I should mention:

The first time I taught for Wharton Business School which was earlier this year (over the summer), Matt met me at the front door after my first day of class to break the unspeakably tragic news that Christian Salcedo (our bass player for In The Light) was killed in a tragic accident that morning. 

I just taught for Wharton a second time last week, and after my first day of teaching, Matt met me at the door to break the news of Grandmom's passing earlier that day. 

I will be teaching for Wharton again in March of 2017. I DEMAND that everyone I know and love should just spend my first day of teaching (Monday, March 6th) in their bed, doing nothing strenuous whatsoever. Just read a book and nuzzle, OK?

Thank you, drive through. 

(x-posted to xtingu.livejournal.com)

Haven't blogged in eons. Life has been whizzing by.

Matt's super-active, fashion-plate, socialite grandmom (age 95) was diagnosed with aggressive stomach cancer about 3 months ago, and it's shocking how quickly she went from vibrant and happy to a shell of a human, just withered and weak. We all rotated vigil and visited pretty much daily, keeping her company, playing cards, BSing, and keeping her spirits up until she no longer had the energy. About three weeks ago she seemed to stop fighting, and she left us on Monday (exactly one week ago). We had the wake yesterday (Sunday) and today we buried her. I will miss her very much; we had brunch together nearly every Sunday since Matt and I got together, and I will never forget how she accepted me into the family without question. In her final weeks I painted her nails so she felt a little more human. She told me she didn't like my new hair color, which made me happy she'd tell me. :-)  I loved her very much, and it's hard to believe she's gone.  Her ex-boyfriend-turned-dear-friend Harry will also be missed, as I imagine I won't see him around any longer. I'm not lying or exaggerating when I say I have a pretty good crush on Harry, all 89 years of him. 

Music-wise:
Played in two Eagles tribute shows (the band, not the team) a few weeks ago, which were fun but bittersweet since it was In The Light's first tribute since losing Christian (our bass player) so suddenly in the accident this summer. 

Played in a huge tribute to the 80s this past Saturday at The Queen as a fund raiser for City Theater. I sang a few songs but was so, so pround to be in the band. I sang backing vocals on every song, and got a Roland Handsonic electronic drum kit and programmed and played the crap out of it (or played actual hand percussion) for almost every song... even played some sax. That band was a true Dream Team of every instrumentalist I idolize, and it was an honor to be the weak link on that stage. 

Between Grandmom support and the tribute shows, Hot Breakfast has taken a bit of a back seat which happens from time to time but I don't like. Now that our obligations are over for a bit, we are focusing on getting our Christmas EP recorded and released in time for our December 17th Very Dorky Christmas Show at The Queen. We plan on turning the upstairs stage into a cheezy living room (complete with fake fireplace and couch and front door), and our Narrator will tell the audience how Hot Breakfast just doesn't have the Christmas spirit this year... as random musicians "stop by and knock on our door" and cheer us up by playing a song or two. It should be a really fun night and a cute homage to silly late-70s variety shows. (If only we could get Charo.)

Anyway, we buried Grandmom today, and after the repast we all went home for naps, and the core Casarinos got together for pizza. Betsy's sister and brother and their spouses came to town from Connecticut and California respectively, so it was nice to talk to them. We got on the topic of "Have you ever had a relative or friend visit you after they died" and that led us to talking about Edgar Cayce which led me to now have three Edgar Cayce books on my nightstand. I love my second family so, so, so much. 

Right now I'm laying in bed as Matt is playing guitar in the other room. There is nothing I love more than hearing the sounds of Matt's creativity echo through the house; the music he writes resonates with me so deeply and so perfectly, and I can't believe how lucky I am. I feel very loved and so warm and snuggly.

We'll be at my folks' place for a week starting this weekend... my dad is going to Asheville, NC to visit his sister, and my mom can't really be left home alone, so Matt and I are going to keep her company. We're bringing up some recording equipment so maybe I'll be able to lay down some lead vocals on the Christmas EP this week while Mom snoozes. (Mom likes to snooze. Luckily the back room where Matt and I stay is clear on the other side of the house.)

I'm sorry I haven't been very present online... I have been reading LJ and OPW but just not having the energy to respond. Caring for Matt's grandmom every day plus work travel and rehearsals was taking every brain cycle and every ounce of nurturing energy I had... and ultimately I ran out of juice.

(Speaking of which, it's probably time for an iron infusion soon. I should get my labwork done.)

Life has been insane, but as of right now, it is finally calm. It is bittersweet, this calm... but as always, life goes on. Everything continues. The leaves are changing color and starting to fall, and soon we'll nestle in for the winter, and with any luck will put the house up for sale this spring.

