korafox

The center holds.

The first (semi)complete piece in Emergence. This is the first of a triptych, and I will almost certainly be coloring it at some point. Working on this was...an experience. I am still trying to organize my thoughts and get over myself, but for now enjoy.

(Also, thank you DW for enabling image hosting. This works wonderfully.)

As previously mentioned, today was a day off work for me--the college has been off on spring break this week, but staff still were expected to be there except for today.  It's been a long week of cleaning and organizing, interspersed with the kind of fatigue that comes of working in an office without an outward-facing window, for longer hours than I'm used to in order to make up for the day off, and with very little of interest actually going on.

Today, though.  Today I did whatever I felt like and nothing I didn't.  I slept in until 9:30 and felt so refreshed and alert afterwards.  There was a nice leisurely cup of coffee and then breakfast (which is the order I prefer when I have my druthers).  The weather was gorgeous, sunny and warm with a little breeze, so I went to the park.  With this week's nest migration on Pokemon Go, there were Teddiursa at that park and I was finally able to get enough to evolve an Ursaring!  Plus I brought my sketchbook and drew some trees, though the wind was making things difficult.

Then it was home for a nice hot relaxing bath, making more progress on reading It, and playing sooo much Torment.  I am liking it even more as I get deeper into it, and I really hope I don't run into any more interesting-looking party members because I like the three I have quite well thank you!  For the TNT peeps:  I totally have Shadow in my party~~  (Seriously, she's a little girl with the ability "God of Hiding".  It makes me happy.)

So all in all, it was an extremely relaxing and batteries-recharging day.  And I still have two more days off in front of me before it's back to work again.

But not unwelcome!  I think Buffalo surprised everyone today, especially Boston.  It's great that a different team ended up winning the Isobel Cup for the second year of the NWHL (I just wish it had been the Rivs... ;__;).  Especially such an underdog as Buffalo was coming into the finals, barely getting into third place.  I suspect if they'd had to play Boston and New York in the opposite order, it would have been a very different story.

(I really need to make myself some sort of hockey user icon.)

I was also rooting for Buffalo going into this game because I saw that Harrison Browne decided to retire at the end of the season, and I wanted him to get his name on the Cup before he went.  Although I think he's planning on staying involved with the league in an advisory capacity, which is great all around.  It sounds like Brianne McLaughlin is also retiring, but what a game to go out with.  She was the reason they won today, and definitely deserved the MVP.

The rink they played in for this game was much better from the broadcasting standpoint, even if the crowd looked a lot smaller spread out across a rink that has seats all the way around it.  I hope they can update the visual feeds for the home ice venues next year to the level this one had, because it makes a huge difference for the broadcast/streaming quality.  It's a damn shame that they are usually stuck in practice rinks that don't have the kind of A/V support they need to really make it a viable viewing experience for people watching remotely.

I can't wait to see how next season goes!  Hopefully they can get more sponsorship deals and some games on TV.  That would be spectacular.  (And one year closer to potential expansion, yey.)

So, I know they were playing for nothing but spoiling Boston's perfect season, but I'm so jazzed about the Riveters beating them 3-2 in the last regular-season game of the year!  :D

Katie Fitzgerald is a ridiculous goalie.  She carried the rest of the team for several stretches of the game and made some absolutely spectacular saves.  And yay also for Amanda Kessel continuing her points streak.  Now they just have to beat Buffalo on Friday and (almost certainly) repeat against Boston on Sunday to win the cup!~

I really wish there were NWHL teams out in this part of the country.  I would love to go see one in person, but there's no way I can go all the way to the east coast just for a hockey game.  Hurry up and get an expansion division out here already!

The past few days I have been working against my brain rather than with it, which has unfortunately meant that not much is getting done.  Besides having to disbelieve my bad!brain telling me untrue things, I'm just finding it damned hard to concentrate on much at all.  I have about half a dozen things on my to-do list that I really ought to get to, but I'm pulled in all directions and can't manage to sit down and start any of them. 

Plus, the new Torment game came out last week and I started a play-through.  I'm trying (mostly successfully) to limit my play time so that it doesn't eat my life.  So far the game is quite fun and fascinating in the same way as the original.  I'm purposefully avoiding anything like a strategy guide so I can try to work through it without any spoilers or direction.  My dominant tides seem to be tending towards Blue and Silver, and I feel slightly guilty whenever I do something that adds to Red.  : /

The art is gorgeous though, and much more colorful (un-dreary) than the first Torment.  I can see why this took so long to make.  I look forward to finding out what the heck is up with my party members, also.  There are Stories there, I can tell.

As the title says.  I worked a full day today, because one of my bosses is out of town and I found out last night that the other one would be calling in sick.  Thankfully, it was extremely quiet for a Monday and there were no crises.  I don't think I even have to qualify that with "no crises that couldn't wait until Tuesday".  At least I was able to pack a lunch.  However, I didn't sleep particularly well last night and I ended up having to brew extra coffee around lunchtime to hold on to my ability to string two words together.  Bottom line is that right now I feel exhausted and strung out, and I dare not have any more caffeine because I'm right on the edge of having a racing heartbeat as it is. 

