Post 21

We're on day 21 of my post-a-thon. I'm mildly proud of myself for being able to keep up a daily habit for this long. Hopefully I'll be able to apply this self-discipline to other areas of my life. Maybe. Kinda. Sorta...

*ahem*

MOVING ON.

 

 I was waiting to get my mom's reaction first by going home with a new hair color unannounced. I am now..well...not brunette anymore. In some people's minds I might actually qualify as a strawberry blonde. In my mind it is orange. Bright, blazing, I-should-know-better-than-to-dye-my-hair-when-I'm-tired orange.

Let that be a lesson to us all.

New Artist Crush Mondays: Mr. Pip

Laser Kitty by Mr. Pip

I found Mr. Pip when I was working on a project for digital imagery having to do with physics. Since then I have been following him on his DA site (http://mrpip.deviantart.com/). His work is sometimes dark, sometimes humorous and often nerdy. Because of the nature of DA some times we even talk (gleep!) and he often gives me his opinion on my work (when I'm updating my profile like a normal person). My favorite are his girls, who always look so wonderfully normal that you could see yourself meeting them on the street rather than in the pages of a magazine.

Road Trips

Things I have learned not to do in the car:

Not bring Coffee/caffine

Drink too much coffee/caffine

Forget CDs

Pretend to be Austrailian

Listen to the theme from Luke's trench run while driving alone on the Seney Stretch

Pretend the horn fires the lasers

Tell the person in the toll booth to "Live long and Prosper"

Also things not to say to toll booth personnel:

"Let the Force be with you." (Even if the opening credits theme is clearly playing on the radio)

"These are not the Droids you are looking for."

Also, the people in toll booths don't like it when you pay with a $2 bill, a dollar coin and a 50 cent piece

Never, under any circumstances, sing along with the "Spider-Man: Rock Reflections of a Hero" Cd. Never.

Caturday!

Hai guys! It's Caturday!

This post brought to you by icanhascheezburger.com and the bowels of the internet.

Quiet you.

Random Word Generated Friday

This Friday's Random Word: Liquid

I'm sitting here with my brother as I write this and he asked what today's word was.

"Liquid," I told him, "Somewhat ironic seeing as the last one was "Solid""

"Too bad it wasn't gas and doesn't have anything to do with gas." He replied.

"It does now." I said with a laugh.

"Hoo boy."

The reason he even brought it up was we went out earlier today to bust down the doors for Black Friday shopping at the crack of evening. We stopped for tacos at this Mexican place and got back in the car when I noticed something was off.

Being the neurotic person I can be at random intervals of total lack of sanity I started worrying I had forgotten something in the car and it was beginning to rot. Or maybe it was my breath. Or maybe that demon stench was just me, had I remembered to put on deodorant? What was my brother thinking about the smell? Did he notice it? Was he thinking I stank like the butt hole of Hell but too polite to mention anything? I realized I had to say something about the smell eventually. I was never very good at ignoring the elephant in the room, or in this case, the elephant sized gas cloud that seemed to envelope the inside of the car. How was he not noticing? Why wasn't he asking about that stink?

"The car smells weird." I said tentatively, this did not begin to cover the smell but I just wanted to begin discussion on the air quality of the car interior. Maybe some how this was not my fault.

"That's because I farted." My brother said casually. He could not understand why this statement was followed by 15 minutes of laughter.

I have the mentality of a neurotic gopher and the humor of a 3rd grade boy.

Pie Crust with Cheese

Delicious.

