I watched a youtube video of the book signing by Glen Beck. It was cool to see what we missed. Chris told me that on the radio today he apologized to Floridians that even he didn't know it would have been that huge and that a lot of us didn't get to see him since he went from city to city. That's interesting.

I decided to participate in memnet's icon meme. She picked out six of my icons for me to talk about so....

roman_pirate made this icon and I had to snag it. I'm a big Simpsons fan and this is a scene from The Simpsons Movie where Homer's playing an arcade version of Grand Theft Walrus. It's a parody of the Grand Theft Auto games that are so much fun. This is one of the icons I use when I'm gaming a lot.

This is a Tabebuia tree. I don't know the common name, but these gorgeous trees from the Bignoniaceae family bloom here around February. This is a huge one at the Botanical Gardens. They come in pink and yellow. The yellow ones have flowers that are too spread apart but the pink ones are full and rich like this. They are one of my favorite tropical trees.

First off I need to remake this one because there's a spelling error in it. I've been too lazy and must get around to it. I use this when I get into Flamwars. I can SOOO relate to Sea Catch who was the big bull beach master seal in the story The White Seal by Rudyard Kipling. Sea Catch never started fights, but lots of fights always came to him. This is my situation as well and like Sea Catch I always take on the challenges I'm given. The quote from the book is He was scarred all over with the marks of savage fights, but Sea Catch was always ready for just one more fight. ... Sea Catch had just finished his fort-fifth fight one spring when Matkah, his soft, sleek, gentle eyed wife came up out of the sea.

The Jacaranda is related to the Tabebuia and also in the same family. They bloom a little later after the Tabebias around March. They are also huge full trees and the place is always dotted with splashes of purples when they go off. Beautiful!

Another video game icon that pays homage to the wonderful Game Tetris. I have a dark sense of humor and found this halarious. People get offended so easily these days that I had to use it.

This is a shrunk version of my character Destina Gomez at the city of gold. I really like the way the colors and effects came out on this. She sailed to the new world during the age of exploration. Her powers are that of wind and lightning so she's using her powers here. As a personal touch I drew wild gourds growing in the surrounding jungle.

Well I finally got some screencaps from the game. Check out Owen.



Click all for full size.
That's how he looks in the game. Not bad for how limiting the creation engine was in this game. I guess there weren't glasses in ancient times. That's one reason he looks odd. His hair in the front is too short and too poofy in the back.

( More of Owen and my cat girl Leona )

Squiby has added a new feature but like most pet sites when they try to make things better they don't. Now you can chose what pets to display. Problem is it doesn't work well because the stupid box goes off the page. See screencap here. At the bottom of the page is the navigation bar and notice how the box covers it up. Makes getting back to the profile page hard. Also if you add more than one row of pets you can't see it. So I sent Keith a nice little PM with my suggestions on how things could be better. Namely make it like the galleries on Deviant art where we can make categories and there are pages. We'll see if he listens to reason. I've compiled a long list of things I want to say to Thaz for DragonAdopters. I think I've got everything now. I don't want to leave anything out as it will be a big message. I'll post a copy of it here once I get around to it. Anyway, at least the pets that need clicks are the only ones displayed now on my Squiby with only about three exceptions.

Speaking of Dragon Adopters please click Matkah for me. She's in my sidebar, the white furdragon. I'm so close to level 30 and getting my last dragon. I swear they slow down at key levels like this. Once she hits 30 she'll grow fast again. Most annoying.
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Today's been great. Chris told me yesterday that Glen Beck the conservative radio commentator was in town for the signing of his book Arguing With Idiots. He wanted to go and I said I'd love to accompany him. I love book signings. They are like conventions. He had to work this morning and after that he took the day off. So we went out to Borders and holy cow. I hadn't expected it to be this huge. Traffic was bad, the media was there and the line was out to the street for a whole block. It was great seeing so many American flags, people dressed up, one guy was Uncle Sam, and patriotic music playing on cellphones and cars. Unfortunately we got there too late and several thousands of us didn't even make it in the road. I was a little disapointed about that but we had no clue it would be such a big thing and we really should have planned it better. Despite that I still had fun people watching. The extroverts were halarious. There was a baby turtle coming out of a retention pond and we had to save it because he was heading for the door. The walk was nice as we parked several blocks away at a Wal-Mart. Chris doesn't have the new book but he has An Inconvenient Book which is what he would have had signed.

After that since we were in the neighborhood I wanted to show him the Silk Greenhouse which is a huge warehouse for slik plants/trees and Christmas stuff. I've been going to this place since I was a kid but hadn't been in years and wanted to show Chris something new. I'm so glad he was so impressed. When you walk in there are giant Christmas trees and ornaments, but they aren't cheesey. They are all very beautiful and elegant and come in so many colors. I'd forgotten they had a big parrot cage full of love birds. I remember back in the 80s when it was full of budgies. All this was in the Spanish part of town so I felt very at home there.

After that we went to sound exchange and I sold off most of my SpongeBob dvds and some of our duplicate metal CD's we had. I hated to part with my SpongeBobs but I plan to get the box set of the first 100 episodes so I'll get all those back. I needed the money because Zorro is out for the Disney Treasures Collection. They come in these awesome black tins. I grew up watching that show. I used to watch classics like that along with Lassie, Flipper and Gilligan's Island. At $50 it was expensive but worth it because I loved that show and it was my introduction to Zorro. That has been the best version of him ever. Chris and I watched the first few eps and I'm so glad he liked them too. I'm very happy about how much of my childhood I've been introducing him too and he's been liking it. He was skeptical at first because he thought it was going to be like Darkwing Duck that I watch alone. No no no. I assured him that I know what Disney he would like and what Disney he would hate. I would not subject him to something I know he wouldn't like. I have a love hate relation with Disney but I think I'm more tolerant of it as I grew up with it and it was a major part of my childhood. I'm amazed how much of the biology I know I learned first from watching documentaries on Disney like The Living Desert. That's one of my favorites. I loved the intro by Leonard Maltin. He mentioned something I hadn't thought of and don't know how I could have missed it when it's so blatant. Zorro was the inspiration for Batman. Now I'm seeing all the parallels. His assistant was like Alfred. He had a secred cave attached to his mansion. He was a hero of the night. His day time persona was a loveable rich guy. And his horse was like the batmobile coming when he whistled for it. Very cool.

I started a new game on Oblivion as a Kahjiit (sp?). I named her Leona which is Spanish for lioness. I made her real mean looking and gave her a feathered hair do so she looks cool. Mostly I did it to see how different some of the dialog would be with a Kahjiit vs an Imperial which is what I made Owen. I will recored them and share with you the screencaps so you all can see how Owen looks this time around and Leona. I might even possibly make Destina. Not sure yet.

