First, I'm going to start with some positive news. The website is pretty much mostly done, so feel free to take a peek if you haven't already done so. I've figured out how to add a totally awesome flash thing that allows you to look at a sketchbook and turn the pages as though it were a real book. I'm really excited about it. Now I just have to finish it and upload it.. :)
Second of all, a friend and I are going to start trying to design our own cards, envelopes, etc etc with our artwork on it. It'll be for sale if all goes well. I'm really excited about it, but I wish I had more time to think about it.
Finally, I'm helping her with her own exhibition at work! It's really exciting to help an exhibition along that I'm genuinely fond of. (I like the artist even more than the art, of course. :) ) The excitement is contagious and most of the office is tingling with anticipation. It even made spamming 1400 people seem like not that bad a thing, although I spelled the artist's name wrong on about 1200 of the invitations :(
Yeah, this is going to be one of those generic emo blog posts. I apologize beforehand. If you don't want to hear excessive whining, you're best off skipping this one!
I suppose I'd better start off with the biggest problem: My grandfather is in the hospital. He's been there about a week now and he'll probably be there for several more weeks as well, assuming his health remains the way it is now. I'd like to be optimistic and say he is "stable", which he is. Unfortunately, he is also very ill. So despite his "stable" state, if it takes a dip down, it is immediately a severe and dangerous situation. :(
When we were following the ambulance at 140 km/h, my nose wouldn't stop crying. My eyes were fine, no blurry vision, but the damn nose was so distressed that I had to wipe it with windscreen-cleaning-tissues. The result was a rather smelly nose which remained moist from the fluid on the tissue, but at least it stopped dripping.
I snapped blurry photographs of the ambulance while my dad tried to keep up. He told me to tell any policeman who stopped us that my grandfather was dying in the ambulance in front of us and that I really didn't want to miss my final moments with him...
It was unfortunately not a great exaggeration, and at the time we really did think he was dying. He recovered at the hospital however. "Recovered", in this case, is a relative term. I mean to say that his heart rate went back to being very very low instead of insanely dangerously low.
The photographs are not very good. They show an ambulance with sirens and blinking lights on driving over wet, icy roads. The sky hangs low and threatening. Cards dodge to the side and we push on past through them. Strangely enough, they all seem to take us zipping past them attached to the tail of the ambulance in stride, some of them even seem to understand what is going on - that we're not some freeloading adrenalinaholics chasing the ambulance for fun.
Perhaps even more shocking is that one car refuses to make way for the ambulance. But we pass it anyway despite its astounding rudeness.
That was earlier in the week. My grandfather's lungs barely work. It's years of smoking. I know, it gets spammed a lot in today's society and I do feel sorry for the smokers who have to put up with it, but it is actually for a good reason:
OI! You smoker! Even if you don't get lung cancer, your lungs are going to give you a slow, phlegmy death if you're lucky enough to live that long!
I'm serious. You should see the poor old man. And ok, if not getting enough oxygen and having your lungs full of black mucus doesn't bother you, then the impact on his other problems is significant enough that it's really really really not worth him smoking anymore.
Of course, the first thing he swears he's going to do when he gets home is start smoking again. Sometimes he can be so stupid. My dad sees what has become of grandpa, but of course he keeps smoking too. (Yeah, I know you won't like me writing that, but tough shit!)
So then, on to trouble number 2, which is perhaps the least serious. I'm a little worried about meeting all my deadlines at work... But I think I can do it anyway.
Number three, I'm stressing out because of Eyal's exams. Tomorrow, he has a really big scary one... in .. just some hours, actually. I hope he doesn't read this and freak out.
Studying for these exams takes up almost all his time these days and I miss having someone to spill my worries to at my own convenience. But even from so far away with so much on his own dear heart and mind, he's been really supportive and concerned concerning grandpa's health.
It depresses me that grandpa is 0% interested in return. I guess he has problems of his own, and I guess it's selfish of me to wish that he would show a little more interest in the man I've chosen to hopefully spend my life with. Oh well.
