Today we took our final exam, and I feel somewhat good about it. I got into class early enough that I could flip through my flash cards one last time as a refresher right before the test – very important for me because the dates sometimes escape me, and it’s good to re-read those little, last details. You know. So, despite the snow, I got in early, sat down and started flipping through my cards. Three minutes before class starts, I still had a small stack to go through, but the instructor stands up and says, “Okay, we’ve got three minutes before the final, so everyone put your things away and move your bags and books to the sides of the room.”

Um… lolwut?

I quickly (and frantically) flip through three or four of the cards sitting directly on top of my stack and and reluctantly put everything away. The test then started early.

Luckily for me, the 10 identify slides she put up were ones I had looked through that morning, so I managed to get them all right. Hopefully I mentioned all of the terminology she wanted and will get full credit for everything. You never know though, because on my first exam she wrote “Excellent, I couldn’t ask for more!” and gave me a 96.

And before you ask, yes, I’m still wondering where my other 4 points are.

Otherwise, I have very few other complaints… but here’s one. (Ha!) A month ago, we all turned in a five-page paper (12 pt. font, double-spaced, so… 2 pages of actual text?). We didn’t receive them back until today, after we turned in our final exams. When she handed me mine, she said, “Great job.” I said thanks, took it and walked away. The front page said “A”. Inside… no notes. No number. An arbitrary A-grade. Who knows what that means — full credit or the “couldn’t ask for more, here’s your 96″? I don’t know!

But beyond that, I think everything went okay and unless something mysterious happens to my test I will receive my A. Lots of changes happening for me right now so I’m debating whether or not I even want to take the CAD class next semester. I probably will because it’s all project-based and will give me a break from paper-based study.

A couple of random items… I’m working on some new things that have me very excited right now. This coming Tuesday, one of my friends, Dan, (who is also my guitarist) is coming over to measure out a section of the basement so we can build a sound room. Once it’s up I can make noise and write music without having to worry about Tom overhearing. (Making him wear headphones and blast metal just isn’t working for me — I need a room of my own to create in.) So that’s another project on top of my other projects. Right now it’s my priority so I’m very excited.

I also started playing WoW again and transferred my druid to, um, that server Kerry’s on. Her name has been changed (yet again) to Sodi. I also started another noob shaman named Saere so those of you on the new server can find me. Ken and Ed are still on Agg, and I’ve still got toons there so I can hang out with them…

…but only a little. I’m very busy and strangely addicted to Fat Princess on PS3. If you’ve been following me on Twitter, you also know I’ve been trying out a little Assassin’s Creed 2, though Tom and I are trying to figure out why the game has such a good rating. It’s a long, long time before you get to the good part of stabbing anyone and the story is lamesauce.

I guess I had missed seeing the Invader Re-Stik decals, which are even better than the stickers because you can peel them off and reuse them again. Geekology mentioned they were on sale, so I rushed right over and bought a pack.

Whoever threw these stickers on the wall has obviously never played a game of Space Invaders.

The Re-Stick option is $25.00 for a pack with pretty speedy shipping. The package was sitting on our doorstep when Tom got home yesterday. I left him to his own devices and…

…twenty minutes later our computer room had been invaded.

The walls now need to be painted, but the whole thing is giving me a pretty good giggle.

But I knew that wasn’t the whole truth: My house is still half finished; I haven’t really touched it since we put the kitchen cabinets back on. I’m an interior design failure due to my own laziness.

My school has a few good looking writing classes, and even some available online. Kerry and I had a brief chat this morning about how much he really loves the online classes, and it encouraged me to give it a try. In the back of my mind, I was ditching the whole interior design idea.

Then I looked at my degree spreadsheet.

I keep an electronic document of what I would need to finish the Interior Design AA degree (yeah, nerd alert). The classes I’ve taken are greyed out. I guess I had forgotten that I am almost half way through an AA degree in Interior Design. Now? Well, now it’s a different story. I am encouraged. I can do this.

