The sky in the southeast is black, lightning spiderwebbing beneath clouds. The wind blowing toward us is hot and dry yet smells faintly of rain.

The air has a distinctly electric feel to it.

I don't know where this storm is going to land, but wherever it does, they're going to get whallopped good.

...Anybody free on Thursday/Friday? It's my grave misfortune to be on the wrong side of the state on those days. ;)

Miss Gemini
Approx. 4" x 5"
Winsor & Newton Artists' Watercolour
Moleskine watercolor journal

Other half of the page the Nectarine is on. So that page is complete now:




A Sunset Sketch, or, How To Mix Orange
6" x 9"
Marie's Transparent Watercolors
Canson "Biggie Junior" 90lb watercolor paper

I let Sascha paint tonight and set her up with Crimson, Lemon Yellow, Burnt Sienna and Cerulean Hue or maybe it's just called Sky Blue, something like that, from the Marie's set. All but the yellow were leftovers from last time. I squeeze out a little from the tube and then add some water before I give her the paint, so that she has strong washes to paint with. Otherwise she'll pick up the whole blob on the first brush stroke and use it up very fast the way she did the tube watercolors in last year's Art Set.

So while she painted some coloring sketches of Therazinosaur, giant shark and giant fish, I explained mixing and demonstrated with this little sunset, using some of the colors she wasn't using as much of. She understood it and did some mixing on her paintings, while together we used up everything in the palette neatly. So I was able to clean it thoroughly for giving her new colors next time.

We had fun and she learned something. I learned that I can do a decent little landscape off the top of my head just explaining things too, so that was fun. Sky Blue made some great green mixes into the warm colored browns and yellows, that was cool.

So finally the rental agent person calls back and says we've been "approved". Whether that's for aug 1 or the pro rated for the last two weeks of july as well, she neglected to say. Hi, information age, talk to us.

Anyway. It's one year and if they're still utter wankheads, then we'll look for better. Apparently ALL places here require ID to rent but ID is no assurance that you're squeaky clean and all. Weird.

I was going to be looking at other places tomorrow but i'll be heading downtown to get my phone changed over, and get a new phone, at that. Whee. ( please, no wonkies, I hope this is a straightforward process!)

Then I can get on with the business of finding some work, and prepping for con.

TINY CHILD: (points at wildlife calendar) Is that a lion?
ME: Yep, that's a lion.
TINY CHILD: What does the lion eat?
ME: Well, lions eat antelope and zebras and....
TINY CHILD: (looks at me with big, innocent, trusting eyes)
ME: .... hot dogs. Lions eat hot dogs. Do you like hot dogs?
TINY CHILD: I like hot dogs!
ME: Good! Now go play with the trucks.

So this weekend saw the first of the two weddings of 2009, as my friends Pete (or, as we call him, Gramps) and Christine tied the knot in front of close friends and family. It was an ace weekend, and I had a great time... I may have ended up ever so slightly completely wankered, but that's really understandable, and I don't think I massively offended too many people with my drunken state.

The day afterwards I eventually got up and showered before having breakfast/lunch at Burger King with the friends who'd been at the reception. At around noon, I bade them farewell and headed over to Bicester to spend some quality time with simbagirl. Unfortunately, we didn't find her a graduation outfit, but we did spend time walking in a wood, so I reckon it balances out, really. It was a good day, and awesome to spend time catching up properly!

In news unrelated to weddings, I bought The Conduit for the Wii on Friday, and although the wedding got in the way of excessive play, I have been playing it and I can cautiously report that it's rather good. I have found a couple of parts really very very hard (and personally I think all guns should have bullets and am therefore not so fond of the alien weaponry available) but I've managed to get past every challenge with sufficient effort and the plot is unravelling nicely, so all's well. I'd be interested to see what online play is like – snowking, are you planning to get a copy? Anyone else I know going to be playing?

I went round to visit hawkida the other night, and spent three or four hours catching up with her, which was awesome for all the right reasons, and came away with five sacks of stuff to donate to charity in addition to fifteen or sixteen cans of pre-drinks for the aforementioned wedding. She mentioned that I suck at updating my LJ, hence this roundup of events.

