Title: Embrace
Artist: zephre
Rating: PG
Fandom: BBC's Merlin
Characters: Merlin/Arthur
Notes: For the Merlin/Arthur Hug Meme


(image at the drawing comm)

I got a clean bill of health yesterday, and got a shot in each arm (flu, tetanus).

Ran by Spec's to get cookies and cheese and found a few other things to try. My food experiments have been kind of eh lately. Sometimes they work out, more often they leave me feeling gross for the rest of the day.

Also, been watching Avatar: the Last Airbender Book 2, which tends to make me very emotional. Between Appa and Aang I just cry at the drop of a hat in this book (In the next book, it's Zuko and Hiro that make me cry the most), but luckily Sokka is there to bring me back with a smile.

Time to go run some more errands, and hopefully reclaim my Firefly DVDs. By the time I get home, I should be able to find Merlin's latest episode, too.

I still haven't finished the quilt.  Argh. Soon, though.  Soon.

Dad and I went to see Star Trek on the IMAX. It was pretty hilarious. I noticed lots of details I'd missed the last (10) time(s) I saw it.

Have now been mostly spoiled for the first episode of Series 2 of Merlin but I find I don't mind so much. Not sure if that will continue for the entire run, but what with having to wait two weeks for any opportunity to see it, a bit of spoilery speculation is fun.

Still running deadlines, and now I'm also pinch-hitting, which is fine but more deadlines. I thought I'd get to work on tiny shrines this weekend, but it's so not happening. Time to get some time-management going.

-- Jaye and I are going to hell.
-- Jaye fell asleep in the panel on Consciousness.  (I fell asleep in the Putting the World in WorldCon panel)
-- I feel like I walked several miles along the corridors at the party hotel.
-- the Polish restaurant in Old Montreal is awesome, as I remembered it, and I really must get back there for dinner.
-- We are still in search of decent coffee, but the place in the Palais serves "cafe mocha" ghetto-style, which is hot chocolate with regular coffee poured into it. OMG, it is So Damn Good.
-- became a pre-supporting member of the Texas 2013 bid. Yay.
-- random guy in the panel about Genocide in Literature spent 5 minutes of panel time summarizing the most recent Star Trek movie.
-- Charles Stross predicts human drivers will be illegal in 30 years...
-- Paul Krugman to Charles Stross: So where do you get your ideas?
-- Opening Ceremonies included a really good contortionist. Those folks always make me cringe a little, though, when they fold their spine backwards just below their diaphragm. Eep.
-- Neil Gaiman seemed shorter than I am when I ran into him (almost literally in a narrow doorway). That is so weird. Also, he did not offer Jake a blow job. (But hey, it's only Thursday.)
-- Margarita ok. Aquavit excellent. La Fin du Monde local microbrew AWESOME.
-- Now Jaye and I are going to bed.

This is actually not so much a report as a Yay! Photos! post, with occasional commentary. That link goes to my Flickr set, which will in turn sometimes sync up to the Azkatraz Flickr Pool.
Here's my Mug Shot:

( Further adventures under the cut )

I've forgotten the LJ usernames of half the people I met already, but if anybody wants to pop in and remind me, feel free!

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...

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.)

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.

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?

Museums visited:
- The Museum of the City of New York (Awesome! This is a small but mighty place. Wonderful paintings of ironwork from historic brownstone front stoops; new miniature paintings and dolls from the Dollhouse; an exhibit about Dutch New Amsterdam and Hudson; and a big display of dresses from the Valentina line.  Oooh.)
- The Guggenheim (terrible - they had the entire thing dismantled to install a new Frank Lloyd Wright exhibit, so you couldn't really walk any of it. We paid $6 to see about 35 paintings in the two open side galleries and take photos from the ground floor.  Meh.)
- The American Museum of Natural History (Fun! We went to a planetarium show, I fangirled Neil DeGrasse Tyson, we petted the meteorite in captivity, we went through lots of amusing taxidermy and dioramas, learned about Human Origins, and saw dinosaur bones.)
- The Metropolitan Museum of Art (Pretty good. I went specifically to see Madame X by John Singer Sargent, but she had been taken out of her gallery. D'oh! So I visited William, as I do every time I am there if his gallery is open, and saw lots of other 19th and early 20th century paintings, skipped through some of the Asian art, zipped through European Deco and Medieval Art, lingered in the Classical Sculpture atrium, ran through the Greek and Roman galleries, and did something I have never done before - I went to the Roof Garden. Yay!)