So we cut into the Pear and Smoked Gruyere pie today, and it was good enough I thought it warranted a recipe for the crust:

You'll need:
1 cup liquid measuring cup
1 teaspoon
1 Tablespoon
9" Pie dish
Rolling Pin
Fork or Pastry cutter
Large Mixing Bowl

2 cups all purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
2 Tablespoons Apple Cider Vinegar
3/4 Cup Cheese of your choice, grated
1/3 Cup Milk
1 Cup Butter flavored vegetable shortening (I prefer Crisco)

Combine the Vinegar and Milk, set aside (the longer this sits, the better)

Mix Flour and salt in mixing bowl, cut in vegetable shortening with fork or pastry cutter until mixture starts forming crumbs, keep going until there is no powder in the bowl

Add the liquid, mix with your hands or a fork (not the pastry cutter) until you get a marbled look in the dough

Divide the dough in half, set half aside.

Flour counter and roll out dough until the area of the dough is larger than the pie pan, you can either fold it in quarters or fold it over the rolling pin and place it in the pie pan, press dough into corners of the dish

Fill the pie dish with your selection of pie filling

Fold the cheese into the crust you set aside, roll out until it will cover the pie.

Getting the crust over the pie will be tricky as the cheese will hinder the dough's ability to hold together, but the beauty of this pie crust is that it's really hard to mess up, so don't hesitate to re-roll it out if your crust falls apart completely. (Never ever do this with any other pie crust recipe, even the vodka one, it is a serious no-no)

Pierce the crust with a knife and bake according to your recipe's instructions.

The possibilities are endless! Pear with Gruyere, Apple and Cheddar, Strawberry and Parmesan. It's a whole new world of pies to explore.

So we make more pie...

In my family, the pie is the most important part of Thanksgiving. We love our pie, often substituting it for birthday cake and giving it a gifts to each other. Of course 3 pies weren't enough, mom, my brother and I made 3 more pies today. There are now 7 pies for tomorrow and 9 of us.

My mother, my brother, my grandma and I all use the same recipe for pie crust. I learned today that we do not make it the same way. I do not mix it as much as my counterparts because for a good deal of my life, I have been making pies in a muffin tin because it was the only thing I had to bake in. I didn't roll out my dough, I just pressed it into the cups. It makes it light and crispy because the flour fries in the fat when you bake it.

However, when you make a big, normal sized pie this way with thick crust around the edges to keep the mincemeat from boiling out like my mom did, the way I make pie dough causes it to melt off the edge. Slightly different then how my mom makes it.

I could tell she was disappointed about her pie so I grabbed my brother and we got whipping cream. Which, when you come from a pie loving family, makes everything better.

Pie Update: So Far So Good

Pumpkin, Strawberry and what I will call "The Creation" until further notice

Sorry for the late update, I was driving for 9 hours strait.

I finished baking the pies without too many more recipe alterations, at least nothing as the pears-for-grapes. Nothing set on fire, and I have a new idea for pear and raisin pie with brown sugar. I'll try to make Thursday's update reactions from my victims taste testers.

Ranger Brooke brandishes her dinosaur and guards
the pies as they get ready for the trip to my 'rents house.

New Artist Crush Mondays: Chic Steals

Quartz Point Crystal Cluster Ring

This week's Artist Crush is Carly J. Cais a Fashionable DIYer who writes her own blog Chic Steals studied film in college and has certificates in Animation and Animation Direction from a two year program in Japan. Currently she is challenging herself to wear 30 outfits in 30 days without repeating any clothing and always including something she made or DIY'd.

I first came across Chic Steals because I am addicted to DIY tutorials. I draw a lot of inspiration from Cais in my own wardrobe as I try to phase out my tweenage gear for something more adult, but still fashionable. Left to my own devices I would look like a gumball machine or a cartoon character. Possibly both.

Growing up in Japan, and making frequent trips back there I see a lot of Tokyo fashion influence in her style, while still having a foundation in Western fashion which, I think, gives her looks a unique fusion that to me is very cutting edge. Her tutorials are always clear and well written with helpful photos, so I get my DIY fix as well as my fashion fix.

I spend a lot of time window shopping in her etsy store: Carly j Cais

Pie: To Fail or not to Fail?

Apparently not easy as.