I don't know when I'm going to see him again. He promises to come after the end of the month when he passes all his exams, but it's very frustrating to not know an exact date.
Four, drama drama drama! What's with the internal drama? I won't go into it here, but some people are so insanely selfish and illogical that I want to go give them a proper talking-to. Unfortunately, it's not my place to do so, and so I can't go punish the nutter.
(Again, my apologies. I know certain other people won't enjoy reading this, but I have to get it off my bloody chest. Live with it.)
It may be hard to believe, but I am not lying in a coma somewhere. I have in fact been active and running around, doing everything but blogging. Right now, I am trying to reinstate my online presence, and I am beginning the process by yet again doing my annual facelift and update of my own website, www.annmi.com ...
As of my writing this, there is still nothing really exciting to see there. I'm restructuring the thing and also creating my own templates and snippets in dreamweaver so that it will be easier for me to update.
I'm fairly excited about the design, and while I am aware that it is unfriendly for anyone using 800 x 600 resolution, I've made sure that all you people stuck with your puny 1024 x 700 screens will survive the experience. It should also look good with all browsers, with the exception of an old version of internet explorer, which will have a tiny little glitch. How annoying. But anyway, here are two little preview pictures:
As you can see, I'm going for a look that might be accused of being "cluttered" and too "image-based", but if an art gallery isn't allowed to look personalized and be image-heavy, then what is?
I've been printmaking, beading, and the usual sketching. I've been traveling, visiting art museums, ... The only things I haven't really done lately are writing, blogging, and knitting.
..there comes Ann-Mi! Yay, for a change, I managed to vanish and reappear yet again! Woo-woo!
Why anyone should remain subscribed to this decayed place, I have no idea. Oddly enough, I haven't given up on it yet - I still think about it weekly, but I haven't made it all the way to blogging.
So here's a little update for anyone who cares concerning travels, sketching, driving, and gaming:
1) Going traveling next week - can't wait! Will be gone for 10 days, but who will notice the difference? In fact, me being away from home might induce blogging while away instead.
2) I finished my sketchbook. I'm looking into a way of uploading it in its entirety with a fancy page-turn effect and stuff so people can peek through it as they please.
3) I got my driver's license! Amazingly, I both passed the theoretical and practical parts on my first try - don't know how that's possible considering how incredibly... mediocre I am at it all. Luckily, mediocre seems good enough and my good points made up for the bad points, and I got my little floppy piece of paper! I guess I can pick up the plastic card in over a month and then proudly display the picture of me looking zombie-like and tired with a pimple on my chin to all who wish to see my ID in shops and whatnot. Luckily that's only a semi-temporary thing.. whew.
4) Uhh... Yeah ! I nearly forgot, I'm playing Colonization again for the first time in a long time, and it's even more addictive than I recall. I thought I was worse at it now than I've ever been, but I finally finished a game and got just about the highest score I've ever gotten. They named an inland sea after me, "Spankton Bay". See, my game-name was Lady Swank of Spankton, and they name something after you depending on how high you scored.
It's a lurvely lurvely lurvely strategy game from the age of DOS when possibly the most high-tech thing you had on your pc was Windows 3.
If you don't care about graphics and want a good, brain-exercising game to wile away your time with, hop on over to home of the underdogs to check it out - there's a windows version available.
So, uh, yeah, that's about it. Banana-flies are overrunning the kitchen, but I'm trying to get my meat-eating plant to blossom again so I can give them a wonderful surprise. BUHAHAHAAAA
Here's a little drawing (hopefully in progress, not finished) of a character I have in planning for this Ultima Online roleplay server I play on.
Yeah, the lighting among other things needs some work, but I worked on it till my hand cramped and thus far, I am pleased. There's a little bit of Vincent Price, an anonymous grumpy guy, Errol Flynn, Vigge Mortensen, and Antonio Banderas in him. With so many potentially schmexy people, how did he come out so ugly? :P
Life, make no demands of me, I'm trying to write. Begone, oh distracting list of Miranda.
