Muses are Finicky and Have Bad Timing

So, anyone who reads this blog must already know that I'm both a writer and artist. And if you don't know, why the hell not? Haven't you been paying attention? Didn't anyone tell you there was going to be a quiz? I'll save that for another time though, so don't run away screaming just yet.

Now, as a writer, I've had days where I thought, 'I want to write' and stories that just haunt me and will not go away until I put them on paper for prosterity--not all of these stories have been good but, you know, that's just how it goes. There have been days that I have just HAD TO write. To not do so would be roughly the same as forgetting to breathe.

I'm pointing this out because until last night I have NEVER had that sort of day as an artist. I've never felt 'I have to draw. Today. Now.' I've never had an artistic idea that struck me so firmly that I HAD TO get it on paper immediately. Basically, art has always been something I had to think about. But here I am last night, driving home at 6:30 pm after work and a 30 minute stop at dad's to do some work on his computer, listening to one of the most random cd compilations in all creation, and this idea just hits me and BAM! All of a sudden I'm sketching the thing out in my brain--picturing the trajectory line, the arch of the shoulders, the way the knee should bend, the angle of the ankle and foot. And I'm thinking 'wtf?'

I couldn't get home fast enough to sketch it out. Got in, changed into my boxers and t-shirt, got out my graphic pencils and computer paper and just pump it out. Had the basic lines done by bed time. Now, that may seem like 'big deal' but one night, 5 hours, is kind of a record for me. I'm what you might call a 'slow and sloppy' artist. In other words, I have to do a preliminary inking over my sketch just to get something recognizable enough to clean up. Then I take another pass at it in pencil with a second sheet of paper, THEN lineart.

This morning I woke up and instead of dozing on the recliner I continued said lineart. With any luck, I'll be able to finish it over lunch break and scan it tonight.

I guess there's something to be said for sudden inspiration, but I sure wish it would inspire me to work on projects that I'm trying to COMPLETE instead of new ones! haha.

And Now, For Something Completely Random...

Okay, so picture this:

It's 11:15 pm on a Thursday night and you're brushing your teeth before bed. Minding your own business. One of your psychotic cats jumps up onto the counter. (You have cats, okay? Otherwise this entire story makes no sense.) Anyway, your psychotic black cat jumps onto the counter wanting pre-bedtime attention like every night, so you turn your head, and that's when you notice the warning label on the bucket of kitty litter behind him. It reads:

"Warning! Children can drown in buckets containing only small amounts of water. Keep children away from buckets with water in them."

And so you think 'huh?' Apparently warnings don't need to have anything to do with the product in question. There was no 'kitty litter may be hazardous to your health if ingested' or 'do not apply to open wounds'. No. What's the Scoop Away signature warning?--Children can drown in here...if you ever put water in it. Wtf? I get that you can use the kitty litter bucket for other things after it's empty, but can the company honestly be held responsible for things that happens when their disposable container is used for purposes other than it's original intent--holding kitty litter?? Was Scoop Away sued for a baby drowning incident?

So, you go to bed, sullenly preparing yourself for horrific dreams of small children drowning in kitty litter, just like I did last night. Thankfully, I have no small children.

As far as other stuff, my favorite comic on Last Comic Standing--Papa CJ--was eliminated last night, so that's a bit disappointing, but not surprising after how horribly he BOMBED the prop comedy challenge. So now my top three are Iliza, Marcus, and Sean, in no particular order.

Also saw a preview for a new fall NBC Show starring Christian Slater, My Own Worst Enemy, so Mike and I are pretty excited about that. To use Mike's explanation of why we MUST watch this show: "It combines two things I love and two things you love! I love multiple personalities and spys, and you love Christian Slater and violence!" ...which makes me wonder just why it is that that statement makes me sound like the psychopath of the household. Action, Mike, not Violence. ACTION. And don't mistake 'love Christian Slater' in that "omigod he's so dreamy" kind of way--because totally no. It's more of a "there's something about Christian Slater that's just plain awesome" kind of way.

