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'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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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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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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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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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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I've had a few of you ask me to show pictures of my budgies. I have several and what I'm going to do is do a bit of a history of my favorite special budgies. Next time I'll do cockatiels and finches most likely, then pigeons. I'm always talking about my wonderful budgie boy Phage. But before I can talk about him I need to talk about Virus. Virus was a bird I got back in the late 90s. Chris and I were still dating and he bought him for me as a birthday gift in a petstore in the mall. I took my time and was looking at all the budgies in the bin, but none were right. Then I saw one lone white budgie like the one I colored for Squiby in a tiny cage alone way up high. He was a beautiful recesive pied sky blue. I didn't know it at the time but that's what I wanted. Black eyed budgies are my faves and I knew these guys kept the black eyes for life. I worked very hard with Virus and he turned out to be incredibly sweet and loving and the first talking budgie I ever had. I was amazed at some of the things he could say. I was big into Godzilla at the time so I taught him some of the names of the monsters. In fact his name Virus was the name of squid alien that was the enemy of Gamera the giant turtle. But Virus got really sick and died after only a year. I was heart broken.

Not long after I was in a petstore again with Chris and there was another bin full of budgies. I'm the type of person that needs to fill the void. I can't say, "I don't want to go through that pain again." I say, "I don't want to live without that love." So I looked in the bin and all the budgies ran away except for one light yellow recessive pied. He looked just like Virus except he was light yellow. I reached in and he didn't not budge. He did not try to run away and clearly was not scared. I grasped him like in that one icon I have and picked him up. He sat calmly, actually kind of cocky in my hand and didn't wiggle, try to escape or bite. I gasped at how fearless he was. I knew he was special and I had to have him! I rarely ask anyone for anything but that day I asked Chris to Please buy me this budgie! He asked me if I was sure since it had only been a few days since I'd lost Virus. TOTALLY SURE!



And here he is at last. This is the famous beloved Phage! I'm going to put the rest behind the cut becuase there are lots of pics.

( Budgies ahoy! )

So this is where the budgie line stands so far. I also have a pair of light yellow Phage babies that are brother and sister and accidentally paired up even though they were in a big flight cage. I dont' want to inbreed so I haven't bred them. Those were the ones that I had the snake disaster with. I don't know if I should try again or just repair them, but the problem is they're so in love they don't care about other budgies. The male is the one that abused the Gaus baby. Sigh.

So there it is. It's been very interesting all these years and I'm very nostaligic tonight missing some of my most special birds I've owned.
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I got a teeny bit of writing done today. It was hard because I just couldn't concentrate and was so easily distracted. Tomorrow I will unplug the cable to the computer so I can't surf around. I have to be that tough on myself when I work on my writing or artwork. I've been rather spontaneous lately which I don't like. Still I have managed to make some headway on things.

I had a wonderful start to my day today. I woke up to a scratching on my window. I knew they were bird claws of some sort and my first thought was a wild budgie was trying to get in. I opened the curtain and saw a Tufted Titmouse staring at me with big cute black eyes. I called Chris to come look quick. I was still grogging from just getting up. We have two wasp nests one on each window and the titmice were eating the larvae. It was awesome. There was so much bird life too. Oh and they were all in the peach tree which oddly enough has started flowering. Remember if flowered early in January and a frost killed all the flowers so we didn't get peaches this year. But now it's trying again when it's not supposed to and has really bad timing because it's been so cold again. We might never get peaches, but I'll check and see if the flowers are still on it. Wow it would be funny to have them out of season. That means they'd be out in February if they are pollinated now and survive.

How many of you go on click sprees on Dragon Adopters based on your Recent Visitor meter? Chris and I love doing that. We try to find people that are on and are also clicking so nearly all their visitors say "Moments Ago" or within the last 6 minutes. I click someone near the top then click the one of top of theirs and so on until I reach a dead end. If it says several minutes to an hour I don't bother because those people probably aren't on and I start over again for my page. Nearlly all the people I click click me back right away and if you want your dragons to grow that's good. Now here's my next question for those of you that do click sprees. Do you just click the name and then move on or do you click all their dragons? I speed click so if they have more than one dragon then I don't bother and just click the next person on and on. This is why it's important to place your priority dragon first. The exception is my friends list of course. On those I click all of them. Chris and I race each other but he usually wins. I end up saying "I see you on so and so's page" more than he says it to me. I sometimes feel like I'm just following in his wake hehe.
EDIT: Oh and almost forgot to mention this but it's something I was thinking about. Not that I would but if I got another account I would get all Raptors and name them after Jurassic Park characters so I came up with.
Dr. Alan Grant - Blue
Dr. Elly Sattler - Silver
Dr. Ian Malcome - White
John Hammond - Gold
Dennis Nedry - Green
Robert Muldoon - Red
Genaro - Blue (can't remember his first name)

I might start playing my Xbox again. I'm not saying what Game because Chris has been trying to guess. I'm weird that way how I keep things to myself and if he catches me playing then he'll know. But I do have a few options. All older games of course but I've been thinking about some of them and my guys in them. Of course thinking and doing are two different things.

