I think I need to make blogging a daily habit, although I'm using Twitter a lot more now that it's part of my job.

Yesterday I went to get a new glasses prescription.  I had forgotten that optometry takes three zillion more hours than my regular doctor. They did all kinds of things that I don't think I've ever had done before, like dye drops to check pressure and various scopes to peer into the depths. The guy doing the exam was very nice and willing to chat and joke about the various machines, which is always nice. I like a doctor (well, in this case a student) who is willing to explain things. He dilated my eyes, which takes about a half hour to process in itself. 

So while I was sitting around letting my pupils grow, another student came in and asked me to take part in her research project - it would be very brief, non-invasive, and I could do it while I was dilating.  So I said sure, and went and looked inside a big box at some glowy lights, telling her when they changed color. Then my student doc and the supervising doc took turns peering into my eyes again, and at the end of the exam they said, "Your astigmatism is gone."  Hey, cool.  Turns out that if I don't wear contact lenses for two years, my lenses/corneas/whatever don't warp as much. No mention was made of whether warps in the soul bounce back, too. Fun times.

I'm leaving for San Francisco on Wednesday, and starting my packing this weekend. I'm beyond worrying about costume pieces, now.  I have a hat, that will have to do. My art is printed but not yet in the frames. I need to run a final back-up of my data before traveling with the laptop.

This is the extremely busy and stressful time at the office, and with the con just past and the one coming up I am not in a good place to be worried or stressful about fandom stuff. It's just not worth it. So I'm skimming most things, concentrating on getting back into a creative mode so I can do my art, and not worrying about anything but getting to Azkatraz and meeting all the cool folks I hang out with online.

In other fandom news, by the way, I've suddenly become completely addicted to fanfic in the new Star Trek 'verse. Mostly Kirk/McCoy. This has not been exactly my cup of tea in the past, but it's entirely too much fun now. I very much like most of the fics' take on Uhura, in any pairing. She's a mad genius. Also, I've noticed that fandom seems to have taken a huge shine to Sulu/Chekov, of which I really can do nothing but approve, right? My question is, why is there no love for Scotty, in any verse? Show me the Scotty fic, folks.

ApolloCon went well, and the post-mortem is in progress, and I am up to my ears in paperwork.
I also have less than two weeks to get myself together for Azkatraz.
I've ordered postcards for the meetups and general promotion. I've gotten the prints of my Gallery art, and may print up some more postcards or business cards with those images.
I have boxes everywhere in my apartment, and no sign of getting rid of all of them anytime soon, but I do need to do some cleaning and organizing here. 

General To-Do List: ( cut to spare the f-list )

[OMG, Colin Morgan and Bradley James are teh adorable, sigh. -- ok, back to work now]

Time to get off my butt and go to the store before the day is totally gone.

In case anybody didn't know, this weekend is Houston's awesome fantastic superriffic science fiction, fantasy, and horror convention -

ApolloCon!

Yay! It's a fun place to hang out!

And I really must remember to carry my camera around, and occasionally actually use it. :)

I've had a rather bad several days, interrupted by some really great stuff.
Been doing art, building furniture, being very depressed, having a great time at work, going to various meetings, being depressed again, calling therapists and doctors, and re-arranging my living quarters.
I got to go to the ancestral home for Mom's birthday on Sunday to play Ticket to Ride: Europe with Mom, my aunt, the scion and Hillary. And then on Tuesday Dad and I went to IKEA for dinner and to pick up the table I wanted. Mom came over yesterday to help me put it together, along with the laptop table and task chair that I'm using now for the computer. It's so much easier to do stuff with a workstation that lets me keep a good posture. Typing on the laptop on the coffee table just was not a winning situation.
Due to my two bouts of severe sorrow, I got behind on my art commitments, so I'm working tonight on finishing the last overdue one.
I'm also watching a DVD that isn't Merlin. Ha, ha, ha, I know.  I've watched Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Real Genius, and now I'm watching the really awesome episodes of Season 3 of Babylon 5.

OMG my love for Andreas Katsulas as G'kar just swells my heart to bursting.  God, what brilliance. Such a good show... such a loss.
Ok, moment over.

