Holy crow is Bank of America a mess or what?!?  I went to check on my order status with Apple this morning, and found that it hadn't processed.  I was incredibly upset as I won't even look at a painting until I have a new computer (seriously, I can't wait, I'm so anxious!) and pushing pixels around on my ancient iMac is an exercise in masochism and patience. Plus my studio isn't finished yet, so all of my art supplies are packed away, and I am just itching to get back to work.  I've had a few offers from local stores to carry my stuff in the last few days, and, well, I have nothing for them to display!  All of my work is sold...

But anyway, I tried to run my debit card two more times and it wouldn't run no matter what I did.  I called my bank to find out the balance in my account, and over $1000 had disappeared overnight.  WHAT!?!  I called the customer service line and they turned out to be random charges from Apple.  I was pretty confused about that, but the bank said I had no limit on my withdrawals per day and the computer should go through.  So I call Apple.

They charged me $807.86 for my new HD monitor (drooool) and for the warranty, plus tax.  Okay, so what's the deal with the charges.  Well the bank DOES have a limit on my account, but they offer to call and have it withdrawn manually.  I say YES of course because I want my computer to be built tomorrow!  But the bank tells them NO and if I want the money I can go to the bank and get it myself.

WHAT?!?  Oh I'm mad now but I don't want to be that person screaming down the phone at the reps since I rarely ever scream at anybody so I keep my cool.  The bank says they're sorry and they will authorize the charge, but the charge is for more than my receipt says I owe.  Crap!  So I call Apple, and they said that the money would automatically go back into my account, but the charge STILL isn't authorized!  They attempt to run it 5 or so more times, and it still declines it.

So I am letting it sit today, and hopefully tomorrow morning after my exercise and breakfast, the phone service will show that the money is out of my account.  And if it's not then... well hell if I know!

After 3 years of abuse, I decided it's time to retire my iMac G5.  I ordered a Mac Pro this afternoon.  I've been planning on it for ages, but I didn't want to buy it and then have to lug the huge thing back up here.  So I decided since I had the money right now, I might as well get it before I spend the money on some stupid thing.  My parents offered to buy me a new tablet since mine has a big dead spot in it so I should be set in a few weeks.

The studio is all wired and the breaker box is installed.  Tomorrow I'll be putting up some house wrap between the studs, and whatever else I'm told to do.  I sprayed for ants today too, because they are absolutely SWARMING the house.  They are all over the porches, the deck, the siding, the patio, even the retaining walls for the drop offs/cliffs.  I got some kind of twisted satisfaction out of spraying them, I think it comes from having to deal with cockroaches in Arizona.

I've got another kidney infection so I feel like crapola today.  I have a lot of things to do still but I think I really need a nap.  Anyway, gotta go whip up a salad for dinner.  Whee!

I finally got here.  Text and pics behind the cut!

I'm so bored.  All my stuff is packed away and I have nothing to do except sit here or play sims and I think I'm all simmed out.  I need to do some last minute art show stuff before I pack up my printer but I'm feeling really sluggish.  I didn't get a lot of sleep last night.  Samantha has stayed the last two nights, I think she is really bummed out that I'm going away.  I am too but I try not to think about it, because she WILL come and visit me.

She's asleep in the other room right now.  She usually sleeps a lot later than me, which is fine since I hardly sleep at all.  It was kind of noisey around here this morning, and I kept waking up so I just gave up on sleeping and got out of bed.  There was a huge fiasco with our U-Haul trailer.  EVERYONE is moving this weekend, because all of the colleges let out on the same day.  So my grandparents went (and are still gone) all the way out to Casa Grande to get a trailer.  It's like a 55 mile drive, after Uhaul assured us that they had a trailer within 40 miles.  Pshaw.  I just hope that all of my stuff will fit, because there's  LOT of it.  Seems like twice as much as when we came down here in September.

I don't like that about myself sometimes.  I'm a nester and I horde stuff I don't really need so I can make my house perdy.  And by stuff I mean approximately 4,000,000 candles, more blankets than I should really have living in Arizona, pretty pictures, various knick-knacks and way too many house plants.  I envy people with minimalist decorative style because I can't do it.  It looks so neat in other people's houses, but in mine it feels empty and lonely.  I like that my house actually looks like someone lives here, but damn, I hate packing it up!

Anyway, I think I might go lounge on the couch and try to get some energy back.  Blahblahblah.  I probably won't update again until I am settled in Washigton, for reals this time!  So toodles for now, LiveJournal Land.

