logo

in class a few weeks ago we got the assignment to make our own personal logo. i went through a few drafts and finally settled on kind of an old school crest design. i went through a few dozen more drafts, and finally settled on this:


the significance of the steer on the left is quite evident. the wings, however, are there for kind of a humorous touch. the elephant is not me declaring political affiliations, but rather just a nice shape to counter the winged steer. and no, i dont like crimson tide. i guess i could stretch it to elephants being my favorite animals when i was a kid (at least, im told so. apparently i was obsessed with "Dumbo"). also, my dad was in Africa at the time, so it was sort of on my mind. all the type is custom done, and all of it was reproduced in Adobe Illustrator. Extra points to whoever can translate the text in the ribbon.

well, im finally home after a long day and stonewall has been cooped up here for 12 hours. its time to play.
more later...

STONEWALL

so on december 21st, i went over to the Bolinger family abode and discovered that the three dogs i was to sit had multiplied to seven. Briley, that golden harlot of a canine, had puppies. they were real cute, and hours after their entrance into this world, i had singled out mine - the only boy in the litter. i named him Stonewall. he moved in with me last night here in the tree house on hurricane ridge. he lives in my bathroom and right now we're working on potty training. he's getting there... slowly. heres Stonewall at a week old (his eyes still had not opened) and one taken this afternoon.he is mine, and i love him.

here comes the twister

on tuesday night, Union University campus was ravaged by a tornado. about 80% of their residential buildings are beyond repair. Kinsey and Taylor Brooke Bolinger are ok, but their stuff is still MIA... if there is anything left in their rooms then they cant get to it. the national guard and FEMA has the campus on lockdown. there is a website, http://uuemergency.blogspot.com/ that has updates on the situation. its pretty serious. the girls are most likely going to have to start over again from scratch. everything they had was in those rooms. Thank God they are alive, though. if you would like to help the students at UU, then there is a post on th previously mentioned website that explains how. if you would like to give to the Bolingers directly, contact me and i can set that up. This is my family. they are in a time of serious need. if nothing else, you can send them a note or a letter tell them that you are keeping them in your prayers.

i strike back like the empire

FAXMACHINEANTHEMS IS BACK ONLINE! this last month has been... well... epic. epic challenges, changes, and lessons. cheezy? i think so. poignant? you bet.
since my last post i have become an entirely different man. i lopped off all the locks, for one. that was a tough change. it was time for them to go, though. i've calculated that, since my last post, i have read (i think) 8 or so books. the one im on right now is called "What is the What" by David Eggers. fascinating. riveting. humorous. heartbreaking. since my last post i have also applied for about 14 different jobs, and i am still left unemployed. i started my second semester at chatt state too. im taking 18 hours this semester, down from my original plan of 21. i dropped one. something else has changed: i am now a slave to my schedule book. after 20 years of being scatterbrained and taken off guard by homework assignments and scrambling at the last minute to get things done, i took the safer path of just writing everything down. it works, believe it or not. every night before i go to sleep i make a to do list for the next day. i wake up a few hours before my first class or commitment, have a shower, have devotions, get my day planned, and have some breakfast. its amazing. strangely enough, its difficult for me to sleep past 9. i tried. its harder than it used to be. for the last month and a half i have had the pleasure of spending large quantities of time with miss kinsey bolinger and my second family. thats been a real treat. i hadn't been able to spend much time with her since about a year ago, due to distance and scheduling, so ive been making the most of the opportunity. she's leaving to go back to Onion University (Jackson TN) in a few days. she will be sorely missed.
anyways, i miss all my CovCol friends, as usual. im becoming increasingly busy, as usual. im continuing in ceramics as well. ill be trying to do production pottery this semester. i weaseled my way into additional shelf space in the studio. haha. i like winning.
well, im glad to be back, and ill be posting again soon. i missed doing this. i just needed to take a break for a while. im now hungry and i still need to get some sketches finished before i can eat, so im done with this post. here a little pickey pick for those who have not yet seen the new 'doo. (the kids today would refer to it as a pseudo-frohawk. i approve.)



