so...I've just got to say it....

Where in the heck did spring go?...things started well, trees started leafing out, flowers, came up...even the flowering trees were in full bloom. and the days while not hot were definitely warm enough to go out without three layers.

Then things went wrong.....we had snow...three days of snow..and not the frosty fluffy pretty snow that I love, this was ....white mush falling from the sky to soak our already saturated ground.
and it's COLDDDD!!!
I'm freezing everyday...I usually take a ton of pictures in the spring..but lately..I hate even having to check the mail because it is SO freaking cold.

I'm pretty sure that the flowers are in shock..I know the plants that had made the transition from house to porch are toast.


Other than that...there isn't much to say. I'm doing a drive recovery because the drive where all my pictures were has come up as "unpartitoned, unformatted space"
anyone who has done one knows, that especially with large drives..it take forever..

Signs that wow really is addictive
you check every day to see if the dead tauren is STILL lying in the center of town.
You wonder if Terenus would kill you as quickly as Lethan did.(and almost hate the day when you will inevitably be part of a group to slay them since they are SO damn pretty)
Wonder why the horde always has control of the towers..then realize with a start that for once...alliance has them all.
Ponder exactly HOW it's fun to make your way across a land where EVERYTHING wants to kill you. and realize that you might be a little sadistic.
You wonder for the hundredth time that day WHY you can't report Lord so and so for spam or at least make it so you can't hear him...
ok...all mortals will perish...blah,blah,blah...we get it already


Hope all is well in your worlds

Signed on and had a sub, thank you to a very kind person on DA.
I never even got the email. so it was literally a huge surprise.

Anyway, Happy Belated Easter to everyone.

and to celebrate..features :applause:

you may notice a theme..I freely admit I'm inclined towards night shots and vibrant colors.



This one I knew I was going to feature as soon as I saw it. it's just so...cheery
I will be adding more as I make my way through the massive amounts of art on my watchlist, but as of now, I've barely made a dent..

So...I originally signed in because my realm on WoW is closed so I figured it was a good time to update my features..
then it occured to me....
No sub means no thumbs..

I'm currently 1,240 watches and almost 200 messages behind and things are moving SLOWLY..lol
actually at this point they aren't moving at all because for some blasted reason lately every time I sign on I can't get anything besides small views to load...and sometimes not even those.

Anyway, I am still alive am sometimes still around and as hard as it is to believe this is still the best place to reach me..

excluding wow of course

sorry to be so all inclusive but thank you everyone who has commented, faved or watched me since I was last on. I will try to be around more but since DA isn't loading pages for me it's kind of hard to catch up..to say the very least.

Tune of the day [link]

[link]
just watch it, it's funny.


Anyone else finding that DA's journals cannot keep up with their typing? I type a line and have to wait for it to finish showing up, then type another, I would think it was just because my Sub expired and DA is punishing me but I vaguely recall this happening last time I updated too and I still had a sub then.

Anyway Happy Valentines Day, I have Chocolate and beer and therefore all is well in my world. Hope it is in yours too.

BTW, I got a new Ball, Spalding neverflat it's supposed to stay inflated at LEAST a year, and since my norm with balls is 3 months, it was well worth the almost 40 dollar price tag.
one thing that ticked me right the fuck off though, right on the package it says "for MALES over 12" WTF????



Now to the Buyer beware portion, Anyone heard of Broadway Photo?
Found an ad of theirs in the back of one of my photog mags and after checking prices of the various biggies, Andorama, B&H etc I found they had the lowest price on my Canon, I therefore ordered it, gave them my card number and "thought" all was well.

then I get the email...I need to call to "verify" my order. no big deal and yes I did expect them to try and upsell, most do. (Just say no works well in this case too )

But it went badly from hello

Not only did they try to upsell, They tried to charge me EXTRA for the battery, charger and all the cables(all of which are SUPPOSED to come WITH it) after refusing all of it the guy then asks me do I want the import or USA version

I asked what the difference was
He then tells me the US version comes with all the cables, battery, charger, software, etc
ok..I want that one.
he gives me my total and it jumped up 500 bucks.
I told him exactly where to stick it and canceled the order. he gets pissy, says "F off, order canceled" and hangs up on me


Never f-ing again. buncha crooks..if I would have known where they are located and had a way to get there I would have punched someone.

My lava lamp is dying, all I get it a lumpy tumor looking thing at the bottom

tune of the day [link]



I need a real camera. have for while now. It occurred to me about a year ago that I've gone as far as my little point and shoots can go and after that point it just becomes....pointless, and depressing.