Also trekked across Central Park by way of both open levels of Belvedere Castle. 
Result of the two days walking: two blisters, one on the bottom of each foot.  Ow ow ow.

I also got to have lunch with Carolina today, and yesterday I met some great tarot folks whom I will see again this weekend.
Last night was Liam's Birthday Quiz at the Baker Street Pub. We had a nice group of Squirrels out for it, surprising Liam, and we gave him a card from all of us. (Note to self: never go into the children's card section of CVS with E. Had we goten any more hysterical I'm sure they would have thrown us right out.)

Also, have eaten Vietnamese, Thai and Indian so far. No major stomach issues. Hooray!

Tonight is the Rocky Sullivan's Pub Quiz out in Red Hook, and I expect we will be getting in from that quite late. I am leaving in the morning for the conference in NJ.

Went to the library after work, picked up three books.  Noodled around with my tablet, trying to figure out why it's not working properly. Started Nation by Terry Pratchett.
I got so engrossed in it, I ended up staying up until 1am to finish it.
Brilliant, amazing book. Totally different from Discworld, but with a few touches that throw back to that series. Incredibly moving, especially in the first few chapters when all you have are two young protagonists with no shared language, dealing with tremendous trauma and grief.
AMAZING.
Go read it.

Mom and I just watched The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency on the cable, and it was totally awesome.  Loved it.  We knew it would be the best thing ever when Mma Ramotswe climbs the ladder and paints the crucial apostrophe on the sign.  Win!

The whole thing was just so moving and gorgeously filmed and good gracious Botswana itself is a star.  The graphics for the credits are amazing as well.  Really lovely design there.  We're looking forward to the series.  :)

I just watched the first five episodes of Avatar: The Last Airbender and omg it's just so CUTE!
They have some mighty themes to deal with, though, in low-rated cartoon.  I'm looking forward to it - how many seasons are there total?

Happy Pi Day!

Last night I went to see Jonathan Coulton with Paul & Storm, of whom I had never really heard before last summer, nor ever seen perform, whether on youtube or live.  It was a really fantastic performance with lots of humor and audience interaction. Paul and Storm's opening show had me falling over laughing. Jonathan broke a string on his guitar in the first song, then later discovered his mouth harp was in the frame backwards. It being Friday the 13th, he joked, of course things went a bit awry. But none of that really interfered with the show, or the music. I could have done without the hair-flinging, loud-singing guy sitting one row down from me, but every concert-goer has crosses to bear, and as concerts go a hair-flinging, loud-singing obnoxious dude is better than drunken groping or being fallen on.
At one point near the end the entire balcony was doing Thriller-type zombie gesturing from their seats while shouting "All we want to do is eat your brains." Yeah. Nerds in groups. I should have taken photos. (The few I did take will be posted later, mostly of House of Blues itself.)
I went out with a party of six folks from the Houston SFF community, all active con-goers or organizers. We had dinner first with a few of them, then met at House of Blues downtown, where there were a bunch of other local nerds that folks in my party knew.  We ended up with seating right near each other in the balcony, oddly enough.
After the concert, we all went to a diner/coffeehouse on Westheimer and had food and drink and conversation until after midnight.  I did not get back to my car (I'd been ridesharing to avoid the downtown/midtown parking crunch) until 1:30 am. 
I haven't had a night out like that in quite some time, so it was pretty awesome.

Today I woke up at an ungodly hour to take care of my unruly stomach (it's pretty much a clockwork alarm all on its own - 6:25 am it wakes me without fail, just before my alarm.  I nibbled on a rice cracker and some orange juice and chatted with mom for a few minutes, then crashed again. I got up for real at about 11, and looked soberly at the packing I should be doing...  and turned away.
Instead, I cut some batting and the backing fabric for the quilt in progress, pinned it all together and trimmed it, and now I'm working on attaching the border pieces to the front before getting in there with the machine quilting.
Ideally I would like to have this finished in time to take it to New York at the end of April and present it to the recipients in person. I may not finish it before I move, but I'll definitely try to get as much done as possible before then, and keep the pieces in a separate box so I can find them pronto in the new place.

I just finished giving the kitchen floor a sweep and clean and mop, so I'm taking a sit-down break in front of a fan to type this up. My only minor angst today is that I really wanted to watch Ghostbusters while I did my sewing but I couldn't find the DVD.  I am pretty sure that I actually bought my own copy, but I could be mistaken. (Sorting out my stuff from the family stuff will be such fun!)  I put on The Last Unicorn  with Real Genius in the bullpen instead. 

