Everything's better with stickers

About a month ago I bought a day planner so I'd be more on top of things, such as finishing my projects and remembering to blog about them.  Whenever the daily quota is reached, I give myself a sticker.  When I exceed it, I get a shiny sticker.  And whenever something out of my control comes up and completely uproots my plans I get to draw a little icon depicting what went horribly, horribly wrong.

Something went horribly, horribly wrong for the last five days in a row, starting with Tonio's AC adapter deciding that it no longer wanted to power the laptop about a nanosecond from me finishing the second of my late 90s Choose Your Own Adventure extravaganzas and an added bonus I'm tacking onto my website for the fun of things.  I actually meant to get this done weeks ago, but that's when my dad decided I was going to stain the entire deck.

So yeah.  Stay tuned and expect imminent awesome in the near future.

A Blast from the Past

          When I was about ten or eleven years old, I hoarded composition books and filled them to the brim with about every type of creative endeavor you can possibly imagine.  Screenplays.  Game design.  Documentaries. Musicals.  Books.  Interpretive Dance  You name it, I probably dabbled in it during my childhood, and chances are the story had something to do with a holiday.
          I specifically had a notebook designed just for Choose Your Own Adventure stories.  Most of them were short and pretty odd, but looking at them they just seemed like something you'd have an easier time following through a website.  My web design skills could definitely use some improvement, so I figured, hey!  Why not practice using some original material I've already written?
          So The Proto Lu Encounter came to fruition.  The Lu Encounter is a plot I've been working with for ages.  This particular version is probably one of its earliest iterations and involves surviving the 4th of July with your evil aunt Lu.  The current Lu Encounter is nothing like this at all and involves robots, a global domination plot, product placement and sandwiches.  Consider this a very early prototype, complete with a very, very old-school graphic style.

Click here to play for yourself

(and good luck getting out alive!)

What the Truck!?!

The Gasellschaft and I have a love-hate relationship.

The Gasellschaft is my truck. Actually, scratch that, it isn't my truck. It is my dad's truck. It is obscenely large, has custom, fixed side view mirrors designed for seeing around a horse trailer, an extra long bed, and an extra wide cab. It is quite possibly the most unwieldy vehicle short of a tractor-trailer and guzzles gas like no tomorrow, hence the name. It also completely dwarfs me to the point where, if you're not me, it's actually really funny.

For now I'm stuck in New Jersey, where people pump your gas for you. These gas station attendants almost all think it's the funniest thing in the universe to see someone like me behind the wheel of something like that. Every. Single. Time. Once in Maryland I tried to park at a Panera with it and took so long to get it right that my friends had enough time to go in, see that the line was too long, and decide to just split up and get food elsewhere before I could get it in the space.

Half the time it doesn't even fit all the way into a parking space. If it were actually my vehicle it would definitely be a lot smaller and more sensible on gas. I am probably going to write a serious children's book about being relatively short and driving an obscenely large truck. Worse comes to worse I can sell it to gas station attendants in all two states that have them.

Anyway, about a week ago my dad actually used his own truck to take some garbage out to the dumpster on his other property. That's when a freak accident occurred! Here's what went down in the art style of Bruno Bozzetto:

It was a classic example of normal human drives truck on empty road, crazy idiot swerves normal human into only parked car on entire shoulder, crazy idiot does not stop at all and just drives off like a jerk. You know how these things go. The truck sustained internal damage that we thought was just a cracked steering column, so he got his friend the mechanic to tow it down to his shop and fix it up.

We thought it would only be like a week tops. They'd put in a new steering column and fix up the dents and badda-bing, here's your absurdly large vehicle back. I mean, I had places to go. Jobs to bag. Chums to see.

Unfortunately, this wasn't the case. A week turned into a week and a half and My Dad's Friend The Mechanic found he was having trouble aligning the truck to finish the job. He had to call in a specialist, who incidentally, happened to also be a friend of my dad's. This is just one of those towns where everyone's all in everyone else's business. Heck, I'm sure if I ever cared enough to get a boyfriend in this state, my dad would know who it was before I would, so many people know my dad.

So for now I am stranded here--stranded here moreso than I was up until this point--for 2 to 3 weeks. That means the Christmas decorations will be up until about Valentine's Day. Typically, my dad uses whatever truck he has at the time to take them to storage after the holiday season. That's the Gasellschaft for you. Can't live with it, can't live without it.

