the journal tracks site updates and my random musings.
I plan to divide up the actual updates and my "real" journal, soon.
29feb2000
Updated: Site index now includes professional section. Here's the pro section links, along with the now WORKING gallery and e-shop! 16 x 20 prints and notecards now available!
As usual I've been MUCH more active than this journal indicates. :) As part of my new and improved site overhaul (underway!) I'm going to be revamping this particular page soon anyway, to reflect site updates and journal entries separately.
I like how this angel series is coming along. It's a simple concept but hey, I like simple concepts.
I got an Epson 1520 printer for Christmas (I think I forgot to mention that...). It prints up to 17 by 22+ inches! I'm so excited about it! I've been doing some print testing and I'm waiting for my supplies to arrive, so I can go into full swing.
Yeah. Real busy. Man! Glah! A lot of updates (see above). I still want to try and use this journal as an actual journal, but we'll see whether I can ever keep up with it. To give you a brief idea of what's been going on... let's see... Been busy with shopping and the holidays, Orlando had a nice vacation off work, I was sick for a week or so. I've missed a lot of tae kwon do class, hopefully I'll go back tomorrow.
Things have been so busy, it's just unbelievably crazy! On the upside, my art shop online is updated, and I've already sold some prints. Tonight I'll post the actual sales pages to Amazon.com, and then it'll really be up and running. I'm so excited! It's really almost too late to get the Christmas buyers though... oh well... Good preparation for next year.
Artistically speaking I have had two basic tasks over the last few days. I mailed out some prints, for one. I was also going to mail a friend of mine a book I made him (some poetry he wrote, I offered to bind it all nice as a present). It turns out all that work I did on it yesterday was a total waste of time because the binding is wide enough that it obscures some of the words in the book. AAAAAAAGGGGGHHHHHH. I thought that I had compensated adequately for that. I guess NOT though. I was about ready to cry, I was so frustrated. So. I get to redo it tonight.
My husband says I have got to stop going to bed so late and I absolutely agree with him. *whimpersigh* Needless to say I'm exhausted right now... I slept an hour extra (and therefore I will be working an hour extra).
Otherwise tonight I want to list all those zShops listings I need for my little shop. I can't list the limited edition prints yet (I need to print and scan these, I forgot to scan Anna's), but I can list the leaves. I also have class tonight... sparring class, and with me half comatose that should be pretty amusing. The exam is next Monday though... I hope I do all right. I'm really far behind in that class. :(
So as you can see I'm pretty anxious overall. It's not like it's all bad stuff, but.. well. That's what's up. Exciting and VERY busy!
Okay, so I didn't write last night. But here's what I basically did with my day. I was still feeling kinda sick so work was amusing, shall we say. Even so, I got some stuff done, so... good.
I had a big e-mail discussion with my father about why there's horizontal lines on some of my prints (my printer is misbehaving). I dropped by their house later while waiting for Orlando to get home, to show off some prints in person. There were several my mom really liked, but Dad vetoed because of these horizontal lines. D'oh!
See, he and I had been exchanging different opinions about whether this meant the prints were 'flawed' or not, due to this printing artifact. I said basically that if it was an artistic concern of mine then yeah, it would be a flaw. But, I think these prints look fine. It adds a different kind of effect. Now, admittedly anybody who's familiar with the vagaries of inkjet printers might be turned off by it, which is totally fine -- they can just buy something else I'm offering.
And in other news, my friend Nick clued me in to this Amazon.com gift registry kind of thing. You basically enter your wish list from any of their sections... books, DVDs, CDs, toys, etc whatever... and then people can look at the list (like say, my family) and they know what I want. Neeeeat. :)
I've been SO busy. I was sick today, too. Blaaargh! Anyway, I've been printing a lot of leaves -- go see! I ran out of ink, so I ordered more... unfortunately my printer still has that !#$!^#&@! clogged nozzle, so I still can't print my 3D graphics as limited edition prints. On the other hand, I can still print leaves just fine.
