Yaoi-Con in San Mateo, CA. I went this year. Duncan took all the pics. He went as Urahara Kisuke from Bleach. Unfortunately, I don't think he got a picture of himself. Just everybody that was there. There are 4 pages. Enjoy.
s216.photobucket.com/albums/cc92/erutara/Yaoicon%2009/

EDIT: OK, apparently he did manage to get a pic of himself... with Halibel. Lucky bastard...
( See Picture )

Inglourious Basterds was AWESOME. And speaking Italian with a red neck accent... I just about died.

On another note, I picked up a copy of The Jungle to re-read it. Been a couple decades and felt I should revisit it. (Because my memory is really crappy and I can re-read books over and over and find new stuff.) I am the only person I know that actually reads the prefaces, introductions, and forwards in books. Does anyone else do this?

Anyway, because I read the introduction I learned a couple things I never knew before: Upton Sinclair was a Socialist and the book was a major Socialist statement, amongst its other statements. Also, that he was vice president of a Intercollegiate Socialist Society in 1905, and guess who was the president of that little club? Jack London! I had NO idea HE had been a socialist. Weird... Strange thing history... and the fact that what seemed to be the 'in' thing in the early 1900s became a dirty word just a few decades later with the cold war and all. Usually you hear Socialist or Communist and you think of bad guys. I did... But come to find out that a lot of important people were involved in that movement. I love history. 8D

You know... life and stuff. Nothing good can come of it.
Going to leave here in a few to go see Inglourious Basterds. Will write a real entry soon. I swear it.

Yeah, sorry I've been away, but it's been one disaster after another around here.

Still haven't found a job, but the doctor's putting me on disability anyway until he can convince me to have the surgery on my back to fix that disintegrating disk. The problem has gotten to the point that my balance is affected. I can spontaneously tip over if I'm just standing still, and the numbness in my leg is now down to my calf. Not to mention the chronic pain. I'm popping pills almost as bad as House now, just to function.

My mom had been really sick and I've been taking care other plus doing all the cooking, cleaning, shopping... you know all the stuff she usually does, on top of my own stuff and on top of monitoring my dad constantly so he doesn't kill himself or burn the house down. Oh, and disciplining the kid constantly because he keeps finding new and interesting ways of getting himself suspended from school.

My mom had gained 50 lbs of just water, and they had to drain fluid off her lungs and off her abdomen. She had 4 liters just on her abdomen. But they found cancer in it and now they are telling her she has months... and were pretty vague. She's going to go get a second opinion. especially since now that they got all the fluid off she feels better than she has in years. I would think if someone was dying from cancer they should be feeling worse, not better. :/

She's the only person I know that can be told she's dying from cancer and her response is "We're going to Disneyland!" No, seriously, she's got the whole trip planned and booked for the second week of June.

I'm doing my best to make my own way, since no one wants to give me a job. Things to supplement my income with, but I don't expect to make a living off of. Staring my own rabbitry, for instance. I will be raising Beveren, Creme d'argent, and Giant Angora. The kid has Netherland Dwarfs in the works. I have my beveren dow, and will be getting a buck here shortly, and I have the Creme d'Argents lined up. I'm on the waiting list with teh breeder for those. Don't have a contact yet for the GA. Working on that. But I will be showing and breeding.

Got my specimens buried and am finishing up cleaning the raccoon skeleton. Though with my back, I probably won't be selling bones much anymore. Too hard on me to get specimens cleaned, but I do plan on drawing them and selling the illustrations. I have a website, I just need to set it up.

I'll take commissions, too, for pet portraits, animals, flowers. Stuff like that, once I get the site set up. I'm thinking about making my original knitting patterns available for sale, too.

Anywhos, that's all for now.

I don't know what exactly possessed me, but I suddenly remembered a show that I used to watch on Nickelodeon when I was a kid and wanted to look it up on youtube. Sure nuff, found several episodes of 'You Can't Do That On Televison' and was still enterrtained by the rampant stupidity. Unfortunately, now my kid is hooked on it and I'll have to show him more episodes.

Still no job, and I got in with an temp agency. They have nothing. :(
But... finally got an unemployment check. Paid my bills and had enough left over to go grocerry shopping at sakura and pick up some japanese goodies.
So i made eel donburi today and scarfed that and three sticks of dango down. So good...
Writing= intermittent. Not anywhere near done with chapter 3 of five years.
Went to Duncan's yesterday to go withhim to Sakura, came back to the house and got my ass kicked with a sword, then switched to shinai and didn't fare much bettre. My arm is hella sore today. But he's probably not much better off from fending off my attacks.
School=OK. The fact that I can't buy the one book I have homework in irks me, but what do you do? I don't have $70. I barely had the $25 for japanese goodies.
And... that's all for now. I guess.

