Somehow September is half over...?

The August 27th Dr Sketchy's featured the most excellent model Danni Doll. She was really profession and held some amazingly ambitious poses perfectly. For one of the 20s she was twisted up like a pretzel with a leg over her shoulder and everything. It was crazy. Her costume/makeup was also spectacular. Also there was a turtle on stage with her. Good times.

I feel rather short of words for blogging these days. I've several projects recently started and now on hold for no good reason. Arduino project, quilt, stuffed monster. There are of course also the never-ending number of things that I think would be a good idea to start soon-- bottle cap monsters, more bullet bugs.

Fits of nostalgia for creative accomplishments in the past have been tormenting me, perhaps a symptom, perhaps a cause for my stalled progress. My sketches used to be so much more creative! And numerous! Also reminisced upon was my old writings, particularly those of my tabloid writer MUD character... which I frantically searched for an thankfully found a couple nights ago.

I collected all my glorious scribblings on this Blogger page, beautifully formatted to highlight their ASCII font-art glory. Too much game knowledge & context is probably required to enjoy or make sense of them... but it makes me extremely happy to read. I appreciate the alliteration and cadence my writing takes on when I fully embrace the low brow gossip columnist style-- which apparently is the only thing I'm fit for.

Work at work continues... fitfully, with my mood being directly tied to the degree of forward project progress made every day. No one to blame for failure of progress except myself. This being somehow related to above mentioned creative block is not entirely impossible.

Rolling along...

Just got back from visiting family in the Midwest. Both sides of the family, actually. I took a pile of photos and will at some point soon be sifting through them... In the mean time, here's today's Dr. Sketchy's doodles.

Have been very busy lately, sadly. Was in Seattle not too long ago and now this trip. Played my first outdoor soccer game on the Rdio team (8v8 coed) and look forward to future games. I didn't do that great, but I had fun.

I pulled out my Arduino stuff recently and poked at it some more but had to give up-- the weather is just turning nice again and San Francisco Second Summer is starting... who can stay inside and code on weekends like these?!? I look forward to the rainy season so that I can code contently in my home or at a coffee shop... but till then! Outside time!

Adam and I enjoyed the ever-wonderful pancake breakfast on Mt Tam this month in the company of a co-worker. Yay for socializing and exercise. Remember, the last pancake breakfast of the year is Sunday, October 13th. Other fun outdoor things- this Saturday is both the Tour de Fat event in Golden Gate Park but also the Greek Food Festival.

Things thing things... I've been flying my kite a lot lately. Actually, I drag my kite around and then Adam flies it marvelously. Makes me want to try designing some novel kites... My knees hurt a lot these days, which is sad.

An looking forward to upcoming new D&D game with friends. Reminiscing lately about old MUD playing days. Not looking forward to turning 30 soon. Time goes on. I'll write a better blog post next time...

Kaua'i 2013

Adam and I went to Kaua'i at the end of June/beginning of July this year. It was good. We've been to Maui together before and look forward to visiting other islands in the future.

Where as our time in Maui was spent mostly in the water, we spent a lot of time hiking on this trip. I was delighted to see these huge bamboo groves at one of our trails. The cliffs were amazing, be they overlooking other cliffs or the ocean. Our room (acquired here through VRBO) was lovely and spacious with a view looking directly out onto the ocean. It was a little stuffy at night, having no A/C unit, but I didn't mind. The unit was super cheap- yet not gheto- and centrally located. I highly recommend staying there if you visit the island.

Normally I say "if you want to know more, ask us in person!" but for some reason I seem to continuously fail to talk about it in depth, even when folks ask. It was a nice get away, it was green, I recommend it. I think I liked Maui a bit more but I enjoy snorkling & safe swimming over any degree of surf. Adam however loves boogie boarding (or whatever it's called) and was much happier with Kaua'i's water offerings. There were some low points- seeing a young girl's knee get fucked up by the surf, the death march of death, and getting beat up once pretty bad by some surf- but overall it was great and I maintain I prefer my Hawaii vacations over any international ones we've done so far.

There was a Natural History Museum. I loves me some Natural History Museums! It was super old and crusty, but I liked it and found it informative. It's also in a super great location, in Kokee National Park.

In closing, we took well over 300 photos on the trip. Of those, we uploaded over 80 into a general Flickr gallery. Not many people want to actually dig through that so we then whittled it down to our top 18 picks. Also, the NHM has warranted it's only tiny gallery/view on Flickr.

G.I. Joe

Dr. Sketchy's is one of the best things in my life these days. Everyone is nice, the music is good, and I always am happy. At some point I'll feel guilty about placing in the contest so frequently... but for now my ego needs it.

The sheer number of folks on the stage was overwhelming and fantastic. The poses were so much fun, none of my sketches did them justice.

There was an incredibly detailed Transformer on stage with them (with a good natured girl inside) but was not for me. I don't know how to.... "summarize" mechanical things (yet!) and so any doodle would have taken > 20 min... As it was, the military clothing will all their do-dads and patterns and folds was killing me. I'm trained on bustles, lace, ruffles, and lady curves. This was definitely outside my sketch comfort zone and I loved it. I am certain I will try to catch these guys (the Cobra 1st Legion) one of their other events for further sketching attempts.

