The reality of finally going to college looms ever closer. I try not to think about it most of the time, which is the usual pattern since I left high school. I signed up for classes on Tuesday, though, so it's not that escapable.

It was...lame. I went to an adviser who, thank god, is not going to be my actual adviser for the rest of the time. He was incompetent. It started off with him cheerfully remarking that he'd just gotten through with a student who was also going to be mastering in fine arts. I explained that I was also thinking about a master in computer science so I needed to balance my classes so that I had a good start for either one.

He told me the english class I wanted was full. It wasn't. He told me that the drawing class I wanted was only available in the morning now. It wasn't. He wrote down the number for the design class I needed and the class didn't even exist anymore. He told us the completely wrong computer class for a good start in computer science. Introduction to Computers probably isn't even a blip on their radar. The only thing he didn't mess up was my math course because we didn't really discuss it. I already planned to take the harder Algebra/Trig one for fine arts students.

Adrian and I didn't believe them when they said it took, on average, one hour for students to register for their classes. If that joker of an adviser was any example, I am amazed that it doesn't take twice as long for everyone instead of just me. In fact, the adviser in the computer lab where I was registering between shivers--oh, long hair how I miss thee--was more helpful. She went to the building next door and fetched me a list of the classes a fine art student needed to graduate. He had a printer right next to him and couldn't even do that for me!

I was still not happy when I left the computer lab. With the hours available for the classes I needed, I couldn't take the english class I wanted, but was stuck with the communications class that was also required (I am so testing out of that. I can speak publicly just fine, thanks.). Nor could I take any of the computer classes I tried to sign up for. When Adrian and I got back home, I logged in to my computer and poked at my schedule some more. It didn't feel right. So I called the computer science department and talked to the adviser there.

Damned lucky I did too. She explained to me which computer courses I needed to take so they'd let me in as a computer science major. I was also informed that the math class I had wasn't going to be advanced enough. I would have to take *gulp* pre-calc or risk falling behind.

Stop laughing, Fire. We both know how I did in calculus my last year of high school. ;)

I think I changed every single class I had signed up for earlier. The good news was that I could then take the english class I wanted. The bad news was that I will be facing a math class every single weekday and my classes start at 7:30AM. *bangs head against desk and weeps* Fear of screwing this up has led me to start studying Adrian's mom's old math text books every day until school starts. I am also trying to adjust my sleep schedule early on. I have this thing where I can wake up at such an unnatural hour and be okay for a bit but then I crash. I would be crashing right during the class I fear most. So. Not. Cool.


In other news, Adrian and I have been finishing some wooden boxes that I will decorate with my beading. Go me! Pictures and more babbling about it tomorrow, mebbe.

Finished the first wing of the zebra swallowtail. It is scary beautiful. I was v v afraid that it wouldn't work out at all. The real test now will be to finish the hind wing and see if they mesh well together. *crosses fingers*

Not that they match up perfectly in nature, but I may want to adjust the pattern for next time.

The northern blue turned out beautifully. I'd happily share it with y'all, but the camera is still broken. *stabs Best Buy*

Okay, that was going to be a fairly short and meaningless journal entry so I'll take a minute to talk about something that has been bothering me: I cannot seem to take artsy photos of my stuff. I've been reduced to using my husband's nice linen-ish white shirt for everything. It gets the job done, but it doesn't feel special. I do care about my critters. I feel like I'm not doing well by them. They need to be Ooo Ahhh Shiny-er!

I recently had a conversation with someone on devart whose photos I admired and I'm starting to see the light on taking more interesting photos. It could be as simple as a scattering of screws to show how small things are or two different textures. My biggest problem with them before was that my stuff is small and most of the interesting photos I'm seeing other people take are of larger objects. So the props they use to spice up their photos would either be unrecognizable or overwhelming. She's given me ideas though and those ideas are spawning in the hind brain. Go hind brain!

I just want to play right now. I tried to try out a few ideas with our other camera, but its macro sucks. So I have a vague notion that my ideas are working but no workable photos to show for it. *grumblegrumble* Oh, well. Past time to go to bed. Not that Adrian isn't sitting up and writing anyway. *purrs* He's pretty and clever, my precious.