Now I'm having some dessert (angel food cake with strawberries) as a reward for finishing the line art for this overdue piece - with my fanart style, when the line art is final, the piece is 60% done.
Tomorrow I'm home from work, so I'll be finishing up some other obligations, including data entry, and more furniture arranging plus the disposal of all the styrofoam and cardboard.

I'm really having a lot of trouble with my GI stuff - Mom says I need to give myself more credit for dealing with a chronic health problem as well as I have, mostly.  It just got really frustrating for a few days - with all the other stresses, then feeling like I was unable to eat just was a bit of the last straw.  I've got to rethink my habits.  One great thing is that my Wellness Counseling at work has been going really well, including keeping a food diary. That will hopefully help once I can do a bit of analysis. Only another few weeks before I get back in to the gastroenterologist.

Mom's been encouraging me to meditate, and it kind of sort of maybe helps. And I should really do a tarot reading or something. What's all that stuff for if not to offer guidance in times of stress?

Oh, and bonus - despite the stress and stuff, I am happy to say that I still have fingernails.

Now it's back to the drawing board, or in this case the brilliant Wacom tablet.

Happy Birthday to my awesome mom!  :D

Once again, Mom and I attended the Progressive Forum- this time it was a conversation format between the organization's president and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.
She was pretty good, on-message most of the time, and told interesting anecdotes. Sometimes the rhetoric got a bit too flavored with righteous American Imperialism, but on the whole it was interesting and enjoyable to hear her speak. Even if I disagree with the political rhetoric, Madam Speaker Pelosi is a very accomplished woman who made history, and does have a powerful message for women.
We all got free copies of her book from the Progressive Forum, and after the talk she signed them. That's when I got to shake her hand, and so did Mom. It's funny, I'm this huge SFF geek con-goer but I have more books signed by politicians than by fiction authors.

So for weeks now I have been working in small increments to get a grip on Corel Painter (ok, months, but weeks in the case of this particular piece) in order to make some art in a different style.
This is an illustration for a fic in the BBC's Merlin universe, and I've used pre-Raphaelite inspiration, mainly Lawrence Alma-Tadema, especially for Gwen and Merlin, which some viewers may recognize.
I wouldn't say I was pleased with it, exactly, although I feel that it's an improvement over some of my previous Merlin attempts.  I do love Gwen here, though.
Now I'd best get back to working on the deadlines and commission.

Title: "We have wine."
Artist: zephre
Rating: G
Characters: Merlin, Gwen, Morgana, Arthur
Medium: Painter with Photoshop touchup.
Summary: An illustration from the Arthur/Merlin fic, Awash with Love by burkesl17. Merlin climbs to the top of the castle to discover Gwen, Morgana, and Arthur sharing wine and lamenting their situation.
Notes: A not-so-subtle homage to Lawrence Alma-Tadema and the pre-Raphaelites.


Here be the art...

Yesterday started early, picking up Kim right after breakfast to run around leaving Con fliers all over the neighborhood.  We got around to several spots, and then met my parents and Mark at Crescent City Beignets for lunch.  Mmm, seafood gumbo.
After lunch my parents and I met up at the Progressive Coalition's house party fundraiser for three City Council candidates running on progressive platforms.  It was a pretty interesting gathering, and I was able to stay to hear all three candidates speak before heading out for my ConCom meeting.
ConCom meeting went pretty well. We're getting closer to the big day, so things are very intense. Scheduling is getting tight and a much larger portion of my free time than I expected has been dedicated to Con stuff.  (Not a problem, but as this is my first year I'm still getting into the feel of it, gauging the job.)
After the meeting, several of us went to dinner at Sewadee Thai, and I had some yummy Squid Delight, which also served as a great breakfast today. 
Then I went home to put up my leftovers and stash my paperwork. I got picked up later for a lovely and fun game night in the neighborhood, so yay. I had a really grand time and they introduced me to Fluxx, a card game I had never heard of but really enjoyed. I'll have to get myself some edition of Ticket to Ride to bring for play another time.

