'Nuff said.

So there was a fair amount of tequila last night, cunningly disguised as this citrus-y drink called a margarita. It was yum. Though given that I had been very tired all day anyway, I'm amazed that I managed to stay awake through three episodes of dollhouse (I got a friend hooked on the series a couple of weeks back, we have now finished season 1) There was such an amount of tequila that said friend ended up needing to stay over and, luckily, he works very near me so I got into work early today due to actually, you know, riding in a car instead of taking the train. Which is good 'cause it's chilly today.

So yay! We approve of tequila and awesome Mexican food. Tonight there shall be hot tubs and steam rooms and probable hamburgers. Though I suspect I'll have to forgo a peanut butter shake since we'll be eating before the cooking ourselves in hot water.

Very, very ready to be on vacation. :-)

I feel vaguely blargh today. Yesterday I had a fairly large lunch/dinner out that was fine until I went to bed (6 hours later!) then decided to have me very uncomfortable and acid-y feeling. So I got up to take some tums. Which is always a bad idea at night because for some reason they make me vaguely ill if I take them and I"m not up and moving. So I think, totally, I got about 2-3 hours of sleep last night. And my stomach is still a little blargh which I think is just totally unfair.

Other than that the weekend was okay. There wasn't much done except lots of dragon age and barely meeting my word goals on NaNoWriMo. I am no longer a day ahead of the game at least. Today and tomorrow may make up for that as it's not a workout day so I can spend my lunch hour writing...and tomorrow I may end up being in a cafe for 3 hours or so as I'm going to watercourse way with debmats but our appt isn't even till 8. So unless she decides to swing by home to pick me up...long time to lurk with only a laptop to entertain me.

Pondering the merits of poking my nose into my doctor to make sure that the current allergy yuck that's sapping most of my energy isn't a sinus infection BEFORE I get on happy fun plane this weekend.

Brie pesto fondue was a success though it wasn't quite as good as the cheddar roasted garlic that I did previously. It probably just needed more pesto but I erred on the side of caution as not everyone adores basil quite as much as I do.

Chocolate port cake is made but how it turned out remains to be seen since it's for this evening. Cocoa powder makes me sneeze if I'm not careful but it does smell good, I have to say.

Glee starts back up tonight which makes me inordinately happy even if I won't get to watch it till tomorrow. Given that my plans include dinner with a deer this evening this is an acceptable situation.

New sheets arrived last night, jersey cotton and were promptly washed and installed. They were very nice to sleep in, especially since it's been bloody cold here in the early mornings lately.

Very late in posting this and I think I may have missed a couple because I was bad at keeping track last month but:
( Books read in Oct 2009 )

Happy birthday, kensaro!

Weekend was good. Dragon Age: Origin's has eaten my brain thus much writing did not get done and no painting at all. Bad fox, no cookie, I'm afraid. Though I do also have the excuse that lunch with a friend on Saturday involved margaritas and thus a few hours of sobering up time before said friend could head on home and then Sunday brunch with another friend led to viewing six episodes of Dollhouse as he's never seen it before. So the fact that I'm barely a day ahead of my goal is excusable I suppose. The fact that I'm over 20 hours into a game that I bought on Friday is, perhaps, not.

Friday I left work a bit early to buy said game and go to an art store to replace some of my paints as I was getting low on a couple (I was SO done with work that I really needed a couple of hours of freedom or I was either going to scream or kill someone. Neither productive, really) Sadly I didn't replace as much of my paints as I might have liked as one big tube, one brush and a pad of cheap paper for figure studies was almost fifty dollars. Never let it be said I have cheap hobbies.

Tonight I shall be making mystery fondue, writing and baking up a chocolate port cake for a friend who's birthday was last week that I'll be seeing tomorrow. You know you are in good fox graces if he bakes you something he can't actually, you know, eat. :-)

Lion's finished. Unless I decide he's not, anyway. This is a scan which always washes out the colors just a bit...I've yet to figure out the best way to post painted art. Though it would probably help if the scanner I'm using isn't older than some people I know.
( Painting! )

And promised pictures of cartoon hair.

( Amazing floating cameras and stunned foxes ahoy! )

I bought Pumpkin spice coffee creamer yesterday because, mmmm, pumpkin. However this means I shall both be drinking more coffee than I usually do AND coffee full of sugar. People may need to beware.

