hurricaneislandheart | I'm Looking Forward to Regretting This

The first day of the month is a good day to start a new blog on, right? In our warped sense of importance for particular days, it seems like people want to start things on the first. Therefore, in response to my Twitter query ["So, who wants me to blog vigilantly about being a Master's Degree student?"] and the favorable replies I received, I am putting my DreamWidth.org blog to use. :D

Today also happens to mark the first 24 hours I've been in my new dorm room. I spent the weekend driving back and forth between here and Turtle Lake hauling car loads of my stuff. It was a good reminder that I really do have to get rid of more of my stuff. I don't use most of it on a regular basis, but I am overly attached to my clothes and books. These happen to be the heaviest and most aggravating things to move. I also don't really want to part with my Dragon Ball and Pirates of the Caribbean collections, because those are the two things that have really kept me motivated artistically the last few years. But, in the end, it's all just "stuff" and clutters up my room and my life. I hope to get to a point of mindfulness where I realize I really don't need it and can let it go.

Here's my residence hall, Ross Hall. This building still has those lovely, rather public high-school gym style showers in their bathrooms. I'd gotten spoiled by the semi-private bathrooms at Crownhart last year. So far, out of six total shower heads on the first floor (where I live), I've found four that don't work properly. One of them is in a handicapped-accessible bathroom, and as such has a semi-private shower, but after turning the handle all the way over to "hot" this morning, I was only able to coax lukewarm water out of it. I got about 15 seconds worth of the lukewarm before it went back to being cold, even at the hottest setting. This shower was like that the last time I lived in Ross, which means it hasn't been fixed in at least two years. -_- One of the shower heads in the public shower only drools water no matter how you try to manipulate the settings, and a second one in that shower has only slightly more water pressure. A third one in that shower has decent water pressure, and has two temperature options (lobster and refrigerator). I am going to explore the other options over the next couple of days and see if we have any properly-functioning showers on this floor, or if I'm going to have to deal with the lobster/refrigerator shower head. I have a sneaking suspicion there is only one properly-functioning shower and that it's best to use it in the early AM hours - I've yet to run into anyone else wanting the shower at the same time as me, and I've heard a lot of shower-taking in the hours prior to 6:00 AM.

I haven't quite finished unpacking everything and putting my room together yet. In the midst of moving, I was also working on an entry for the DBZ-Girls club at deviantART. I managed to finish it by the deadline, and it has the distinction of being the first piece of art I've completed in my new dorm room. I'm not super-duper happy with it, because I know it was rushed, but considering how much hell it gave me while I was working on it, I'm pleased with the final result.

Experience Has Made Me Rich by *HurricaneIslandheart on deviantART

Classes start tomorrow for me, so I'll be better able to blog about what my schedule and workload is like after that. For those of you who don't know and are just joining me in my college adventures, I'm starting my Master of Arts program at the University of Wisconsin-Superior. My major is Studio Art with an emphasis in Expressive Ecopsychology. I graduated from the undergraduate program last May and received my BFA. The experience was fantastic, and I am really happy with the art program here, so I decided not to transfer anywhere for my MA, but to instead continue on here at UWS. I'm really kind of excited to see how the program is different for MA students, because dorm life does not yet seem to be any different. -_-;

As a final note for those who might just now be joining me, I'm also found on various websites (such as the deviantART link I have in this post) and I'll be adding those to the Links in this blog. Feel free to follow me on dA, Twitter, or any of the other sites I use. :)