http://www.iscaliforniaonfire.com/

The sky is all red, the sun is all red, and my tonsils are really pissed off.
I was in the middle of fighting off a cold, but now I think I may have lost!
but this makes me happy.
And then here are some beautiful photos of the fire: link

Other than that, we officially close on the house on the 11th, but possibly sooner. There is no bathtub here, but there is one there, so that makes waiting for it much harder! I don't know who would build anything without a bathtub. That's the only thing I won't miss about this place though-- well, that and the pot dispensary across the street that used to be the best mexican restaurant ever (grrrrr). There are in fact 800 dispensaries in LA because our city council is that incompetent that they left a (huge, gaping) loophole that allowed basically everyone and their duck to open one. For comparison, San Francisco has 30. Now our city council is busy closing them down and getting sued.

This month is going to be busy! In addition to the move, there's the Queen Mary Art Deco Fest, the LA County Fair, Oktoberfest (i think), Tar Fest, and the Avocado Festival. And that's after I narrowed it down.

I found a condo I want! Next time I go I will take some pictures. It has really high ceilings, 2 fireplaces, a huge balcony, and is 2 stories. It is in Westchester, near the beach in Marina Del Rey.

My little cottage-apartment will be missed though, and the drive-through coffee shop on the way to work, and the teeny next-door Russian grocery store and the Vietnamese tofu factory restaurant that we just discovered down the street. (So good I'll have to drive up to the valley for it constantly.)

Bee Canyon!

I want to do this 19-mile round-trip hike to hot springs in Ventura County: http://travel.latimes.com/articles/la-trw-sespe7-2008dec07
it looks amazing.

I started a brand new etsy store! I have been wanting to sell art prints for a long time and I finally got around to it. I hope some of you will check it out (and tell people.. hehe ;) There's only a couple prints in there now, but I'll be adding more stuff pretty often throughout this and next week.

In other news I had an interview yesterday, I think it went well! Wish me luck!

I have been neglecting this journal, and I think I forgot to even mention that I was going to Japan and China! It was so fun and I got to see my sister and explore and we were right next to mt. fuji but the clouds never went away so we couldn't see it.

Here are pictures!
http://www.alexisrawlins.com/JapanChina08/

I'm sorry there's 130!! I narrowed it down from 900, but still. I also had fun trying to get lots of texture photos that I can use for other stuff.

Yesterday I got a blog up for my website... alexisrawlins.com/blog! I've been having fun with it so far and putting random stuff on it. But it has to mostly stay professional, so my real-life updates will stay here.

Speaking of real life updates, Japan in one month!! We went to the travel clinic to get shots, and I didn't need any!! That was really awesome. Brandon got a tetanus shot, though.

Yesterday, Boba picked up a paper soda cup with his teeth somehow, then he jumped off the desk with it still in his mouth. Then he walked around with it. I was impressed. It was mostly empty, though. Zephyr is the one usually responsible for picking up random household objects, and carrying them around like prey. But usually he chooses something cat-like, like a pen.

I've been working on a bunch of stuff, 2 websites my dad wants, plus more indesign formatting for Novatel (ooh pays so well too), fixing up my website more, and tutoring illustrator, and brandon's website.

On Friday it was 109 degrees in Van Nuys where I live
Gas has reached about 4.70/gal, it costs me $75 to fill my tank.
Need more trips to the beach.
All of california is pleased with itself for finally unbanning gay marriage. :) Interviews with/pictures of sulu are everywhere!
We went to the del mar fair and saw a giant steer (the white mountain!) and a giant horse (hercules!).
A baby cow licked brandon's pant knee.

Yesterday I was about to go take the trash out, when behind my trash can I heard some animal moving around. I was totally weirded out so I stood and watched, and then a little black tail came out of the dryer hose! And then a whole kitten kind of fell out of the dryer hose! It sat there for a second and then it heard me, so it ran back up into the hose.  I left it some food, later that night TWO black kittens were running around in the side yard. They're feral and won't let me near them, but they're out there all the time. Later on, we noticed there were at least 3 of them, and when I went around to my car there was another one so now I guess there's at least 4?