I slept in this morning, and now I'm trying to get some more drawing done. My deadlines loom.
Also, despite several library books waiting in the wings that I have started but not finished, I'm rereading Lirael and Abhorsen by Garth Nix. So much for new stuff.
(Also, good grief how much do I adore the soundtrack to Merlin? When will they release the music from the later episodes?  It's really amazing.)

So that book meme got me thinking about books I read as a kid.

Does anybody else remember The Young Astronauts series?
It was all about an international group of high school/college age geniuses who were recruited by NASA in the very near future for a mission to colonize Mars. The books started with team assignments in Houston, training at JSC, and eventually launched the teams into space where their ships for the Mars mission were being constructed in Earth orbit. Then they actually land on the Red Planet, establish base camps, and have the beginnings of governance for the new colonies.
I think I read, perhaps, five books? Then I lost all track of them. I always got a kick out of the fact that one pivotal early scene in the first volume took place in the Galleria. And they all got to ride on the Vomit Comet, and figured out one character's medical issue based on playing an arcade game.  Fun times, man. I was sure that I still owned them all, too. I am certain that they were still in my house when I left for college, but they may have gotten purged at some point in the last 14 years.

Another series that I remember vividly that vanished into the mists of the out-of-print section was the Secret of the Unicorn Queen or some such, about a modern teen girl who predictably falls through a vortex into a fantasia in which unicorns are endangered by some evil empire, and gets adopted into the pro-unicorn freedom fighters. And wears her jeans until they fall apart. 

And then there was the ballet series, Satin Slippers perhaps? I don't remember what the series was called, but it was a FAME-type set-up of teenage soap opera at a famous ballet boarding school in San Francisco. I just remember this one storyline about the FMC's dance partner who injures himself but hides it to continue in his starring role, to the point of completely improvising a pas de deux at the last minute to avoid landing any jumps on his bad ankle.

The other thing I really enjoyed way way way back in the day was a series that was essentially Choose Your Own Adventure but with time travel, so you were always being thrown back into some real intense historical period and offered different ways of reacting to it. Looking back, they were probably awful in terms of historical accuracy, but they were entertaining. And I know there are still some of these in the house.  (A quick Google search tells me they were called Time Machine.)

ganked from E:

This week’s Booking Through Thursday asks:

“This can be a quick one. Don’t take too long to think about it. Fifteen books you’ve read that will always stick with you. First fifteen you can recall in no more than 15 minutes.”

1. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

2. Sati by Christopher Pike

3. The Blue Sword by Robin McKinley

4. The Princess of Flames by Ru Emerson

5. Dune by Frank Herbert

6. Essential Rumi, translation by Coleman Barks

7. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

8.The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran

9. The Seeress of Kell by David Eddings

10. Dragonsinger by Anne McCaffrey

11. A Light in the Attic by Shel Silverstein

12. The Girl with the Silver Eyes by Willo Davis Roberts

13. The Egypt Game by Zilpha Keatley Snyder

14. Contact by Carl Sagan

15. The Deed of Paksenarrion by Elizabeth Moon (I read it first as an omnibus edition)

Well, that was actually kind of hard, and I admit I couldn't always remember the correct author name. It's weird to try sifting through my mental book catalog to the sources of some of my most cherished scenes and characters.  You know it's been a long time since you've read them when you can recall the scene and the cover, but not the title.
Except for A Tale of Two Cities and maybe Dragonsinger, I believe that I actually still own every one of these.

No nonfiction, either.  Interesting.

ETA: You know what should have made this list that I totally missed? Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No-Good, Very Bad Day by Judith Viorst. Because it is a big part of the family literary canon, those books whose references and quotes have become part and parcel of conversation and lifestyle in my immediate family. Actually, it would be interesting to do a whole meme on the books that make up the family canon. Do many other families read series together? We all have our own tastes, and then significant portions of overlap, and random books that have made the rounds of everybody.

So my Mom told me she followed the link from my LJ to sign the petition at racebending.com about the whitewashed casting of the Avatar: the Last Airbender movie.
Is that everybody now?  Go sign it!

