This semester is going to be crazy. And I say that will all of the affection in my heart! In addition to working full time, I am taking 12 hours this semester- 9 hours of which are class, and the other 3 of which are an internship with Musa Publishing's Aurora Regency imprint. A big part of my responsibility is updating, managing, and writing for the Aurora Regency blog. I will get to write historical articles, notices about new releases, and also work with authors who are also writing articles for the blog. I'm very excited!
The classes I am taking now range from intro to publishing, to publication design, to 17th century British poetry. The design class has had a surprising amount of freehand drawing in it, and I'm no artist- and yet my first two projects have turned out pretty well. One of them was using graph paper to draw a font, and I churned out a blocky, stubby font that I named "Corgi" for obvious reasons.
I'm a little leery of having so many things on my plate (in addition to riding and whatever other activities), but if I can get through this, I'll only have to take 6 hours of class (2 electives) and one more internship next semester- and I can graduate in May! Also, with the cooler weather approaching, my house will be more pleasant to live in, which will lead to a much less stressed out me. Winter is coming!
Since I don't like to write posts that don't have pictures, I'm going to switch gears now to my wildlife sightings over the last week.
First: One night, about 9:00, I let Romeo and Fiona out back to go do their business. I noticed that Fiona was jumping (in playful fashion) at something, and I yelled at her to stop, thinking she had found a scorpion. She ignored me and continued on, so I went outside to yell at her better. What I saw almost gave me a heart attack: a huge, dark, long shape in the grass. After screaming at her to get away (and scaring her half to death in the process), and then screaming at Romeo to get away as he came trotting back up, I took a closer look to see what was hanging out next to my porch:
I'm not particularly afraid of snakes, having owned 4 in the past, but when I see my little dog playing with a random, yet-to-be-identified-as-venemous-or-not snake, I panic.
As I was shining the light in its face (and probably confusing the heck out of it), the feral cats discovered it. While the kittens hung back, Lexie walked up and sat next to it, following it as it moved, and meowed at it. I think it was the equivalent of a bouncer escorting someone from a building. Cas walked up to it, slapped it a couple of times, and walked away.
It looks to me like a broad banded water snake, which is not venomous. It didn't show me any aggression, in spite of me getting so close to it and shining the light in its eyes, and seemed more like it wanted to get away than anything else. I left it to itself (and to the cats, if they wanted), and the next time I took the dogs out, it was gone.
Wednesday night I was driving home from eating dinner with my older brother, and when I was about 3 miles away from my house, I drove up on a large herd of hogs out next to the road. You can't really tell what they are in the picture, so take my word for it.
Usually hogs run before I can catch them in my headlights; these guys weren't very frightened by my truck. I drove off the road a little, trying to get better lighting for a picture, but they stayed on the move.
There's always something new and different when living out in the country, be it animals, creepy drivers that cruise very slowly past, or sudden, unexplained explosions that rock your house (happened last night and horrifically scared me, my roommate, and Fiona). I guess that's part of its charm, eh?
The classes I am taking now range from intro to publishing, to publication design, to 17th century British poetry. The design class has had a surprising amount of freehand drawing in it, and I'm no artist- and yet my first two projects have turned out pretty well. One of them was using graph paper to draw a font, and I churned out a blocky, stubby font that I named "Corgi" for obvious reasons.
I'm a little leery of having so many things on my plate (in addition to riding and whatever other activities), but if I can get through this, I'll only have to take 6 hours of class (2 electives) and one more internship next semester- and I can graduate in May! Also, with the cooler weather approaching, my house will be more pleasant to live in, which will lead to a much less stressed out me. Winter is coming!
Since I don't like to write posts that don't have pictures, I'm going to switch gears now to my wildlife sightings over the last week.
First: One night, about 9:00, I let Romeo and Fiona out back to go do their business. I noticed that Fiona was jumping (in playful fashion) at something, and I yelled at her to stop, thinking she had found a scorpion. She ignored me and continued on, so I went outside to yell at her better. What I saw almost gave me a heart attack: a huge, dark, long shape in the grass. After screaming at her to get away (and scaring her half to death in the process), and then screaming at Romeo to get away as he came trotting back up, I took a closer look to see what was hanging out next to my porch:
I'm not particularly afraid of snakes, having owned 4 in the past, but when I see my little dog playing with a random, yet-to-be-identified-as-venemous-or-not snake, I panic.
As I was shining the light in its face (and probably confusing the heck out of it), the feral cats discovered it. While the kittens hung back, Lexie walked up and sat next to it, following it as it moved, and meowed at it. I think it was the equivalent of a bouncer escorting someone from a building. Cas walked up to it, slapped it a couple of times, and walked away.
It looks to me like a broad banded water snake, which is not venomous. It didn't show me any aggression, in spite of me getting so close to it and shining the light in its eyes, and seemed more like it wanted to get away than anything else. I left it to itself (and to the cats, if they wanted), and the next time I took the dogs out, it was gone.
Wednesday night I was driving home from eating dinner with my older brother, and when I was about 3 miles away from my house, I drove up on a large herd of hogs out next to the road. You can't really tell what they are in the picture, so take my word for it.
Usually hogs run before I can catch them in my headlights; these guys weren't very frightened by my truck. I drove off the road a little, trying to get better lighting for a picture, but they stayed on the move.
There's always something new and different when living out in the country, be it animals, creepy drivers that cruise very slowly past, or sudden, unexplained explosions that rock your house (happened last night and horrifically scared me, my roommate, and Fiona). I guess that's part of its charm, eh?
