sad... but I guess that's why it's important to live life as it comes... If you're happy in the present, then there will be no regrets for you or the people you leave behind.

Maxim Grapefruit!

I was at my grandma's house picking grapefruits off her tree, and I got this huge grapefruit:

That's my hand holding it. It was really big and kinda flatish. So naturally, the first thing that came to my mind when I saw it was the following (it just needed a few modifications colorwise...):

Yay Photoshop. Anyway, it's a huge grapefruit. I wonder if it's tasty.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains.

That is the best first line of a book ever. I remember in high school, my English teacher told us that the first line of a novel is the most important part, because it sets up the entire novel and captures the reader's attention. This first line certainly got me in the right mindset for reading the rest of the book. I have had the original first line ("It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.") memorized since 7th grade, which made this one all the better.

If you don't know what I'm talking about, you should read Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. It's infinitely better if you've read Pride and Prejudice, since it takes a lot of the original novel and then changes parts. It works surprisingly well.

I actually don't know which book I like better (I'm secretly a romantic.. sometimes). I really liked Pride and Prejudice and both of the movies, but Pride and Prejudice and Zombies has everything that a bestseller should. It appeals to everyone! It has romance for girls, zombies and ninjas for guys, and it even has literary merit for the English teachers (complete with discussion questions at the end)! It almost makes me enjoy English. Almost.

Anyway, go read it. Then we can discuss.

This is a little ironic

Vicic: The best types of brainstormers are housewives and marketers. Uneducated housewives. Educated ones know too much.

Dave: I knew there was an argument against education! I just had to get to the end of my four years at college before learning it.

Ah, the things we learn at Caltech.. ChE 110 is the best class ever.

I'm too tired to write my own blog

There's something about the nature of death that forces action. The idea of death, is probably not the nicest way to put it. But the raw fact is that we're all mortal, and some day, we will die. And so life is basically a story with a beginning and an end. These are facts, at least for now. Unless technology makes some major advancements, and we start to understand consciousness, but until then, we're all governed by the rules of how we age, and the limited time we have on this planet, in this existence.

As a 12 year-old, you have time, and so you have the luxury of playing the "does he like me, does he like me as a friend or does he like me more than that" game. But as we progress through the period of life, where these issues should have been solved, it becomes more efficient. "Are you attracted to me?" "Can I be your girlfriend?"

I'm not sure where I'm at... in life, regarding this issue. Perhaps it's time to be more direct, and to take more chances, and to wait less. You can't wait your entire life for a pair of aces. You'll end up paying the blinds, and eventually running out of money. And money, in this case, really is just time.

-Tyson's blog

In other news, there was lots of snow on Baldy this weekend:

The worst license plate ever?

A red sun rises... blood has been spilled this night.

This morning I went outside, and the sky was covered in a cloud of smoke. It looked like it was foggy everywhere, except it was all smoke. It smelled like fireworks. And then I looked up and saw the red sun.

Now it's not nearly as smoky anymore. I'm not sure how the entire sky got covered with smoke, or how it disappeared, but now it's just smoky in the north again, like it's been for the past 4 days.

I can see the smoke from my window

This is the closest I've ever been to a fire. Now the picture above doesn't look too bad, but that fire is like a couple of miles away and spreading all over the hills. The picture below is the same view as the one above:

So yeah, closest I've ever been, and closest I'd ever care to be. The air's difficult to breathe. Just walking down the street to take these pictures last night took the breath out of me... Natural disasters are the most devastating and yet beautiful things. Funny how that is.

The wise words of my brother

Over the years, I have learned so much from my older brother. I have always looked up to him and admired everything that he did. So today I decided to share some of the things he has told me, so that you too can bask in his knowledge.

Do you like pool? If so, I've got the balls if you got the rack.

You remind me of a blue ribbon bass - I don't know if i should mount you or eat you.

Wanna try an Australian kiss? It's kinda like a french kiss, except down under.

It's true that there are plenty of fish in the sea... but you're the one i want to catch and mount back at my place.

If you can't find a job...

it's your college's fault?

There are so many things wrong with this situation...

She graduated in April, then sued her college 3 months later for tuition and "the stress of her three-month job search." Makes it seem like she was only looking for jobs once she got out of school, which is one way not to get a job.

And of course, all reasonable employers love people with 2.7 GPAs and solid attendances. After all, as long as someone shows up to work, they're a valuable employee, right?

And apparently the career center is supposed to make companies interview with students. I'm sure the career center should go out of their way to make sure each individual student gets plenty of job offers. The student shouldn't need to be proactive at all (granted, she did send her cover letter and resume and make phone calls, and she did get some responses, but still complained that she didn't get enough).

Plus, it's so unfair that the career center favors people with better grades. The people with better grades get jobs more easily.. it must be because the career center favors them.

This article is a great example of how not to get a job coming out of college. So I just need to remember to do the opposite (or at least not the same).

Inspiration

I've taken to taking more pictures now. Maybe it's because I have more time and I'd like to experiment more, or maybe I want to edit the pictures. But some pictures don't need photoshop to make them look weird. Like this one... the blur is a person on a swing. It was taken at night without a flash, so she just showed up as a blur.

I've also started taking more videos of random things. We made a silly video today. It was tons of fun. I took lots of clips using my digital camera, and then we put them together and added music.

Maybe I'm just in an artistic expression mood, because I also made two song parodies today. That's pretty fast for me... I think I got a burst of inspiration today. I love the summer...

Life...

...is amazing.

Every day, I fall into my usual routine just to make it to the end of the day. I take every little thing - my food, my friends, my ability to breathe decent air - for granted. And it is so easy to fall into this monotonous lifestyle. It is so easy to forget that I actually love living life. But I do. As cliché as any of this may be, I love my life and everyone and everything in it. I love waking up after four hours of sleep to see the sun shining into my window. I love eating my simple breakfast of cereal and milk. I love driving to school/work and slowing down for traffic. I love seeing my friends.

But it takes the opposite of life - death - for me to remember. I wish I could remember without that reminder. I wish I could say that I don't need that reminder to enjoy my life... but as sobering as death is, it makes me appreciate the things that I have.