What are you looking at?!

One of the perks of being a director-type is having access to a DVD player for "research purposes". Lately I've been "researching" The Maltese Falcon, Mildred Pierce, It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World, Fight Club, and a bunch of Bugs Bunny cartoons.

Strangely enough though, I've found that I get the most amount of work done while watching The Blackadder. Ah, Rowan Atkinson, you were so damn funny once upon a time! My fave clip from season #2:

Nothing Resembling a Timely Manner

My procrastination skills are pretty good. Not as good as the Husband's, but he's in a class of his own.

However, my skills came into play big time in regards to a Christmas present I was asked to do back in November. I was asked to paint up a rolling hard-sided suitcase for a fellow Derby Doll to use as her skate equipment bag. No problem, I said at the time.

I'm such a BIG FREAKIN' LIAR.

The reason why is because I decided that I should use enamel paint instead of my usual acrylic, as I figured it'd be more durable. I've never used enamel before, and I was really, really freaked out about using it on something that was a gift for someone else.

So what did I do?

I procrastinated in rare form when it came to doing the project. Out of the seven months I had the suitcase in my possession, I ended up doing five days of actual work, tops.

Freakin'.

LOSER.

However, I finally got over myself and asked for some advice from my friend Kenny and got going on the project and got it done...just in time for the Derby Doll hiatus to start. So I didn't have a chance to see the recipient of said present for a month before I could deliver the damn suitcase.

Which I was finally able to do last night.

So here it is:






















I think she liked it.

I hope she did, at any rate.

Ta-da!

Since I keep talking about it, here's some pix of the Divorce Desk. Notice that you won't see a real wide shot of the desk. That's because the room that it's in is so damn small, we can't step back far enough to take a decent photo. Here's a close-up of one of the hydraulic cranks that adjusts the desktop:
















Fascinating, isn't it?!


Here's a wider shot of the desk:





















Aaaaaaaaand another shot of the desk.
















On top of the desk shelving(which is cut off in the photos)are two lamps. Which were thrown in with the desk for free. Awesome. I heard that the mover dudes in Sherman Oaks threw away a bunch of shelving, desk parts, and animation disks at the end of the day when we went to get the desk. Sad, sad, sad. They could've told us to just take the stuff...I know that the animators would've gladly taken it off the movers' hands.



Oh look, here's a photo of me announcing at that Smog City/Bakersfield bout in Fresno last weekend. The guy sitting next to me is the dad of one of the skaters and was supposed to co-announce with me. Instead, he decided to just watch the game. I didn't complain.

















Some time I'll have to tell the amusing story of the husband and I meeting a nice bunch of lesbians at the pizza place we had dinner at after the game.


Thursday and yesterday, the studio at which I'm currently employed had a huge lot sale. They sold off a bunch of props, furniture and wardrobe. Unfortunately, they didn't have any cool props, such as a prop insect head or anything, but they had a lot of interesting lamps, dishes, shoes and baskets. The first day I went with some of the other ladies from my production. Now, a note about me and the rest of the ladies on the production. I'm not like them.

Oh, shut up.

Seriously.

They were humored at my attempts to find clothes, since all of the women's clothing available were actress-sized. Note: I'm most definitely not actress-sized. So I moved on to lamps, which I talked myself out of buying. Including the sparkly lava lamp. Dammit. And then shoes, where I found a pair of murdersickle boots, but couldn't manoever them onto my feet in anything resembling a timely manner.

So I came out practically empty-handed. The other ladies got some snazzy lamps, clothing, suitcases, etc. I make a terrible shopper.

Yesterday I went back on my own. This time I picked up six rice bowls for $2 and an umbrella for $1. It's of a nicer quality than the 99-cent store umbrella I'm currently using, despite it's having a bent rib. It worked great when I walked back to work from the lot, at any rate. The security people now know me well enough that when I walked back to work and swiped my ID card through to open the pedestrian gate, they didn't bother coming out to check my shopping bag for explosives. Awwwwwwwwww!

