Normally I like to pass birthdays by like any other day. Maybe use it as an excuse to read a good book or watch a movie instead of work.  Maybe go out to eat for dinner. I also don't really enjoy emphasizing my birthday because my age only reminds me that I've had such a late start in life. JUST now graduated from school and still no hope of moving out, being independently wealthy, and being generally a burden on the family until my life gets sorted out.

But today's birthday was really special. I received so many comments and messages from folks online with birthday wishes. I now folks might not think it means much since you're not actually telling a person yourself, but it really means alot to me. I feel so disconnected at this point in my life. I don't go out much thanks to killer work schedule and hardly get the time to hang with the dear friends I miss. I always feel like an irresponsible or bad friend because I cannot hang with people who are always inviting me out...nor do I keep in touch as well as I should. Thanks so much for letting me know that I'm not forgotten and taking the time even to do something so simple as type a little post meant for me.  I can only hope to chill with you guys in person sometime soon and let you know how much such little mundane things mean to me.

And, just to plug a wonderful talented lady and dear friend, I also received the following bday gift art from Sam Hogg. I can't stop staring at it. It's just so awesome in every way, from detail to how well it fits the character.  My boyfriend also surprised me with a drumroll list of a new computer with dual core processor and lots of sexy terrabytes of hd space!  I can't wait to check it out next week.  He also pre-ordered Assassin's Creed 2 for me...which was sad since I don't have a PS3 and was just going to borrow his.  Hayley and her husband also surprised me with a gracious little donation to fuel my goal of playing Aion at some point.

But then my mom decided randomly to get a Playstation 3 as a combination Christmas and birthday present too!  Our family has finally ventured into Blu Ray territory where everything is shiny and new.  

As a random plus for today, my $25 gift card from Amazon for my rewards points arrived in the mail, which will probably go towards Christmas pressies for folks.  I also had a great find at Hobby Lobby where I got a leathermaking kit that was on sale (I am one who gets uncommon glee from discovering good bargains) so now I have sponges, a leather sewing needle, a mallet, three stamps, two bottles of dye, and tons of awesome leather accessories just waiting for my designs!  With a 40% off coupon, that was only $14.97 for all that!  I can't wait to get started with more mask making with these new tools.  The leather wallets and other goodies are also going to be great Christmas presents for my family and friends.

I'm so inspired by today. I just thought I had to share something new and positive after so many sad journals.  Thank you all for making today special and I hope you will spread the love in your own lives!

So as my mom and I were walking out the front door on our way to the store, a green anole skittered inside and b-lined for the dining room. My mother screamed. Not knowing why she was yelling, I assumed there was a giant spider in my hair (as they have been making webs across our doorways lately) and prepared to take a dive into the front yard while scruffing my hair with my hands to make sure there was nothing in it.

After a moment, I realized my mom was retreating indoors and still yelling and that there was nothing in my hair. The green lizard was retrieved safely and alive, scolded for escaping in the wrong direction, and set free on the surface of the house where it resumed sunning.

It was a much needed laugh for us. It's been so lonely around here without Blaze.

I hope to return with a more serious journal entry later with some good news! The convention season is upon me and things are starting to change in my life, little by little. I just hope they continue to change for the better!

Cross-posted from DA. 

One dark and stormy night, my brother spotted a little black puppy on the side of the highway. Despite his rather gangsta outward appearance, Roland was true to that soft gooey inside of his and decided he would pluck this puppy from a no doubt gruesome fate on the highway and bring her home to us. The next day, I was rudely awoken by the inquisitive paws of a little fuzzy black form who was dumped on top of my sleeping self. With her round tummy, huge floppy ears, and big nose, she looked more like a piglet than a dog. 

We named her Blaze for the shock of white hair on her chest and the tuft of white hair at the very tip of her tail. She was a little mixed mutt Labrador, shy, but playful. Loyal to a fault. She fit in perfectly with our family of shy oddballs. Her nicknames included Blazer, Blazie, Booger, Boogie, and Booge. It was a wonder she knew her own name! 

Blaze stayed with us for 9 years, all in all. When I went off to college, she was my mom's constant and loving companion, though I suspect she would lay on my pillow while I was gone. When I moved back home, there was a mysterious amount of black dog hair on my pillow case that could have come from no other source I can imagine. She was always at my feet, especially during thunderstorms, which she was afraid of. She loved the car ride to McDonalds, the long walks down the road where she could chase bunnies and her most hated adversary, the squirrel. 

