oscar wilde: the bravest addition.

so, here are some things (i feel like every post is starting that way, but it doesn't bug me enough to change it.)

i believe most of you know of the most recent addition to my little apartment:

his name is oscar wilde, and i love him. i'm not even kidding, ask katrina. i show him to anyone brave enough to enter our apartment, i basically greet him every time i enter my room, and i randomly talk about him. a lot. the other day i put him in front of the mirror because i wanted to see how he would react, thinking there was another beta around. let me tell you, oscar is a feisty one. i had to remove the mirror because i was afraid he was going to kill himself by ramming his head into the side of the bowl repeatedly. yesterday, i accidentally poured too much fish food into his tank so i went and got a spoon to scoop it out with. instead of cowering away from the foreign object, as a lesser fish would do, he came right up to it and tried to intimidate it. i couldn't have purchased a more fitting fish if i'd tried. i feel like such a proud mother.

as part of being an art major a graphic design major i get to go to a seminar once a week where successful artists in the community come and speak to us, i would imagine so that we all don't grow too hopeless in ever using our degree to actually make money. tonight we got to hear from a rather famous and pretty well off photographer, patrick cone. pat started off by showing us some of his most famous work, and then telling us how much money he's made (one picture has made him almost over $20,000). he then proceeded to tell us that a freelance photographer being hired by magazines or companies should NEVER pay for hotels, flights, food or equipment upgrades. guys. we have a serious problem here. everything he was saying had the little wanna-be-artist inside of me screaming that this is what she wants to do. for some reason i had it stuck in my head that the only photography i could ever make money from would be portraits (which we all know isn't my forte) but this guy, he makes money from his street photography. he gets flown to places like new york, portugal, and new zeland to take pictures of amazing sites i can only dream of. and it's all paid for. i don't think i've ever been so excited to listen to one middle aged man for an hour in my life. even though i completely realize that thinking i'll ever get to that same professional status as him is a total stretch, i at least have a little more fire under me to go out and practice what i love. he said something tonight that really stuck with me. "do you have to do art?" he paused as we all thought about it, some of us slightly shaking our heads no. "i don't know about you guys but i totally do. i'm compelled to. it's all i know how to do, and when i see something i love, i HAVE to document it." that's the point i want to get to in my life, feeling compelled to take my camera everywhere just in case i see that one perfect shot that i know i'll regret passing up. i already have those moments where i wish i could have documented something, but i can't wait for the day where my love of documenting overrides my self doubt. wow, that paragraph grew really fast and got kinda heavy towards the end there. apologies. lets move on to lighter/girlier things.

for the past few months i've really, really wanted to dye my hair some outrageous colour. something like this:

the way i see it, i'm nearing the place in my life where obnoxious colored hair soon won't be acceptable anymore, or i guess even less acceptable than it is now. while dying my hair auburn was fun a few months ago, i'm ready to go even more bold. i think blue or purple tips would be amazing. i really need a hair school friend who lives  nearby to help me safely accomplish these things.

speaking of photography: lately i've been compelled to take pictures of my feet wherever i'm standing/sitting/currently being. i kinda want to start some sort of project with that but i don't know where i would post the pictures. they're just simple ones taken with my phone but the few that i've taken have kind of made me really happy, and i want to continue this. thoughts?


i painted my nails tonight:

the amount of times i paint my nails in any given week is directly proportional to how bored i am vs. how lazy i am. all in all i'm pretty proud of how they turned out.


so, every so often i go through these stages where i spend a few hours late at night on half.com compiling lists and lists of books to purchase that i've wanted to read for ever. stuff ranging from old classics, to stuff popular today to books i remember reading and absolutely loving as a kid. i easily fill up my shopping cart with 20 or more books and then i check out the total. and then close the entire window because that's too much money and i already have 12 books here that i need to read before i purchase anything else. and then there's two hours of my life that i've wasted with nothing to show for it. i'm unsure why i do this. and yes, tonight was one of those nights.
(half.com book shopping cart update thing: i actually went ahead and purchased those books. 6 books for $14 bucks baby. lets hope i don't regret this in the morning.)

well, now that it's 3 AM i think i'm allowed to go to bed now.
wanna hear what i was listening to while writing this? ok.