I have a 4 MP Minolta that I absolutely adored...for the first two years or so. I also use Birdy's 6 mp Lumix, which was interesting...for awhile.
But they are so limiting that I've gotten to where I delete 99% of everything I take, and rarely put any of them on DA.

I go out and see...everything, I can visualize a picture but cannot actually take that picture. Especially when you consider that most of what I like to shoot is in extremely low light.
Long exposures only work for certain things, take a long exposure on a windy day and you get...a colorful blur. Higher ISO's on a P&S get you, NOISY, pixelated...crap.

I'm sure you've all heard it's the photographer, not the camera, but that's only true to a point. you can give the best camera to someone who has no clue and they might come up with an accidental masterpiece, but most of what they get are going to be..mediocre.
On that same token, you can give a great photographer a snapshot camera and they can only go so far with it. Sure some will be gems. but most will be...snapshots. Nothing more, nothing less.

In it's way this is my explanation for my longer and longer absences from DA, and pretty much everywhere else too, I've just..lost interest.
In an interesting twist I discovered that when I was in love with my photos it was a boon to my other types of art, lose interest in my photo's, and everything else followed.
I keep meaning to reinstall apophosis, terragen, even bryce..I just never seem to get up the momentum to actually do so. (a laptop would be a lifesaver on that front too, I find that less and less do I want to have to sit at my desk to get something done, especially since most "something's" take hours, or days.)

I am trying to get myself moving artistically again, but if you don't see me for long stretches, now you know why.

tune of the day [link]



Seems like lately I've been spending WAY too much time at hospitals this last month.

My younger two had the obligatory winter ear infections that decided to go postal overnight.
And now my eldest is having seizures, three in the last week.
As if that isn't scary enough it looks like our HOUSE is the reason
The house was winterized over the summer so it's pretty much airtight, great for electric bills very bad for our health as it turns out.

We had 6 pets DIE in a two week period starting Christmas morning with my poor little bird. We've all had what I assumed where the normal winter colds, Not horrible but stuffy noses, sore throats etc but they never go away, and I wake up and go to sleep with headaches on a nearly daily basis. Now the docs say that it looks like Mandy(my oldest daughter) has been poisoned by something, presumably in the air she's breathing.
Unfortunately it's VERY time consuming AND expensive to try to track down the culprit and insurance will NOT cover it. Not that knowing what it is would help much. The general consensus is we need to move..and quickly.

So in the meantime I've been leaving all the windows open as much as possible(which really sucks in the wintertime, let me tell you) our electric bill is going to be insanely high for this month I suspect.

I hate moving, really truly absolutely LOATHE it. and trying to find a place where the girls won't have to change schools is hell, it's looking more and more like we're just going to have to give up staying in the school district. Good schools are SO hard to find.

Still no way to take pictures so I haven't been around much one of these days I'll be able to get a camera, but right now there are more pressing concerns.

features are what I've stumbled across as I try to clear my insanely full inbox.

If you get multiple copies of this journal in your inbox blame DA, it's refusing to post it.

tune of the day



It's actually not quite Christmas here, we've got an hour left of Christmas Eve.
The girls have been asleep for a few hours already but I still haven't done the whole "santa thing" which is odd in itself since usually I can't wait for them to fall asleep and then I get all sorts of happy and play Santa.
I've been like this a few months already, it's kind of bizarre, like I'm not all here. you may have noticed my absence here too..I actually attribute most of it to the fact that the cameras are out of commission. Even my trusty old Minolta is pretty much belly up since batteries last for all of 5 minutes and die in it now. and even faster in cold weather, take two shots and I'm done. I'm slowly going nuts without one.

Other than that though, I can't really figure out why I'm so Disinterested in everything anymore, I'm NOT depressed, I'm actually fairly content except for the aforementioned camera thing.

My throat feels as if elves are ice skating on it, with sandpaper skates, my ears hurt too, I have a feeling that Christmas is going to bite healthwise
It started last night but I was at a Christmas party with enough alcohol to dull the feeling pretty well.

Anyway, to all of you that celebrate Christmas, have a very merry one. and to the rest of you
New features are all Christmas or season related and I'm pretty sure most if not all will be emotes. Cause I'm in an Emoty mood

tune of the day



No Tune of the day, new features etc, just a quickie to let ya'll know I am in fact still living.
It's been a busy month, I accidentally deleted ALL my pictures from before I went to Snoqualmie to now(at LEAST 6 months worth) All the photo's from the falls, the mountains etc..GONE not to mention the miscellaneous photos that I take pretty much everyday... waterfront,downtown etc.
I've run every recovery program known to man but only one was able to recover ANY of them and they were so badly overwritten that none of the original data was salvageable.