I probably won't have time to post or be online much.  The date that I move keeps getting moved up and basically I have 3 days to pack now.  WHAT?!?  Haha.  Oh well.  Sooo I'm sure by the time I get back online I will have a million photos to post but probably new art.  Ah well.  I'll be back soon!

"Midnight in the Oubliette" received an award from Fantasyana for April!  I was really surprised when I saw that I had won an award, but I'm really flattered and I think it's pretty darn cool!



Also got my mom's mother's day present.  I'm jealous!  I'll post pictures soon, but they'll be friends only in case she stops by... that's right ma, no snooping!

I got the first panel of a triptych I am working on finished finally.  The second was done, I thought, but I ended up having to update it.  I had a happy accident with Photoshop while working on the first, and so I had to update the second to match.

So every day my gran calls and updates me on the progress of the studio.  My grandpa is either really bored or really fired up or perhaps both, because he has really been just a-goin' ever since he started talking about doing it.  Yesterday gran sent me some photos she's taken of the studio, so I thought I would share.



This is the front of it.. kind of messy right now but I'm sure it'll be cleaned up once they get done.  That window was originally going in the back, and I was disappointed at first when they said the picture window was being put in the front instead of the back.  But then I saw this one...



Apparently my grandpa (in the front) had ordered this window several years ago, and had ordered the wrong size by accident.  Sometimes that happens and he never returns them, he just waits for a project to come along that requires it.  That's my uncle Brad in the back there helping him install it.  As you can kind of tell, it goes almost up to the ceiling!  This makes me very happy, because that means I can open it in the summer and get a nice mountain breeze going through the studio, and I can spy on the deer that tend to hang out in the trees and meadow just beyond them.



This is the left side of the studio, where you can see another little window will be going in soon.  I think I might put my drawing table near the corner there, that way I can have light coming over my shoulder, but still look out the big window.



And this is the last picture for now, showing the right side of the studio, along with the back door and the little lean-to shed in the back there.  I am not sure yet if the brown door is staying or if he is putting in another door.  I kind of like the brown door, even though it is old.  Also not sure whether the flourescent lighting is staying or going.  I don't really like the way it looks, but since I will be cutting mats in that area, it might be nice to have.

I am truly spoiled, and lucky, and eternally grateful, and so excited to be moving back!

Yesterday was bizarre, to say the least.  Sam and I had planned to go to Sedona for a few days, so yesterday we drove up there for our usual lunch and photos.  We decided since the cafe had a line out the door we would go into the Euro Deli and I would get a few things, so it probably took 10 minutes in there.  Then we went to the bookstore and I bought some vegan cook books, so probably another 10 minutes.  So her puppy Coco was in the car for about 20 minutes, with the windows rolled down and a bowl of water.  We go out and get her, then we go back to the cafe and order our food.  We wait for a bit, but another dog shows up and Coco gets upset, so to be polite Sam takes her back out to the car.  We eat our food quickly and go back out to the car, and I notice a big orange sticker on my window.

I am trying to figure out why it's there, I'm confused because it says I parked illegally, but the parking lot is for shoppers at the complex and I'm not in a handicapped spot, so I have no idea why this thing is on my window.  I try to scrape it off and it won't come off.  Then this 60ish woman runs up the stairs like she is propelled by justice itself and launches herself at me, running off the curb and getting up in my face, yelling at me that I am a horrible person, I am a murderer, I am trying to kill the dog, blah blah, in her thick German accent.  I just kind of ignore her because the dog is fine and I am more concerned with the sticker on my car.

Then a cop car pulls up and I think "Finally, someone will explain this thing on my window!" but no, apparently this crazy German cunt called the cops and told them that *I* had left a dog in my car for 2 hours!!!  She keeps coming at me and yelling and I look at her several times and say "You really need to lower your voice and get out of my personal space", "You really need to stop yelling, I've asked you nicely several times now." and finally, when she won't give up and keeps repeating the same shit over and over again, I look at her and yell back "It's not even *my* dog!".  She gets this weird look on her face and then runs back into her store, never even says anything to Samantha about it.  I go back to messing with the sticker on my window, but it's not coming off and I'm getting more and more angry that someone vandalized my NEW car.