I've got some commenting and emails to catch up on still. Thanks to those of you that clicked my Squibys. Three of them grew up. I'll have to adjust my list and make it shorter now.
I just proof read my own post and laughed at some of my errors. Silvolf and I were having a converstion awhile back about how we make spelling errors were we write other words so spell check won't catch them. The sentece about the turtle originally said "almost went out the door." Kinda hard for that to happen when we were outside. I laughed out loud at that. My most common transposed mistake is saying NOT when I mean NO. I found that too here and had to fix it. I need to mention I made a big mistake in a previous post. I said one of Owen's enchanted items was called Light A Budgie. It was not! It's actually LIGHT AS A BUDGIE. A mistake like that totally changes the mean. It's not about setting budgies on fire. It's about being lighter because it has a feather spell. Oh man.
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I've temporarily set my journal to the Squid Layout because I wanted to show schneeschaf what it looks like. I'm glad I figured out how to transfer my code from the Miami layout to this one so I didn't lose my sidebar and stuff. One thing to note. Where I have the little blue budgie by the subject the default pic on this is a cute pair of bubbles.

Today seems like a slow and relaxing day. The budgies have all grown up except the youngest. I have him on one feeding a day but he does know how to pick seeds up a little. I see him in the bowl from time to time. I'm pretty sure he's the one I'm going to keep. Despite being handfed the others are skittish except for the green female. I don't know why that is. But I have pictures to share again.



This is an older picture of all of them piled up. They used to sleep on the floor of the cage huddled and it was so darn cute.

( Budgies Ahoy! )

I'm getting tired of waiting on some of my squiby pets to grow up. Instead of posting a bunch of pets and cluttering up our journals I'm going to list the ones that haven't grown yet. Here's my account. The pets that need to grow are:
Tron Snake, Cosmic Serpent, Slyth, Feathery, Blaze, Blue Fin, Demon, Blackhole, Spearmint, Electric, Conifer, Doberman, spirals, Hen, Budgie Girl, Rainbow, Lemon, Lantern, Autumn, Hallowhale, Mars Keet, Protist, Vermithrax, Snow, Sulphur Bottom, No Fin, Orca Food, Singer, thrasher, Ice Breaker, Lamp Light, Teuthis Phage, Optic, Gobbler, Summer, Leggy, Rooster, Pilgrim, Inky, Cardinal, English Sparrow, Mocker, Robin, Deep Sea Nautil, Leslie, Estuary, Ammonite, Saphire, Tidal, Brandywine, Big Beard, Bruce and Citrine.

So if any of you are feeling generous and want to click any of those I'd appreciate it.

I finally got a new icon of a hawk. I've been needing one. It's a juvenile Cooper's Hawk like the ones that come to my yard. I have a love hate relationship with Cooper's Hawks. I don't like them when they are after my pigeons. They have lots of other birds to chose from. Leave mine alone. They also have cocky attitudes and the propensity to be mean. But it was a young male Cooper's Hawk that was the first wild raptor I befriended back in the old house. I really REALLY miss him. I named him Cooper. Yeah how original, but being able to feed him rats and calling him and having a wild creature come to me was just too amazing for anything. I wonder how he's doing? I hope he found someone else to feed him rodents. He's life is probably harder without the free handouts now. Also I admire how Coopers can kill other birds so efficiently. I have no trouble looking at videos and pictures of them killing pigeons. In fact I saved some amazing photos I found the other day. So long as they aren't MY pigeons.

I went with Chris on a job today. It was nice. I found time to write while we were out and that section of my story is so much closer to being done. I can't wait until it's over. I said I wanted to finish in 2009. I've got a month and a half to meet that promise to myself. I think I'm almost done with Oblivion. Only a few things left to do like buy all the horses and just walk around looking for enemies and enchant a few more weapons. So no one was curious about Owen in this game? I'm surprised I didn't get any responses to that.

Now that I'm gaming less I am starting to feel the urge to draw again. I'm so glad because I always hate being in an art slump. I should work on some of the drawings I already made and color them up, but I'm mostly feeling the urge to draw new things. I think it's time I created something amazing again. It's been a long time since I did that. I think my last amazing drawing was my running Deathclaw. Been thinking a lot about Deathclaws again as well. I also need to get back to my Squiby art. On dragon adopters I'm anxiously awaiting for Matkah to turn 30 so I can get my last dragon. I have a growth and pageview ring on her and I don't think those special items do anything. I haven't seen any difference in her growth and I do get lots of clicks so I may sell them. To me most of the special items are crappy and useless.
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I think I'll keep my pigeons locked up for the rest of the week instead of two days. The hawk didn't take the hint after I scared him off. I didn't expect him too. Cooper's are jerks like that hehe. He keeps scaring the aviary of pigeons and he flew by the screened patio freaking out the budgies and tiels. They do give up once they realize they can't get in the cages. I just have to wait him out. It's also Fall and this is the migratory bird season. I have all of you northerns' hawks. It really is a sucky time to be a pigeon fancier. On the budgie front, the youngest baby is the only one I'm still handfeeding. Hopefully he'll wean soon. I need to decide which one I'll keep as a pet. So far seems he'll be the one I chose.

The rest of this post I'm going to put behind a cut because it's all about video games and I feel it will be quite long.

( New Sims and Oblivion )
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Yesterday started off with too much excitment for my taste. Chris and I were outside feeding and flying the birds when a young male Cooper's Hawk showed up. He went after my birds and unfortunately I do have some weak flyers that recently recovered from an illness. I saw him grab one and land over by the neighbor's house. I ran after them and found them in the neighbor's front lawn. My bird was bigger than the hawk and still alive. The hawk had him pinned with his wings spread over him but the pigeon was struggling. I went up hoping I could scare the hawk without him taking off with my bird again. He did take off but luckily with the weight of a big pigeon and a brick wall I knew he couldn't clear he dropped my bird. But then the pigeon ran under the neighbor's shed. Now I felt bad because I was trespassing. Chris and I knocked on their door and told them what happened. They said it was ok to look around the shed. I had to get on my tummy and reach under there but I managed to grab my bird. Amazingly he only had a cut on his beak! I'm really very glad it wasn't a female Cooper's or it would have been over. My pigeons are probably to big for a small male at least to fly with. He probably would have eaten the pigeon on the ground and left a mess of feathers and bones. But the females can fly with bigger prey into trees. I know, I've had that happen too. So after putting peroxide on him he goes back in the loft today. But no flying for two days in case that hawk is sticking around.

