We usually wear name tags in choir. There's  more than a hundred of us so. Anyway people like to be creative with them. I have a hallowe'en themed one I'm wearing this month but needed to make one for November. 

It's a kind of intarsia with felt and foam. I cut the pieces on the laser. It was "fun" working with the different colours. Did you figure that cutting blue/violet things with a blue/violet laser might be very different than cutting black things?  I spent hours working on the right settings and insets to get the kerfs to match. 

I have to glue all the bits to something, probably black construction paper, but that's a project for tomorrow. 

oh, yes, I'm singing alto. 

I woke at three in the morning to answer a call of nature. I'm one of those people who has to have moving air on me at all times when I sleep. So, in a pitch black room I open my eyes and I see a halo of light in front of me. I quickly blink to see if I'm hallucinating, but nope, it's still there.

Because I'm me, I alternately close one eye and then the next. The halo disappears when my right eye is closed. Hmm, says I. What fresh Hell is this? I lay there while my sleep-addled brain turns this problem over.

Finally, I realize that my right eye has the perfect paralax to see past the spinner of the fan and be able to observe the faint spark from the brushes in the fan motor glowing in the dark room.

Cool.

POODOO INHINT
  CA Q
  TS ALMCADR

  TS BANKCALL
  CADR VAC5STOR

  INDEX ALMCADR
  CAF 0
ABORT2 TC BORTENT

OCT77770 OCT 77770
  CA V37FLBIT
  MASK FLAGWRD7
  CCS A
  TC WHIMPER -1

  TC DOWNFLAG
  ADRES STATEFLG

  TC DOWNFLAG
  ADRES REINTFLG

  TC DOWNFLAG
  ADRES NODOFLAG

  TC BANKCALL
  CADR MR.KLEAN
​​​​​​​  TC WHIMPER

Yesterday my hubby and I chose to skip a JMU production of Twelth Night that we had bought tickets for months ahead of time in order to see Alien on the big screen in Charlottesville. At first I felt a little bad because I'm sure the students did a really good job (they always do), but I'm deciding to consider it a donation to a favorite institution. I'm sure the people who were sitting in the seats next to ours wondered why anyone would not show up to something for which they had paid $40 (the show was sold out), but it wouldn't be the first time. We've attending many events at the Forbes Center where we knew seats were sold and then not filled, so I'm sure we weren't the only ones who didn't show up. I wish I could've done both events, but the showing of Alien was a last minute thing (as far as I can tell) and there were only two showings on Sunday, both of which conflicted with the play which was going on right in the middle of them. So we chose to spend another $25 (plus the gas to get there) and see one of my all-time favorite movies on a giant screen. And we were not disappointed! I've watched Alien countless times, but I was only 11 when it came out and apparently I missed the re-release that happened for it's 25th anniversary, so I was thrilled to celebrate its 40th anniversary with about a dozen other fans in the theater. It doesn't matter how many times I see that gruesome thing pop out of John Hurt's chest, I love it every time! Definitely money well spent!

I have tried both Google's my maps and scribble maps and boy, it is a pain in the ass to just... make a map of an interesting route. With some waypoints and some connecting lines. it's not impossible, it's just so fussy that I say forget it. Is this always so bad? Is there a tool that everybody swears by? should I just give up on the idea that I should be able to do this on my phone?

So it took me a little while, but I just realized that I had accidentally created two accounts on here. At least I never wrote anything on the other account. My first clue was the fact that I couldn't find the couple of other posts I had made on the other account. I figured they had just been deleted because I hadn't written in so long, and I was ok with that. But then I saw my own name in the people list and I'm like "Wait a minute!" LOL So now I'm good, just excuse my stupidity. :)

It's October, and Halloween is right around the corner. I haven't painted myself into the corner, but I've had some pretty good Halloween costumes in years past. No easy task for my panoramic physique. I've been assembling elements for this year's costume, but y'all are just gonna have to wait for the big reveal.

My dog, Gna had a tumor removed in March of '18. The biopsy results were that it was an aggressive cancer. And while my vet got narrow margins, with this type of cancer they'd like wide margins. It was located close to her genitals, so there was just no room to get wider margins. This morning I noticed she has another mass in almost the same spot. I'm bringing her in next week for my vet to have a look-see. She's 8-9 as near as we can determine, so it's going to be a judgement call. And there's always a chance that things have gone seriously sideways internally. Today has been really hard, I've been sitting at work torturing myself with what-ifs.

