The Part Where May Has Been Quite An Interesting Month

... complete with a visitor from out of state! Always exciting to have a younger Ms. Scanlan hanging out in Los Angeles. Anyways, because I've been derelict in my duty to update the photos on my blog, here they are all:

May 18, 2013. The sisters as we watched Wreck-It Ralph, which is always a great movie to watch; and then E decided it was a good idea to watch Battle Royale, which is not exactly the best movie to follow Wreck-It Ralph with. So, to make myself feel better, I watched the finale of Doctor Who by my lonesome in the dark, which ... still was not a good idea because ALL the feels came out. Dammit. I need to start watching things that don't make me sad all the time.

May 19, 2013. Oh hello Disneyland! It was a family-outing kind of day. So we had a great time at Disneyland and this photo appeared!

May 20, 2013. It was a sleep-on-the-living-room-floor kind of day. 

May 21, 2013. Times Square. Some nights last forever.

May 22, 2013. Catherine and the beach. So puuuuurty!

May 23, 2013. Disney bball. E is making her shot!

May 24, 2013. Hangin' out waiting for sushi.

May 25, 2013. Waiting for Christian to watch Mama, which is a TERRIFYING movie. Hello moonlight! Time to go running with the werewolves!

May 26, 2013. Went paddle boarding with the boys. We had a fantastic time running around on the ocean, but it was very tiresome. Definitely a great work out and we still were close enough to shore to be safe. Coming back to the beach took all of like five minutes. I'd go again in a heartbeat! Especially to get that amazing wet suit tan line! It was horrendous, but ... at the same time, pretty fantastic haha

May 27, 2013. Making some home made beef jerky. Next time, i'll probably try for Korean BBQ beef jerky. Nom nom nommmm

May 28, 2013. Makin' poor man's breakfast for dinner. Spam, beans, and buttered baby spinach. Pretty solid, honestly. Perpetually a poor college student I guess.

May 29, 2013. E's newest addition to my Project 365. She's starting to fight back!

May 30, 2013. Spent the night at Jordan's after watching this great Bollywood movie called Singham. Then realized I'd forgotten to take a picture! The lighting's weird, but I weirdly like it too... it's kind of spooooooky ^_^

All right, so, except for today's picture, I'm all caught up. I'm going on an epic hike up to the Bridge to Nowhere in Azusa Canyon tomorrow, so I'm sure I'll have some sweet pics tomorrow, but as for now, that's all I got.

--Tiffany

The Part Where It's Been a Long Couple of Weeks

Yeah, I'm going to be honest, the last couple weeks have been trying... Thank God for friends and family and all sorts of wonderful people.

Anyways, I've been all sorts of tired, so I haven't posted in a while, I know, but here are all the photos that I haven't put up since... April 26th:

April 26, 2013. Stayed the night down at LMU, because I initially was going to go to the SCAD presentation with my Kairos sister, but she realized she had Gryphon Games at that time, but she and my little still convinced me to stay down at LMU and hang out and watch Disney movies. It was pretty fun!

April 27, 2013. After the SCAD presentation, my parents and I wandered around the 3rd Street Promenade and watched some street performers. That little kid picked up a lot of the moves really quickly! He was pretty much adorable.

April 28, 2013. My parents are too freakin' cute. We went to see the Queen Mary in Long Beach. It was a ton of fun ^_^

April 29, 2013. My sweet other half. We are most definitely a we, and it is wonderful. Thanks for a wonderful birthday!

April 30, 2013. HI LILLLLL! Haha I have no idea why I took this, but here it is! haha

May 1, 2013. To be honest, I didn't have anything else to take a picture of. It's a set of rings I bought off of etsy, and I'm pretty sure it's one of my favorite pieces I got off that site.

May 2, 2013. On finding out about Fr. Mark. That was a rough day. Thank God for CLC... you all kept me sane that day...

May 3, 2013. At the Natural History Museum First Friday! It was great. Hi Film School Friend!! That crepe looks dewicious!!

May 4, 2013. Film School Friend again! She and her roommate had a one-year-anniversary-of-graduating celebration so E and I went over. Two days in a row! Jordan must be jealous.

May 5, 2013. At the airport, waiting for my flight home... Rough weekend.

May 6, 2013. It was, however, quite nice to be at home and comfortable with my parents

May 7, 2013. At the vigil.

May 8, 2013. At In-n-Out, just waiting. And eating, I guess.

May 9, 2013. Painting my letters to Ray. I've fallen hopelessly and irrevocably in love with watercolors. They bring me so much joy. Also, they've helped me realize that I have really strange coping mechanisms...

May 10, 2013. Post Bacc-Mass Party.

May 11, 2013. HAPPY GRADUATION, CLASS OF 2013!! You made it (as is obvious by the fact that you all threw your hats into the air!)!! YAYYY!

May 12, 2013. Painting partayyyyy.

May 13, 2013. The start of my first Doctor Who fanart. Because ... let's be real, I can't call myself an artist AND a fangirl if I haven't made a piece of fanart. So I did. And then I submitted it to the Doctor Who tumblr blog. Because I'm a fan girl. FANTASTIC!

May 14, 2013. Middle Earth, I miss you.

May 15, 2013. Late night showing of The Great Gatsby with E. It was a pretty good movie! I was impressed that some themes and parts of the book were clearer in the movie than they had been in the book. That kind of thing doesn't usually happen to me. It was fun to watch. Baz Luhrman definitely knows how to make a visually stimulating film.

May 16, 2013. After seven hours of being in-transit, the Middle Scanlan arrived! As you can tell, the little lady was not very happy with her crazy travel plans. But we made it up with Ayara and a trip to the movies to watch Star Trek. That was a pretty good movie too!

