great day at the market. I made 200. tom did well too. we had lots of sun and it was plenty warm. I got three special orders and one basket repair. con didn't have such a good day. its raining now. Kelse has gone somewhere with jack and sam. bowling is involved then I think theyre going to sams house.

I just brought logan to alexs. or he brought me to alexs then I drove back home. He just got his permit and I let him drive the car. Ron made him help unload the truck (wood) earlier. He was here for 22 hours straight. No, they are not back together.

talked to jake. he was driving to LA with court. court was letting him drive. All this stuff about driving today. hmmmm.

I went in the woods with ron and got another load of wood. I cant believe hes done that 19 other times without me. It was waaaay more work than just unloading. Kelse has only helped unload two loads, Jake maybe three. I think I have only missed out on one or two.

Im tired and a little cranky now.

Here's my backyard after attacking it with the weed wacker of doom.



We really hadn't done much with it for about four years, so I was surprised by how quickly I got through it all. It's about ninety percent done; I broke the string of the wacker against a stump I missed seeing. I may dig out what stumps and big woody stems are there and continue next weekend. I'd like to get the area against the garage, and the little cubby back behind it, done.

I recommend Lee's Rent-It in Kenosha. Easy to deal with, and they have a big Black Lab who lives in the store. Pretty dog!

( Here's what it looked like before the mass deforestation (but with better lighting). )

I like the willow tree in my backyard; I've always loved willows. Plus, I love having a yard that backs up against the train tracks. On top of the fact that I just love trains, we have a yard with a lot more privacy than might typically be afforded in the 'burbs. I need to take care of it better; it's worth it to have a space there to go out to. Man does my wrist hurt after running that thing though.

My 'coonie-grrl offered to buy me dinner after seeing the yard. She is nice!

I used to post on here under my old name but had made a new one due to some personal issues, where it just dawned on me I never friended this community again D: But i'm back on track now lol.

So besides the initial *squeeITSCOMING* post I wanted to get some ideas.

We have decided to TRY and do a Nightmare Before Christmas/Carnival theme, set in Oogie Boogie's lair. My boyfriend is coming down where we are dressing up as two of the trick or treaters where my ideas so far is to use a lot of black paint and black lights lol. My question is..do any of you guys know some good music that will fit into this? I am using some remixed versions of the NBC soundtrack of course but any other suggestions would be great.

Dreamwidth codes if you want 'em. Just leave me an email address.

'member that time when i said, "i wouldn't put a macro lens to good enough use to warrant buying one"? and since then i've needed a good macro lens about five times? yeah, story of my life.

i've been seeing these huuuuuge bugs flying around my courtyard, and i could have sworn they were dragonlions dragonflies. i managed to catch one this morning while taking zee out. it was a little too hyper, so i had to keep it in a jar, but i snapped some pics.





( +1 )

any idea what type of bug this is? the tail-end part moves around, and it looks as if there's quite possibly a stinger in there.

ETA: according to the trusty internet, this is a mud dauber, which is a type of wasp. (good thing i was touching it... gah!)

I had a good day/bad day scenario with the kid today. I read her some books, she read me some books. She was funny, we did stuff together, we had fun. Then nap time rolled around and I put her in bed and read to her for half an hour and sat with her for fifteen minutes and she was still thrashing around on the bed and asking for a million things and getting up and refusing to go to sleep. So I did what has become standard practice when she won't nap: I put the baby-gate up so she couldn't get out of her room, and I went somewhere else to do something else. She proceeded to stand at the gate and scream at top volume for the next two straight hours. I yelled at her a couple of times to get back in bed, which she did - and then promptly got out again. She continued to stand at the doorway to her room, howling that she wanted out, she wanted the gate down, she wanted Mommy to come stay with her, she had to go potty, she wanted her shoes, she wanted to go outside...anything but being in that room for a nap. I eventually lost my temper and swatted her on the butt. It had absolutely no effect on her, but I felt like shit. She kept screaming until nap time was over and I let her out. I was feeling frayed, but she went right back to playing with her stuff in the living room.

My husband got home and took Piper out for a while so they could do some errands and I could get a break. Unfortunately, between multiple phone calls and our neighbor's poor timing on lawn care, I didn't get anything done.

Then they came back and Ryan had a big caramel latte for me. Which was awesome. Piper was glad to see me, which was awesome. Then she started to whine, which was not. Then Ryan said that Dre, the neighbor whose dog killed Chick, was hanging out in the next-door neighbor's front yard, and I realized that I wouldn't be able to go outside until he was gone. Dre never apologized for his dog killing our beloved cat - he hasn't spoken to us at all, actually, and if he sees us outside, he doesn't look at us. He pretends not to see us. I was going to go out front and water the grass, but stayed inside because in my state of mind, I would've seen him and run up to him and unloaded some big screaming rant on him. Our position in this neighborhood is uncertain enough as is; I didn't need to be "the woman that spit in Dre's face" and make us some more not-quite-enemies.