Oh I want to welcome actipton80 to my journal. She was nice enough to run my budgies through a genetics counter and found out what my babies will be. Check this out.
They will be either green or blue with a 50% chance of being opaline for both boys and girls. All babies will be split to Rec. pied, and all boy babies will be split to lacewing, and the boy babies who aren't opaline will be split for it. All babies will also have a 25% chance of being split to dilute. I didn't factor in YF because that gene is wacky when it comes to expression.

She's right because my first two were green and blue opalines. I'm curious if I'll get an non-opalines because I'd like the males to be split for everything. Those are the ones I need to breed for the 4th generations of Phages. I'm very excited about this. My blue male is a yellow face though so it's in there too. I can do cockatiel genetics because it's straight forward but there are so many budgie mutations it just overwhelms me. Of course I'm interested in Recesive Pied and Lacewing the most. I wonder if they will be yellow or white lace wings? Would be nice to get both. I wonder what this looks like on the chromosome and why opaline blocks everything but without it males are split to everything. The thing about budgie mutations is that you need to know which are dominant, recessive, sex-linked, dominant etc and which are color mutations and which are pattern mutations. YARG. With tiels I only deal with Dominant, recessive, sexlinked and color. The only pattern being pied and that's easy to factor in as a common recesive mutation. Add anymore and I start to get overwhelmed.
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It was pretty cold today. It's going to reach a low of 48F so I'm leaving the budgies inside and covering the others. I was bad. I didn't take pictures of the babies like I promised. I just went out long enough to feed and water then ran back inside. When I took the cover off Peep was sleeping in the nestbox. I don't blame him. All those hot budgie bodies were probably nice and warm in there. Male budgies don't really go into the nests so yeah it was cold.

So my new dragon finally hatched today. I got a white furdragon out of desperation because I didn't make any fur or white. I didn't think things through well and was hasty. I named her Matkah after Kotick's mother, the white seal. But now that I think about it I want my next one to be a white raptor. I'm not please about having two whites though. If I have to double up it will be blue because blue is one of my favorite colors. Aqua/turquoise is actually my fave. Not sure what the difference is. So what I'm planning on doing is once she turns 30 I'll get a white dino and name her Matkah also. Then once my furdragon turns 40, I'll release her and then have my last one be a blue furdragon. So I'll be out of fur again. I didn't plan this well but I guess I was just sick of not having those two resources and having to trade for them especially now with how the market sucks. And now that I'm in a hurry to get my guys to 100 I had forgotten how slow SeaCatch was over all to grow. Even with so many clicks that he gets everyday he's going super slow. ProPhage just turned 97 and it's at these stages that it takes an hour per percent. It's aweful so these are my priority ones. Please click them. They're holding up the passing down of jewelry. I hate it when they wear stuff they've out grown.



I just tried switching to rich text here and it didn't add in the border tags so I just switched back and did it manually.

I finished inking the first Deathclaw stage and will begin coloring it tomorrow. I also worked on some Squiby budgies and made another set of white ones this time. I'll make a separate post for the spoiler section for them. So if you have a squiby please be kind and rate me at 100 on the new white budgie.

There has been way too much change online for my taste lately. I keep forgetting to mention what Yahoo did. I loved that I had this big preview window for my latest five emails. All I had to do was hover over the subjects and read the first five sentences without going in my in box. This was nice to avoid spam and other things I just didn't want to open. Stuff that isn't opened is bold and I like keeping it that way until it gets my undivided attention. Well there's no more mouse over and they changed the text and it just looks aweful now. I'm not happy. So Yahoo, Youtube and DragonAdopters all at once. It's just ridiculous.

Protist my budgie girl is starting to look old to me. I think she's six, I'm not really sure. I need to look through my first photos of her and see if they have a date. She's not that old really and I guess I got spoiled by budgies living for 10 years which is rare. Four to Six is average for a budgie. She's Phage's first born. Never bred her, been trying to but who knows. I love her. She's a pain but she's also a sweety. I need to film her more and take more pics of her while I can.
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Ok, DragonAdopters. I'm still not done ripping into them. This is a small gripe but you have to add the border="0" tag to your html or your pets will have an ugly border around them with the new codes. I got this very good info from schnee about what's happening to gold and silver dragons.