Thanksgiving is this week and my mom had asked me what I could bring. Not being the most stellar of cooks (see the "set microwave on fire" incident), I offered to bring the one dish I feel I excel at: Pie. She said she already had enough pies.

In a conversation with my brother, he insisted that I should in fact, bring pie because there is never enough. Then he asked if I would make grape pie. I told him I could give it a shot.

After some internet research, I learned there are two kinds of grape pie: Concord grape and green grape. Since the only way to get your hands on Concord grapes is to know someone who grows them, I aimed for the green grape version, and failing that, raisin pie.

Except there will be no grape or raisin pie. Not that I've made anyway. Because I screwed up at the most basic level of recipe following: the grocery shopping level.

It's not that I didn't have them on the list, or that I forgot them. Instead, I walked by a display of pears and was like "Hey, how about pears instead? Yeah. That sounds like a good idea." Now, I've gone of course with recipes before, but usually not this early on in the game.

Not pictured: Grapes

This set off a sort of cascade failure in my shopping trip. Never having made pear pie before, or heard of it I started formulating a recipe in my head of how you might make a pear pie. That recipe includes apple cider vinegar and smoked gruyere cheese.

Fortunately, after returning home and doing some more internet  research, what I have in mind is not impossible and I was able to find some foundation recipes to build my monstrosity off of.

This may be why mom told me I didn't need to bring pie.

Half Life

Recently I purchased "Half-Life" from Steam, for the second time breaking what used to be my very firm "no first person shooter" rule on video games. 007 Golden Eye on the N64 was THE party game of my youth, my buddies and I would get together to shoot at each other on screen for hours. I quickly found though, that without peripheral vision, the way my eyes perceive are first person shooter is apparently code for motion sickness and instant migraines. And while puking on an opponents shoes is an effective diversion tactic, it is generally viewed as more of a multi-player faux pas than spawn camping or getting the golden gun.

Unacceptable party behavior.

What I have discovered since becoming more of a PC gamer than a console gamer is that being able to control the camera with a mouse rather than a joystick is like the difference between driving a car and driving an ox cart.

Or an Ox Car.

Instead of getting a view that is best likened to sticking the family's video camera in a hamster ball and then letting it go on Lombard Street, with a mouse I have the ability to control my camera view with something much less nauseating. (Although in reflection, my poor ability to use a joystick may explain my strategy in games. Not chess club though)

Since I did not pick up on the first person shooter wagon early there are some things I run into that really break the suspension of disbelief for me. For instance, Gordon Freeman (the protagonist) has no feet. I have been told that this is an accepted practice in FPS's, but I find myself contemplating it every time I have to jump.

And if he has no feet, why does he have to jump? Isn't he already hovering?

But the most disbelief-breaking thing for me is the way Gordon Freeman opens doors. Which is by running into them. Here I am, playing someone who is supposedly a theoretical physicist who has not yet mastered the art of the doorknob.

Effective for making an out, but not usually and accepted means of using doors.

I would be more forgiving of this aspect if it weren't for the elevators. Many games load you on to an elevator as a means to avoid load screens, which is an elegant method of not breaking the storytelling. Even if you're a top assassin in a building sent after a corrupt corporate man you still have to wait for the elevator.  Most games have you get on the elevator, and then off again. Sometimes you choose a floor. Valve took the extra step of including a button you have to push to make the lift move, while I question the position of some of these switches (on an open sided elevator, the switch is on the wall outside of it for instance), I appreciate the detail.

But why can't the doors have buttons? It's not impossible, you have the technology. Apply it.

I believe a perfect rebuttle for this rant is "You're a grown woman. Don't you have anything better to do on a Saturday night than complain about a game released 12 years ago?"

No. No I don't.

Solid

*Double post Saturday since my internet was being a poop head*

Friday's Random Word: Solid

First thing I thought of. I am a dork.

