taste of strawberries

It begins...

I highly recommend to anyone in the New York area who has never tried Tim Hortons to give it a whirl. You don't even have to like coffee because they have good sandwiches and bagels and soup.

I first caught wind of this book in December. It was billed to me a bit inaccurately. I was expecting lesbian demon-hunting nuns. It was mostly right, except that they weren't nuns. That was actually the part I was anticipating most. So, let down right there. (Made better by the fact that a few weeks after hearing about this book, I discovered Sister Claire, which has the nuns hunting demons, with a fair amount of lesbian subtext.)

The book is short. There is a hasty exposition before it gets right into the action. The action was fine, but with no context to it, I didn't really care about the characters, nor was I surprised when "good" guys did bad things. I hadn't come to expect anything from them either way, and characters were introduced and killed off before I knew what was going on.

It had great potential, but didn't live up to it. Still, it was a great mindless, bedtime read.

I've been going through the archives of this journal today. And I've come to realize a few things.

-Time does not go at the same pace all the time; it speeds up and slows down and my memory puts things out of order.

-I have been trying to buy a house for a lot longer than I thought. My journal is a "little black book" of houses I have courted.

-I have become more and more attached to writing every single thing that pops into my head.


And last, but not least:

-I have gotten angrier lately. My rants have gotten longer and more plentiful since around November. I'd really like this journal to be dedicated to fun, happy stuff. At the very least, not scary, angry stuff. I want it to be about art and comics and jokes and cat macros.

And so, I created a second livejournal, specifically for posting rants to. From now on, rantalarian is where I shall be posting my long, rambling rants and essays. I took down the old rants from this journal, and re-posted them in the new one. I wish I could have brought the comments with it, but I couldn't. It is fresh and new.

This journal will continue to be about my life, my art, and various announcements for the comics and publishing stuff.

If you like reading my rants and essays (which aren't always angry, mind you. Some are actually funny), feel free to friend me at rantalarian. If you'd rather just see art and stuff, then don't.


I worry that I'm going to develop a split personality from this. rosalarian will become nice and sweet and funny, and her dark personality, rantalarian, will be a ravenous baby murderer.

I did post a new rant in honor of this occasion. Homophone Marriage. (This is one of the funny ones.)

ZAP!

***********************************

There are three designs neck and neck for the lead in the Kawaii Not T-Shirt Reprint Poll! So I am opening ROUND TWO for voting:


***Click here to see the finalists!***

Poll #1429411 Kawaii Not T-Shirt Reprints! ROUND TWO!
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

Which of these reprinted designs would you buy?

View Answers

Cheap 'N' Easy (Design #1)
44 (45.4%)

Whatever-A-Cinno (Design #2)
36 (37.1%)

ll Mixed Up (Design #3)
40 (41.2%)

I have been dutifully eating gluten-free for five days, and I wasn't getting better. I felt better for a day, then felt bad again. Today, I gave up and ate a sandwich. I actually felt better after eating the white bread than I've felt in weeks. So I'm pretty sure Celiac is crossed off the list. Ulcers, Crohn's, stones, and various other digestive diseases remain on the list.

It could possibly be stress-related. I had no idea how stressed I've actually been these past couple weeks until I took a mini-vacation yesterday. I didn't realize how hard I was working myself. So it very well could be old ulcers flaring up (a large percentage of my graduating class had ulcers by the end of high school, though I have never been tested for them).

Camping was fun. By "camping", I mean we stayed in a trailer outside of a casino. Not quite what I signed on for originally, but whatever. It was only for sleeping. We spent most of our time playing slots and going to the beach.

We played 1 cent slot machines. The thing about the penny slots is, it has all the fun of gambling away money, without the pesky hassle of ever winning anything over $6. I only had $10, so Dad gave me a few random dollars here and there to keep me going. He mostly likes the company.

The trailer shook all night long. I don't know why. But I couldn't sleep. I got maybe 1 hour of sleep last night. I feel exhausted. But somehow, more relaxed. Craziness.