I've just finished reading a very good book by Frank Herbert. It's called "The Santaroga Barrier". For the first 20 pages or so, I misread it as Saratoga for some reason. Were I Jeremy, I would write something deep and meaningful about it and the thoughts about society, individuals, and all the other issues it brings up (including drugs). Unfortunately, I am not Jeremy - I am Ann-Mi, and a tired Ann-Mi at that.
Instead, I shall present you with a problem that might be from a soap opera. It is likely on the bland side, but it is nevertheless one I am struggling with. I hope no one involved objects to me presenting it here - I just wanted a fresh point of view. I know it's rather long, but I appreciate any and all feedback offered. And thus begins the rant.
This is my dilemma. I have been invited to travel to London at the end of November with two friends. Unfortunately, one of these friends is my most recent ex-boyfriend. Now, we have been 'ex' for a while now... I don't really know how long, but over two years at least, I think. I have met him since then, however. We remained exes then as well, although we got along very well.
Both of these friends are people I have not seen in a long time that I used to spend far more time with, usually conversing with or playing games with over the net. So you can understand that I have a deep longing to see them both. One of them especially remains a friend I talk with and debate with on a weekly or at least a semi-weekly basis. Finally, there is the aspect of England. Having studied there for three years, I have managed to develop a bi-faceted relationship with it. Is that a word? I don't know. I guess I should say "love-hate" relationship, but that feels far too intimate when it is mostly only an acquaintance, not a country that I have had a meaningful relationship with.
Ah. I'm cycling off. What I meant to say is that I would very much love to see the damned place again. Another argument for visiting would be the time period - Friday to Sunday, which are the days that I do not work, so in that sense it would not interfere with my "other life" here in Finland.
Now, I present to you the big argument against travel - it would make Eyal vastly uncomfortable. It would make him worried that I would be traveling with an ex-boyfriend, and this one in particular, as he is "the big one". Judging by how much I have spoken of him to Eyal, I agree. It must be the big one (no offense to previous boyfriends) or at least it currently is the big one as it is also the most fresh.
However, the fact that he is who he is is part of what makes me so ineffably convinced that nothing would happen. I've tried it, I've tested the ice, I fell in, I drowned, but somehow I survived. I do not wish to do it again. Unless some rather significant things about him were to change, it could not work. There is this old cliché that in order to love someone else, you must love yourself. In order to know someone else, you must know yourself. In order to be happy with someone else, you must.. and so on. I think it holds true in this case.
Don't get me wrong - I still care about him as much as I used to. I really do. If something were to happen to him, I would be crushed - it would be like losing a family member. But I feel the same way about the one who came before him as well, and I do not wish or harbor any dreams of anything coming from this person either any longer, and not for a long while now.
I'm very happy with Eyal. I feel, oh forgive me for the unimaginative but clichéd term, "complete" with him. It may be a worn out term, but it is true. I'm not going to start babbling like some love-struck idiot, but I have to make the point. The truth is, I do not want to lose him. He assures me that if I did travel, I wouldn't lose him - he would just feel very nervous until I got back.
I talked with one of the women I work with. She said I should travel. Eyal should be able to trust me. Eyal assures me that he trusts me, but that he does not trust my ex. I want Eyal to understand that nothing will happen - I don't want anything to happen and even if my ex did want something to happen, I'm not going to give it the chance. There will be no stupid nonsense like sharing rooms. I will not allow any kissing to occur, except possibly on the cheek in generic Portuguese politeness, but if he gets jealous from that, we have a problem in any case. (Sorry, Eyal! Good thing I don't live in France, you would have turned emerald by now if this bothers you.) There will certainly be a hello-hug and a goodbye-hug, but there will be no kinky back-rubs. There will also be a certain mutual friend traveling along for whom I have never harbored any kinky feelings (sorry J, even if you are the LotR champ, you're not geeky enough for me). So he will be there as an apron.
My work-buddy also said that if I have the faintest suspicion that I will be randomly snogging this ex, then there is no reason I should be going.