A friend of mine introduced me to the Metal Gear series via Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty. Which, while most people would say it was the worst game in the series, was totally awesome to someone who's previous game experience included killing Link in interesting and increasingly implausible ways and kamikaze missions on Rogue Squadron. (That would be me by the way)

I do not have an ounce of strategy in my body, as I have previously stated, my usual tactic is to be stronger and bludgeon my enemy to death with the nearest stick. (sadly, this is also my strategy in chess, making my stint in the chess club a short and bittersweet one). Metal Gear showed me that I do have one other talent however, I am a sneaky little ninja. I played through 3 times I was so fascinated by this new approach to game play. (I still can't make any sense of the storyline in that game though).

Which brings me to one of my favorite proverbs: Don't try harder, try smarter.

Metal Gear taught me that not every game had to be beaten by sheer force of will. This applies to a lot of problems actually. It's like a fly banging against a window until it dies of exhaustion or brain damage (do flies have brains or bundles of nerves?) when there's a door open two feet away. Sure, hard work and perseverance do pay off, but sometimes the solution is to be lazy. Think about it, a lazy man invented the washing machine and the dishwasher. He tried smarter, if he tried harder, well, I wouldn't be looking forward to Thanksgiving as much as I am right now. That's a lot of dishes.

Relationship Advice

If there is one thing I would recommend to everyone it is to write thank you notes. I started writing them with some regularity after I quite facebook. It was probably a combination of factors, the quitting facebook, graduating from college and receiving presents for it, and searching for a way to connect with other people since I didn't have the glue of classes holding my social life together anymore.

Since then I have found there is a certain enjoyment in writing a really good thank you note. It's almost like an addiction for me now, as soon as I get something or someone goes out of their way to do something nice for me I start thinking about writing them a thank you note. In my head I start composing the ways I'm going to tell them how much their thoughtfulness meant to me, writing and re-writing sentences until I finally have pen meet note.

I have found that this practice of meditatively thinking of others and what they have done for me makes me more aware of what someone else might feel like in a situation. I have developed a lot of empathy that I did not have before. I feel like I've become less selfish in the way I interact with people since I started the practice of writing thank you notes.

A thank you in person doesn't do it either. I think a really good thank you comes after the fact, it lets the person know that what they did went beyond the moment and that you think of them even when they're not there.

I now understand why my mother always made sure I received, amongst all my other gifts, a package of thank you notes. Even though the thank yous I wrote as a child may not have been as genuine as the ones I write now, they taught me to have that empathy I needed to initially start becoming aware of others feelings. We learn everything in our early development by first aping it and then understanding it, being forced to apologize to our siblings even when we don't mean it, or write our relatives thanking them for those truly horrible sweaters is what taught us to consider the feelings of others in our actions. I firmly believe that we have  to learn to be compassionate because we start out self-centered.

Of course, it could be argued that since saying thank you makes me feel so good it is selfish of me to continue to do so. Ah well. I still recommend taking the time, sitting down and writing a really good thank you note.

Probably the most productive thing I've done since starting this blog...

Text only about Images. Yesh.

Today marks the 7th day of continuous posting! Yay! Only 23 more to go. I think when I finish this I'll take it down to just 5 days a week. I don't think I'll have something interesting to say and/or do every day for the rest of my life (or the life of this blog). I needs me my boring time!

Tonight I'm going to be putting the finishing touches on some pictures I've been working on for a commission, one of which is the dog picture I posted the pencils of earlier.I've had since forever. I don't think I'm going to do anymore commissions after this, I really stink at getting them done in any kind of timely manner. People are just going to have to buy the art I make. I'll try and post some images of the completed work tomorrow*.

Once I finish the commission, I'm going to challenge myself to finish painting my bookshelf, followed by setting up my studio and starting a new painting series. Wooo. Responsibility. I'm developing it.

*Edit : Images! Yay! No one wants to read a book without pictures.

"Why yes, I would like a treat. How did you know?"