On that subject, I had a roommate in college, Shelley, who claimed that "Christian Slater is the Devil". She said if the devil had a human face, it would be Christian Slater. In retrospect, if Morgan Freeman can be God, then, well, why not?

Anyway, aside from Eli Stone, that basically covers all the TV I watch (what Mike watches when I happen to be in the room doesn't count.)

SubV stuff: I've added two new dreamcatchers to my ETSY: http://tradejack.etsy.com/ . As always my ETSY page can also be accessed through SubV's craft section. I made these a while ago but couldn't add them because of my camera being missing. Also took some better pictures of the jewelry--they're still not great, but they're better than they were before, so check them out if you're interested.

That's about it for now. I'm shooting to have chapter two of 'Girls Only' on site by August 1st, but I'm not too confident right now that I'm going to make it.

Until Next Time,

~Denryu~

Women Drivers!!

I swear, today I honestly wished my car had missile launchers. Now, before anyone goes crazy on me, there is a MAJOR difference between women drivers, and female drivers. I, am a female driver. ...and because of that I can say that women drivers have GOT TO GO! Seriously. I got stuck behind a lady almost the whole way home from work who for whatever reason insisted on applying makeup while driving. There are times it is NOT okay to multi-task, ladies, especially when it causes you to drift into oncoming traffic. This woman applied blush, mascara, combed her hair...! If you wear so much makeup that you can't put it on in the parking lot before going inside wherever it is you're going, then you wear way too much! The woman also kept checking a list or some sort of print out, which I could pass off as checking directions if not for the fact she had a passenger in the car fully capable of doing so. How do I know? Because the passenger kept holding up the damn print out and pointing at it! And then, right when I thought it couldn't possibly be any worse she starts CLAPPING...yes, while in motion. And then, stopped at a red light she proceeds to start chatting with the vehicle in the left hand lane. when the left arrow goes on and he/she turns...the wonderful lady in front of me runs a red light WITHOUT SHOWING ANY SIGN OF EVEN NOTICING! Honest to any deity who cares, I hope she gets into an accident--not one major enough to get anyone killed or permanently damaged, but enough to teach the damn idiot a lesson! Argh!

Okay, so I'm done venting. In other news, the revamp was a complete success and I finished it late Saturday. The prelude and chapter 1 of girls only are up in the writing section and ready to read. Once again, for those few of you who might not know already, the website is: http://subsequentvisions.com. So check it out!

Beginning Remodeling

Well, it's just before 2 pm, EST on 7/12/08 and I'm going to begin the rebuilding of subsequentvisions.com right after a quick run to the food store. I'm expecting to complete it some time tonight, but there are a few other little tasks I need to take care of throughout the day, so I may be working on it tomorrow night as well. Site will definitely be back up by Monday night at the latest.

Down Time

Well, I can honestly say I am ecstatic that it's Friday. It's been a hell of a week. I endeavored this week to get a lot of things done that I had no business finishing in one week, and then on top of it, Tuesday afternoon my father was hospitalized because of bad stomach cramps. He got home last night and it turns out not to be anything too major--diverticulitis (which I really can't be sure I'm coming even close to spelling correctly), which he used to have when I was a kid and basically boils down to the fact that he can't eat seeds. In the interim Mom and I had to take care of his dog, which for my part mostly involved being on the road by 6:30 in the morning and not getting home until after 9--I'm only just recovering from the exhaustion, but I still managed to get things done.



I've been working on my top secret art project during my lunch breaks at work, wrote the website's text blurbs five words at a time on scrap paper at my desk, and plowed through coding the pages between 9 and 11 at night. Tonight I'll finish the last little bit of coding and do those 'Girls Only' edits. Depending on how late it is (and how tired I am), I may begin moving out the old design and moving in the new one tonight. If not tonight, I'll be working on it tomorrow.