I've finally finished the 88 butterfly. Rather, it still needs to be attached to a pin and antenna, but the hard bits are over. A stiffer wire ended up not being enough to prevent wing flop so I still had to go back and strengthen the wings with extra lacing. Mrrr It's not that I mind working on it more, but it drives up the price I have to charge for them. Oh, well. The butterfly is beautiful. :)

So far I have made 7 of my own butterfly patterns: 88, zebra swallowtail, luna moth, california dogface, northern blue, glasswing, and mourning cloak. I've started the glass wing and will probably try to make all of my butterflies before I tackle making another pattern (a process which Adrian sped up considerably with his suggestions). However, if any of my friends have a particular butterfly they'd like to see me make let me know and that will be what I do next.

Well, unless you say monarch butterfly. It's inevitable so let's give some other butterflies a chance first, neh?

Family reunion on my husband's side soon. *deer in headlights*

I whine and avoid posting stuff to my galleries because it's so much work, but it really is so wonderful to get some reactions and connect with people over them. Read: attention whore. :D

I have 19 more bead critters to post to these galleries which is more than 19 uploads since some have multiple photos. *whimper* Adrian is stretched out on the bed playing Warhammer and making me extremely jealous. I admit that I want him to work on a project so I don't feel like I'm missing out on the fun he's having. Also my character is falling behind his! *sob*

I have finished a pattern for a luna moth. I plan to make a giant luna moth pattern at some point, but for now I'm sticking to pin-size. I could do some really gorgeous hair pieces though... *purr* I'm thinking of tackling the california dogface next. Yeah, it's got black in it and I favor black like the former little goth princess lover that I am, but the name is just too cool not to and it waaas on the list.

Oh, how I want to be killing things right now. :(

Today I procrastinated. It's a bit hard to be productive when Adrian's at lose ends and wants to play Warhammer with me. He plays a warrior priest and I play an ironbreaker, so it's a healer/tank combo. My buffs mean I take some of his damage and most of the aggro and he keeps my armored ass alive with his heals. It's amusing when we can beat a public quest that's not only for a higher level than we are but is supposedly for 6-9 players, not two. So it's tempting to play rather than "work."

I have managed to upload a few pictures to my online galleries and I've gotten positive responses for them too. (Yes, that's the sound of my ego purring.) But before that I let myself get distracted by Dharma. She's a wooly mammoth of a dog and we haven't been grooming her daily like she requires. We might have gotten away with most of it except she'd been seriously neglected while in the care of someone else. On the surface she still looked great. She's got long, silky guard hairs and those have been easy to keep neat. But you start digging the comb beneath that surface and it's tangle city. Now I have yet to meet an animal that didn't get five times antsier when I tried to groom its rump (Is it me? Can I not be trusted with rump?). And, y'know, it's not like I'm all that enthusiastic about it. You won't see me running around going, "Please let me brush your butt. It's my favorite part!"

I was ready to bite the bullet and do a little chasing today. That's right, I'd rather brush a dog's butt than upload stuff to online galleries over and over again. :p The mats I found were bad enough that we needed to cut them out.

Adrian and I consulted and we bought a pair of clippers to shave her. I played distract the pup while he shaved her rump and, under my influence, her tail. We probably could have gotten away with just cutting out a few bits in the tail and combing the rest, but he's been so protective of it that I just had to see what she looked like without it. Mwahahaha It's like the shrunken head thing happened to her tail. I'm so bad.

Afterward, we gave her treats and she stayed remarkably still while I brushed and brushed out what was left. Wooly mammoth dog. :p The amounts of hair I got off her after she was shaved is sick. She is so getting a bath tomorrow since it was pretty clear the shampoo never penetrated down to her rump past those clumps. Weee.

...I think I'll have earned a trip to the library book sale.

Other chores I did to avoid uploading include dishes, scrubbing the mold off of the shower curtain, cleaning the dust out of the desk fan, clipping Greg's toenails, and bathing both Silver and Dharma. As my husband says, there's nothing like waking up to the sound of your cat being tortured. :)

I'm tired, but I should look over two of my butterfly patterns and finalize them before I sleep...