I want to thank kaetarin for helping me solve the problem I've been having here on LJ with post listed as adult. For those of you that don't know for some reason I kept getting them as a cut even though I'm over 18 to see them. Turns out there's an option in the display profile for collapsed and non-collapsed posts. I had no idea that was there or that that's what it meant. I set it to only collapse explicit stuff. I don't have anyone on my list that makes those kinds of posts but just in case I don't to see them anyway. But now it's great because my friends list and the pumpkin community is visible to me. Usually if the subject wasn't an indication of what the post was about I tended to skip those and I was missing out on a log. I like to look at my friends page at a glance. Unless they've purposely made I cut I hated to bother with the way it was.

Ok, one of you said you wanted to see some of the stupid PM's I've been getting on Dragon Adopters. It's amazing how dumb kids are or how they think they can act ignorant when they already know. It's just a creative way to ask for clicks.

Subject: pls could you tell me?
November 11, 2009
what lvl my dragons must be for have 4?
2 adults and a teenager now
you look as a person with experience in this game, pls tell me

Ok ignoring the horrible lack of capitalization, aweful netspeak and begining sentences with numerals instead of spelling them I still read on. Ok this kid had three dragons. Don't you think after three dragons it would be obvious that you get your new one at level 30? How could he not know this? So I get singled out because I have six dragons. So surely I've been around a long time and know my stuff. Well true enough, but that's just plain stupid. I still helped him and warned him about getting clicks. Ok, not so bad at least. Next.

Subject: Thank-note
November 12, 2009

Thank you very much for coming to visit my dragon!
I've just come and visited your dragon. It's really A beautiful one. I'hope one day my dragon will become a dragon like yours.
I hope you'll come back and visit my dragon again. I believe We will be friend soon!
Once again THANK YOU

Much better grammar and capitalization. But this one is worse in my book and a very good way to make an introvert say, "AAAAHHH!!! SHIELDS UP!!" The It's really a beautiful one line makes me roll my eyes. Yes, as beautiful as the many other thousands of white furdragons out there. There's nothing special about it. Nearly everyone has one. Chris has gotten this too. "Cool dragons". Yeah, as cool as all the others. There's no difference and I don't consider that a compliment. Next I had no clue I'd clicked her since I went on one of my blind click sprees on the who's online page. To me she was just another number that would click me back to help raise my level. Nothing more. The emotional attachment she put on this is rediculous and over the top. She hopes her dragon will one day be like mine? Well she had just one. An ugly lizardus so no it will never be beautiful like mine unless she gets a fur dragon. Hehe. The I believe we will be friends soon soon statement was the part that made get all defensive. WTF? I don't understand how people think (extroverts mostly) that just because you greet someone suddenly you're best friends. NO! It is a long grueling process to become my friend or my enemy for that matter. I instantly distrust anyone that is that buddy buddy with me. I don't know them, they don't know me so why act that way? It takes time to get to know someone, even an extrovert that will tell you his life story in five minutes. So I ignored her. So she copies and pastes and sends it again. YARG!! I continue to ignore her. Thank goodness it stopped or I might have had to eat her dragon.

Lastly I had one kid that sent me a PM that all it said was "Hi." Yeah whatever. Meaningful conversation mean anything to you? I'd love to make some friends from Dragon Adopters but it's unlikely I'll make the first move. Especially since we no longer have profiles. All I have to go by is a user name, an avatar and what few names they may give their dragons. For me all three have to be interesting and so far that hasn't happened yet. So I have little hope of someone contacting me based on the contact I've recived thus far.

I've been playing Oblivion and lots of funny things have happened. I still have to set up pumpkins everywhere on my castle despite that my guards eat them. That was the main reason I started the game. But I also want to get to level 100 in certain skills like acrobatics so I can jump off anything and not get hurt. Some skills take a long time to build up. I have to do Mage's Guild quests because I want to use their school to make enchanted weapons. But I'm doing quite well with regular weapons. The creation engine in that game is decent. I made Owen as best I could. He looks best from the front. His side view not so good. But in some scenes he really does look like a prince. Alchemy is one of the primary skills I gave him along with blade so I'm keeping him in character. I also have all the fire magic that I can possibly use at my level. I can't wait to make a fire sword. That will rock. I've often thought that if Owen lived in those days he would have been considered a wizard. Notice I didn't say he would have been a wizard. Other's would have thought that of him because he still would have messed around with chemistry. I love how the word Alchemist has Chemist in it. And I think alchemy was just Chemistry that the majority of the population didn't understand so they thought it was magic. Potion making. I love the replicating cheat though. Since I'm not playing the game seriously it has helped tremendously. I got Owen a white horse too since white and blue are his favorite colors. There was a mage's white robe that was the closest thing to his labcoat, but it had too many fancy designs to look right. And unfortunately it offers no protection. Next time I'll talk about a crazy adventure I had as I was jumping off of a mountain.
EEP! Chris just showed me something really cool, but I have to go now. So I'll probably have more to post about this later.
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I'm still flip flopping about what to do for my last dragon. I have decided to go with a female this time and name it Raksha. Raksha was the name of Mowgli's wolf mother and it means The Demon. Even though I liked the bird in Riki Tikki Tavi, the name Drazee is too cute for my taste. Raksha is pretty sweet. Buuuut...the problem is now I'm not sure about the color. I wanted white because I don't have a white raptor. But now I'm wondering if I should make her gold to have two large aura producers. Gold seems to trade very well both on the resource and items markets. I'm not so sure now. Regardless I will start off with her being white. Hum, perhaps I should stick with my guns and just go with the original plan for white. I don't know if gold will devalue since so many people have it. That's something to consider.

I've started playing Oblivion on Xbox. You can see the icon in my sidebar under gaming. I really only started so I could put pumpkins everywhere and I made so many in the room of my castle. It was halarious. I'm definitely not into RPG's so I'm not going to play for story or try to beat this. I just want to level up and do some fun and crazy things. And I've already done something that Chris is amazed I did. "How do you do these things?" is something I hear him say a lot. When we first started gaming I told him I have a knack for "breaking" games. It really isn't that I set out to break games. I think I just ask the right questions then try them out. It all started with the original Mario on NES for me when I jumped in one of the castle levels and got stuck in the wall and found out you could go through the bricks without breaking them and beat the whole level that way.

