I said I wanted to blog more in 2012 and it has taken me ten days to come up with a second post.  (Granted, I was away in New York Celebrating my family’s christmas and not able to blog for 8 of those days and I don’t really have a blog topic per say.)  I need to record Nutty Bites, but they are doing construction to the foundation of the house behind me so every 30 seconds to ever minute there is a loud thud sound that makes it sound like I’m under fire, not to mention startling my nerves.  I am currently avocado (this is a term my husband and I have come up with when you use your big headphones to block all audio from the real world and tune into music, a game, a video or podcasts) to save my sanity.

I wanted to post this picture when I painted it, but I couldn’t because it was part of the present I gave to my Kris Kringle (confused? I refer you again to my family’s christmas) so I didn’t want to give away the surprise.  The painting is a water color of a sketch I did a while ago of an elf, a specific elf, an elf my sister plays named Caelan (or some spelling like that, she has a few characters with the name.)  Again I will say I am really enjoying getting back into watercolors, I can see why a lot of artists like acrylics these days, its faster, but I just don’t like the flatness when the painting is done, yet with the watercolors, which are even faster, and easy to clean up and set up but I feel like I can get a lot of depth to the images.

A lot of people tell me they can’t get behind watercolors because they are so drippy and uncontrolled, I hope that from my few paintings I have shared so far you can see how much control you can get over the medium.  I wish I had images of the sailboat scenes I’ve done for my mom years ago to show you.  I didn’t document my work as much then as I do now and it’s a shame.  Then I only used film on the most completed of works, I didn’t want to waste film (remember those days?) Now it’s easy, everything is digital, scan it, photograph it and it’s saved forever.

I’ve been trying to draw on my iPad but I just can’t control the stylus like I can with my tablet, the iPad isn’t sensitive enough, I know that Cynical Woman does amazing things on her iPad, I’ll have to get her to show me how she does it at Balticon or something.

I cam home from vacation with stacks of day job work and all the stacks of voice work and recording I’m already behind on.  Coming back to construction wasn’t helpful for the recording side, but I’m hoping to do some late night recording to get it taken care of.  I really need a sound proof booth because the new house just picks up every sound from the outside, you’d think I would hear our neighbors a lot more (it’s a duplex) but I have heard them perhaps three times since moving in.  I’m not creating excuses for why things are behind, I don’t like it when other people do that :) I’m just reflecting on what’s going on in my life.

Something I have done, that isn’t recording or paying work but is a good break is I’m playing Star Trek Online again.  I played this when it first came out, and since the game is going free to play they are allowing anyone who have subscribed in the past to play now, before everyone else (Jan 17th) which is pretty nifty.  There is a bit of learning curve as they changed so much about the game since I played last, a lot of really good improvements.  The game is sleeker and runs a lot nicer, there doesn’t seem to be any wait to get onto the server, which used to be a problem.  There has been almost no rubberbanding, which also was a problem before, I haven’t had it happen once, Tek had it happen I think on the first day and that’s it.  Going back to STO just reinforces my decision to not play an MMO in the first six months, I know that doesn’t help the game thrive, but I can’t take the adjustment period.  Also, I LOVE free to play games.  I still play a subscription for DDO (Dungeons and Dragons Online) but I can’t see myself paying for more than one MMO, I can see myself buying items from the store and doing micro transactions.  I think it’s a great business model and the way to go for MMO gaming, I never feel guilty if I don’t play LotRO, Champions, Conan or now STO, because I’m not paying monthly for it.  I actually think just describing this I may have talked myself into switching to F2P for DDO.

I got a lot of comics for Christmas and Epiphany, Kill Shakespeare, Game of Thrones, Dollhouse, Mause, Iron Man Nior and now Vol 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 I think of Buffy Season 8, I need to get my hands on 3 & 4 before I start that though.  I looked into getting the digital versions, but they sell those by the issue number, not the trade volume number, so I need to figure out what issue number was the last in vol 2.  I also started downloading a ton of Sherlock Holmes books in digital format so I can reread them, I started reading and am just loving every minute of it, it’s transporting me to happy childhood days of reading.

What are you reading now?  What are you playing?