I am writing this while working at Adrian's friends house. Adrian is helping them pick a good logo design for the store they are trying to open. I've been working on patterns for butterflies or mostly just one. I've worked out how I want to construct the patterns for their bodies since I'm not satisfied with doing a static black body for all. I mean, I am taking the time to base my patterns on real butterflies. I might as well go all the way. I figure once I get enough wing shapes and experience on how things will turn out when made, I can start mixing in my own fantasy butterflies of eye-blinding tendencies. Until then, the patterns are in Illustrator which will make them real easy to modify.

The zebra swallowtail pattern is finished. I need to try it out with actual beads now. Woof. If the camera weren't broken, I'd be in more of a hurry to put it together and post it online. As it is, I think I'll just move on to the next butterfly. It's tempting to try the zebra longtail next, but I'm favoring patterns with black too much. The glasswing then.

I cut my hair short. I've had waist-length hair before so short for me is shoulder length hair. In this case "short" is a few inches long. Maybe it should have been obvious, but I didn't realize that short hair on someone like me would mean hair products on it at all times. I miss my silky smooth. :( It could actually use a little more hair off to be properly spikey and I can't decide if I should explore this short hair thing thoroughly once and for all or cash my chips in now and get to regrowing my poor hair asap. I know I want miss my length. I also know that it's been a lot cooler without all those extra inches and I am quick to overheat and this will be my first summer in a humid climate.

I think I may choose to learn to live with survival-length hair and maybe next year try out shoulder length in the summer. I used to be able to handle the heat so much better. *grumble*

It's two days later and it's been a meh day. I acquired pipe cleaners and started nibbling on a frame for my Chinese dragon. I've not touched the butterflies except to pick out more butterflies I would like to make patterns of. I meant to upload more of my art to devart and such, but I am so weary tonight from my allergies that I may go to bed instead. Ugh. The cat needs a bath tomorrow. Evil, evil cat drool.

I don't even want to keep posting in here even though many thoughts haven been buzzing around my head tonight. I don't even want to play more Warhammer. :p

I meant to write a post on the day I made brownies and that was a week ago. I already want to make more.

Finished reading Alan Moore's The Watchmen earlier. I've heard the author complained about how the movie differs from his story. It actually followed the events in the main story line closely until the ending and then you see how all the side stories changed Alan's ending vs the movie. Adrian and I have both read the graphic novel and now we want to see the movie again. He liked the ending in the graphic novel better. I think a mix of the two would have been best because Alan's didn't work on a global scale. Although, I suppose if you took into account the fact that the whole world was already in a bit of a froth...

The big difference between the book and the movie is the feeling of corruption. You get a small idea of it in the movie's riots and opening musical sequence, but the side stories illustrated how immoral and violent the world had become and they are missing. It makes it much easier to question the necessity of the ending.

*shrug* Ah, well. Enjoyable entertainment both and that's the whole point.

Currently working on butterflies! Naturally, the one I decided to design first had a complex pattern that took most of a day to figure out. I needed to keep making the wings bigger in order to capture enough of the details while avoiding making it so big that I had to switch to smaller beads in order to keep the butterfly's size down.

(Nice! I just figure out that if I select the Always on Top option in my VLC player I can watch a whole playlist of music videos and still type in here.)

I made three complete patterns before I found the right balance. Currently I am working on another pattern for a zebra swallowtail, but below is a shot of one side of the wings of my 88 butterfly. Also part of the peacock I've been making. I think 4-6 more feathers should complete it, but I'm feeling terribly lazy about making them because it hurts my fingers. :p

It took a few more days than I wanted, but I finally finished updating hermitism.com. Naturally there are a few more things that I need to photograph and put up as well, but it's current-ish enough. I've also listed a few things at the etsy store I'm sharing with Adrian. *fear*

Been itching to make some jewelry the past couple of days, but I haven't gotten around to that. Also need to start updating the deviantart gallery bit by bit along with the two other galleries I signed up for. If I build it and line the rode with jelly beans, they will come. I hope.

And I found out that Elfwood deleted my old gallery! I don't know why. I didn't receive any warning and I was still logging in and checking on it every now and then so I'm not sure why they did it. So I had to sign up for a new one (and holy shit was the process easier. What? I don't have to study for their test this time?). Then I uploaded my art and prepared to wait for a few weeks. I believe I got a comment on my work by the next day. Elfwood has changed.