In this game I bought a horse and managed to scare some deer into the castle. I got off quick and shut the gate behind me and trapped them in there. One disappeared but I managed to scare one into the horse pen and now I have a pet deer. I recorded it too as proof since lots of people don't believe it when I say I've done these weird things. I think one of the best things I've done was on Game Cube's Simpsons Road Rage where I learned how to go through the walls and fly around the levels outside of the map. I had made a whole website dedicated to my wackiness on that game. I guess because when I play I ask myself things like, "What happens if I go in there?" "I'm know I'm not supposed to go there but I think I can." What would happen if I stepped on that?" "What would happen if I killed that guy?" "Would I die if I touch that?" Testing these questions has produced some really funn results, like Cope on his bike in Saints Row 2.

Chris is still recovering. He's doing much better. It's orange season again. I think the farm down the road will have those big black buckets out again. Our organes are out too. I've picked several for Chris already. We bought a cheap little juicer yesterday and it's fun. It's one where you put the orange half on it and turn and it makes juice. I made a little bit yesterday so that was fun. I also made more pumpkin pancakes since I still had puree left over in the fridge.

I'm actually looking forward to Thanksgiving this year. I want to make some pies to take to dinner. I'm not into parties or social gatherings, but around every two or three years I do get the urge for it. This is the first time I've felt this way since we've lived in our house. I just hope there won't be too many people. We'll see how long I last before my introversion freaks me out.

I finished reading The Seven Daughters of Eve and really enjoyed it up until the last chapter. It was going wonderfully until the author got all sappy and emotional and even a bit feminist on me. WTF? I had never noticed and it never bothered me about nature documentaries how at the end nearlly all will preach to you about man destroying the world. It never bothered me but now I'm aware of it and try to find less preachy videos for him. But now I know how he feels as it's been happening in my science books. The Toes, Thumbs and Tear book ended with the author freaking out about robots replacing mankind. A Monk in the Garden ended up freaking out about Frankensteins because of genetics. And now this guy goes feminist and emotional over his genetics. I hate this trend. If I read a science book just give me the facts. Don't save the last chapter for an opinion fest. I'll make up my own mind damn it! For me a bad last chapter can easily ruin the whole book. Unfortunately I think I'm out of factual books to read. I'm only reading Moby Dick at the moment but it's funny too because Ishmael is so darn opinionated that I can't seem to escape it even in fiction. But he's so funny about too that I wish he were real and I could grab him and shake him and say, "No damn it! Look this is the way it really is!!" The reason the book is so long is because most of the chapters are about history and Ishmael talking about how sperm whales are the best of all whales superior to everything else and why whalers know more even than naturalists on the subject. Oh and whalers are the best sailors more so than the navys, the merchant sailors, etc. And if you disagree with him and the tons of facts he's thrown at you you're a fool. Haha, it's great. Don't you just love S types? I've pegged Ishmael as ISTP. The thought process of an ST is so different and interesting to look at though.

Ok time for budgies. They're all nearly full grown now.



Here they all are. I like the youngest neon green and yellow baby. The pictures dont' do him justice of how bring he is.

( More budgies behind cut )
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I have decided I'm going to keep my furdragon Matkah. Originally I was thinking of getting a female white raptor and naming her Matkah and releasing my furdragon of the same name once she hit 40. I then would have gotten a blue furdragon as my last dragon. But I don't want to have a released dragon on my record. I want to be done with the game as far as getting dragons is concerned. I think a lot of the original old accounts are gone from inactivity. When I click people they usually only have one or two dragons. It's weird. What happened to all of us that started with version 1? I rarely see anyone else with five or six dragons so I'm proud to now have one of the oldest accounts there. Anyway, I decided that the color I'll double up on will be white since it's a bit scarce. I will get a white raptor and my last one will be male and his name will be Darzee like the bird in Rikki-Tikki-Tavi. I wish I could rename my dragons. I'd love all the names on Owen's account to be Kipling related. I would like to rename Talon and ProPhage. I like dragon accounts that have themes. It's nice you can change colors if you screw that up, but I'd like to be able to change name and gender too.

I worked a little bit on my story today. I can't wait to finish this section. Once this is done hopefully the worst is over. I'm still on the same part I was stuck on the last few times. It's a Halloween scene since the Copes celebrate all the holidays.

Ok, I'm going to post some videos behind the cut because schneeschaf and I were talking about birds and I want to show her how different kinds of birds can be cuddly. Most of you have seen these so you can ignore if you want.

( Bird Videos )
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Today has been a great day. I've had a lot of fun. Chris is feeling better and so am I. My back only hurts a tiny bit so I'm quite happy and energetic. I've been taking care of Chris and he's recovering nicely. I brought his xbox into the bedroom so he could play his game.

My sidebar is fixed! It looks wonderful. I'm really loving how my journal is turning out. Good things ARE happening hehe. Now I just need to figure out how to make a banner and a few minor things and it should be good to go. And if not I'll just switch back to good 'ol Flexible Squares which is so much more straight forward.

I'm happy with my progress on Dragon Adopters as well. Cope should be getting another dragon soon. I'll be getting a gold raptor and naming him Stubb after the second mate. Soon I'll have the most important crew members of the Pequad. BTW, I'm trying to save up blue so I can buy the gold powder. Would anyone be willing to gift me some auras? I could consider it a late birthday gift or early Christmas gift. I think asking for auras as Christmas gifts is always a good thing. If any of you ever need some let me know. If I'm low at the time I can eventually get it and I'm always happy to help my friends out. I'd have to put up an offer of like 1 of anything and ask for whatever ammount you wish to give in return. And if anyone else takes the offer all the better. Their loss.

Speaking of dragons, the next stage of the pterodragon is out. MELKORTO, has the oldest pterodragon. Man does that stage suck! Two out of three stages are horrid and I don't have high hopes. When will Thaz draw something good? I'm quite certain I won't be getting one. I won't be surprised if the final stages are equally as aweful. At least we can release dragons we've screwed up now. But some people get ugly pets on purpose for RP's or whatever so I do find that amuzing. Anyway, I bought some nice backgrounds and Love the way my dragon page looks now.

Speaking of games, the new expansion pack for Sims 3 comes out the 17th. I definitely want to get it. I'm disapointed that I can't dowload stuff from the website anymore. I've downloaded like three things but they just won't go into my game. And it says I have downloaded them. Emailing EA's support has not worked. I spent points on some of them while others were free. I downgraded to IE7 because I didn't like 8 and that's when the trouble started but that didn't work either. I don't know what to do. I don't want to use firefox because I like I don't have all the plug ins installed so I don't get some of the virus filled ads on DA, but the Sims site won't work on my Firefox and I don't want to get the plug ins as I fear that will make DA work which I don't want it to. I'm thinking of calling support but I can already imagine hanging on the phone for 3 hours. YARG. But I have been thinking of Sims 3 and might start playing again. I still haven't finished with Cope and Owen. I've only finished Davon and Solan. I'm looking forward to playing as Solan in Egypt and Davon in Asia. And I'd have to be Airball in France. I'm getting the gaming urge. I'll probably start playing games again very soon.
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Public Post for the planet to see. Warning, very looooong.
( More Expressive stupidity )
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Poor Chris is sick. He's got a cold. We've broken the "rule" again that we can't both be sick or hurt at the same time. Only one at a time. Ha! I wish we could keep that "rule". My back still hurts but I can take care of him and I'm more mobile so it's up to me. I'll do my best to make him teas and hope he gets well soon.

