My good friend just became a Library Media Specialist at a DC public school this year.  She is in the midst of transforming an old, neglected library full of antiquated books into a resource the students would actually use. But to do that, they need updated books. Here is her take on the situation (emphasis mine):

The majority of the books are from the 1950’s and 1960’s. Much of the information in these books use outdated terminology and often have negative stereotypes of women, African Americans, and hispanics. This is particularly bad since our student population is 75% African American and 25% hispanic. In addition, most of the library collection is above an 8th grade reading level. Last year only 8% of our school scored proficient for reading. Getting books at these students’ reading level is imperative in helping the students improve their reading comprehension in years to come.

So how can you help out?

• Make a cash donation (Be sure to type Book Drive in the Donation Designation)
• Buy books from their Amazon wishlist and have them shipped directly to MacFarland Middle School
• Donate used books that meet the following criteria:
  • Elementary and middle school reading level (1st – 8th grade);
  • 50-100 pages printed after 1999; maximum 300 pages;
  • No books in poor condition or above 9th grade reading level.
  • Books accepted at 1419 Columbia Rd NW Washington DC 20009 and at MacFarland Middle School, 4400 Iowa Ave NW Washington DC 20011
• Share this link with your friends and family. Help spread the word!

All donations are fully tax deductible. You can read the official MacFarland Middle School Book Drive Letter for more information. I’ve already bought all of the Captain Underpants books from their wishlist and you should pick a few books out that you really like to help the children at MacFarland Middle School.

FullBleed, a web magazine published by the Art Directors Club of Metropolitan Washington, did an interview with me for their Fresh Face column. The aim is to showcase up and coming creative professionals and I feel honored to even be considered. It was a lot of fun to do and a big thanks goes out to Stephanie Hay, Corey Greeneltch, and Sean McCormick who took my photo. Go check it out!

My 1994 Mercury Villager mini-van has served me well over the years but it has to go according to the U.S. Government. Since it gets a measly 17 combined miles per gallon according to fueleconomy.gov, my van is a certified clunker and eligible for the Cash for Clunkers program. This means I can get $3,500 off a new car purchase that gets at least 4 more miles per gallon or a $4,500 discount for a car that gets at least 10 more miles per gallon. That’s a sweet deal considering the Kelley Blue Book trade-in value is at most $1,550.

The thing is I don’t really need a new car. I get to work using public transportation leaving the van only for small errands. Once a year we will take it on a road trip to Ocean City but that’s about the extent of my driving. I fill it up maybe once a month and according to FuelFrog (my review) I’m getting about 22 miles per gallon.

Because it has 130,000 miles on it, the tune-ups can be a bit costly about every other year. I have started noticing a high-pitched squeal whenever the accelerator is depressed and one of these days it will die.

With this opportunity I decided to do a bit of research on Yahoo! Autos. I found 21 cars that fit my criteria including the 2010 Honda Insight, 2009 Honda Fit, and 2009 Honda Civic hybrid which all caught my eye. Kristina doesn’t like any of these because she already has a small sedan and strategically it would make sense to get another type of vehicle. I can agree with that, but bigger cars are more expensive.

There is also the option of brokering a deal with my dad for his Toyota Rav-4 with 100,000 miles on it in exchange for a car with the discount. He was the one who bought the van 15 years ago and paid it off before handing it over to me but such a deal sounds complicated.

I just feel a little weird about getting a new car and then having it sit at home for most of its early life. So this is where I seek advice from the wisdom of the interwebz. What should I do?

On the plus side an auto loan would help me build my credit score for when we eventually buy a house

When Kristina and I went to California two weeks ago, we got to meet my new niece for the first time. One of the unique things about little Lacey is she was born with an extra toe on each foot, for a total of 12 little piggies. In the medical world this is called hexadactyly and is quite common. Lacey’s older sister was also born with 12 toes.

Sometimes the extra toes can be tied shortly after birth where they simply fall off. Otherwise doctors advise having surgery to remove the extra digit before the crawling stage. Lacey’s is scheduled sometime in June.

Either way, she is still a cute baby.

Remember my request for hand-crafted dioramas as a Christmas gift this year? Well my friend Pammy was the only one to follow through.

She constructed this awesome LOLcat Christmas diorama. The cats came from post cards and the rest was made by Pammy herself. This will remain on display for years to come.

Kristina was also in the crafting mood for my Christmas gift. When she was browsing through the Paper Source store one day she stumbled upon robot wrapping paper (and Kristina knows how much I love robots). She carefully cut out three of the robots, glued them to colorful paper, and framed them in stylish square frames. They now hang above our closet.

With all of the talk about how bad the economy was during this holiday season it was nice to receive a few handcrafted gifts. They were better than anything that could have been bought in a store. Plus, the gift-givers noted how much fun they were too make!