I just registered to take Ancient Art History, a required class for the Interior Design degree. I’m really looking forward to it and I can’t wait to get back into the grind. Some people don’t do well with structure, and some people do. I think I’m one of those who requires it. When I don’t have a lot of stuff going on, I get lazy. If I have structure, then I work harder to find personal time to accomplish things. That probably sounds crazy, and it’s because I am a little! Back to school… And it’s going to be great.

When we first moved into the house, the kitchen and dining room had the original wallpaper still up: White background with purple and red flowers and berries attached to crayon green stems and leaves. Horrifying. The kitchen cabinets were the original brown stained cabinetry.

It’s taken me two years, but all of the wallpaper is gone, the walls are sanded, plastered, sanded, plastered, sanded, plastered, maybe another sanded-plastered round in there, and then primed and painted. The cabinets still aren’t done, as I have to sand, primer and paint the row of cabinets in the back of the kitchen and the walls need touch up. But I’m getting closer.

So this is a shot of my kitchen with my new, spiffy under cabinet lighting on. For some reason I had left one of the cabinet doors open and didn’t realize it until I had finished taking pictures. Oh well. You can still get a good idea of what it looks like. I have a galley kitchen and it’s quite small, so I take all available space very seriously.

Here’s a shot as you walk in from the living room/hallway.

Not as pretty as the first picture. First of all, we don’t have a microwave with fan installed. Instead, the previous owner had some sort of weird shelf installed in its place. Eventually we’d like to buy one and have it installed, but it’s not a priority. I keep the microwave, espresso maker and a couple of large cutting boards up there.

From this angle, you can also see where I haven’t yet sanded and painted the cabinets. The doors have been unscrewed and the cabinets are exposed, so it looks a little ugly back there. I was also getting ready to cook dinner, so I hadn’t set anything up for a glamor shot. It’s clean and it’s lived in. That’s the best I’ve got.

The door on the left is a pantry of sorts, but it’s more like a deep closet with shelves. Once you open the door, wire racks hang on the door and that’s where I keep all my spices. I got them from Lowe’s for a few bucks. The other door, directly across from your view, leads to the garage.

Here’s the back counter for a better idea of how much more work I have to do. There’s really not much compared to how much has already been done.

I keep all of the crap to the side of the fridge, as well as a little reader board that reminds Tom what leftovers are available and still OK to eat. We’re trying to be good about eating leftovers and not letting them go to waste.

Here’s a bigger view with more of the unfinished stuff.

I’ve posted previously on the kitchen colors. Here they are again for a refresher.

I chose the browns and the white based on the existing, dated laminate counter. We have the money to replace the counter, but if you do that, you really should replace the cabinets. And of course, you can’t stop there, because you should also replace the sink and faucets. That’s all money we didn’t want to spend. So I had to make the counter look as exciting and pretty as possible, which is why I went with the darkest shade of brown in the counter, and the lightest shade of white/cream for the cabinets. Now the counter looks pretty nice. We also upgraded the hardware by buying new knobs and handles. Those aren’t cheap; we paid about $50 in total for that. Still, it’s cheaper than replacing the kitchen altogether.

For kicks, I took a picture of the cabinet lighting on without the overhead light on. Kerry told me that his lights burned out and, since they’re halogen, he hates them and hasn’t replaced them. Here’s what he’d have to work with if he had under cabinet lighting.

So it’s coming along. It’s not perfect, but it’s getting there. So far I’m really happy with the results and can’t wait to get it finished up.

Recycled from deconstructed clean vintage fur coats, these small pillows are high-design and beautiful but also very amusing at parties, adult or otherwise. The round shape is great on couches as a counterpoint to rectilinear design.

Dude, don’t give me your fancy talk about rectilinear design right after you just mentioned Tribbles at an “adult party.” Eew.

Live long and prosper, preferably with better taste.

So without further ado, here’s the design. It photographed a little dark, so I tried to adjust the picture settings. Not sure if I was successful or not.

Color board:

Rendering:

For the first half of the semester, we learned basic drafting techniques (with pencils and vellum, not with CAD) from the head of the Interior Design program. The majority of the class didn’t like him. The class is filled with 18 year old girls who are fresh out of high school and whine a great deal. They don’t understand the concept of being on time, reading syllabuses and assignment sheets rather than having someone spoon feed things to you, etc., and the teacher was pretty adamant about these things, as they are all things he preferred in his classroom. Everything was to be turned in on time at the beginning of class and no later or it would not be accepted. His office hours were rigorous and he insisted that appointments should be scheduled if you could not make his office hours. Most of the class couldn’t stand him.

