July 6, 2014

At the moment, I am exhausted. There is no real reason for me to feel this way. I just want to go to bed, and I have felt that way since about nine o'clock. It will be an early night.

I didn't have a lot going on today. At one point the internet and cable went out for awhile and I took the opportunity to watch Frozen and set up some cloth for my next cross stitch. Despite being sick and tired of the entire world being in love with Frozen and seemingly never getting tired of Let It Go, I liked the movie. It was really funny. Particularly Olaf the snowman and Anna. The thing I don't really get is everyone loving Elsa. She was a catalyst for the story but she really wasn't the lead of the movie, Anna was. And Anna was a much better character. Elsa kind of came across as a bitchy emo kid for the vast majority of the movie. She was actually pretty unlikeable. I get the reasons for her feeling the way she does but good grief. Grow up and get over it already. It was also kind of strange that she ran away and built an ice castle, that seemed kind of random to me. And then making the giant ice monster to get rid of her sister, who she went to all the trouble of isolating herself from in order to protect. So overall, at least in terms of story, it could have been better. But I liked the humor and I'd watch it again.

I started my next cross stitch because I wanted to take a break from that damn metallic string. When setting up the cloth for it I meant to leave a three inch border around it but in my calculations I just added three instead of six, so now I have an inch and a half border. I didn't really plan on putting a mat around it so I think the smaller border should be fine. It is also a little easier to work with. After cutting it out and taping the edges I stitch the first three words because calling it good for the night. It is so much nicer stitching with regular string again. I remain the enormous frustration caused by knots but I didn't have any of those tonight, which I am thankful for. I am using a shorter length of string than I was the last time I cross stitched so maybe that has something to do with it, Less opportunity for the string to get twisted and tangled. I'm excited to see how this pattern looks in the real world. It is about books but has the same basic layout as my cupcake one, so if this one looks good, the cupcake one will. I just hope I measured correctly.

I spent a lot of time looking at the artwork of Alice X. Zhang today. She is the artist who made the three Doctor Who prints I bought awhile back. She has a really unique style and everything she makes looks amazing. I want to buy all of it. It also makes me wish I could draw. I think the coolest thing in the world is being able to draw anything that your imagination can come up with. Drawing or painting or creating super immersive environments in video games are the things I wish more than anything that I could do. I can be artistic in other ways but that stuff is really just mimicry. Being able to sit down and create something completely unique and original at the end of a pen would be deeply rewarding. Every however often I get the drawing itch I immediately become aware of my lack of focus and ability to stick with something. I generally do stuff just long enough to be able to do it decently, and then I move on. I do believe that being able to draw is something you're born with. You can practice and make that talent better, but if it's not there to begin with, I think you're kind of screwed. And if you think otherwise, saying that you sucked but now you're good, you probably had the talent in the first place. I don't think I have that talent. But, I also haven't ever put in the time it would take to get good, even if the talent was in there somewhere. I like the super realistic look and that is definitely something that will never happen. It would be nice to bring drawing into my daily routine, however. Start at the basics and just practice.

We had a belated Independence Day family dinner tonight. I ate way too much food, as I have a tendency to do. I blame my sister because she made the pasta noodle thing and I went back for seconds. My mom's deviled eggs were also good. For dessert we had fruit pizza but it was make-your-own. This was to avoid the fruit pizza getting mushy sitting in the fridge. It worked out pretty well and the final product was delicious.

Tonight I did laundry, cross stitched a little, and watched YouTube videos. Super exciting. I wanted to play a video game but I was already feeling tired and could bring myself to pick a game. I need friends to play games with. I would like to jump on the bandwagon of whatever they're in the mood to play rather than trying to pick a game out myself. Unfortunately, I don't have any gamer friends. If I wanted to, it wouldn't be too hard to find some people online, but I don't really make online friends. Or offline friends. I should work on both.