Happy Holidays

This is the image I (and Abe, I guess) sent out as a Xmas card. (Abe still will need to send it to his own friends since I only sent it to people I have email addresses for.) I drew it with a technical pen or two and colored it with watercolor pencils. I don't want to waste those, so I recently went and bought a set of Crayola colored pencils and they are really fun to work with. Plus there are about twice as many colors, including silver and gold, which can be useful.

So Happy Holidays one and all! It is the second day of winter and it is getting colder. It got warmer first, though.

Today is my last day of work for the year. I was going to work tomorrow, but my coworker Lucas and Abe convinced me to take my last day of PTO instead of the payout. So here I am working my last day of the year from home. It was a successful day too because I finally figured out the example of Oregon state tax withholding. Buh. Doesn't my job sound exciting?

Well, I hope it gets colder over the next two days because I want snow on Xmas day again.

Last Saturday, Abe's last day off before Xmas day, we went to my cousin's for a Xmas movie party. We were the first to show up and I think we were early. Good times though. They bought a house this year and it is nice and big. We got to see Tony's dad, who I haven't seen in a while. (Tony, or Anton as he likes to be called now, is my cousin). He brought Frango's over, which is a real treat since I used to get to eat them every year for Xmas, but now we rarely see him, so we don't get them. Yummy. He even brought lasagna, but I didn't get any of that. We watch A Muppet's Christmas Carol, which was awesome. On Monday, I still had the Ghost of Christmas Present's song stuck in my head. Which isn't so bad.

Also, I am knitting (poorly) the hat penny wore on the last Big Bang Theory of the year. I needed to use size 9s. I might make another one tomorrow... I used 7s, so I would use 9s tomorrow. I am pretty excited. Maybe I will post my final pattern here. I am just using some leftover Red Heart acrylic yarn from the first blanket I ever knit (which was for Xmas and looks terrible - dropped stitches, poor finishing, I never even weaved in the ends). Hopefully I can finish it to wear to Abe's mom, who he still hasn't called to make plans for Xmas Eve. Jerkface.

You know who is not a jerkface? My coworker Lucas, who kindly recycled my can of Diet Coke and washed my cups since I thought I was coming in on Wednesday, but since I am not, they would have sat there dirty for almost 2 weeks. I think the dirtiness grosses him out enough that he would have washed it even if he didn't like me. Haha.

Anyways, in other art news, I also recently went through my box of "art" stuff. I found an embroidery project I want to finish but may not be able to. I will give it a shot, I guess. I also found my ink and nibs. So last night I started practicing drawing with that. Well, I did one a few days ago too. So have more pictures to scan and post. It is just so annoying to try scanning. It only works half the time. We have a new set up that we have not tried yet, though, so it might work better now. The other problem is that I draw on paper that is larger than the scanner, so I have to scan each picture in two parts and then put them together in Photoshop. Anyways, I will stop complaining and just try to do it. I have at least 5 pictures to scan and post. I am not behind in any way. What are you talking about?

Happy Birthday Abe! (and a picture)

Abe, my big sweetie, is another year older. Can't really tell though. Looks the same, acts the same. He makes me happy and I make him happy, so what else could you really ask for?

I got him pants for his birthday, yes pants. A pair of jeans and some pj pants. And, simple as he is, he loves them. Works well for me. I also got him some yarn so I can make him some mittens. My goal is to have them done before the end of January. We also went to Texas Style BBQ for lunch. It was good, but has made me a little sick. Abe is in love though. (He also got himself some games for his birthday - two of them were under $10 each...)

I also sent him to this. He laughed a lot, which I suppose is what you should do on your birthday.

And finally, here is the pic I intended to put up for Thanksgiving and forgot. Now we are off to Thai for dinner with Abe's mom and then to play EQ2 for the rest of the night. Should be a blast.

Comic tuesday

This comic is strangely recursive.

I'm going to be 35 in a few days. I feel old.

I can't decide what to get myself as a present. I'm considering Borderlands, Dragon Age or just pre-paying for a 3 or 6 month subscription to EQ2 and pre-order its next expansion. On the other hand I might just buy a few comics and make a big credit card payment with the rest. You know you're getting old when making credit card payments with your birthday money ranks up with buying video games and comics.

Well, I need to run to catch the bus to work. Hope everyone is well :-)

--Abe

My thoughts on New Moon and the comic

So I thought New Moon was good enough. It let me see the parts I had a hard time picturing, like the horse-sized wolves. But that was about it. I was disappointed with the whining in the book, but in the movie I was disappointed. It was barely good enough. I was glad that the annoying internal monologue of Bella was gone, but then they also left out the acting. It was a different director and I think that was part of the problem. I liked the direction of the first movie better. In this one it seemed like everyone could care less. They just went through the motions they thought they were supposed to without putting real thought or heart into it. But since the previous one was a bit better in regards to the acting, I would have to put it on the director.

When I read the book, I pictured Jane and her brother as pre-teens, like 9, but I guess she is might have supposed to be mid to late teens, so I guess Dakota Fanning was good. She looked beautiful. She was just older than I had pictured and I can't find any accurate information about Jane's age online. I am seeing 9 to 16 years old. Whatever.

I think in the end, if they don't keep getting worse, we will probably end up buying all four movies because it would be fun to watch them all in a row.