The good news?

I DON'T HAVE ANY CAVITIES!

CTNX, Part Trois

Okay. I didn't expect to forget to post until the new year. Oops? Thanks for kicking the sense back into me, Matt. Not the Matt who's marrying Lauren. I've started a Matt collection since I last posted here regularly.

But you don't want to hear about any sort of Matt collection, do you? Of course not! You're probably here to hear about how CTNX2011 ended. Nobody likes a cliffhanger ending!

So before I left for Burbank, my mom came to me with one request that she insisted I fulfill during my stay there. No, not "get a full-time job doing that thing you love" or anything. She wanted me to buy myself a coffee mug and gave me money specifically to do that. I suppose using just any mug in her house is aggravating her OCD.

Now, this wasn't like one of those conventions where you can just walk up to the coffee mug table and buy a coffee mug. I'm actually not sure if those sort of conventions exist. I'm not exactly the most knowledgeable on the conventions of conventions. I did, however, spot a gift shop in the hotel. Unfortunately, that gift shop always seemed to be closed whenever I approached it, but there were DEFINITELY coffee mugs in there.

Thankfully, on Sunday morning, I managed to catch it during the hour it was actually open. And I did find a coffee mug that I really liked, too. They put the wrong price tag on it, but it was still in the allocated Coffee Mug Budget, so I snapped one up before the store closed on me.

As with all two of the conventions I've attended in my lifetime, the last day was abbreviated. I did run into Bobby Chiu again. I picked up his book after I caught an inspirational speech he was giving someone else that pretty much validated my decision to opt with Ellen's book instead of the sandwich. It's nice to have a lot of heroes you can mentally interview for inspiration. Maybe one day I'll hold the record for having the most!

I picked up as much free stuff as I could before the floor closed, and reconnected with Twi after finding his business card lying around. It was actually pretty lucky I'd noticed it, because he changed his contact info since the last time he gave me his card.

When I got back to the room, I finally met Jordan, with whom I'd been sharing the space this entire time.

She turned out to be really awesome, and we watched YouTube videos and read Twilight sporks for a few hours before turning in for the night. Unfortunately she doesn't seem to have a portfolio site or blog anywhere yet, though.

I flew back uneventfully the next morning at noon, stopped once in Phoenix again, and did not purchase cactus seeds. I doubt I'll live long enough for cacti grown from seed to make a very effective privacy fence and child-deterrent anyway.

To end this CTNX wrap-up, I will leave you all, or at least those of you who know Paige's mom, with disturbing mental imagery of Paige's mom as Ursula from The Little Mermaid. You're welcome. Brain bleach is on the counter to your right.

CTNX, Part Deux

By the time I made it to my hotel, my roommate Jordan, whom I'd never met before, was already either snoozing or on the verge of it, so I unpacked my bags and found, to my dismay, that my phone was not responding when I plugged it into the wall to charge. I opened it up and discovered this:

Why yes, that is a battery I am holding. A bulging, unresponsive, awful-looking battery. Thankfully after a few minutes it did manage to react to charging, so I took that time to re-update my manual phone archive, which everyone should totally do. You never know when your electronics will fail you.

It wasn't long before I ran into Tyler and his chum Eli, and from there stumbled upon a massive flood of SCAD alumni and students. I must say, everyone from school had shown up dressed very well. Monty was always full of great dressers, but I was impressed anyway. For the duration of the expo I just drifted around and switched friend groups every hour or so, and wound up picking up the following memorable quotes:

"Love is as fleeting as a Listerine breath strip."

"There are no cowboys in Africa."

If anybody who was there wishes to claim those quotes, I've totally forgotten who quoted them and probably should have mentioned it when I wrote them down. Maybe I was just trying to write a ballad.

I also ran into Mario again this year in line for the Andreas Deja panel. This year I think he picked up some extra lives, because it seemed like every other person I met at CTNX was named Mario after that. He picked a few caricature duels, which wasn't a bad idea at all. I think I might steal it for later.

By that point, I was sure beyond a shadow of a doubt that, during this presentation, my phone would do something disastrous like leak battery acid or explode in my pocket.