Been thinking about my story again. Hopefully I will feel well enough and be in the mood to write more of it again. I'm starting to miss drawing too and keep thinking of the little Deathclaw I need to finish still. I've got a bunch more new Squibys now and I may post a few priority ones here that need help.

I have four budgie pictures to share this time.



Here's that strange baby I didn't know what it was. It's going to be lime green! The back is neon yellow so he'll be gorgeous! He looks kind a like his grandma though she was more of a green blue than a lime green. Still I love her and haven't seen such a bright budgie like her in a long time. I hope he'll blue up as he gets older. I have to decide which male I'll keep as a pet.

( Budgies! )

And I think I'm going to rename the pigeon Melon. Calling he Fat Girl just doesn't seem right anymore. I had her out today while I was lying down in the game room and it was awesome that she walked in hoped on my lap and sat down on me. EEEE!! She made soft cooing sounds the whole time and I petted her while she rubbed her beak on my hand. If she was a cat she'd have been purring. She's a lap pigeon! This is wonderful!! Oh I love her so much all ready! I had her on the counter too trying to show her how to take a bath. She wanted to I could tell but was a little afraid of how deep the sink was. She's not as confident as Punkin was and I hope I can inflate her ego with time. One thing I loved about Punkin was how she would just get into stuff without hessitation. She was a proud cocky pigeon but she wasn't mean. I like proud, confident extroverted birds. I think Melon can become that with a little work.
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( Expressive stupidity )
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I haven't felt well the last few days. My back has really been acting up and I have had to be down. The bad thing is it hurts most when I lie down which makes sleeping difficult. That's been the worst thing and one reason I haven't been on much. But other than that things are going quite well indeed.

Olney and I have not worked out as far as finding that pet to fill the voide of Punkin. BUT remember I mentioned the other pigeon Fat Girl? When I fly my birds she'd always land by me and follow me around and even let me pet her sometimes. She was a baby I hand raised because on a cold night her parents kicked her out of the nest. I found her on her back, cold and naked. I thought she was dead and brought her inside. But then I saw the life in her eyes just barely there. I rigged up a little critter cage. A heating pad would not have worked so I wrapped up the whole thing in an electric blanket in my bed and put her in there. She started to respond right away. I didn't know what would happen and didn't have much hope but I was amazed when the next day she was moving around and took the food I gave her. It was like she came back from the dead.

As she grew up she was always a sweet bird but not pretty. I always thought she was a bit ugly because he had black and white patches on her feace instead of being solid black or solid white. Back when I was deciding on which bird to keep I picked another hen because she was beautiful. But that didn't work out because I could tell she wasn't happy being in a cage. So I put her in the loft with Fat Girl and the other flyers. I always knew Fat Girl had a great personality but I wanted personality and looks. Then I brought in that white flyer that also followed me around. Turned out he was a male and got mean. Back out he went. Then I got Olney who's half sibling to Punkin. I thought this had to work. Turned out he was a male too and got mean. I've been reluctant to let him go but yesterday when Fat Girl followed me into the patio from outside I decided to give her a try. I was fairly certian she's a female.

I put Olney in a budgie cage on the patio. Poor thing. And I put Fat Girl in his cage. I'm cautious about getting close as I've had so many set backs. I tell Chris that birds for me are like relationships with people. I want a pet to love that also loves me back and I want another bird like Punkin, Gaus, Phage or Joel. It hasn't been easy to find "replacements". But when I let Fat Girl out I was amazed. She didn't fly away and WALKED like Punkin. I could pick her up on my arm which I could never do with Punkin. She's softer than Punkin was and she's already kind of cuddly. She followed me into the game room on the first try and she responds to my cooing to her. Oh my gosh I think I FINALLY found my pet! I hope so anyway. I hope she won't get mean. Here are some pics.



She walked everywhere. I had a hard time getting a good pic. I'll have to hold her and have Chris take one. But see her colors? I still say she's kind of ugly. Also I want to change her name. I don't want her to imprint on Fat Girl. I'm open to suggestions but I'm considering Melon.



She's half homing pigeon and half wild pigeon so she's not as big as my other birds. The reason is I have some rescued wild pigeons that I keep mixed in with my Homers. I need to find them homes but I don't know anyone that would want pigeons so I'm stuck with them. She was also very healthy. No mites at all, but I do still need to spray her and disinfect her. I don't know what I'll do with Olney. He's on the patio for now, but I can't put him with the Homers because he never learned to fly home. And it's too late for that now. I could put him in the aviary with the wild ones but it's half open and I don't know how he'll get used to the wind, cold and rain. But that's likely where he'll end up. I'm just glad I don't have to clip the wings on this pidge.

I completed my checklist last night on Dragon Adopters. I just bought the cheapest level 10 stuff and sold it to the factory. The colors I was missing I made at level 10 with no failures and also sold most to the factory. I kept a few 3% reptile scale stuff because my next dragon will be another dino and since I thought I was done I sold all my dino stuff of the earlier levels. Now I need to get it back.

Being that I'm not well it's likely I'll start playing xbox again. I've been watching Chris play Oblivion. It's not the kind of game I'd get into all the way. Too much RPG like for my taste and I know I have no interest in doing everything. BUT there is one thing I really want to do and may start a game to do this one crazy thing. There's a castle you can download as your home. There's this one cheat code you can use to replicate almost any item, but not weapons. Well there are pumpkins in the game. And any game with pumpkins is cool in my book. I freaked when you could replicate the pumpkins and watermelons. So I had Chris place some as decorations around the castle. Of course I want to take it to the extreme and literally have pumpkins EVERYWHERE! I'm already foreseeing the gaming having a hard time loading and screwing up with what I want to do. But we only placed a few at the entrance of the castle.

Then the pumpkins and a leek that was in a display case mysteriously disappeared. What the? Then we found out what happened. The guards were eating them. We saw it happen three times. The guard walks up and eats the whole thing in one bite. GULP! NNNOOOOO!!!!! So that's going to be a problem if I do this with my castle. My stupid guards eating my decor!