I was making dinner, and turned the wrong dial on the stove, but because it's an electric stove I didn't realize this until I picked up a dish that had been sitting on the unexpectedly hot burner. I put my hand directly on the hot coil, burned the shit out of my finger and wrist, but didn't drop the glass dish. Then the neighbor's stupid lawn mower started again, and he was yelling over it, and Piper was demanding something and I JUST COULDN'T TAKE IT ANYMORE.

I asked Ryan to please put the chicken on the grill and asked if it was okay if I took a break. "I need to go sit in the other room and listen to some music and ice my hand and drink my coffee," I said. "I just. need. a break."

And then my very nice husband let me sit in the other room with the door closed, a bag of ice on one hand and a latte in the other, reading American Gods for ten minutes while he grilled chicken and tried to entertain Piper.

My reprieve lasted until Piper started calling me from the other room, and finally resorted to whacking on the door and yelling "Mommy! I want dis Mommy!" By then, I felt reasonably calm enough to answer the call.

So it goes.

I have a faux hawk! None of the pictures I tried to take turned out at all, but it is *awesome*!

eta...cropping it my friend. Does anyone else have to take a shower after getting a hair cut? I have to asap or I itch the rest of the day.



I have a faux hawk!



I am really quite amused by it. Can still go in to a "normal" style if I need...or a swoop...but really, it is all about the faux hawk! I swear it is really not icky-spikey like that, I was trying to take pics with way too much flash when my hair was still wet.

It turns out that I misunderstood, or misremembered, what Devin told me. He's working tomorrow, so he can't go anywhere. I'm hesitant about going to abandoned buildings alone, so maybe that won't be happening. I may go down to Chicago anyway and take pictures, or I may stay at the house and work on Ebay. Not quite sure. But I really need to get all of this stuff out of here so I can fully concentrate on things I really want to do. Not to mention have extra money in case my partner has job issues.

====================

While going through stuff to put on Ebay, I found one more HX4700 iPaq. These are HP PDAs. This one has a 640x480, full VGA screen that be viewed either portrait or landscape. It has onboard wi-fi and bluetooth, as well as 64MB of memory, expandable via either SD or CF card. It's running Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition version 4.21.1088.

I think this will run a VNC client. I thought for a bit about hanging onto it as a control module for my car computer, that I want to construct at some ambiguous future time. But I don't know when that's going to happen. If I really, actually want one when the time comes, I can buy another. murstein picked one of these up from me a while ago and, I think seems to like it.

On Ebay, these are averaging about 100 dollars used, and 150 to 200 new, it seems. For someone I know, I'll take 75, including shipping if necessary. If you're interested, let me know. Otherwise I'll put it on Ebay next Wednesday.

I'm also putting up a lot of 8 iPaq 3850s (old and obsolete iPaqs; ok, even more so) and a Firebox Soho 6 (new in box). serinthia, I'll let you know how much that Soho thing goes for, if anything, so we can split it.)

Hey everyone,

I'm Brianna, and I'm new around these parts. I'm a HUGE halloween person, so much as I'm having a party on July 31st because I can't do it just once (Halloween in July, get it? XD)


Anyways, I finally uploaded my video of my house on Halloween. My goal is making it in to the paper this year, so I need some advice. Mainly advice on lighting and making full-scale dummies.

Here's the video:


Thanks SO much. I know it sucks a lot, but it's miles away from what anyone else does where I live. And ideas to publisize it as well would be fabulous.

All my internet crap. Honestly. And the hardest thing to cut was my Venti Espresso Frapachinos.

The Durham Apheresis Center is pretty awesome. In Quincy, there was a small room with four apheresis chairs, and one old tv that they pulled out into the middle of the room and played whatever movie someone had brought in that day. (The guy who ran the center did the whole "buy a million movies at yard sales and then sell them on ebay" thing, so it was a mixed bag.) Here, there are twice as many chairs, and each one has a dvd player and a screen that will pull out in front. It was pretty sweet. I had brought an audiobook (because I was expecting much worse), and it was still nice, because everyone else had headphones, too, so I wasn't forced to pick my audiobook out of the movie's soundtrack. A++

Anyway, the actual platelet-donating was super easy as always (although they did tell me that my veins are tiny -- no one has ever told me that before! And I donate all the time!), and apparently I am still platelet-filled, as they were impressed with the number of platelets they were able to strain out of my blood :) I may not have much else going for me, but I have super platelets! And I got a new pin to add to my collection! I love the blood pins!

I'm probably going to start donating as close to every two weeks as I can. Nothing like having people being impressed by your platelet count to make a girl feel special :)

Well, the greening of Em was a bust. It actually looks more green in the sunlight, but inside under low light you can barely see it at all. There's a closeup at right which shows it a little bit, but it's really hard to see in this picture.

I think "subtle" would best describe it. However, when you're ten, you don't want "subtle." You want ANIMATED SUPERHERO AWESOME GIRL FANTASTIC. We may try some Special Effects brand but I don't think it'll do much more without bleaching her hair, which we're not going to do.

Oh well. She had fun doing it, so we can chalk it up to another learning experience.



