Sound Bites

Carleton's family lives right near the shore on the Long Island Sound, and this morning we went critter scavenging on the beach.


A little crab



A skull thing, any ideas on what it is from?


The shell of a little horseshoe crab


A fish vertebrae


And our biggest find, a huge horseshoe crab that had washed up in a bed of seaweed. It was pretty fresh, but most of its innards were missing, so we decided to take it home with us to clean it. Soon I will have the shell all nice and clean for display (or perhaps to make into an awesome helment ¬_¬ )

Part 2

I'm moved in and mostly settled, and all is well. Today I went and had lunch with the props shop, and they were all very nice and welcoming. They took me around the theater and introduced me to everybody there. It is very exciting, I get my own desk, mail slot, and my name is even on the staff list on the website! It's like the real world or something!

Otherwise, things are good. Fish survived the journey with little more than hunger and grumpiness, and he's settled in enough to have built a bubble nest today. Yay!

Now I have a few more things to do to get settled with the idea of living in Connecticut, namely registering to vote and finding out what needs to happen to establish educational residency, in case I end up going to grad school at UConn.

Part 1

Well, the first leg of my trip is complete. Carleton and I left early this morning and arrived at my aunt's house in Virginia at around 4. The fish seem to be just fine, if not a little grumpy for being cooped up in a shipping cooler all day. I think that once Fish gets into his 5 gallon when we get to Connecticut and a nice meal with extra bloodworms, he'll be back to his old cheerful self.

I'm glad to be traveling, the sadness and worry and anxiety leading up to the big move was starting to get heavy, but once I got on the road things were much better. Having a nice place to take a break and spend the night helped too ^_^

We'll set out early again tomorrow morning and be in Connecticut by evening, which will give me plenty of days to settle in before starting work on Monday. Yay excitement!

AvP

So last night Carleton and I went to see Aliens vs. Predator

...

ahem


Well, we went in pretty much expecting the worst movie in the world, and thus our mindset allowed the movie to be enjoyable and good compared to our standards. They we pretty straightforward about it, all throughout it was like the movie was trying to tell us "Yeah, we know, we aren't trying to fool anybody here, just sit back and enjoy the spectacle."

Carleton said the only resemblence the movie had to the comics was the Predators' basic ship design, and that was pretty much it.

My favorite part: The humans are in the sacrificial chamber, they drop a glowstick through a floor grate and see it land. "Oh, there is a chamber below," they conclude. A few scenes later, the main character is carefully consulting her compass. "This must be the room below the sacrificial chamber," she concludes...from her compass, mind you, not the fact that they find their HUGE RADIATING GLOWSTICK ON THE FLOOR IN FRONT OF THEM!! It had me in giggles for awhile.

So, the moral of the story was, if you kill an alien all by yourself, the Predator will say "aw, I guess you're cool, you can hang with me."

They never did resolve how she got out of the antarctic wasteland all by herself, though.


In other news, I finished Panda's commission. Yay! Doing it gave me a better idea of ranging of prices to charge for commissions, in case I ever start taking them regularly.

The next couple of days will be devoted to packing and preparing for the big move. Nervous!

Back from the Gather

Back from the Con! I posted a review over on the Gather Journal if anyone's interested. It was fun times, I met cool people and had fun. Art sales were very slow this year all across the board, and not much went to auction at all. It was disappointing, but oh well, I did sell a few things (my sculpey dragons and mask) and I got lots of compliments and "bring this to the show next year when I have money and I'll totally buy it" comments, so oh well. Hopefully things will bounce back next year.

I also met a guy (well, re-met, he's been at that con every year) and found out he did glassblowing at Illinois State in Che Rhodes' program, small world and all that.

I also get to now reveal the commission I'd been working on this summer, which I had to keep secret because it was commissioned to give to one of the guests at the Con as a gift: http://storage.wertle.com/albums/art/finished/fenton.jpg

It's a long story, but I'm proud of the drawing. It's watercolor, colored pencil, ink and a bit of acrylic.

Anyway, I only have like a week before I leave for Connecticut, it's getting exciting and scary. I now have such mundane goals as getting my room clean and packing, both of which will be considerable chores in their own right.

Notes

A note for anyone who still uses my ldbrow00@centre.edu email address, it is now officially non-existant as Centre begins their new year (*sniff*). Email me now at my wertle.com address.

In other news, I really am on the verge of getting Mozilla Thunderbird as my email client, but the only thing holding me back is their lack of calendar (I use Outlook's a bunch). Does anyone know of a good stand-alone free calendar program? I suppose if all else I'll just get Thunderbird and then only use Outlook for its calendar from here on out.

Went to King's Island yesterday, rode many roller coasters, had lots of fun.

Conglomeration is this weekend, and I'm pretty excited about it. I have a ton of art to put in the art show, so hopefully some of it will sell. If you're in Louisville and have nothing to do this weekend you should check it out.