Imagine you were once really really good at something. You went to school to study it for a long time. You started out thinking you’d never be as good as the others at it but worked your ass off. Seemed like you were living and breathing it. That and a bit of luck and you were doing pretty well for a while.

Then stuff happened and you stopped doing it. Cynicism about the seemingly arbitary prices mixed with the business of starting a life with another person and you just forget to do it. There was a small part of it in your daily life. You thought about it often but you never acted on it. After a while you were afraid you’d never be that good again. Then six years passed.

One thing everyone in my life agrees on is that I should make art again. My mother, sister, husband, best friend, dad. Everyone. They say it in different ways but that’s the general consensus. It’s been scary to think just how out of practice I would be.

Then I read about this sketchcrawl and thought I should try making art again…

(please look in extended entry) *warning! fairly large images!*
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There’s an interesting article in newsweek which has spawned an more interesting thread at slashdot (and now a post at boingboing) about how most people of the X-Y generation, 20-35 year olds, will spend a good portion of their thanksgiving visits with the ‘rents doing on demand tech support for the family. Wow.

You mean these kids aren’t called all the time by random cousins wanting to know if they can replace a power supply and fix a machine that survived a major surge or two during hurricane Ivan?

Cody’s family does not expect us to show up at most of their weekend get-togethers. No one ever asks us to bring a pie or Cody’s great green chile cheeseburger egg rolls. But we are called upon on a fairly regular basis to walk people through Norton installations, how to resize a photo, or installing Service Pack 2. We are on-demand tech-support every day. I just wish these folks would remember that Cody sleeps during the day and works at night.

We are also a repository of dead hardware: “hey, the guy at best buy said this had a virus so we had to buy a new one”, or my absolute favorite “this printer doesn’t work with our computer so we thought maybe you could use it”…”That’s because it’s a daisywheel printer for a very old mac”. Sometimes I feel like a weird computer age version of “Sanford and Son” (Not to be confused with Fox’s next big reality tv hit: Stepford Wives and Sons). Except we’re white and roughly the same age and married and live in a fairly good neighborhood and don’t own a very old truck. Never mind.

The good part is my Dad’s an old-school geek and buys and sets up his and mom’s systems himself. Hell, he used to to that for a multi-billion dollar telecommunications company he can handle a home network :p So we actually will get to relax at christmas.

Coming this Sunday

sorry but I couldn’t resist

Or is she old enough to be considered platinum yet?

I finally have the answer!

You Are From Neptune

You are dreamy and mystical, with a natural psychic ability. You love music, poetry, dance, and (most of all) the open sea. Your soul is filled with possibilities, and your heart overflows with compassion. You can be in a room full of friendly people and feel all alone. If you don’t get carried away with one idea, your spiritual nature will see you through anything.

Winter’s never shown any interest in escaping from the yard. One time the gate was open and I found her on the front porch trying to get in. That was about two years ago. But yesterday she was outside for a long time. And aside from the general quease in my stomach I felt an extra utz in there and knew..just knew that gate had opened and she’d gotten out. But we couldn’t really see from the windows if the gate was open and she wasn’t answering when we called from the back door. So Cody got dressed and went back there. After about three minutes with no signs of either I got dressed and went out there too. The gate was indeed open so I walked to the front yard and there was Cody and Winter walking up the street. He’d found her down the street sniffing in someone’s yard. But he asked if she knew where mommy was (yes, we call each other mom and dad to the dog. stfu) and she headed straight for the house..and there I was. I was happy to see her and am just trying not to think about what could have happened.

All the animals have lived a very sheltered life in our house. No one has ever been mean to them. Ever. The cats lie in the middle of the floor on their backs completely confident that human feet will not step on them. Granted, the dog gets excited and decides to give a cat a chase every once in a while but she makes sure she doesn’t catch them it’s just for fun and the cats have specially designed escape from the dog places.

So now each of them have had their short adventures into the real world. Even the hedgehog has her “getting behind the sideboard where the hand couldn’t get to me” story. And our great two year record without an outdoor escape has been broken. Damn. The gate has been properly latched now. I admit we usually have it slightly rigged but not well latched because the latch is a pain in the ass for service people to open. But they can just suck it up my baby is not escaping again.

I don’t want to think about what a stranger would make of her ridge or the fact that she shrugs away from letting strangers touch her on the top of her head - even though she wags her tail and is very friendly strangers are not allowed to touch her on top of her head. Or what she would do if she saw a car coming. Or had gone just fifty or so feet behind the house to that really busy road. This is not helping my stomach.

Cody has decided this is a cold. And now that I have a sore ear and a general achiness he might be right. So I’m being sent to bed frequently with a cup of tea and some alka seltzer cold. I’ve been half-assed working on a skin for people on dialup but not much is getting accomplished at this rate.

I did get a birthday present for him for next week and a christmas present ordered. So that’s good.

This week’s theme: randomizer meme

Ri9H+-CL1ck 0R 1′Ll HUrt j00

Beastie Boys - No Sleep Till Brooklyn
(buy album)

Richard Thompson - A Love You Can’t Survive
(buy album)

Sid Vicious - Chinese Rocks
(buy album)

Dead Kennedys - Kinky Sex Makes the World Go Around
(buy album)

Judy Henske - High Flying Bird
(buy album)

Morphine - In Spite of Me
(buy album)

Marianne Faithfull - The Ballad of Lucy Jordan
(buy album)

U.N.K.L.E - Rabbit in Your Headlights
(buy album)

Salt n Pepa - Tramp
(buy album)

Loretta Lynn - The Pill
(buy album)

I’ve been kind of “not right” this weekend. A mean little cycle of getting hungry, eating something, then feeling nauseated for a few hours until I feel hungry again. Even with soup. Mer.

And, no, I promise you it’s not that. Really. It’s not. Stop it.

In other personal news I’m finding that everything I buy must match my pink ipod mini. This is a strange phenomenon that I’m unable to explain. But, yes, pink has been sneaking into my black, white, and khaki wardrobe more and more lately. I think it’s easiest to blame it on the ipod.

After getting a really good laugh about that apple branded sock’s general silliness, my brain made a very bad red hot chili peppers joke to itself that I chose not to share with the world. I will share this one though: it makes a great stocking stuffer.

Then during a strange conversation I don’t want to get into Cody and I came up with a design concept that could make us millions: bras made in ipod mini colors using that weird metallic thread for the cups with a big padded clickwheel on each boob. It would be like fredericks of hollywood noveltywear for geeks!

Here’s a very crude (in at least two ways) mockup of what I mean

I guess there could be a matching pair of panties with a click wheel in the front center as well.

Yeah, ok time to go eat some saltines and drink water. No it’s not that.

Here are some random thoughts I’ve had about weblog doohickies today.

Why doesn’t blogrolling allow you to have more than ten blogrolls? I’d be willing to pay an extra buck or two for a few additional ones rather than have to set up a separate blogroll account and pay ten bucks again. Not to save the ten dollars but to avoid having to migrate between two blogroll accounts.

Why does the ‘find on page’ function in Firefox 1 not search within text boxes, like for example the text boxes for templates in movable type? I know it did with 0.9.

Why is blog explosion more worried about the voters than the votees in this rating game nonsense? Why couldn’t we have the option to choose whether or not we want to be rated (like we can with be comments) as Sam has suggested?

Why doesn’t the category selection drop-down menu reflect the categories and sub-categories in Movable Type? Is there any way to list posts alphabetically in a category archive in Movable Type (apparently there is, thanks Mr Payne!)