I think my least favorite thing about the whole series (though I haven't read the last book yet) is how pitiful Bella is. She drives me nuts. If my boyfriend all of a sudden changed his mind and told me he didn't want to be with me and I would never see him again, I would be pissed, even if I thought he was too good for me, because no matter how little I thought of myself, no one deserves to be treated like a toy that can be set aside and forgotten without regard. Let this be a note for you, Abe... :) Just joking. Sure, there would be some self doubt, but New Moon is like an exercise in self doubt. And she sure keeps with that theme throughout the everything, Bella thinking she is not good enough. Which can only mean to me that she also has trust issues since Edward tells her all the time that she is everything to him, blah, blah, blah.

Uh, but no kidding, I really enjoy the stories. I know that I have a lot of negative to say about it. I just think the books needed better editing and the movies needed better acting and directing (hand in hand).

Anyways, I just wanted to point out that I totally used a ruler to draw the lines in the last comic, so the crooked lie drives me nuts. Ah well. I did another one using the ruler and I think it looks awesome. At least the lines around the panels do... It is a Xmas one, so it won't be posted for a bit. I have at least three Xmas drawings to post. We don't decorate or anything until after the 11th to respect Abe's birthday, so we won't post the pics until then either.

Also, in the 4th panel, I forgot to draw in Georgie's fingers! And get ready. I think the next comic is pretty darn funny. :)

This was a bit more negative post than I had intended. The Twilight series just really frustrates me because it seems like such a great idea with poor execution. Especially for the books, being a technical writer, they can get hard to read. I just try to remind my self it is a teen book, though I think that is an even better reason to write well.

Oh, I also have a Thanksgiving illustration that we need to post. So get ready! I have been trying to draw and ink and color a lot, so I hope I can keep it up.

OMFG A COMIC?!?

Yep, its a comic. And there's a second one that I can post in a few days too. They're sort of unintentionally related. This is part of an actual conversation that Angela and I had. I hope that this insight into the deepest workings of our minds doesn't leave you scarred for life.

New Moon was enjoyable but not very good, like a twinkie. It just felt very uninspired. The acting was meh, the music was meh, the cinematography was meh, the movie was meh. The book is so much better.

Bellas constant running internal monologue doesn't really bother me since she pretty much narrates the whole story and she *is* a teenage girl. My favorite characters are Jacob and Alice though and, while Jacob was decently portrayed in the movie, Alice was not the character that I read in the book. She was dressed like a frumpy 30-something housewife and the acting just seemed phoned in. A lot of the acting was like that actually. And the spinning and spinning camera. I think the cinematographer had just finished taking "Spinning camera for dramatic effect 101" and he/she really wanted to show off.

It's WTF cold here today. I'm wearing a wool hat, wool sweater, fleece hoodie, thermal socks, and a blanket and I'm Fuh-Fuh-Fuh-Fuh-Reeezing!

--Abe

My electronic entertainment enjoyment

Things I have enjoyed through electronic entertainment the past week or so:

1. Professor Layton and the Curious Village - Abe got this for me for my DS and I LOVE it. Bunch of brain teasers and puzzles. I have been able to figure out almost all of them (except 2 I think). I have solved over 30 puzzles in the game. It is a little weird because the characters facial expressions never change regardless of the information they are relaying - I found a cat! That man was murdered! Yeah. But still fun. I got it and played it for 2.5 hours straight. Very fun.
2. Monk! I love Monk. Friday was the second to last episode of the series and next Friday is the series finale. Sad. But Sunday I watched a Monk marathon almost all day! Great show. I am bummed it is over, but I am sure they will continue showing all the old episodes. (I don't know if this is sad or not, but when you Google "Monk," the tv show comes up before things on monks.)
   
3. Boondock Saints II - I didn't even hear this was coming out until I think it was already out. Or a week or so before. So I went on Monday night to see it by myself since Abe hates the first movie. Freak. I loved it. I laughed out loud. It was gratuitously violent, wonderfully chummy, and used amazingly colorful language. I wish I could swear like that. I will be buying this on DVD or whatever for sure. I also finished watched the first one right before I left to catch the bus to see the second one. Awesome. The volume was up to loud, but it had basically everything I was hoping for. I laughed. I was sad. I jumped in my seat even when I knew it was coming. :)
   
4. Xmas music Time! I have checked all the xmas music in my iTunes so it plays in rotation with everything else now. Awesome.

Well, that is all. I finished up a five-day weekend of knitting and watching TV. Good times. Lost my keys, too, so I couldn't leave the house, but it turns out they were in a side pocket of my bag. Dork.

Tonight, Abe and I are going to see New Moon. I am really excited, but I am totally expecting to come out completely underwhelmed. I hope it is good though. I like the movie better than the first book because I didn't have to listen to as much of Bella's inane whining. And I hope that is more so the case in the second movie because I almost couldn't finish the second book because of it. I mean, I was physically unable to stop reading that book, which must be made of literary crack; otherwise I might have stopped reading it.

Also, we are almost done with Xmas shopping. A few things left to get for each other and a couple gifts for a couple other people and we are basically done. I am about halfway done with Abe's gifts.

For Thanksgiving, we had a wonderful chicken thigh dinner (which was supposed to be chicken breasts) with my mom the Sunday before because she was coming down to see Where the Wild Things are anyways and we had a yummy dinner. Then on The Day, we went to Abe's aunt and uncle's and that was fun. Played Trivial Pursuit on the Wii. Weird. And then I cooked a nice dinner with a yummy cornish game hen and yummy gravy on Friday while Abe was at work and we had that when he got home. Yummy. For thanks, we are both thankful Nisa is doing so well after being diagnosed with Addison's a year or so ago. (She also got a new harness from Annie's Sweatshop. I ripped it already, but I think I can fix it. It is sure darn cute.) We are also thankful that Ernie has lost so much weight and is a lot healthier now.

-Angela