Now, I can only think of one more argument for not going in addition to the rather huge one of causing considerable discomfort and stress to Eyal - the onbringing of possible confusion. This is a reason I find rather hard to accept, as I am convinced I do NOT feel confused - I know where my heart is set, I know what my mind wants. The defense against this would be to give myself no reason to get into confusing situations. The biggest, most drastic measure, of course, would be to not travel. But seriously, am I supposed to live the rest of my life without meeting one of my best friends? It seems very harsh. I don't like it - it makes me sad. But the thought of hurting Eyal also makes me unhappy.
My heart and brain are in turmoil. I want Eyal to understand... I want myself to understand.. One of us has to make a compromise - I'm ready to make it, and I think he is too, but I don't want it to boil down to not traveling.
If every day I tried to leave work were this eventful, I would probably get home an hour late each day.
Today as I exited the building and walked towards the bus station, I could smell a distinct, vaguely familiar and yet completely bizarre scent in the air. It was something burning.
"What is this? Weed? Is someone smoking weed in the graveyard? Huh?" I sniff-sniffed, looking around, and saw no one smoking although there was this weird guy staring right at me. I carried on, shrugging, and yet the smell persisted.
After a little while of walking, there it was. Firetrucks in the distance, a policecar in front, and a much more dominant smoke smell. The policewoman directed the traffic away from the smoke hovering from up ahead.
I cursed as I tried to get my malevolent camera to work. After about five minutes of turning it on and off with an error constantly showing, I gave up and started to take the detour to the bus station, but a few meters in, it finally turned on properly and I started snapping away.
So here, for your viewing pleasure, Helsinki burrrrns. I also recorded a very shaky, poor video. The most exciting part is probably when the helicopter flies right overhead. Please admire our strong-looking policeman as he explains things to people.
(If the video's not working yet, give it a few mins, I just uploaded it.)
I have no idea what was burning, only where was burning.
Incidentally, here's a shot from my town when I got home. This time it only took me about 3 minutes to get the damn camera to turn on... The sky was so dark and the leaves were so bright.. :) It was a different kind of fire.
Exciting, pink, soft flesh is revealed! Ann-Mi wonders if she might yet again be ripping it open by accident! The excitement.. THE EXCITEMENT!
Also:
Glove-monster mk 1 completed. Expect preview of it when camera begins to work again. Mk 2-4 expected to be in the making along with instructions on how to make them.
Finally:
Driving lesson today in the evening! Will the sun set on the hapless beginner during the lesson? Will she survive driving in the dark? Or will she run some poor sod on a bicycle over, crash into inanimate objects, and be forced to wait 1 year before she is allowed to re-attempt getting a license?
If you watch two youtube videos today, let it be these:
First, I give you the world's worst music video. Now, I know there are some masterpieces like elektronik, supersonik, but this one is actually unintentionally so abysmal that it is a work of art. I am proud to say that it is indeed from Finland. Danny is a legend here in Finland, and I think you can see why.
And secondly, I give you The Worst Fight Scene Ever. Only I don't think it can be worst, since I have seen so many Godfrey Ho ninja movies... Pure class. It's brilliant.
I'be been bitten by the bug and I am coming down with oh
Something that can't be cured
There aint a doctor in this town who is more qualified than you
...
I am ready for the news so tell me straight
Hey doctor just what do you diagnose
There aint a surgeon like you any place in all the world
So now, shall I remove my clothes
Ah, how I love the silliness of this song. I confess, I have a slight secret shameful liking for this Kylie Minogoue song called "Fever". But never fear, that is not the point of this post.
I do in fact have a fever. My head feels like it's doing cartwheels, my throat is swelling up rapidly and painfully (it started happening so fast I was afraid I had an allergic reaction to something random), my cheeks are red, I am even more scatterbrained than usual, and I feel the need to do stuff and can't sit still. At least the strange helmet of a headache went away right about when the floor started diving towards me. :)
My grandpa is doing far worse. His feet are swollen, he is tired, so tired of life. I'm worried. What will happen? There's no one there to take care of him except for the nurse who visited him twice today. Are we going to lose him this time?
