Our Library rocks. Know how I know? Today I checked out the first season of Dog Whisperer on DVD and also picked up the new hardcover edition of Charles Burns' Black Hole.
Yay for cool liberries.
Someone with a defter writing hand than I needs to write a horror story about a human-specific variety of Cordyceps fungus that attacks a small town in the middle of nowhere. Worksafe, but not for the squeamish.
We have had a wonderful Christmas season. First Christmas was with my family, and Second Christmas was with Paul's, and sandwiched in between was our own Mini-Christmas, or possibly Christmas v1.5, depending on how you look at it.
Christmas with Paul's family was so great. I love them all so much, and I always have so much fun hanging out with them. At one point Marcia found Dave's box of childhood stuff, and we laughed ourselves sick reading his kindergarten report card and discovering that not much had changed in thirty-odd years. I had a lot of fun playing with our three wonderful nieces, each of whom has her own distinct personality, and all of whom I'm enjoying getting to know better. I only wish we lived closer so that we could spend more time with them. Much good food was eaten, much good drink was imbibed, and far too many cookies were consumed. After the kids were in bed, we looked through Nancy's Italy photos (so gorgeous; I'd never have been able to come home after visiting at the places she did) and closed the evening by watching the new Kevin Smith standup DVD (horrendously offensive, but also gutbustingly funny).
I'm continually amazed by how much talent there is in Paul's family. His mom and dad are both excellent photographers, as is his brother Dave. Our sister-in-law's got some hella amazing craft and jewelry talent, and someone else in the family (I can't really say who or what yet) just got a huge, incredible, wonderful opportunity for more creative, personal, and career growth. I can't wait to see what s/he does with it.
Oh, and not to forget: Karen managed to find me not onee but two boxes of Lyon's Gold Label tea, and also got me the new Indigo Girls CD/DVD. I'm drinking the tea now and realizing why it's worth searching out. Woo! Extra awesome.
Paul, who is fast racking up points in the World's Awesomest Husband contest, got me page 183 from Castle Waiting. The art's gorgeous, and features all of my favorite characters: Jain and Pindar, Rackham, Chess, and of course, Sister Peace. Adding to the wonderfulness of Linda Medley's stunning inks is the fact that it bears real (albeit photocopied) Todd Klein lettering. I can't wait to get it framed and hung.
Paul let me in on a secret: In order to get the page delivered past me unnoticed (since I work from home, I get the mail) he got all supa sneaky on me and had Linda forge a bogus return address on the envelope so I wouldn't knwo what it was.
Continuing his devious streak, Paul also bought us a piece of sculpture from Smart Shop that I'd fallen in love with. It's a big mantelpiece clock made out of gears, with bright orange hands to tell time. He loved it the second I pointed it out to him, and surreptitious dude that he is, paid for it the same night and picked it up when his show came down. I was none the wiser. It's now gracing our mantel and throwing weird geary reflections into the mirror.
I love my husband so very, very much. He is amazing. His presence in my life (gifts notwithstanding) is the best thing that's ever happened to me.
Merry post-holiday to everyone!
There is now Conveyor Belt Sushi in Ypsilanti.
I meant to blog this as soon as it came out, but I suck. Better late than never:
Women's Work, a new Creator's Collective!
Featuring the work of Lisa Jonté, Lea Hernandez, Carla Speed McNeil, Rachel Hartman, Shaenon Garrity, Layla Lawlor and many more!
"Art before housework. In a hundred years, no one's going to care how clean your floors were."
Awesome. The website's gorgeous, the participants are hella talented, and there's lots of stuff to see and read. Go! See! Post!
Remember, kind friends: From here on out it only gets easier. The days get longer, the light gets brighter. Never mind that it'll soon be cold as Ragnarok, we'll at least have daylight to commisserate by.
Zoë's neutering has been so beneficial to her mood and behavior and training that I'm considering having myself spayed.
We just got back from seeing The General, starring Buster Keaton. It's a silent movie, and a local group of genius musicians, bLuE daHLia did the live soundtrack and all the sound effects (including a squeaky rubber dog toy for Annabel's voice).
It was amazing. Amazing, amazing, amazing.