And now my kitty is climbing on me.  Gee, it's almost like she missed me today.

So yes, I had grand plans of making an Indian curry dish tonight but there is no way.  Even if I had the energy, I do not have the actual time to let it cook in the crock pot like it would need to because I didn't get home until 5:30.  Oh well.  I guess it's spaghetti tonight, wretched failure of a homemaker that I am.  : P

Somehow I managed to get to the end of today without doing any art.  So much for that daily task (sorry, Habitica peeps).

What I did do was read the majority of and finish a library book (Dawn, Octavia Butler) that has to go back by Sunday because someone put in a request for it.  Silly people demanding equal access to a public resource!  Considering I've been reading It for the past month and only got about a third of the way through it so far, it's probably not a bad thing to have taken a break to zip through this one.  It was definitely interesting even if there were hella consent issues on the part of the aliens.  Every once in a while it's good to read some SF that tackles the question of relating/adapting to beings that exist in an entirely different mode from our own.  This is one of the things I go to LeGuin novels for.

I'm actually writing this from my brand new (to me) laptop!  My 5 year old netbook was getting reeeeally chuggy and it was becoming much more of an obstacle to getting things done than a tool.  So we ordered a refurbished Acer laptop that is now probably going to be my main computer.  I'm hoping I can get Photoshop to install properly...I spent much of the afternoon transferring all my files and getting the settings how I want, and Photoshop is the next and last big thing I'm tackling.  Then I can connect it to my big monitor and have two screens and internet on my art computer!  *yay*

It is Windows 10, though I've installed that Classic Shell and that helped a lot.  I think I managed to go into the settings and turn off all the spying stuff Microsoft loads into it.  This is my first SSD computer and I'm definitely liking the speed and oomph it has.  It runs very quietly and cool so far; hopefully that will continue to be the case as I put it to more use.  The keyboard feels good and it shouldn't take too long to get used to the little differences in size and positioning of keys between this and my netbook. 

I got a little more done today despite having to stay almost two hours longer at work than I was originally scheduled.  After I came home, I had a quick lunch, a cup of chai, a lying-down-quietly for a few minutes, and then I got my butt up and did some painting. 

It went well, I think, but when Husband got home and I wrapped things up so I could make dinner, I was feeling unreasonably down instead of accomplished.  It's not fair; I just pulled myself up out of a funk by tooth and nail and I do not want to go back into one again.  I am going to hope that this is just exhaustion talking; I have definitely been having extraordinarily bad brain blips today.

Case in point: after Husband got home, he calls out to me from the bedroom asking if there should be a magazine in the clothes hamper.  I had meant to recycle it. *facepalm*

Also I went looking for a tupperware in the hall pantry (there are absolutely no tupperwares there), and tried to put the tupperware of leftover bell peppers in a cabinet instead of the fridge.  Oy. 

Left to do tonight:  I owe an email and should start working on Access chapter two.  In about twenty minutes I'm also going to get a call for Senator Warren's tele-conference which will hopefully be interesting (and better than the say-nothing blah one our local House rep gave last week).  Here's the link if anyone is interested; they will also send you a recording of it in a day or two if you can't join in tonight.

I have a theory that's been kicking around in my head.  Who knows if it has any basis in reality; I'm sure much more well-read people seeking PhDs have looked into this sort of thing already.

I've heard a lot of people lament that kids these days (and oh, joy, that I am finally getting old enough to use that phrase, though I hope to always do so facetiously and not in malice) have no idea how to write academically.  I am definitely not qualified to assess the truth of that accusation.  But if it is true, I wonder if it's caused not by students doing much less writing, but by them doing a lot more than previous generations of students.

I'm thinking about my pre-internet days, and there was really very little writing I did that was not in some way "formal".  Mostly this was for school, with the occasional letter and thank-you note.  Even once I got on the internet, it was in ye olde days of Fanfiction.net and I was writing (very, very bad) short fiction.  These were all forms that were more compositional (to potentially invent a word) than conversational. 

But now, people are sending texts and making Facebook and Twitter posts.  They are leaving short comments on news articles and message boards.  All of these mediums are extremely conversational, and the volume of this mode of writing almost certainly outweighs the volume of formal academic writing students are doing.

Is it really all that surprising that these conversational qualities are creeping into academic writing?  That isn't to say we don't need to be teaching students how to code-switch when their future job prospects may ride on being able to communicate formally.  Also, I would much rather see short electronic communication pull towards the formal instead of the other direction.  But I do have sympathy for the students trying to navigate that divide.

Okay, I am done spitballing.  If you have an advanced English/teaching degree and you're rolling your eyes at me right now, please have mercy on the poor woman who only completed an undergraduate degree (and that in Painting, no less.)