Don't really know why I'm writing this post - not looking for pity. I think I just needed to get it out into the open.
Pardon the cheesiness. I did an online quiz that asked me if I believed in true love. I replied no, but at the same time I know that I am truly in love. I always defined true love as (and forgive me for not putting it eloquently, but I believe the way I express the definition also portrays a certain truth about it:
like superepic love that can fly over everything and conquer all
So I quickly typed in "true love" into google, resisting the urge to see if wikipedia had an entry on it, and found an example of this superepic uberleet flyz0ring disney type of True Love.
IDENTIFYING TRUE LOVE
We can only identify true love and know when we have found it, based on the Word of God. When we match our relationships up to what the Bible says that love is -- and we are honestly prepared to make a life-long commitment to that person -- then we can say that we are truly "in love." The three keys to that statement are:
We have to…
look at the Word of God
be completely honest with ourselves
understand the level of commitment that comes with true love
Ugh. It is answers like this that make me very scared for the future. It seems so overly rehearsed and brainwashed that it hurts to look at. Very Disney and naive. Then, I found this other definition. If it is indeed an accurate description of true love (not True Love), then I certainly believe in it. I don't want a threesome with God, thankyouverymuch.
Love
Sees the other person's flaws and still loves them
Wants to serve the other person; selfless
Still spends time with others
Takes time to build the relationship
Other relationships and friendships grow stronger
Trust and understanding results in less severe and less frequent jealousy
Encompasses a long-term commitment
Survives and sometimes is strengthened because of distance
Quarrels are less serious and less often
Quarrels can strengthen the relationship
I especially enjoy the points about distance, spending time with others, and seeing flaws but still loving them. Eyal, you may leave chunks of toothpaste in the sink, but I love you anyway. In any one else, it would probably annoy me. Incidentally, this second definition came from the distinctly uncool site of College Sex & Love. I was expecting to find something truly inane and stupid, but was pleasantly suprised. It also offered a comparison to infatuation.
How do you define true love, and do you believe in it?
I don't quite know how to begin this, so please allow me commence in the most clichéd way possible just to get it off my chest. "OMGOMGOMG... OMFG! AARGH!"
Today, my driving instructor took me smack into the center of Helsinki. Goodness gracious it was scary. I mean, first of all, the drive to it was awful. I went along the so-called Länsiväylä, which I guess is some sort of highway. Those speeds were scary, as I am still trying to get a grip of how wide the car actually is as well as how little I have to turn the wheel at what speed for something to happen. For anyone who is even less experienced than me, at fast speeds, the teeniest wheel-movements are felt way more than at slow speeds. In other words, since I'm used to going at a maximum speed of 50 km/h so far, when I start to turn the wheel what felt a comfortable amount then at 100 or 80 km/h, it gets pretty scary for a few moments.
And no, I'm not going to translate that into miles. Go learn kilometers, you prehistoric people
Eventually, after what I experienced as a rather teeth-grinding and fast drive, we made it into the cobble-stoned, bumpy streets of Helsinki. How anyone could drive faster than the speedlimit in there eludes me, as I could barely reach the minimum. I would have thought that people behind me would lose their patience with me and try to pass me by, but strangely enough they were extremely patient and understanding. Some even let me go first in places I would have been perfectly content to wait in. This made it bearable. For a few minutes, even, I found myself enjoying the drive. I interpreted it as some sort of strategy game. What should I do with the gear? Where should I watch? How close can I go? How fast am I going? Where should I go next?
But then my teacher started slamming on the brakes for every car that was parked too close to the zebra crossing because according to the law, if a car has stopped within five meters before a zebra crossing (even if there is no one inside that car), you must stop. I of course was far too concentrated on everything else. Urgh. What a nightmare.
Speaking of nightmares, I managed to make the car stall in the center of one crossroad. Luckily, there was no traffic there at the time and I was able to get it rolling again despite it being uphill. If there is one thing I am almost ok at, it's starting the car again and getting it moving uphill. Thank you teacher and pappa for drilling it into my thick skull.
Sigh.