Back to work...

The Other Woman

I've discovered that I'm really jealous of someone.

Very high school of me, I know. But she's getting on my nerves.

Unfortunately, that someone is my own altered ego.

She gets a lot of attention. When I went to the Art Dorks show, I was introduced as Tara more often than Sandra. And people love to hear about Tara's adventures. No one really gives a flying rat's tail about Sandra. OK, Sandra doesn't do much except draw and ride murdersickles, but damn, Tara just talks about freakin' roller derby for hours on end. But everyone loves it.

What the hell?!?!?!?!!

And here I thought we were the same people. But apparently we're not.

I just came to the jealous realization recently, and haven't thought through the repercussions of it. Should I talk crap about my altered ego? Spread rumors? Puncture her tires? Call her out and have a bare-knuckle fight in a parking lot?

I can't kill her off yet, and she's already on hiatus 'til July. But she still persists. Betch!

Speaking of Tara, we drove to do the announcing thing in Fresno yesterday. It turned out to be a great game between the Smog City Rollergirls and Bakersfield. Bako won, but it was a close game and the audience went completely ape over it. The skaters did well(especially considering that they were skating on uber-slippery concrete), and I got $100 for my troubles(which were really nonexistent).

Highlights include:

• having bacon on a pizza. Talk about heart attack on a plate! Loved it!
• seeing that highway 99 is almost like a real freeway...I was able to go 85mph when I got out of LA-LA Land.
• central California is still rural enough to effectively play, "What's that smell?!" for hours on end.
• knowing that I can drink Southern Comfort, Newcastle ale, and a Long Island Iced tea all in one night without losing my guts. I think the pizza helped.
• seeing Bako continue to improve. I love those girls, I really do.
  

Hopefully I'll have the majority of my freelance done by a week from today. Woohoo! Then I can play with the new animation desk, which got nicknamed the Divorce Desk after all the yelling and screaming the husband and I did at each other while trying to fix the damn thing and bring it into the house to set up in the art room. Nothing else really fits into the art room now, but at least the damn desk is all set up.

Here's a non-sequitir to end with:

Chugga Chugga Chugga

Ok.

I know I needed a day job, but jeezus, I didn't expect the rest of my life to gear up and keep me as busy as work is! So I'm just chugging along with work, freelance, and outside-of-the-Dolls derby stuff.

Since I'm too lazy to post any artwork, I'll share some photos that were taken last Friday at the Art Dorks show at Thinkspace Gallery here in LA. I found out that nothing freaks out a bunch of quiet artists more than a big loud woman on a big loud murdersickle pulling up and stomping into the show. Funny thing is, I knew a lot of them online, but I got introduced under my real name as opposed to my online alias, so it took awhile to figure out who was whom. If you go to the Art Dorks site, you'll see a link to their photos and who they are.














































Speaking of big and loud, the security guards at work now all know who I am. Apparently I stick out like a sore thumb whenever I come up to the gate. Shocking, I know. Today one of them asked me if I'd ridden in, as he missed seeing me this morning. Yes I did, I replied. Good, he said. I heard about a motorcycle crash on the 170 yesterday and I hoped that it wasn't you.

Awwwwwwwwwwww!

This weekend the husband and I are going to Fresno. Willingly. Because I'm going to announce at the Bako/Smog City bout Saturday night. Should be verrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrry interesting. And hot. I hate hot, but I have no choice.

Hit Me!

Adventures in animation:

Yesterday the studio I'm working for sold off a buttload of animation desks. These desks were allegedly around $5 GRAND APIECE when they were first bought. They're really nice; hydraulics to raise and lower the desktop, side shelves and drawers to put all one's animation crap in, they even have electrical outlets on 'em! Verrrrrry nice.

The studio sold them for $100 EACH.

HOLY CRAP.

So the husband and I rented a van and got ourselves a desk.

