Target

This week I did something that is rather uncommon for me.

I went shopping.

I know what you’re thinking. “Katie, aren’t you a girl?” And to that, I have to say a firm yes and explain that I am not your typical girl. Let me also explain that I love to online shop and I love clothes as well as cool gadgets and trinkets.

What I hate is the physical act of shopping. There, I said it. I strongly dislike rifling through racks of clothes that all look the same yet slightly different, trying on clothes and constantly having to put things on and take them off and put things on again, and waiting in lines to check out, especially on weekends. It is such a process and it always leaves me with an achy back, sore feet and an empty wallet.

That is why shopping this weekend classifies as my adventure. You see, I am going on a great adventure to Hawaii for the first time in approximately 12 days (not that I’m counting), and for this large adventure, I need to be well equipped.

This led me out of Fort Worth and back home to Plano to do some much needed swimsuit and Hawaiin-esque clothing shopping.

Where do you think I went first? No, not the mall. I went to Target.

Who doesn’t love Target with all of their heart? Target is a place where I can get all kinds of clothing shopping done, and then quickly escape to the electronics section to take a breather searching through the DVD section.

They had everything I needed, including cute swimsuits, cover-ups, and shorts all for affordable prices. There is no place better than Target for your Spring Break needs.

Next I had to take an adventure to my favorite clothing stores to see if they had anything worth investing in. So I went to adventure through Express, Urban Outfitters, and Anthropologie. While I didn’t buy anything at the time, I tried on all of the things that I had been drooling over online. Here are some of the things that I was looking for:

photos from anthropologie.com

Some items were cute on, and others were not at all. The ones that were cute were incredibly expensive and left me feeling a little appalled at how much was being charged for something so simple (another reason I dislike shopping). This all led to a feeling of accomplishment for my job well done at Target.

An adventure to the mall is not always as fruitful as you would like it to be, and I learned that this weekend in full force. I think I learned my lesson: just go to Target, and life is much easier.

While my adventure blog this week certainly sounds a lot more like an ad about the wonders of Target, I hope you can see that Target is a magical place worthy of your time. It is always an adventure to walk through those hallowed red and white halls.

Adventure on,

Katie

Warhol in Fort Worth

I am so excited to say that this week I had the absolute privilege of seeing the Andy Warhol exhibit at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. What better adventure is there than getting to see firsthand the original artwork of one of the most iconic artists in American history? I can’t think of many things that would be better.

I love going to the Modern because not only is it only $4 for students, it is one of the most gorgeous buildings. Just walking up to the building, it’s apparent that you are someplace special, even if you have no idea that it’s a museum.

The architecture is stunning, but the most amazing part is after you walk in. The entire backside of the building is floor to ceiling windows that is situated right next to a shallow pond that stretches from the side of the building to halfway out in the yard.

The building itself puts any visitor in the mood for art and I started getting really excited to see the exhibit as soon as I walked in. I paid for my ticket and headed upstairs and walked right into the first room that introduced the exhibit.

“Andy Warhol: The Last Decade” is a travelling exhibit that features collected works from the last eight years of Warhol’s life. In the introduction, it explains that many people consider this period the most productive time of his career.

It was evident in the first room that this was an extremely bright and introspective time in Warhol’s career. He was still playing with his silk-screen printing process that made him so famous in the beginning with pieces on Marilyn Monroe and Campbell’s Soup cans. The beginning largely consisted of silk-screen self-portraits and incredible original pop art pieces of iconic figures like Santa, Mickey Mouse, and Dracula.

The next room looked into the oxidation process and Warhol’s foray into abstraction rather than straightforward pop art that focused on the manual art process and less on the mechanical process of screen-printing. There were floor-to-ceiling hand crafted studies on inkblots as well as more hand-painted pieces in the same room.

The next room had many examples of his camouflage pieces as well as more self-portraits.

After that there was a room that had many pieces from a set of collaborations Warhol did with Jean-Michel Basquiat. These are largely opinionated views of American culture and life in the 1980’s. Also in this room are some of the black and white advertisements that Warhol recreated to comment on the commercialism of society.

The final room has a large collection of Warhol’s last subject, recreations of “The Last Supper”. These are some of his largest and most striking pieces. All along the way, I learned more and more about the iconic artist.

Along the side of the exhibit are some examples of early work, like his flower series (my personal favorite, I would love to put them in a kid’s room) and some examples from the Campbell’s soup series.

Warhol’s style is so entrenched in our society today that there is even a Photo Booth setting on Macs that allows users to create their own Warhol-style series of pictures of themselves. His images are everywhere in our culture, and it was such a privilege to see some of his influential pieces firsthand.

I highly suggest that all of you take some time to go through the exhibit at the Modern while it is here. It goes until May 16, so there is plenty of time to get over there and have your own art-filled adventure!

Adventure on,

Katie

Snow!

Last Thursday was a miracle, my friends. Nine inches of powdery, fluffy white snow covered Fort Worth, Texas. It wasn’t just a two-inch layer of ice lightly dusted with a cover of snow. This was real snow.