So NaNoWriMo started yesterday as those of you on my filter know. I'm currently at:

3550 / 50000 words. 7% done!

Given that the plan was to work on it all yesterday this is vaguely full of suck :-)

The weekend was non-eventful for the most part. There were many people over to play rockband Friday night. This led to a couple of people crashing at my apartment (One planned, on not so much) and breakfast the next morning where, despite it being Halloween, there was a single pumpkin flavored thing to be seen. This possibly made me a bit sad. Actually Halloween was pretty much a non-event anyway, I painted a bit (I think I'm getting better at it, this is only the third time at this painting and I think it's almost done as opposed to the fifty billion times I've played with the lion!) and then hid in my room in the evening as my roommate watched movies. Not even scary movies, I think they mostly had spies in them.

I was very tired all day on Halloween anyway, I think it was allergies.

Yesterday was the official start of NaNo. As you can see I didn't do the tens of thousands of words I'd hoped to do though it was a solid start. I shall be working on it again during my lunch hour today. There was also breakfast out again by myself as I wanted, and this time got, something pumpkin flavored, in this case Hobees had pumpkin walnut coffee cake.

Edited to add:
I put goop in my hair this morning, which I almost never do because I don't like the way it feels but my hair was so not behaving this morning. Except, as I said, I almost never put goop in my hair and I'm not very good at it, thus leading to this very amusing looking geek wave in the front that won't go away. I may take pictures when I get home so y'all can point and laugh :-)

Burnout is currently a large factor for me at work at the moment. Hopefully having NaNoWriMo to focus on in the coming weeks will be enough of a distraction that I'll keep plugging away at work in order to score some time at work to write.

I think I have a vague plot! Only two days before I have to start writing. This isn't the latest it's ever been, the time I wrote about Brandon I didn't know what I was writing till the day we started but it's pretty close. I need to stop cribbing ideas of plots though ;-) A reminder, if you want to be on the NaNo filter speak now or forever hold your piece. Just don't hold it in public because it's typically against public decency laws...

I'll shall post after this to the filter so that those of you interested can see if you are or are not on it. For those who haven't been on it and aren't sure if they want to be or not there's typically a fair amount of hair pulling and obsessing about word counts plus massive dumps of quickly written first draft which may or may not actually, you know, end up being finished. Cheering me on and such helps as incentive towards the whole finishing the story thing, so do it often and regularly.

In other news, I'm reading a book involving using wine to work magic. This is a win in my book. Especially as I have a case of wine that should have arrived today that I shouldn't have bought but is full of yummy so I did.

How are y'all doing? Are you living more exciting lives than mine? I bet you are...

In case there was anyone missing me, the last two days I spent mostly flat on my back with occasional breaks in the sleeping for food, drink and nyquil, not necessarily in that order. It's just a cold but it's the worst one I've had in a bit, I have to say. I'm still not feeling that hot but I'm at work due to an upcoming deadline...and I can actually think today which is more than could be said on Wednesday.

There is almost nobody at work today. In a little bit there will be two people in this side of the office. The other side has I think three today. Out of 18 people.

I'm dragging but I'm sort of obligated to be here to answer phones till my usual time as the only other person who would do so had to leave to take her daughter to the doctor. I am virtuous and deserve large cash gifts.

Or at least a nap.

I woke up this morning with pleasant sensation of someone having just sanded the inside of my sinuses. Given that every cold I've had in the last couple of years has started this way I was not impressed. I vaguely remember waking up a few times in the night to blow my nose.

So I've been alternating between sneezy and runny nose most of today, along with being only slightly coherent. Bah! There still shall be fantastic vegetable lasagna and supernatural this evening though. I have decreed it. Mostly because I didn't spend a couple of hours making sauce for nothing last night.

Almost finished with this month's book club book. For I am a paragon of virtue and honor. And it's a book I actually own of my own free will.

I got to see a double rainbow when I was coming in this morning. It's sad that it's easy to forget how pretty things are sometimes until something like that pokes you to notice, isn't it?

The weekend was okay. I actually slept a lot for a change, so much so that Sunday I had to haul myself out of bed despite knowing I could sleep longer so that I could get stuff done. Energy levels rather low I'm afraid.

