Pictures for the win...

I drove down to Texarkana for the weekend, which for me began on Thursday and stretches clear 'til 10:50 Tuesday morning. I decided that it would be best for me to put in as much time as possible with my parents in the near future. My reasoning feels pretty solid-- once I begin working for Marble Slab (not to mention Kaplan's end of semester push) I won't have the time or energy to come home for long weekends. Add to that my impending summer-length absence, and I feel like it's for the best to be connected as much as possible with my folks.

I am a bit worried about my laptop. Well, I suppose that's an understatement. The tip of the charger broke off in the port, so there is no way for me to charge my battery any longer. Thus, the computer itself is rendered useless as far as I can see. Also, I'm on my second harddrive and the screen has issues, not to mention that the battery doesn't hold more than 30 minutes of charge. This has brought my stress level up considerably, but short of a conversation with the parents this weekend, I've had no real ideas. I'm planning on having said conversation tomorrow. It's definitely not the end of the world, but research is definitely hindered when I can't keep a running document in front of me. Fortunately, I was able to email all my notes to myself once I realized what was going on and before the battery ran out. No harm, no foul. Also, I have all my newspaper and journal articles stored in a folder on my Gmail account, so that's awfully handy.

For those wondering how my stage makeup class has been going, our first real project was this week. We did gender-bender, where the ladies were made to look like men and vice versa. This was not drag makeup, rather we were trying to simulate a normal-looking person of the opposite gender. Here's a before and after for you.

Before (actually, this was taken my first week in China, so before... the bags under my eyes that don't go away, before I spoke Chinese, before I'd ridden an elephant, and a lot of other stuff.) Mainly, before any makeup.


After
Mom thought Granny would get a kick out of seeing that. The wig is courtesy my friend Bekah (@bekbeks for the Twitter-ers), we sit next to each other in makeup class and have a grand ol' time. I think I make a decent looking blond, but I was glad to get all that stuff off my face. Eye-liner is still my nemesis, but I'm learning to deal with it. Still to come: death and disease, gore, old age, viva glam, and characters.

Happy weekend before Lent.

T