Operation: Reinvention

As a part of my plan to fill my days with something other than nothing, I've decided to add a physical component to self-improvement. Do some hardware changes in addition to the software, yanno? It's a really intelligent time to start, too: term paper season. I like to make it easier for myself whenever I can.
I'm sure some of you recall my past fitness resolutions and how I promptly stop mentioning them a couple weeks after I make them. Rest assured, it's not because I was saving you from having to read about the meaningless minutiae of my life, but rather because I didn't actually stick to them. It attempts to combat this problem, I have turned to the Internet, and discovered two programs to begin: The Couch to 5K Running Plan and The Hundred Push Ups Training Program. In both, I am at level 0. I've decided to remove the day-offs from the running plan, and instead take a break every 3 days instead. Time will tell how this pays off. I also cannot do enough good form pushups to begin the other one, so I'm gonna have to train in order to be able to train. Being weak sucks.
Once I have completed these programs, school will be over and I'll be back at home, where I will begin actually using equipment. Yes, the blowflex. I think I'll also continue running, and bring the dog, but it depends where I'm working and how intense the bike ride will be. Once the pushups are done, I'm planning to start working on The Prison Workout in addition to bowflexing, running and biking.

Ambitious, no?

I have always wanted to be physically strong, and since my little brothers have become stronger than me, which of course they weren't for the majority of my life, this desire has grown. I envy the complete control strong people have over their bodies, and showing up my brothers is of course a nice bonus. It's time to stop wondering when a genie is going to come along and grant my wish (yes, this was my actual plan) and start doing something about it.

If any of you want to long distance workout with me, that'd be cool. I think you should definitely torture yourselves to motivate me and provide moral support.

Pictures from my Camera





These are Roman ruins on a mountaintop in Turkey. Seriously, the top. of a mountain. There was an amphitheatre and everything.














Dogs escaping the midday heat on nice cool marble right outside the doors of the Athens Museum.














The famous Blue Mosque in Istanbul. A really cool place, but ladies bring your headscarves is you want to look inside (and you do).

The witty title is the hardest part.

Hey guys! For fun, I was going to give you a list of the things I do in my week. Then I realised that it's not funny-pathetic, it's pathetic-pathetic, and decided not to. True story.
Another thing that is pathetic is that I signed up for a visitor counting service for this blog, because I have long laboured under the hope (false, as it turns out) that I have a hoard of lurking fans who constantly check to see if I've updated.

Since I signed up, the visitors to my blog have been exactly 0.
Why doesn't the universe worship me and fulfill my every whim like I want it too?
(Bitch bitch bitch)


Pictures from my Camera






As promised, my house. This is the kitchen. Yeah, the entire place is either really hard to photograph, or I suck. It's 50/50.















These are the stairs and the door. And my shoes.














Another angle of the kitchen! Now there is a table covered in 50 lbs of old newspaper.















The living/tv room. And also the dog. And porch.
















The bathroom, as you can see, is complete with toilet paper and soap, left by the previous tenant.



I would show you the bedrooms, but at the point I took pictures, they are completely empty and very boring.

My mouth tastes like old coffee and battery acid.

So I'm pretty sure some of you have noticed and been irritated by the complete dearth of blog posts lately. This is due to several factors, foremost among them being the horrendous case of academic writer's block I seem to be suffering, and when I can't do assignments it doesn't really feel fair to blog or draw. Which sucks. So I am making a determined effort to get me life more organised, my house clean, and attempt to do something creative every day so I can turn my brain back to ON.

I have discovered the cord to my camera, so now I can show you guys pictures! I won't be able to give you current ones, and my camera is brain damaged or something, but I've got a couple hundred (mostly from vacation and of dog) that should keep me occupied for a bit. Youve got that right, this means a new segment! (I need to make a list, and at some point I'll start tagging stuff.)

Pictures from My Camera! (Click to embiggen)










This is Riker being a milkmaid or something.












These are the gates at Buckingham Palace. I also saw some corgis on the grounds, but I wasn't quick enough on the draw.















And this is the mighty Acropolis. It may even be the Parthenon, but I need to refresh my Ancient Greek architecture. (Shameful that I don't know.) I'm pretty sure it is, cause you can kinda see some scaffolding. They were restoring it.












Next time: Pictures of my new house.

25 things about me

So this meme (or whatever they're called) has been going around, and I finally got tagged on facebook, but I thought I'd put it here with slightly different answers before I edit it and (maybe) put it up there.

