Muoi rayes

I drew the cartoon above this morning for Illustration Friday. This week's topic: "Smitten."

So I finally got curious about the phrase "muoi rayes" because it kept coming up in spam headers, so did a Google search for the phrase. Turned up nothing. Anyone out there have any idea about why this phrase is so popular in spam e-mails?



After meeting with my sister to plan her Web site revamp, I spent time working on NaNoWriMo cartoons. For most of the cartoons, I'm taking Inkygirl comics and revamping them to make them more NaNoWriMo specific. I'm also creating some new comics specifically for the event. The comic above is one I created when I was doing NaNoWriMo several years ago. I made it more generic for Inkygirl afterward, but have recently restored it to a NaNoWriMo theme. The NaNoWriMo site will be posting one of my comics every weekday, but I'm hoping to come up with enough they can post them on weekends, too. :-)

I was quite tickled at the number of people asking if they can re-post my most recent Will Write For Chocolate comic in their own Web sites as well as post a print-out on bulletin boards at schools and libraries. My answer: Please feel free! I don't mind the occasional re-posting with appropriate credit if you let me know, but I'd have a problem with someone who re-posted my comic on a regular basis without asking first.

In the afternoon, I did some yard work with Jeff. We were thinking about watching some DVD episodes of Lost but decided to do something together outdoors instead. I'm very glad we did. Good exercise, but I also enjoyed the autumn colours and textures in the garden. Like these leaves on one of our serviceberry bushes, just starting to turn colour:



And these sedum blooms, which have turned from pale pink to a deeper rose in recent weeks:



It's funny. Some of our friends were worried about Jeff not being able to handle house owner chores. He's THRIVING on housestuff, always fixing and raking and building and installing. I benefit, of course. He recently replaced our kitchen tap, getting a new one at Home Hardware and installing it himself. It works wonderfully (MUCH easier on my tendons), has a dual spray feature AND a built-in dish soap pump. I never thought I'd get excited over a new tap, but there you go.

Anyway, Ray came over for dinner after all the outdoorstuff and we had take-out sushi....yum.

In the past few years (since Inkspot, actually) I've found myself wanting to simplify. I used to thrive on being busy all the time...the busier, the better. I'm realizing that deep down, I was making the mistake of equating being busy to being happily productive. It's true I was productive in some ways...but I wasn't really working towards my longterm (life) goals.

Also, the happiness part was lacking...I was feeling stretched too thin, not having enough selfish-time for myself. I had trouble saying no, and as a result was juggling far more plates than I could really handle longterm. Plates were already starting to fall when I decided that I had to sell Inkspot.



These days, I find myself drawn to like-minded people, who are moving towards simplifying their lives and lifestyles; I wonder if it's because of my life experience or my age? Probably both. I enjoy new experiences and learning new things, but I'm finding myself being far more selective, asking myself: "Is this something that I really want, or am I just going along because there's nothing better to do or I'm afraid to say no?"

I'm also finding that I increasingly value my alone-time. I love doing things with friends and I always value my time with Jeff, but I go crazy if I don't have solitary creativetime to myself on a regular basis, time where I can read books and write music, or draw for fun instead of for clients. I admire people like my sister (and you other work-at-home parents) who manage to carve out selfishtime despite an overwhelmingly busy life.

I could ramble on much longer about practical ways I've tried to simplify my life, but I'll save that for another Blathering. But meanwhile, I'm curious...what about the rest of you? Do you feel that your life is too busy? Do YOU need selfishtime and if you do, how are you managing to find it? (even for a few minutes a day?) I'm especially interested in hearing from parents.

Livejournal comments

Mr. Twilight, Trek, Lemony Snicket and Elfquest

I finished reading Mr. Twilight by Maya Bohnhoff and Michael Reaves (published by Del Rey) last night and thoroughly enjoyed it. LOVED the characters and intriguing plot...some great mystery and horror here, as well as a dash of romance. I also very much enjoyed the dark humour. Looking forward to following these characters in future books. I was amused to see the name "Helen Waters" used in the book; total coincidence, I know, but Jeff and I have a friend by the same name.

