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Hello there, this is Katana, also known as Kat in some circles. I'm your friendly neighborhood twenty-two-year-old illustrator/writer whose sarcasm is second to none and harboring the ability to verbalize the parentheses in stories. I drink coffee and draw like an addict and am liable to get you into things that I like. Currently the wielder of a BFA in Illustration and a minor in English.

Questions? Comments? Death threats? Feel free to PM or message me in some iteration. I'm always around, you just don't know it.

"Some of the great artists of our time started off by doodling in class. ...Maybe. Oh heck I dunno."
- Miss Anonymous

The end of that road

I'm fairly certain that after tomorrow night, I'm going to be quitting my job. I checked the calendar for December and I am working two days. Salad bar. A chat with the sous chef revealed that the manager basically said "oh, she thinks she can do that, huh?" when finding out I wasn't going to work New Years Eve.

And I laughed. Because she thinks she can beat me. I'm fairly amazed at how childish the adults I know can be sometimes, but especially at this job. Favoritism runs rampant and nothing is fair. And really, it's at a point where I feel like this is hindering me. The further I get in my education, the harder things are becoming and the less time I have to spare dragging myself home to do this job. It's not worth it.

So really...I can't be beaten, because I alone hold my fate. And I choose to end this path. Three years and eight months at my first job isn't bad. In the mean time, I'll be looking for stuff to do around here during the winter and also around campus.

Hereby announcing JanNoWriMo

Yeah, I know the "Na" part of NaNoWriMo stands for "National", but a few of my friends and I have decided to swap that for Jan - January.

Pretty sure I said this, but NaNoWriMo falls during one of the two worst months of the school year (the other being April). I think part of the challenge is for regular people to have to deal with the start of holiday stress, or maybe 'cause the weather's getting colder, or something else, but when you're a(n art) student, November is not cool because there is so much to do. There is no time to spare if you're enrolled in five or more classes; even worse when you're like me and fielding four classes that give you ridiculous finals in the home stretch.

Graphic design is demanding my attention for the first and only time this semester, namely because our current project is designing a complete CD case. When you're asked to do three different comps, that is a ton of work that is about twelve times more to do than the previous project. Photography is asking for 400 shots (with ten prints) for a final that comprises 40% of my final grade. Drawing gives me the chance to re-do some stuff that I want to make better, and Illustration is just being itself by giving me an editorial that has no business calling itself an editorial.

What all that boils down to is me having not touched Word in about two weeks for anything other than writing down episode titles for my Drawing project. I also have this theory that the well of creativity I use for either writing or drawing is the same for everything. It's why I crank out a lot more things in the summer and over winter break.

WHAT THIS ALL MEANS IS

January is spent half in winter break and half in the beginnings of a semester when nothing happens. Therefore, this is the perfect time for us, the students, to write. So I hereby announce The JanNoWriMo Project. This way, if I actually do fail, I really can't blame it on anything other than my own laziness.

Oh right, Christmas cards

I decided a while back that my Christmas card this year would be Rory-based, because I have way too many friends into Doctor Who.

Alternatively, I'll make some other design for people not into the spacey wacey stuff. Either case, I'll be making them after finals, so I'll probably be cutting it close to the actual holiday.

Also: Keep in mind these won't be one-of-a-kind cards, but (nice) photocopies. As much as I would like to, I don't have the focus or time to pull that off.

So if you'd like a card from Kat, drop a line in the comments. I have a lot of people's addresses, but I may have to hit you up on that. If you don't feel comfortable giving an address, I'll be posting up the artwork around Christmas. :)

I haven't talked about work in a while

Oh, my job... I've been working at the restaurant for almost four years, which is a kind of strange but also somewhat awesome that I've been able to hold a job for that long. A lot of stuff has occurred in that time frame, but I'm slowly ge...

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V-log: The Asian Cupboard

A quick video of how difficult (eh, kinda) it is to find actual ingredients in our cupboard because of how much random Asian things we have.

The brownies are tasty.