Pseudo-Monday Blues

Well, I have Windows 7 and I find it a bit annoying. I haven't used it much though, so maybe I will get used to it. I think the most annoying part is having lost all my setup/organization in iTunes. I have to uncheck all the songs I don't actually want to listen to (mostly Abe's cds). All my playlists are gone. :( I am big on playlists. Based on mood. And all my ratings are gone. I had lists by rating, too. Bah.

This weekend was pretty fun. Abe didn't have the best Valentine's, but stil a pretty good time. We went down to Fluevog and both got shoes. Pretty nice. I got the Mini Gorgeous to wear with all my hand knit socks, and I am sure I will wear them all the freakin' time. I also put the Mini Dollface on layaway, which is awesome because they only had one pair close to my size and it fit fine. And they weren't sure if they would get any more shipments. I would have been super bummed to have missed this pair, so I am glad I put them on layaway. I should be able to get them by my birthday. :) Abe also got the Angels Supervog. These, I swear, are the most colorful shoes Abe has ever had. At least since I met him. I am so glad I finally got him to try on a pair of their shoes. I am pretty sure he is converted and will save up money to buy their shoes when he needs more in the future. Yay. I had wanted to try on Earl of Warwick Coventry, but they did not have my size. :( Oh well. I would have wanted to put those on layaway too and there are other things I want to buy someday. I tried on the Fellowships Jenna, but I wasn't as big a fan of them on as just to look at. Which was too bad. The leather was crazy soft. Sounds like a good thing I didn't get them though, because the last two reviews of them are about how they wear poorly. Which at over $300 is not acceptable.

We also went to Luisa's which was delish as usual and later we watched WALL-E, which is,no kidding, one of the cutest movies of all time. I love it.

On Friday, the Olympics started and so I started the Knitting Olympics. I am doing pretty good. 4 days in and I have a sleeve done, the left front done, and I am over half done with the right front. That leaves the rest of the right front, the back, and the other sleeve. Then I sew it all together and knit the button bands and the collar. I think that is doable with 2 weekends to go. I think I can finish the right front and the back by the end of next weekend. There is one glitch. I might need to rip back the sleeve caps and knit them a bit longer to match the front and back. The pattern from the handy book of sweater patterns doesn't seem to really do that. Oh well. At least I have only done one sleeve. I was going to take a picture every day, but I totally forgot. Oh well.

On Saturday, my mom and Jim came down. We had a great time. First we went to see Avatar. Wow. I couldn't tell what was CGI and what was real. It was amazing. The plot line was pretty typical, but I barely even noticed because I enjoyed the characters and the visuals so much. We did end up watching it in 3-D. The new 3-D is pretty amazing, but man it gave me such a headache. I had to keep readjusting my eyes throughout the movie. I think I would watch a cartoon in 3-D (like shrek and the new viking movie), but no more realistic. I will definately be buying Avatar on Blue-Ray. I can see why it was the number one movie for so long. By the time I got home that night, I was already ready to watch it again.

We went to Suni's for lunch afterwards. Delish. I had my usual Avacado Bacon Burger with an egg. Everyone loved their food. I asked for no fries and got them anyways. And I just realized I got charged for them and shouldn't have. Oh well. Less than $2.

Saturday we also went to Daniel Smith just south of downtown Seattle. They have a lot of stuff, go figure. So I got some Vellum, a #0 round brush for inking, a kneaded eraser, another pen handle for a different type of nib that I accidently bought the last time I went to Dakota Art, and some gaouche, which I cannot pronounce, for covering my mistakes and maybe even for drawing with. On Monday I went to Dakota because after practicing, I found the #0 was a little too small, so I got a #1 round and a #4 flat. The vellum is totally AWESOME as opposed to regular tracing paper which is so thin. you can see back on Zorro (wikipedia), if you look close, that there are wrinkles in the large black sections. Which is going to be a problem with Gone. I have decided I will just post that here, since there will be the wrinkle problem and that is not professional enough to send out. I really like the brush on the Vellum. I made some sketches. There is the leg of the Rocketeer (wikipedia), Mariella from another story, some sketches from my art class.

As notes on that Rocketeer pic, I was trying for a certain style and failing. I fall back into my own style pretty quickly. I am pretty satisfied with it other than that, though. His left thigh is a little too long and his feet are a little too small, but other than that. I am pleased with his shirt and various wrinkles. Originally, it was supposed to be tilted 90 degrees counter-clockwise so his feet were pointing down but there was something wrong with it and I changed the orientation. So his rocket packs don't quite seem to work with what is going on, but I still like it.

Well, I am getting ready to go to the dentist soon to get a mouth guard. Sexy. Abe gets to go get his teeth cleaned, lucky dog. :) I am actually pretty excited because it should help with the pain I am getting. I clench my jaw when I feel weird. Weird as in stressed or anxious or whatnot. I also grind my teeth a bit. And now that I have had my wisdom teeth removed, they are moving all over the place. The mouth guard should help that. I am also getting a lower retainer type thing to keep the bottom one from moving too. I have switched to Sensodyne because the new gaps where my teeth are moving has gotten really sensative, but it is not helping. And it tastes terrible. So I am switching to Crest ProHealth or something.

Finally, a little shout out to LeVar Burton, who was born in Germany in 1957 today. You know, Geordi La Forge. He created and hosted Reading Rainbow. If you check out his wikipedia page, he is looking a bit aged, but he kind of is. 50 and over is kind of aged. He has won a surprising number of awards for Reading Rainbow, at least surprising to me. Looks like around 15 to me.

I would have spell checked this, but the button refuses to work for my mouse, so screw it.