Friends

Days never go quite as planned, do they?

Still, yesterday was a good one. With a few hiccups. I was working on the calendars in the morning - had a few roughed up layouts that I sort of liked and wasn't in hate with... and uploaded a preview via FTP to my site and went to get a glass of water.

Came back, and my computer had shut down. DOH! I had forgotten that the night before I was downloading big, big files and set my FTP program to shut down the computer when it finished file transfers. So, of course, when it finished up with that one little file, it shut down the computer - including all the open files in InDesign and Photoshop. DOH!!

I did get some designs up, but no product photos, and at about 5, I remembered that it's JULY already, and I have to pay artists. Those pesky artists.

I also had an accident involving our new hammock. (A co-worker of Jake's evicted their big free-standing hammock that they never use and he brought it home and set it up in front of the house.) I accidentally went outside when I let the dog out and accidentally sat down on it. It was fully in the sun, and my photon-starved skin said 'YES' and the next thing I know it's half an hour later and I'm stretched out on that thing petting Norway and soaking up rays.

Woops.

I also picked up our farm share. Not sure I mentioned that here! It has been SO SO worth it so far! We've gotten big totes full of greens - and I'm only getting a half-share. Delicious, yummy, tasty FRESH greens.

Work now. LAST DAY. (Maybe. Sort of.)

I now have enough in donations to get almost everything I want scanned, scanned.

That's a lot of scanning...!

And there are a lot of people showing up in these! tuftears, transdraconis, okojosan (Yes, there's a picture of one of your characters in sketchbook #23!), wordslinger...

Hmm. Wonder if I should mark the lingerie slumber party PG-13, even though nothing is showing. You'd have to be logged in to view them, then... They're pretty harmless, but they are pin-ups.

*goes back to a lot of scanning*


Stardancer Home.

Last night, instead of getting out my inking supplies and finishing up the tree, I installed the Wacom tablet software on the laptop, scanned in a couple sketches in high res, and noodled with them. The installation took a while (longer than it should have, because I couldn't find the installation disk and had to download the driver -- which is okay, because the one online was up-to-date), and the noodling didn't produce anything worth showing. But I did work. :)

(I should really be more focused... it would help me finish things.)

We're driving to Idaho tonight for a long weekend with family, and I'm not taking ink with me, but I am taking the laptop and Wacom. Off I go to pack...

Current Mood: busy

Episode #4978

Boners (brought to you by tequila)
1. "Deaf & Blind Kids Can't See What We're Doing Anyway":  The Utah legislature has, for the tenth year in a row, denied funds to build a permanent school for the deaf and blind.  The building they had previously used has been condemned and is scheduled for demolition.  The building the legislature intends them to use is full of asbestos.  In addition, the legislature has only funded them for 1/3 the price of the lease on this less-than-desirable building.

(Author's note:  If anyone has an article/blog/link to send me for this, please do: atroposrfh@gmail.com)

2. "They Don't Pay Me Enough To Care":  A patient of a New York emergency psychiatric hospital died in a waiting room and went unnoticed for more than an hour.  The woman had been in the waiting room for more than 24 hours while waiting for a free bed.  She suddenly fell to the floor, flopped, and then went still.  A security guard *rolled* his chair around the corner to look at the woman, then *rolled* his way back.  Finally a hospital employee came along, poked the body, and discovered that the woman was dead.

3. "Big, Tough Gangbangers":  Gangs in Orem may not be as tough as other parts of the country.  Miguel Monroy, 21-years-old, spent a weekend in jail after stealing a tricycle from a little girl.  Mr. Monroy was caught by two members of the Orem Gang Taskforce peddling down Orem Blvd.

The neglectful hospital is Boner of the Day.