Yay! Colors!

New Artist Crush Mondays

I thought in my effort to post everyday for 30 days I'd start a feature I've been thinking about for awhile where I rave on about an artist I've found who inspires me. Mondays seemed as good a day as any to do this.

Today I thought I'd talk about Eric Fortune who works out of Columbus Ohio. He's an illustrator.

A Want to Believe by Eric Fortune

I think Stumble Upon was responsible for first introducing me to his work. I really liked it because it was something new. I had recently been flooded with images of "hauntingly beautiful" girls that were about as intellectually exciting to me as a wet paper towel. Fortune's images though, moved past creating an image of the perfect woman over and over again and explored different depths of emotion.

I think his work largely appeals to me because his characters seem like introverts. They are alone on his canvases and convey an expression of both loneliness and contentment. To me what makes his painting interesting is not the creation in interesting things to look at but a careful crafting of an emotional landscape communicated through the medium of visual art.

Check out more of his work for yourself: http://www.ericfortune.com/

Potty Training

I have worked with a lot of children through out the entirety of my life. This is because I like kids and they seem to like me too. This also means that I have moved so far beyond what a normal human would call disgusting that there are only some very specific professional avenues of persons who's "gross" threshold is higher than mine.

For instance, I was peed on today. It was actually the second time I was peed on by the same child. First time wasn't their fault though, their diaper wasn't properly fitted. This time, they are potty training and mom didn't think to mention it.

So there I am, reading a book to the kid in my lap when suddenly they're staring wide-eyed up at me with a horrified look on their face. I am confused for a brief moment as to how Dr. Suess's "10 Apples on Top" could spark such fear when I feel the dampness seep into my pants.

The stuff of nightmares.

Dinner: Continued

Wyoming is a big state without a lot of people in it. Seriously, their license plates only have 5 letters & numbers on them. A cowboy riding a bronco takes up the remaining space, because when you’re a state that big with a population that small, coming up with personalized punctuation is what your State Congress does.

I see what you did there Wyoming.

Random Word Generated Fridays

Randomly Generated Word that inspired today's post: Dinner

I've decided to try to do something for 30 days in a row. Unfortunately for mom, I was talking to my brother about it first so it will not be making my bed. Instead, I'm going to try posting in my blog for 30 days in a row. Since I don't do anything really interesting every day, I thought I'd introduce some theme posts for certain days of the week. Friday posts I thought I would use a random work generator to inspire a post.

"Dinner" luckily gave me an idea for a post that will span today and tomorrow.

It all started one summer when I got it into my head that I was going to go live in California with my aunt & uncle for a few months. To this day I am not entirely sure what brought this on, but it was simple something I was going to do. Period. No matter how many horrible things happened in my life surrounding the trip that even someone who doesn’t believe in “signs” would start questioning the intelligence of their decision.

I'm like a character in a horror movie that way.

Things I Watch.

Yep. That's Nic Cage.

 So last night I threw on a few movies to keep me company while I worked. I don't know if it's more embarrassing that I watched Valley Girl or that I knew all the words to the soundtrack. Nicolas Cage must have sealed his acting style in carbonate because it is exactly the same in this movie as it is now.

On the bright side, it meant I got a lot of work done.

How to Get (& Keep) Your Work in a Gallery

I'm working at my 3rd gallery, and since getting involved with running/helping to run galleries I have developed some preferences about how artists present themselves and their work. Some of them can make or break a deal with new artists or with ones who get pulled because we need the wall space. So, in no particular order, here are some tips on how to get & keep your work in a gallery:

Pokemon

So last Christmas I learned from my brother that updated color versions of the first pokemon games had been released under the guise of "leaf green" and "fire red". I thought to myself how awesome, I had, at one time a copy of red, blue and gold. I never made it very far in gold because there were too many stats to deal with. Yes, I realize that it's a children's game and that I was (at the time) somewhere in high school and that I should have been able to figure it out, but my general approach to strategy games is to get really high level and bludgeon my way through battles that were obviously set up to employ artful simulated combat within the rules of the game. Pokemon gold over loaded my brain and I stopped playing after that.