It took forever...we got the van, drove to the Valley, and found a clusterf#%^% of epic proportions. I wasn't too surprised, but the husband wasn't happy. The original idea was that on the hour, every hour for four hours, a new group of people came, signed in, paid up, and got a desk loaded for them. The staggering of groups was to help keep a flow going through the loading dock.

Um, yeah. Didn't happen.

We got there a half hour before my appointed time, and the loading dudes weren't done with the first group(I was in the third group). So we waited for about two hours in line. snore. Then there were the groups of artists who banded together to rent just one truck, and had up to six desks loaded. That took forever. Then there was the pizza break that the movers took, leaving the two studio security guards to help load stuff in. Then there was the coworker who had trouble backing his rented truck into the loading area. Needless to say, he got a lot of grief from me since he regularly loves to aggravate me at work. His new name is, "Drives Like A Girl". Hehehehheh!

So we finally got my desk, along with extra bulbs for the light table, and an extra disk(worth around $60 or so)loaded up and back to the Westside in early afternoon. We unloaded most of the pieces with no incident, but the main desk part is too wide to put into the art room. So the husband has to take it apart and bring it in piece by piece to reassemble. Oh, and the hydraulics don't work. So we have to figure out how to get that going.

Then derby crap took over. We had to find outfits for the Sleazy 70's fundraiser thingy going on that evening. So after taking my sister to our favorite Italian place for an early birthday dinner, we dragged her along on our shopping spree. Two hours, $88 and two stores later, we had our goofy outfits for the evening. The husband ended up looking like Al Pacino from Scarface, and I ended up looking like a 70's groupie, complete with halter top. That was funny.

Here's a video clip that one of the Dolls and her boyfriend put together. The choice of soundtrack alone is fantastic, in my never-humble opinion:

I'm in my office...

...makin sum drawings.

This whole driving-30-miles-to-work thing is taking a bit to get used to again. No matter which route to Bore-bank I take, it's Lane-splitsville on the ol' murdersickle. Which reminds me, I gotta give the poor machine an oil change this weekend.

Anyway...

My new office is OK. When the air conditioner isn't on, it gets stuffy. But when the air conditioner does come on, I expect snow flurries any second because it's so damn cold. No matter how I set the thermostat, it's either stuffy or freezing. Ah well, at least I'm kinda out in the far reaches of the crew. Right now I'm the last outpost...the other offices beyond mine are for the moment empty. That probably won't last long.

The main complaint I have about the office is that the desk is stinky. Kinda an unwashed-animation-dork stink. I tried wiping everything down with some Clorox wipes, but that hasn't helped...it only added a rotting fruit stench. Oh joy. Thank gawd the window opens to the outside world!

The work is coming along nicely. I'm trying to throw in a Big Lebowski reference in a section I'm boarding. Mainly from the Gutterballs sequence. The director is saying, We can't do that! The reference to the Log Jammin' porno from the film will not fly! My response is that the kids won't get it and the adults will laugh their guts out if they've seen the flick. For once I'm being subtle about this. Srsly.

The crew is cool. They're funny and ridiculously talented. As in, what the hell am I doing on this production when there are so many damn good artists on it? I'm the weak link in the chain. A little unnerving, but much like everything else on this job, if I don't dwell on it too much I seem to do OK.




















Freelance is keeping me busy at night. It's plugging along, and I'm really happy about how it's turning out.

Derby crap is keeping me busy as well. Giving private lessons, doing more announcing, arranging for hiatus-training fun, and I'll be an MC at our little fundraiser/social thingy on Saturday:





















Do I have an outfit for this shindig? Of course not. Will I have time to get one? Probably not, as I have an animation desk to pick up Saturday morning and haul home. Should be entertaining.

Show up and have a derby chick yell at you drunkenly. It's entertaining and for a good cause...us!!

Bookshelves

Last night the husband and I straddled worlds and went to not one, but two parties. One was the birthday party for one of our animation buddies, CH. The other was an office-themed party(as opposed to a The Office-themed party) thrown by one of the Derby Dolls, TZ.

