A series of unrelated images...

"Using the bones of my adversaries to build a ladder." - Hank Green

My contribution to the little Hank Green Out Of Context project over on tumblr.
Here's the recap post with all the entries.
Super cute!

Happened to see these two mourning doves gettin' it on in the backyard a few weeks ago. Ha! Get a room!

We're gearing up for a garden. Hadn't spent much time out with the birds through the wet winter. A few days ago I noticed one of the Scrub Jays has a bum wing.
Hanging awkwardly. And the poor thing isn't able to fly very well. It was extremely windy the last couple days and I didn't see him. Hopefully get out tomorrow to see if he's around/better.

D:

Took me forever to crack open the Nvidia Shield Tablet replacement after the recall. Just kept putting it off. Then I had all the Windows 10 troubles and didn't want to deal with it. I was planning on rooting it so I could format my SD as internal storage and do all that. It was daunting, so I procrastinated. 

But then there was a huge update around the new year, which integrated everything I would have wanted to do into the Nvidia... no need to root. So that spurred me to get the replacement going.

I've been using it since and it's perfect in every way for my needs. That update freed up an enormous amount of space and made the SD formatting super streamlined and easy. Woo!
I expected the old one to shut off much sooner than it did. It continued to work for like three months until it bricked itself. Thus ended the life of my first tablet. I gave it a ceremonial burial in the 'ship this tablet carefully so it doesn't blow up in transport'  box that Nvidia provided.
Bye, tablet! I barely knew ye!

ONE BERNIE, PLEASE!

The election was already ridiculous, but things have really escalated into madness over the last month. The DNC is totally effed. The fraud, the rigging, the voting problems... it's all gross.

I imagine it will only get worse closer to the convention. I'm appalled by how Clinton is representing herself through all this.

It's going to be Hillary vs. Trump and that's...

... ugh...

... uuuugggghhhhh...

We need election reform, news media reform, all the reform. Good god. It's bad.
I'd like to think Hillary can get a landslide over Trump.
I'm genuinely paranoid this could go very differently.

UUUUGGGGGHHHHHHHH.

In happier and vastly more entertaining news, the end of the Premier League season was an absolute delight.
Leicester won by 10 points. No one was touching them.
But the runner-up positions were still in tight contention up to the end. Tottenham, having their best season... ever, could have pulled off 2nd and finished above Arsenal for the first time in 20 years. The rivalry runs so deep that this had Arsenal fans shitting themselves. But then Tottenham choked in their last few games allowing us to gain on them.
It came down to the last game of the season.

Arsenal played Aston Villa (relegated)
Tottenham played Newcastle (relegated)

These games were played simultaneously. Tottenham only needed a draw to hold 2nd.
We had to win.

And beautiful beautiful Newcastle, playing purely for the yucks, absolutely destroyed Tottenham. They even went down to 10 men... and still destroyed Tottenham. 5 - 1.
Each time they scored, Arsenal fans went absolutely nuts, getting the results through social media.
And Arsenal won. 4 - 0.

Thereby, Arsenal popped above Tottenham into 2nd and the 21st St. Totteringham's Day in a row was celebrated like we'd won the damn league ourselves.



IT'S HAPPENED AGAIN! IT'S HAPPENED AGAAAAAIIIIINNNN!
TOTTENHAM HOTSPUR, IT'S HAPPENED AGGAAAAAAIIIIIIIINNNNNN!

Being an American who really doesn't care all that much about clubs and their local rivalries...
This was just far too comical to not enjoy in every way.

The narrative. THE NARRATIVE.

This season was so damn strange anyway. Very amusing.
It'll be interesting to see if it gets crazier next season, or if things get back to something more normal.
Euros over the summer though! That'll be fun.
I'm determined to stay relaxed and detached this time so I don't have a total anxiety meltdown like I had during Germany's run for the World Cup.

Gotta be chill.

RAINBOWS... RAINBOWS EVERYWHERE!

YEEESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!

This straight woman who has zero interest in marriage herself has been giddy, smiling, and crying all day from sheer happiness. Today the world became a bit less sucky!

YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Done and dusted...

45 completed.
WOO!
They're packaged in groups of three and on their way to the P4A perks gathering place. Took about a month of work. Many continuous hours over the last two weeks. Abused my body in the process. A vicious knot over my right shoulder blade. Neck aching. Sleep-deprived. Too sedentary. And my fingers are all wrecked, thumb included. I won't be doing any art for the next two weeks. At least nothing that requires holding a tool of some sort. Might do some Illustrator work since it's just clicking paths into place. I'm typing this entirely with my left hand at the moment. Lol.

Totally worth it though. The Project for Awesome will be in a couple weeks. I'm very happy to contribute to the cause.

Here are some highlights out of the 45.

It's all Vlogbrothers/Nerdfighter stuff. I'm really pleased with the results.

The packaging is cute, too. Little brown paper envelopes with handmade stickers to close.

That's the look of glorious victory.

And also aching fingers. XD
I've even been taping my thumb, which is super tricky to do with the need for so much bend at the knuckle. It's quite furious with me, to say the least.

While working on this, I was reminded that most folks don't have to worry about using scissors or pencils for a few minutes. And also that I used to not have to worry about it. I went 20 some-odd years without having to limit tool use, and now I can hardly relate to what that must have been like.

Sad thoughts.