A changing of the guard occurred during the second half of the semester, when we no longer learned drafting and switched to model-making. This is when we ended up with the batty teacher I had last year for IDE 101 & 102. I like her as a person (most of the time), but she is constantly making things exponentially more difficult than they need to be. She’s unorganized and forgetful, and tries to cram everything in at the last possible minute.

Homework assignments were given out, and she completely forgot she had assigned them. “Rough sketches” were insisted for our sketchbooks with the criteria that these should be rough, freehand drawings, and when they were returned to us, we found them graded harshly and received a huge lecture about how much better they should have been. I was the only person to receive an A on the assignment, and that is because I had taken her before and went through great pains to carefully draw with a ruler and measure — even though she specifically said we weren’t to do that. Quizzes were scheduled and then forgotten. In fact, she was supposed to give us a couple of quizzes but never did so gave us a rush quiz on the last day of class after we turned in our final projects – she’s not organized at all. Assignments were given out with little instructions and then when we received them back, we were marked down on things she admittedly forgot to teach us. And, for the grand finale, instead of receiving the instructions for our final project when the other classes were receiving them, she held off for two weeks to give us other model assignments as filler and “practice” so we wouldn’t have the model to work on over the Thanksgiving holiday. And then when we finally received the assignment, her instructions were exponentially more difficult and required much more than the other classes were required to do – with less time to do them.

On the last day of class, before the teacher came in, I was in a discussion with a group of girls who were comparing the teaching styles of our first and second teachers. Everyone in the discussion (except myself) agreed that they liked the second teacher better. Why? They said:

Because she’s a girl, you know, so she’s, like, more understanding.

I could hardly believe it, either. Their grades were worse with her and the assignments were exponentially more difficult, but because she’s female, and because she lets people take breaks whenever they want and eat in the classroom, they find her to be a better teacher.

I couldn’t stop laughing to refute the argument and just had to let it go. But the good news is that this second “better” chick teacher will not be teaching anything at all next semester, and we will be getting the first guy again, who I liked better. I can’t eat or drink in the classroom but he shows up on time and gives assignments back on time? I can live with that.

But anyway, this final project. All semester we had been learning to draft this house – the same house. For the final project we had to build a foam core model of this house, 1/2″ = 1′-0″ scale, of a two-story 40′-0″ x 20′-0″ house. Our model was required to have the ceiling come off, as well as the north and west walls come off — oops, she changed that to north and east walls a week before the project was due — so we can take a look inside. We were required to turn in a practice model of the staircase and roof, at the very least. My practice staircase was disassembled and my practice roof was not good enough for her, so it was severely marked down.

One and a half weeks before the project was due I had all of my exterior and interior walls cut out, but had not yet done a staircase and roof — and there were girls in the class who hadn’t even started with exterior walls yet. Needless to say I felt pretty good about where I was at.

Tuesday night, the night before the project was due, I sat down to do the stairs and roof, cut out the windows on my final exterior wall, and assemble. I thought I’d be done by 11:00.

We got done at 4:00am. The entire night was a series of things that just kept going wrong. Tom stayed with me the whole night, changing the music CD, making me coffee, beveling edges, gluing and pinning and piecing together my entire project.

He has won the Best Husband Award of 2007, which is good because there are only a couple of weeks left in the year and I was getting worried.

Seriously though, he was amazing. I don’t think anyone else would have done that for me. Well maybe my Mom would — I can think of a few school projects she did with me until the wee hours of the morning (I love you, Mom!). But those I procrastinated on, and this one I hadn’t procrastinated on.

In the end, my project looked pretty beautiful. The windows were beautifully cut, the beveled edges of the house were perfect, and it really was one of the best models that were turned in.