To you Classic Trek fans out there: I've updated my "He's Dead, Jim!" blog with a post about "The Enemy Within" as well as a poll about whether Shatner's acting enhanced or detracted from your enjoyment of the series when you first saw it, and then later on. Please answer at the end of my Trek blog post, thanks.



Thanks to the 61 people who responded to my blog-reading survey a couple days ago. I'm putting together a summary for an upcoming Blatherings.


Hey, I'm a Go-Back! Has anyone else out there read the Elfquest books by Wendy and Richard Pini? Please do go read this LJ post by Allison to see all three Urban Tapestry members as Elfquest characters in a drawing by Kamen with help from Shae. Kamen and Shae are two of the many friendly and incredibly talented German filkers we met at Filkcontinental last year. Kamen kindly gave me permission to use my Elfquest character as an LJ icon.

"Hsifyppah" had a great idea for enhancing the Kathleen Sloan cookbook I mentioned yesterday...optional song-recipe pairings! :-D Anyway, I'll probably be carrying the cookbook around with me at OVFF, so feel free to ask to sign the book during the convention.

My friend David Barker is entering Nanowrimo this year, and has invited everyone to help him by suggesting phrases that he promises to use (in some form) in his novel. I've already posted my enormously helpful suggestions.



And a Lemony Snicket follow-up: Last year, I pointed people to this SFGate.com article about my friend Joey Shoji, who won a bid to have his father's name appear in the next Lemony Snicket book. Joey's father passed away on July 4th last year. Well, Joey reports in a blog entry yesterday that his father name nows appears on page 223 of The End, the thirteenth and final book of the series!

"Jojishoji," Sunny said, which meant something like, "I don't believe that abridging the freedom of expression and the free exercise thereof is the proper way to run a community."

What a wonderful tribute to his dad.

:-)

Livejournal comments

Andybirthday, my new mouse, Interfilk cookbook, heulschniefschluchz

Happy birthday to my friend Andy!



I took the above photo in Robarts Library many years ago when we were both at the University of Toronto. The drawing to the right is one of my first attempts at doing a portrait with Corel Painter. I strongly believe that Andy could have been a brilliant movie reviewer in another lifetime. Even when he and I disagree completely on a movie (which is often), I always enjoy reading his reviews. Too bad he's not a blogging type; he'd be raking in the Google Adbucks. I wrote a song about Andy many years ago, but I am opting NOT to post it publicly because I know he would hunt me down and break my fingers. It would almost be worth it, but I have too much writing I want to do right now.

Andy posts as "aiabx" in my comments section, by the way. I loved his most recent post in response to my Blog Comments Etiquette blathering:

"What nonsense. 'Nobody likes a know-it-all'. Everyone loves it when I post. They cheer when I write and weep when I don't. How do I know? Because I know it all, of course."

47 people have responded so far to the blog reading survey I posted yesterday. Only one had trouble with the Wufoo format, and he was using custom text sizes. I'm going to try figuring out a way to pump up the text size myself in CSS so he won't need to. I'd like to give the survey another day or two before shutting down the survey and posting the results; if you haven't already, please do answer the very short survey at the bottom of yesterday's Blathering.



Hey, I have a new mouse! It's a Kensington Expert Mouse Optical USB Trackball 64325. Trackballs aren't for everyone, but I find that using a trackball has been a huge boon in terms of tendinitis recovery, and allows me to continue typing for longer stretches at a time than I would be able to normally.



I use the trackball with my left hand (I'm right-handed, if you're curious, but the tendons in my right arm were the most affected). I click the buttons with the heels of both hands, just below the thumb, and rotate the wheel with my thumbs. I situate the mouse between my elbow cushion at the edge of the desk and my keyboard.

Sounds awkward, I know, but it works for me. :-)



And finally, check out the cookbook to the right, which I recently picked up at a flea market: Rustic Italian Cooking by Kathleen Sloan. Those in the filk community will recognize Kathleen's name, except the identical name is just a coincidence. I thought it would be fun to turn this into an Interfilk item, however. Kathleen (the catalog queen Kathleen) has kindly agreed to autograph the book, and I'll also be adding some cartoons. I'm taking the book to OVFF to hopefully collect some additional fun doodles from filk artists, and will also be soliciting mini-pseudo-reviews of various recipes from OVFF attendees throughout the weekend, to be written directly on the page with the recipe.