I gots a letter. It's just another 'fill this out and send it back' thing, but in the format I'm used to for filling out to get my unemployment checks. So they got my letter and my internet submission. Yay!  This specifically says to not SEND it until the 18th, so that will be two chhecks I haven't got,  but if I get a check at all I'll be tickled plaid. I feel really horrid having to borrow money from my parents in order to pay my bills, especially when I don't know if I'll ever be able to pay it back. I haven't even been able to buy any books or anything for my classes because they cost a total of $275. I don't even have $3 to my name right now. I can't bbuy anything off the dollar menu either.

Serioulsy thinking of asking the kid to borrow some money out of his piggy bank. Now that's sad.

I am really depressed abbout the job market right now. My luck has not been good. For the dozens of applications and resumes I've turned in since August of last year, I've gotten ONE interview and no hires. And the one interview was only because I had a friend at the place of enmployment for which I had applied. The fact too, that I couldn't even get an interview for pre-xmas wal-mart when I had worked therre before and knew the personel manager was really depressing.

Either the job market is that shitty or my luck is really, really bad.

I'm not quittting by any means though. Now that I'm taking accounting classes, I hope I can get hired as a bank teller or something for ow until I graduate and get an accountant job. Hopefully I can find something entry level now that will hhire somebody who is currently learning the procedures.

Woo! Trying to remain hopeful.

Say yes to gay marriage. They should be as miserable as everyone else. LOL.

Hitting the alcohol already this morning, LOL...

( blah blah blah, whine, bitch )

Bad news = the ex is now engaged to the one that caused the divorce. No hard feelings, just surprised they didn't get engaged the moment the dicorce went through. It's been over a year.

Good news = hidden_gems's scarf is done! I'll get it sent off as soon as I get a little money. Maybe monday...

I went and bought a virgin mary candle for my mom and aunt and lit it in the house, since our local catholic church no longer has a candle lighting section.

Not that God will listen to any of my prayers, as damned as I am, being trans AND gay, LOL.

The hospice just called to inform us that Aunt Susie has two or three days left to live. All because a doctor misdiagnosed her cancer as a goiter a year ago. I just feel numb. I lived with this person for six months, together with my parents, and I don't feel much. Maybe because there's already been so much crap that I just got nnothing left to feel?  :/

Trying to convince my dad to drive my mom up there to see her sister before she passes away. Weather's really nasty though.

*sigh*

Despite my asociality of late, I spent last evenning at a friend's, just so my kid could beat up on his and vice versa. Just because I'm being unapproachable doesn't mean the kid have to sufer because of it. The beautiful thing about letting the kids stay up until midnight is that he slept in until 10 AM. The silence was golden.

Getting depressed looking at the job postings. Everything requires either an engineering degree or heavy lifting. And the fact that unempoyment seems to be making up excuses about why I am not getting a check hurts even more.

On an off note, hidden_gems's scarf is 1/3 done.

They finally all went HOME. Jeez. Nothing says the hholidays like extreme discomfort and awkwardness amongst your own relatives. I probably offended my mother bymaking my dinner plate and returning to the safety of my room and avoiding everyone. But I think she probably gets that I am rather hurt that NO ONE bothered to even acknowledge that I'm male. Ad I'm so non-confrontational that I'm not going to keep reminding people who it won't do any good against. I got one xmas present- I wasn't expecting any- from my parents, addessed to Wally. They make they effort and they care, it's just they are in their 70s and forget sometimes and that's OK. They have a lot of other things to worry about and I'm not going to be a dick about the gender tags.
UGH, but I really don't want to look at another human being for at least three months. Hibernation commences.

Oh! On an off-note, Iwill dig for the yellow fuzzy yarn today and start that scarf for hidden_gems! Should only take me a couple days to knit!

I just spent 15 minutes in the bathroom shaving my face off, and go into the kitchen for a cup of coffee and my brother asks "Hey Sis, where's the tylenol?"

:(

Why do these people not understand I'm not a girl anymore? I'm tired of reminding them, so I just chucked the pills at him and went in my room and locked the door.

Can't wait for Christmas to be over and these people to go home.

know how to take screen shots off the xbox 360?

Thanks to the AWESOME character customization feature on Soul Caliber IV, my dear friend has brought a good chunk of our characters to life!