Also, the TV and DVD player are both installed and working beautifully, and MY GOD Colin Morgan is adorable when his face is a foot tall in my living room.  ;)

Now all I have to do is actually build my IKEA furniture.
And finish my art before deadline.

The thing about TVs is that they come with so many possible connection options that nobody packs cords in the box, and I didn't even think to myself, "Self, you should pick up some composite cables so that you can make this TV work with your cable box," so I can't make it work with my cable box yet.  And I don't have a VGA cable handy either to test it with the computer, so all of my plans are kind of dead in the water.  At least as regarded the TV. 
So I put together bookcases and arranged them and put my DVDs on a shelf instead.
That's one more box deconstructed and ready for the recycle bin.

ETA: Apparently it may not be the cable that's wrong, but the way I had the TV set up. Will try fixing that next, before spending money on extra wires.

Here I am at my lunch break, thinking that I have not been doing much blogging lately.
Things have been happening, thoughts have been thunk, writing has not really happened but a lot of art has gotten done...

I've been calling on my parents a lot for help with the apartment, arranging and unpacking and such. I have some stuff from IKEA that hasn't yet come out of the box - perhaps I should have that Flat Pack Party after all.
I think that this evening I shall go buy a television at last, and maybe put some books away.

Lately I've had lots of meetings and Meet-ups and a seemingly overwhelming amount of volunteer commitments, mostly online. How did I end up working on two back-to-back cons? Urgh.
I haven't got a costume for any of them, either. Although I may go shopping for something to wear to the dances, at least. 
I'm test-running some less-demanding-than-Adobe art software on my Mini, so that I won't have to lug Ginevra and all of her expensive software to San Francisco for the art demo I'm supposed to do. Does anybody out there use openCanvas regularly?  Got any good tips? Tutorials?

Other randomness:
Read The Graveyard Book, and it was excellent. Haven't yet managed to finish any of the other books I took from the library. Rereading the Enchanted Forest Chronicles omnibus instead.
Ran through the entirety of Avatar: The Last Airbender again. The finale chokes me up, man. Beautiful stuff. I may need to get DVDs.
Still re-watching Merlin, too. I'm easy.
Really, really wish I had Ghostbusters  on DVD.
I've made a lot of grilled cheese lately.  Also used almost every pan I own. Now I just need to make cookies (or pizza) and I think I will have used all possible kitchen tools at least once.
Have made minor progress on the current quilt, but won't really get far until the sewing table stops being the "put everything down here when you come inside" table. Working on it.
Been keeping a better food diary for the past few days, along with a general journal. I've stopped trying to separate everything and am just keeping everything in one book now. This combined with regular check-in with the Wellness Counselor at Rice should help me get a better handle on things. I hope.

And that's enough for now. Lunch break is well over, and I have things to do.

So, been doing art to try to meet deadlines, and sorting my stuff out. Have also been going to various estate sales and this weekend will hit some resale shops and possibly a Memorial Day sale at a major department store.

Also watching Avatar: The Last Airbender Season 1 again, because it's just that awesome, and I needed to cleanse my palate of the publicity photos released recently.  I've gotten through almost all of the first season today - how nice that I got out of work early.  This series is full of such great lines.  It's wonderful. 
OMG how much do I love Sokka?  SO MUCH. 

This week we started experimenting with the printing press at the Art League, using clear acetate and watercolor paper.


And after I did my run on the press, I didn't feel inspired to add watercolor to the pieces so I did a new one.

This weekend I cleaned and rearranged with my parents' help, and it went really well.  I'm still debating how best to arrange the things I have, but now almost every box has been opened and its contents put someplace.
Today I cooked for the first time - serious cooking, I mean, not just heating water for tea. I made rice noodles in chicken broth with Quorn nuggets, bell pepper, snow peas, mushrooms, and bean sprouts.  There is a big bowl of leftovers in the fridge.
I also made a big list of cooking items it would be helpful to own.  :) 
Now I have eaten, cleaned up the kitchen, and am watching the last epic hilarious battle scene from Van Helsing.
I have lots of art deadlines that I need to get moving on, so that's my plan next. I have one piece almost finished, and the composition of another in my head. I hope to get the one finished and the other sketched tonight.