The sets of leaves that aren't already sold should be for sale soon... as soon as I figure out which set I'm giving my Mom for Christmas. :)
I'll try to get back into writing here every day. Kinda let myself get distracted from it, for a while there.
Can't wait for that massage later today. Aaaah. I relax just thinking about it.
14nov1999
Updated: This journal page.
I made arrangements to get a quickie $15 seated massage, for Tuesday (the 16th). I
neeeeed it, maaaan. Apparently there's a massage therapist working in my
building and she does these massages on the side. I'm looking forward to it.
Here's an extremely unfortunate (and amusing) movie theater sign I saw:
POKEMON
BACHELOR BONE COLLECTOR
Sounds like some yaoi anime, doesn't it? <snicker> (If you don't know what I'm talking about, you're probably much better off that way. Trust me.)
I saw Dogma with my brother this weekend. Liked it. Yeah.
10nov1999
Updated: This journal page.
Here's a ton of musings from my day.
It occurred to me the
other day that every single thing I'm doing on this job is something I
learned basically by myself. Some guidance and pointers, but I didn't learn
to do this via college. It was merely /during/ college.
I didn't really sleep at all. I stayed in bed, but I just couldn't sleep...
I read a book for a few hours. Orlando woke up in the middle of the night
and asked me what I was doing awake. I told him I couldn't sleep, and to go
back to bed. I didn't want to tell him "Oh, I'm kinda upset" because then he
wouldn't feel right going back to sleep anytime soon, and I wouldn't feel
right with him awake.
Fiction. Eh. I do like fiction to a point. My taste is just tending towards
the real, I think. It's absolutely true that 90% or more of the books in my
growing little library here are all reference books. Photo reference, text
reference, whatever. Those are also the books I look at and sit down with
most often. I read those.
If I wanted fiction really bad I'd probably see a movie. I do that a lot
more nowadays than I ever did in high school or college. Maybe that's a sad
statement in a way... but... but, I also have read the dictionary, and
encyclopedias and stuff, dammit! Cover to cover! I ain't any ignorint
American! :)
I'm reading Angela's Ashes at the moment and the happiest, most well
adjusted character I've seen so far in the book is Buddhist. Too bad he's
stuck in wartime Catholic Ireland, though...
I hardly ever read novels anymore. I was on a fantasy book stint for a while
in college, read the Wheel of Time stuff, etc. Read a few scifi books before
that (BattleTech, some classics like Asimov and Clarke and such). But over
the last three months I've read two modern books, both memoirs, one fiction
and one not. It's been an interesting experience. I've never read a memoir
before. Well, except the diary of Anne Frank, but. I was a kid then.
Rambling onward, now... You know, with regards to giving people kids like
Anne Frank to read, Bridge to Terabithia, All Summer in a Day, Old Yeller,
City of Gold and Lead, If I Die In a Combat Zone, As I Lay Dying, Death in
Venice, 1984, etc... all that stuff... I can't decide whether it's good to
basically traumatize kids with this stuff, or if you should wait till
they're older, or what...
I guess it's better to wait till they're older IF you're not going to give
them much sympathetic guidance after confronting them with this horrible
idea/story. And I don't think that kids get that in class. I sure didn't.
And my parents would have helped but they didn't really know what I was
reading, anyway.
Here's my two cents on encouraging kids to read and read
tough/challenging stuff early. If the tough aspect is a pretty major issue like say...
DEATH, or SEX, or both at ONCE, or whatever... something that the kid has
never been introduced to and it's never been talked about before... then
reading it in a book isn't so good, I think. I'd rather their parents talk
to them about it. Then let 'em read all they want. That holds true for any
media their kid's exposed to though... the parent has to know what it's all
about so they can make an informed decision about how to talk to the kid
about it. Since it's really not like a parent can STOP a kid from seeing
stuff. Not really. Not nowadays.
08nov1999
Updated: This journal page.
RE: Saving Private Ryan. I read an old review that said everybody in that movie was
really good except for Tom Hanks, who was playing Tom Hanks. ;) But I think
there's nothing wrong with that. And if Ted Danson could be there for the
entire movie acting and I didn't even realize who he even was, I'm not gonna
complain about HIS acting like some people do, either. Yeah.