So if you had a gold dragon that, say, had a base production rate of 800 aura before and that got 400 extra from items, you'd have ended up with 2400 before – (800+400)*2 = 2400, but you'll only get 2000 now — (800x2)+400 = 2000. The same thing basically goes for silver aura, too — pretty sucky.

I'll say! That totally makes sense and how I wish I didn't. This explains why ProPhage doesn't make 4010 anymore even though I removed his stuff and put it back on. I still say they're stupid and should set it back the old way with EVERYTHING multiplied by 2 or 1.5.

At least enough people complained about the limits on the markets and they're going to raise it to 30 for resources and 50 for items. Supposedly it's gone into effect but mine still says limit 10.

And now there's an ugly ad for Thaz's wimpy art under the recent visitors list. Swell. I'll just block it on Firefox. I'm screwed on IE. Why doesn't he put it on top like it was before? Burn out my eyes. Does anyone know of a good ad blocker I can use with IE?

At least the recent visitor thing is nice because people will click you back. But as always there's something bad to go with the good. The bad thing is it's so much harder to find open lottos now. Forget playing off your friend's list. I had to go to the ranking and even there like on page 20 I was still getting "Someone already played" message. GRRRR!!! No, Dragon Adopters still sucks. Fancy colors won't win me over. Oh one good point though. I had fun adding custom colors to each dragon. That's just hexidecimal code. Thank goodness there's no stupid buying involved with that or I wouldn't have bothered.

So here's my new stupid egg.


Please click it because she's not growing fast enough for my taste even with 50 clicks a day.

Ok, I'll try to not talk about this anymore tonight. I have had a good day though. My gosh it was freaking cold this morning. It was in the 60's! Yes, I can hear the laughter now all the way down here from you northeners. I had to wear a T-Shrit today when I usually wear a tank top because of the heat. Tonight it will be aweful droping into the 50s. I need to bring in some of the weaker budgies.

I spent most of the day working in Illustrator. I've almost finished the first stage of the baby Deathclaw. It's coming along so nice. I can't wait to finish him and color him! I'd like to make him four stages but I can't think of anything else to add really so he'll be a standard three stage. I still need to finish drawing the other two stages since they went off the page.

A fourth budgie hatched today!! Yeay! I will start to take pics again of the growth progress since people are asking. I don't mind. More budgie pics are always good.

So I'm in the mood to watch The Godfather. I think I shall do that after this post.
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YARG!! I'm still annoyed about Dragon Adopters but it's a little better now. Except for Silver and Gold, dragons have NOT been demoted. It's a glitch I figured out how to fix. I noticed because Talon had 1010 and 1010 for his scales and aura. That seems like a default number when he's naked. So I took off all his jewelry and put it back on and he's back to making 2303 aura like before. Sometimes I had to go as far as taking off a ring, putting on a smaller one to jostle it then putting on the original one so it would register it. I realized this when I looked in my check list and the only thing listed are the items I recently bought. That annoys me because I had one of every item in every color. Now I have to start that over again. Anyway it was hard to do this because my inventory is full so I had to take things off only two at a time and rotate. So do this and your dragons should be fixed except silver and gold. ProPhage was making 4010 for level 96. I fixed him from 1800 to 2936. I'm still losing over 1000 gold a day though. Not happy but slightly better. Kotick was making 1299 a day at level 69. He was making more than Nagaina. After rotating his rings he now makes 1140. He's making less than her. Not good.

Ok more weirdness. Remember when I lost that item a few months back? IT was a special level 90 I put on the market, didn't sell and didn't come back despite me having room? Well it came back tonight and I was like, "What's this doing here? That's not mine!" Actually it is! So it's back on the market. I can't seem to get rid of this thing but now may-be I'll get the resources back I lost on it. Such weird things. Oh and a warning to anyone thinking of releasing a dragon. Strip him of his jewelry or he'll take it with him.

It still doesn't make sense to me why they lowered the production on gold and silver dragons! That's wrong and I will forever complain about it until they fix it. WOW someone just bought that item! Finally! It's gone. Anyway, inventory is still a jumbled mess. Why didn't they fix that so we could arrange items by type and level? Because people only fix what ain't broke.