She was so strange and special. Whenever I dropped my pocket angel book on the floor (which happened often), she never chewed it up, but rather picked it up carefully in her teeth and gave it to my brother every time. She was also the first dog we've ever had that learned how to open doors for herself. She ate my dad's mounted Honduran Piranha which I used to HATE. (But don't tell him that, he still doesn't know!)

Towards the end, she never lost her zest for life, though the cancer in her liver had drained her of all body fat and left her hardly more than a living skeleton. She saved every scrap of energy to wag her tail and give us love. She made sure she never missed a walk OR a meal, despite our vet's amazement at her still being able to have an appetite, much less walk with us every day. How she seemed so happy with a tumor the size of a volleyball inside of her abdomen, we'll never know. In the end, she did not want to go. Her surgery revealed her cancer to be inoperable and we chose what was best...to let her drift off in her sleep to a place where I hope with all my heart we'll be able to meet again.

Our family has had many pets over the years, each of them special and loving. For us, a pet is another child of the family, not merely a replaceable animal. Each one leaves a hole in our lives that can never be filled completely. Each one is unique. Each one has given us unconditional love.

We spread her ashes this weekend along the road she loved to explore. She can chase bunnies and squirrels for as long as she likes now.

Here's to you, Boogie, you made our lives so wonderful and every tiny mundane thing, like a trip to McDonalds, exciting. You will be missed...

So I went fishing with my boyfriend and our gal pal, kuriah , this past weekend to de-stress and enjoy the relaxing onset of Spring and the flowering colors of nature.  We caught at least three fish per person! (and probably caught the same one more than once, greedy bastard).

As per tradition, I knelt to lay a kiss on the poor small mouth bass my boyfriend was holding in his hands for good luck and so that the fish would return.  The bass twitched, as live fish are tend to do, and slipped from Kev's hands, where it proceeded to thwap me in the face cartoon-style with its tail, then fell on top of my breasts and flopped around vengefully for a few seconds before falling back in to the water.  I am lucky it didn't end up, tail skyward, sticking from my bra.

Yes, Kevin, you fail the boyfriend test.  But I was too amused to be angry and love you anyways.

Life is stressed, per usual, but all in all, good.

What an exciting night we had last night! I spent most of yesterday laid out with a really terrible headache. I can weather a broken finger or the flu and still get work done, but headaches are my kryptonite. I can't get jack done except for staring forward and groaning...much less reading, proofreading, and arting. Messed up sinuses run in our family on my mom's side so any time the pressure changes in the air, it's generally our weathervane brains that signal something's up.

It was around sunset that our night started to get wild. We had been watching the doppler radar on tv light up with red and purple over our area when suddenly our satellite went out and the rain began. We knew there was a dangerous storm in the area, but didn't really take it seriously till the power went out and the dog started to get restless. My black lab Blaze hates lightening and thunder in the first place, but this time, she started to bark and run back and forth. With our little elevator out, we made a mad dash for the basement with golf ball sized hail pelting down on our heads.

( OMG HUGE HAIL! )

That's the hail in my father's hand! I've never seen any that big before in real life. Lucky for us, whatever tornado was in the area passed by quickly and we were unharmed, our property undamaged. It must have been a close call for us to get the worst part of the hail!

We had dinner at Burger King and read books by candlelight until the power came back on. It's amazing how silent everything is when you don't have tv, computers, or anything else distracting you. Sometimes it is nice to sit in the dark and watch the lightening. I'm one of those odd folks who likes the smell of burning candles.

So that was the end to our exciting night. Everybody say hello to Georgia's tornado season!

HELL HAS FROZEN OVER!  I've just recieved word that all of my professors have signed off on my Thesis.  After all the blood, sweat, tears, saliva, and sanity, the journey towards getting a Masters is nearly complete!  Now I just have to turn it in to the library and department and call it a day!  Seeing it all printed and bound in all its half an inch thick glory has been extremely surreal.

I am so happy I nearly broke down in tears in the car.   I've NEVER been happy enough to cry before.  It was a very strange experience.  Can this really, truly be the end of so much hard work?  I've been so used to the thought of never being free from school that it's a hard thing to grasp not having that hatchet hovering over my  head.

Am I REALLY graduated or is this just a glitch in the Matrix?  What am I going to do with my time now??  Can I REALLY work on my own thing now???  OMG FREEEEEDOOOM *Braveheart yell*

I've been talking with my father about a few options on how to share this thesis with others and he's been urging me to publish it as a book.  Do any of you know about academic publishing?  I can't imagine anyone actually wanting to read an academic paper for fun...  I am thinking perhaps, once I'm not sick of looking at it, I'm going to rewrite my thesis, strip out the academic bullshit tone, and write it with a tone geared towards artists.  There are so few books on e-marketing for the arts specifically that I think I could add something rather than contribute to the growing pile of  "how to" books.

