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.

The Part Where ... Tomorrow!

I officially get to sing along to Taylor Swift's "22" starting TOMORROW!! Oh how time has flown... My parents coming into town made this weekend pretty sweet. I finally went to visit the Queen Mary in Long Beach, so we ran around that all day. Phew! I'm pretty bushed from all that, to be honest. We finished off the day at this super nice restaurant on one of the upper desks, where the food was pretty dang expensive, but it was pretty much all worth it because it was all super, super delicious. Mom had lamb, Dad had scallions, and I had duck. And wine. Bahaha! And we all had soup!! Mmmmm that was delicious too.

Before we were eating, we were watching some seabirds diving for fish... At first, there were probably three or four, but by the time we were seated, there was a good dozen or so. Very interesting to watch, honestly. And then to top off the evening, dolphins! We watched like three or four swimming in the school of fish that the birds were dive-bombing. I'm pretty sure they were trying to eat too, and then we watched them swim out of the harbor.

Anyways, all in all, probably not a bad way to end my 21st year. I think I'm gonna have to go back to visit sometime. There were a few things I didn't get to do; we went on the Ghosts and Legends of the Queen Mary tour, the Self-Guided Audio tour, and the Princess Diana exhibit, which is housed there and is a pretty epic history of the Royal Family.

Then church... the whole of Middle Earth was there! Oh it was great to Ann and Michael and Jordan... I can't believe that it's almost been a whole year since we all met, essentially. I mean, we all knew each other/knew of each other, but in the course of three months, everything changed, and now, I can't imagine not knowing them! It's crazy that it's almost 365 days since graduating LMU.... Crazy, crazy, crazy!

Anyways, I gots to go. Delivering my bike up to Tiffy in Westwood; just wanted to throw in a quick blog post before I headed out. G'night! T-minus 1 hour and 15 minutes 'til 22!!

--Tiffany

The Part Where It's Almost My Birthday!!

Three days, eh! Yeah, it's exciting. And strange ... this is the first birthday in recent memory where I'm not scrambling to finish some sort of project. This is going back like... eight years, at least. Yupyup, all the way since the beginning of high school. Though, I guess in high school, it was more of a conglomeration of a ton of things, where as in college, it was usually one big project that I was working to finish. I mean, I got hired to do some effects on a student film this past week, which has made this past week a lot less enjoyable than I wish it had been, but, hey, I got to clear the cobwebs on my AfterEffects skills and made some pretty sweet light saber and force lightning effects (yeah... it's heavily influenced by Star Wars). It's actually a pretty cute film; it just really hit home to me to see how under-appreciated the VFX industry is. By no means am I a professional, but ... to be brutally honest, I think I got paid like $1.50/hour, which makes sense, considering the fact that I'm working on a student project. But if that's the mentality that's being fed out into the film industry, suddenly all the bankrupt VFX houses start to make sense because directors are being led to believe that VFX work should be that cheap, which is totally untrue.

Anyways. I don't want to get into industry politics right now, so I'm just gonna shut up.

And furrealsies! It's almost my birthday! I'm excited; my parents are showing up in LA, in approximately 3.5 hours. We're gonna have a family weekend ... still not quite sure what I'm gonna do with them, other than this SCAD Open House thing tomorrow, but I'm sure we'll figure it out as the weekend goes on.

It's crazy to think about what a difference a year makes ... times sure have changed since last April. I can't believe where I am, what I've done, how I've changed. It's a pretty impressive thing to think about, honestly. It's kind of funny that graduation will have happened exactly one year ago, next Sunday, and I was so unsure of what I was doing, but so sure at the same time. It's funny how I had all these plans, and I'm nowhere near them right now, but I wouldn't give up what has happened this past year for anything. What a year, what a year!

Haha! Birthdays are almost more important to me, and re-evaluating everything, than New Year's.