Chris and I went to look around at Lowe's yesterday. He bought me a Birds and Blooms magazine. I still need to read last month's. But I found some neat dragonfly clips that are for holding up orchids. I'm not into orchids at all but I liked these clips and mentioned that I wanted them for my hair. Chris bought me the set.



Aren't they cute? I think I'll wear some for Thanksgiving. Hee hee. I have a huge collection of clips made of sunflowers like this that I collected back when they were the rage in the 90's. I knew things would go out of style so I bought a bunch. I'm always sad when they break though because they aren't replaceable as no one makes them now. I'll take a pic of that later. But these dragon flies are similar to that. The blue and pink are my faves but it's too bad there's only one green, yellow and purple. I'd like two of each which is how I have my other collection.
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So I disappeared again for a few days. Did you miss me? That's very typical of me to just suddenly quit being active somewhere and return later unannounced. I've been around I just don't think I've really had anything worth while to post about, though things have been going well. The most exciting things have been what I'm thinking of doing and I don't like to talk about what I'm thinking of doing when I can talk about what I've done. Interesting as my thoughts are I hate saying, "I plan to do this." or "I want to do this." and then never do it. Yeah so I've been doing a lot of thinking and planning.

The budgies have been keeping me busy. Ok well one of the things I thought of I will share because it's interesting. I've noticed that all my pets no matter what I name them eventually get a nick name. I don't set out to give them a nickname as I have a hard time coming up with their real names as is. But the nicknames usually evolve out of their real names. So here's a list of my pet names and their nickname/s.

Phage- Phage Page Budgie Boy, Phagiopage, Phageiopagio, Aphagia, Phagian
Virus - Virian budgie
Billy Joel or Joel for short - Joel Bowl
Daimon - Blue Thing
Protist - Portisie
Peep - Peeper
Gaus - Gaus mouse
Olney - Onley Pigeon, If Olney
Punkin - Mrs. Fluffy Pants
Fat Girl - Fatty
Elton - Little Elton
Seep Seep - Seeper

Hum, that's all I can think of at the moment. My other birds have names but these were pets so I got close to them, got to know then and I guess that's how they end up with nicknames. I guess the more nicknames the more bonded I am to them. My beloved Phage whom I still love dearly even in death had many.

Ok it's time for baby budgies again.



This is what happens when you're trying to get a group shot and budgie sticks his face in the camera.

( Three more behind cut )

And I guess that's it for now. If things keep going they way they are I may not post again for a while.
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I got my seeds in the mail yesterday. I'm very excited to try growing Casa Bananas. The name is so misleading as it's a cucurbit. I also ordered one packet of Aristolochia trilobata to attrackt pipevine swallowtails. Let's hope that that goes well. I ordered from Summer Hill Seeds and they were nice enough to give me a free packet of Aristolochia ringens. I'm very happy with their customer service and that they have some nice rare plants. If I ever need a rare Morning Glory I think I'll be set with them.

I also found somewhere I can order a Zucca gourd from. They are hard to find and they are the big light green gourds you saw in my pictures of Epcot. I think it would be fun to have a giant vegetable garden. It's a bit cold outside right now but hopefully I can get a little work done in the garden. I made a list of the plants I want to grow. But that still doesn't help much as I don't have a plan yet as to where to set them.

Ok now about emoticons. I think this is an NT thing but I don't really use them. I do my best to be clear when I speak and I usually am. Rarely will there be confusion and if there is I usually slap the person around for missing a key world like "might". I've only had a few sentences that were ambiguous no matter how I wrote them where I had to use a winking face ;) or something. I also have to be an extremely elated mood to use other emoticons. Now I think we NT's appreciate good expressions. Chris cracks up at some of the animated ones. Back in the late 90s we went on a smile collection spree and have a huge folder of classic smiles. Some of the best made it onto the Square Board. I loved all the emoticons we had there, but I myself hardly used them. They were mostly for my members. Chris doesn't really use them either. When I first got my journal I thought about making a section in my sidebar so people could click and use them, but then decided not to. It would just be the square board all over again and the journal is for me and I just don't use them. For that matter I don't even notice when people use them elsewhere much. Just like in real life I tend to ignore emotions and get to the meat of what's being said. In this case I only care about the text.
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First I want to say Happy Birthday to earthmother45




123glitter.com

Things have been going well. I had my last iced coffe yesterday. No more caffeine until mid December for me. I'll probably go into withdraws soon.
I've taken down nearly all the Halloween stuff I had up around the house. I still need to take down the cute lanterns from the kitchen and that's about it. Half the stuff can stay out to celebrate Thanksgiving and harvest. I put out turkey and cornocopia window clings. The glass doors and wingdows look so nice now. I really want to get more window clings.

It's sad there are virtually no pumpkins left now. The big tent by our house almost sold out. I think they were left with like five gross pumpkins and they left them on the side of the road for free. It was tempting but I passed those up. The seeds are good I'm sure for planting. I've got one pie pumpkin left that I'm saving to a Thanksgiving pie or four. My recipe makes two pies and this is a big pie pumpkin.

The baby budgies are doing well and it looks like I'll have two dilutes. The big one doesn't exactly look like Seagrass. He's more blue where she's more of a green. Both are pretty pastels. Well here are a bunch of pics from yesterday.



Here they all are waiting to be hand fed.

( More baby budgies )

Alex and Kim wanted to go to the corn maze this year. I thought we'd missed out chance but I just checked their website and they're open through the rest of November! Woo hoo!! This is great news. Before they used to close after Halloween. But being introverts communication doesn't always happen between us. I'll have to ask them if they're still interested.
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Today has been a rather quiet Halloween for me. My back is still acting up and Chris had to work in the morning so I spent most of the morning in bed reading a book. I got better and in the evening Chris took me out to buy pumpkins because I really wanted some bigger ones for this year. But being the last day the stand was ransacked. The last big ones were the rotted ones and mishapen. Not good at all for carving. There were a few decent medium ones and I picked out a white one, an orange one and a small speckled one that looks like a Jack Be Little but had green and red stripes.

I pulled out the carving kit and was going to make my own cutom one with a budgie. I drew the budgie but had no idea what parts got cut out and what stayed. Perhaps someone can help me with that later. I also remembered how I suck at this and drawing on pumpkins so I went with something easy but still different. I decided to make a night sky pumpkin and drew a moon and stars on it.



At first when we finished it looked crappy, but once we put the candle in it it really looked nice. This is our first Jack-O-Lantern in our new house. I'm amazed how much easier the carving saws make things as opposed to how I used to do it with the kitchen knife. I would always go outside the lines. We did this time too but that's because we weren't trying too hard. I think this would have been impossible with a regular knife.

