Irritation

I'm getting irritated.

It's as if either everyone is way too polite or no one knows what "healthy" is anymore.

I've been on a diet...excuse me "life style change"

at one point a couple years ago (when I first moved to Phoenix) I was depressed, had a horrible living situation, and eating crap. I gained a ton of weight. I got a wii fit and lost ten pounds of that. Kept it off for awhile and then had to move all of my belongings up to a third floor of an apartment building when I moved out of horrible living situation. Lost another ten, kept it off for the most part. I was curvey but no one ever called me fat (technically obese/overweight according to BMI at the time).

Met Evan, current husband extraordinaire. Kept the weight off but became really sensitive of my size...especially since the man could wear MY PANTS.

We celebrated our one month together in style and I ended up gaining 8 lbs. Oy.

Adopted Evan's lifestyle of eating for allergies and working out with him. Lost 20 lbs.

Took a break, gained about 6 back. Still in overweight/obese land.

Got married lost those 6 and then some for my wedding. Yay. Gained the some back over the course of honeymoon. Boo.

Started a lifestyle of working out twice a day and only eating 1100 calories. No results...misery.

Decided to do something safe and drastic and now the weight is pouring off and someone hit my eating reset button.

I eat really healthy right now and everyone comments on it.

"Are you on a diet?"

Yeah

"Well, you don't need to be"

and I want to scream because yes I do. I'm still away from a normal BMI for my height. I am closer everyday, but everyone this whole time (besides Evan who knew what everything was and knew it was unhealthy) has told me I don't need to do anything. Now especially since I am super close to my goal. But I was not healthy before and everyone wanted me to eat like them and look like them and I refuse to do it. I know people think I am weird now.

I don't care. America has a warped perspective about the whole healthy eating and weight thing and I was a perfect example of this.

I'm almost there, I'm the skinniest I've been in I don't even know how long. I'm inching into middle school territory if I really think about it..I think.

But I am finally getting happy with how I look and feeling way healthy. I may even post the pics of my journey with my face blurred (even though there are already pics of my face) but they were me and I am proud of how it's looking now.

If not I'll just dig up photos from the past few years and scan them in to show that kind of difference.

I am happier now with myself but this crazy diet is almost over and then comes the maintenance for 3 weeks and then living the rest of my life. I'm kind of terrified about this.

But I believe in me!

Life Styles A-changin'

When my job started up again, I got into a huge funk.

I couldn't get anything done. My weight was going back up. I was super stressed. There was too much to do and no time to do it.

Last week I went to my Geek Girl Goal Setting (nearly late and rushed) and said I wanted a schedule, to catch up on things, and to calm down.

I am starting this goal this week. There has been lots of things going on around here and I wanted to address some of them.

Goal #1
Catching up on the house.
It's almost there. Evan and made more work for ourselves and bought a bunch of things from IKEA and we've been putting them together throughout the weekend. I now own a king sized bed, two nightstands, and two tall dressers from the MALIM collection of IKEA.
The Kitchen is clean. The living room is clean. The bathroom (thank god) is clean. We moved out office into the bigger extra bedroom, which still needs to be cleaned and the former office needs to be cleaned out along with the closet. Our bedroom is a work in progress from all of the new IKEA stuff and moving out my old set. Which now needs to be craigslisted.
The house is almost there, and that actually takes a lot of stress out. I can come home and relax a bit now.
Still need to clean that car though.

Goal #2 MI reception stuff
Invites are mailed. My ring issue is being resolved (via a new ring, that is almost like my other one just more expensive) as is Evan's ring issue. Surgical grade steel ring = no allergic reaction. I also have a nice shiny plain band too. I bought plane tickets as well. The only few things left are to do the photo books and print photos from the wedding and honey moon. I will also have to get my dress altered since I have lost enough weight where it is sagging a bit. I'm going to call an alteration place this week.

Goal #3 Art
oooh boy. I've been THINKING about art. Not much doing. I owe a friend a prize picture, still need to do my next creative grab bag, Evan wants some help with a game, and my friend Connie wants to talk to me about a webcomic. I am hoping to sketch out the prize pic this week along with the sketch for my grab bag. Evan will be next week and Connie whenever I talk to her.

Goal #4 A schedule.
It will be done this week. I am a cheer coach now and have to use time wisely after school and during. I want to schedule in art time, cleaning time, relaxing time, and evan time.

Goal #5 Dietary Changes
I'm on a pretty restrictive diet right now, but it's working. I'm being creative with cooking and spices and am not bored at all. I'm over the halfway mark (if I do it for the 30 days, I may go the full 45...currently on day 20) and have been working out how I'm going to do this when I'm allowed other foods. I have good ideas and need to start writing them down somewhere so I don't forget how to do this. Also: tea and stevia are my new best friends. I have finally fallen in love with tea and drink it ALL the time.

Lots of things to do, not enough time to do it...but I'm getting there and enjoying it finally. I've reached some sort of inner peace I guess.

I'll just keep going.

This is a Test

This is only a test...