More soon.

originally posted at xtingu.livejournal.com

Hi! I am a queer, non-binary person whose pronouns are anything but "it", and who is also a mom married to a straight guy. No, I don't find any of this contradictory. It took me a long, strange trip to get here, and I am really quite zen about it. I am not fussed about misgendering (from my perspective, you pretty much can't misgender me), which in no way invalidates those who are. 

This has been your National Coming Out Day public service announcement.

Insane day. A yadda yadda decided that everybody had to have a floopy blawnox 2016 because they didn't feel like maintaining floopy blawnox 2012's anymore even though they sort of promised but not really? And suddenly I had to cope with all the fallout because the floopy blawnox 2016 doesn't quite fit into the floobistan. Quite. Almost but not quite. You can make it work, but it takes all day and then you have to use a replicator to fix all the other floobistans but some of them are slightly irregular and you have to use the replicator AGAIN, and pretty soon it's 6pm.

In addition to my day job, this also impacted One Post Wonder, just now, as some of you who saw my test comments will likely have guessed. So here's hoping you can read this.

❤️,

#1 floopy blawnox herder

I decided to go a little sideways with my reference for this one. Look familiar?

Also - the darkest of my Prismacolor markers was going dry. You can see it in his sweatpants.

Tools - I 'cheated' by using pencil to rough out the design so tha it would follow the reference closely enough to be recognizable. Next was the cheapy ballpoint pen to draw the design. Sharpie pen to very line weight, and traditional Sharpie for the 'bold' stuff.

Day One of both Inktober and Drawlloween. Went with something a little goofy, and light hearted to start things off.

Used a pic of Bugs Bunny running to get the body posture.

Already noticing that some of the proportions aren't really right, but I'm not too worried about it.

Used a cheapy ballpoint pen for the base drawing, a Sharpie pen for inking,  traditional Sharpie for the bold, and Prismacolor markers for the greys.

Tomorrow? Noisy Zombie. I have an interesting idea....

First, I should point out that I hate the name Drawlloween. I love the concept behind it, and I'm taking part, but there's just something about the name that is very much like fingernails on the chalkboard for me. I think it has something to do with the way some people have asked me throughout my life to "please drawl me something?". That's not the word.

I'm not really a grammar nazi. Not really. I just play one in my head.

Okay, yeah. I kinda am.

Anyway. I love the idea behind Inktober and Drawlloween. (Links are to their respective FB groups.) This year, I decided to take part in both. Yes, that's a little bit insane.

Unless, of course, someone got the idea in their head to combine the two. Which I did. So I created a quick cheat sheet which can be found here: Inktober Drawlloween Combo Prompts. (Document also contains the list of prompts for each separate group.)

So - I don't know if any of you were thinking of taking part, but if so, feel free to let me know! (I'll probably be posting the images here - or at least links to them throughout the month.)

Good lord did I just stumble upon the way to lose ALL of my time. I've been rediscovering Reddit over the last couple days and finding a lot of stuff that piques my art curiosity.

I just found the /r/Imaginary.../ subreddits.

Example:  /r/ImaginaryVikings/

Once you're there, note the menu structure along the top of the page.

You're welcome/I'm sorry.

That sounds a bit more dickish than I mean it, of course. Here's the thing though - I've realized that I'm spending way too much time on social media. Again. 

So it's time for a revamp of how I interact with social media, and FB in particular since it's the worst offender. This may seem like self centered ranting, but I decided to post about this because I think many folks might benefit from using my 'process'.

My process for checking Facebook is pretty straight forward: 1. I look through / click on the notifications I've received since I last checked in. 2. Once I'm through those, I might read my wall/stream/wtf they're calling it these days.

But I noticed that there's only a handful of types of posts folks are making on Facebook, and they are:

• Political posts: Okay, I get it. You have strong feelings about one or both of the candidates. That actually makes me happy because it means you're invested. Most of the folks who read this post? I probably agree with your mindset. Those who I don't agree with? As much as I would like to think myself a 'bigger man', you're not likely to sway me with your vitriol towards my candidate. End result? I'm not reading political posts.
• Charity posts: There are a ton of really worthwhile charities out there who deserve our resources - be that time, money, or effort. Chances are pretty good that I'm already familiar with the charity you're doing your 'awareness' post on though. I can't easily put in time helping with the run/event that is coming up because I'm not going to be around for it. I genuinely wish I could, but.... And lastly, I already put what moneys I can into a handful of charities that I've picked out. End result? I'm not reading charity posts.
• Pet photos/videos: Look, I'm a sucker for cats and especially dogs. If you know me at all, you know this to be true. But holy hell are there a shit ton of pet videos on the intarwebs. If it's not the cat/dog/other of one of my friends? I just don't have the time/bandwidth to spend with it. Which kinda brings me to the close of this post:

tl;dr - I now look through those same notifications, and when I'm deciding whether or not to click, there's one simple question I ask: did the post originate with my friend? Yes? Click. No? Move along - nothing to see here.