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My funny cat, my two jobs, and chicken noodle rice
(originally posted on Diaryland.com, 2003-08-19 - 2:47 a.m.)
Second day, and another entry! Go me! :-D I might actually be able to do this dairy thing yet!
SETTING: Whew! Still pretty hot; though it's cooled down quite a bit outside, the studio is very warm and the Apple G4 persists in crashing and freezing. What a little hothouse (or is that coldhouse?) flower it's turned out to be... we might have to switch the painting onto the Power Mac 8600/200, which would be horribly slow and would pretty much kill any hope of working the "Girl Genius" pages in layers of color, highlight, shadow, multiply, etc.
THE CATS: I haven't told you anything about my cats yet, but for the purposes of this story all you need to know is that Emmie, our little patched tabby with white tummy and feet, is an extraordinarily pretty feline with the brains of a budgie. Seriously. She is one of the weirdest cats I've ever seen, and I've seen quite a few in various degrees of strangeness.
Case in point: she has an uncanny ability to find the nearest electronic device and lie down on it, usually in such a way as to cause something undesirable to happen (muting the TV, causing the VCR to turn off when it should be recording, etc.). Today while my husband and I were talking on the phone, we heard a CRASH-click-click sound on the line -- a quick visual check on my husband's part confirmed that yes, Emmie had just knocked the extension in the dining room off of the bookshelf and was poking at it with a paw (presumably hearing our voices and trying to engage them, a behavior we'd seen from her before whenever our old answering machine went off).
Less than five seconds later, a piercing BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP sound filled the line: Emmie had decided that since she couldn't make the little people come out of the phone to play with her, she would sit down on the keypad instead... *sigh*, I love her dearly, but sometimes I'm convinced that she is a badly designed attempt by an alien species to infiltrate human culture!
Remind me to tell you the story about Emmie and our cream-and-sugar set... er, sets. Smashy smashy! Gravity works! Wheeee! =^_^=
MY JOB AS AN ARTIST: As mentioned, our graphics machine is having temper tantrums because of the heat and humidity. With any luck and a bit of jiggering with the memory sticks, we hope to have it back up and running by tomorrow so I can go back to painting "Girl Genius". By the way, here's a link to Agatha Heterodyne and the Electric Coffin, and 8-page story I did as a test to land the coloring job. It's a fantastic book by Phil and Kaja Foglio (fan favorites indeed), so I highly encourage anyone who likes Romance, Adventure, and Mad Science to check it out.
MY OTHER JOB: Ah, yes, Ipsos-Reid -- company of the broad shoulders, hog-butcher to the... oh, wait, that's Chicago. Never mind.
*ahem* Ipsos-Reid is a company specializing in global marketing research and public opinion polling. I work there as a Level Two telephone interviewer three evenings a week, because it's work I can do easily, the pay is pretty good ($9.25/hr at my current stage), and it's regular money to supplement my profitable but erratic freelance art career. The company is actually quite pleasant to work for, and the surveys are often very interesting. (Note to self: never, NEVER try to conduct a farm survey at harvest time, which is what I-R is trying to do right now. Nobody can/will talk to you. And this is the project I've been on for the last three days. Gack.)
MISCELLANEA: Helped a small flock of tourists from out-of-town find their way to a downtown mall (one of them promised that if I came to Ottawa, he'd help me out too, lol). Went out for late coffee with my friends Michelle (aka Northlight, very cool artist and one of the players in my A.I. roleplaying game) and Corey (more about him in another entry, since he's impossible to condense in to seven words or less). Tonight Corey introduced me to the soundtrack to "Chicago" -- damn you, Corey, that's ANOTHER CD I have to buy now! Discovered that Liptons Chicken Noodle Soup mix, white rice, and frozen vegetables make an incredibly yummy porridge. See? Life DOESN'T stop when you reach 30! :-)
QUOTE: "If you can't say something nice, at least be eloquent in your criticism."