I'm alive, I promise. Everything kind of just hit at once and I've been slowly swimming my way back to shore.

Everything is great and awesome though. Some quick highlights.

My job has started back up again. It's going great. The only thing about this is that I'm spending tons of time on new power points and project examples since I'm starting at the beginning with the little ones and have nothing.

I'm also becoming a middle school cheerleading coach. *shrugs* I have no idea, don't ask.

The house is being cleaned out. Like a major overhaul. I feel like I'm drowning in stuff and that Evan and I are falling into that owning a house trap of filling it up. Just in the living room we are down a bookshelf and entry way table. Just started going through clothes last night again. I'm so sick of stuff.

Clothes are easy to go through right now. I'm back on the horse of losing weight. I have 20 more days of my restrictive diet plan and then can slowly add back some normal things. But I'm feeling so healthy and great some things may be having a permanent grave for me. I will also tell you about the horror show that happened to me because of that on another day.

Also had to clean out the fridge because apparently "natural flavors" n thing sis code for milk and soy. Which my husband is allergic to. He kept getting ill and we had to figure it out. I gave half my fridge away. That sucked.

The art portion of my life besides making examples for school has been nill. Monday I have a Geek Girl Goal Setting meeting and it's the perfect time to restart my goal of an artwork a month. The first being a prize for a dear friend who got my 1,000th page view on the deviantart site. Then I'll be back to my creative grab bagging.

Umm Some drama with mine and Evan's wedding rings too. We are both getting new ones, which is depressing but better than having to deal with the drama of them both. He's allergic to his and mine just keeps breaking. The jewelery place is working with us though. Which is nice.

I will be blogging more and more, I promise! It's part of the goals!

Comic Sans

Stolen from here: Timothy McSweeney's Internet Tendency

I'm Comic Sans, Asshole.
BY MIKE LACHER

- - - -

Listen up. I know the shit you've been saying behind my back. You think I'm stupid. You think I'm immature. You think I'm a malformed, pathetic excuse for a font. Well think again, nerdhole, because I'm Comic Sans, and I'm the best thing to happen to typography since Johannes fucking Gutenberg.

You don't like that your coworker used me on that note about stealing her yogurt from the break room fridge? You don't like that I'm all over your sister-in-law's blog? You don't like that I'm on the sign for that new Thai place? You think I'm pedestrian and tacky? Guess the fuck what, Picasso. We don't all have seventy-three weights of stick-up-my-ass Helvetica sitting on our seventeen-inch MacBook Pros. Sorry the entire world can't all be done in stark Eurotrash Swiss type. Sorry some people like to have fun. Sorry I'm standing in the way of your minimalist Bauhaus-esque fascist snoozefest. Maybe sometime you should take off your black turtleneck, stop compulsively adjusting your Tumblr theme, and lighten the fuck up for once.

People love me. Why? Because I'm fun. I'm the life of the party. I bring levity to any situation. Need to soften the blow of a harsh message about restroom etiquette? SLAM. There I am. Need to spice up the directions to your graduation party? WHAM. There again. Need to convey your fun-loving, approachable nature on your business' website? SMACK. Like daffodils in motherfucking spring.

When people need to kick back, have fun, and party, I will be there, unlike your pathetic fonts. While Gotham is at the science fair, I'm banging the prom queen behind the woodshop. While Avenir is practicing the clarinet, I'm shredding "Reign In Blood" on my double-necked Stratocaster. While Univers is refilling his allergy prescriptions, I'm racing my tricked-out, nitrous-laden Honda Civic against Tokyo gangsters who'll kill me if I don't cross the finish line first. I am a sans serif Superman and my only kryptonite is pretentious buzzkills like you.

It doesn't even matter what you think. You know why, jagoff? Cause I'm famous. I am on every major operating system since Microsoft fucking Bob. I'm in your signs. I'm in your browsers. I'm in your instant messengers. I'm not just a font. I am a force of motherfucking nature and I will not rest until every uptight armchair typographer cock-hat like you is surrounded by my lovable, comic-book inspired, sans-serif badassery.

Enough of this bullshit. I'm gonna go get hammered with Papyrus.

Chuck Jones: An Animated Life

So a few weeks back my brother and I went to Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport to sadly take my Mom there so she could go home to Michigan after her ten day visit. After we said our tearful farewells I asked my brother if we could find the little mini art gallery they have in that terminal (Terminal Four!) he said sure since we were going to have to pay for the full hour of parking anyhow.

So we found the gallery and what do you know...a Chuck Jones exhibit! Now for those of you who don't know who Chuck Jones is, he is one of the lead animators/creator of characters from Looney Tunes. It was quite the retrospective of his work. I didn't get pictures of everything but I got the best things in my opinion.

Again these are taken on my camera phone as it was the only thing I had. Yay Droid!

Biography


Sketches








Looney Tunes Paintings




















How the Grinch Stole X-mas Painting


Phoenix Art!