What this means for you is that subsequentvisions.com will be experiencing down time tonight that can extend up to tomorrow evening. During this time the site may be completely down or only partially functional. Please be patient. I will be working as quickly as I can to get it back up at 100% again and expect the process to take no more than 1 full day to complete.



And sooo, you can expect to see the teaser and chapter 1 of "Girls Only" to be up on a fully functional Subsequent Visions by Sunday Morning if all goes according to plan.



That's all I've got going for now. Looking forward to the completeion of another huge project and maybe an easy week next week.

Idiots!

It started last night when I got a spam aim message from someone named 'Yearning Salmon' about how McCain (sp?) hates bloggers. Well, I hate politicians, so I figure that makes us even, and congratulations, Mr. Salmon, now I hate you too. No real loss: I didn't like salmon in the first place and I like spam mail even less--so AIM SPAM has to be the lowest of the low. So Obama doesn't respect his country and McCain hates bloggers--color me relieved, America. George W. reads the bible every night and still can't remember the story. Get some Ginko, Georgie. You obviously need it.



Then I get a post card from FedEx to confirm my address. You know...the one they mailed the postcard to--via USPS. Wtf? If the United States Postal Service knows where I live, if MAPQUEST knows where I live, then I don't see why you can't figure it out without me. Then you give me your local number...and don't answer your phone, so I have to go through your crappy 800-number automated system and when it gets to "or say More Options" and I say "More Options" it doesn't understand. Twice.



You know, I haven't had a lot delivered by FedEx, most of the companies I deal with ship either via USPS, or UPS, but a buddy of mine always said "if I want to buy something and the company ships by FedEx, I try to find someone else selling it for about the same price." Now I get why. I really don't have any patience at all for blatant stupidity. I guess I'm just not understanding of people who completely lack all common sense.

I've been eating like crap lately too, so I've been going to bed and waking up with an upset stomach and forcing myself to drink soda to calm it--I don't even like soda. I guess I'm just working a little too hard, but if I can get everything I plan to done by Friday I'll be incredibly happy. (I don't think I can make it happen, but I'll be damned if I'm not going to try!)

I'm shooting to have the website redesign and the 'Girls Only' editting done and up this weekend sometime--but I might have company again so who knows if it'll happen as planned. I got another huge chunk of html done last night: the art pages. Now all I have left is the contact and about pages, and other little nonsense stuff like that. The biggest thing I have left is checking all the links and putting it all on site--which I'm hoping I'll be able to get done in one night--I should be able to if I start right after feeding the cats and run straight through to bedtime.

...I think my eyes might fall out by then, but whatever. As long as it gets done quickly. I really want to have the redesign up and just start 'Girls Only' on the new format. I'll be putting up a few incredibly old short stories too. I don't write short stories much, so don't expect them to be all that good.

I found my camera last night, so I should be able to get on a few of those projects that had to be put on hold. I have some dream catchers that I want to put up on Etsy, for starters. The camera fell under the seat of the car, so I found it in the back seat under my winter coat, which still hasn't found its way to the dry cleaner. But now my cousin Kenneth's CD is missing in the car (bah! I can't win for losing!) I think I have it on my computer though, so no big deal if I have to make another copy--and if I don't I can get my dad to make another one for me.

While I'm on the subject, check him out:
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=203827272
He's actually pretty awesome. Got some music up there, some youtube videos too--the first one is of questionable sound quality, but the second one down is a lot better.

Geez, my eye is really killing me, but I will persevere! I'm not going to start depending on those damn glasses...but I think that's all I'm going to say for now.

Productive Weekend

island girl hair claw
Originally uploaded by gunaoverthemoon

Three day weekends can be a real godsend.