1. Sometimes I stay up all night, because I can and also because I'm afraid of running out of time.
2. I have a, hopefully irrational, fear that my irregular sleeping habits will make me more at risk for degenerative brain diseases when I'm older.
3. Blogging kind of makes me uncomfortable, because it's all about me and I cannot fathom anybody being that interested in my life. It's a lot of pressure to entertain.
4. I sometimes like to imagine what the world would be like today had the Edict of Milan never existed.
5. I've never been more introspective than when I was in 1st year, the worst time of my life.
6. In order to feel motivated to do something, I have to feel there's a good reason. It could be just altruism, but there has to be a reason that I feel makes my effort worthwhile.
7. I'm a big ol' feminist, and all around equalist.
8. I really don't like or agree with any of the labels that could theoretically be applied to me.
9. I wish I could be paid to learn things - book knowledge and experience knowledge and physical knowledge (like sports/ martial arts)
10. Despite disagreeing at an ideological level with the founding principles of the movies, I thoroughly enjoyed both Death Race and The House Bunny (and I won't feel guilty about it.)
11. When I was little I tried to figure out how to pee standing up. It really doesn't work.
12. You mess with my friends, I mess with you.
13. I love a clean house, but hate cleaning (don't we all?)
14. I don't follow any shows because a) I never know when they're on and b) there's usually a game on at the same time. Despite this, the tv is usually on for a couple hours a day, even just as background noise.
15. I pride myself on being open-minded and accepting (although I have issues with the word)
16. I don't feel like I can be myself around my family. I've never been that close to them (don't get me wrong, I love them dearly).
17. I want dogs and I want to travel, and those things don't really mix. So I'm gonna have to get my traveling done sooner rather than later.
18. Sometime in my life I want to live with a friend.
19. I want to roadtrip somewhere this summer with my peeps, and we will sing along with ABBA and mixed cds.
20. After I graduate, I want to spend some time just having fun - traveling, doing out-of-character things.
21. My favourite food has got to be the DQ Blizzard, or similar style milkshakes. Healthy, no?
22. I like to peruse craigslist, despite knowing I'll never actually respond/buy anything.
23. I can never have too many graphic t-shirts.
24. Of all the superpowers, I wish I could stop time (and shapeshift).
25. I still can't drive.

Yay, you finished!

Operation Cheesy Annhilation

So in between keeping myself up at night and bemoaning my inadequacies, occasionally something happens that won't be tedious to read about, and this is one of those times.

For a project of his, my brother had to make a sphere, a cube, and a cone out of uncommon building materials. For the sphere, he chose Cheesies. Picture, if you will, a soggy, squishy ball about the size of a baby's head, looking not unlike a very orange brain. It got marked today, and he brought it home, and immediately his first though was "let's burn it." But seriously, what else were we gonna do? Fire is awesome.

This is how we found ourselves standing on the porch in front of the barbecue at night, attempting to light this abomination of dairy with a bic. After a few false starts, it caught, and boy was it brilliant. It burned with intense, bright flames for about 10 minutes, and then the flames crawled inside and began to make serious headway on the white-glue saturated interior. The smoke was absolutely noxious, and you could hear the cheesy embers sizzling and shriveling until they lost most of their mass and looked like little ash caterpillars.

It was after a futile attempt to get the other side going when we gave up, dowsed it in water, and now here I am, writing to you, and smelling quite strongly that I've been smoking something very mysterious.

A "Major" Dilemma

Wow, blogging at home alone on a Saturday night... I need some friends. Or just one friend.

Okay, on topic now.
Whenever I tell people I'm taking anthropology as a major, they always ask me what I'm gonna do with it, and my answer is usually "no idea". I really love learning about anthropology, and astronomy and archaeology and geography and basically everything I take. The problem here is that I don't want to BE an anthropologist, or an archaeologist, or anything in the university applicable careers. I did want to be a writer or an editor, but I completely ditched English as a major. (Not that English really applies there.)
So right now, I guess my life plan is learning, and continuing to jump from summer job to summer job, in the hopes that eventually I'll land somewhere I really like. And I suppose I could give the whole writing thing a serious try - at least it'll be fun.

I'm sorry, were you talking to me?

So over the past few weeks I have, unintentionally and unconsciously, turned myself nocturnal. I was staying up late all through the holidays, and once the semester booted up that didn't change. I'd just started having naps when I got home. It's come to the point where if I get to bed before 4 in the morning it's a really good day, and my naps have stretched into 5 hour marathons.
Needless to say, I haven't been very productive AT ALL, and let me tell you, your brain actually needs sleep to, like, think. So tonight I hope to get to bed at the very latest midnight, and try to turn this crazy bus around.

The Daily 'Dote
The other day, as I waited for class seated on a bench - dozing with my head in my hands - I heard a voice:

"Have you ever done that?"

No response seemed to be forthcoming, so I lifted me head and looked around. The only person remotely near me was a middle aged women the exact proportion of a pear standing several metres away, and staring at the climbing wall in front of us. Assuming at this point she was talking to me but still doubting I'd heard what I'd heard, I mustered up the clever response of "Hmmmah?" When there was no reaction, I tried again with an actual word. "Pardon?"

"Have you ever done that?" She said again.

"Uuhhh, no."

"Me neither." And then she wandered off, and I went back to sleep.



Also, a question for you; is "whatever" the new "like"? I heard this the other day, with whatever retaining the delightful upwards questioning inflection that goes with like.
"I was in the cafeteria or whatever?, and getting a smoothie or whatever?, when I totally had an idea."
I am terrified by this possibility.

This is why I hate my alarm.

