RECENT PICS, TAKE 3!

And the fun designs continue…

One of the volunteers at my work funded a musical design (yay)! This was very timely, as there was a Music Therapy Conference at the time I shaved this pattern:

4/1/11: prepping the treble clef

4/1/11: It's very faint, but it's there!

4/5/11: That's better!

Since I had space on the other side, I asked my student “Maiden” what I should put there. He suggested, of course, the “Beast Master” (this is what he calls Iron Maiden's mascot). Here’s a sample of the picture he showed me:

Eddie, Iron Maiden's mascot

He wanted the eyes, nose, and mouth, but I told him it would probably look better (read: be easier) to just do the eyes. I didn’t have time at first to shave the whole design, so I laid out a “template”:

4/1/11

A few days later, I made them look less like sunglasses, and more like Eddies eyes:

4/5/11: scary enough?

While at the MT conference, I received another donation. The idea for the next pattern went something like this:

However, this design would have to wait, as I was about to leave for Boston to run the marathon, and I definitely wanted something to represent that. My original idea was a shamrock, but I thought hey, if I can fit the actual word “Boston” somehow, why not! Then I found this t-shirt:

Perfect! Let’s lay it out:

4/10/11

Here’s a little bit of what it looked like:

A few days later, while in Boston, I shaved it again:

And, just for fun, I colored it green to see what it would look like:

4/14/11

At the race expo, so many people wanted to take pictures of my head!

First time that’s happened! Someone with a nice camera got a good shot too:

4/15/11

It’s hard to get the whole picture of my Boston design, since it’s on both sides of my head...I’m glad I’m not the only one who had trouble fitting it into the shot! I also asked multiple photographers on race day to get pictures. You can check out my race pictures here. For the record, my official time was 3:51:31, not 3:58:whatever. Not that I was running it for time (as evidenced by the fact that I took my phone with me for pictures and video of the course), it was all about the experience!

4/18/11: Marathon Monday! Yes, I stopped to take this picture... :)

Also at the race expo, I got a chance to meet Dick and Rick Hoyt, aka Team Hoyt.

4/15/11: Go Team Hoyt!

Their story is such an amazing testimony of what someone with a disability can do, with the right support. In this case it’s a devoted dad (Dick) who sees his part in pushing his son in races such as marathons and Ironman triathlons simply as an assistant to the real athlete (Rick). Their website is http://www.teamhoyt.com/. Check out the video, it’s powerful!

By the time I was home from Boston, my head was quite fuzzy…

4/22/11

Time for another digression from the pattern funded at MT conference (that I will eventually do!) – my latest design, which I did the day after returning from Boston. I figured I should do something related to Easter.

4/21/11: prepping the cross

Front view

Back view - yes, it goes all the way down like a mohawk
(and it'll look better when it grows out a little more)...

If I make it to $1500 soon, perhaps I will keep part of the design, which is (conveniently) shaped like a mohawk!

MOHAWK, ANYONE?

So as I rapidly approach the $1500 mark ($1440 as of 4/7/11), I had a thought. Let me back up for a minute though…

When I came up with this project, my first idea was to shave my hair into a mohawk.

Then I thought, why not just go for the whole head? In any case, this is definitely the direction I’m thinking when I start to grow my hair back, but I thought, why not start now? I’d still shave the sides. And yes, that would mean I could still shave patterns.

And let’s face it, I’d still pretty much be bald. At least that’s what my husband keeps telling me, the poor man! He can’t wait for me to grow my hair back… Still, he argues that a mohawk is still not having hair, and says it’ll look silly on me. Ok, I admit, when I tried this for fun back in December, it did not look all that great:

But I say, if it continues to look silly as it gets longer, I can always shave it off. I mean, I already know what I look like completely bald!

In a way, the fact that my next monetary goal is beyond the halfway point is to symbolize that I want to go above and beyond even my goal of getting my dream $2800 MacBook. I would love to help out ASD’s other programs who don’t have their own MacBook yet. But I digress…

So will you help me get to $1500 so I can grow myself a mohawk?

2ND VISIT TO THE APPLE STORE

On March 10^th, I returned to the Apple store to talk to someone from the business side of Apple. This is what I wore to the store:

Yes, those are my pajamas. Hey, why not be comfortable? And seriously, if you saw me for the first time, would you really be focused on what pants I was wearing when my shiny bald head is at eye level?

Anyway, here’s what I learned from this visit:

·      The new 15” MacBook Pro has more power & space than the last model. So in a way, I’m glad this fundraiser has continued until the new Mac came out!

·      The bigger screen does help a lot. Also, the 15” has input and output, which 13” does not. This will be useful when I want to switch back and forth quickly between inputting pre-recorded music from the keyboard and playing back what we’ve recorded through the keyboard speakers.

·      I should wait to get Logic until I learn GarageBand. Apparently they’re similar, and it would be best to get a good handle on GarageBand before “graduating” to Logic.

·      I should keep files on an external hard drive. This will make the computer work faster. We already have one, so that’s easy enough!

·      The thunderbolt connection is 10x faster for moving files than a USB. This will be useful when I want to copy files from the computer to the external hard drive.

·      I can use a projector (in extension or mirror mode), so my students would be able to see a larger version of the screen. This is good for big classes, when I wouldn’t be able to show what’s happening on the screen to all students at once.

·      In Garage Band, there is a feature (previously called Quantifying, now called Flex Time) that will snap notes to a beat. This will be useful to put students’ improvisations to a beat and make a song out of it.

YouTube video of Flex Time

·      I can have students use the Mac’s keyboard to “play” software instruments. I can then ask them what changes they’d like to make to the notes and the beats to make it more accessible sounding, and it would still be the student’s creation!

Whenever I learn new things about the MacBook like I did this day, it makes me even more excited about getting one! Thanks to everyone who’s contributed to this project, it’s getting closer!