It's always a little surreal to go from one persona to another. Or at least it's weird being called one name then a different name based on the change of venue. But a common thread of the evening is that both CH and TZ lovelovelove monkeys(and who doesn't, in the end?). So I gave each of them little monkey toys to play with.

Anyway...

It was the first time for me to check out the living quarters of each party person, and it's always fun to see how other people arrange their stuff. As opposed to me, who has no organizational skills whatsoever. CH has a lot of DVD's. A LOT of DVD's. Some books, but not as many books as DVD's. TZ had a LOT of books. I like looking at people's bookshelves to see what they have and mentally compare it to what I've got. There's usually little to no overlap, which is fun.

So I was looking in a very non-specific way at TZ's books, and it got me thinking about my bookshelves and what's on them. I don't have enough damn bookshelves for all the damn books the husband and I have accumulated. He specializes in science fiction, I specialize in biographies. From Eleanor Roosevelt to Sam Goldwyn to a Scottish guy who helped bring in modern surgery techniques in the mid-1700's in England.

I also have a smattering of kids books. Not a lot. Many animation artists collect the old Golden Books rabidly because of Mary Blair and a couple other Disney artists who did work for GB. Dr. Seuss is of course also popular. Maurice Sendak is up there, too. But my personal fave artist is usually way underrepresented in peoples' bookshelves: Shel Silverstein. Yeah, that dude that wrote The Giving Tree, Where the Sidewalk Ends, and a buttload of other kids books.

I grew up with The Giving Tree, Lafcadio, Where the Sidewalk Ends, and A Light in the Attic. It wasn't until I was an adult myself that I found out that he wrote adult-themed stuff. Go buy Uncle Shelby's ABZ Book RIGHT NOW if you don't already have it. It's silly. We need more of that kind of silliness in the world.

And then there was the way he drew. I think I soaked up his influence the most in the way he drew, with the simple, solid black lines. Much like...a Sharpie! It all makes sense now, doesn't it?

Anyway, when Silverstein died, I didn't hear much about it in the press. Not like the hullabaloo when Dr. Seuss died. Not that I'm saying that Dr. Seuss didn't deserve the attention he got(having Jesse Jackson read Green Eggs and Ham on SNL as a eulogy was absolutely cool), but I've wondered why Silverstein doesn't get the attention like some of the other top artists?

Sad, as I think he deserved better.

My parents RAWK.

Today I got off work early. We're moving our offices from close-by Sherman Oaks to out-of-the-way Bore-bank this weekend. To prepare for the move(and, more importantly, keep out of the movers' way), everyone was encouraged to work from home today and tomorrow.

Check.

So after gathering my paycheck and packing the rest of my crap up(yeah, two weeks and I've already got crap. Mostly supplies), I went to change the incredibly bald tire on my murdersickle in the OC and then get a much-needed hour-long nap. I love "working from home"!

To celebrate my three-day work week, we went to one of my fave restaurants ever for dinner. My parents gave me a gift certificate for this themepark of meat for my birthday, and so we put it to good use tonight. This place was responsible for turning me into a carnivore when I worked in Texas four years ago. OK, I would've had to have turned away from my semi-vegetarian standards just from being in Texas to begin with, but Fogo de Chao helped the process along at a much more rapid rate. Luckily for me my parents picked up on my raving about it, and have given me gift certificates for the place when they opened up an LA branch a couple of years ago. Sweet, sweet carnivorous bliss! THANKS, Mom and Dad!

Despite the Derby Dolls being on hiatus, we had a special guest trainer come in last night to kick our asses. Her name is EstroJen and she used to skate with us until our league split last year and she went with the flat-trackers. She's an amazing skater and it was fun to have her teach us new stuff, especially strategy-wise.

I've also gotten into a spat with another Derby Doll. It's a situation where pot + kettle=black, but that ain't how she sees it. Pity. It makes me rethink why the hell I keep with the Dolls, as she insinuated that I'm not well-liked within the league. Again, the pot/kettle analogy applies strongly, however. It just makes me frustrated and I wonder why I bother sometimes.