I ask the cop if he did it, and he says he didn't.  So it must have been crazy German lady.  The cop harasses Sam and I for 10-15 minutes before an older cop shows up and tells him he's handling the situation wrong.  He accuses Samantha of being a criminal and a liar because she has a dummy file at the DMV, however the older cop finds out the dummy file is from when she got a photo ID, and then yells at the younger cop for calling us liars without even knowing what he's talking about.  They keep saying we left the dog in the car for 2 hours, but we keep telling them that's not true.  It's like they aren't even interested in what we have to say.  In the direct sunlight on the black cloth of my back seat it is 100 degrees, but they don't actually check where the dog was, which was in the front in the shade.  Plus the windows were down, and the whole time they are telling us we are going to be charged with animal cruelty I am sitting in the car and not even breaking a sweat.  It's so not hot enough to even hurt the dog, plus she had water, and if I had thought she would be in danger from high temperatures, I would have kept her with us at the cafe.  Duh?

I guess the older cop figures out that it's 65 degrees outside, the windows are down, the dog has water and she's happy and running around the whole time this is going on.  Obviously, we didn't hurt the fucking dog.  Someone from the Euro Deli comes out and removes the sticker from my window to avoid being charged with vandalizing my car, and we finally get back on the road and go home, resolving that we won't be shopping, eating, or doing business there in general.  The whole time the crazy bitch knew where we were and could have handled the situation by simply coming and talking to us, but instead she decided she wanted to cause a huge scene.  We didn't even get a citation for the whole thing, because the older cop said we hadn't done anything wrong.  He realized it gets hotter than 100 degrees on a daily basis where the dog is used to living, and no one bats an eyelash when she is outside when it's 115+.  Obviously, we would not be putting her in the car if it were 115 degrees outside.

So I take Sam back to her house and I go to mine, I open the back door and pull out my purse, and about 2 cups of huge dog poo falls out of my bag.  This is obviously not Coco's since Coco is tiny and this dog poop is about the size of one of her legs.  It's also kind of old and dried out, but it still made my purse and car smell pretty badly.  I think when the windows were down, that crazy woman stuck her hand in the car and tossed some dog shit in my purse.

And now you know why everyone hates animal rights activists.  Buh.

Well I am back from my little trip.  I've been home since Saturday, actually.  I came home early, a little disappointed but that's all.  It is good to find out early on that you can't stand being around someone for long periods of time, right?  I stayed in a hotel in Lebec, California on Friday night, and got home in the afternoon on Saturday.  I am actually kind of glad that I went and that I stayed in a hotel.  I was reluctant at first but it was late and my grandmother insisted I pull over for the night.  It was nice to stay there, for once.  All of my hotel stays in the past have involved fighting family members or boyfriends who just want to pick fights, but to be there by myself, with no responsibility to keep it clean or do anything, was fantastic.  I had Chinese take-out and watched stand-up comedy until I fell asleep.  It was perfect.

However, my parents must have figured out I was getting pretty lonely and homesick, so my grandmother is flying in on Tuesday, and will be with me for the last 3 weeks or so of my stay here.  It's going to be a bit awkward, since we have to share my bed, but it will be nice to have someone around to talk to, watch movies with, go out to dinner with, and help me pack and clean while I go through finals week.  I am awful homesick, though.  Every afternoon I sit on my bed after class and think "Man, if I were back home, I could call up Cassie, or Jimmy, or Tabby, Chelsea, Jess, or mom, or Brad, or ANYONE and we could go see a movie/go out for dinner/chill" and then I get more excited and frustrated about moving home.  Frustrated because WHY CAN'T IT BE NOW?!?!?!  *giggle*

Also, my pops sweetened the deal.  Originally I was supposed to have the entire third floor of their house to myself, which would be my old maaaassive bedroom back (it's like, 14'x26' or something), a bathroom and the old guest room, which would be cleared out for my art supplies.  But gramps had an idea that is way cooler.  We don't all get along (what kids get along with their 'rents all the time?) all the time, and my art stuff makes a mess, and they have the house on the market right now so they don't want to have to show the house to people with my little rat's nest of paint screwing it up.  So instead he had this shed in his backyard, which is really a shed with an addition on it, since it wasn't big enough when he was still doing a lot of construction work.  Each shed is about 12'x12, but they're both pretty much empty, since he limits his workload to existing clients, maintenance stuff, and smaller remodels, and now he mostly works in the basement/garage.

SO they called me the other day and asked what I thought about him putting in some more windows, knocking the wall out between the sheds, putting in a locking door, insulating it, drywalling it, fully wiring it with lots of electrical sockets for my computers and lights and such, adding a separate phone line for my business/personal use, a small a/c and a baseboard heater.