My god.. where did tonight go?

I hate this work that is in my way. It is the last week of my notice though, which means soon back to regular updates. God I miss them.

Now sleep. Tomorrow I shall again attempt comic and the Tom poster I've been working on for months.

Okay, so for October expo I'm being Seigfried. Which means Matt has to be Nightmare so we can make out and show yaoi fan girls what being gay is all about.

(Well, not really as Matt has refused to fanservice with me, but it would be sweet if we could.)

But yeah, the costume looks like this:



So I decided I'd just make a duct tape dummy of Matt and just build it over the top of that. Screw treating it as armour- it's all going to be flesh. Kinda like a lot of fursuit construction really. I absolutely love fursuits. One day I shall do one, but for now I'm making non-furred armour suits.

But yeah, we did the dummy today. Hillarity ensued.





(the mop is so Matt can find the strength to keep his arms up.)

It's all been carefully cut off him and is now a pile of tape on my floor ready to be stuffed.

Work in progress. I shall share one incomplete page:



I just power-comicked four pages while listening to "Poker Face" by Lady Gaga on repeat. Play count is at 80 and rising. The shame in this room is palpable.

Also, dear god, I so don't need to spend any of my hard-earned dollars on old school Star Trek 'zines. I'm a responsible adult. I need groceries and things. ...And yet my finger won't quite come unglued from the "buy now" button. Nnnnngh... Must...resist!!

Really starting to think it isn't gluten-related. Haven't had any for 3 days. Bought special gluten-free food (which tastes like total crap, by the way), packaged in places where no cross-contamination can happen, and still, every time I eat, guts start hurting about five minutes later. All stabbey like a belly full of forks.

I'm still going to finish out the week, just so I can officially eliminate it. Then I'll try something else.

My mom thinks it's lactose. And I admit, I am sensitive to it. But there is no "I drink milk --> I get sick" absolute correlation. Sometimes when I ingest dairy, I get sick. Not always. Same with most other food. Sometimes when I eat tomatoes, I get sick. Sometimes when I eat pasta, I get sick. Sometimes when I eat greasy food, I get sick. But not always, and it's always unpredictable.

Maybe my guts just hate me.

cebuscapucinus just made a post with a pic of some awesome armwarmers that a friend made for her, and it reminded me that I had meant to post pics here of my own fingerless gloves that I finally finished for good on the 4th of July! Only 14 months after starting them, too! lol What can I say, they were in hibernation mode for a long time, I guess (^_^) But anyway, ( here they are! )

This was a fun project because I learned how to make a gusset (that's what the part where the extra fabric that forms the thumb is called), and I also learned how to do cables! They are surprisingly easy but (IMO) so so pretty. You can't see the cabled motif all that well on these gloves due to the multicolored yarn, which is the one thing I have slight regrets about, but I'm going to make another pair in the future that will be all in graded shades of blue -- I already bought the yarn and everything. I think that will show off the cables nicely.

My hands have been acting up a lot -- I go through long periods where they are totally dry, but when they sweat, they sweat buckets (@_@) I'm working on trying to correct the problem, I'll let you guys know if / when I have any success. But when they sweat, I can't really knit (obviously), so my knitting's been kinda sporadic lately.

I want to finish up this colorful Koigu wrap I started a while back. ( This is an old pic, it's very very close to being full-sized now: )

Then I just have to block it and make sure I stretch the wide ends really really good during the blocking process, so they'll be long enough to fasten in front.

For my next project I want to make ( this hat: )

( but in these colors: )

The blue will be the background color, the motif will be in cream, and the burnt orange with sparkle will be for the band of color around the brim. I think the colors are going to look really really nice together. And I've never done Fair Isle (well, I guess this is really "Fake Isle", technically speaking), so I'll learn a new technique which is always fun (^_^)

So that's it for knitting stuff! I've been saying I was gonna do this for a few days now, but after dinner I'll post again and put up some pics of my new apartment and an update about that (^_^)

YU+ME Pt 2 Issue 8 is completely finished. I now have a five-week buffer on the comic.
I also wrote more detailed summaries of issues 11-14, and I'll probably write their scripts tomorrow. I like getting things done!