I also could not quite grasp a concept involving one-way streets: When you turn left on to a oneway street that has more than one lane, you must make sure you go into the very left-most lane. Damnit. I failed that part twice, but mostly because I didn't even realize they were one-way streets. Observant I am not.
At least I didn't nearly run anyone over.... And yet again, I yielded for someone coming from the left. It is so hard for me to learn that I should only yield to the right. I mean, it makes perfect sense, but if I'm driving around being submissive to people who need to get onto the road, I find it so hard to filter out the left side.
On a positive note, I believe I have finally stopped raping the poor gearbox. By the end of the lesson, I was even remembering to switch between 1 and 2 and stuff. I am disappointed to say that on the motorway, I accidentally shifted to 4 instead of 6, but luckily the teacher rescued me fast. I think he was prepared for it.
I feel sorry for the teacher. He drove away right afterwards, and the wheel must have been drenched in clammy stressed out hand-sweat. Gross.
People, if you haven't had driving lessons yet, always remember to apply deoderant very liberally, as you will be sweating more than usual. Please remember to do this especially if you have to go driving at 8 in the morning and you have a full day of work and then lectures all the way to the evening.
When I stepped out of the car, my legs felt like rubber.
So if you find yourself in southern Finland within the next few weeks, please be on your toes and look out for a certain very nervous driver. Ugh.
manictrout.com is chock full of beautiful, simple beaded jewelry. I've never tried making beaded jewelry myself because it generally brings to mind the cheap crap that you get from those vending machines with plastic toys inside. Manictrout, however, is different. Delicate, stylish, and imaginative, I feel more like calling the pieces artwork. Speaking of artwork, there are also watercolor and oil paintings. Everything is for sale. These bracelets struck me as a highly original idea. Very simple and cool, and a little punk.
Check out her embellished painting too, which combines oil painting with embroidery.
I also found the Starving Artist Bazaar which has handmade, glass jewelry. The name of the site is completely awesome to begin with - why can't I think of anything like that? Different types of jewelry are grouped under mysterious names like "Eukaryotes", "Protozoa", and "Amoeba". With a little bit of imagination, the pieces also look like it. I really want to try working with glass someday, and the likes of this site are really inspiring. Everything on this site is also for sale.
Like manictrout, the Starving Artist Bazaar also has some paintings for sale in addition to the glass, and stone & silver jewelry.
Here's my favorite- the Periwinkle & Seafoam Eukaryote Necklace with Stacked Silver Beads. Worth seeing also are the hair pins.
Last, but certainly not least, I found the simply delicious etsy shop page of Sweet Stella Designs. Hairpins that look like chocolate cookies, lollipop earrings, cookie bracelets, gourmet chocolate bracelets, a lemon slice necklace, mint rings... It makes me drool, just looking at these pictures. You have got to see this! The jewelry is crafted from polymer clay and silver. Who would believe it? Yum yum yum...
Huzzah! I now have 3 gb of RAM! Whether it was smart to go all the way to 3 instead of sticking with 2, I have no idea! But it sounds bigger so I'm going to pretend it's better. I am quite pleased.
Installing the 2 gb went seamlessly. Just turned the power off, unplugged it, made sure I wasn't full of static electricity, and took out the old two 512 mb sticks and shoved in the brand-spanking new two 1 gb ones! Disturbingly enough, the old ones look more modern and fashionable than the new ones. I tested the 2 gigs, then turned it off and shoved in the two extra 512's!
This didn't go so well. The pc sort of whirred and then stopped, and I hastily turned it off again. The problem was easily solved - the RAM wasn't properly placed inside. So I got back down on my belly and re-attempted it, and mission successful!
Now then only problem is that I don't know if the memory is running at the correct speed... I romped about in my BIOS and tried to see but I actually didn't see an option for it - only one that told me how much RAM I have. Disturbing.
