In the life ...

My rant on why I'm not going to go see GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra is up at Pink Raygun: [link]

Ja mata ne!

In the life ...

My cousin went to Africa for a school program thing for college and has contracted the fatal form of Malaria. They caught it early, so things are hopefull, but I'd appreciate any healing energy thrown her way!

In other news, I just did a painting for the Tex-Mex chain Tijuana Flats -- they're holding a charity event and needed someone to do the art for the invitations! They're going to be auctioning off the painting, too! Cross your fingers for me that this will lead to other work!

Now, I think I'll go play some of the new Harry Potter game for the PC, which I got in the mail today -- can't wait for the film to come out!!

Ja mata ne!

In the life ...

First, a moment of silence for Mollie Sugden, who passed away today at 86. "Mrs Slocombe" (of Are You Being Served? and Are You Being Served Again?) will be greatly missed, as well as fondly remembered as a source of much amusement and bonding between my friends and I ....

Been back from vacation since Monday evening, and I'm still tired. XD The rain hasn't helped -- makes me sleepy. Still, had a good time, was glad to see old friends, haunts, and family -- but I missed Alice terribly and am glad to be back with her!

The fam reunion was interesting -- 10 to 25 mph winds kept blowing food and stuff all over the pavillion! XD But otherwise, the temperature was nice. And had fun at the zoo with ~Tincrash and his lovely lady, saw Up with them and our friend Tony, had fun shopping at various Asian supermarkets with ~UrsulaPatch, and had a nice lunch with ~kinoethermes and her sister, as well as went to our old workplace with ~kinoethermes and then had some delicious sorbet. She also gave me a kick-ass tote bag she sewed herself! So I had a good week. ^^ Hope you all did too! Hopefully I'll eventually get some of the photos I took of the zoo and the Field Museum posted at my photo account...

Opening commissions again, with all I ended up spending on vacation. *cough* Only one slot at a time, though. Who wants it?

Ja mata ne!

In the life ...

Remember how I won that ~qodartclub contest a little while ago? Well, one of the prizes was a commission from one of the club members, ~xenoform.

I asked him to do one of my characters, Sekhmet Darkwing. In my New Avalon storyverses, souls often fragment, so that multiple people can assimilate shards of the same soul. My main character, Selina Brightwing, has a shard of Sekie in her, hence the name Darkwing; they're sort of opposites (yet not entirely, 'cause Selina can get vicious on her own at times). It's Sekie's "divine duty" to cull the crueler elements from the human herd. She has to give eagh person five chances to change their life; each time she (or any of the Hunters) catches someone doing a malicious deed, they bestow a "Hunter's Claw", a scar that can only be seen by someone with psychic ability, on the person's brow. When the person accumulates five Claws, they have a Hunter's Tally, and become prey. Sekie feeds on the body herself; she feeds the soul to Ammut (a demon that is part crocodile, part leopard, and part hippo), who is basically a sort of soul recycler. Selina carries a weapon of enchanted silver that can change into whatever she needs and which, for her, is usually a labrys; for Sekie, it's usually a silver bow that shoots arrows made of flame. Selina wears a pentacle pendant that is an ID tage of sorts for New Avalon; Sekie wears it as well. And Sekie's wings are made of shadows.

So this is the commission:



Is it not absolutely breathtaking??~xenoform did this in just a few *days*, too! And he made it even better than I'd imagined, with some brilliant suggestions of his own! Ammut turned out amazing too. And I just cannot get over Sekie's smile -- he totally nailed it! Look close, and you can see that the background includes both pyramids and the Chicago Skyline, as Chi-town is Sekie's current hunting ground -- I think it turned out fantastic! Thanks so much, ~xenoform!!!

And now, I bid you all adieu, as I probably won't make it back to DA before I go on vacation -- I'm working under the wire on a commission. I'll be back at the very end of the month. In the meantime, I now have a cell phone (which I have named Hedwig), and plan to twitter while I'm away. Provided I don't waste the batteries on Sudoku.

Bright blessings to you all, and Merry Solstice to those who celebrate!

Ja mata ne!

In the life ...

Luke was my beloved computer.

The night of (the 5th) there was some bad lightning out here. Luke's power cord was plugged into a surge protector, but the DSL wasn't, and despite my puter being turned OFF, lightning fried my motherboard -- I could turn the puter on, but I couldn't get a monitor to pick up the signal (tried it on two moniters).

Dad has been wanting to get a new computer for a while, so he decided to do it and give me his old one, intending to switch out his old c drive for mine and stick my k dive in the extra slot, leaving his own extra drive in.

Unfortunately, my c drive didn't have the drivers necessary to get onto the internet via the router with his hardware. We spent about SIX HOURS setting things up, then transferring my old c files to his extra drive in the hopes that we could reboot, but despite his best efforts, we coudn't. So he put his c drive back in.

When he rebooted, we discovered that he had somehow wiped my K drive clean, despite it having been fine that afternoon, when we tested stuff in his tower in the kitchen.

240 gig of material GONE. (To give you an isea of how big that is, an hour TV show is generally about 1.25 gig.)

And it only recognised the router for about five minutes before it wouldn't do it anymore, so it may be the router that's the prob after all.



Thaaaaaankfully I had backed up most of my art & writing files last month, but I did lose my latest projects (including my contest entry for =Ellygator's contest), as well as many hours of TV I was slowly burning to disc, and some music. And my bookmarks. *sigh* And some Tart organising stuff I'm going to have to redo. *headdesk*

I also lost all my emails from the last year or so to my verizon account, after having spent a goodly while last afternoon making a PST file and putting it on the K drive. Ugh .... But Dad is looking into a disc recovery program, so cross your fingers!

I am soooo drained .... And now I have reloading everything onto the "new" puter, Cerebro, to look forward to. XD Cerebro is a bit noisy for my stastes, and outlook runs a bit differently on him despite he and Luke having both been E Machines running XP. And while Luke was very quiet, he had these sounds he made that I had grown to understand -- this sound meant a drive had "woken up" and I had to wait for another sound before I could do anoything, that sound meant something was formatting, etc. I miss him already --- terribly!

Oh, and if I have been in contact with you via my verizon account, please email it again so I have your email -- I lost all my *addresses*, too!