Ok that's enough about DA. With this and Youtube changing, online just hasn't been as fun lately. Now about real eggs. My third budgie hatched today. I wonder what color these will be? I also got a chance to work on some art. I inked more of the little baby Deathclaw. He's coming along nicely. Oh and since I'm disenchanted with DA right now I'm thinking of closing my click commuity Arvyre_grow. It's fairly dead, no one goes there and I have no real love for it. It's not official yet but I'm heavily leaning in that direction.

I really feel like Comic Book Guy today. "I was on the internet within minutes spreading my disgust throughout the world!" That should be one of my mottos.
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I forgot to mention that Peep and his mate are on their second clutch and their first baby hatched the day before yesterday Oct 11. The second baby hatched today. There were nine eggs, one looks like it died. So we'll see if anymore hatch. If all the rest DO make it I will definitely be handfeeding some of these guys as eight babies is too much for the parents. And no more breeding for that pair this year. I'll have to separate them once the chicks fledge. But now it starts again. I wonder what color they'll be??

Got home late last night and I was too tired to post. Went on two jobs with Chris which was nice. But before all that we finally got Chris's desk set up. Here it is with nothing on it.



I like how modern it is. If you remember Chris's old "desk", you'll see it's a vast improvment over three tables. I've been wanting to do this for him for such a long time now.

( More stuff behind cut )

Because we got home late we missed the first half of The Big Bang Theory.
I've started reading The Seven Daughters of Eve again. Finally made myself wade through the intro genetics chapter all these books have that I already know. So now it's geting interesting with examples of how they've used it to solve mysteries.
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I've had a fairly productive day today. Well before that I need to talk about yesterday. I was going to post but I got sleepy early and never did. Someone had posted about these really cute soap dispenseres that were shaped like pumpkins at Kohls. I looked up where the nearest one was. It was kind of far but Chris said he'd take me to it so we could get them. So we went out that evening. Unfortunately they didn't have them, but they did have lots of Halloween and Autumn things and lots of pumpkins I really wanted. So Chris bought me a big tall ceramic one. It was cool they happened to be having a 50% off sale so we went at the right time. He also got me two pretty pumpkin towels. Here's the big pumpkin.



I LOVE it! It's so big and pretty. I have lots of the round short ones but not any tall ones. I'm partial to the round ones so that's why. But a tall one like this makes a nice centerpiece to my make shift table. This is what all that mad cleaning was about. I wanted to open up a space for this. So after that we went to eat at Red Lobsters and I had my usual rainbow trout. Then we spent the rest of the evening at Borders. Gosh I saw sooo many books that I wanted. The math and science section has been rather boring for months. There was nothing I wanted, but now there are a bunch of books out I really want. Last night was the first night it got dark early. I think around 7 which isn't good. As much as I love the fall I hate the short days and the cold that will certainly follow. I like things comfy and cool, but not cold.

The rest of the pics are going behind the cut.

( More pumpkins and a naughty budgie girl )

Oh and I got more writing done on my story today. Hurray!! Gosh I can't wait to finish it. Oh and I have a very fun phone conversation with earthmother45.
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I had someone unfriend me here on LJ out of the blue. I asked her why both on her journal and on mine. No response. It doesn't make sense to me especially since we'd both recently left friendly comments on our newer entries. I'm not too bothered by it because she hardly ever commented anyway, but what does bother me is that she couldn't answer my question and tell me why. I had the same thing happen with another girl on DA, and after I defended her in a flamewar she wouldn't tell me either when I asked her. You know after standing up for her she owed me and the only thing I asked for was an explaination. I don't care what she said so long as I got an answer. It bugs me when people can't face me and be honest. When I remove people for whatever reason I will tell them unless they are totally gone and I can't get a hold of them any more. But perhaps it's time I prune my friend's list again. I have a few accounts that are just sitting around inactive for months now. I don't know, perhaps I was removed because of all the flamewars, but that doesn't make sense to me as this person owns message boards and you'd think she'd be used to getting that. We've never had a fight. May-be it's lack of common ground. That would make sense, but if that's the case I'd still like to hear about it. There just isn't enough information. It's another WTF moment.

But I do have a new friend on here. I'd like to welcome memnet. We met on cucurbitaceae and have many common interest like our love of the Fall and pumpkins.