So here she is: Tangle! This is what my avatar was always supposed to be. Every dragon dream I have ever had I am an all black dragon. :O

Art by dragoncreator - http://mirroreyesserval.deviantart.com/art/The-Slink-90340537
Character sheet (put together by me) - http://theslink.deviantart.com/art/Tangle-Character-Sheet-90395003

Isn't that art amazing!? Tiina really knows how to create dragons, and I sure needed a lot of help with this. I have had my true avatar in my mind for a long loooong time, but it was never too clear. I gave Tiina a lot of little details and vague ideas and she produced exactly what I was looking for. I highly recommend her talents. :)
Please take a look at the character sheet and let me know if I forgot anything. This is the first one I've ever done.

I pulled out my inking supplies last night. It's not quite finished, but here's a sneak peek:

Current Mood: cheerful

The 21-30 Retrospective is half-done; I've chosen all the pieces out of the database that exist and put together the history and descriptions (this took me about four hours...!). Now I'm at the part where I scan new things to add to the database for your delectation.

The problem is that there are so many cool things I don't know what to scan. arielstarshadow, razzek and chlorophyta have sponsored this drive so far, but even with their donations I don't have enough to get it all in. There are at least fifty images I'd scan if I could, maybe more.

So here's where you come in. What should I concentrate on?

Poll #1216358 What to Scan?
Open to: All, results viewable to: All

And yes, you can only choose one option!

Current Mood: tired
Current Music: Tears for Fears - Pale Shelter

F.O.P Keith has created a group for any Denver Friends Of the Program.

http://groups.google.com/group/DenverFOTP

I get tomorrow off. Thursday, I'll have some work to do, then Friday is the 4th and I will be off until Tuesday.

Tomorrow I have the following plans:

Calendars.
Product photos.
More designs up at EMG.
And, orders. I'm fairly well caught up to where I need to be on these.

Tonight, I will ink further on the Morrighan piece. Slowly, slowly coming along.

I got 10 designs up yesterday, and an email out to the update list. Still need to email the EMG-Zine update list.

That Ren faire thingy that I finally decided not to do last weekend? Got canceled because of rain. Very glad I hadn't invested much energy into it. They're going to try again for next year. Maybe I'll do it then! (Because, of course, I won't be busy or anything NEXT year...)

Gaming tonight. My big plans are to bake pizzas and ink the Morrighan. Maybe blow something up, perhaps shoot some nuns. You never really know what will happen with our group. Which - oh! That's a question I've been meaning to ask!

Is drawing while hanging out considered rude?

I am not keen on 'hanging out' for the sake of 'hanging out.' I like to have something to do in my hands, and my something to do is generally art. Every so often I zone into my art and lose track of the conversation, but for the most part, I just doodle (or ink tedious texture) while paying some amount of attention to the goings-on.

Do you do this? Do you find that if someone does it to you, you feel slighted? My gaming buddies are very tolerant with me, but I've often itched to pull out a little sketchbook when conversations fail to entrance me (which is... like all the time, because I have the attention span of a gnat) in other situations, too, with people who maybe aren't artist-tolerant.

Probably most of the folks on my FL are artists, or know them, so maybe you aren't the best folks to ask...

But it's something I was wondering.

New issue up now!

Last day to submit 'muse' themed work for August, too.

Is this job dead yet?

Episode #4976

Sign-offs

• "Heat, pressure, and time make a diamond, or a waffle."
• "What if The Hokey Pokey is what it's all about?"
  

Episode #4975

Opening Song
"Free Time" - The Aggrolites

Giving Up
Yesterday, Peter of Squatters brought Bill some beer.  Unfortunately, Bill had ridden his bike, which meant taking the beer home would prove rather difficult.  Bill asked Richie if he would take the bottles and leave them with Mrs. Bill.  Sure.  Gina wasn't sure that Richie should be doing that.  Isn't Richie encouraging Bill to break the W.o.W?  Well, Richie has kind of given up on Bill, so it really wasn't a problem.  It wasn't as if Bill would just decide not to drink the free beer.