I placed second with my Recondo G.I. Joe sketch (which in no way followed the contest theme- shame on me!) whose outfit was totally what I wished I had though of for Jaya.

Chillen'

Just spending a nice and mellow evening at home with the boyfriend. We met over a game of Catan and it's still quite nice to just play some Race for the Galaxy together even if our overall boardgame playing has dramatically declined in recent years.

Denver Hackathon went well. Made something that I find useful-- haven't uploaded it yet anywhere. Will do so... "soon". Just ordered some more parts/accessories for my Arduino and plan on picking that project back up again... "soon".

Also I have a new quilt in the works. Most of the fabric cut, time to start sewing.

Not-Work at Work

Work, the location, should be somewhere you enjoy going. I find working at home to be too distracting (or rather, distraction to be too accessible) but a dull workspace makes me depressed. You can't control your coworkers (for good or bad) but as long as you don't work for crazy dictators *coughcoughAcuituscoughcough* you can make your space into what you need it. And I need it to be "interesting".

One of my coworkers was super awesome and ordered a box of 36 mixed succulents from Amazon. He then distributed one to each member of the team and then other random awesome devs around the office. This made me happy. My friend Suko was awesome and used her Google-fu to sleuth out that the plant I got was a gasteria disticha.

It took me some time, but I eventually pulled together a teacup monster to house my new little green companion. I've named it Gretel after a book character I'm currently enjoying. Turns out Dremeling through cups is a bitch. Had to break it up over the course of several nights, so horrible was the sound and so tedious the grind/cooldown cycle. The legs didn't really turn out the way I wanted-- initially had hoped for a more realistic clay/resin type of leg... but I had to settle since I'm actually quite bad at sculpture. I'm not that dissatisfied with how these turned out. Adam pointed out they were rather elephant like, which makes me smile. I still have 2 more teacups so I might take another stab at it...eventually. Once my ears stop bleeding- ugh.

Another thing I do at work some times that makes me happy is bake. I think I've mentioned we have a fantastic oven there. Nice little well-stocked kitchen as well. The Friday before my vacation (you know, the day when it's near impossible to focus on work) I baked some bread at work that I made from scratch. In the office. Working somewhere that allows for such sillyness makes me extremely happy. I didn't waste *too* much time doing it and those who sampled the results seemed very pleased. It was one of the best loafs I've made in a long time.

I chopped up some strawberries and mixed them in with a normal batch of bread... which resulted in ridiculously wet dough. It was quite difficult to work with, I had to keep adding flour, and took over half an hour to work into a reasonable state. After its first rise (which went perfectly) I spread it out, laid down more slices of strawberries, honey, and M&Ms, then rolled it up. Pushed it into a bread tin, waited for the second rise (also nice), and then into the oven. So good. SO GOOD.

Coding with the aroma of baked goods filling the office is a good way to spend an afternoon.

Yay

Time Flies

Wow. It's already mid-July. Crazy. A lot of stuff has happened in the last month (though none of it all that important)

There was a hack-a-thon at work early early June and I got *really* into my project. Picked up my first Arduino and made a Next & Start/Stop external button for Rdio using the Rdio JS API and Chrome's USB API for apps. I had an intense weekend of non-stop coding and yet didn't quite finish the project (input works, but I haven't gotten output yet). I mean to finish it yet! Soon...

Adam's mother visited and we went to see The Tales of Hoffmann (an opera) which was quite fantastic. The Doll Song has always been one of my favorite pieces. Then Andreas visited and then we went way for a much needed vacation. Obnoxious vacation post to follow soon once we get our photos in sorted out.

Tonight was another fantastic Dr. Sketchy's. The dedicated Mercy Beaucoup posed as Beatrix Kiddo from Kill Bill. I appreciated Mercy's great outfits and ambitions/creative poses. I've sketched her before (as Wonder Woman) but the pictures were lost on my way home! Luckily I managed to hold onto them this time. I'm thankful that I won tonight's context with the below image. The prize was this super awesome book The Art of Sketch Theatre Volume 1 which I look forward to reading after this post is done.

Speaking of reading, I've been doing a lot of that lately as well. Was horribly let down by Robin Hobb's Rain Wild Chronicles which I dropped mid-series. Am struggling not to be entirely consumed by the thrilling magic realism World War II series by Ian Tregillis. I accidentally staid up till 3am finishing the second book (on a work night no less! shame on me!) and I'm worried the third book will lead me to a similar fate. Bitter Seeds (Milkweed series) is the first book and I'd probably recommend it to most folks.

In less happy news I installed Minecraft for the first time this weekend and lost several hours of my life. I regret it and wont be doing so again. Sigh. Having re-read World War Z and watched the movie (and surprisingly not hated it) I've a strong hankering to play some Left For Dead again, which I will not regret. But there are better things to be doing with my time. Like sketching. Quilting. Finishing my hack day project. Writing letters. Cleaning.

Pacific Rim was great. Not perfect, but what it delivered it delivered well. You should go see it. Now.