Just a heads up for anyone who has or plans to purchase a Zune, when you delete things make sure you are checking the right boxes because when you delete from within Zune's software, it's not something you can undo. regardless of what they tell you.

I've been too busy, with Thanksgiving and other events to properly mourn the loss of all those files but I know when it hits me I'm gonna hurt.

I've spent the last two days tagging every MP3 file on the network( some 60 gigs of music) and in general getting prepared to reformat at least two of the computers, probably three. Figured it was the perfect time since the files that I normally worry so much about are already gone.

And for the oh-so-sweet deviant that renewed my sub you made my week.

tune of the day [link]
(Sprung Monkey right my wrong)

Note me if you want lyrics



My thought process really is fucked up sometimes.
you know how when you can feel something but not see it your brain tries to supply a visual to match?

My brain supplied me with a severed finger

I was clearing a blockage from the kitchen sink.it was pretty dark and I wasn't really looking just kinda scooping this..thing up (the thing turned out to be a green bean,) but of course my brain..twisted as it is, supplied me the mental visual of a severed finger.




I know, I vanished for a few days there.
Got a little pissed off, I was actually working on a cool piece. unfortunately I also had a crash, and my last save point was HOURS before the crash....so basically I went from almost finished to...an almost starfield and a nebula.(luckily those were saved from when I started them a few days ago.)

Ever notice how you get the songs you don't really want stuck in your head playing in your own personal thought track? mine for two freakin days straight was the song stoner Love.



I wonder if music addiction is dangerous. I always hear music, I can FEEL music even when it isn't actually playing (that's where the personal thought track comes from)
sometimes the music is almost loud enough to shut out everything around me, other times I actually have to tell people to shut up so I can hear the music in my head (yes...I really do, do that)
I get some funny looks from people..only the ones who don't actually know me...most people who know me just accept it and move on.

anyway this really is leading somewhere, I'm wondering if I'm the only one who does that.

Do other people hear music playing in their heads?
Do you dream to music? (I do BTW)

it's like a playlist in my mind that changes to suit the moment. except when I get stuck on a song and then it's like a song set to repeat..it gets kind of old and I have to listen to "actual" music to change the station in my head.

I guess I want reassurance that it's not some sort of sign of psychosis to add to my already long list of psychotic traits.
c'mon people..reassure me.can you hear the music too?

tune of the day [link]

Note me if you want lyrics



The journal title...it popped in my head..Snoopy always started out that way


It's an interesting week.
I went downtown last weekend, spent hours taking pictures of Downtown and the waterfront, it was cold, rainy and windy and since I spent a lot of time kneeling on wet sand, rocks, sidewalks etc I was soaked by the time I got back into the Jeep to head home.
I tend to get pretty involved with what I'm doing and end up places that aren't exactly warm, dry, or clean to take pictures.
My "tripod" that night was a dead flashlight I found in the jeep, turns out it works well in sand and on rocky areas because you can push part of it into the sand or rocks until it's semi level. plus it's fairly sturdy(my tripod broke it's legs on the last trip up the mountain and I haven't replaced it yet)
Overall it was worth it though, I got some of my favorite shots that night...and not ONE of them was at the museum of glass...probably a first for me since that's one of my favorite places to shoot.


I've spent the last few days working on computers..none of them mine.
I've actually lost count of how many, two reformats..those were the easy ones. and various other problems on the others. I finished my last one tonight.

It's weird, I'm glad I'm done because I'll get paid, but at the same time I LIKE having one to work on. a computer for me is like a jigsaw puzzle, you usually have all the pieces, you just need to figure out how they work together to make the whole. of course some are harder to figure out than others, and there are those rare incidents when nothing can be done to save them. but the rest of the time it's almost soothing for me, even the ones that make me want to rip my hair out.

plus when I'm otherwise kept busy it keeps me from the camera/wanderlust I'm cursed with. I would quite literally be out most of every night taking pictures if I could be. doesn't matter what the weathers like, how tired I am..nothing, that's where I want to be.
I finally found something that overtook my basketball obsession, don't get me wrong, I'd still do that very day if I could too..but it's different hours. the best photographic hours for me are from sunset to almost dawn. I love the way that things look totally different in the dark. and how different amounts of light affect each shot.

Now I just need a decent camera..

And Birdy if you read this, I know I drive you crazy with my adventures and photography obsession, I love that you handle it so well

tune of the day [link]

Note me if you want lyrics