Today was part 1 of "let's make sure the FHA doesn't turn down this house" fixer-upping. Went all 1989-Berlin on a basement wall, to see what was behind it. Turns out, it was a lot of sand that had gotten in through cracks in the basement foundation. No biggie. Just seal up the cracks, and sweep away the old sand.

We marked all the faulty power outlets. There were a lot of them, and they all have different problems. No ground, switched up hot and neutral wires, lack of power. It will be harder to fix than we thought, but it'll just take more time, no more money. (Good!) Removed a window to fix it, measured some things.

Went to Home Depot for mortar. $4 gets you enough to re-mortar the house 3 times, but the grout bag costs $8. Insanity! Then... we went to the dump. Oh. My. God. I love the dump. They pick through the garbage and salvage things, which they sell in the dump store. So much cool shit! But they make it way more expensive than things salvaged from trash piles should be, so I didn't buy anything. (Dad said the dump in Kalamazoo is cheaper, so I'll go there.) But the place was chock full of awesome stuff that I can't believe people threw away.

As for the new diet, I can never eat within the first two hours of waking up. I will immediately get sick. I've been this way for a while. So by the time 2 hours had gone by from waking-up time, I was already working on the house. When we got done, Dad wanted to go to Mr. Burger. Most everything there is glutenous. I ended up getting eggs, potatoes, and fruit all a la carte. I know there was cross-contamination, but it was the best I could do.

I am starting to think this might not be Celiac, which is good. My health has been a bit up and down still, but it's more greasy foods that make me hurt than glutenous foods. I'm still going to finish the 7 days sans-gluten, just to rule it out.

-Finish YU+ME Pt. 2 Issue 8 (80% done)

-Finish piece for LGBT art auction (75% done)

-Work on "End of the World" comic for anthology

-Work on Art Prize entry/entries.
-Digital vector/vexel piece
-Ink and watercolor piece

-Get art together for "Emerging Michigan Artists" anthology (just submit old work, I have to figure out which 5 pieces are the best to sum up who I am and what I do.

-Work on Lesbian Pirates Pt. 2 Issue 4 (10% done)



Most of this stuff is due by the end of the summer. Some of it by much earlier than that. Plus, I'm going to be closing on the house (hopefully!), and packing, and moving. And working at the day job. It's going to be a hectic summer. It's probably a good thing my roommate is moving out and taking his TV with him.

Someone explain to me how RSS feeds work, and how I can use them? I'm tired of not knowing how they work.

Happy Friday! Here’s another page.

Originally published at Abandon: First Vampire - an online graphic novel / webcomic - Love is in the blood. You can comment here or there.

The new Monkey Island game is great, but it is too big for my computer to handle. It makes it all slow and jumpy. No good. So I installed it on Laura's computer, which handles it much better (though still slightly slow), only to have her monitor break the next day. Curses!

The game itself? I've only played about half an hour of it, but it's fun so far. The controls are a bit hard to get used to (they change them with every game, don't they?), but after a while, I mostly got used to it. The plot is very interesting, what I experienced so far. Same excellent humor, same fear of porcelain, same I-have-twenty-cannonballs-in-my-pants-pocket inventory. (I call them "endless pants" games.)

The problem with playing a game as soon as it comes out is that there are not hints for it online. So I have to do it all myself. I always break down and find hints, but this way, I can't, so I won't. I can play the game for real, and actually exercise my brain!

Day one of Gluten-free diet.

I feel a LOT better. Since I haven't had a chance to look up what kinds of foods to eat, I've only eaten things that boldly proclaim "GLUTEN FREE!!!!" on their labels. I slipped up and had 4 Pringles, which hopefully won't make much of a difference. But all in all, my digestive system is already feeling calmer, though still somewhat painful.