Announcing in Bako last Saturday went well. For the most part. Other than the one wireless microphone shared between two announcers (me and Razorslut) kept cutting out on us. We did well enough to be asked to announce the next game in Fresno in June. Fresno. In June. Hilarity should ensue out of that, I'm sure!

Still slogging away on freelance. Got an extended deadline, so all is good.

I'm going to rub my fat belly for luck. Mmmmmm, meat!

More Rejects

Ah, the weekend. A three-day weekend. Where I get to relax and not do anything.

Except for breaking my announcer cherry at a roller derby game in Bakersfield, yell/train a bunch of out of town skaters from Tuscon for a couple of hours of banked track fun, do a derby interview, aaaaaand, more freelance!

Below are more rejected drawings for the freelance gig. I'm still having a bunch o' fun doing it, and I can't wait to see the final results. The people I'm working for seem to like what I'm doing, that they're asking me to do even more for them. Awesome!
















Yesterday I went on a casting call for a new "reality" tv show. A bunch of Derby Dolls went, so I know that some of us will be on teevee later this year! I think I totally blew the interview. The husband isn't disappointed by this...in fact, he's breathing a BIG sigh of relief. Why? Because this was for a tattoo show! He doesn't particularly like the one tatt I have(neither do I, hence my trying to get on a tatt show so that I can get a good coverup for it), and he doesn't relish the idea of me getting a bigger tatt to cover up the ugly one I already have. He asked, How do you know that the new tatt won't end up gross and muddy like your old tatt? Because the inks are better, I said.

That wasn't a satisfactory answer.

I've decided that if I don't get on the show, I'm going to research laser tatt removal options. Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Back in the Saddle

This week I went back to work, and got back on the murdersickle.

Thank goodness!

Being a sequence director is a different experience. The board artists I'm working with are more talented than me, which makes me wonder why the hell I'm the director and they're not. Being alone in an office with a computer at my disposal is dangerous. I put on Pandora radio and wonder when they're going to figure out that I shouldn't be there.

At least I can ride the bike to work now. Gawds, I didn't realize how much I missed it until I had to push-start the damn thing on Tuesday morning after it sat around unable to be used for over a month.

Last night was another Drunk Scout adventure. I met up with the husband's work crew at close to 9pm where festivities were already underway and there was an Irish Car Bomb waiting for me. I think I had 2 Car Bombs and 2 Long Island Ice Teas. All I know for sure is that one of the coworkers had 7 Car Bombs on an empty stomach. That got ugly for him sooner than later. Everyone else took turns looking in on him while he curled up in the bathroom until 11pm, when it was decided that they were all going to the beach. The husband and I went home, drunkenly.

Thank goodness!

Today I got a report that one of the beach-goers broke her leg when she tripped over a dog. Wtf?!?! Glad I missed that. Apparently we missed a lot, because today the husband said that no one will talk about what else may or may not have happened. Hmmmmm...

Last weekend was amusing. I set up 4 hours of derby-learning goodness for the Sacramento league to absorb. They didn't get through half of my agenda. So hopefully they'll invite me back up so that I can show them the other crap I had planned. At least they paid me very well for the time and instruction that I gave them. They're going to be bouting against the Western Nationals champions from Seattle next month...oh my! That's gonna be a helluva learning experience!

This weekend I make my announcing debut in Bakersfield. The husband will make his drinking debut, I guess. Bless his heart! I also get to show a team from Tuscon how to skate on the banked track. Yeehaw! Busybusybusy...too busy to post a damn picture.

Sleep is for the dead

Thank goodness there's melatonin in the world, or else I would've gone completely batsh!t by now. No, I wasn't batsh!t before...scary, don't you think?

The next door neighbors got a new dog. A dog that likes to bark. A dog that likes to bark in the middle of the night while Beavis is lurking about. I freakin' hate that dog. Almost as much as I hate Beavis. So last night when I was woken up at 1:30am by the barking dog I stomped next door and rang the doorbell to annoy the neighbors as much as their dog was annoying me. They didn't answer the door, but the dog shut the hell up, at least. This is where the melatonin kicked in...I was still able to get enough sleep after that adventure so that I'm not completely useless today.