Bigger Than You

So in Tempe Towne Marketplace there is a store front called "The Night Gallery" It is a facility that is used to showcase student works from ASU. A lot of the time they will have "established" Phoenix artists share the gallery space with the student work in order to get more people to come in and see the shows and to hopefully get more revenue. The shows are free but there is a donation jar in the front.

The following is from a show that is still up (it's been up for awhile now in the back) and it is by Nathanial Lewis and called "Bigger Than You" According to his blog this was his Thesis show for ASU.

here a couple links to him and his work: Blogspot Blog and Art Site

A side note: My photos don't really do his work justice. I only usually have my phone on me, so all of these pics are taken on my Droid.

Now on to the show!


"Blossom"


"Icarus"


"Scribble"




"Feast"


"Maya"


"Melt"


"Real Gone 1"


"Ghost"


"Anticipation"


"Hunger"


"Loom"


"Me & You"


"Extrude"


"Romper"


"Satisfaction"


"Make Believe"

Phoenix Art by a Phoenix Artist

Platypus!

CD Cover Design

Fantabulastic's Victoria by ~SyntheticPlatypus on deviantART

The next Card in The Creative Grab Bag Series! Design a CD cover for a fake band. Luckily, I already have one of those.

Fanatbulastic starring the lovely Kabukikatze on Guitar and SyntheticPlatypus on Vocals.

Awhile back Miss Kabuki and I did an art trade where we had created a band and did posters advertising for them : Fantabulastic Poster
Miss Kabuki removed hers cleaning house :) But I assure you it it was an epic poster advertising the Russian leg of our tour.

So a little about the design of this cover. I had the band already so the hard part of figuring out a name was already taken care of. I knew I wanted to revisit fantabulastic, but how?

When I was in Victoria, Canada I fell in absolute love with the Native Art there. Evan bought a painting and I bought some magnets for the fridge. If I could have bought more I would have.

So I decided to use that as my inspiration! The CD is called Victoria for Canada and I used the design elements in their native art that makes it so unique and fantastic. The colors are simplistic and everything is made of shapes and alot of those shapes have animals in them.

I'm on the left I have glasses! Miss Kabuki is on the right. See the red hair? :)

In this picture somewhere: A beaver, a rhino, a frog, an eagle, a cardinal, and a parrot.

I had a ton of fun doing this, once I figured out how to draw with the shapes it actually came out rather quickly. Colored it in photoshop and sized it correctly.

Phoenix art by a Phoenix Artist!

Mint Condoms and Weed

Now you are looking at the title for this blog entry and thinking: "...what?"

Now that would be what I was thinking when I encountered these very items.

Let me explain.

The other week I had my follow up Doctors Appointment (everything is fine, I worried for nothing). As Evan and I were leaving the office I pulled out the wrong way into a gas station that is in front of the building center. So as I pulled around to go out the other way I saw something on the ground and I came up to next to it and opened my door.

A wallet and a phone! Holy Crap!

I picked up both and pulled into a parking spot at the gas station. Now as luck would have it I was just reading about what to do when you find a wallet or phone from The Simple Dollar.

So I went inside to the gas station and told the clerk I found a wallet and phone and I wanted to leave my contact information. She told me that the guy has just come in 15 minutes ago in a panic. I gave her my name and number and told her that I hoped he came back.

I went back to the car and started going through the contacts of the phone, hoping to find a "mom" or "dad" number to call. Evan started going through the wallet. There were no credit cards and no money (hopefully no one had taken it) but there was a mint condom that Evan pulled out (which we had a good laugh at)and then a small bag of what I could only assume was a bud of weed. (o_o)

Well, I wanted to get everything back to that guy ASAP because I was not keeping this around. Especially when one of the numbers was "House of Toke" so I punched in the guy's address from his license and found it was only 5 minutes from the station and since Evan was with me, I figured we could drop it off at his house.

Well as we were pulling out a car pulled in and rolled down his window and started to ask something of the maintenance men that were working around the gas station.

I told Evan that this had to be the guy. So I pulled up next to him and asked if he was looking for something. He said a wallet and phone and I handed it over to him. He looked like he was gonna cry from happiness. He asked where we found it (on the ground) and then I told him I was going to drop it off at his address. He threw a couple "God Bless You's" at me and we drove off on our merry way.

Make Art Like A Child

miscellaneous by ~SyntheticPlatypus on deviantART

Another somewhat easy card drawn, once I figured out what I was actually going to do.

Card Drawn: Make Art Like a Child

So the first thing I did was dig out a bunch of old old artwork and look through it. I was looking for inspiration, at one point I was going to update a picture I had done in 1998 but then I found some stuff I did while I was in school and realized the answer was this:

DOODLE

I teach kids now and this is all they actually ever want to do. So I took a sketchbook page and I doodled the crap out of it. No pencil, no erasing. Just pen to paper and have at it.

I enjoyed filling up this space quite a bit and enjoyed trying to come up with all sorts of different things.

It did take me a few hours to do it (I watched some moves while doodling) but on the whole I'm pleased how it came out!