The next morning I made it into class 30 minutes early so I could review for the test we were supposed to take. My brain was only half functioning at this point. I walk into the classroom and there are a half-dozen people in there, frantically trying to finish up their projects which look horrible. Immediately as I walk through the door they’re begging me for pins and glue and supplies — and of course I happily donated whatever I could to the cause. Most of the girls couldn’t figure out how to attach the ceiling to the roof (because we were never told how to do this stuff, just that we were to do it) and I said that in the end, I pinned them together instead of gluing. I had purchased a $20 beveling gizmo for the ceiling, so it would glue to the slanted ceiling, but it just wasn’t working. We pinned it. I told the girls what I had done, and they all started lining up so I could pin it.

Now, when I pinned mine, Tom and I did it carefully so we wouldn’t pierce the ceiling. Of course by then I was so tired that I did make a couple of tiny punctures in the top, but I fixed it so that at least no one would get stabbed. One of the girls said she didn’t care, grabbed pins and started stabbing the ceiling into the roof so that four pins were sticking straight out of the top. And when I flipped her roof over you could see that she had, at one point, cut herself badly because there were smears of blood all over the model.

It was quickly dubbed the “Stephen King House.”

Most of the other houses were messy and many of them didn’t even have exterior walls that came together. Even though I was really proud of my house and I did a great job, it did not receive the A- that I had expected. Because I ended up not taking the additional 4 hours to install skylights and vaulted ceilings in my house, nor did I give the assembled practice staircase and an acceptable practice roof, she gave me an 87.

Everyone was marveling at what a great grade that was, because she was pretty harsh in her grading. I was furious. Absolutely furious. Maybe because I was tired, I don’t know, but I think it at least deserved a 91. And, admittedly, I was so exhausted that I couldn’t think. Everyone had stayed up as late as I did, and some hadn’t even gone to bed yet (like the Stephen King house girl).

The beginning of the semester was fun, and I really enjoyed myself. Drafting was fun and I felt like I was learning something cool, but when the second teacher took over, I found myself caring less about doing well, and just wanted to get assignments done. I know the other people aren’t looking forward to having him back in the classroom next semester, but I am.

In my class, we have a crazy person. The neat thing about her is that you don’t know she’s crazy until she starts talking. At that point, crazy is all out in the open and pretty hard to hide. She’s older than most of the students – not that she is old, she’s just older than a lot of the kids who are fresh out of high school. I would guess she is in her 40′s. We knew she was a little nuts because of some of the odd things she decides to interject during lectures, in an attempt to raise her “participation” part of the grade, which is worth 25% of the grade (basically, the participation grade is showing up to class, not being rude, asking questions, that sort of thing).

Allegedly, a lot of the IDE 101 students are failing the class. The course grade is mainly decided by three tests, each worth 25% of the grade, and then the 25% participation grade. Halfway through the semester we had only been given one assignment, so in all essence, the grades were riding on the tests. A lot of students bombed the first test, so our teacher decided to assign some homework to help prop up our grades. So we put together what is called a color board, where we were given measurements that we had to have for fabric swatches and the board that the fabric is mounted on, and the idea was for people to get colors and fabrics together on a presentation board, called a color board, which is then presented to a client. Our teacher was trying to get us to learn how to lay out our items in a way that makes sense to a client, and then receive feedback from peers.

Crazy came out for the project in a whole new way. She was the second or third to present, and her board was a bit like her – crazy. Nothing on the board fit the measurements that were on the handout; first of all, her board was about 1/3 of the size it was supposed to be (11×17). So no one could really see it. When that, with a couple of other things, were politely brought to her attention after her presentation, she was like a woman scorned! To everyone else who presented after that, she would raise her hand to give feedback and she would say, “I don’t like that at all. I think it’s ugly.” Thanks for the constructive criticism, Crazy!

During today’s class, it was a new and interesting day for Crazy to botch up the lecture. And did she ever.

About a third of the way through the lecture, someone’s phone starts ringing. Loudly. And not in one of those regular tones – some extremely loud and annoying little pop song. The teacher stops speaking and we are all looking around for the culprit. Meanwhile, Crazy is gazing stupidly up at the presentation screen, as if nothing is going on. Finally, my teacher says, “Whose phone is that?”