This morning I had a very enjoyable dream. Instead of arms, I had wings, and there was some sort of enormous warehouse environment, and I had some superhero type friends, and we were fighting some evil dude and his minions, but all that was secondary to the flying. The entire dream I was soaring around the warehouse, going super fast, or super high, weaving through the aisles. It was amazingly detailed, I could feel the strain in my arms as I took off, the effort needed to make altitude, the feel of wind under my wings. I even landing on the top of a wooden pole, like one of those old wooden power poles, and I almost lost my balance because I had only my sneakers to stay on. It was SUCH an awesome dream. I fricken love flying dreams.

And then I woke up, and I've been pretty depressed all day. It's a commonly expressed sentiment, but by god I wish I could fly, more than anything.


Anyway, I'll be home soon, and won't have to worry about school anymore, which will be lovely.

I have a headache.

S the other day I stayed up all night to do a project (which is probably crap anyway), and the next day in school I kept falling asleep in class, which was likely very noticeable as I sit at the front and stuff. And we learned about acupressure points that make you wakeful, and they worked so I didn't fall asleep again.
ANYWAY, the point of the story. Normally, when I am tired, I draw in the margins of my books to keep me awake, but on Tuesday I fell asleep while doing that. Which meant I sleep-drew a little bit, which made my day. I'd drawn an elephant head, and when I woke up there seemed to be this bird-shaped tumour on it's back that kind of tapered off into nothingness.

Book Reviews

I've read a few books recently, and I thought I would share my opinions about them here.

1. Bloodtide, by Melvin Burgess
Set in London after a catastrophic few years, this dystopian novel has a very promising start. It follows the story of a 14 year old girl and her twin brother, and chronicles around a decade in their lives. The story begins with a treaty between the two rival gangs that rule London, to unite and join forces against the half-men, constructs of a forgotten time in humanity and about whom little is known. The premise is a good one, but the very few of the characters invoke empathy. The novel is violent, graphic and disturbing, but it lacks an anchoring character to make sense of it and drag it out of gratuity. Book 2 is especially disappointing, as too seldom the suspense is terminated prematurely, leaving you unsurprised at the apex. The people and animals in the novel have little redeeming value, despite reacting realistically to the situation, and perhaps that it why it is ultimately unsatisfying; the reader expects the protagonists to rise above their situation, to master it, instead of being an eternal victim trapped by circumstance. Basically an alright book, but not really for those who are sensitive to violence, or awkward sexy stuff (I don't mean that all sex is awkward, I mean the sex that happens in the book is).

2. Mouse Guard: Fall 1152, by David Petersen
This is a graphic novel, set in a fantasy world where mice have underground, medieval civilisations. Three of the elite "Mouse Guard" are sent on a routine mission, and discover a conspiracy with far reaching consequences. The story is simple to follow and gripping, and the characters are distinct and personable (and adorable). The art is fantastic, and drives the story, as it can go pages without dialogue. The settings are varied and rich, and while it is detailed, it is not overly busy or distracting. My one complaint is that the action scenes are sometimes a little difficult to follow. Overall very entertaining, I would recommend it to anybody.

3. The Outlander, by Gil Adamson
Now THIS is a story about a protagonist who rises above. Set in Western Canada at the turn of the century, this book follows the flight of Mary Boulton, a young woman widowed by her own hand, and chronicles her adventures. The book starts out slow and was initially a little confusing, but it soon picks up and becomes difficult to put down. Adamson's writing style is uniquely fascinating, laced with subtleties that give the narrative a rich and complex feel, while keeping the story flowing. The pace and language of the novel changes drastically throughout, keeping the reader bound to Mary Boulton's surroundings and circumstances, and convey emotion and tension very well. One of the best books I've read this year.


I own all these books, so if you would like to borrow one let me know in the comments and I'll bring them home with me for Christmas.

Prepare Yourself.

In lieu of important school work I am gonna tackle some of my unfinisheds, so there oughta be a lot of drawings coming in the next couple of days.

First off comes this horse. I have been drawing a lot of horses lately, and this is mostly due to the fact that there are a LOT of tutorials on how to do this. There are also a lot of tutorials on wolves, so I expect I'll move on to canids at some point. This particular horse has a lot of anatomical issues, but I noticed them after I pretty much finished, so I don't really want to redo it. Lazy!


















I also expect that I'll start making real backgrounds, but that will probably be when I am happier with what's in the foreground.
I want to go to Michael's, and buy a selection of those little plastic animals for references, because searching the Internet is not that much fun. Plus, Toys!

I have also been attempting to brainstorm ideas for a comic, because I think this is excellent practice and a good way to track progress. I've thought of an idea of a rat detective, the adventures of a baby crocodile, and a lady minotaur so far. I seem to be staying away from people, which is good because I cannot so much draw them. I will give you, my public, some character sketches and preliminaries to critique, and please toss your own ideas out. Should it be a serial comic, ala Lackadaisy? A serial interspersed with social commentary and witticisms, ala Shortpacked!? Or should it just be a day to day, whatever I feel like drawing, like the Perry Bible Fellowship?
(You should also check out The Abominable Charles Christopher)
Also, is it obvious I found the hyperlink button?

Warning: Severe Self-Deprecation Ahead. You are now entering the Mopey Zone.