And OMG, Halcyon is so adorable I want to lick the TV screen. Elizabeth is HOT chocolate, and Erutara is an absolute badass GOD. Koreeuthh looks incredibly like a red-headed Jin. Jazzur Kif is big, black, and THE SHIT. Adrian is the most fabulous gay that ever fabbed. Hal's sister, Giselle, looks very much the whore, and that's really, really OK... Both Butterfly and Cicada look very full of themselves, and have the attacks toback it up. (LOL, Cicada's weapon is a giant squid.) Tariethh looks scary with his wolf head, and Siran is ever the noble ice eagle.

Xzz looks like a total freak in the armor Duncan chose to put on him, and not so much like Toushiro OR David Bowie, LOL. But Xzz's hair, OMG, has NEVER seen a comb. Duncan says it's just the same as how I drew him, and he claims his hair is like that because being a pangolin in god form, and rolling around in a little armored ball all the time, your hair will get like that.

And as we foundout, Adrian's position as the Queen of Gays has been usurped. Once he made Orezhhu, a big black guy w/ buzzcut pink hair, we found out that it's not how you dress or what you look like, it is how you BEHAVE. Adrian is openly fabulous, but Orezhhu tries so hard to hide it and fails miserably. When one of your attacks is doing a pirouette on someone's back, and you are a giant buffed black guy, that trumps any scrawny little, dress-wearing fruit,  LOL. We would need to somehow get video of that.

Needless to say, Duncan brought a much needed smile to my face, and in some instances (i.e. Orezhhu) I laughed so hard I nearly pissed myself.

I would love to share them all with you, if anyone knows how to do screenshots off the thing. Duncan can't figure out how to do it.

Oh, and the drawing will not be done byxmas, I am sad to report. I have worn a hole into the paper erasing, it has made me very angry and I've put it aside for now. I haven't given up! And it doesn't have to be a xmas present that Buttterfly is forcing upon his beloved conquering armadillo (sorry- *pangolin*), it could be Xzz's birthday or something.

Ever have a bad dream that put you in a horrible mood the whole next day?

Yeah, I had one of those last night. I'vebeen trying so hard to just FORGET everything about what went down and then I had one of those recap dreams that went over the whole mess, just with completely different people and slightly different circumstances, as if to say ';it happened before and it will happen again'. Just a little reminder that no one can be trusted.

I woke up thismorning thinking 'That's RIGHT! I should avoid having friends and trusting family members, because you never know...' Well, I'm still feeling that way because of said bad dream, but my overall mood is better because MY SCHOOL APPLICATION HAS BEEN PROCESSED and I register for my classes on the 19th! Yay! It's still seems TOO easy, but I';m going to run with it for now and not get my hopes up.

At least the body is done. I just have to put the face on. And really... don't know when that will be.

Go ahead and laugh. It's an idea sketch, it's supposed to be really preliminary. God, I fail at drawing people. At least I finally figured out what to do w/ butterfly's hand. (Though it's probably not what the girls wanted to see him do with it, I'm sure.) Once I get the placement of things all figured out, I'll draw it for real.

But what about background??? I have no idea, and I fail more at drawing backgrounds than I do people. ARG

( Awful sketch is awful )

Finally starting to get somewhere w/ the xmas card thing, but I fail at proportions. I've got a nice prelim sketch of Butterfly forcing a gift onto my little Napoleon guy Xzz, but I am having trouble getting his arms drawn right. He's supposed to be standing behind Xzz w/ one arm wrapped around him so he can't escape and shoving a present into his face w/ the other. (beacuse Xzz, being mortal for the first time regards mortal holidays w/ much suspicion). I got their expression sketched in ok, it's just placement of limbs I have trouble with. The sketch is really sad, but it's a start. I'd scan it, but you'd all laugh. I'll scan it if someone can fix the damn arms so I can get to the next step.

And why is Xzz looking like Toushiro again? Gaw, either he comes out looking like David Bowie or like Toushiro I can't seem to hit a happy medium and make him look like Xzz.

And I am NOT looking forward to drawing his Pangolin scale jacket. It'll be awesome if I can pull it  off, but... *sigh* Haven't settled on Buttterfly's manner of dress yet except refined and white. That's all I know. Would a casual suit be too much?

There are a TON of accountant jobs around here, surprisingly enough. And I am kicking myself that I decided to get married 10 years ago iunstead of finishing my AA in accounting. So... I went back to MJC, even though it's been near 15 years to see if I could take Accounting there. And woot! Not only can I start next symmester, but hlaf of the classes reuired for the AA in accounting I already took 15 years ago and it's still good!  So yay! If I can't find a drafting job by the time I finish up there, I have accounting to fall back on!

Urg... and I really need to finish drawing hiddengem's xmas card. But Cicada and everyone else I'm trying to draw refuses to cooperate. Sorry, it might be late...