Friday night a friend came by very late as he was in the area and his car isn't safe to drive at night so he was crashing at my place for the evening. There were games and a couple of drinks before falling into bed where both of us were asleep within ten minutes. The next morning there was breakfast, my laughing at him because he'd over done it at the gym the day before and basically moving anything hurt and then he was off and I was breaking into a new game that had arrived from gamefly, Cross Edge.

If you own a ps3? Just don't get this one. Awful controls, need to grind incessantly to not get your ass handed to you repeatedly and the worst kinds of micromanaging for equipment...it made me sad as I'd planned on spending a fair amount of time playing games mindlessly. Instead I ended up finishing up Smallville season 4 (wtf is with them about cliff hanger season endings? *grrr*) and then watched the original Superman movie, which I had from netflix. The game got sent back today.

Sunday I did chores, grocery shopping and drew a bad anthro fox which has since been posted of Furaffinity since I did it on my tablet rather than with pencil and paper.

Catching up a bit, the play I saw last week, "The Chosen" was sort of blarg though Deb liked it. It wasn't bad I just didn't care for the characters much and it kept almost putting me to sleep.

NaNoWriMo is coming up. I only have vague ideas of what I'm going to write, it should be an adventure. If you were on the filter last year and still wish to be you don't need to do anything. If you weren't and wish to be please drop me a note. If you were and don't wish to be...too bad :-P (nah, just let me know and I'll pull you off.) If you're not sure either ask and I'll check or there will probably be a post in a day or two with the filter.

Happy late birthday, mat_t I was procrastinating *grin*

A large lunch of hamburger and half a vanilla shake is not a recipe for getting much done in the afternoon. But I has new art supplies (a nicer palette knife than I had and a couple of palette cups for keeping medium in)

Might have to stop in next week as they're having a sale and there's a couple of types a paint I'm low on.

Just because one person said it would make her day better.
( Painting beginnings )

A reasonable weekend was had by all. Or at least I assume so, I know mine was fairly reasonable. Friday I got home and finished a book. Drew a tiny bit and decided, since nobody was home, that I really wanted to take a bath. So I started another book. By the end of the bath I was 180 pages into said book so I curled up on my bed and finished it because it was pretty good (Unclean Spirits by M. L. N. Hanover for those playing the home game.) Then I started a combined christmas present/birthday present for a friend of mine that I will hopefully finish in a timely-ish manner. Busy evening I suppose though it felt very lazy at the time.

Saturday was renaissance faire. We went a bit later than usual as the Gilroy renfaire is doing a concert series after the official end of the faire this year and the evening we had chosen was to be "The Wicked Tinkers" which debmats and myself used to evilly lure lilacfairy out to faire for the first time in many, many moons.

Faire was pretty good, very dusty as it was windy but that kept things very cool so it was a nice trade off. The concert had some very severe sound issues at the start that took them a great deal of time to sort out but they did eventually and then it was pretty good. Though it was getting dark by that time and very chilly with the wind so it was with a bit of relief that we ran off to change in a pitch dark parking lot and ran off to a late-ish dinner.

Sunday was breakfast with a friend and then touring a small street faire in Los Altos while discussing the merits of hemp made textiles, various fiber-y things in general, classic cars and what makes a car classic and other stuff and nonsense (Admittedly I went on rather long about fiber...conned into making a hemp washcloth for my sins, however *grin*) I also completely and utterly did not attempt to talk him out of purchasing a wind chime. Because I'm an enabler unless previously requested not to be *grin*

Then there was painting. Of which there shall not be pictures for awhile since it's sort of a secret what I'm working on. This brings the total of paintings in the works to three with another sketched out. This is also known as "I should get my ass in gear" I'm afraid :-)

Since I haven't posted it yet:
( Books read in 2009 )

As promised, a picture of the lion painting, round four for those of you keeping track. Given that it was sort of late when I took it I had to use the flash to get the picture to be any sort of brightness, I don't like doing that because it throws up odd reflections from the oils in the paints and really shows places where the paint is thinner. That being said I think it's almost done, just a bit of detailing...hopefully finished this weekend. One of the centuries I really need to get a good scanner for home so I can stop having to futz with the camera for these.