I lost 2 pounds since yesterday, (for a total of six this week), officially putting me at a lower weight than I am comfortable with. My inability to eat most things right now isn't helping matters, either. I guess I shall eat a shitload of rice tonight. Perhaps try to exercise and see if I can't gain some muscle.

Thanks for all the advice, to everybody who gave it. I'm going to try the Gluten-free thing for a couple weeks, to see if that helps. I'd still like to go to the doctor for confirmation, but as we've discussed before, that isn't something I can do on a lark. I need to put some money aside for that.

*insert another pro-NHS rant here*

I was just saying something to my dad a couple of days ago about how I probably ought to learn some things about property management from him. My dad has some commercial and residential properties that he's renting out, and his office manager is also his property manager, but I thought it might be good for someone in the family besides him to have a clue what's going on with those properties, ya know?

Well, today I got to work and I don't know if my dad mentioned something to his office manager or what, but most of what I've done today has been related to the rental properties. I'm putting together an info sheet for new tenants in the apartment complex I'll be living in with information about who provides their power, utilities, etc. and how they can open their accounts. I even found out what schools are in that district and put the school information down as well. I also got all the information we need to provide to potential tenants who call so I can start answering those calls and dealing with those people. Next I'm going to revise the tenant application with additional info we need to be getting from the applicants.

And it's been kinda fun! I think I'm going to see if I can start sitting in on the applicant interviews and stuff, and learn how the office / property manager conducts the interviews and what she looks for in a potential tenant. Maybe she'll let me learn how to do the background checks and stuff too!

I think my sister is seriously crazy. This is a conversation we just had via cell phone. Note: she called me at work while she is also supposed to be at work, so this is taking place in our respective office environments while we're both officially on the clock.

Me: Hello?
Her: Do you mind if I call you 'Hermetia' from now on?
Me: What??
Her: 'Hermetia'. It's like a combination of 'Jamie', 'Jaime', 'Herbie', and 'Maria'.
Me: You're calling to ask me that?
Her: Yeah. See, Brian is 'Beppe', and Mom is 'Georgia Bush', unless we're in Italy and then I call her 'Georgia Buccini'. Theetsa Connie is 'Theetsa Constacle', and Theetsa Billie is 'Theetsa Leaky'.
Me: (not even attempting to follow along) OK. You can call me whatever you want.
Her: (suddenly switching gears) Do you remember that song I made up the other day?
Me: The one that you whistled in my ear over the phone?
Her: Yeah, that one. I think I made it up but I'm not sure if I heard it somewhere or not. Do you remember how it goes? 'Cause I forgot it.
Me: No I don't remember how it goes. I was at work when you called me up and whistled it to me, and it didn't really make much sense so I can't remember what it sounded like.

At this point in the conversation a customer walked into the office, so I told her I had to get off the phone.

Me: I've got a customer -- can I call you back?
Her: Oh, I have to go anyway. OK, bye.

Just like that. So I have no idea what she was really calling about, if there even was a purpose to her call other than asking my permission to call me a made-up nickname.

I would also like to say that this is a very typical phone call between me and my sister -- right down to the end where she has to go very suddenly. lol

I took my car to Costco last night and they confirmed that my tire was out of round. However, they don't stock my tires in the warehouse so they had to order a replacement and put the spare tire on temporarily. Since I had to go to Ft. Pierce last night, I parked my car on the side of the driveway (to keep it out of anybody's way) and borrowed my mom's car to make the long drive up north.

On my way home today, my dad called to tell me to park at the end of the driveway when I got home because one of the trees in the front yard had blown over and was blocking the way. When I got home, I saw that the tree had fallen down directly where I normally park my car when I'm at my parents' house. So if I had parked where I usually do, god only knows what would have happened to my car when the tree (admittedly not a huge tree, but still -- it's a tree) landed on it. Phew!!