On the down side, when I came out of the grocery store after work, my car had a massive crack across one third of the windshield from the passenger side. It wasn't even that hot out, but the sun was beating down.  I'm kind of pissed off about it, not that I actually have direction for my anger - these things happen when one owns a car.  I'll have to see how long I can drive with it, and if it gets any worse I'll have to have the windshield replaced.

I finished the painting from last week, which was an exercise in color.
This is Donna at the Lexington Avenue N train platform, based on a photo I took in 2005, before we both moved to Houston. This has a touch of prismacolor in it from when I was trying to even up the lines and shapes, but it's mostly free brush over light graphite outlines.  Next time I do something like this I may actually block out the letters with a resist first. But it's groovy despite the shaky typography.


And then I did a quick still life, as that was the class for today. I think it still needs something, maybe a bolder hand with the lavender background, or some highlights or somethnig, but on the whole I'm very pleased.


Next week we're supposed to try prints. Fun!

I love going to see movies with my parents. They are a riot.
( slightly spoilery riot within )

Also, there was a preview for G.I.Joe: The Rise of Cobra and I squealed in excitement in the first three seconds, which made everybody look at me funny. Sorry, but I recognized it immediately by the menacing Christopher Eccleston surrounded by evil types. Yay!

Mom did comment that so many of the movies we saw previews for were dark and violent. I was horrified by the preview for the new Tarantino film, and the ones for Transformers and Terminator both involved a bit of robot apocalypse so they were also really dark. Terminator moreso than Transformers in terms of actually being almost always dark and dreary with guts and explosions, but... can we maybe make a few good SF movies that aren't marketed solely to video gamers?

Every year for Mother's Day, this is the hope I post. Let us make of today and everyday a remembrance and an ongoing labor toward peace and tolerance.

Julia Ward Howe's Mother's Day Proclamation, written in 1870:

Arise, then, women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts,
Whether our baptism be of water or of tears!

Say firmly:
"We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, the women of one country, will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."

From the bosom of the devastated Earth a voice goes up with our own.
It says: "Disarm! Disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance of justice."
Blood does not wipe out dishonor, nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil at the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel.

Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace,
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God.

In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality
May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
And at the earliest period consistent with its objects,
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions,
The great and general interests of peace.

Two events today with my parents:

The 2009 Art Car Parade was wonderful, but very very hot.  There was a great little breeze that eased it occasionally, but it was really just hot. The cars were fantastic, our neighbors were great, and it was a fun time. Behold, the two bunny slipper cars:

See more (to the tune of almost 300 photos!) at my Flickr Set.

And Hidden Treasures from the National Museum, Kabul at the MFAH. This exhibit was so moving, I almost cried several times, and I definitely went into paroxysms of joy over several pieces.  Not just the photos and stories about the war-torn land full of archaeological excavations that have been abandoned (and the Bamiyan Buddhas, damn), but the glorious artifacts themselves - amazing and beautiful works the like of which I have very rarely seen.
One Roman medallion in particular made me go back for second and third looks, it was so delicately beautiful, a tiny infant Eros with the most beatific expression, embracing a butterfly Psyche.  And three ivory table legs in the shape of voluptuous and elaborately dressed Indian women. And the most amazing thing of all, a drinking vessel of Roman glass, painting with figures in inks that retained all the brightness and cartoon-vividness of a souvenir McDonald's glass, I swear. Unbelievable. Then came the room full of burial gold from nomads of the Steppes, and my art inspiration just went into overdrive. I may have to spend some quality time with some textile history books to envision the full beauty of the garb they must have worn.
It is incredible what was saved, and just imagining the scope of things that must have been lost, whether to looting or destruction, boggles the mind. The exhibit holds a tragedy and a miracle all in one, and I highly recommend that everyone who can get to it go see it. It'll be in Houston for another week, and opens at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in June.

On the list for tomorrow: IKEA and Star Trek.