A New Den for the Salazars

First day in the new home (please forgive the backlighting):

Miguel found for himself a nice place to lounge...and roar.

In such a crazy day, David kept finding things to hug.  As he told me, Guanabana was his "secondary huggie" and Coke Bear was his "firstendary huggie"

"I'm not even tired!"

Alex found a quarter and wanted to play with it, so he asked for "Heads or Iowas"

We went to Texas Roadhouse for Andres' birthday and, no, we didn't make him sit on the saddle and have it yelled out to the restaurant that he was turning 25.  What we did have was Rachel drawing on a box.  You decide for yourself which is more entertaining, but I think we know where the boys stand.

A Simple Truth

When my brother and sister-in-law returned from their two week sabbatical, they brought me this from a decorative glass place.  They were with my sister's family at the time and apparently they all agreed that it was perfect for me.  I agree.

Happy Birthday!

Happy birthday, Andres!  Keep celebrating until you get a cake...or Marble Slab!

Photo Hunter: Flags

I only have one: This was taken in Juarez, Mexico from the dingy building in which we had our meals and worship services. I like the window pane and the rooftop and how despite the dust and the distance, this flag is proudly waving.

Photo Hunter

Antigone

In my history of design class our final was to do a project in the style of any designer.  This could be a costume rendering, a lighting storyboard, an aural collage, etc.  I decided to do a sound design in the style of Dan Moses Scherier.  This is the description of his first professional sound design: scraps of movie music, pounding heartbeats, rhythmic chants, loud breathing, deafening electronic blasts.  Reading this, I immediately thought of the version of Antigone I light designed sophomore year.  I took piece's from Becca's script and using as few words as possible I told the story using music and sound effects to fill in the rest.  I have my own flair in there of course, but I think Dan Moses would like the style and the effect.  

I've been wanting to post this for a while, but Blogger doesn't really support audio.  Finally my sister suggested that I make a video and hide the screen.  However, I also have a lot of good pictures from my light design that I can claim as my work, so I made a slideshow to go with the story.  Enjoy! (One thing, it starts off very quietly so don't adjust the volume until you're about 15 seconds in)

Furthermore, our final project for scene design was to completely design and do a half-scale model of any play.  I chose Antigone for this as well, thinking that a Greek play would lend itself well to any style I wanted.  Also, Becca's scene did not have a set so I knew I would not be influenced by my light design experience.  However, the more I got into it and the more I looked at other people's work I realized that the best Greek plays, especially Antigone, don't have sets.  Realistic sets, Greek or modern, look ridiculous and totally overwhelm the actors and undermine the play.  Therefore, my design is quite simple, but I am pleased with it.

I chose to have an altar center stage that has three rings around it.  The rings are all elevators so that there can be many variations to the altar's position.  There can be steps up or down or it could be level with the stage.  In the end, I wanted Antigone to ride down on it and have the altar become her tomb.  The background is a dual image of the palace and the desert; the richness unable to cover up the desolation that Creon has created.  To me, it is the image of the "whitewashed tomb" from the Bible.  It's simple, but I like it (if only the steamer had been working).

So this all is a very, very small slice of my classwork: the things that keep me up all night ;)

Photo Hunter: Advertisement

In my love for taking pictures of amusing signs, I assumed that the hardest part of this week's theme would be narrowing down the choices.  However, I quickly stumbled across the perfect picture.  I presume from the disappearance of this product's availability, this was a very successful advertisement.

Photo Hunter

sarahneedsajob.com

It all started in portfolio class.  Our final project was to make significant progress on a website for ourselves.  I had the hardest time finding a website builder that I liked so I ended up choosing a random one and throwing stuff in at the last minute.  I finished the class convinced that the kind of website I wanted to make with slideshows and side bars, etc. would be ridiculously expensive.  Yesterday, I picked it up again, trying to make some headway to my pathetic site which led me to two places.  

1) I downloaded a random new web server called Opera.  It's actually quite a bit awesome.

2) I became convinced that the builder I was using (webs.com) was useless.  After only a few minutes of searching I found wix.com and my life was changed.  I have spent a large part of the day working on my website and it is in very useable condition.  

My brother jokingly called it "sarahneedsajob.com," which is a fairly accurate description.  I would like to invite you to visit the real site wix.com/sarahchanis/portfolio.  If you need to make a website or if you're looking for a new browser, I would recommend either program.