Is this Pixar’s next movie? Nope, this is the 2006 demo reel of a fellow Art Institute classmate of mine. Billy Woodward and I graduated at the same time in September of 2006. During our graduation screening, Billy’s demo reel blew everyone away. And even if you ignored his 3d animation or his storytelling abilities, the fact that he got the “Voice Over King”, Don LaFontaine, to do a custom voice over for his demo reel shows just how far he would go to make his vision as compelling as possible. Watching this short trailer made you feel like you were actually in a theater waiting for the feature presentation to start. It was easily the best showing of the night leaving everyone wanting more.

I was going to write up this post at some point in the future but when I heard Don died yesterday from complications of a collapsed lung at age 68, I immediately thought of Billy’s demo reel. The fact that he would take the time out of his busy voice-over schedule to help a graduating art student spruce up his demo reel shows just what a great guy Don was. He will be truly missed and movie trailers just won’t be the same without that booming, authoritative voice we’ve grown familiar with.

My roommate, Jaime, had to make a website about poetry for one of her classes. Her idea was to present the poems of several 19th century American poets along with a recording of a reading. Guess who got to lend his voice to the poetry reading? That’s right, it was me!

I was happy to help out with voice over work and recording. I borrowed a R0DE Podcaster Microphone from work and recorded everything into Garageband on a MacBook. I recited poems from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Emily Dickinson, and Walt Whitman.

In fact in the 8th grade one of my assignments was to memorize and recite in front of the class Whitman’s “O Captain! My Captain!” Even after all of these years the words flew off my tongue with ease.

Jaime’s site is pretty interesting and well designed for a first time website maker. Take a look around and take a listen to the other poems.

On May 23rd, Kristina graduated from the University of Maryland at College Park with two B.A. degrees. One was in Communication Studies and the other in Art Studio – Graphic Design. I took a photo and posted it from my mobile phone on that day but here are the rest of the pictures from the day.

Kristina in disbelief that she is finally graduating.

On stage with diploma in hand.

Walking back to her seat.

A picture of the happy family.

My turn in front of the camera.

Flowers, diploma, and mortar board! Oh My!

Kristina's aunt got her a garland.

Showing off her stoll.

Posing by the sign to mark graduation day.

The whole shebang.

Now comes the job search. Stay tuned…

The Filipino Cultural Association, which Kristina is a part of (and therefore me too), had their annual end-of-year picnic this past Sunday. We couldn’t have asked for a more perfect day as there were no clouds in sight and the sun was out in full force. Maybe the sun was a little too forceful as I forgot to put sunblock on my arms and face which were burnt to a crisp.

Everyone met at Centennial Park, Maryland, for food and games. There were plenty of burgers, hot dogs, and hungry college students but our poor chef Casper couldn’t cook them fast enough on the tiny charcoal park grill.

A life size hot dog with ketchup makes you feel like you were actually there.

Kristina put together a series of games dividing everyone up into 5 color “families”. The events included:

• Balloon Toss – Passing a water balloon back and forth with a partner until there was only one team left. After each successful toss the teams would take a step back.
• The Three Legged Race
• Pie Eating Contest
• Balloon Stomp – Where each team member had a balloon tied around their ankle as they tried to pop other peoples balloons.
• An Obstacle Course/Race – Consisting of spinning around a bat 10 times, a human wheelbarrow race, and a mad dash carrying an egg on a spoon.

Paolo prepares to catch a water-filled balloon.

Bits and pieces on his glasses were all that was left of Daryl’s Apple pie.

Jen races to the finish line carrying an egg on a spoon.

An FCA picnic wouldn’t be complete without a tug-of-war match between the upper classmen and the lower classmen. It is tradition for the upper classmen to win and immediately tie an underclassmen to a nearby tree. This year sure didn’t disappoint, all in good fun of course!

Upperclassmen vs. lowerclassmen in tug-o-war.

They say it’s an honor to be tied to the tree.

At the end of the games everyone was too tired to care who won (it was the red team if you must know). Everyone had a good day out in the sun, laughing, having fun, and eating picnic food. This is Kristina’s last year in college so we probably won’t be back next year. Atleast we have these memories and the 495 pictures I took of the day, which was more fun for me than getting worked up over picnic games.

See more pictures from the day.

Last weekend Kristina and I ventured over to the house of a family friend to take pictures of her kids playing with a toy. Kristina was designing toy packaging and needed shots of a child playing with the toy for the box art.

Scheduling the shoot during the late morning hours wasn’t the most helpful time in terms of lighting. Most of the shots had our subject squinting with dark shadows in her eyes. This could have been fixed by bouncing light onto her face from below using a reflector. Of course this didn’t occur to me until after the fact and I didn’t have a reflector with me. We made do with what we had and brought back some decent results.

After the official work was done and out of the way the kids wanted to play. I got some interesting shots of child play in action.

You can see more pictures in my Picasa web album.