FROHAWK KICK!!

end of an era

two fridays ago i had exactly a week to get done an ammount of work which i could fill a month completing. i started working in the lab at chatt state and found that all the labs were locked for the weeked at 6. fantastic. my computer cant do these projenks start to finish, so i needed another. where do it turn? i went to covenant. on covenants campus are two MACs- both down in that infamous yearbook room that the wallballers camped out in for a month at the end of last semester. so, i loaded up the truck and i moved to ... er... the cave. ive been here for 9 days now. i got all the work done that was due on thursday and friday and now im finishing up the very last of it for monday night. the supreme irony of this whole situation is that i left the rolling grassy knolls of covenant college for the shabby community school just because i wanted to study design. so, here i am at the end of the semester needing to have access to the great facilities (seriously, they are really good) with which chatt state dragged me off the mountain, and they are quite literally under lock and key.

nine days of hard work and living off of ramen and food smuggled out of the great hall come to an end tomorrow afternoon. its been a blast. its been stressful beyond belief. but, its been good.

back to the real world...

long time coming

its been over a month since my last post. i figure its high time i did something about that. ive been very busy with school and work, but some things have happened. two weeks ago we had a friend from Nigeria come stay with us for a week and a half. that was good. his name is Gideon, and he is very encouraging and good to have around. its a bit strange, though, because i find myself speaking in a very deliberate way towards him, trying to weed out my American slang that he would find difficult to understand... after speaking like this for a few hours i was talking to everyone like that. Gideon was very encouraging to me and kept telling me how God had great plans in my life. im started to believe him.
in other news, i am very busy at Chatt State. i am taking 16 hours, including Production Art, Advertising Concepts, Intro to MAC Design, Illustration I, and Ceramics II. the last is modef my favorite. i spend between 6 and 10 hours a week working in the ceramics studio. i absolutely love it. its such a relief for me to make things with my hands after sitting in front of a computer for hours working on building some business card. its not that i dont enjoy my other classes- i really do. i just need to work with my hands. its the way God made me, i guess.
i started working at a company here in chattanooga as an intern- one of four. the company, named Sulzer, is one of the worlds leading producers of huge water pumps used to supply nuclear power plants with water. they build these pumps and supply plants all over north america and a few in central and south america. why am i there? they have 40+ years of paperwork sitting around in boxes and filing cabinets with varying degrees of organization. it is my job to organize all this paper, get it digitized and archived in multiple places with backups, and set up the finished product to be shredded. its a massive task. there are four of us working total 60+ hours a week (thats all of our hours put together) and we're projecting running into the summer with this. buts, thats good because i get $13/hr, and i get to listen to music and books on tape since it is such mind-numbing work. so, i sit there and download harry potter books (yeah, that right... i finally gave in and now im completely hooked) and shuffle papers for hours at a time. its great. sort of.
finally, Thanksgiving is coming up. i am very pleased with thins for a few reasons. the first is that i have off of school for a little bit. its not much, but every bit helps. the second reason is that ms Kinsey Nicole (thats her-->) has off of school too. its going to be nice to see her. third is food, and fourth is more food. i guess fifth through eighth would be sleeping.
so, theres a post. i hope you're happy, domekia.

heres another pic of the most recent steere family get together. the two non-steeres are (on the left in green) brotherdan's lady Jennifer Daniel. on the right (in green) is my lady, Kinsey Bolinger. well, i tried to put another picture up so it wouldnt look so obvious that i just wanted to post one of kinsey, but i think that it had the opposite effect, since she is now in the same blog post twice. sorry, kin. i couldnt help myself.

sitar

for the last few years i have been mildly interested in indian music, sitar specifically. j.fox got me into christian indian music like aadadhna. its an instrument which is complicated and difficult to get a hold of. sitar players study for the whole lives- its not a hobby... its a lifestyle. less than a week ago, i spoke to a number of people on how much i would like to learn sitar. last night i went over to a friends house who had lived and worked in India as a missionary. we were going to dread some hair. i walk in and the room is packed with different kinds of musical instruments- and sure enough, leaning against the piano, was a sitar.

i just about poo'd my pants. i played it for a while and asked a bunch of questions and she offered to let me borrow it. are you sure? i asked. she said yes. heck yes. so, here i am trying to figure out how to restring it with guitar strings when the neck is 1 1/2 the length of a guitar neck. also, there isnt really a standardized tuning for the instrument- its all relative to who is playing, what they are playing, and what other instruments are being played with. im trying to use the ravi shankar tuning. its simple. its the most lovely and fascinating instrument. im really glad to have it for a little while. i wont get anywhere, but thats ok. its fun to just fool around on.