Thursday night I ran to Michaels to get some craft supplies and managed to get home in time to do a 20-minute power cleaning of the bathroom, before Last Comic Standing.
Once that was over I spent an hour hunting down my glue gun, and when I found it, made the island girl hair claw pictured, starting at 11:00 pm--I think my creativity is nocturnal, seriously. I always start this sort of project in the middle of the damn night...

Anyway, on the fourth my parents came over, but not until about one, and I managed to finish some preliminary work for an important art project. (It's top secret for now, but sufficed to say I'm on a time crunch.) Needs some cleanup, but the basic linework is done.

Saturday I woke up and painted the kitchen and hall fixtures I've been putting off for months now. The paint was so thin I had to do four coats, but thank god that's done and over with. After that I popped in Fate Stay Night (love it, btw, but too short--I'd have liked to see better development on some of the side characters)and turned on old, neglected desktop (which is still way better for photoshop than my laptop, in spite of being 7 years old), and started working on redesigning my website again. Worked on that seamlessly until about 3 AM. (Creativity=nocturnal, remember?)
Took the weekend off of 'Girls Only', since all I need to do is editing and formatting, and don't expect that to take more than one night, tops.

Sunday I finished up Fate Stay Night and popped in Cowboy beebop while continuing the web design, so now I can proudly say I'm about 75% finished with the redesign after only 2 days of work. Sure, they were 10 hour days and I'm wearing my glasses today because my eyes are killing me, but still, pretty good progress there!

GEEK OUT MOMENT: Lovin' the PageBreeze Free HTML Editor. I was never able to get into Dreamweaver, as good as everyone says it is (just couldn't really get into the layout of the program for whatever reason), and I've been using Free Coffee Cup for years, which is a damn good program too--but I decided to try out PageBreeze when I had to reinstall the program because of the Evil Force that is Vista, and it's very slightly different, but I like the differences. It's very user-friendly with only very basic html needed to make full use of the program.

Also introduced myself to Flickr this weekend, which I think is going to make my life a whole helluva lot easier.

'Girls Only' MAY be on site by next weekend. I'll let you know.

Hate It

I'm going to redesign my website again. I know the new design has only been up for a month or two, and when I was doing the redesign I liked it. It was long since overdue because I wanted to cover a lot of things that weren't touched on at all in the old design. The current design covers them and well, but it lost way too much personality in the process. It became too much 'business', not enough 'fun'. The site no longer feels like 'me and my stuff'.

I also cut a lot of corners making the site so it's not search engine friendly. At all. That needs to be fixed as well. I meant to do it and kept putting it off, and now I realize that's because I'm really not at all happy with the current design. I already have a really good idea for a new one, so I plan to start working on that probably by September/October, depending on other projects.

It's horrible when a good plan falls short, but I guess that's just proof that we're growing. It's also proof that I need to give up being fancy and dust off my html and my color chart hexagrams and stop relying on ImageReady because it makes me want to go overboard on the pretty and make Practical walk the plank.

Anyway, I just have edits to do now before 'Girls Only' will be premiering on subsequentvisions.com, so that should be on site by next weekend, life permitting. Exciting, huh? Well, okay, maybe only for me right now, but I hope everyone will enjoy it.

My July 4th weekend starts in a bit over an hour, and I'm probably going to miss the fireworks again this year. Last year it rained. This year Mike is working until closing, so unless I can catch a few sitting on my deck I guess I'm s.o.l. I don't even know what day they're supposed to be on, really. A little depressed about that--I love fireworks--but not the end of the world.

Dad might pop by tomorrow, but other than that no terribly exciting plans for the weekend--lots of cleaning and generic repair work, plus some art projects that desparately need my attention. (I'm on a tight schedule this summer.) I'm going to try to get as much of the housework and errands done tonight as I can so I can actually enjoy my three-day weekend--or spend it with a pencil and heavy duty eraser--either way.

Well, guess that's all that's going on right now--and all I have time to write about. As exciting as ever, I know, but what're ya gonna do? I don't have time to go out and get a life. ;p