On an unrelated note, Em went to the dentist to see if the amoxicillin had cleared up her infection.

It had not.

The previous x-ray didn't extend all the way to the base of the teeth. This one does. The dentist says that the two dark areas at the base of the roots on the second-to-leftmost tooth (the biggest tooth) are advanced decay. She has referred us to a general dentist with pediatric experience for a root canal.

Em's taking it surprisingly well. I, on the other hand, may run the X-ray by someone else for a second opinion. She's probably correct in what needs to be done, but I still need to check if there's even a chance we can avoid it.

Em, meanwhile, has taken an eight-second-long shower (she timed it on a timer), changed into her princess costume from Halloween, and is watching PBS kids' shows while hanging out on the couch. ETA: Now she's added a swim mask. Just another day at Casa de Tvini.

Here's a picture of a certain, nearly universally known, piece of art, oddly replicated on the window of an abandoned building on the site of the Damen Silos, in Chicago's lower west side.



I'm thinking about this one as a candidate for a convention art show.

This is actually a crop from a larger image that shows a bit more of the building. My thoughts in selecting the portion I want included the following:

*Is there too much bright green grass? Is it distracting from the picture's centerpiece, the Mona Lisa?
*Is there enough of the building present in the frame to provide context for the Lisa's location?
*Does the selection of building that's in the image act as a good frame for the content? I like the vertical brickwork at the top an the horizontal brickwork at the left that provide straight lines in to the middle, but is there too much, or too little?

I may still tweak it some as I look at it. I have a while. I may decide to take more grass out, or crop in on the right just a touch to frame between a couple of window panes. Depends on whether I want the building to seem to go on significantly off the right side of the frame, or if I want the piece to have a definite border on the right.

The more pictures I take, the more I see how much like painting it all is; the very same thought needs to be put into matters of composition and form. I see, too, how distortable reality really is through the lens. It's been a sometimes-surprising learning process.

Print sale! Prints as low as $10! Limited edition. Handprinted by me and my trusty spoon.
Sale ends July 15th.

http://ezerd.etsy.com

Lots of other great goodies too!

It took a hell of a long time, but I've made it through The Reality Dysfunction, the first volume in a trilogy recommended to me by ennnis. It's a "space opera" about a futuristic society plagued by an evil force that "sequestrates," or maybe just possesses, people.

The story takes place in the Confederation in the 2600s. The set-up is quite detailed and interesting. One group, the Adamists, lives on a failing planet Earth and various other planets. The Adamists are mostly like the people of today, but with neural implants that allow them to "datavise" or communicate directly with computers. They have starships and nuclear weapons and whatnot. Another group, the Edenists, has a different kind of technology that is organic. Edenists have genetic changes that allow them to have an affinity bond with each other and with their habitats, which are miniplanets made entirely of organic matter. This bond allows them to share thoughts and feelings inside their own heads, without speaking, and to see through other people's eyes. They also have spaceships that are organic and have personalities and memories. When Edenists die, the intangible part of them is absorbed into the habitat. The distinction between the two groups is essentially religious; they trade and coexist more or less peacefully.

The plot of the book revolves around a new planet, Lalonde, which is being settled under a Dutch East India Company-esque scheme. Colonists have bought in, and come from Earth or other failing urban planets to farm. We see a group of the colonists struggling to get their village, Aberdale, up and running. This is fresh stuff--after all, in sci-fi like Star Wars and Firefly, the farmers are just there as redshirts or comic relief. However, an evil force appears on the planet and begins to take over villages and people in a mysterious way. The book has a huge number of characters, including Joshua "Self-Insert" Calvert, a strapping starship captain with remarkable sexual and technical skills, and many female figures that are almost characterized well enough for you to be able to tell them apart. There is a planet with a culture nostalgic for 19th century England and a bunch of marines who have huge machine guns welded to their forearms. So while Lalonde turns out to be central to the plot, it doesn't dominate in terms of number of pages. There is a lot going on here, and some if it must pertain to the later volumes of the trilogy, since it doesn't pan out in this one.

This book is either rather good or completely terrible. The author is certainly inventive, but I often had occasion to wish that he'd handed over his ideas to someone else to write. The pacing here is frustrating. At times, he is so enamored of discussing planetary trajectories and technology that you wonder if you will ever see a sentient being again. There seems to be little structure governing the arrangement of scenes. There are problems with the POV. You'll be reading about Person A doing something from the point of view of Person B, watching them from 20 yards away. Then all of a sudden you're in Person A's head. Or, scenes of a space battle cut back and forth between the POVs of people in different, even opposing spaceships, with no notice. This problem is so basic to telling a story that I'd expect even a novice to avoid it instinctually.

The novel is quite long and there are two volumes left. In the end, I feel about it the way I did about A Game of Thrones. It has its good and bad points, and I thought I was intrigued enough by the plot to read the sequels, but I never did. We'll see about this one.

The Reality Dysfunction: Two smileys, I guess. Would have been three if the author had cut 500 pages.

Does anybody want to come visit me tomorrow?