Writing Center Conference.

Since the beginning of this year I've started tutoring English and writing at RCC (my 2nd job). I really love tutoring and the experience has reassured me that I want to teach someday. I work with a group of pretty interesting tutors. Back in February, a bunch of us tutors and the writing center director, went to the Southern California Writing Center Convention. The convention aimed to expand the techniques and skill in tutoring of all those who attended. This is us in the parking lot before heading on in. (above)
This is Heather, myself and Alex at the continental breakfast before we all split off into groups to attend various presentations. Each presentation covered one topic, like how to work with English second language students, or how to cover every type of intellegence. We had our choice of what presentations we wanted to attend and we gave our own.
This is our group above: Me, Heather, Bri, Mikey and Alex. We just finished giving a presentation to a class room full of people. I gave a short presentation on web resources and how to use them in a tutoring session. It was fun being in front of the class. We had to dress bussiness casual so I felt kinda like a teacher and I even looked the part!
During our presentation we broke off into small groups and each of us taught a handful of students our different techniques for tutoring students. Above I'm talking about how tutoring with highlighters can be good for the visual learner.

Art I guess...

Above is a painting I did on a canvas board of the "Catch-22" book cover. I painted this for my ex-boyfriend, Dylan, a few years back.
This is a painting I did of the Eiffel tower in France for my old roommate, Jackie, since she was leaving us to go live in France for a while. I left a large board for all of her friends to sign and to wish her luck. Then her jerk, best friend wrote on top of my painting... That was pretty rude if you ask me. Anyways, the painting wasn't meant to be anything fantastic, I don't possess that much skill, but it still came out nice and I was please with how the sky and stars came out.
This is a painting I did for my Mom for her birthday this year. Its a collage of the Twilight book series, book covers. She really enjoyed reading the series and I had no money to buy her a gift so I figured this painting might be kind of fun to do. My Mom loved it. I was pretty happy with how it turned out, especially the ribbon and the apple.
I don't claim to be an artist at all. I feel like these were some of my "creative" moments and I was pretty pleased with how they turned out so I thought I'd share.

Clay Creations

Since I was a kid I've always loved to work with clay. I use to make little cartoon character figures back in the day and figurines of Husky dogs. Recently I've been getting back into the hobby.

Above is a picture of a Dragon I made for Dave, since he loves dragons. Below is a picture of another dragonish character. It's actually a Pokemon called Charazard (basically its a cartoon from a kids show my little brother and I use to watch). Both of these are made with 'Sculpey' clay products. They were formed from colored clay that I mixed to achieve specific colors and hues, and then were baked in an oven for hardening.

Here's both my creations together. I'm quite proud actually! When I use to work with clay I was 11 - 12ish and now here it is almost a decade later and I'm actually much better than I was back then, and this is without any prior practice. I have some useless, but fun talents.

The Getty!

Early this January, Dave and I went to visit the Getty Museum in LA. It was a lot of fun! I first came here in 6th grade for a field trip and I'd been dying to come back ever since. I'm not always an active art appreciator, but I really enjoyed going to see these famous works. My favorite was the sculptures of course! Below in one of Aphrodite, or Venus. She was always my favorite Greek/Roman god ever since grade school. Goddess of Love and Relationships. Behind her is Hera/Juno, Goddess of marriage and ruler over all other gods with her Husband Zeus!

The Gardens were my other favorite part of the museum. This is a great shot of the center of the circular gardens. Those designs are bushes growing right out of a pool of water. The colors in the Gardens are amazing! Who would have thought this could have grown in LA?!

Christmas photo-shoot with Arrtoo!

I like to take pictures with him for the Holidays, he's the closest thing I've got to a son I guess. hehehe. Poor dog has to suffer humiliation because of me.
(Below) Oh Wow! Look what Santa brought me! A pain in the ass dog...
Poor little Arrtoo was not happy being in that box...
Merry Christmas from Me and Arrtoo!!

CrAzY hAiR!!

DON'T WORRY!!! It's just a wig. haha. Yes, but wouldn't it scare all of you if I DID have hair like this???
I've always had the incredible urge to do something strange with my hair. I'm never quite happy with it and I love to experiment. This Blog was inspired by my Sister-in-Law, the other Megan Siana. At my 22nd Birthday get together she made a comment on how "normal" my hair looked for once. I thought that was pretty funny and too true! Above is how it looked when she said that. Below are pictures of my abnormal hair over the past couple of years.
Red! This is the most recent crazy hair-do. I really loved my read hair though, even if it was a bit much...
This is the shortest I've ever cut it (above and below). The above picture demonstrates how I use to tease it in the back to achieve the volume and spikiness in the back. Don't mind the face I'm making below... I rather hate smiling in pictures, so this is the best I could give you.

And, of course, the brief purple streaks in my hair! I really loved the purple, but it got to expensive to keep up with since it would all wash out every 3 weeks. Oh well.
So have I grown out of the crazy hair days? Probably not. I'd really like some Purple back in it. The saving grace is that I don't have the money to do these things, so for now you all have plain old Megan back...

New Puppy

Carrie saved a life last week. She got herself a little mutt and gave it a good home.... our home.
This is Barnie (female), and thus far she's been what every puppy is at first: a pain in the ass. For a week we had to keep her indoors because she hadn't gotten her shots yet. Its always a task, teaching a puppy not to pee in the house. Plus she has major separation anxiety issues. After she starts to live outside things will be better because we wont have her using the house as a bathroom and then Arrtoo can keep her entertained outside.
The top picture is one of Arrtoo being a jerk and stealing Barnie's favorite toy. She's so young and takes it too serious when he tries to play with her. Barnie ended up biting Arrtoo pretty good that night, which he probably deserved. I'm just so glad that he has such a good temper and never struck back. He would just turn and bump her out of the way with his butt if he saw her about to attack. It was really quite funny.