Boners (brought to you by some Chinese)
1. "WTF?  WTF?":  The randomly assigned license plate numbers in North Carolina have recently been spitting out sequences containing the three letters "WTF" in a row.  The three letters are frequently used for an abbreviation of a potentially offensive phrase.  North Carolina will replace the plates for free.

2. "Did You Say 'Cube Steak' or 'Pube Steak'?":  The former cook of an Indiana steakhouse has plead guilty to inserting hairs into a customer's steak.  Ryan Kropp was allegedly upset that the customer claimed his steak was overcooked.  The customer refused a replacement steak, but Mr. Kropp prepared another steak medium-rare for the customer to take home.  The customer called the restaurant and police after finding the hair in the steak.

3. "Have You Seen My Kids?":  After a four-day bender on crack-cocaine, Lisa Vantunana appeared a a police station to inquire about the location of her children.  Ms. Vantuanana did not recall leaving the children with a baby sitter and claimed that several people told her that she had either smothered them or dropped them out of a moving car.  Fortunately neither case was true and the children were found safe with a babysitter.

The crack-smoking mother is Boner of the Day.

Margaret Ruth
You're gonna have to wait for your new and cute boyfriend to work his way out of the closet.  Men from Iran are part of the axis of evil, but they are goooooood lookin'!  John is way too sweet.  He needs to stay sweet until he can go on his mission.  Living in a naval town, use a condom and wrap your rascal two times, because you'll want it to be joyless and without sensation as a punishment for waiting 10 years to get married.

Finally!
The Blue Boutique finally made good and brought a ball-gag for Gina.  Unfortunatley, Gina can't wear it - she has a gagging problem.  Kerry felt sorry for Joe.  Kerry perfers the "Marcellus Wallace" red ball-gag as opposed to the pink "fantasy" brand.

Boner of the Week
Dave "The Flower Guy" Matson chose "I Need a Drink" as Boner of the Week.

Gina's Sign-off
"Ball-gag?  I don't get it."

I just found about 30 pages of rough layout for the graphic novel that I was putting together with silvertales eleven years ago...! I had forgotten that I wrote two books worth of script for that thing. It was... Oh my GOSH. An Objectivist furry/human romance novel. With a super-gorgeous enslaved human assassin main character. And a hunk of a male lead. Ayn Rand with fur and swords...!

This. Is. AWESOME. lol!

Stardancer Home.

Current Mood: lol!!

I am going through sketchbooks 21 to 30 for the retrospective (yes, still trying to be productive, slowly, slowly), and... wow, the things... in here... that are not online... Um... there are shaded pencil sketches of jet fighters and stealth bombers (proving that I can, in fact, draw technology??? I had no idea!). And jokes involving rocket launchers. And... wow. Just incredibly out-of-the-blue stuff. O_O

I'd scan a good fifty pages of it if I could...!


Stardancer Home.

Current Mood: boggled

http://www.mazapan.se/games/BurnTheRope.php
Burn the rope:
An online video game that is so simple, the winning strategy is the name of the game!  Despite its simplicity, it is still quite fun,.

http://www.bamkapow.com/gallery_photo.phtml?gk=22&gpk=174
Recommended by Atropos
Mostly intended for Kerry, this site has 50 pictures of 'hot' chicks dressed up as Wonder Woman.

http://www.colorstrology.com/colorstrology_sniffer.html
Recommended by Punk!
Although intended to be more about design and fashion than fortune telling, this is an astrology site, telling you about your personality based on your birth date, but also points out 'your' color - the color that you look best in and will bring out the best in you.