Of course I said HELL YEAH!  I get more details every day, and he must be really fired up about it because he's already had the windows delivered and ordered a door.  I think he wants to have it done by the time I get home, so I can just unpack my art stuff into it directly instead of having to unpack it in the house.  I'll still have my bedroom indoors, but I will have my very own art studio away from the house!  It's wonderful, I'll have to take pictures when it's finished.  From what I have heard so far, it will have a big picture window in the back, and since the sheds are tucked into the woods, I'll have a wonderful view of a meadow where deer often live during the summer months while I am painting.  The only downside is that it will still have cement flooring and no TV of any kind for me to watch, but I can always watch movies and they bought some area rugs for it today.

The wall paint has already been picked out, and now I am just DYING to go home!  *sigh*

Edited to add: I forgot I have an interesting picture where you can see a little bit of the shed!



Yep, it really snows that much where I am from!  It actually snowed more after that was taken.  A few days later they received 6 more feet in just 6 days.  My uncle Brad is the guy in the black jacket and jeans.  I don't recognize the other man's face from this small picture, but I know he's a neighbor.  So, yep!  Hopefully next year we'll be more careful about keeping the roof cleared off, hehe.  :)

Also, I probably won't have a lot of new work until June.  Everything is sooo crazy hectic right now, I just don't have time with all the moving stuff going on, plus finals week is coming up on me FAST but god am I glad.  I have been itching to do some painting though, so I will probably sketch out some ideas for stuff that's been running around in my head.  Maybe I will post them, but they'll be friends only of course.  ;)

Going to be spending the end of the week with the... "male-thing" in San Francisco, so I won't be able to ship orders until Tuesday the 15th.  I'll be gone the 9th-13th, but I have classes all day on the 14th so shipping then is no good.

Unfortunately he's allergic to cats so I am off to wash more laundry and try to remove most of the cat hair from my belongings.  Feh.  Hehe.  It's worth it, though.  :)

So I did a painting several weeks ago of a crow girl trapped in an Oubliette and decided I would do at least a triptych of them because I have a weird fascination with oubliettes... don't ask me why, I think it might be part of my obsession with Julia Ormond (First Knight).  There might be more than three eventually, but since these are going to be used in a graphic novel I am writing/illustrating, I don't want to fill the whole thing with oubliette faeries.  I will have to go back and redo the first painting, because it does not meet this one as far as quality is concerned by a long shot.  But I'm hoping it won't take more than a day or two to fix it up and make it look similar in skill to "Forgotten".



Anyway, I am going to get it ready to send it to Ellen for consideration for things on EMG, and think about updating my site with a new layout and stuff, and taking down the shopping cart, and what not.  And also, repainting Oubliette #1, and coloring Oubliette #3, and like, a billion other things.  Hm!

Also I wanted to say "thanks" to Ellen for the welcome over at EMG, and for putting up "Wolf Moon".  It was really nice of you to welcome me to the site!  :D

And you can get small prints and totes and t-shirts and other stuff with "Wolf Moon" on them now at EMG Gift Shop.  I decided to release it as an open edition print since the paperwork for the damned limited prints was lost forever!

I have to delay shipping ONE MORE DAY. Gah.

I ruptured my belly button. It's actually a ruptured hernia, but I figured I had a bug bite or something in my belly button and just let it go yesterday, rubbing the occasional swab of rubbing alcohol on it. But it didn't stop bleeding and is still bleding, and after dealing with it for a little while I finally decided it might be kind of serious. Yeah well, it is. Duh. Hopefully I will be able to go to the dr. tomorrow. I missed important classes today but my teachers excused me, since bleeding from the belly button is not a common thing and could be pretty serious.

I just keep waiting for the bad luck to stop, but I just keep getting hit with weirder and weirder stuff. Geeze.

I have been trying to get some art done lately, but it's been dramadramadrama around here. eBay and other shipments may be running behind as much as a week right now for the following reasons:

1. My wonderful landlord sent me a notice that they will be inspecting my home anytime between March 24th - April 30th. Which is just swell, because that means a lot of extra work trying to deep-clean the apartment. *grumble*

2. I was taking medication for my allergies but started having allergic reactions to the medication itself, and spent the last week or so feeling dizzy and disoriented. So I only made it to 1 of 9 classes. Whoops. No arting really got done either, though I did write a bit while I was in bed.

So now I am back to having allergies. It sucks and I feel crummy all the time, but it is better than what was going on so I guess I'll deal with it. Anyway, I have a lot of cleaning to do. Blah. I wish I had a maid.

I was going to write something, but everything I write just sounds stupid and boring to me. I am in a blah mood, feeling blah, thinking blah thoughts.