I'm now in the indecisive mode of how to encourage healing. Tight taping to stifle swelling? No taping? Heat soaks? Ice? Pure rest? Normal use? I wish I knew what it was. I'm tempted to take prednisone, which I know works, but the side-effects are miserable.

Just gonna tough it out and monitor recovery along the way.

FINGER STATUS

Little epicenters everywhere. My pinkie is the first to be fully swelling. Can't bend it much. Ring finger looks like I took a hammer to it. Small puffy spots on the middle finger. It's the least affected actually. The tip of my index finger is beginning to be unbearably sensitive. The thumb also has the hammered look going on at the knuckle, but the worst pain is around the side of the pad.

Mess.

I've had a few nights now where the overall ache and prickling is keeping me awake and it will probably get worse.

It's not all doom and gloom. It was a good test to see how much I can push it while also taping religiously. And I got some fun art out of it. S'all good.

Also got through all of Star Trek:TOS. I'll post on that at some point. Hoo boy. It really never improved. -___-

But next post will probably be about JYJ. I still want to say a few words about the album. Plus, they're currently on a dome tour in Japan and releasing a new single. They are singing Begin during the concert encore. EMOSHINKI. The tears. THE TEARS I HAVE SHED. T___T

Hajimarusaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.

Oh, and I think I'm switching lanes to the Nvidia Shield Tablet instead of the Nexus 9. Android Lollipop rolled out for the Shield a few days ago and I think that just sold it for me. Waiting to see if there will be any Black Friday/Cyber Monday deals that become the determining factor.

K. I'm done.

In the thick of it...

May have been a bit ambitious. Ha!
I've been hunched over paints and pencils and stencils for a couple weeks. Now on the homestretch. I need to get these Project4Awesome art perks ready to ship by next Friday.

Cut up a ton of squares from old printmaking paper.
Mixed acrylics and painted them all for backgrounds.
Below are some progress pictures while I was stenciling the Nerdfighter salute logos.

Stenciled what I could. Everything else is hand-painted and drawn with Prismacolor pencils.

I'm eyeball-deep in this mess now. Lol. It's all the most focused, meticulous, detail-work for the rest.

Still aiming for 45 pieces, but my fingers are starting to get really angry with me. Taping religiously has kept me from a full-blown swelling episode, but there are a few spots that are on the way. Depending on how well my hand withstands the next couple days that number may need to change. We'll see.

Then it will be packaging and mailing. Woohoo!

FINGER STATUS:

It feels as good as it looks. My thumb is unfortunately untape-able, because it's too restrictive. But it has also had far fewer blow-ups than my other fingers, so it's still pretty manageable. The ring finger is a mess, but taping is keeping the swelling down and keeping my mobility. Lots of other sensitive/raw/threatening areas, but all tolerable thus far. I wonder how I'll be in a week!

Time to get back to work.

"...lungs that suck at being lungs..."

"Pain demands to be felt."

The alternative substrates project. Open subject matter. We just had to print it on more than paper; shirts, wood, stickers, etc. My design was inspired by 'The Fault in our Stars', by John Green. The main protagonist is a teenage girl with lung cancer. I wanted to do something with ribs/lungs and then something with a starry motif, which shows up repeatedly in the story. So I did this stylized constellation thing with the lungs. Pretty happy with the result. Also printed some variations with prints I already had from earlier projects. Originally, I wanted to integrate the text in the design, but I decided against it... 'Pain demands to be felt' is one of many memorable lines from the book.

The poor, mangled bodies of plastic basketballers littered the carpeted ground: here, a ball palmed by a disembodied hand; there, two torsoless legs caught midjump. Isaac kept attacking the trophies, jumping on them with both feet, screaming, breathless, sweaty, until finally he collapsed on top of the jagged trophic remnants.
      Augustus stepped toward him and looked down. "Feel better?" he asked.
      "No," Isaac mumbled, his chest heaving.
      "That's the thing about pain," Augustus said, and then glanced back at me. "It demands to be felt."

Again, I highly recommend reading it, as long as you have a box of tissues within reach.

 Here's John reading the first chapter on youtube.

Winter throwback III

I'm sensing a theme here. A bit of an odd story behind this one. Claytonian is a Youtube vlogger who lives/teaches English in Japan. He visited a gallery somewhere... this was quite a while ago... and this piece caught his eye. As seen on the left, I screenshotted it, because it is rather gorgeous. Eventually got around to painting a version, based totally on the screenshot. Claytonian didn't know who the artist was or what it was called. I couldn't find any information either. I would love to know. Until that happens I'm just calling her 'Clay's Geisha'. Kept messing up the eyes and redoing them 'cause they're so much lovelier in the original, but I couldn't make them work. I like the grey-ness of it, though!


In other news, I have fully moved in to my new computer. Still getting acclimated to all the Windows 7 jazz. Feeling less anxious now. I was worried I wouldn't be settled in by the time my online classes start next week. Silkscreen, CSS, Web Development, and Dreamweaver. I predict I will be confusing the three online classes with each other. Lots of passwords and schedules to stay on top of. I'm suuuuuper excited about Silkscreen, but the teacher is notoriously a bastard. As far as I have heard, he rarely gets through a semester without making at least one student break down in tears in class. Soooo... yeeaaahhh.

Oh, and I got The Fault in Our Stars a day early from Amazon. w00t. One of the gazillion pre-orders signed by Vlogbrother, John Green. I'll start reading it tonight. Huzzah! DFTBA.