Today has been a GREAT day. Chris and I had a great time on DragonAdopters. I think Azoga's account must have gotten hacked because he was putting up offers of 1337 for 1 resources. I'd been trying to grab them but it was hard because others were. So I told Chris to come on and help me. We finally managed to nab some but then I had the idea to see if he would grab a reverse order. That would be easier. So I put up 1 resource in exchange for 1337. HE TOOK IT!! OMG! So we started putting those up then bigger offers like 100 for 1000 and 1000 for 10,000. He was taking them all from us! We got all the colors and all the sheddings and made out like bandits. We'd take turns and say, "He's selling again. Start clicking." Then after awhile it was, "He's buying again, put up offers." "He's taking white. Now he's giving dragon fur, ask for dragon fur." We did that for an hour! We saw one of our friends on and we said she probably wondered why we were putting up such lousy offers and who would take them? Well that's why, they were being taken. Finally it stopped so we assumed he must have emptied all his resources. What a break for us though! We made tens of thousands in profit! I never liked him always being on the market cluttering things up. His whole opperation seems fishy. How can he have so much silver and gold with only two dragons of normal colors? We suspect he hacked the site and gave himself resources. The guy was never off the computer. So either he got hacked, or was high or drunk or something. But it worked in our favor.

We got a new filter for our shock vac. We cleaned it up and it works so well now. We really needed it because trying to sweep up tiny feathers with a dust pan and broom is just insane. Now I can make little piles and just suck them up. I changed some budgie cages around. I put Protist and the English budgie outside and brought in the Gage babies. I hope they'll make nice pets. They were so sweet last time. But of course they're afraid right now being in new surroundings and a new cage. But I had to get them out of their old cage. They were too big and fighting with their dad too much.



Here they are all grown up. Aren't they cute? But they still have baby faces. I have more pics so I'll put those and a few quizes behind a cut.

( Budgies and Quizes Ahoy! )
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I've had a very good day today. I went out with Chris on a job on the water front. The customer was nice and she showed me her garden. She told me she had pumpkins and when I saw them I was amazed! This was the nicest pumpkin patch I'd ever seen in Florida. Pumpkins really don't grow here and these were in great shape. They were in a long skinny bed hanging over the water. She said the manatees could come and eat what hung over. I've never seen sea side pumpkins and asked if I could take pictures and post them on my journals. She said it was ok. I showed her the difference between male and female flowers and how to pollinate them. She didn't know there were two types so I'm glad I showed her as her males and females weren't opening at the same time. She had five female buds that I told her would make great pumpkins. We exchanged emails which reminds me I need to write her because she wanted to see my youtube vids of my birds and moths. I'm a bit tired right now and will get the pics out of my camera later. I'm going to post them over at cucurbitaceae because I think people would enjoy them there.

I picked up a cute pumpkin ceramic bowl to put the candy corn in for display. The house is really starting to look nice and look festive. We had a yummy dinner at Bob Evans. I had a salmon which was so good and big that I had left overs. I like getting left overs because that will be my lunch tomorrow.

I forced the budgies to fledge the other day. I shoved them out through the hole. They really didn't want to go and were hanging on to the hole with their feet so hard. But now the blue male comes out and only goes in to sleep. The green female is more shy. But I was surprised to find an egg today despite the babies still going in the box. I need to clean the nestbox so I'll have to take the egg out while I do that. I like to clean the nestboxes well between clutches. But it's funny the mother and babies are in there with the egg. The kids aren't even weaned and they're starting a new clutch.

All my Squiby whales grew up. Check out how awesome and dark these guys are!

Click Me! Click Me!Click Me!

I don't know which one is my fave. I like them all for different reasons. Moby is all bloody and evil. He's recently killed something. Toxic Cachelot is just cool and black. And Physeter is blue. I LOVE that tourquoise so I just love him for his colors. And all of them look realistic and tough. These are definitely some of my favorite squibies.
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Arrr, avast me mateys. It's Talk Like A Pirate Day again. But I'm not going to keep it up long. I just read a longer chapter for Moby Dick out loud to Chris so I've been talking like a pirate hehe. But in the spirit of this fine day here are some cute pirate parrots.



I LOVE these and am so glad I found them. He's a scarlet macaw. Three more behind the cut.

( Pirate Parrots )

Silvolf, think you could reduce the computer one to icon size for me? That would be cool. I need a pirate icon for this holiday. All these make nice icons. I just don't like the long pause at the end of the one with the sword.

I got three of the four stages done for the pumpkin. Check these out.



I'm quite please with how these turned out. I'll have to release them in two parts with two stages each. Hopefully the final stage will turn out as nice as these.

I ended up going to bed at 1 am last night but didn't fall asleep until 3. So I'm tired a little early today. Eventually I'll get to post about everything I want to talk about. But for now it's time for a budgie update because I got behind and I got requests about seeing the budgie progress.