The phenomenon put my adventurous plans on hold this week since Mother Nature gave us all her own special adventure that was blog-worthy all by itself.

Growing up and living in North Texas my whole life means that snow has always been a foreign substance. All you fellow Texans will agree with me that Dallas/Fort Worth doesn’t have “snow days,” we have “ice days.”

North Texans don’t have snowball fights, but we do have ice-ball fights. They are generally painful and end up leaving bruises that make “ice days” not very fun.

North Texans get entire school days off if there is even a chance for ice. I firmly believe this is because everyone is terrified of a bunch of ill-equipped drivers trying to maneuver their way around on slick surfaces.

For North Texans, there was no precedent for what happened at the end of last week. All of the out-of-state students laughed at us natives, as we looked genuinely stunned. In the parking lot, it was easy to tell who was new to snow because they were the ones using their bare hands to clear their windshields (myself included, it was not fun) instead of the pros with their ice scrapers.

Of course the first thing my friends and I wanted to do was play in it. Campus was crawling with fellow students all trying to do the same, and by about noon, most of the snow was used.

We decided to drive out to find a patch of untouched snow and pulled the car over at the Fort Worth Zoo Park off of University. There we were able to play in six inches of untouched snow while more kept coming.

After throwing snowballs for a while (which was actually fun and not painful, just very cold), we decided to embark on the epic task of making the biggest snowman ever, which proved much more difficult than we anticipated.

After rolling around a large snowball for the bottom and watching it grow larger and larger, we began rolling around another for the middle. We decided that the bottom was done only when it was nearly impossible for two people to push it together. Then we rolled the middle to the bottom and discovered that it is much more difficult to lift large balls of snow than it looks.

With four people trying to lift at once, it was deemed an impossible task and we brainstormed to find a way to construct our epic snowman. Finally, we had an epiphany moment when one of our friends announced she had a towel in her car. From there, we rolled the middle on to the towel and with four people lifting, pushed it over onto the bottom. From there we placed the much smaller head and scavenged around for some arms and various facial features.

This is what we ended up with:

She leaned a bit and was quite scary from a side view, but she was a success for a bunch of native Texans.

Mother Nature delivered quite the frosty adventure last week and I hope all of you enjoyed it as much as I did. TCU has never looked quite as pretty as it did when fresh snowfall covered every surface.

Adventure on,

Katie

Ice Skating

There was a time not too long ago when I daily put my life in danger jumping horses over five foot jumps. I frequently enjoy the thrill of strapping myself into small cars that move at terrifying speeds along tracks at Six Flags. I once went white water rafting through Grade 3 waters.

Yet, when I decided to try ice-skating this weekend, the prospect was a little scarier than I anticipated.

You see, I haven’t been to an ice rink since ninth grade, and while that was only five years ago, I wasn’t any good then. This is why ice-skating was a fun, nostalgic adventure for me this week.

A couple of friends and I decided to head over to ICE at the Parks Mall in Arlington for their late-night open skate. It was from 9:00 to 10:30, and only cost 6 dollars for admission and skate rentals. It all seemed so great until we were handed the skates and suddenly the realities of ice-skating came back to me slowly, like a strange slow-motion movie sequence.

Reality No. 1

It takes forever to lace up skates.

With a million little metal things to go around, it takes a surprisingly long time to work your way up to the bow. I also managed to forget that you are actually supposed to tighten them to a level way above the typical pain threshold. This was a fact that came in to play much later.

Reality No. 2

Balance is a key factor in successful skating.

Just walking on the carpet from the benches to the ice was enough of a challenge. It took every ounce of my being to keep from wobbling enough to break an ankle. Then actually stepping on the ice was a leap. That first step is a moment to remember. I wobbled onto the ice and grasped the side-rail for dear life.

Reality No. 3

It is very difficult to keep from looking like a hunched over old woman doing a strange dance when you get on the ice.

That seems self-explanatory enough.

Reality No. 4

Falling is painful.

While I only fell once and it was only a half-fall, landing on my knees on the hard, cold ice sent a jolt through my bones that made my teeth chatter. It gives you a whole new appreciation for figure skaters. When I watch the Olympics, I will no longer laugh when the poor people fall down.

Reality No. 5

There will always be those rude younger kids who skate around at obscene speeds who think it’s funny to cut off people who are having a hard time keeping their balance.

It’s just mean!

While it was definitely an adventure to get started, it was certainly fun. I also slowly got better and was able to go at a decent speed by the end of an hour. I even attempted to skate backwards, though not so successfully. I was pretty proud of myself and even the fact that a monkey can ice-skate better than me (really, it’s true) doesn’t make me feel so bad.

One last thing…

Reality No. 6

You will get blisters from your skates.

This is true even more so when you don’t tighten them enough. At least I will have the battle wounds on my heels and toes to prove that I’m out there adventuring!

Until next week,

Katie