We were gonna just keep feeding it when we thought there was only 1, but now we don't really know what to do with them. First we're gonna ask the apartment manager if she knows if they belong to anyone, and then if they don't I guess we're gonna look around for a good no-kill shelter. They're little kittens and would probably all get adopted if only we could ever catch them. so the plan is feed them a lot until they love us. They're so cute I wanna hug them but can't!!

yay, the changes to rawlinsdesignstudio.com are up! Thanks everyone who gave me feedback, it really helped a lot.

Right now I am still debating that flickr badge being on the front page... I dunno, i felt like it needed a little something more than text, but I might move it to another section anyway because it's weird.

(also, Robyn! Is it the page still cutting off that text for you? I couldn't recreate it with my browser so i can't see it, but i did mess with it a little. It's the first image in the publication design section btw. thanksyouuuu oh helpful person.)

New website!

it's at http://www.RawlinsDesignStudio.com.

I'm going to leave it up for a few days before giving the URL to my teacher (who has a possible job contact-person for me :D) in case any of you find any BLARING, HORRIBLE mistakes in the page so I can have a chance to fix it before my teacher visits it. Yep!

Go visit, and criticize!

I have been using an empty inhaler for asthma, and it works about 70% of the time.
Too bad I can't just convince myself I used it when I didn't. Then I could just make the asthma go away with my mind.
I attribute the asthma improving to my cats. Because I love them, and then they forced me to not have allergies to them, and then I found that I wasn't allergic to lots of other things.

OH MY GOD, NIGHTMARE BUG

CAUSE, WHAT IF I SAW THAT THING IN PERSON... YOU KNOW, IN CASE I HAPPENED TO BE IN ANTARCTICA, AND UNDERWATER, AND I SAW THAT THING!!!


My first thought was "Oh look, it's Oran----HOLY SHIT THAT'S AWFUL"

Lately I've been hunting down some old apothecary jars / prescriptions / labels etc from the late 1800's on ebay. I bought a set of 4 little jars, and I think I will make an old west-apothecary themed bathroom now. The actual reason for this obsession likely started with Dust: A Tale of the Wired West, which was a little-known game from when I was younger. Probably a few of you will remember it as being some kind of silly obsession of mine in 1995 ;) But the game was so amazing to me at the time and it still is, and I still have my copy. And why wasn't I alive sometime around 1870, anyway? Not that I would necessarily trade it for now, but I want both! Can't I have both?

I'm not sure what it is that fascinates me about that time/that game so much, and the game was one of those Adventure games that are basically unplayable without the manual (just in a couple parts) but I still remember there's this part where you have to find a gun, and eventually you find an old revolver in a well, and then the sun sets.
Also I remember there was a shoot-out near the end of the game, and me and my sister were both too scared to do it alone. So we'd have one of us steering with the keyboard and looking around, the other person would shoot with the mouse. Haha. Still I'd be a little weirded out to try it alone, even though it probably wasn't scary at all. And there is actually another part of the game I remember where you're in an apothecary and you have to mix some medicine, but I don't remember why.

I also got an old 1800's beer bottle off ebay, they used to make them out of stoneware and the typography on them was always so beautiful. That's probably why I'm so attracted to almost everything made by C.O. Bigelow Apothecaries, they've apparently been around since the 1830s but they kept the same style of typography. I should get that shampoo...

Anyway, off to class!

So, I laundered my boyfriend's ipod...

It was in my car, and I was taking it out of my car, and put it on my shirt, and then I washed it. By myself.

So i said I'd replace it, for the video ipod one even, so now he wants the video one that costs $300 more than his old shuffle, but since we never actually celebrated our birthdays/chanukahs/valentines day/etc from last year, we're gonna arbitrarily do that in a week. We had no money or jobs, so we went out somewhere cheap at the time and had fun, but still, 2 holidays is better.

Anyway, so I bought him that video ipod. Also, I made him something which I will have to try not to post yet since I don't feel like locking this entry. :P


Work has been good, both jobs actually. My new internship/graphic design job is pretty fun, and I like the people a lot. They are doing the packaging for Jack Daniel's meats, and they had me photoshopping the meats to look better, and were commenting on the fact that the vegetarian person has to photoshop all this meat.

I didn't have a problem with it, actually the only thing I wouldn't want to do is the retouching people thing. I was the TA for a retouching class, and the teacher was just taking off all of this model's freckles, and the freckles were awesome, before, and just making everyone look exactly the same... ehhh.

Ok, end
my cat keeps biting me and his breath is bad