Years later I would give away my games because I never played them anymore. Since Christmas though, I've been thinking about playing pokemon on and off because I've got a couple of friends now who play it and talk about it. So when I found a copy of leaf green for what amounted to pocket change, I picked it up.

I named him Tesla. Because I have the need to be considered the nerd of dorks apparently.

And now we get to the point of this incredibly long, boring and nerdy story. Within the game there are trainers you can battle, and they have names and an adjective related to their pokemon preferences. The trainers with the water type pokemon are swimmers. I happened to notice one of these characters was "Swimmer Doug", and I casually thought to myself, "ha ha. I knew a guy named Doug on the swim team." and was prepared to think nothing more of it. Then Swimmer David showed up, there was also a David on the swim team, then swimmer Darrin, who, as you might have guessed, was on the swim team.

I don't know if it's weirder that there are 3 coincidences or that I didn't notice it when I was playing the game when I was still on the swim team.

I drawed a puppy

Pencils.

I am too tired to be witty so I give you a happy dog.

I am a bad cook.

Today I put half an acorn squash in the microwave to cook it. Instead, it decided to turn in to a fireball and explode.

Oddly enough, the microwave still works.

This turn of events meant I had to go grocery shopping since the only other thing to eat in the house was a couple of cans of butter beans and rice. For some reason, I decided that I did not need to make any kind of menu or list or guide lines for my shopping trip.

So there I am at the grocery store hungry (bad), tired (bad) and somewhat shaken by the explodability of acorn squash (very bad) with no real plan of what to buy other than "food" (also bad). This lead to forty minutes of wandering up and down aisles trying to come up with meal plans while telling my inner child that "all the food" is not a good idea and neither is "all the candy". My inner child is not helpful, but very loud. I am dreading the day she realizes that we could have bacon all the time.

What this week's meal plan finally boiled down to was nachos and chili cheese fries. I am the healthiest person ever.

Oh, and I got another acorn squash, because what are the chances of it exploding again?

Sometimes, I'm really boring.

Today I ordered a cake. If you want some cake, you should probably be at the Vertin on Friday from 7~9. Also, Joyce Koskenmaki's exhibit of work inspired by the Kalevala will be opening. You could get some edutainment and cake. Mmm. Cake.

"Poor vampire had to DIE rich. Couldn't manage to make $10 in the last 100 years."

In other news, my subconscious in charge of the dreams has decided that it needed to jump on the vampire band wagon. However, instead of smut and/or horror, my oh-so-special subconscious told me a story about a vampire who was ostracized from vampire society because even though he was really old, he had not managed to capitalize on whatever it is that vampires seem to do so that they have stacks of cash for mansions and designer jeans. All of his money was left from his estate before he died and the other vampires were picking on him about it. The rest of the dream was me giving him investment advice. Original? Yes. Boring? Oh yes.

Because of this, I've been wondering exactly what the undead investment strategy is since all of the children of the night from Dracula to Angel seem to have, even in the midst of rampaging across Europe, had the foresight to put some cash away to use a couple hundred years in the future. I've pretty much come to the conclusion that good money management must be the unsung vampire power. Super strength & speed get all the glory, but no Nosferatu would be caught living without a diversified investment portfolio.

DULUTH.

Duluth. Only 4 hours and 24 minutes away. Awesome.

 My last few trips have begun with disasters and then turned out pretty well. When I went to Duluth all my ducks did not row themselves until the Thursday before I left. Ducks are not good at geometry. This is why I did not let them do my math homework.

Anyways, as I was leaving Friday, the gal I was visiting called me back. Which was good because I could tell her I was coming. Yes. Ducks are very bad at geometry.

Onward to Pictures!