I turned in my submission for my monthly writer's group and I'm really happy with it. I suck at short stories, but this one came in around thirteen pages and just under 4,000 words. The 30,000 foot view is it's a sci-fi/milfic/vampire story that takes a hard left turn into Lovecraftian horror. The writer's group meets on Friday. I'm looking forward at least that far.

That is all, and I think that's enough on my plate for right now.

There's a quiet gearing up to the holidays. And to paraphrase Anne's post, a ripple in the force with the current political climate.

The weather had a sudden shift like a window slamming shut. I ain't even bov'vered. The bright sunny days stopped having an effect on me last month. It was more of a passive noticing, "I should be making the most of this somehow."

Hmm.

I've finally agreed to myself I need a cleaning lady. I've already begrudgingly let someone else do most of the lawn cutting, but the cleaning has been mine for so long, my source of pride. But I have giant gaps where I just can't anymore. I finally broke down and asked a former cleaning client for her maid's number, only to find out she's booked solid. Aargh!! The good ones usually are.

I detest the idea of having to hunt for and vet someone. So back on the backburner it goes.

So a friend sent me a link to The Toolbox Fallacy (the video above).

He sent it saying: "If you're pushing yourself to do Inktoberfest, I figure there's a chance that you aren't where you wanted to be with your art, by this point in your life.

The following 7 minute vid is a potentially impactful one, about how too many of us wait too long and have too many excuses for not taking more action sooner, toward becoming who we want to be."

First, I thought it was very nice of him to try to give me a gentle prod in the right direction.

The tl;dr of the video is "Don't wait until you have the right tools or environment or... whatever. Just do the thing that you love to do." In my case - make art.

I learned something, but it's not what you might think it would be.

I've been aware of what this person calls the Toolbox Fallacy for many years. For me, it's pretty much never about "I have to have X to make Y." In fact, to the contrary, I've spent a non insubstancial amount of time cheerleading others to 'just get started' with whatever they have on hand. Or, at worst, finding something (anything) to 'make it happen'.

It's true that I'm not where I want to be with my art. To grossly oversimplify, where I would like to be is: "Making a significant portion of my income (or possibly all of it) via the sale of art I've enjoyed making."

The reason I'm pushing myself to do Inktober (think NaNoWriMo but art using ink) is because I want to break from my normal digital production. I'm using Inktober to force myself into a 90 degree turn. Okay, so it's maybe more like a 45 degree turn. The point is that it's a different medium, there's a timer running, and it's an intense 'workout' of sorts that I don't normally do. Something like using (as I recently mentioned to Lindsay Harris-Friel ) a reduced color pallet to force yourself to think differently. These sorts of workouts often lead me to some of my best breakthroughs.

"Okay, okay. We get it. You've told us what you didn't learn. Can you get to what you did learn already?"

Fine. Be that way. I'll get to it.

Essentially, I learned two things watching that video:

1. I'm giving folx the wrong impression about the art side of my life. I suspect this is primarilly because right now the majority of the art I'm doing is hidden from most of the world. I'm doing this on purpose (to create a 'big reveal' when our game Conquest! goes live. Still, I need to find a way to share more of what I'm doing. Part of this feels like a social media thing, and I need to do some thinking about it. More to come.
2. It's probably time for a change. I've been doing effectively the same thing with my illustration for... well, probably about 4 decades now. Sure, I've gotten better at the thing I do, but if it hasn't brought me to where I want to be after four frickin decades then maybe I need to change the process / model / product. I'm pretty attached to the (art) process and the product, so maybe it's time to focus on the model. I've spent a lot of time working on character drawings, saying "See what I made? Don't you want me to draw your D&D character for $0.50?!" Just like the guy on the street corner who's asking for a buck, most folks just mumble some excuse and scurry away. The two people a year who actually drop a buck in my offered cap aren't enough to pay the bills. So I need to figure out something to get more work coming in the front door. Here again, I need to do some thinking about this, and I'll post more when I've figured something out.

Stay tuned, True Believers.

A quick (and terrible) collection of the images I've done for Inktober so far.

Top row is the 'standard' Inktober themes. Day 1 was "ring" and Day 9 was 'swing'.

Bottom row is the 'whimsical' list starting with Day 1 "fairy" and Day 8 'sorcery'. I haven't finished Day 9 for the whimsical list. (I'm posting this 10/8 so I'm a day ahead on the 'normal list'.)

"I traveled far and wide
And laid this head in many ports
I was guided by a compass
I saw beauty to the north
I drew the tales of many lives
And wore the faces of my own
I had these memories all around me
So I wouldn't be alone"

From Rose Tattoo by the Dropkick Murphys