I've also been thinking about how much a change of setting can help refresh life. Leaving Loft was the best decision I've ever made. It's funny, with my new job, I am probably more vocal about thinking something is wrong, which often means that my boss will shoot me down, but at the very least, I'm voicing my discontent. Haha, that sounds like my new job is terrible, but it's really not. It's got the fast-paced nature and interpersonal interaction that Loft had, but it's much more in line with ... well, me. And my boss treats me well and I'm slowly but surely feeling the creative spark come back to me, which is something that never happened for me at Loft. It was almost like I could feel it draining me every time I went in. I was fighting so hard with myself to enjoy working there and be positive and keep my head straight and out of politics ... it was just a mess. I'll always be happy for the people I met there; they're really fun and nice, but I really needed to get out.

Onwards and upwards!

Anyways, before I bounce, photo update!

April 19, 2013. Feelin' a bit patriotic after that week from hell.

April 20, 2013. E had a special reading of her book. It was fantastic! I'm excited for the rest of it to be written ^_^

April 21, 2013. We had a busy, busy day! Went to a 3D showing of The Little Mermaid, then out to the beach, then to a fundraiser for Boston, then to mass at LMU! T'was very busy, and very fun, and very full of people!

April 22, 2013. The Command Center! Working on the Star Wars project, watching Doctor Who, and eating a sandwich. Actually, it was a pretty good day ^_^

April 23, 2013. Happiest of Birthdays to my lovely little, Erika. You are the light of my life. Thank you for Facebook stalking men when I am completely incapable of doing so. And for assuming that my phone password is some nerd reference. Which it's not. =D

April 24, 2013. Again... E! Yeah... it's an occupational hazard to live with me while I'm embarking on a Project 365. Goodness knows you'll have a LOT of pictures of yourself at the end of that year. ^_^

April 25, 2013. Ohhhh Kellie, the labs have not been kind to you. Love you!!

--Tiffany

The Part Where This Whole Week's Been Wonky

Yeah, everything's felt super strange this week ...  I mean, I'm sure part of it has to do with Boston, but then Texas happened, and then Cal State LA, and then MIT tonight. I feel like all these terrible things happen all at once all the time. It's a little overwhelming...

I need to get up early tomorrow, so it's just photos tonight. I'm feeling all sorts of out of sorts that I'm even skipping my customary episode or two of Doctor Who! Yikes, I need sleep or something. Or maybe I'll just go read in bed. Hopefully that'll set me straight.

Here we go!

April 10, 2013. I walked down to Subway to get some dinner, and walked out to this! As much as Los Angeles can be grating on the soul at times, I don't think I'm ever going to get tired of an LA sunset. It's always quite beautiful.

April 11, 2013. My wonderful CLC group going down the escalators in Uhall.

April 12, 2013. Midnight soccer on the beach. Went to the 3rd Street Promenade in Santa Monica to clear my head and see some old friends. I love the smell of the ocean; it gets me every time ^_^

April 13, 2013. Burbank Arts and Crafts Fair. E volunteered to work it through her work, so I wandered and looked at the stalls and just generally had a good time in downtown Burbank

April 14, 2013. Oil painting which I started last summer and never got around to finishing. Oh the layers I see when I look at this thing!! I need to start putting all my color efforts into this thing. The desert colors are amazing O_O!

April 15, 2013. Happy Spring ya'll! Snapped this on the way to Tai Chi this Monday. Love the green and the red

April 16, 2013. Volleyball. Because I'm a California girl through and through. And there's no better way to spend a week night than to be crushing balls and souls on the volleyball court =D

Hahah! J/k!! ... or am I.... O_O =)

April 17, 2013. Phew! This week was busy. Got together with my amazing Kairos co-leaders at In-N-Out for a reunion/dinner thing. Lots of laughs + a fair amount of swearing + EJ's hilarious stories = a great time had by all!

April 18, 2013. CLC tonight! I got designated leader, so I took someone's suggestion and led an art reflection. Yeah, real original, I know, but it was fun! and creative! and colorful! aka... all the things I love, so ... really, no one should be surprised. ^_^

Okay. Good night world! Stay safe tonight everyone.

--Tiffany