Season of Dreams...

Not sure why, but every night this week I've had vivid, odd dreams. This, after several months of nothing particularly striking.... I blame the changing temperature.

The second dream:

My co-workers and I were super heroes, themed after different sandwiches. Someone was a ham sandwich hero, I think I was egg salad or peanut butter & jelly. I wake up. I tell one of my coworkers about this dream. I wake up.

After telling the same worker about the dream and the dream within the dream, I did not (sadly?) find out I was still dreaming. I'm happy that this dream did not leave me sad/scared/worried.

The first dream:

I'm somewhere near a river, in which I find a goat being slowly washed down stream. I retrieve the goat and decide to keep it as a pet. Time passes and I go somewhere else. I realize I forgot my goat and call my aunt Laurie to see if I left it at her place. Sadly, she doesn't know where it is. I am sad to have lost my pet goat, but on the other hand kind of relieved... Apparently adopting a goat would cost $250 and it occured to me that the backyard at our house doesn't really have any grass and I start to imagine the damage the goat would cause in the basement if we kept it indoors. None the less, I spend the rest of the dream frantically searching for my goat. I do not find it.

Despite the above sketch, the goat in my dream was very clearly a Anglo-Nubian goat. This dream left me very sad/worried.

I have not yet sketched the third dream.

In totally unrelated news I went to the San Francisco Superhero Street Fair and had a great time. It's not an epic event, but one I would casually recommend. Fun dancing time. I wore a sparkly mask, glow sticks, and a skimpy outfit. Someone asked if wearing a mask made dancing easier. It didn't make dancing easier (that went just fine) but it made going out in public in one's underwear a lot easier.

Have been playing with the NVD3 graph library at work (which sits atop D3) and been having a good time of that. I can't really chew on numbers with any sort of statistical skill, but I can make a mean graph. Sadly our hackday that was planned for tomorrow has been moved.... to some time in the future. Alas.

Related to work, I've really been enjoying this song for some reason:

Adam has been playing GTA V and I've really enjoyed watching him do so. I <3 Trevor (just like everyone else, I'm sure)

New Idea! New Idea!

I'm thrilled that I've been struck with a new idea for a themed dinner party. I've been scratching my head for ages trying to come up with something to top the Alien's theme party... and now I've got it! Table top gaming! The title? "Only the GM Knows What's For Dinner"! I'm giddy with glee.

The above image was made this weekend with a lazy susan, mirror, camera, remote shutter clicker, and a sweet 3D printed shape made by my friend Kyle. It's a castoff (there's a defect you can barely see) that he gave me and I hope to mod in the future into... something...

Dinner party idea is the product of a weekend spent making a new D&D character for a friend's campaign. I'm going to be playing a Warforged Fighter. Basically I'm a robot that will hit things. Am excited for that too.

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.