So! Three favorites from what I just uploaded:



Mind you, I added over 20 things and when I say "favorite" I mean that it appeals to me just this second as a favorite but ask me two minutes later, I will not only not be quite sure what I listed but I will list something else entirely.

Damnit, I still want to make teeny black widows. :'(

The aperture of the lens was set too low and all the photos had to be retaken save for those of the crab because it has disappeared. :( I suppose I could have used the ones I had and they were better than what I had before, but mrrr. The camera could do better! Happily I have also discovered that I can take pictures in fairly cloudy conditions and use Adobe Bridge to bring out the proper colors. Yay!

So far I've finished editing the pictures down to usable size. The next step will be to make thumbnails for my website and then slowly start writing the text and uploading them bit by bit. This is to preserve my sanity as much as it is to hopefully draw in more people's interest. I also need to finish figuring out prices for what I want to put up for sale. It's very hard to judge how much time I spent making some things because I'm horrible about remembering to watch the time. Pricing. It is eeevil. :p

Project-wise, I am still missing a bear and a hummingbird. I know. It's odd that I haven't re-made the hummingbird yet since it's so very shiny. I need to be able to focus enough to remember to watch how much time it takes because that one I'm really not sure about. The wings just throw off any time sense. My list tells me I want to make a black butterfly, an anemone, and a grasshopper the most. I will need to explore designing my own fish if I want to make progress on one of the larger projects.


I'd really like to make a teeny black widow out of 15/0 beads only I was dumb and didn't get the shiny black ones from fusion when I placed my last order. *sad ears* Black widows are not matte black so that will have to wait. Then there's the butterflies and studying flower arranging. And dragons. Always dragons. ^^

Always something to do next. Life is good.

For a while there, the laptop was having problems with supplying power to its usb ports. Actually, I shouldn't say the computer because if you ran Ubuntu, the mouse worked fine. Long and short being I reinstalled the virus called Vista on my computer and that meant having to reinstall everything else including the graphics programs so I can start editing photos.

It's very amusing that I took pictures of near everything four days ago and I am behind by three bead critters already! And I succumbed to myself last night and strung a bunch of cream colored beads (figuring out in the process how to get my bead spinner to handle a small amount of beads effectively*) so I can make another siamese cat. It's very hard for me to tell if the cats will actually be desirable to others since I know so many cat lovers. My dad claimed the siamese and then the matte black cat. Then I made Rik one of his beloved Shayde. The one critter I've made the most and all I have right now is the prototype. :D

One of the critters that I don't have a picture of is an angelfish from Anga Freese's book. The special thing about it is that it's made from a smaller bead size (15/0 instead of 11/0). The silver beads are a hex cut so it's silver++! I have small hands and I can hide the body beneath my thumb. I can't decide if I should offer it as a necklace or put together a few more fish and make them a set. Regardless, it's shiny and small so my brain squeals whenever it sees it.

These programs are taking forever to load so it's time to make a cat. Not that I couldn't babble on for much longer about all the things I want to do with beading. I'm in <3. ^^


* Bead spinners work best if you can fill the bowl to half-way. What people fail to mention is that this takes an enormous amount of seed beads. At $3 a tube for 18g at Hobby Lobby (and who is just going to stick to their limited color palette) which doesn't even begin to fill the bowl, this is kinda impractical. Luckily, I am using one that runs on batteries and has a bowl with curved edges to keep the beads from jumping out. I can tilt it to near vertical so the beads cluster nicely while still moving. It's faster, but not as fast as ideal full-bowl conditions. I wish I'd figured this out earlier than last night. :p

There was sunlight today between wind-blown clouds so I took photos. They still need to be edited and I suspect some of them will be lit by cloud-light instead of sunlight, but they're in focus and with Adrian's expertise I think I'll be able to use them for the most part.

Meanwhile I'm trying to replace the bead critters that are no longer with me while still exploring new patterns. Right now I've got grasshoppers, octopi, bettas, and dragons (always dragons) on the create side and the ruby-throated humming bird, cat, bear, and pig on the repeat side. I also want to weave some wire in the moose's legs because they can barely stand. I think that's the last of the stuff that needed to be reinforced. And then there's the flowers...