It was screened in a local church, and we all sat in the pews and munched free bags of popcorn and they passed the collection plates for donations. The music was amazing, and perfect for the film -- all original compositions, to boot (well, except where they nicked a few lines of "I Love A Man In Uniform" for the recruitment office scene) -- everything from a chugga-chugga rhythmic opening number to the heart-tugging "Annabel Lee", full of wistful longing. You can hear two of the tracks here: "Girl in the Sack" and "Time is Ticking".
Paul and I were really vocal during the movie (no surprise there) because it was the first time either of us had seen the movie all the way through, and we were genuinely amazed by its breadth and depth -- and we got at least some of the audience cheering and clapping along with us, especially when Johnny Grey bonked the union engineer over the head with a piece of firewood and ran off with the girl and the engine both. Afterwards, the musicians told us that we were one of the more vocal audiences they'd had -- which surprised the heck out of me. How do you watch a movie as brilliant as The General in a setting like that and not cheer and hooray when Buster hoses a bunch of Union officers with a water tank? Twice?
So yeah. They do a lot of stuff around the state. If Blue Dahlia comes to a venue near you, totally go, especially if they do a Buster Keaton movie, and especially if you have kids. That was one of the single best cinematic experiences I've ever had in my life.
Seriously. These have to be the awesomest things I've seen in ages. Dude. Christmas is in, like, ten days. Anybody wanna get me one of these? :D
Eeesh. The sky's so oppressive today. It's odd. I think I can feel the edges of a (very) minor seasonal depression setting in. It's a combination of lethargy, overeating due to boredom, wanting to sleep more, and that feeling of wanting something but not knowing what, the feeling of looking in the fridge over and over, hoping something tantalizing will magically appear. All of this is cyclical, of course, because when I eat or sleep too much I get loagy and lethargic and the whole thing starts all over. Good thing I'm exercising now. Soon the dog will be able to go back out for long walks again (She gets her stitches out on Monday) and that'll help. Regardless, I've been through this enough to know that I now need to start doing stuff to avoid getting into that cycle.
So tomorrow, I bake. On the schedule are gingersnaps, curiously strong merangues, butterscotch chip cookies, and ... maaaaybe... pretzels. I still have to see if I feel up to making them. They're a hell of an undertaking, what with the deathbringing chemicals and all.
In the meantime, I have a Yellow Dog, good tea, a fireplace fire, and Steppin In It on the radio. It's impossible to be depressed with these things around me.
Huge congratulations to Mike and Dagny!
Mia Ann Hanner Zawacki was born Sunday, December 10, 2006 at roughly 2:00 pm. She weighed in at 6lb, 10oz and was 20" long.
According to Mike's Blog, Dagny was quite the trooper, so send all three of them some good lovin' vibes.
YAAAAAAAAAY!
So, Zoë's spay aftermath has been... interesting.
She's done pretty okay, and has left her stitches alone for the most part, but has been weirdly neurotic and started displaying nesting behavior yesterday. Today, I went to check her stitches to make sure they weren't red and swollen, and finding them fine, I made another weird discovery.
She's started lactating.
Not a little, either. She's got noticably swollen teats. So very weird.
The internets haven't turned up much of anything, so right now my best guess is that she might have been in proestrus when they spayed her. Between the resulting hormonal imbalance and her stimulating the general area, she may have caused the lactation hereself.
Anybody raise dogs ever hear of this problem? Karen, our usual top resource, has come up blank.
Ironically, putting a teeshirt on her isn't working, because her legs are so short -- she gets all tangled up and can't walk. Earlier, I put citrus juice on her nipples (staying well away from her surgery line) but that didn't help. I just put a teeshirt on her and kinda tied it up under her tail, which covered all but her hindmost set. We'll see if that works. I know the real answer is a cone collar, but I hate those, and don't really want to use one if I don't have to.
EDITED TO ADD:
Jen found this for me and Paul's call to the Vet cfonfirmed basically the same info: a drop in progesterone triggers an increase in prolactin (give birth == need to lactate), so when they took her uterus out, she must have been in proestrus, which meant a sudden drop in progesterone. Add that to her licking her nethers a lot...and you 've got instant boobies. It's a little unnerving, mostly because she's all shaved. They're all pink and cartoon-uddery.
Also, this is hysterical, pun intended.
