Beach

I was so excited I was able to go to the beach! My roommates told me they were planning to head out and asked if I had time to come with them. I didn’t know if I could because I had some character and environment designs due, but I ended up going anyway. Sometimes you just need to take a day, or even a few hours, to relax and have some fun. All work and no play makes Alex a psycho girl.

So we packed up a few sandwiches and drinks to have a picnic lunch on the beach at Lido. The last time I’ve been to the beach was last August before school started while moving my stuff down here. The water was pretty cold so I didn’t do much swimming, and instead just soaked up some vitamin D. I spend hours upon hours a day in the third floor of the Student Center where there are no windows whatsoever, so I’ve really missed the sun.

I didn’t really see anything all that interesting while I was at the beach, it was just the regular families and people out and about. The annoying and ever-present seagulls were there of course and got too close to stealing my food. It’s strange how they aren’t scared of people whatsoever; it kind of reminds me of Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds in a way.

Alex Boatman at a Glance

I just wanted to take a moment to introduce myself. My name is Alexandra Boatman, but I like to go by Alex. I'm a junior Computer Animation student here at Ringling, so I'm pretty much always busy. I call Rosemount, Minnesota home and I try to suppress my "accent," but of course it leaks out every once in a while. Nowhere near as horribly exaggerated as in the movie "Fargo"...

I went to the School of Environmental Studies, which is a public alternative high school that's partnered with the Minnesota Zoo. I attended there for my last two years of high school, and absolutely loved it even though I never planned on a career in the sciences. I have a link posted on the right sidebar of my blog for my high school. What I loved about the school was that instead of learning about certain things from a textbook in a classroom, we would actually go out and learn from the outdoors. Like going out to a lake and taking samples and readings to test the health of the lake, or going to Fort Snelling to excavate some buckthorn, which is an invasive species of weed that looks very similar to a tree since they can grow up to 25 feet tall. I know all about the health of the environment where I live back home, but it's completely different here in Sarasota.

I have no idea how many of the plants that I see everyday on campus are native or not, but I never really have the time to find out even though I've been curious. I never really get a chance to get off campus, but I’m going to try and get off at least once a week for this class. It’s just REALLY difficult with the amount of work that I have to do for CA, plus I don’t have my own car and I really don’t like taking the bus down here.