is this on?

I am not a very popular internet entity. I have no regular discourse with anyone. I have no regular followers. I am merely a lurker. Trolling (not to be confused with chat or forum trolling) the bustling streets of the inter-webs waiting, and not trying, to be noticed. This is my virtual existence.

take the last train to Clarksville and i'll meet you at the station.

Bryce and i left at 7:50 a.m. Monday morning to travel to Lafayette, Indiana (my hometown) via Amtrak. we were first supposed to be traveling on Train 8, the Empire Builder from Minneapolis to Chicago, where, at Chicago's Union Station, we would have a 2-hour layover, then switch to the Hoosier train which runs from Chicago to Indianapolis and makes a stop in Lafayette.

the problems started when, Saturday night, i received calls from Amtrak. first they said that due to the (undeniably) bad weather the train was canceled and we would be bussed from Minneapolis to Chicago, which made me groan since we were supposed to have a sleeper car. then they called back and said just kidding! there would be a train but it would be coach only. well, at least it wasn't a bus.

so that train boarded on time, but the crew we were switching to in Winona had a "rest issue" which meant we had to wait an hour before we left the station. then, because it was around -15 out, they had switch problems and we sat at a switchyard for fifteen or twenty minutes. at that point i called my mom because i was starting to get worried - we'd eaten up almost an hour and a half of our two hour layover. but not to worry, she said - she called them a minute ago and Amtrak said the train was only half an hour late! we'd make up time on the way!

not so. later into the train ride, the conductor came on the announcements to tell us we probably wouldn't be in to Chicago until 6 or so - and we were supposed to get there at 4 and leave at 5:45 so i went into panic mode. between my mother and i, we reached the conclusion that the Hoosier train at Union Station would be held until the Empire Builder arrived, because several passengers from our train were supposed to get on it. Bryce and i rushed out of the Empire Builder train, with our 3 hugenormous heavy suitcases, walked as fast as we could into Union Station, located the gate where our train was supposed to depart from, and walked down the hallway...

...into a massive, wall-to-wall, sardines-in-a-can style crush of people. Bryce texted my mother that it was "like the apocalypse" and i am pretty sure it was at least somewhat similar to the airport scene described in 28 Days Later. Bryce and i were lucky in that we only waited about forty-five minutes before our train was called for boarding, but i found out the next day that at least some of the people stuck in the station were there for 

24+ hours without food or water.

on our way back we caught the train again at the station in Lafayette, where the weather was hovering around 60 degrees (wtf? apocalypse indeed!). the train was on time, and we arrived at Union Station...on time at 10:30! which meant we had about a 4-hour layover because our train departed at 2:15 p.m. i had checked before we left the house and the train was on time. when we checked in to the lounge, the receptionist told us there would be a delay, maybe an hour, but "nothing like last week," which we were relieved to hear. we wandered around the station, bought magazines, and ate a lot, looking forward to our train ride where we would have our own private room and beds and be able to sleep. 

when we came back, the receptionist informed us the train was delayed more, and we were looking at a departure of 4p.m. okay, frustrating, but still, not that bad. and then, the delay just kept getting longer and longer, until our departure was set for 7:30 - 5 hours and 15 minutes AFTER we were supposed to leave originally. the station manager had us all come up with our tickets and IDs and gave us $10 per ticket for food; they said dinner would probably not be served on the train. they did not make an announcement, but when i asked, he said the train was broken and was being fixed in the yard.

so, about 9 hours after we had arrived at Union Station, at 7:30, we got on our train, finally. we discovered that dinner WOULD be served and would be complimentary for sleeper car passengers, which was nice, but mildly annoying since we'd used $11 of our $20 to buy dinner since the people at the station told us it probably wouldn't be served. the train crew was very apologetic (and scattered), but at that point we were just happy to be on the train. we got back to Minneapolis at 4:30a.m., and the station was full of passengers probably waiting for our train. 

and that was where our adventure ended, and despite how frustrating it was i am also acutely aware that it could have been much, much worse.

just so this post isn't about our woeful travel difficulties, here are a couple of goodies for any readers to enjoy:

creepy, unusual street art.

Angel - Massive Attack
(and my favorite Massive Attack song ever.)

pretty things? also jeans.

so, following a tried and true tradition, i'm going to post about a million things here in the first couple of days/weeks, and then forget it exists. here are some pictures i made.

the first one is for Digital Illustration. the idea here was to make a character lineup of a lot of the characters who appear in my work. i was originally going to do all of them, then decided i was insane, and now i have these five. maybe there will be more in the future. i'd like to eventually get most of them done, but who knows. they're pencil drawings scanned and colored in Photoshop. the background texture is yanked from CGtextures.com, which is probably one of the most useful sites i've ever encountered.

the second is another character portrait image. it's Trevor again, from the first image. he and James seem to be the guys who pop up in my artwork the most over the past oh...year and a half. James really consumed the entirety of my work this semester and i'd say Trevor got a lot of it for the past two semesters. a lot of the work i did this semester for digital ended up being kind of lame because i was doing independent study and didn't have enough time to do anything really complex. again this is just a pencil drawing scanned in and painted in Photoshop, with more CGtextures.com magic.

and finally, my Illustration: Tools of the Trade final. it's an image about artist's block, and it's James (again.) i like to draw gooey inside bits. graphite and colored pencil.

OKAY guys! finals are OVER, now all i have to look forward to is WORKING A LOT over break. i bought a new pair of jeans last night at the new True Religion store in the Mall, but more on that later.

hello, internet, make me your leader.

i recently discovered that it is, in fact, possible to make a living by blogging. this baffled me - and it continues to baffle me - since i always thought that blogging about one's life, while at least moderately entertaining for both writer and reader, was kind of, um, just for fun? but apparently Heather @ Dooce (not that she needs any more publicity) paid her mortgage by blogging.

so this is my new life goal: to expose to the wonderful world of the Interwebs how devastatingly funny i am and how exciting (!!!) my life is, and by doing so, to become independently wealthy and never have to work again. then i will have private salespeople come to my house bearing hundreds of pairs of designer shoes, and i will try them on and buy them all. just like on "The Real Housewives of Atlanta."

yes, that is my goal in life. by achieving it, i firmly feel i will be bettering the world we live in.

today, which has just shortly ago become Thursday, is the second-to-last day of finals in the first semester of my Junior year at Art School. i don't think i've ever been so overwhelmingly relieved that a semester is coming to its end, although i'm pretty sure i feel that exact same way at the end of every semester. they just keep getting worse, and worse, i guess. the thing that really did it this semester was that i not only went to school full-time, for the first time i also worked 30 hours every week on top of that. the result is a scintillatingly brain-numbed Zombie Katie, who contracts colds that seem to last for weeks on end.

anyway, Bryce has his underwear out and i've been up since seven this morning, so now that i've thoroughly devirginized our blog, i am going to follow his lead and get my ass some sleep. goodnight, internets!