May 17, 2013. Being a tourist with Middle Scanlan. Hello Hollywood!!

Yeah, I mean, that's kind of it. I've been busy and trying to stay sane ... and missing a lot of people now that the class of 2013 has graduated. On the other hand, I've had a fair amount of time, so this happened:

It was floating around in my head, so I figured now was as good a time as any to actually draw it, and then paint it. It was a ton of fun because I got to use watercolor pencils and watercolors, and it was semi-therapeutic in the intensity and semi-monotony. Doctor Who has been such a joy to watch, so I figured I'd show a little appreciation for the show by submitting to the BBC America Doctor Who tumblr, so I made a tumblr and posted it. No idea if I'm gonna keep posting on tumblr, because I'm much more of a blogspot girl. But here's what I had to say about:

We all love the Doctor, and his zaniness, and the way he cares about every living thing, and we are all obsessed with his heart-breaking history, but I think the thing that makes my heart break the most is inevitably how alone he must feel all the time, especially in the in-between moments that we never see after he’s lost companions, when he has to slow down and think back to why he hates being alone.

It's a really fantastic character and premise, and I think I'm definitely a Whovian for life ... I'm a little bit surprised that I fell in love so fast, because there are some shows that I couldn't get into that are supposed to be much more critically acclaimed. But I suppose there's something a little endearing about the initially terrible VFX and there's definitely something amazing about the truly human elements of the show. I guess that's why it's a well-loved cult classic.  LONG LIVE THE DOCTOR! (who am I kidding? ... with his infinite regenerations he's going to outlive us all.)

Anyways, that's all. Good night all!

--Tiffany

The Part Where It's Mother's Day

SO HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY MOM!!!!

Thank you for being pretty much the most awesome mom ever. You're the best and I love you forever and ever and ever!!

--Tiffany

Rest In Peace, Father Mark Catalana

I've been lucky enough that, up until now, I haven't experienced a death in my lifetime that I've had to process as a young adult or adult. I've always told my parents that, in theory, the deaths that I would probably take the hardest, would be the deaths of my grandparents. My mom's dad and my dad's mom both died when I was too little to really know what was going on, but mom's mom and my dad's dad have both been around for ever. And ever. They're troopers, they get through anything. So ... even though I'm not close to either of them, I suspect that their eventual deaths will be extremely difficult for me to process.

But now today, I received news that Fr. Mark Catalana, a long time family friend, and both my brother's and mine Confirmation sponsor, passed away this morning from a heart attack. All of these ... feelings are so foreign. I don't even know what to call them, because just most of the time, I think I'm confused. Or at least everything feels so confusing that I'm getting confused? It's hard to process, considering he was younger than my parents are now. The process of processing is just proving to be very difficult.

I'm not totally sure I can specify exactly what his impact has been in my life other than this: because of his friendship with my family, I can say I'm probably one of few kids who can say that they grew up having a priest semi-regularly over for dinner. He's kind of like a grandparent; he's been around my family for pretty much as long as I can remember. I don't know if the relationship between my family and him started before this, but he was one of the parish priests at my parochial elementary school; my brother used to altar serve for him at morning mass, which my mom attended, and then suddenly he was a fixture in my family's life.

He had a big booming voice and he rode his bike around everywhere, even when he came out to our house for dinner, and he'd have to take a shower before coming downstairs to chat with my mom and try to hassle my brother into the priesthood. He prided himself on his one-minute sermons -- always a plus when he did morning mass, but always insightful despite the brevity. He took my mom's side when it came to Pope Benedict XVI vs. Harry Potter, and told us stories about his visits to Vatican City. He loved what he did as a parish priest, as a recruiter for the Diocese... He was the holiest man I know.


In all that he did, he was always with God (he said the best prayers before meals, which always made me feel a tad bit inadequate when I got old enough for him to start singling me out to say prayer). But, then, he also taught me that, as long as you pray, no matter what you say, the prayer is more than good enough, and that God accepts it gratefully.

It's funny, the chain of events that led up to me finding out about this ... I was just finishing up playing a game of volleyball, after a decent day, but I was happy. Endorphin high, I'm sure. But then Renee called me, and it was shocking and numbing and oh-so-confusing. It could have been paralyzing, but it wasn't. And I was already on my way to my car to go to CLC at LMU, which is my fantastic support system of wonderful people who love me and care about me ... it was all timed ... just right. And our fearless leader's prompt for the day was: "Right now, God is...", which was a perfect stream-of-consciousness writing exercise, which let me get it all out. Everything lined up right.

It was just ... so ... perfect. For lack of a better word. There's never a "perfect" time for something like this to happen.

But it got me thinking (and maybe this is just my confused brain trying to make sense of this confusing situation, but I really don't think it is): I can say that my faith is strong; I can say, that if confronted by someone who would hurt me if I confessed my faith, I would say that I believe in God ... but I can't say that I can see God working around me on a daily basis. I don't necessarily think about God every day. But with this immense tragedy, it all fell into place just as it should have. I cannot think of a better way for me to have found out, but from someone who cares just as much as I do. I cannot think of a better place I was on my way to, than who I was already headed towards. Today, the devil wasn't in the details; God was.

So, Fr. Mark, if making me see God in action every day was your last act to me on this earth, I think you did a pretty solid job of driving it home. I believed; now I will consciously act, every day. I will miss you so, so much, but I know I'll see you again someday. I'll remember you in joy, because that's who you are to me: living, breathing, holy joy.

Rest In Peace, Father Mark Catalana.