( Lion round 4 )

debmats and I went to fondue last night. We typically don't get dessert when we go as I'm allergic to chocolate and she can't eat a lot of sweets but we got a package deal yesterday and as I can eat varying amounts of white chocolate (high amounts of cocoa butter do bother me but not nearly to the extent that cocoa powder does) we had one mixed with amaretto.

Way too much food for just two people. I was still kind of full this morning when I woke up and dinner had ended before 8 last night! *laugh* And of course, this being the way of things, two people independently brought food into work today. Urph.

I'm hoping it will be cool enough to paint tonight...I should also take a picture of the last lion update and post it since I may work on it again this weekend.

Possibly choosing grapes that have seeds was not the brightest idea as a midmorning snack for work for you have to keep stopping to spit out seeds. I now have blue fingers. And a blue tongue. It's terribly stylish, really.

They are, however, tasty.

Belatedly, the weekend was good if severely lacking in sleep and cool air. Friday evening we got to finally try out "Last night on Earth" a board game given to me for my birthday by the ever fabulous mut. It was fun though I think it will take a few plays to wrap my head around effective strategies for it though one thing comes to mind...do not fight the f*&cking zombies hand to hand (I'm looking at you, Eddie*...dying three times instead of running away *mutter, mutter*)

Anyway, that was followed by much Beatles rockband. Hilarity continues to ensue as I jump from harmony to melody midphrase to plug holes in the song that my partner leaves. It was 4am when we finally stopped.

Saturday morning was kind of a loss as I woke up at 7am. And procedued to stare blankly at a game until I started to fall asleep again at 11:30 and took a two hour nap. Damn body clock! Then there was a bit of drawing followed by, again, more rockband. Not nearly as late this time though.

Sunday was errands, video games and trying not to melt. I'm ready for autumn anytime now, please.

So, some drawings. I still need to take a picture of the most recent lion update, maybe I'll do that tonight after I get home from a fabulous fondue dinner with debmats who has become fondue obsessed in the last few months *grin* Granted, giving me cheese to dip stuff in is pretty much counted a win for tasty foods so it works out.

The seal (since I've had selkies on the brain for ages now) was started awhile back while watching my roommate play Infamous so is a bit sketchy. The deer is ponderings for a new painting and thus just a test to see if I can, in actuality, draw it in that pose.

( Onwards to the land of smudges and creepy black eyes )
*Note, Eddie, in this case, is not the friend of mine who might actually, you know, see this journal but a friend of my roommate's who spent the entire game getting himself killed by taking on zombies with his bare hands.

I keep thinking I should bring a sketch book to work so that I can take it out and sketch buildings during my lunch hour on the days I'm not working out. Oddly enough all those straight lines and such make for, in some ways, a much more difficult thing to draw than the animals and such I usually do since errors in perspective are so much more noticeable when you're drawing straight lines. Of course I only think about this when I'm at work and not at home where the sketchbooks actually live. And also today is hot, verging on way hot and by the end of this weekend it's supposed to be "you're kidding this is WHY I don't live in a desert or swamp, please shoot me now" hot so not particularly an air conducive to sitting and sketching.

I do need to branch out a bit to stretch my skills though.

Today is very long. Ready to go home. There shall be board games involving zombies this evening apparently and, knowing the people involved, likely much alcohol consumption.

The train hit a car a couple of cities up the tracks from where I get on last night which made getting home a bit problematic, I'm afraid. Though thanks to the magic of twitter we found out not too long after it happened and were able to jump on a bus and only got home a bit over an hour late. Which gave me just enough time to finish cooking before debmats arrived. I did not, however, get to make the cookies I was pondering.

The upshot of this is that I signed up for twitter this morning though I doubt I shall use it much since I don't really THINK in soundbites. It's just more convenient to have links to caltrain and such rather than have to go digging for it each time. I suppose you can add me if you really wish to.

Much fun was had with Beatles rockband last night as there was great hilarity involved in figuring out just what part a person was singing. It doesn't help your score when you start giggling, I'm afraid.

I'm trying to figure out good, low calorie, reasonably tasty and not sweet snacks to have at work since I'm getting tired of the cloying sweetness of most 'bar' type things but I'm trying to adjust my eating habits to something a bit better again. Variety helps too as I'm a great one for getting bored of food if I have to eat the same thing a lot.