It's been a while since I've actually updated the journal. Whew. Distracted. I think what I'm going to start to do is quote myself from the many e-mails I send out every day, and use that in edited form to make up my journal entries. Better than writing it from scratch, right?
My computer keeps crashing at work. They wiped the hard drive... it kept crashing. Then they replaced the entire hard drive, which means re-downloading all my pertinent bought-from-web programs. BLEH. Muttermutter... now I gotta try and catch up on work... mutter...
Item One.
I made a petition webpage for a friend of mine, to help promote the domestic
release of Mononoke Hime. Go. Look. http://go.to/mononoke-petition
Item Two.
I made a plushie ferret for a friend of mine. Awwrrr! Cute! He needs a nose...
05nov1999
Updated: Nothin' but this page.
Artwise, I've made no progress on that Zoamel sketch for Slayers Demiurge. I also need to finish my print testing, so I can start selling actual prints, and fulfill Anna's order. She's been VERY VERY patient with me. Maybe I'll send her an extra goody as a little bonus. Hmmmm... wonder what she'd want, I'll have to ask her.
In other, personal news, things seem stable now on Nightscape MUX, which is good. That IS my main source of entertainment, after all. Some people watch TV. I play on Nightscape. Heh heh heh... So, let's see, what else is up. My boss came home from vacation. I haven't been to tae kwon do much lately. Gotta make sure to go on Saturday and Monday.
03nov1999
Updated: Nothin' but this page.
Orlando's definitely fine now. I went over to visit Stefan, so I could roughly sketch out another character I'm drawing for Slayers Demiurge. When I got back, Nightscape MUX had been restarted. (That's that roleplaying game I really like. I take care of the webpage for them.) Turns out a couple of newbie jerks were terrorizing the populace, made half-a-dozen alts, spammed the public channel with obscenities, etc. So, they got sitebanned (yay!). The game had been restarted because the wizards did a backup.
02nov1999
Updated: Many minor edits for format, typos, etc.
It's been a busy few days! Orlando was sick for a while longer but he seems to be mostly better now. My office had a Halloween party. I'll link in a few pics soon. For Halloween I went over to my parents' house, carved pumpkins. I did a Blair Witch Pumpkin (with the stickman on it, you know?) and a scary pumpkin that was painted red inside, and bristling with nails in the eyes and mouth. Fun. It scared some kids off the porch, though... I also got a raise at work (yay!). I've only been there for four months, so that's great!
27oct1999
Updated photos to add our wedding pictures.
My pooooor husband Orlando was sick today! Aww! We had an interesting discussion about whether me sleeping on the couch would do anything to decrease my chances of getting sick. It's moot anyway since I forgot and kissed him on the mouth. Oooooops...
My brother Stefan/Twoflower got parts of his website included in a Japanese magazine! I'll add a link to it as soon as there is one to give. Neeeeat.
26oct1999 am
Fixed links section. Minor edits. I also made a LOT of different linking banners.
Busy night last night. Worked late. I wasn't sure I really felt quite up to going to tae kwon do class tonight, but I did go. Luckily for me, the instructor took it pretty easy on us. Mostly concentrated on technique instead of wearing us out with repetition.
Then when I got back I updated a million HTML pages again, to fix all the errors I'd noticed over the previous day. Or... wait. Shoot. I just remembered I forgot to fix some other stuff. AARGH. Well. I'll do it tonight. I want this page to be JUST right, then I'll list it in search engines and stuff. Then it'll also be nice and presentable when I use links to different sections in my sales listings. Which means I can sell prints more confidently. See how this all works out?
25oct1999
Allow me to quote a friend of mine who, upon seeing this particular page, commented: "Your journal is beyond gripping. :)". I told him, "Yeah, I know the journal is the greatest autobiography known to man." Hey, at least it's short!
24oct1999
Started uploading this page this weekend. Too sleepy and lazy to even pretend to be brilliant today. I think I must've edited at least 50 HTML pages today... or more... probably more. Glah!