Oh and Chris also bought me a butternut squash the other day and I used half of it today in some pumpkin pancakes. I'll post the recipe for that in another post. We don't get Trick or Treaters here because we're almost in the country and out street has no sidewalk. That's ok, more candy for us. May-be we'll watch a seasonal movie tonight. That would be nice, but I'm kinda not in the mood for Hocus Pocus this year. Seems like I just watched it even though it was last year.

Had a bit of a scare today. Seagrass got out again and was in Daimon's cage. I can't believe it but she took the twisty tie off the door some how. I'm SSOOOO glad I got home when I did. Daimon was trying to catch her and I know he'll kill any budgie if he can get the chance. He hates budgies. Luckily I caught her before anything bad happened and I retied the door.

I gave pices of pumpkin to the budgies today. They went nuts. There was pleanty to go around but they still got into fights. My birds are all pretty mean, not to me but to each other.

I'm kind of tired so I'll stop here.
Note to Self: Talk about Emoticons next time.
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Happy Halloween everyone! I don't have any real plans for it today other than to go out and hopefully get some last minute pumpkins. I'd like to try carving one this year and keep the rest as decorations through Thanksgiving. It's sad that pumpkin stands go down on or after Halloween. I really think they should stay up through Thanksgiving as pumpkins are a part of that too. Wow, it's already time to change the calendar again. And November is a Friday the 13th month. Excellent! I can't believe next year there is only one. Usually there are three.

I got the pumpkin soap dispensers in the mail yesterday from Kohl's. Chris bought them for me since they were available in stores. I love them.



Now to fill them with soap. I need to get a big thing of soap from Walgreens. Sigh, I'm such a procrastinator. Those of you that get cards will be late this year. They're still here sitting on my desk. Better late than never though.



I've had several of you ask me so here are the baby budgies. I pulled them for handfeeding yesterday. I'm excited about the middle budgie because it's a weird color so far. And the big one is going to be a normal green. I prefer normals over opalines. I hope the weird one is a male. I'd like to have one male budgie to work into a pet and teach how to talk. Yes, I want another Phage and they have Phage in them so there's a chance. My pet pigeon Olney has been a bit of a disapointment. She's mean and not cuddly and I suspect might actually be a male. If so I'm stuck with him because I never trained him to fly outdoors and now it's too late for that. But it is cute how he follows me around. He just doesn't like to be touched and sometimes attacks me.

I've been thinking about Disney ever since we came back. I've always know about the Hidden Mickey's at the parks. They hide them in paintings usually. I tried to find some while we were at Epcot but didn't see any. I suck at that kind of thing. There was a book, but it was all text and didn't show any pictures. I figured there would be a guide online but couldn't find any. The ones I did come across sucked and again no real pictures. I thought I remembered seeing a site that told you want order to find them and a picture for each location but who knows where that is now if it's even still down. I told Chris that in a way these are like the hidden packages in video games. You can do it in real life. Find all 100 or however many there are hehe.

I'm excited about getting my Casa Banana seeds! This is one Cucurbit I'm looking forward to growing. I also ordered some seeds of a special Dutchman's Pipevine for the Pipevine Swallowtail caterpillars. I'd love to raise some of those.

And my dragon FINALLY reached 100! I came on this morning knowing he'd changed over night. I gave him his new set of items and now he's maxed out. I'm finally producing gold again in great quantities. They still need to set it back the way it was. It will be a long time before SeaCatch reaches 100 so I won't be checking on them as much now. I need to grow my furdragon to 30 so I can get my next dragon, release her at 40 then get my last furdragon and be done with that account except for growing. I want to be rich hehe.
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Well I'm still tired from yesterday but it's a good tired. Chris did see all the birthday wishes btw. I shall poke him about possibly responding but he is greateful for them. So we made plans to get up at 7am. The alarm rang. Chris got up, I got up at 7:30. I guess 7am is still too much to ask of me. We wanted to get there at opening time but since we got behind on schedule we didn't quite make it for opening. I'm so glad I thought of the idea to get our lunch and bring it with us to save money as I know how expensive the restraunts are. We would only have to buy drinks. So we stopped by at Publix and ordered some Cuban sandwiches and got some potato chips. Not quite Halloween yet so I had fun in the produce section looking at all the squash. Then we went to Epcot.

One thing I was so thrilled about is that they finally got rid of that horrid Mickey hand they had on Spaceship Earth. It was like I'd gone back in time and could see the ball clean as it was. I don't know when they took it down or if a hurricane did us a favor but good ridance.



This is how it should be! Very rarely will people correct their mistakes and this made me happy. Unfortunately there is a new major blunder I will talk about later. Lots of images so the rest will go behind the cut.

( Epcot )

So we had a wonderful time. I'm inspired to garden again. I always am after going to Epcot.
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Just wanted to let everyone know we had a great time! I'll make a detailed post about it tomorrow. I'm zonked. I also need to catch up on the tons of responses I've recieved while away. Yeah lots of catching up to do.
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If anyone is interested I posted all the possible results to that House sorting/Myers Briggs test in a response in my previous post. It's interesting that some types can fit in two houses. At first I thought it was weird to see NTP's in Slytherin, but then I remembered Voldemort himself was INTP. D'uh! It's very hard to find evil INTP's but there are a handful out there. While everyone was fangirling over Snape (INTJ), I instantly went for Voldemort and thought him more interesting and cunning. But then I'm always drawn to the INTP. Never met anyone else that had him as their favorite character and I love being in the minority.

Today was a nice day. I cleaned up the kitchen which I'm happy about. I want the house all nice for Halloween. It's amazing how easily it can become a disaster area. Chris and I are just so apathetic about that type of thing. If it's not bothering us and it's not in the way it's invisible until it gets in the way. Then we went out to dinner and had a good time. We went to AAA in the evening and got my ticket for discount and Florida Resident discount. So I'm set. I printed out Chris's pass for his Birthday tomorrow. So thought it's early I want to say:


To draconisthanos

Looks like glitter graphics that I usually use is down. I hope they aren't gone for good.

I'm looking forward to tomorrow. We're going to try and bring our own food too so we won't have to buy food at Epcot's outrageous prices. I'd like to have enough to buy something and everything is expensive there. I want to go to the the Behind the Seeds Tour again.

And I have come up with some cool scenes and dialog for my new story. Unfortunately no clear cut direction so I'm still lost, but there are some good action scenes I came up with today.

Please poke my stupid slow dragon. I wish he'd reach 100 already.