However, it miraculously held throughout the presentation, including a brilliant display of the differences between Kaa and Juju. After THAT, who should appear but Richard Sherman himself for an impromptu segue into the presentation that I would phone my grandmother about the next morning and speak of incessantly until this very day.

Casey managed to recite the word "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" backwards and got major props that evening.

My grandmother is a very avid Lawrence Welk fan, and claims that they just don't make music like they used to. Seeing Sherman perform live was definitely an amazing experience, and it was certainly my kind of concert, if you can call it that. No mosh pits, no overdone guitar solos, and my ears weren't ringing afterward! And, musicians, you know you totally can make music like they used to, right? If I had musical composition aptitude I'd definitely go old-school with it. It's so retro it's cutting edge!

*Zane is not a real pain, he just plays one on television.

For dinner that night a handful of us went off to Denny's. We had most of our meals at that Denny's, since it was right across the street. I'm not sure if this was a Hollywood-area thing, but every time I went to that place out of all the CTNX's I'd been to, they'd been showing professional juggling on the TVs instead of regular sports. If this is true of most restaurants in the area then I really need to start living in California ASAP.

CTNX

Hi there, Zelda here. I just got back from a fabulous weekend at CTNX with several dozens of the most awesome friends I could ever ask for.

Basically, ever since last May, I took a cue from The Wizard and Close Encounters of the Third Kind and wandered around aimlessly since then mumbling "California" in a zombielike trance. If my voice actually resembled Jimmy's it was purely coincidental, as I haven't seen that movie since I was a wee lass, and I doubt that guy still sounds like that.

Eventually, it was then decided that I needed to go to Burbank for the Creative Talent Networking Expo to frolic about with others of my kind. I finally took off last Thursday, and a lot of stuff went down so I'll break it all up into a few entries. I've got a lot to do now that I'm back, the least of which is hosting Thanksgiving tomorrow!

Personally, I love airports. I know it's a little odd, but I've just been on so many planes I feel good about knowing my way around a bunch of them and being prepared for security...but I definitely reached a new high in airport savvy when I convinced the woman running the first class counter that I was lost to the point where she just checked me in without me having to wait in line, despite the fact that I was carrying one non-obtrusive carry-on and my check luggage was within the normal weight specifications.

I switched planes in Pittsburgh first and there was a pretty hefty wait between flights, so I wandered over to the bookstore to indulge in my filthy habit...buying celebrity comedians' novels and autobiographies. Hey, it beats collecting self help books about cleaning your clutter, right? Eventually I wound up in this life-altering mental debate...

Ellen DeGeneres' latest book, or a sandwich from Subway? No contest there.

I regret nothing.

By the time the plane came along I'd finished Seriously...I'm Kidding and felt more good-looking than usual thanks to the incessant compliments Ellen DeGeneres put on the back cover.

Several hours later I arrived in Phoenix and finally got brunchinner. That was at Burger King. Now I'm not sure about you, but I find Burger King fries phenomenal under normal circumstances. Unfortunately, the fries at THIS Burger King were noticeably larger, softer, and less flavorful than usual, and on top of that they did not sell chicken tenders. I sincerely hope that this is unique to that specific Burger King and not something that originated in the west and has plans to migrate eastward anytime soon. If I hadn't been eating airline pretzels and pages of Ellen's book all day I think I'd have imploded from hunger. It made the subpar fries taste somewhat edible.

At the gift shop in Phoenix, instead of magnets and postcards they were selling Grow-Your-Own Saguaro Cactus kits. I personally would have purchased ten if I had real estate on which I could plant them.*

Who needs barbed wire or real gates when you can make a wall of giant cacti around your property?! Take that, you lousy kids!!! So, uh, now my dream house will need to have a Saguaro wall and a lyophilizer. Classy.

*According to the seed packet they'd grow anywhere, but only flower in the desert after about a hundred or so years.

I made it to Burbank in one piece...and that's when the real fun began!

TO BE CONTINUED...

Hi again.

In the last month I've learned that after art and voiceover work, mowing lawns is my third-favorite thing-I-can-do-to-make-money. It's also great exercise. I'm not sure why I never did it when I was in the typical "Hey Mrs. Jones, can I mow your lawn for $10?" age range. It was probably something along the lines of my mom not trusting me with a lawnmower.

I should be drawing now.