I have a lot of stuff to do. I have to pack for my roadtrip to Sacramento. I have to plan the bootcamp that I'll be doing in Sacramento. I have to prep the husband on the cats' medications before I go to Sacramento. I have to do work before I go to Sacramento. I may have to go shopping for props to use at the bootcamp I'll be running in Sacramento.

On the Derby Dolls front: no bouts until July. No training until July, except for the newbies. We're looking for a new home during this hiatus. This comes at a pretty good time, actually, as I was beginning to stress out about how I'm going to figure out work and skating at the same time while work moves from one side of the Valley to the other and the commute resulting. Should be interesting.

Here's some more rejected freelance:

Sleepless in LA

Ever since I hurt my knee a month ago, I haven't been able to sleep well.

I apparently twist and turn a lot in my sleep, and I constantly wake myself up when I twist my knee into something hurtable. That's not fun. I've tried wearing a knee brace to sleep, but all that does is cut off the circulation to my foot. Nothing like waking up to see the cankle of a 400-lb. women attached to my leg to make me rethink the brace strategy!

So I'm now even more of a walking zombie than normal. Phooey.

On the up side, I went to a fun little birthday party yesterday, I skated to the beach and back, I rode my bicycle around, and I saw friends of the non-derby variety. It was good. Very good.

With today being Mother's Day, the husband and I will attempt to ride the bicycles to his sister's house in Torrance. An approximately 45-mile round trip. Oh, good times! If that doesn't make me sleepy, nothing short of a heroin/Quaalude cocktail mix with a splash of horse tranquilizers will. Hmmm, I wonder if Anna Nicole's prescriptions can be updated for me...

Below is a rejected rough drawing from my current freelance. It's rejected not because of the pose(let's hear it for the Petty influence! Yay!), but the pose + the outfit wasn't working for the effect we were going for.





















I'm lovin' this freelance job!

A List

A non-comprehensive list of stuff I like:

• warm cats
• June gloom
• watching The Big Lebowski over and over again
• chocolate-covered pretzels
• hearing mockingbirds early in the morning
• the smell of strawberries while riding on the motorcycle
• big, black boots
• leather pants
• skeleton art
• small gadgets from Japan
• old movie posters
• LA house architecture from the 20's-40's
• riding the bicycle through downtown LA on a Sunday
• drunk drawing
• two-lane roads in summer
• riding the motorcycle at sunset in New Mexico without a helmet
• Taschen books
• the idea that stupidity should be physically painful
• refridgerator magnets
• truck stops
• abandoned gas stations
• skating against Texas
• skating in Texas
• driving through small towns in Texas
• redwood forests
• bears
• Sharpies
• flowers on hats
• suits on men who don't ordinarily wear suits
• cemeteries
• old bicycles
• swing music
• kissing
• red lipstick
• big earrings
• small parties
• hermit crab races
• jumping on trampolines
• mocha frappuccinos
• BBQ'ing steak
• organizing my clothes
• soap
• riding the subway in NYC
• petting dogs
• packing for a trip
• laughing out loud

Just throwing it out there.

What Have I Gotten Myself Into?!

So my union gig coming up is all pencilled in schedule-wise and it's all good.

Then I get a call the day before yesterday. The gig says that the sequence director originally assigned to my section has "punked out" and would I like to be sequence director?

Huh?!?!

Quick definition for the non-animation types: a sequence director basically is responsible for having three storyboard artists get their storyboards done for a section of script. In this case, a third of the script I'm going to be working on is assigned to three storyboard artists who will then split that section three ways and I get to tell them to hurry up and finish. Then I get to critique the work, give minor revisions, and will then help the main director to make sure that the timing of the animation in my section is done so that the whole shebang can be sent to Korea for animation.

Great googly-moogly!

