Tag: parks and rec

done! (mostly)

Margot Kriete 2013 Fall Cohort, Gateway 2 Comments

I don’t know how but I’ve seriously underutilized gifs in my blog posts. I guess it comes down to the whole gradual comfort thing, somehow thinking they might not be appreciated here…yeah, I’m not sure what I was thinking either. So, my thoughts towards my portfolio, starting from the beginning, in the language of Leslie Knope’s expressions (my bad if you don’t watch Parks and Rec):

How I felt (all gifs found here) when we got the assignment and I decided to play around with HTML for my portfolio:

Leslie Knope of Parks and Rec doing Rocky moves

Realizing the scary amount of resources and not knowing what I was doing at all, and the reality that slapped me in the face this weekend at the state of my portfolio (and my roommate seeing it and telling me “That looks so boring”):

Leslie Knope with a giant slurpee cup on her face

Throughout this weekend, rearranging and writing and of course, our favorite, revision (occasionally taking a break to study for databases and computer organization):

leslie knope saying "everything hurts and i'm dying"

Today, accepting that my portfolio will be a work in progress, and actually feeling pretty alright about the whole thing:

leslie knope smiling
In case you can’t tell, in my future life I aim to be Leslie Knope

Thanks for all your advice, comments,  words of encouragement, and sympathy in all our shared struggles. If you feel like poking around my portfolio you can check it out here!

real blog talk

Margot Kriete 2013 Fall Cohort, Gateway 1 Comment

Before this class I’d only blogged out of a requirement for another class (albeit a class that gave me a pretty substantial amount of freedom in topic choice, thanks to T and her “blurred vision” class for LHSP), but I’ve been reading blogs for a while. I go through cycles of blogs I visit most frequently, but I tend to like ones that don’t take themselves too seriously, since when I want Real News I tend to go to the New York Times or New Yorker or the Atlantic. The following are two blogs I read for entirely unnecessary information.

1. Slaughterhouse 90210 pairs dramatic captions from contemporary and classic novels with screencaps from all sorts of popular tv shows. Being able to identify the screenshots, knowing the characters and their situations, gives the quotes an entirely different feel – sometimes sarcastic, bittersweet, ironic. I love the simplicity of the blog – it demands about 4 seconds of my time per post yet conveys more than many other blogs do with posts that take 20 minutes to read.

If my blurb hasn’t convinced you, here’s a sample post ft. Ron Swanson (sorry if you don’t watch parks and rec to understand the character. No, really, I feel sorry for you):

“People who are harder to love pose a challenge, and the challenge makes them easier to love. You’re driven to love them. People who want their love easy don’t really want love.”
—Rachel Kushner, The Flamethrowers

2. So… no judgment for this one. I love Trader Joe’s. I hate wasting money. And luckily for me someone named Nathan decided to create a blog consisting entirely of reviews of trader joe’s products, appropriately named What’s Good At Trader Joe’s. He’s actually funny though, and takes a picture of the nutritional content, and has a consistent rating scale. Sometimes it’s just nice to have someone try out the questionable frozen dinners and tell you not to splurge on the egg rolls.