( Big baby budgies )

Well that's about it for now I guess.
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At last I'm finished with my first Squiby Adoptable. I've never uploaded one so this should be interesting. This will be the official spoiler section for anyone that wants to have a look. This budgie is based off my beloved Pet Phage. He's the one in my icon. You always see green and blue budgies but you rarely see light yellows or whites. He's a yellow faced recesive pied sky blue to be exact. It's too badt he final stage turned out so small. It's hard working in the restraints of the box they give you. I even angled him to make him as big as possible. These look so much better in full size. I thinkt he fourth stage is the best just because it's the biggest and you can see it best.



Des's Squiby account.

EDIT: Well I may not upload the budgie after all. You're only allowed three stages. You have to pay to add more. It's five dollars for 500 credits and each stage costs 100 credits. Now I know why people only make three stage pets. It's not that they're lazy artists, it's that most people aren't going to pay to show off their own art. So I'm not happy about this. I uploaded mine and have it as unlisted but I may just delete it completely. Glad no one saw it then. I'm disapointed. I don't think I should bother coloring the pumpkin now. Three stages is lame. I'm also annoyed because there's a glitch that when you use IE it thinks you're not uploading .png's. So I downloaded firefox just for that too. What a waste.
EDIT:EDIT: This is kind of lame but what would you guys say to me uploading it in two parts? So you'd get Budgie pt1 which would be egg through stage 3 then adopt stage 4 going to stage 6? It's the only way I can think of getting around the amount of stages without paying. But seems like a hassle to adopt two pets that are really one. Oy!!
EDIT:EDIT:EDIT: Last edit I promise. I have decided I WILL upload them in parts then. So it will be Budgie Pt 1 an Budgie pt 2.
Final Edit: The budgie is now up as one pet with six stages! Hurray!
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I'm very excited because I've joined a new adoptables site. I long ago gave up on all the others except for DragonAdopters. I have abandonded those sites and the pets there are on their own. But I have joined Squiby after looking at Darknessiguana's pets on her LJ. Yes, I have been secretly stalking your pets all these months past. I like the art there and I joined. But what really has me excited is you can upload your own pets! Some one has made a budgie and I adopted it but it's rather crappy. I can do a much better job and I have. I've already drawn all the stages for the budgie I will be uploading. I'm very excited by the idea that people will be playing with my art. They're going to love me I know it! Anyway, here's my preliminary sketch.



The one in the lower left won't be used as I messed it up. But including the egg this budgie will have six stages. Now I just need to force myself to ink it in Illustrator. Squiby is addicting. I think I have over twenty pets now. Don't worry I won't be posting them all. Just ones I think are really cool looking. Here is my Squiby account. If you're really bored and want to help feel free to click them. It's nice some people put up spoilers because it's hard to tell what you're getting from just eggs. If I make any pets that aren't birds or reptiles I will not make eggs. If they are mammals I will simply draw embryos. Mammals don't hatch from eggs anyway...with two exceptions.

Oh and notice someone made marshmellow bunnies. It' up to me to create some Peeps chicks and bunnies that look right. I'll definitely post spoilers to any pets I make because I don't like picking up something that might look cool in the first stage then sucks in the final one. I need to spruce up my profile too. You can use CSS which I'm not too familiar with and make your own design and headers. I may look into that but for now I'll just use simple html. I'll try to make some pet gourds and pumpkins too. Let's hope these guys aren't a let down like arvyre was. But so far they seem to run well and the fact they are world famous should say something.

I keep forgetting to mention that I found this cute site that makes bird art called Birdorable. They have images you can use. Unfortunately the are for myspace but they work on LJ too. I had to share the budgie one.



If someone adds me again I'll have to use this. They have a lot of neat bird art you can buy on almost anything like shirts, cups, clocks etc.

Lastly would you guys please click my first three dragons? I hate that all my dragons are backed up and I can't pass on their jewelry yet. Talon is only a few percents from 99. Prophage is one level from 90 and Sea Catch is a few percents from 80 and all of them are backed up because of this. Also I'm impatient and want them to hurry up. I'm sacrificing my reds right now and have Talon decked out with growth items.



EDIT: Oops almost forgot to mention. I did decorate a little today. I got my ceramic pumpkins and gourds out on the breakfast bar, my jack-o-lantern garlan, and my gourd wicker light. I hope to add more as the season progresses.
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The budgies are getting bigger. Chris took these pics of me holding them today.



Here's the blue one. I think this is a male. I love his colors.