Oh, and Adrian wants me to make a Chinese dragon. We even bought a little Chinese take-out carton to pack it in. ^^


Quick warning to friends who are not logged in right now: I've switched to a personal = friends-only and creative = public journal. Not a decision I enjoy making, but necessary, I think, until things sort themselves out more. Sorry. :/

Yeah, so I finally got around to updating my website again. I've been sick for about a week now so the beading of thing tapered off as well as getting the site updated sooner. *sighs* I think the last thing I managed to finish was a dog for my sister's birthday and that was late. I washed it off in the sink before mailing because I was all gross and oozing while I was doing it too. Ewww Germs. :p

My favorite is the ruby-throated hummingbird:

Is pretty. I put it, along with the fox, black widow, siamese cat, and mice earrings, in my dad's display case for a gem fair in Salt Lake City. So why not check out the rest? :)

Various things have been conquered and worked through between Adrian and I. Currently we are sort of looking at buying a house in Indiana again. On the one hand: scary. On the other, I think I've gone through enough rental experiences with this apartment, culminating in last Saturday when the person I share the house with had a 'concert' in their garage. The garage that's right next to my bedroom with no insulation between at a time when I am usually asleep. -.-

She will deserve it when Adrian comes back and we have very loud sex. :p

Speaking of sex, he and I had the perfect conversation on that very subject. We were speculating on what kind of sex married couples in the army can have and I said I figured someone has tried having sex in their 100lb battle armor. He replied with: Yeah. "Ever fucked a turtle?" *shove*

*snickers* I deserve him.

So I'm still obsessed with making bead spiders (and I've sold a few more too w00t!), but I've also gotten caught up with making critters and things out of seed beads. Blame Rik. He loves skunks and I saw a cute pattern for a skunk and my fate was sealed. I've gone from the little 2D ones the size of your fingernail to 3D sculptures the size of your thumb (provided you don't have very large thumbs).



You can check the rest out at hermitism.com or my devart account. Whichever poison you prefer.

On life goes and still I don't write in my lj. My excuse is that all my writing about my daily life is getting sent to Adrian. I write to him once a day generally. Less on the weekends because I'm talking to him for as long as he's awake anyway. What did you do today? Oh! I talked to you! ;D

He took vacation for two weeks and traveled all the way back from Iraq just to spend time with me. ^.^ I've gone from a man who would not make any long term plans with me, drive two blocks to get to my place or say that he loved me to this one. Comparing them really isn't fair. It's like working with a square wheel and suddenly getting a modern sexy wheel with shiny lights on the hub caps, proper air pressure, and the green gunk that will fill any small punctures so you only have to put in a bit more air.

Or maybe some sort of jet and forget wheels.

Stories I could tell people include--and here you'll understand why I mentioned wheels earlier--the slightly leaky tire of doom, the futon from hell, and my trip to the Rhode Island pony meet that was only eventful because Fire came with me. And those are just the stories that are of my doings and not so much including Adrian. Nor does it include tales of my landlord causing everyone to break their lease but me. Nor does it include all the stories about my cat, Silver. He's the cutest most wonderful Demon of Undoing in the world though. YOu'll just have to take my word for it.

I don't feel like telling about any of them right now. I may never do so. I meant to write big long posts about what Mike and I were up to when we were dating and that file is still sitting on my desktop well over a year later. Huh. I've neglected my lj for that long. I...hadn't quite realized.

Today I post to say that my site has been broken for around five months, but I did get around to fixing it a few weeks ago. I then went on to update it last week. See, KarRedRoses from the mlp community makes bead spiders and I'd always liked the idea but had never made one. Then Firebyrd gave me one of Kar's spiders for Christmas and that was it. I had to make my own my way. So far I've made...26 complete spiders. The first one I don't have a picture of. The one I sent to Iraq with my husband I don't have a picture of. The one I just finished this weekend I haven't taken a picture of yet. Probably will when I finish the other two I started then. So you can see 22 bead spiders plus Fire's bead octopus, and a painted dragonfly. I made a jewelry set for my sister last Christmas that I didn't take pictures of and a necklace for one of Fire's mlp customs that I ended up buying so someday they'll hopefully be up on the site too.