Baby Arlo is back. And he will Rock you.
And Uncle Liam? He hasn't been making more Arlo videos because he's apparrently just sitting around the house doing nothing.
This morning, Zoë went to the vet to get tutored.
It's positively silent in the house, and a little unnerving. To think she came into our lives only a little over a month ago -- and now we so notice her absence.
We're also not having a good day for rudimentary technology around here. For reasons unknown, the front door lock has seized and refuses to open, despite cajoling, pleading, and liberal application of WD-40. Paul's parking brake has seized and refuses to release, forcing him to drive my car. Paul's driver's side door lock also put up a ten-minute fight when I tried to move his car back into the driveway so we wouldn't get ticketed for leaving it on the street.
Yeah. Unfun.
On a more positive note, yesterday I got a site programmed for one of Paul's clients, and three-and-a-half pages inked. I would've got the last page inked, but I noticed halfway through that one of the characters is way the heck too big for the car he's driving, and I'll have to redraw him to make him believable.
Still, that's pretty good progress. I only hope I can keep the pace through the holidays.
I had the day off of work today.
I pencilled four pages. Four.
It's only 10:30pm. I may make another pot of tea and try for five. Either way it's a freakin' record.
Tomorrow I do more programming; tomorrow evening is art night and I'll have those pages inked by the end, come hell or high water.
Dude.
Lots of stuff going on, but I'm moving through it slowly.
Friday night we went out to Art Hop at the SmartShop, where they had live blacksmithing. It was awesome. They were forge-welding a chain out of scrap rebar that varied in diameter from 1/2" to 2". So very cool. Some links were so thick that they had to team-forge them; one guy'd haul the chain out of the fire with tongs and throw it on the anvil and the other two smiths would hammer on it in perfect alternating rhythm. They also communicated movement and timing through hammerblows on the anvil, like "Okay, move the chain onto the flat of the anvil now" or "Okay, done, back in the fire". That part was awesome, and not at all unlike the way session musicians communicate with one another while playing a tune.
Saturday was unThanksgiving and Paul's unBirthday at once, and so we had his folks over for dinner. I baked two lasagnas (froze one for later) and his folks brought cake and ice cream. A nice laid-back evening was had by all.
On Sunday I took it easy, considering I spent most of Saturday either cleaning, cooking, or cleaning up after cooking. Fortunately, there were leftovers galore. I got most of the final Vogelein pages plotted out, which was awesome. Took the dog for a long walk in the cold down to Rocket Star and back; Zoë still has a long way to go with her obedience, but she's still making progress, which is good. Treats are wonderful incentive.
Monday was work, and afterwards I got the chance to meet a young fan of mine. She's really smart and cool and reminds me a whole lot of myself at that age. She was super excited to get the 40-page preview, and she swapped me that for a story she'd written last year. Pretty cool, all 'round.
Getting home Monday night was a bit of an adventure, though -- the last 15 miles were crazy treacherous. It was beautiful and hushed when I finally skidded into the driveway at midnight -- we had some five inches of fluffy Disney snow on the ground and more coming down.
This morning there were at least six inches, and so taking Zoë out for a walk proved to be full of hilarity. The snow was up to her shoulders, and she had a ton of fun surging forward through it and galumphing in the really deep parts. So cute.
Three Questions:
1) If I wanted to improve my l33t \\/3b 5ki11z by taking online courses, are there specific sites/groups/organizations that are more favorably recognized by employers? Online "universities" are preferable to books/cd-tutorials for me.
2) If I had to pick only one or two skills to persue, which ones would gain me the most ground, and would be more applicable to future jobs (as opposed to becoming outdated sooner than later)? Choices include: Flash, .NET, PHP, CGI, SQL, ASP, Cold Fusion, higher-level JavaScript. My current skillset is almost entirely HTML/DHTML/XSL/CSS, with a wee tiny bit of JavaScript -- hardly anything more involved than making date generators or image flippers. i already know rudimentary Flash, and have poked at PHP, but I have virtually no knowledge of back-end or middle. My brain seizes up at the thoughts of learning actual languages like Java or C or stuff like that, so I don't think Real Programming is going to be an option.
2a) If I had to learn one front-to-back path, what'd be best? Front I have covered.
Suggestions?