( Three more )

Yesterday we went to wal-mart because we needed a new dish brush. The first pumpkins of the year are out! I was thrilled they had boxes of pie pumpkins and those little colorful gourds. Soo cute, but we didn't buy any yet. I can't wait for them to start popping up everywhere. I think it's time to decorate the house too. I found a gift for a much belated birthday too. Now saying who yet. I hope that today we can weed out the garden more. It's better but it's still a jungle out there.
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The budgies are getting bigger. They should be fledging soon.



Here's a close up of the little green one.

( Three more behind cut )

Oh man, photobucket doesn't have the feature anymore where you clicked the link and it automatically copied it for you. Now I have to hit ctrl C. Good thing I noticed or I would have pasted the same thing over and over.

Well short post for now. Not much to say, but perhaps I will have more interesting things tonight.
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It's time for another budgie update. I'm glad I'm not hand feeding these babies. What was great about Phage was that he was a parent raised bird but was naturally tame. I'll never forget how I found him in the petstore. This was shortly after my first beloved talking budgie Virus had died. He was a white recesive pied and I was very sad still and wanted another budgie. Chris and I went to a store where they had a big bin full of budgies. When you stick your hand in all the budgies would run away fluttering. But this one beautiful light yellow recesive pied didn't run at all. I reached down and clasped him in my hand and he didn't budge. He didn't wiggle, or bite or try to escape. I LOVED that! He had this calm cocky look in his eyes and I HAD to have him. I seldom ask for things but this time I said, "Please buy him for me." To Chris. He couldn't say no. And he's been the best budgie I've ever had and the best talking bird I've ever had. And I want to keep passing down the natural calm tameness. So far it's been working. These babies are calm and don't try to run away and aren't afraid. I play with them every morning just in case.



They are starting to get their colors now. I think the blue one is also an opaline meaning he'll have a V shape on his back where the lines would have been on a normal blue.

( More budgie pics )

We worked a little more in the garden yesterday. I'm quite happy with how we're making progress. We've actually uncovered the raised beds! I can see a little into the veggie garden again. Then we went to HomeDepot. I wanted to get some ideas for the garden and I'm thinking of building an aviary out back for the budgies and tiels. The problem with the one the pigeons are in is that the chicken wire has HUGE holes that budgies could get through. Also the original owner was an idiot and I'm amazed the thing is still standing. But I'd like something more secure that doesn't have rotten wood.

Chris got me a blade sharpener for my hedge clippers. My clippers have had it and don't cut anything anymore. I was so worried we'd have to buy some kind of big sharpening machine. My mind was envisioning a huge stone wheel like the knights used to sharpen their swords. So I was amazed when the clerk showed us this tiny hand held sharpener that was cheap. YAY!! And Chris got me a bag of red hubbard squash seeds. I've only grown the blue ones and the red ones are kind of rare so it will be cool to try these too. I really can't wait to fix the veggie garden up!

EDIT: Please click my red and gold dragons. I need them to grow fast. Talon is almost 100.


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I've done some major reworking of my Youtube site. I made some playlists to organize all my similar videos. I also shortened and updated my profile on there. I realize I need to reinstall Sony Vegas Movie Studio if I want to make another video to upload. I watched some of my gardening videos and gosh do I need to get back into it. The garden is a disaster right now and to see how nice I had it, especially last year makes me realize I need to take better care of it. Of course having a hurt knee hasn't helped matters since I can do so little per day out there. But Chris is going to help me and we need to cut down the jungle that has grown over everything.

Every night I read a few chapters of Moby Dick to Chris. I'm so glad he's enjoying this book so much though occassionally the old English leaves me wondering what the Hell I just said. Doesn't happen often but it did tonight. When Ishmael goes into one of his historical rants I sometimes get lost. But now he's caught up to where I had left off on my own. So I probably won't read ahead and just have the chapters be new again for me. I did read the book a few years back but I don't remember all the details.

Ok time for budgies and a drink.



This is the older blue budgie. He decided to get too close to the camera. It's funny. These guys have such colorful pastel feathers already that I wonder if they'll be rainbows? Well Peep's mom Seagrass was a rainbow hen.