I'm having lots of fun making them and do intend to try making some dragonflies and butterflies at some point. Because, let's face it: the spiders are for sale but the market for something colorful that is a spider is very small. Especially considering my prices. As my sister said, pretty, but too spidery for me. ;) So it's up to me to figure out a way to do dragonflies and butterflies in a way that I will enjoy. Stay tuned...

This year I know some of my friends are going to try to read 50 books. Last year firebyrd challenged herself to read 100 books (not 200 like I thought) and attained that goal with months to spare. She then tried to think of a new challenge for herself this year, but realized she'd already met all the ones she could think of so decided she didn't need one for reading (hope you've written something today, bird :)).

Seeing as I read well over 100 (not 200 like I thought b/c I knew Fire and I had read the same amount) books last year--a good number of them non-fiction--and I've already read 18 books this year, I'm thinking my goal need not be numbers. So I've decided to read all the books I haven't gotten to yet in the essential fantasy reading list people were posting a few months ago:

FANTASY
1. George MacDonald, Phantastes, 1858
2. William Morris, The Well at the World’s End, 1896
3. E.R. Eddison, The Worm Ouroboros, 1922
4. H.P. Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu, 1928
5. Mervyn Peake, Titus Groan, 1946

6. Robert E. Howard, Conan the Barbarian, 1950
7. J.R.R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion, 1950s
8. C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch, & the Wardrobe, 1950
9. J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, 1954
10. T.H. White, The Once & Future King, 1958

11. Madeleine L’Engle, A Wrinkle in Time, 1962
12. Michael Moorcock, Stormbringer 1965
13. Lloyd Alexander, The Black Cauldron, 1965
14. Alan Garner, Elidor, 1965
15. Ursula K. Le Guin, A Wizard of Earthsea, 1968

16. Peter Beagle, The Last Unicorn, 1968*
17. Fritz Leiber, Ill Met in Lankhmar, 1970
18. Roger Zelazny, Nine Princes in Amber, 1970
19. Richard Adams, Watership Down, 1972
20. Susan Cooper, The Dark is Rising, 1973

21. William Goldman, The Princess Bride, 1973
22. Patricia McKillip, The Riddle-Master of Hed, 1976*
23. Anne McCaffrey, Dragonsong, 1976
24. Terry Brooks, The Sword of Shannara, 1977
25. Steven Donaldson, The (First) Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, 1977

26. Piers Anthony, A Spell for Chameleon, 1977
27. Walter Wangerin, The Book of the Dun Cow, 1978
28. Gene Wolfe, The Book of the New Sun, 1980
29. John Crowley, Little, Big, 1981
30. Marion Zimmer Bradley, The Mists of Avalon, 1982

31. David Eddings, The Belgariad, 1982
32. Terry Pratchett, The Colour of Magic, 1983
33. Robert Holdstock, Mythago Wood, 1984
34. Margarert Weis & Tracy Hickman, Dragons of Autumn Twilight, 1984
35. Orson Scott Card, Seventh Son, 1987

36. Ellen Kushner, Swordspoint, 1987
37. Mercedes Lackey, The Last Herald-Mage, 1990
38. Guy Gavriel Kay, Tigana, 1990
39. Tad Williams, Stone of Farewell, 1990
40. Robert Jordan, The Eye of the World, 1990

41. Stephen King, The Waste Lands, 1991
42. Neil Gaiman, The Season of Mists, 1991
43. C.S. Friedman, Black Sun Rising, 1991
44. Tim Powers, Last Call, 1992
45. Philip Pullman, Northern Lights/The Golden Compass, 1995

46. George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones, 1996
47. J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter & The Philosopher’s Stone, 1997
48. Sean Stewart, Mockingbird, 1998
49. China Mieville, Perdido Street Station, 2000
50. Susannah Clarke, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, 2004*

The ones I've read are in bold. I realize it may not look like much of a goal since that's only 22 books. But it only looks like 22. Titus Groaned is the first book of a series that I'll finish if it's good. Gene Wolfe's is a series of five books. The Belgariad is a series with 8 books. The Stone of Farewell is smack in the middle of William's trilogy of 800 or so page books. The Waste Lands is part of the Dark Tower series so I'll be reading all of that. Black Sun Rising is part of a series as well.