Ok, and Dad just told me a joke he heard on Prairie Home Companion and I didn't know enough about music to get the pun in the punchline without clarification. FAIL.  :P   He needs to tell it to Peter.

This is just a quick update for those following the drama on the Personal filter (and as always, if you want off a filter, just drop me a comment).

Everything is ok, I have lots of apartment leads and one, maybe two viewings lined up for today.
Things are progressing. Work continues to be awesome, so at least that's one place where nothing is falling apart.  It's getting busier, but that's really ok.
I signed up for ten more weeks of watercolor class.
GI meds have not made any real dent in the problem, so it's probably back to the drawing board. I expect a call from the nurse later today to discuss it.
Dad has been out of town this week, which is sad because we miss him, but it also means that I got dibs on the DVD player so it's been all Merlin, all the time.  w00t!  (I know, I know, I am so silly when I get deep into a new fandom. At least the art has been fun.)
Have not been sewing lately, but that really needs to change. Quilt now probably solid with cat hair, despite being covered up with crinkly paper.  Whoever said that cats avoid lying on things that make noise has never met our cat.
Have been largely avoiding LJ and SFF flaps online, but am not unaware of them. I find myself gaping in disbelief a lot, but I've also found some really excellent new folks to read. 
Also, have been reading real books. In the middle of Alexandria, finished Lackey's The Fairy Godmother, and have made a start on Privilege of the Sword.
Umm...  I think that's a pretty good summary.

So, you know, don't worry too much.  Big thank yous to the folks who have been helping me out on this long-distance. You know who you are. I love you guys.

The new DVD player works. Setting it region-free was easy. Mom and Dad got very snarky at my beloved Merlin.
Luckily I've watched all the episodes at least twice already (but never so smoothly or with such high quality video) so I didn't miss anything while explaining the whole "Camelot High" and "Magical Renaissance Festival" stories.

Yay.
Second half of Series 1 (And Robin Hood Series 1) are en route.

OMG, libba_bray posted about this and I WANT ONE!

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

The awesomeness knows no bounds - especially note the info about the illustrations. w00t!

Last night I finished watching the first season of Merlin. This morning's weird dream was unrelated to the show. It was actually about my family and home improvement. And definitely weird. But it was definitely a festival of television last night, with a marathon viewing of the last few episodes.
Thank goodness for the interwebs, I say!
Such a fun show. Merlin is a doll. It's too bad I find doing TV-based fanarts so intimidating. Perhaps some of my friends can convince me to give it a try anyway. Portraiture is something I'm good at, right?

Got a meeting today and I'll probably pop into a discount store on my way home, then it's a weekend of arts and crafts!
I really want to finish the original illo I've been plugging away at since the New Year, and I have some character portraits I hope to squeeze in before the exchange deadlines loom.
I think one of my goals for 2009, now that I'm part of a weekly art posting community (not that I need to pick every single week), will have to be being a bit more choosy in my exchange sign-ups. I do want to have time to do more tarot cards and more original or other-fandom stuffs.

Ah, my files have done copying.  Time to get ready to go!

This is what happens when I watch web TV before bed with the Snupin chatroom...

I dreamed that I was in a beautiful antique bookstore with Colin Morgan, Bradley James, and Emma Watson.  (Presumably my dream-self had been de-aged for the adventure.) We were drinking red wine and playing a Latin word game which for some reason involved a lot of standing up and walking around to rearrange words on the wall. Or possibly to write them on the wall in light, I am still not entirely sure how the words got up there. Luckily for my slightly inebriated dream-self, Bradley seemed willing to be leaned upon an awful lot. (And having not seen any DVD extras yet, I suppose really I was hanging out with their characters, but in a British bookstore. Except that Emma was obviously Emma, not Hermione.)
Anyway. It was really quite vivid and odd, and sadly there was no dragon in the cellar. I think that every good antique bookstore should have a dragon in the cellar.

As for Merlin, I watched the next two episodes before bed and while continuing the general snark, I thoroughly enjoyed them.  I do wonder what Morgana does all day besides get dressed, pose dramatically by windows, mouth off to her guardian, or annoy Arthur.  Surely she must have some occupation?

And for those who have watched the show, ( spoilers for Episode 1.03: The Mark of Nimueh )

This show is so cute, I can't stand it.