Pasithea

So.. I moved recently. I'm still too lazy to photograph the rest of my workspace (It'd require moving my camera, *gasp*) but here's a couple shots of the most importnat parts (IE the drawing table and the animation desk)

Also, in there are a couple of photos of the some modifications I made to the animation desk that I have. When I moved I decided that rather than having the little fold-up disc on my drawing table all the time, I could mount a light on the animation desk and leave the big table clear for other projects. So I built a mount onto the back of the animation desk and got a balast and a light switch and made a new light for it. I also bought a new clamp-light to fit on the desk for top lighting. So um yay! I have real and dedicated workspaces now. Also, if Jon or anyone else wants to come over and work on anything, I still have the foldup which I can stick on top of the desk or something. I've got the animation stand set up too and the computer and keyboard. This place looks like a real studio. Now if it just had a real artist to go in it!

Pictures here

The best part about this new workspace, of course is that nothing is cluttered. there's lots of open space where I can lay in the floor and read (as I did most of this weekend) or anything else I like. It's not like the old place where everything was very tight. More photos later, I promise. Maybe even some of me.

That was the other fun part of my weekend. There's a Goodwill within a short walk of the new house and unlike most Goodwill it has actually decent prices. Not to mention it was Labour Day weekend so all clothing was half off. So I spent half of Sunday crawling the store and getting some good stuff.

Anyhow, I'm off to bed now. Gotta fly a spacecraft tomorrow!

Ohohoh! One more thing. Gotta take photos of Stacey. ^_^ Yesterday I held her down and put a streak of red in her hair and painted her nails green and made her wear a collar and go shopping with me! >:D H0T!

I keep forgetting to post this! Stacey are cooking a buncha food on Thursday. If anyone is hungry, stop by. :)

Eeee!

You know, there are much worse things that crackpot diet programs! I made a deal with the devil err. centauress that if she could prod me into losing say 20lbs by the end of October, that I'd make/wear a costume to FC2004. O_O What's worse, I agreed that on nights I do not exercise as I am ordered to, she can tickle me mercilessly for a half hour solid (IE so I get that aerobic exercise in some cruel and unusual way)

I am so doomed.

Stacey bought me dollar-bin music when she was in Santa Cruz last week!!! Lilith Fair 98, Clitstop, and a Santa Cruz 'Support your Local Musician'. Yay! totally eclectic collections. I so miss the second-hand book and music stores in Santa Cruz.

We used to go and buy piles of $1 and $2 CDs and funky 60's Sci-fi books for 50 cents a piece and then have a good time listening to/reading them. Some are even pretty good! :)

*sigh* Bad me! I wanted to animate on Saturday but decided to make a ton of sushi and have people over for lunch and then I fell asleep because I'd been up until 4AM the previous night and I slept for like 14hours and woke up on sunday. :/

So I was going to animate again on Sunday but it was so pretty out I thought we should go hiking instead and I figured I could do animation later in the evening.


It was a beautiful day. We went to Grant Park which the online parks guide describe as hot, barren, mostly vertical and largely unused.

They were mostly right. In the 6hours we were hiking, I think we ecountered maybe 20 people the whole time. Some of the trails also just sort of disappeared as they indeed had very little use. But as for barren? It was BEAUTIFUL! We went slow and took time to take in all the details. I think we encountered at least 30 different types of wild flowers and we found lots and lots of interesting animal prints and ruts.

We were guessing the ruts were from wild pigs... And what do you know, we were right. Scarry! We saw a big black wild sow. (She was obviously still nursing but we didn't see any piglets) EEEE! Did I ever mention I'm Oikaphobic? Pigs scare me. Especially wild pigs. At least that answered the question of what the mountain lions were eating. Oh. Did I mention that this park had warning signs about all the mountain lions? O_O

So, we hiked up and up and up to 2300 feet and back down to 1200 feet again. We climbed to the top of the tallest hill near our route and sat for a while. Very good view of the Lick Observatory from there. It was neat. I found a rattlesnake den. I didn't see/hear any rattlesnakes but I've encountered enough in the past to know a rattlesnake den when I see one. Didn't bother it, obviously.

It was a lot of hiking 'n' I'm not in such good shape these days so we were looking pretty dead for the last couple of miles or so but... Geepers, not quite this dead.... We were buzzed by these huge black birds with white underwings and red heads, coming within about 10 feet of us at one point. Stacey thought they might be California Condors but I thought they were too small (Although don't get me wrong, these things were enormous, like a 5 foot wingspan!!!!) and that they'd be mentioned as a feature of the park if they were CA condors.

A little google searching today makes me pretty sure they were Turkey Vultures (which look incredibly similar to California Condors, except that they only have about a 6foot wingspan instead of a 9foot wingspan. Eep. Still humongous though. I didn't think we looked that dead! O_O I also didn't think vultures would look quite so pretty. You always see scary creepy pictures of them on the ground and such but in flight they're pretty beautiful. Black and white with a brilliant red head. ... I wonder if that has any thing to do with black, white, and red being the colours used for death shrouds in native american cultures. Hmm.

Geepers. I'm random. Anyhow, to finish up and get back to work, had a GREAT day but got a bad sunburn cause someone decided that sunscreen was just needless weight in our pack and we finished the day off with a trip to Todai and ate like pigs and probably put right back on every pound we too off while hiking. O_O Cie la vie.

That's what this post feels like. A nanosecond of information in a river of tailights. I'm currently going about a million miles per hour and don't expect to be able to stop for about two weeks. You guessed it. Finals time and me WAY behind schedule.

It was worth it though. I went with my partner to visit her family in Washington State. A twelve hour drive each way. I was really concerned about making a good impression. We've been legally 'married' (a notarized domestic partnership agreement) for approaching five years and this was my first visit to see her family, though I'd talked to her mother several times on the phone.

All in all, they were great and the trip went really well. Her sister is 12 but a really great kid. We took her to see Treasure Planet and went to watch her play indoor soccer (which is a really rough sport) So now I wanna play. Looked like they were having just too much fun. :) I wish we'd had more time, but I could barely get out of work for as long as I did and I really am gonna pay for letting my schoolwork get so far behind. Que sera sera. It was worth the trip. :)

-Sammi