Blinking, Crazy looks over at her and says, “Oh, that’s mine.”

A brief pause ensues while my teacher stares at Crazy, waiting for her to get up and stop the offending phone. She doesn’t.

“You need to turn it off. Now, please.”

But Crazy was just too crazy to understand this request. “Oh, I can’t – it’s up front, behind you. It ran out of battery so I plugged it in up at the front of the room…”

Another pause from my teacher. “You need to get it right now.”

Crazy gets up from her seat, squeezes herself between the lecture tables until she can make it into the aisle, bumbles, stumbles, and shuffles down to the front of the lecture hall, and retrieves her phone. Then she has to repeat the process to get back to her seat. Meanwhile, we’re all waiting for her to sit down so we can continue.

A few minutes later…

RING! Her phone is ringing again. We all stop and look over at Crazy. My teacher, now pretty angry, says, “You need to shut that off right now. Please do not ever have a phone on in class.”

Crazy mumbles her response (she’s always mumbling and no one can understand her) so we try to pick up the lecture where we left off.

But wait, there’s more! A little while later…

A strange noise! Our heads pop up like marmots as we’re trying to figure out where it’s coming from. It’s Crazy, snoring at the front of the lecture hall! Yes, that’s right, now Crazy has fallen asleep and is taking a few minutes out of her hectic schedule to have a little nappy-poo. My teacher, now thoroughly annoyed, walks over and begins to tap on Crazy’s shoulder until she wakes up. “You need to leave,” she said. “Right now. You really just need to go. Please go.”

“Okay,” is what I think Crazy mumbled – who knows. She gathers up her things and proceeds to shuffle/stumble out of the room in a dopey and sleepy stupor.

It took a few minutes to recuperate from all of that, but we finally managed, and it’s a good thing, too. We’re on the final stretch to the end of the semester, and things are getting intense. Apparently a lot of students are not doing well, and the people in my particular class have been dropping like flies. The final grade is based on the 25% participation grade, and three tests, each worth 25%. Originally, each test was to cover 3 chapters out of our book. However, when so many people did poorly on the first test (History of Interior Design/Architecture – I admit, that test was fairly intense) she decided to really dig in and cover the next two chapters. In fact, she went back and presented the same lecture twice on chapter 4, just to make sure people got it. Because we spent so much time recovering information, she gave the next test based on two chapters, as there was no time to squeeze in a third chapter.

Again, a lot of people did not do well. I didn’t do as well as I had expected either, but I was still doing well in the class overall so I wasn’t too worried. The day that we got the grades from test #2 back was the day we did our presentations on the color boards. After that day, people started missing from the class, and continued to disappear. Registration for next semester started, but not many people are signing up to take the continuation class (Interior Design 102) – my guess is it’s a reflection of people doing so poorly in this current class. Before every class, my teacher has been asking people to sign up for the next class, because the school is going to consolidate the two classes into one if people don’t sign up.

In an attempt to bring grades up, we are now receiving “Extra Credit” assignments to turn in, that have a real “project” feel to them – they’re quite time consuming. She says they should only take 15 minutes to do, which I am sure is the case if you have a Masters Degree in Architecture like she does. For the rest of us, it took hours. At any rate, I was quite pleased when she mentioned in class yesterday that at the end of the semester she will add up our grades, and then whatever she decides to award us for the Extra Credit assignments, she will just add across the top. Her example was that if she decided to give us 10 points for the project we just turned in, and we were getting an 80 as an overall class grade, we would now get a 90. That’s a pretty big boost, so I’m wondering just how poorly people are doing in the class – or just how desperate she is to get people to sign up for next semester.

The funny thing about it is that the semester ends next week, and she now has to cram 4 chapters into this next test. Our class is on Tuesday and Thursday. She wants to have the test on Tuesday, which leaves us with one more day to cover the rest of the information — nearly two chapters worth. She’s desperate to get our grades up, but on top of the four chapters we are racing through, we also have these big projects piled on top of us to do for extra credit work.

This is not making sense to me, and even though her new and nifty extra credit points are going to solidify a good grade, I’m really nervous about this upcoming test. I’ll probably take a day off before the test to study.