"But I never tried the recipe!" you may protest. "How can I add a comment?" So what? Kathleen didn't write the book, either! :-) Be as creative as you'd like! The book will be donated to the Interfilk auction at GAfilk in January (Atlanta, GA - Urban Tapestry is the Guest of Honor, woohoo!). As a bonus, the recipes in this book sound quite good. Italian food, yum.

German word of the day:

(courtesy Aryana; I learned this in her LJ message board)

*heulschniefschluchz*

is actually a combination of three words:

"heul" - cry, wail, wallow
"schnief" - sniff
"schluchz" - sob

I feel compelled to start brushing up on my German vocab because Sibylle Machat is coming to visit with me next March around FilKONtario time, yay!

Livejournal comments

Blog reading survey

Is it just me, or is anyone else finding an increasing amount of spam that masquerades as bounced e-mail? Highly irritating.



To all you Firefly fans out there: If you haven't heard Michelle Dockrey's wonderful "Mal's Song," do check out this fan video which uses her song as background music. Be warned that there are spoilers from the movie and tv show in the video. I believe that Tony Fabris is playing guitar in this version. For more info, see Michelle's LJ post on the subject. Michelle and Tony, by the way, are Guests of Honour at FilKONtario in 2008 (not next year, but the year after).

For those who didn't see an earlier entry, I've decided to move most of my writing-related posts into Inkygirl, which I'm updating more regularly. Blatherings is more of a catch-all in terms of subject matter.

Blogging seems to have only increased in popularity over the past year or two, despite predictions it was a passing fad. I'm sure the fad aspect is partly true, but right now it doesn't seem to show any signs of slowing down. But that led me to thinking: it seems like everyone and their dog has a blog these days...but are they being read?

I generally read three types of blogs:

(1) Friends' blogs: I catch up on my LJ Friends list infrequently, choosing instead to pick a particular person every so often and catch up with multiple posts at once. I count on my real friends NOT being offended if I'm not caught up with their blogs. I do the same in return. It drives me crazy when people say (in a hurt tone): "What do you mean, you didn't know XXX? I posted it in my blog!"

(2) Publishing news blogs: I browse publishing news blogs fairly regularly for Market Watch and Inkygirl research.

(3) Blogs I read for the writing: These might fit into the above categories, or not. These are blogs I read regularly because the posts are well-written and interesting; the writer could be posting about what she ate for breakfast and I'd still be avidly reading.


I've put together a survey using Wufoo, a survey manager that Jeff told me about. If you read ANY blogs, I would greatly HUGELY appreciate you taking the time to fill out this survey. I'll post results in an upcoming Blathering.

This is also a test of Wufoo, to see how accessible it is. If you have trouble accessing the form below, please do post in LJ instead. Thanks!



Livejournal comments

Will Write For Chocolate, blog comment etiquette, Robin McKinley

Will Write For Chocolate has been updated. Click on the image above for a bigger version and to see my blog post about NaNoWriMo.

Got a new multi-illustration assignment recently. I've decided not to accept any more assignments between now and Christmas so I can focus on my novel writing.

Thanks to starmalachite for responding to my question about that bizarre Turkish Star Trek video I wrote about yesterday and pointing me to this article on the topic.

And here are some interesting links I found through Fuse #8:

A Lifehacker's Guide To Weblog Comments: a very VERY good guide to posting comments in other people's blogs. If you've ever been baffled by a negative reaction to one of your posted comments, READ THIS ESSAY. If you comment at all in other people's message boards, READ THIS ESSAY. If everyone read this essay, the online world would be a happier place.

Author As Bitch From Hell, or, Ways To Persuade Me I Would Rather Be Cleaning Bathrooms Than Answering Book Mail: I'm a big fan of Robin McKinley's, and now even more so. But holy toledo, I'm going to think twice before sending Ms. McKinley any mail.

:-D

Livejournal comments