Wayne and Rebecca Madsen

Graduate schools have begun to contact me. Of the seven I have applied to, three have already responded. CMU and UIUC sent a simple rejection letter. Rebecca was frustrated because a CD we sent with the slides burned incorrectly and didn't have the video presentation I made on it. And the whole reason we made CDs to send to schools was so that CMU would get one. I guess it's not the end of the world that I didn't get into UIUC, but CMU was my dream school. I wasn't upset because I didn't get into the school, but I was upset about not being admitted to UIUC. Isn't that odd? Well, UIUC was at the bottom of our list for choices but by being rejected by one of the bottom schools (a last resort school), I started to get worried that I wouldn't be admitted anywhere. Rebecca kept pointing out that schools aren't admitting on a "best art" basis, but a "best match for the program" basis. I can handle rejection, but I worry about comparative matches.

With that said, I was admitted to San Jose State the next day. However, since then we've been agonizing over the wait to hear from the other four schools. In order to make a decision where we will go, we need to hear back from all seven schools and have all the possible options and variables known. So, now we play the waiting game. Again. Rebecca is also a bit frustrated because she wants to know where to look for a job, but she can't do that until we have decided where we will move to.

This week was marked by Dr. Seuss' birthday, so we had our traditional Dr. Seuss Day party. Except, this year we couldn't have the party on the actual day because Rebecca had mutual that night. And she only had one girl show up to mutual. We moved the party to Saturday night and we had a much better turn out this year than most years. We made some non-sweet snacks for everyone, made up a Dr. Seuss version of the game Balderdash (which turned out to be a REALLY good game), and watched Dr. Seuss cartoons. We played until late and I think the last folks left at around midnight. Silly us, we forgot to take pictures. (The highlights: we had the traditional story time where most everyone gets to read a book, storytime style. It's quite a treat to read Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus in a group and have everyone yelling 'No!')

Also, Faith came for our Dr. Seuss party. She flew all the way from Oregon just to play with us Saturday night and Sunday morning. Well, she was actually in town for a wedding and she spent the night at our house. But it was awfully nice to have her come by. I just wish that Jon could have come as well.

Non-sweet snacks. Camilla challenged us to actually do "lent" and go 40 days without chocolate. I challenged Rebecca to go 40 days without anything sweet. So we started on Wednesday. It wasn't so bad until you go places where there are delicious snacks lying around. We went to a new art gallery opening Friday evening where there was chocolate dipped strawberries and it was hard to resist them. The art was just okay, but it's good to see new gallery spaces opening up. I just wish that, for Provo's sake, people would start buying good artwork from the area.

Mike, Jamin and I went out and filmed some more on our current film project "Knights of North Park." The project is coming along well, but after filling up 2 1/2 hours of tape, I've begun to consider my options for editing this video. Documentaries filmed this way can quickly become a mammoth task in editing, because there is no rhyme or reason to the plot. Normally for editing, I borrow an Apple computer from a teacher or use a lab computer. However, it's becoming more apparent to me that as I do more with video in art and life that I might need to purchase a good editing machine. Which doesn't make me very happy because I don't want another computer in our lives. I'm hoping that I get scholarship money for Spring/Summer term and then I won't feel guilty about using it to advance my art tools and buy a computer.

Rebecca's coming along with her thesis work. She's a bit stressed because although half the semester has come and gone, she's not at a "halfway point" in her work. The IRB hasn't gotten back to her whether she will be permitted to do her human testing for her research. But here's looking forward to the second half of the semester!