The last really major thing is that I went to see the Eagles again on Wednesday night in Birmingham, and they blew my mind. I was really glad they played Witchy Woman from their first album, since I'd not heard that live yet, but I'm a bit gutted stuff like Peaceful Easy Feeling made it in when tracks like Tequila Sunrise or Busy Being Fabulous didn't, but all in all I thought the setlist was really good and strong. Another couple of surprise inclusions were Dirty Laundry and Funk #49 – both on the Farewell I tour and neither of them Eagles tracks, I was kind of expecting the evening to spend less time on the band's solo careers than their last set, but both of them kicked ass so I'm not complaining at all!

Other than that, not a lot has happened. I've been spending time happily getting reacquainted with all the schoolfriends I never seem to get in touch with during termtime, and generally whiling away my days. Work is boring but the evenings haven't been yet, and the first four weeks of being home have been really rather quick. It'll be September in no time, which is good - I kind of miss my physics...

I have nothing at all interesting planned for a couple of weeks now, so don't expect much updating until I go to see the Banksy exhibition in Bristol in a fortnight's time. Until then, ciao!

Thomas had his school sports day today. Daniel and I went along to watch, cheer and get wet in the rain. Thomas was in the 'football slalom relay' and 'hockey slalom relay'. His team won the hockey relay and I think they came second in the football slalom (he wasn't sure either).

His team won the overall prize. :-)

Daniel has turned into Mr Grumpy-Bossy-Pants. I mentioned that the sky was blue and he started insisting that it was, in fact, green. He then got upset and outraged once he went outside and saw it was BLUE! It's like reality is conspiring against him!

#19 Neal Asher, Gridlinked, 2001

Not sure what I expected from this but I was pleasantly surprised. The whole thing felt slightly singularity-y and zips along at a fair old pace, amply aided by a special agent with kickass weapons, and in that sense it vaguely reminds me of Singularity Sky/Iron Sunrise, but I think that it has more of an emphasis on action adventure and less of an emphasis on the science fiction part of things. The SF was there, though – some of the excerpts from the equivalents of the Encyclopaedia Britannica were particularly good in that regard – and I'd recommend reading it to anyone who hasn't read any of Asher's stuff. Not groundbreaking stuff but definitely worth having a go, I would say.

#20 Charlie Higson, The Enemy, 2009

I don't know whether this has actually been published yet, the copy I read was a proof copy, but it's a book written for the same sort of audience as the Artemis Fowel/Alex Rider novels. It's also got zombies in it. I wouldn't say it's a must-read, but I definitely enjoyed it, and I would recommend it to anyone who's got kids in secondary school since they'll probably get a kick out of it as well.

I'm bored of all of my fonts. Suggest/send me some, plz?

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Life is as hard as we make it.

In a manner of speaking.

Back in the office today. It hasn't been bad. Mostly quiet. I'm pretty tired and sore now, but that really only kicked in about an hour or so ago, so it hasn't been a terrible day.

I'm hoping that when I get home, I will have my Leverage box set so I can pop in some DVDs, take some painkillers and crash out early.

Also, if there are any vegetarians on my flist who missed it, there was a hostile takeover in vegetarian. I've heard tell that free_vegetarian is a nice alternative.

...for muffins. Yum.

I spent the weekend at my parents' house in Maine. It was lovely. The weather was gorgeous and considerably cooler than down in PA. The company was entertaining. The blueberry muffins were divine thanks to Mum's blueberry wrangling skills. I consumed tasty Italian sandwiches (Real Maine Italians, thank you very much) as well as steak as thick as my arm from Dad's grill. We also made a boatload of peanutbutter cookies for the boys. Yes, they are spoiled.

Saturday we saw a Tasha Tudor exhibit over at a little museum in Bridgton. Tasha's art is really tiny! Perhaps it's because Tasha's images were omnipresent in my childhood that I have this weakness for simply but intricately depicted scenes and illustrations. Totally worth the drive. We also stopped at Korner Knitters on the way home where I got to impulse shop some lovely and some silly yarn. (It was so nice to meet you, Darrin!)