When I was first contacted about the gig in general over a month ago, the main director had asked me if I was interested in being a sequence director. At the time, I said NO!!!!!!!!! But since it came up again, I figured that this was a sign that I have to follow through on what I said about actually trying to pay attention to my animation "career" this year. Thing is, I've been willfully ignorant about timing in animation, so I'm panicked as hell. And feeling nauseous. Everyone is telling me that I'll be fine, I'll learn it quick, and it ain't a big deal. However, I would still like one of these:



















Oh, and right now I'm busy as hell on some other freelance. Fun freelance. Freelance that isn't animation. Freelance involving drawing pin-ups. When it rains, it freakin' pours.

Now only if my knee would get better. Skating banked track aggravates it. Oh joy.

Well, what do you know...

I've never met Nancy Bieman.

I'd like to, though.

Here's a post on the infamous Anibator(who seems to have fallen silent again)and his views of women in the industry that she posted on her blog. She even gives a possible solution to some of the problems within the industry. The anonymous whiners won't like it, however.

I dunno...

I'm just not feelin' the background.

Blaaaahhhhhhhhhhh.






















Spent too much of the weekend indulging in bad things. No weight lost, and it hurt like hell to drag my fat ass to the SM stairs today with the hot north wind.

Now the Angriest Cat in the World is sneezing her angry head off. Luckily I have some leftover antibiotic stuff that I can give to her. The Fatass cat is laughing at her as he eats his diabetic food.

As part of my food and drink debauchery, I got to tattdoodle on more people. No pix so far, yet. But just you wait, I'll get some soon. Tonight I was supposed to do more tattdoodling, but I'm tired and broke and cranky.

Ugh. Bad mood over this background crap. The image is cool and the bg doesn't help it at all. It's really bugging me.

I Love It When A Plan Comes Together

What a difference a day makes.

I have a bootcamp gig lined up with one of the Sacramento derby leagues.

I have a union job starting the week after the bootcamp.

I'm starting to skate again.

I'm actually enjoying going to the Santa Monica stairs and exercising. I'm only up to five rounds, though. At my peak I could do almost ten. Jeez!



The Get the Fatass Cat Back On His Damn Diabetic Food Project is beginning to progress in a positive direction, too.

Who knew?!

I'm sure something will come along to screw all of this up. Ah, that's just the optimism talking!

Actually, the darkest aspect of my life is the continued lameness of LA City Council and the future of the Derby Dolls. We still don't have a date nailed down for a May bout because we don't know if the city will allow us to have a bout at all. Still.

Bastards.

Here's the Illustrator Monkey as a WIP. Something else needs to be done to his fur, but I don't know what. I like how his hands turned out. I'm still deciding what to do with the background. This "being an artist" thing isn't as easy as I'd hoped.

Cat Conspiracies

Ever since I had to take the diabetic-fatass cat in for dental work last week, he's going through a round of not wanting to eat the food that he's supposed to eat. Finicky little bastard.

It makes trying to keep his diabetes in check more difficult, as I can't give him his regular dose of insulin, as it'll crash his blood sugar levels and at best he'll get all dopey and poop all over the house. At worst he goes into convulsions and we immediately rack up a couple grand in emergency vet costs.

He's done this before, and it takes about a week or so for the Battle of Lardo's Menu to sort itself out. He usually "loses"...in other words, he finally eats something resembling what he's supposed to and gets his insulin so he stays relatively healthy(as healthy as a 16-year old cat with diabetes and almost no teeth can be, anyway). This time, he's being an extra-big jerk about the whole food issue. Ever tried to force-feed a cat? It's not fun and I don't recommend it. Having a shower afterwards to scrub off all of the food-infested cat drool is mandatory.

If anyone wants a used cat, I'll send him to you. Airholes in the mailing receptacle optional.

Stuff update: when I was searching for something completely different, I found both my latest pair of sunglasses and my official Fight Crew tank top. That still leaves my favorite watch(missing since last August) and my fave CD case full o' homemade CD's still lost in another dimension. I win some, I lose some.

I'm such a doofus