Here's Punk's color (for May 20):
"Smoke Green: Intelligent, Emotional, Intense
You are highly intelligent and love to learn.  Your mind is able to grasp ideas and concepts easily.  You can be generous and inspirational to people that you come in contact with.  Your challenge lies in the emotional area of your life.  When you have been hurt or disappointed, your ability to interact with others becomes more difficult and you can lose your normal trust in humanity.  Your personal color vibrates with financial ease and freedom.  Wearing, meditating with smoke green reminds you to let go of the past and stay in present time where miracles can occur."
My color is lettuce green, and talks about how I have a way with words and that I am mentally agile, that I enjoy writing and care deeply about interpersonal relationships, all of which are pretty true in my book.
See what yours says.

http://www.artofthetitle.com/
Recommended by Von McFarland
I think it has occurred to most people that movie openings, just like movie previews, are an art unto themselves, and occasionally can be more enjoyable than the films they precede: 'Art of the Title' is a site dedicated to the best Title Sequences of films, television shows and event videos.  Moderate commentary, but mostly an easy way to view great openings.  Catch me if you can, Se7en, Stranger Than Fiction, Reservoir Dogs, and my personal favorite, Once Upon a Time in the West are some of the Title Sequences they go over.  If you're not interested in watching movie openings for the sake of the open, this is at least an interesting way to find new movies to watch.

http://beartraps.com/
Recommended by Stephannie Walker
A great site warning about speed traps, mostly with information entered by truckers.  The site itself is pretty rudimentary looking, but they have the entire country divided along major highways (I-15, I-85, I-97, etc.) and all of the states those highways travel through.  One danger I see in this site is you may succumb to hubris: thinking you know everywhere the cops would possibly be, you speed everywhere not warned about and end up getting caught anyway.  Still, with that in mind, knowing the main speed traps along your route is a great resource to have, and is easily accessible and interpreted here.

Suggestions?  Questions?
jakeoftheweb@gmail.com

A while back I mentioned that I was going back to a dragon avatar. Something much more ME, what it should have been all along based on my personality, dreams, etc.
Well, it's almost here! I'll be posting a character sheet within the week! I am SO excited!!! ^_^

This weekend I worked mainly on meeting minutes (they're done!) and EMG-Zine editing (July's issue on The Senses should be ready to post tonight), but I did manage some words on my graphic novel. Trouble is, my characters started a conversation that wasn't moving the story forward, and I wasn't really satisfied with the scene, when I finally had it written. I will probably subtract quite a few of those words, and instead get my characters on the road.

Now for some brainstorming on where they're going, and where one of them is coming from. (Two of them, I know already.)

Today we'll pick up Bean's new bike, part of our economic stimulus package present to ourselves. :) (Sprout got a trike for his birthday this week.) Then Bean has a T-ball game, and brozinski has the fourth performance of Sound of Music tonight and will be home late. If I can get EMG-Zine posted in good time, I'll have some time for art. (I hate having to squeeze it in like that, but... well... that's the way life is right now. It will get better.)

Current Mood: busy

http://www.billfrost.tv

Leap from bed before I am fully awake, spurred by adrenaline... to reach her crib before her first cries are finished, and find...

...she is asleep. Crying in her sleep. Nightmares? Pain? I stare at her, heart-sick. She subsides. I stumble back to bed.

Twice more. Twice more I stand vigil, wondering what to do. Wake her? Let her rest? I am paralyzed. I go and lie down, feeling my shattered sleep like the world has razor edges and I am bled just to move in it.

Living is to suffer. I am particularly powerless today|yesterday|tomorrow, and all around me they suffer. I can do nothing. I bear witness. But past a certain point, all there is is suffering, and everyone one of us is alone with nightmares and pain.

I stand outside the crib, the bedroom, the ether, their skins. I love you, I love you, I would take it all away if I could.

Nights and days and nights. Life itself. The life we're given. I leak onto my pillow, too tired to give it more meaning.

I would take it all away if I could.


Stardancer Home.

Current Mood: exhausted

No art today... but I did submit a 10-poem collection to the state's annual original writing competition. :) This is the competition's 50th year, and there's a $300 cash prize for the first-place poetry collection. If I'd had a book-length collection of poems, I could have competed for a $1,000 prize. It's one of the better competitions out there... because entry is free. :)

I've wanted to submit to this competition for ten years now, and haven't been able to... because I was an employee. But I'm not this year, so yay! :)

Current Mood: chipper