Buut that will wait till I've tested out a few more methods and actually gotten to the point where I have succeeded as an artist and feel more qualified to publish such a book.  It's one thing to say the market is glittering with opportunities when you've not really pursued them yourself and a whole other thing to say "yes I HAVE succeeded as an artist with these strategies and here is how they work".

Or perhaps I'm just being too hard on myself?  Would you buy a book on e-marketing if the author was an emerging artist and the book covered various strategies and the strategies of already established artists?

*wanders off to ponder and SQUEE*

WOOO I'm so excited!  We're going to see Cirque du Soleil Thursday in Atlanta!  I've always wanted to see them ever since I saw photos of their performance and heard the music.  It's so enchanting. I can't wait to see them live.

And what's this?? Nightwish is coming to the Masquerade in Atlanta???  Double squee!

Hurray for seeing things I've always wanted to see:)  Now I have no excuse for not seeing them.


( See a random meme behind the cut )

I never thought I'd see the day!  Holy crap...I HAVE A CLEAN WORK SPACE!  After a massive Consuela attack, I managed to rustle up some leftover plastic drawers from my dorm stuff in the basement and get all of my extra stuff stashed away.  Man it feels good to have a work space that isn't buried in crap!  It's been a constant challenge trying to figure out where to put things after moving back home from college.   I couldn't do artwork in the kitchen without having a territorial crap war with my dad and I couldn't work in my room thanks to a dorm room's worth of stuff being dumped onto my desk.

And now it's done...done I tell you!  Let's see how long I can keep it neat and tidy.  Why is this even important, you ask?  Because I'm compulsive and need a clean space to be able to focus on my craft.  Every day I came home and groaned at the idea of doing art because it meant having to fight for a space or shove aside a ton of stuff to find a flat surface.  Now, I can finally sit and bask and enjoy my craft.  I wish I had a 'before' image, but those who have visited will know just how awful it was.  



There's even some space to set up the tripod for my camcorder so hopefully there will be some art video tutorials once I figure out how to do some video editing.  If there's anything you're particularly curious to learn more about, let me know and I will see what I can do.

This is a personal milestone for me, even if it seems mundane to most.  Let the art madness BEGIN! :D

 Well the toll has chimed and the new year has started.  I had the best New Years ever with Brenda, Kev, Catty, and Jack, a small gathering, but fun.  There was much wassail, cookies, and rum to be had!  With an amusing dance around the bonfire of cheapo fireworks for good measure.   We also watched The Frighteners, old skool horror movie with Michael J. Fox.  It's amazing the plotlines and jokes you notice when you rewatch old movies as an adult...molesty murdering ghost couple, wut?

This year has been a strange one, and somehow I feel it's been the last year of my 'childhood'.  I can no longer sit around and expect people to take care of me.  It's time to step up and take control of my plans, regain my focus, and start making good on all my plans!

Well I can honestly say I've experienced why people should not drink and drive first hand now.

I was coming home from a birthday party last night around 3am in the morning when it happened.  Kev was driving while my friend Catty and I were making half-asleep conversation.  We suddenly heard a *thunk* and watched, dumbstruck, as the car coming up behind us in the right lane hopped a sidewalk at about 80 miles per hour, crashed into a phone pole, and spun to a halt, her back end spinning out towards our passenger side and thankfully missing us.  She literally came out of nowhere as we were passing someone on the left.  Thank god for that, as I'm not sure what would have happened if we had been in her way.

We pulled over to make a statement, and that's when we realized how lucky we all were.  The car was totaled and whatever was left of her passenger side along with half of the passenger's seat was wrapped around the phone pole and stuck tight.  If she had someone with her, they would have been dead.  If she had spun out just far enough, she could have hit our car and caused god know's what damage on the side Catty and I were riding on.  As for the driver, it seems she escaped with a broken wrist, possibly whip lash..and three beer cans.  Apparently she had been kicked out of a bar and continued to drink even as she was driving out.

Stupid...incredibly stupid...and incredibly lucky.  We could have been hurt or killed, just as she could have.  She's not getting her license back in a long time, I imagine.  But it got me to thinking about how relieved I was to think all of my friends had designated drivers last night.

Please, everyone, you do the same, if you haven't already, before you end up wrapped around a phone pole.  You might not be so lucky...