Summer Time

Spring semester ended with a buzz of activity, and I have been enjoying my summer break for almost two months now.

May was filled with Visual Art Society work for the Gala & Art Auction that was also that month. I tagged along to Cathedral Caverns with the Photo in the Field class, went Cosmic Bowling with the Art Alliance and finally started painting on the mural project (which is still in progress, but coming along nicely). I am now enjoying my first summer off from both school and a normal job schedule in 11 years! I was hoping to do an internship this summer, but didn’t get one set up in time, so I’ve been working on my personal to-do list (I love to-do list), and also doing a bit of freelance work for various clients and friends.

June was pretty  much the same as May with a variety of personal, school, and freelance work. A few highlights included Karl & I visiting some friends in Mississippi for a bit of fun, and the parents of my brother’s girlfriend Anna, who flew in from Germany and stayed with my family for two weeks. AnnaMaria, Jason, and I were invited to have breakfast with each of the three candidates brought in from the assistant professor of graphic design position. All three candidates seemed very strong in different areas. The three candidates are John Mark Lawler, Jinsook Kim, and Sharon Wasden. I’m looking forward to finding out who they bring in since I want to squeeze in an independent study with whoever they bring in.

I ordered CS5 around the end of May and have been having fun learning about Dreamweaver and illustrator. I’ve mainly been watching video tutorials online at Lynda.com which is an incredibly awesome resource. The videos are really great and they have a variety of lessons on each product or topic with videos for both beginner and expert users. I highly recommend it, even with the $25 a month subscription fee.

As far as fun stuff goes, last week Karl and I went on vacation to Jacksonville, FL & Savannah, GA for a few days. We visited the MOCA & the Cummer museum in Jacksonville, and saw an awesome exhibit of graphic jazz portraits by Paul Rogers.  We toured two different forts, an old plantation, did a lot of driving around admiring architecture and played in the ocean, which was fantastic. I can’t wait to swim in the ocean again, hopefully in August when I take a girls trip up to Charleston, SC. As always this summer is passing by way too fast and I’m still less than halfway done with my main to-do list. I did finally manage to rework my portfolio site so that it’s functional, carolrecord.com, it’s pretty simple, but still needs a bit of attention and my more current work. I’m continuing to work on it as I learn more about CSS and building in Dreamweaver.