( Budgies and a drink )
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Let me get the kinda bad stuff out of the way first. Darwin my grey English budgie finally died today. I've been expecting him to go for a year now and was amazed he hung in there so long. English budgies live around four years and he was nine. I'm obviously doing something right with my English budgies as they all have lived about a decade now. I'm not really sad about it because he was in such bad shape and was so old I was hoping he'd pass on so he wouldn't suffer anymore. I knew today would be the day when I found him at the bottom of the cage and he looked horrible. I set up a little cage for him with his own food and water away from the other more crazy birds. I saw him eat like two seeds. I'd walk in and see a poofy budgie head sticking up above the bottom plastic part of the cage. He finally died around 4pm and I was glad it was over. I do miss him and he was beautiful. I've never cared for grey budgies. I always thought it was an ugly color, but when I saw Darwin at the birdshow nine years ago he struck me as so handsome despite being grey. I HAD to have him. He was huge and he was show quality. I've always been proud of him and even in death he looked so handsome, though he was way too thin by this point. I only have my green English now from the last post and one old blue female. Emma, but she might be too old to breed. She was Darwin's mate and I think a year or two younger than him. I cut off the little leg bands he wore as they say he was hatched in 2000. It's interesting I have a new young budgie that flew into my life to fill the void. That's how I deal with death. I have to fill the void instantly. It all worked for the better.

Speaking of the new budgie; she's doing great! Yesterday it rained like crazy and I realized how lucky she is to not have to sleep in the rain. She also stuffed her face full of food. Again lucky budgie. Life in the wild is tough. But I think she knew that and why she flew to me. She's not limping anymore so she's recovered from hitting the window. And the baby budgies are doing great! I'll post another update pic of them tomorrow.

One of Chris's customers gave him a few plants yesterday. He's a gardener and when he mentioned to him I like gardening too he gave him I think a miniature palm tree and two herbs of some sort. I need to plant the herbs if they haven't already died in the bag. Eep. I really don't know what most of these things are and I hope the palm won't get big. I really don't know what to do with it. Gifts are nice but if you don't put your foot down sometimes you end up with stuff you don't want, don't know what to do with or someone else's problem.

Live Journal question. For those of you that have flexible squares: I think they changed the look of the response page. Look at This screen cap. I don't remember that link being there where it says "2 souls devoured - post new comment". I know mine's custom so on a defualt it's probably "2 replys - post new comment". Still I don't remember that link being right under the post. Usually the link for response is in the post and it still is, it's on there twice and kind of redundant. Is it just me or is this new and I never noticed before?
EDIT: I think I know what changed! It used to say just "post new comment". But now it says how many replys there are too which I don't like.

And now I'd like to share with you my cute cup collection.



This is my summer collection. I got these at Wal-greens a few years ago. I love Wal-Greens and spend way too much time there. Ok the rest behind the cut.

( Cups )
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Happy September. For me it is now officially fall!! Yeay!! Oh that means I need to update my banner. There done. I'm so looking forward to pumpkin and gourd season. This morning it was cloudy and a bit cooler so that was nice.

Well I'm posting early because I want to share some cool budgie news. Mainly another wild budgie came to my yard today and I caught this one!! But before that here's a funny picture of my green English budgie.



I love his round eye. He was scared of the camera and it shows. Ok the rest of the pics will go behind the cut.

( Budgie babies and new budgie girl )

What a neat budgie day it's been so far.
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I heard the horrible news from two different people know about Disney buying out Marvel for four billion dollars. This is aweful! Pixar has never been the same since Disney totally bought them out. What's going to happen to Spiderman and X-men? What's great about comic books is how violent they are. But Disney is a goodie two shoes and I fear they will ruin all the comics and movies. So now the only way villains can die will be by accidentally falling off cliffs and the heros will feel guilty about it. YARG! I say it's time for the nerds to revolt. One thing that's disturbing is that there is a legal issue with The Hulk and if it's not resolved about ownership or something Disney will just overlook it and that character will never be able to be used again. Same for Iron Man but I don't care about him. This is definitely not good.

In budgie news, the babies are getting bigger and I have pictures to share.

( Baby budgies )

And I'm thrilled to have gotten some writing in today. Not much but a little is better than none. I tried to draw Owen in an angry pose but I just couldn't do it. He turned out ok but I wondered if I was losing my ability. But then I started on a drawing of Cope and am very happy with how it's turning out so far.



I have a very hard time with vehicles. I finally faced one of my fears and am attempting to draw his motorcycle. It's supposed to look like a sports bike but it's really giving me a hard time. Suzi, or anyone really I could really use some help as this is all new to me. I'm having a hard time with this, what am I doing wrong? Again I don't mind trace overs in red ink. They help a lot actually. But as far as Cope himself I LOVE his pose. I got that down right. Drawing people isn't really an issue for me. It's drawing vehicles that is hard. But this will be so cool once I can get the bike finished.
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