It's hot, every fan, A/C and ceiling fan in the house is blowing air into my perpetually too-hot art room. It's not helping. I am hungry, but I'm not falling for that trick. I tried to make my tummy some tomato soup and hummus dip with chips for lunch, and I barely made a dent in the soup, and had only a handful of chips.

The original plan today was to go see Saul Williams with Sam, but I'm not feeling up to it. I was going to make stir fry tonight, I might still make it, though I probably won't eat most of it. Hmph.

Anyway, I am going to go write something, and maybe do a pencil sketch. Maybe I will post that later (but friends only, of course).

I'm sick of selling my stuff on the internet. It is a huge headache, and it's not worth the headache. I am sick of displaying my work on the internet as well. I'm tired of hunting people down for stealing my work only to have it happen again the next day because it's readily available.

I have put off really working on licensing and other things that would get me more exposure because I am not yet happy with my style. I've dragged my feet for years because of it, and with several other things going on piled on top of that fact, I can't see doing this anymore.

I've never liked doing this. It's a huge pain in the ass, and it eats up a lot of the time I could have spent on artwork. I get sick of worrying about whether people are looking or if I'm getting any favorites or whatever. It's stupid and I shouldn't be thinking about stuff like that while I am trying to develop my skills as an artist.

My ideas have never been ones that fit within the confines of an 8x10 print. My ideas always run on a much larger scale than that, and I've decided to abandon my online business so that I will have time to take the classes I feel I need to take in order to get to where I want to be.

I've had less and less time to be on the internet and less and less enjoyment from the time I do spend here. The artists that I meet through this avenue are people I would rather forget about. People who are backstabbers, who are unethical and people who are liars. I have made a few friends here that I have kept for years, but so many of the people I have known and people who I have met recently were pretty much unsavory.

I've grown weary of the petty world of digital art. People will be friendly to you until they are more popular than you, and then they forget you exist. They replace you with someone more popular, until they have a bunch of people behind them practically worshipping the ground they walk on in hopes that they will come back and be their friend.

I've had this happen to me I don't know how many times. Worse yet is when those people had befriended me well enough to get me to talk about my personal life, and then used that information to spread rumors about me and worse. I don't get what compells people to act like they do on the internet, but I'm sick of myself and my artwork being out there to be targets.

I may or may not continue to update this journal. I am just not sure what I will be keeping as far as websites and stores go, and I will be deciding on that in the next few days and weeks.

So Livejournal INC. went and got rid of the basic account for new users. This makes things a bit tricky for me since I had made this so customers from my site could read it and add it. Now they can't make accounts, so they can't add it to read any friends only stuff.

Guess I might have to do something else now. :/

I have an ACEO, an OSWOA and several pendants up for auction on eBay right now, so I thought I'd let you guys know.



Dark Fairy ACEO 1- 2 Days 15+ hours left

( Cool stuff below the cut... )

There are several more pendants in my eBay store and more will be going up shortly. If they do not sell the first time they are listed, they will not be relisted! I am not sure if they will be available online again for several months, and definitely not at this price! So grab them while you can!

Guh.  I hate my neighbors.  They've been listening to music quite loudly all morning and of course it was one of those nights where I had bad insomnia, so I wanted to sleep this morning, and can't.  They've been banging around and crap, gave me the impression someone was moving into the empty condo next door.  YES they are that loud just doing mundane every day stuff.

Can't wait to go home to my corner of the forest where I have no neighbors.  Feh.

Has finally begun!  I missed my last math class before break this morning, but it's not a big deal.  They were just studying for a test and I already have the pre-test so I am good.  I "slept in" until about 8:30.  I woke with a start from a weird dream I've had before.... I think.  Or I just had it so many times last night I was tricked into thinking I'd had it before.  Not sure how that works, exactly, all I know is I woke up with this handsome fella snuggling up against me.



I swear, he is the tamest and friendliest cat I've ever met.  He spent the night next to me or in his carrier.  I am so happy he gets in it by himself now.  He knows when I carry him into my room that it is bedtime and he goes right to sleep and STAYS asleep now.  *gush*  It used to be a huge battle to get him into it and once he was in it he would cry all night.  But I guess it is comfy for him.  Of course, shortly after I took this picture, he was living up to his name.



Silly Puck, espresso is NOT for kitty boys.

I also should probably mention that I have put an original watercolor painting up for sale on eBay.  She starts at $50 and can be bought out for $90.  My paintings have been starting for $80 at art show auctions so that's actually a good deal.