I did not impulse buy a lake house, not that it was really a realistic option, but I was tempted. There are a lot of For Sale signs up in the Lakes Region. There are even some For Sale signs on some curiously tempting classic cars. Again, I was tempted.

Oh and the driving! The Clubman and I did not get any tickets nor were we even stopped! I'm pleased to announce that we can get get from the house in PA to the house in Maine on one tank of gas. Just barely, mind you, but it's a huge mileage improvement over the Subaru. The Mini does like to speed though... I'll refrain from mentioning numbers here because my mother reads this blog and will scold me. I will say I am very grateful for its visibility (super-duper fog lights) and maneuverability. On multiple occasions I got to zig and zag out of the way of impending stupidity. Why is it that people in New Jersey don't look before changing lanes?

The drive up to Maine on Friday took me probably 8.5 to 9 hours. I hit traffic in Connecticut and accidents in Massachusetts. The drive back to PA on Monday took me 8 hours. I hit a little traffic in CT where 91 dumps onto 95 and a bit of an accident on the Garden State Parkway, but other than that it was a pretty easy drive. Totally worth it for a weekend in Maine. And while the drive tired me out each way, I think I recovered fully on each with a good night's sleep.

Except that I'm reading books again (as in novels as opposed to short stories) and not getting to sleep as early as perhaps I should.

I blame you, Miss Juli.


Cross posted from digital-tree.com ...

After a few cool days, it's once again hot and humid and being hyperthyroid makes the heat only worse. I have been pretty busy with my research project recently, as I have another assignment related to it due on Thursday. But I'm started like I'm actually coming to grips with the material. It's beginning to come together. Not too soon though, there are only about 2.5 months left before the final version is due and I will need to study for my other exams during the same period as well.

As for something completely different, I'm thinking about getting an ebook reader. Some of you might recall that I used to have a BeBook, but sold it again because I was unhappy with a number of things. I have since gone back to reading material on my ipod, but since I just have a normal ipod not the touch version, it's not very comfortable reading with loss of formatting an small display. Since I don't intend to buy many ebooks, I don't really care about what is available in proprietary formats, which apparently greatly various for the different readers. The BeBook had the one advantage that I read many different free formats without larger problems. Other's don't seem as flexible. Haven't decided on any model yet, but if someone has any recs, please let me know. The market just doesn't seem that big on the whole :-/

My ebay decluttering campaign is continuing to be a major hassle which only turned out bigger today. I usually buy postage on-line and just drop it of at the parcel box thingy. But since I wasn't going to get into town for a few days, I schlepped to the local post office (not really a post office but a small store where they sell stamps and you can leave mail and parcels to be collected), but they don't take items with prepaid postage because they are not connected to the system (whatever that means). Bah!

Ha! Same results aswolfma!

Which American accent do you have? Neutral You're not Northern, Southern, or Western, you`re just plain -American-. Your national identity is more important than your local identity, because you don`t really have a local identity. You might be from the region in that map, which is defined by this kind of accent, but you could easily not be. Or maybe you just moved around a lot growing up.

Click Here to Take This Quiz Brought to you by YouThink.com quizzes and personality tests.

Man, the stupid ass rental person at the towers we were looking at renting in: still silence. if we hear nothing by end of day we'll get that deposit back and go look elsewhere. ( hence, for doodling on letting us in tomorrow, they'll have lost a year's fucking rental, dumb ASS)

There's LOTS of rental space here, so it's not like we're brawling for space.

R extended our stay at ye old super 8 till friday.

Found a resume of mine on my google docs so once i'm caffienated and fed, work on that. tomorrow get a local number and find some work!

His former job also biffed a wire transfer for the holiday pay, so yay, boobery on two fronts.

Everyone else has been pretty decent so why this rental woman has to be a damn cow, after antsing us on to get forms in, and then not TELL us what forms she wants, or ID....yech.

Look! A Library of Congress listing for Thief Eyes. It's a real book!

(Heads offline to finish revising same ...)

arkiebrat/arkiewriter, happy birthday!