(originally posted on Diaryland.com, 2003-08-19 - 2:47 a.m.)
Second day, and another entry! Go me! :-D I might actually be able to do this dairy thing yet!
SETTING: Whew! Still pretty hot; though it's cooled down quite a bit outside, the studio is very warm and the Apple G4 persists in crashing and freezing. What a little hothouse (or is that coldhouse?) flower it's turned out to be... we might have to switch the painting onto the Power Mac 8600/200, which would be horribly slow and would pretty much kill any hope of working the "Girl Genius" pages in layers of color, highlight, shadow, multiply, etc.
THE CATS: I haven't told you anything about my cats yet, but for the purposes of this story all you need to know is that Emmie, our little patched tabby with white tummy and feet, is an extraordinarily pretty feline with the brains of a budgie. Seriously. She is one of the weirdest cats I've ever seen, and I've seen quite a few in various degrees of strangeness.
Case in point: she has an uncanny ability to find the nearest electronic device and lie down on it, usually in such a way as to cause something undesirable to happen (muting the TV, causing the VCR to turn off when it should be recording, etc.). Today while my husband and I were talking on the phone, we heard a CRASH-click-click sound on the line -- a quick visual check on my husband's part confirmed that yes, Emmie had just knocked the extension in the dining room off of the bookshelf and was poking at it with a paw (presumably hearing our voices and trying to engage them, a behavior we'd seen from her before whenever our old answering machine went off).
Less than five seconds later, a piercing BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP sound filled the line: Emmie had decided that since she couldn't make the little people come out of the phone to play with her, she would sit down on the keypad instead... *sigh*, I love her dearly, but sometimes I'm convinced that she is a badly designed attempt by an alien species to infiltrate human culture!
Remind me to tell you the story about Emmie and our cream-and-sugar set... er, sets. Smashy smashy! Gravity works! Wheeee! =^_^=
MY JOB AS AN ARTIST: As mentioned, our graphics machine is having temper tantrums because of the heat and humidity. With any luck and a bit of jiggering with the memory sticks, we hope to have it back up and running by tomorrow so I can go back to painting "Girl Genius". By the way, here's a link to Agatha Heterodyne and the Electric Coffin, and 8-page story I did as a test to land the coloring job. It's a fantastic book by Phil and Kaja Foglio (fan favorites indeed), so I highly encourage anyone who likes Romance, Adventure, and Mad Science to check it out.
MY OTHER JOB: Ah, yes, Ipsos-Reid -- company of the broad shoulders, hog-butcher to the... oh, wait, that's Chicago. Never mind.
*ahem* Ipsos-Reid is a company specializing in global marketing research and public opinion polling. I work there as a Level Two telephone interviewer three evenings a week, because it's work I can do easily, the pay is pretty good ($9.25/hr at my current stage), and it's regular money to supplement my profitable but erratic freelance art career. The company is actually quite pleasant to work for, and the surveys are often very interesting. (Note to self: never, NEVER try to conduct a farm survey at harvest time, which is what I-R is trying to do right now. Nobody can/will talk to you. And this is the project I've been on for the last three days. Gack.)
MISCELLANEA: Helped a small flock of tourists from out-of-town find their way to a downtown mall (one of them promised that if I came to Ottawa, he'd help me out too, lol). Went out for late coffee with my friends Michelle (aka Northlight, very cool artist and one of the players in my A.I. roleplaying game) and Corey (more about him in another entry, since he's impossible to condense in to seven words or less). Tonight Corey introduced me to the soundtrack to "Chicago" -- damn you, Corey, that's ANOTHER CD I have to buy now! Discovered that Liptons Chicken Noodle Soup mix, white rice, and frozen vegetables make an incredibly yummy porridge. See? Life DOESN'T stop when you reach 30! :-)
QUOTE: "If you can't say something nice, at least be eloquent in your criticism."
