You never know how attached you become to a pet until you lose them.

R.I.P. Yuki

born the runt of the litter...
came to us with everything but mange...
grew to be the largest of the 4 surviving puppies...
and was the sweetest Rottweiler you'd ever meet...
though at times she was the epitome of the word "bitch"...
we loved her well and know that she's in a much better place now...
and as long as I can picture her in my mind, she'll still be there...
butt wagging with a big doggie grin on her face as her greeting of welcome home

Have you ever had a moment where you're looking at something you've done in the past and gone, "Oh holy crap, that's actually pretty good!"

Yeah, I did that a few minutes ago while looking at this:


It kinda blew my mind away! I NEVER like anything I've created!

So snowboarding/skiing season started early up here in MI... I've been out 4 times since Thanksgiving... hence the reason for the lack of activity on my account.

Between work, kickboxing, snowboarding, beer league racing (more snowboarding), and spending time with the new BF/SO, I don't have much time or energy to do much else on my down time than sleep and just vegge out.
Hell, even food consumption and chores have fallen by the wayside!
It's going to take at least a month for me to equalize things... hopefully by then I'll have time to pick up my sketch pad and have at it!

I'll try to do something the few days we'll be at Holiday Valley in NY next month... just don't hold your breath! (I'd feel guilty if someone died of suffocation because of me!)

So I'm tired of the long, cumbersome journal I had before... I'll finish updating it sometime... but I just didn't want that monster on my page.

For those of you who care, you've probably noticed that I've been MIA for awhile...

I think I've been to busy and content with my life... my work life, my home life, and my social life have all been too busy for my muse to settle on my shoulder.

I have two down weeks coming up... we'll see if I become malcontent enough to create something

Until that time...

"There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea."
--T.S. Eliot

So I'm redoing this journal entry...

No more "tag"
I'll just feature three pieces from each of the people who watch me

And because I'm lazy... I'm probably gonna do it in groups of 5...

They'll be featured for a week (or however long it takes me to get unlazy to do the next group ) and when I'm done, I'll create one massive journal & link back to it at the bottom of the journal

... but not necessarily another year wiser

I love when everything lines up on the anniversary of your birth to allow you to do little to nothing constructive

... a day spent scoping out the competitor (and trying not to get kicked out of a seminar)...
... canceling private kenpo lessons...
... going to the movies with a couple of your closest friends (BTW, to all you girls out there... and anyone who likes girlie movies... The Women was great! I LOVED it!)...
... grabbing drinks & food afterward...
... and not getting home until the day is the next

and now that the day's over... I probably need to go to bed

A friend of mine is from NW Indiana and apparently there's massive flooding by one of the rivers. Thousands of homes are waterlogged, families displaced, irreplacable momentos of fonder times permanently lost.

All this could have been prevented by the selfless act of those whose job is to be selfless. According to my friend, the reason the city ran out of sand bags to stem the flow of water is because the safety and security of the homes of the fire department were seen to first.

My friend is very heartbroken because her childhood was stored down in her father's basement, and now it's all gone.
On top of that, she's in the midst of planning a wedding, trying to figure out how to finance such an endeavor.

If you've been in the midwest this past weekend, you'd understand why the river had flooded. It rained pretty much non-stop since Friday evening. At least in my area, there was maybe an hour in the nearly 72 hours it rained that the downward flow had stopped.

My heart goes out to everyone affected by this. Not only in Indiana, but all over the Midwest. I am sure her little town wasn't the only one drowned, sure that many and more people are wondering why God or whatever supreme entity they believe in is testing them so.

Whatever doesn't kill you will only make you stronger
Cold comfort to those who must face such adversity.

So lo and behold... I finally have internet at home again!!! :woot:

and cable... so I'm also Project Runway happy at the moment
(I LOVE having a DVR now! yeah yeah... I'm a little slow on getting technology that I thought I didn't need... key word being "thought")

... pretty much sucked.

It was a total disappointment, and I thought it was just me. Tobias here @ work thought so too... I mean, there were a couple really cool booths (the wooden puzzle boxes was pretty cool... but not much else).