All in all, I'm looking at 46 books plus whatever else I want read. I'm just glad I can get some of these on audio so I can work and meet my personal goals as well. Yay! :)

So, Fire. Wanna join me in this challenge? You'll love wincing your way through Phantastes just as I finished doing. >:)

Someone ran over my cat today. We've already buried her.

I just had a very strange dream about people who baked their legs and had them cut off for a pack of batteries...

No more sleep for me today. :p

Finally finished coloring firebyrd's mlp picture. While over a month isn't good timing, it certainly beats the last picture I did for by many, many months. :)



And here are some fun videos that I came across recently. If you faint at the sight of blood, you might want to step away from the mouse. Goodness, I think that was a pun! >:D

Giant Centipede vs. Mouse
Mouse vs. Praying Mantis
Camel Spider eating

My cat is demanding attention so I'll post more about what's been going on later. I did have a very fun Saturday hanging out with the flaming bird and a satisfying Sunday painting, sorting, and eating. It's so good when one doesn't have to work on the weekends.

The day after Christmas, my sister and I finally got around to going shopping. We didn't go near the mall (because we're not suicidal) so traffic was nice and the store wasn't crowded. We went to our favored local clothing store. Last time we did this I was PMS-ing big time and I'm surprised she didn't kill me, but this time I was as zen as I ever get and only got impatient with her near the end when she dithered over a tank top looong after I'd run out of anything to do. Next time I'll bring a book and it will be even more peaceful.

Anyway, we then went next door where there were cheap black socks to be had and that's when I saw it: my glowy dagger. I think it was advertised as a laser sword, but I can't call something that's barely longer than my hand a sword and you can't really say, "well, it's for kids" because a lot of kids are bigger than I am (damn them). It was in the cheap toy bin and the package was rather battered. I worried that it wouldn't work and I'd be stuck with a cheap plastic dagger instead, which doesn't sound nearly as neat as glowy dagger. I poked around hoping to find one in better condition but no luck. Ah, well. It was only a buck, I'd risk it.

Sadness and woe, the dagger didn't glow.*

A few days later the family left for the airport to drop my sister off. We planned to run some errands afterward so I took along my disappointing weapon in the hopes of exchanging it for one truly able to fight evil in the dark. If you can picture two over-sixty parents and one twenty-something "child" digging through a huge bin of cheap toys, I'm sure you're wondering why they put up with me (blackmail). When we found one I took it over to the service counter to test it. Success! Oh, the glowy goodness! Beware, evil-doers! For if you have thin, easily-pierced skin and vital organs not buried too deep beneath other bodily tissues and move very slowly, I can smite thee with my mighty glowy dagger! Mwahahahaaa

* Please don't shoot me. That would hurt!

Last night I finished reading Memoirs of a Bookbat by Kathryn Lasky. It's one of those young adult books where the child grows away from her parents and their associates as they become more "religious" and hateful to others who are different from them. This one was rather well-written and I felt very frustrated about the character's feelings of helplessness with how to communicate honestly with her parents when they only wanted to hear what she didn't believe in. Naturally part of the reason why she was having such problems with her parents was because she was a bookworm and educated herself on what the world was like. I was very amused when her parents were talking approvingly of Custer and she told them he was a perfumed idiot who wasn't even a real general. I also liked that she called herself a bookbat because she didn't like being called a worm.

One thing I've noticed about books with bookworms, they always seem to read all the books in the children's section. It really makes me wonder. I was a huge bookworm when I was a kid and I never came close to reading all the books in the children's section. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that I raided both the county and the school library. Maybe it was because I simply had no interest in reading some of the books they had. But even if I had wanted to read it all, I would not have had the time. So what I'm wondering is if anyone here has managed to do this and how the heck it was possible. Or are my suspicions correct: that authors are either using this as a mark of l33tness for their characters or are talking about libraries that aren't very well-stocked.

Actually, now that I think about it, maybe it was because my mom stole my library card because I was reading too much...