Once I gather the courage, I will hopefully attempt to upgrade the other pc that blew itself up yesterday. It's a bigger job, unfortunately. It's getting a new motherboard, which implies taking the whole damn thing completely apart, putting in the new motherboard with the new processor and new RAM and then putting the whole shebang back together and hoping I did it all right. It's not fun when it's not my own pc.. :(
I think I've made my mind up on what new graphics card to get. It's a schmexy Geforce 8800 GTS 640MB PCIe card by PNY. No, I don't think I'll go for the GTX version as my screen doesn't even allow me to go to high resolutions. As I recall, this motherboard isn't very compatible with Radeon stuff, so it's not even an option.
While romping about on the web, searching for useful tips about graphics cards and RAM, I accidentally stumbled over a recommendation for a program called Aida32. It tells you all sorts of stuff about your pc - even more than the dxdiag command does. I HIGHLY recommend it to people who want to know wtf they actually have inside their pc... especially hardwarewise.. And if it's all running properly, what the specs are, etc. You can download it here at Major Geeks.com. It's only 3mb and highly informative. It also comes with a memory benchmarking thingy, which I guess is good if you want to compare memory or brag or see if it could be improved or something....
I just thought I ought to share with you the source of my current self-obsessive troubles.
Yes, it's sexy, I know. This is what my poor mole looked like the day it was removed. Or rather, the mole looked like the world's tiniest, roundest slug, curled up on a table surrounded by bloody pieces of cloth. Super-schmexy. I got the stitches out by now, which was a scary but wonderful moment. Finally, the annoying tugging and poking of the stitches was gone. Of course, later that same evening, I managed to rip it open by mistake and I was back to square 1.
So now I'm waiting for it to heal again. The normal, old-fashioned "I have a hole in my chest"-kind of way. It's a little more exciting than watching paint peel because it's interactive. I mean, ok, you can help the paint peel, but with a wound, you can disinfect it, put anti-bacterial lotion on it, bandaids or bandage, and finally some skin lotion that would usually be used on dry skin! Yeah! So much fun! You also get to follow the progress. Right now, the scab is trying its best to annoy me by jumping off and causing me to go back to step 2.
It's very annoying. It's nowhere near painful, but the constant presence is so hard to ignore. I also notice that I can't stretch like I could un-sliced. (Speaking of slicing, it was done with local anesthesia and a scalpel. No fancy freezing or acid or whatever for me!) My illusion of being able to move freely was what ripped the bastard open again in the first place. Grrr...
So if I seem a little more disgusted with myself than usual, it's probably from the exciting new hobby - scab-watching. Woooh! At least there's no mysterious white-blood-cell-related ooze around it anymore..
I just went off and bought myself some more RAM for the pc. If you have no idea what it is, my own ignorant mind would describe it thus: RAM is short for "Random Access Memory" or something like that... So it's a type of memory, but it's not that space you have on your hard drive. It's something else. It comes in sort of a comb-shape, you shove it in the pc, and the pc's brain uses it as space to think and calculate crap. Or something like that. Make any sense?
Well. I wanted to upgrade my little beast's RAM from 1 gb to 2 gb, so I went off to buy me some new RAM sticks! The other pc broke down today right after the coffee machine did. Both of them clearly had a built-in self-destruct sequence that initiates itself a month or two after the warranty runs out. I could have taken the RAM from the other pc and stuck it in here, because apparently they are the same type (DDR) and the same speed (400). However, they say it's a bad idea to mix different brands even if the speed is the same. So off I went. My brother also bought 2 gigs of RAM, but his was of the DDR2 type, and annoyingly, 2 sticks of that cost the same as 1 of mine! Damn it.
So anyway, I got home and then I felt the immense urge to bake an apple pie. I was gone in Hungary a short while ago and attempted to bake one then. Unfortunately, things went a little wrong with the baking process resulting in a "lightly charred" pie. I made it again today, and with great success.
I posted this one a few years back, but really, I love it so much that I'll do it again. This is a really really easy recipe for dough that can complement so many different toppings. I've done it myself with blueberries and apples, but why stop there?