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Bad news first. The little budgie died. I went to check on the nest yesterday morning and I was expecting it. Sure enough he was gone. He was born too late and all the other babies were too big. He was trampled. But at least he died on a full crop so it wasn't that mom wasn't feeding him. I wish I knew how to take care of one day olds but I dont' have proper brooders or incubators. I only have make shift brooders that are too cold but warm enough for older babies. It's ok, I'm not too upset about it just mildy annoyed. These things happen and five is sitll a big healthy clutch to have. The other eggs aren't going to hatch I can tell in fact one was broken and I could see the dead embryo inside. So it's going to be 5 out of 9. I think the parents would have gone mad with 9 kids.

I didn't work on art yesterday. I guess I'm still upset about the whole Deathclaw disaster. I will tackle it again but probabally not til this weekend. Tonight I'm going out to dinner with Chris and his parents. It's their treat for his birthday. Then tomorrow I'm looking forward to Epcot. YIKES!! I still have to get my tickets! I'm behind on some of my Halloween cards. I'm not sending to everyone this year, but I will for Christmas. That is my big card spending time anyway.

I'm very happy that I got some writing done last night for the new story. This looks to be a direct sequel to Owen's Lost Memory. The problem is once I finish the intro I have no idea what happens next. I wish I could figure out what the ending is because then it would be easier to work towards it. But the dialog is pretty good so far. This might never get finished but we'll see. I mostly worked on that yesterday. I do need to work on my main storyline more. May-be today.

SeaCatch finally reached 90. ProPhage is stuck at 99 so I just stripped him of all his jewelery and passed it down anyway. I got sick of waiting. Sacrificing his resources for a few days is ok. I have a full set of level 100 items maxed out for him and he'll make it all up to me. Then I can sit back and let he resources come in without worrying about making items or the market so much. That will be nice.

I found two interesting quizes yesterday while doing a yahoo search. One I had forgotten I'd taken before and once I got the same answer again I remembered it. I love how I always test consistent. The second one was a Harry Potter quiz based on Myers Briggs and it typed me right and placed me in Slytherin where I belong. I like that the questions weren't obvious house questions you could cheat on but just based on Myers Briggs. The stupid thing was picking the same answers over and over. The author needs to recode the quiz. For example if it's a yes or no question and you pic NO you have to click all the No's if it's listed five times. That's stupid but supposedly it won't type you right if you don't. There are no E/I questions which I thought was weird, but it's based on your last three letters so you're thrown in with both introverts and extroverts.

( Quizes Ahoy! )



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I have to mention this because I've been meaning to for months and keep forgetting. But it happened today. Have you guys had it happen that something happens to someone you care about that was bad and funny at the same time and kind of your fault. I guess a slap stick moment like you accidentally punched your husband or boyfriend and you're genuinely sorry and concerned for them but you can't stop laughing? It's so bad you're saying, "I'm sorry. I really am." But still laughing your head off? That happens to me a lot and I know it can seem so insincere but Chris long ago learned to accept that I'm like that and can't help myself even though I'm truely sorry. I don't know if the caffeine has cause me to get weird but I was in a very good mood today and as I was walking into the living room past the game room I yelled out. BUDGIENESS!!! I don't know what possed me to do that. Instantly I heard through the wall, "AAAAAHHH!!!" I ran in laughing and apologizing because it was not my intent to scare the stuffing out of Chris. Then I got into one of my laughing fits and I couldn't stop for a good three minutes straight. My voice changes to this mechanical sounding thing when I try to talk while I'm laughing. I'm still laughing as I type this. From observation I've come to the conclusion this is not a personality thing but most likely a girl thing because I've never seen any guy do this, even funny guys. So, have you gals apologized while not being able to stop laughing?

I worked on some art today! I started coloring my baby Deathclaw. But as always I got frustrated. Deathclaws are hard to shade for some reason. Since he's going to be shrunk down I'm thinking of taking the lazy way out and just add a bit more shadow and shine but not too much. Most of it will be lost when shrunk anyway so I probably shouldn't bother with my usual amount of detail. I also got more writing done for my story today. It was some emotional trauma for poor Cope and I enjoyed getting into his mind set for that.

My mind is coming up with a new possible alternate story. Yeah I know another one. I'll make another post just to talk about that later, but it's weird how my mind will give me one scene usually in the middle that makes me wonder how it all started and got to that poin and where it's going. And a second unrelated dialog scene that's very interesting. That's all I have so far and I have many questions now.

Chris's birthday is Thursday! I'm very excited and we plan to go to Epcot and take advantage of him getting in free for his birthday. I haven't been to Epcot since 2005 so I'm looking forward to it.
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I made two versions of the flying budgie that are static. I made the green one and a brand new blue one.

I love the color of the blue one. I even made his foot pink as I didn't like the grey foot of the green one. I'm thinking of using one of these two instead of the animated one because it bugs me how he goes too fast in FireFox. But I haven't decided on that yet.

I cleaned out the guest bathroom today and later when I walked in there I thought I saw a fly on the bathtub. I told Chris about it and that we should probably catch it and flush it. But we're both so lax about that type of thing we didn't bother. I walked back in and this "fly" was on the ground. Something was wrong with his wings. But then I noticed he was metallic turquoise. He was beautiful like a gem! Suddenly I didn't want to kill him. I gently picked him up then noticed the eyes were too small to be a fly and the face didn't have a probosis but mandibles. It was a bee! I got a little worried I was holding a wounded bee, but he was so gorgeous I kept looking at him anyway. I asked Chris to take some pics.



Click for full size.
Look he's my favorite color! He kept pulling his wings forward like that and wasn't a good flyer.



Then he flew into a spiderweb. I didn't want him eaten so Chris rescued him just as the spider was coming out. Poor thing! We let spiders live in our house but this was one bug I didn't want them to get. So I took him outside because I wanted him to be in better light but some wind came by and blew him away before I could take more pics. I was sad. My poor bee! I don't think he'll survive with bad wings, but I wish him luck.

I found out these are called Cuckoo Bees and can be green or blue. They parasitize other wasps hence why they are called cuckoos. They are in the family Chrysidid. I found some great pics on Bug Guide.

Green and Blue bee. Darker blue bee. Mine was prettier.

I'm only waiting on Prophage and SeaCatch to hurry up and reach their next major level. SeaCatch has one level to go to get to 90 and Prophage has two before he gets to 100 and I can finally pass on all that jewelery as they're holding up all the younger dragons. I bought some really cheap backgrounds for like less than 200 resources each. Some were 80 and my page looks much nicer now.

I have got to force myself to work on one of my projects tomorrow.


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