This was the first time I'd ever gone, and it was a major disappointment. There were quite a few photographers that had note worthy pictures, but I'd never buy a canvas print of a photograph. I'd much rather get it on photopaper... the medium it was created for that reason... or maybe it's just me.

The biggest disappointment was the flea-marketish booths that takes me back to Chinatown: designer imitation booths.
There were at least two purse booths and at least one purfume booth... and booths where they were selling anti-Kwami shirts... so ghetto.

Welcome to Detroit... where our Governor is from Canada, our Mayor wears a tether, and no one wanders around Downtown in daylight...

I wish there were 30 hours in a day...

Work, the commute, and sleep take up roughly 16 hours of my day... factor in cooking, eating, & clean-up, and the number goes up to 19... factor in exercising & the commute to the studio, that makes it 21... and factoring in hygiene (which is always a good thing), that goes up to 22... so that means I have on average 2 free hours during the week.

Not enough to get much done, let alone find time for anything creative.

That means it's time for me to prioritize.

What can I give up?
What can be put on the back-burners?
What should I concentrate on?

All of which are very valid questions... ones I don't have answers to

Too many projects and not enough time in a day to get them all done

But I'm probably just feeling sorry for myself because I begin moving tomorrow and I'm not even close to being totally packed

So we went to the Zoo on Sunday (the weather was crap, but the animals seemed to either not care or liked it)...

We come to the Chimpanzee exhibit... and there were these two apes just sitting there by the window, minding their own business. Then another one comes by... I'm guessing it was a she since, well, I'll not go into details because it involves butts and swelling (don't ask)... with a stick in her hand. She then stops and proceeds to beat the smaller of the two (I'm gussing males) who were just sitting there minding their own business.

They wave her off... she keeps hitting. They move, she follows... still hitting the little guy. They do this a couple more times before the larger of the two males gets up and kinda shoos the female away... all without raising a hand against her and following her to give her what we assume was a "talking to".

Meanwhile, the smaller male who was getting beaten with a stick is sitting there huddled, looking sad and hurt... it sucks to get bullied...

Then the larger male returns and the smaller male scooches over... then the larger male does something so human that I'm stunned for a moment. He lays his arm around the smaller male in a hug.

It makes me wonder what else they feel? Whether they understand that they're confined... and that if they do, whether they suffer from depression because of it.

Some will argue that zoos help the animal world... that they strive to educate and breed more so that they will not go extinct, depriving future generations of their beauty and their wonder.
But there are animals that do not breed successfully in captivity...
I love seeing the animals, love seeing what they'll do... but I hate seeing them through bars or thick glass.

With the technology age we live in today, it would be much better to return them to nature reserves that contain their natural habitat and creating virtual zoos for children to learn from.
I'd rather travel to see them roaming free...

I wonder... what would it take to have this happen? To rehab the animals for life in the wild and return them to their natural habitats? To create virtual zoos with screens that will show them life sized? To have kiosks where all manner of information on a given animal next to these screens?

We are one world... and being [arguablly] the most intelligent animal on the planet, we should do more to lessen the viral affect we have on our surroundings...

So after a few days of deep contemplation, I've discovered that I'm an artistic sponge. It's a sad realization. Looking back to what I've done and seeing what others have done, I've noticed that I really don't have a "style" of my own.

What does this mean?
In the past, whatever has caught my eye has seeped into my brain... and out once more through my hands. It's not only my drawing & painting, it's also in my writing. I get sucked into a genre and whatever story I work on is heavily influenced by whatever it was I'd just finished reading...
Sad, isn't it?

So I'd like to take this opportunity to apologize.

If it seems like I had copied or imitated you in any way...
If what I've done bears a striking resemblance to what you do or what you've done...
If I've insulted anyone with my seeming lack of real, home-grown talent...
I'm sorry.

Please let me know if you're on my watch list and I've inadvertently (again) copied you... I'll credit you with being my muse

So it seems that seeing =Veganvictim's abstracts jump-started my stagnant creativity... though not nearly as detailed as his stuff... or much of what's out there.

just wanted to put out a public THANK YOU!!! to him