200 g butter
200 g sugar
Mix the unmelted butter and sugar together in a bowl using your hands until it becomes even. Then add:
400 g flour
1 egg
1 tablespoon of cream
1 teaspoon of baking powder
Again, mix it all together with your hands. The dough should be somewhat crumbly, but not overly floury. If you find that it has too much flour, just add a teeny bit more cream and mix it some more.
Grease pie pan, and gently line the dough over it. Apply your topping (lots of blueberries with lots of sugar or sliced apples with some sugar and lots of cinnamon work well). If you have leftover dough, you can use it to decorate the top.
Stick it in a heated oven (175 degrees celsius, I believe), leave it in there for half an hour or so, but keep an eye on it just in case.
Serve with vanilla icecream, whipped cream, or whatever you prefer!
In other news, I will be changing the look of this blog away from this default design, so if you see some funky stuff going on, please don't be scared.
Here follow some of the sketches I made over the summer all the way to today. Only the first two are 'full size' and were made as a test of the new brown-papered sketchbook and then of the "inktastic" colored pencils I bought today. The rest should be clicked upon to enlarge them. Yess. Make their girth bigger. Bulging. CLICK!
It's funny how people change. Here I sit and type as I try to peel this DAMN GREEN PAPER (GRRR!!!) off my :rawr: sandwich where 20 years ago I would have been eating the paper without the sandwich.
I've just had my first two driving lessons. The first one went alright.. the car stalled twice or so and I drove in circles in an industrial area. It was truly not exciting and I felt disheartened. How long would I suck this badly and how the hell can I learn to do this when it is so unenjoyable to suck so badly?
Then came today. I got to go on these little bumpy roads that didn't even have properly paved roads everywhere - half of it was loose gravel. There were two cats - one sat under an umbrella and licked himself, keeping an eye on me, and the other dashed under the bushes and didn't get run over. There were people to look out for. There was a girl on a bicycle to worry about. There were a couple cars. There were even a few T-junctions. I enjoyed this challenge, although trying to get the car moving after stopping (deliberately) uphill without letting it roll back down or stalling did take me some time.
Finally, I even got to drive out of this weird little suburban/country area to the shopping center where I also got to park the car.
At one point, I had to reverse because the road ahead of us was blocked off for construction.
20 years ago, did I ever think I'd be driving through traffic? I think I sort of assumed I would stay at that age forever, or that this was an eternity away. Strange how it's caught up with me.
I went off and got my blood sampled last week too. I figured it's about time to figure out WTF my blood type is. Am I A or O and rh+ or -? I'm actually excited to find out. I want to know which of my parents I've inherited my blööööd from.
I also got my driving license photos taken. Unfortunately, this was after a long long day where just about everything in the evening had gone wrong and I had just missed a bus. I looked totally dead in the photo and to make things better, I had a pimple on my chin. WOOHOO. Perfect timing for it to pop up, and excellent location. At least it wasn't on my nose...
I bought some interesting colored pencils today. If you've ever heard about the type that turn into watercolors when you add water on top of the pencil drawing, then these will be slightly familiar. These turn into ink. When it dries, it won't come off, even when exposed to water. This is perfect. This is what I've been looking for all my life, or so it feels when I test them. It's great. I can combine it with other mediums or just work in lots of thin layers without it destroying the previous one.
In a couple weeks, I fly to Hungary to meet Eyal. Incidentally, Eyal recently started a blog here at efx and while he's still trying to figure out what exactly to blog about, I'm sure he'd still appreciate people popping over to say hi. He's posted a couple cool links that anyone who likes music and uses the internet could have use of.
I'll try to post some drawings soon, as I have been working on a few.
Oh, and for those Finnish people concerned for their health - don't worry, I won't have another driving lesson for a while. STAY SAFE .. AND VIGILANT until then.
Sorry about the dead image links - just got my blog transferred here from the old server
and I have neither uploaded new pictures nor fixed the links.
Sorry, I'm still trying to
get this place back on its two little hindpaws. Please have patience while I wrestle with it.
Make yourself at home!
Description
Eclectic blog about art, books, computer things, crafts, and whatever comes into the mind of an Ann-Mi.
