it's 11:14 and in theory all good little honey bees should be in bed now but nope...one poor little bee ended up, first in my hair scareing the absolute shit out of me while I sat at the computer and then proceeded to try and fly into the lamp. He was a bit lost, a lot disoriented and on his way to being a dead bee. I lost it atthe buzzing in my ear part because I don't do that insects buzzing in my ear bit very well. For those of you who have seen madegascar think...

NATURE, IT'S ALL OVER ME!!!!!GET IT OFF ME!!!!!!
sad for me, there are A LOT of stupid and disproportionately HUGE buzzing insects here. And I have been stung more here by bees than I have in my entire life... now I know I am not allergic it just hurts.

I ransaked the garden yesterday and pulled up all the mad poppy plants that were trying to take over the world. The problem with the poppies is not that they are a mad tangle of green and red and black but that they are aphid city central and that means ants. Now I don't mind anty ... that much... but I do mind them in the billions when they farm the aphids and bite me while I am having supper on my deck.Plus the poppies were crowding the roses out and that was that. the roses were a birthday gift the poppies come free of charge thanks to the wind and last year's seed surprise packet.

So needless to say there were a LOT of confused ants running around the terrace today going 'Hey where's the aphids at???'  Try the compost heap across the way dudes, I tell them...but ants, like poppies, don't listen.

My roses are starting to discover that they quite like being spoiled rotten. Another flowered this morning. An exquisite perfect flower of pale lavender that has the best rose scent yet! Now the Snow whites are budding and starting to show their white dresses. I wonder though if that's what got the poppies all up in an uproar... before the roses came they were the prima donnas of the garden in their flimsy flittery red and pink dresses that gave way to the wind far too easily. My friend Sarah A. from NSCAD wrote a little book about how flowers helped with home work and I have a copy... she mentiones poppies, she doesn't mention roses.

Today was hotter than hell. And weird. But the laundry dried like crazy which was nice and I am getting a tan from just hanging it ... I never go out into the sun other than to hang the damned laundry. I am ever vigilant now since I had that weird pre cancerous skin stuff on my nose burnt/ frozen off.

the writing is at an all time low but you know.. it's hard to be creative when your brain is cooking! And while the rest of CH is getting wild thunderstorms and COOLING down we here in the southern snip are continuing to sweat. I guess this is why I start my fitness jag in the summer, I sweat more and there by feel as though I have actually done something.

Mostly though I am restless. I always get edgy and woudn when the weather is like this, it's as though it calls to some deep seated primal thing in me that makes me long to be some place else doing god knows what. I yearn but i don't know what for. It's weird and a bit frustrating because I would have though that this internal restlessness woulld have eased with age somewhat but nope.... every summer when it heats up I get that Ottawa jag... and long for the sounds of motor bikes , or boys skateboarding down South street at 3 am, the sound of saxaphone being played across a roof top and that lustful ache for really slow great seduction... God knows what it is but the heat sets it off and I am unbearable to live with.

I spent much of today checking out belly dance sites, especially tribal sites and places to buy the tribal style berber/kuchi/turkoman jewellery. I love that stuff.
Tomorrow is Thursday...LOST day and on Friday I meet with my buyer of paintings and I am nervous...But I have sold my first pieces from the RE-Cycled series and am thrilled as well. Pretty cool I think. eep.

Must remember to photograph them tomorrow, sincethe lighting is optimal.

and that folks is that....I am going to bed..

Until then, be excellent to each other. 

okay so there is nothing like tromping around from shop to shop to TRY and find one thing.

Ikea was out of Billy corner pieces ( IKEA out of something is BAD) and no where else had anything even remotely like this in stock either.

This is the down side of living here.... avliability of stuff.

so consider me cranky and annoyed and very frustrated about this...

on the up side we did find us both new sandals at decent prices, lost dvds part 2, and mexican beer ( yay us).

we'll bbq again today using the Rudy's BBQ spices that J&H gave us holy jumpin jesus is that stuff GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOD. And I mean good. yum yum yum.

okay enough cranky pants...and i will forego the rant on insanely stupid people who suddenly stop in the entrance to the shop! grrrr arggg

Until then be excellent to each other

A couple of my friends have asked me why blog? The yhave both said almost exactly the same thing..... that they didn't really get the blogging thing...anyway they made me think about my reasons for doing this blog stuff.

1: it is the very best way for me to keep in touch with a bunch of my friends who are scattered all over the world without me having to write a ton of emails every day ( laziness)
2: I have always kept a journal of sorts so this is a continuation of this in a different medium, one I find much easier truth be told.
3: I read other people's blogs because...they are A: my friends andthey blog to keep in  touch with their friends because writing a ton of email is just a pain when life is normal andt here's nothing new new special to write about.and B: because I am nosey!

See the absolute truth of the matter is nosiness. Although that being said I don't read every blog that comes along only those of people I know some how, either from real life or friends I have made online. (yes I have friends) I suppose it is a way of being reminded that the world is still out there and that some people never change and some do.

There are some really good writers of blogs out there, they are able to make even the most mundain things sound interesting and fun, then there are the people who I thought would be excellent bloggers who turn out to be the exact opposite.It seems that writing about life the universe and everything does require a certain amount of .... dunno what word to use, talent? desire to be creative while spouting about one's self? Less me and more they? I actually have no idea. But I do know a bad blog when I read it. and yet I continue to read? why? because I am nosey. ( call a spade a spade right? )

What I find interesting about the blog thing is how easily people who write them forget that it's not just friends reading ( unless you LJ and then you have that feature) Everyone can read apublic blog.... your friends, your enemies, your inbetweens and utter strangers that you'll never meet.... I am always surprsied sometimes at what gets written down for the world to see...( including my own self)

I started this blog thing because my friend Mi started hers just after she moved away. It was a good way for us to talk to each other without phone bills and stuff... and it just sort of blossomed for me. I now keep 4 blogs, 2 are real life and 2 are fiction as in I am writing books in blog form for the world to see based on a why the hell not?

Why keep 2 blogs... now that IS the question isn't it? I mean surely one is enough to spout all the gibberish and dullness of life so why 2?

well this is my main one...the first one and the place I hang out with all my links. BUT Tblog started to "upgrade" (god how I love that word) and they messed stuff up that really annoyed the bejezzler out of me. My page lay out changed without me being able to fix it back up and the whole system in general became more complex and FAR more annoying.... so I went in search of other options...

Around the same time, SWG went boom with the NGE and many peeps were posting on LJ ( that's live journal  for all you non blogger types) Now LJ has been around for a while and they have some pretty nifty features, like being able to private your posts or lock them so only people on your friend list can see them etc......but often in order to reply to a post on someone's LJ blig you need to be an LJ member so...... I started an LJ blog that was, in the beginning a place to rant about the unholy hell SOE unleashed when they implimented the stupid NGE. however, that got old fast!

I mean you know ranting.... boring....gotta cap it at some point.

Then I discovered a bunch of folks from my past were on LJ. And I could keep in touch with an entirely different circle of people that don't use tblog and probably don't read it either, and LJ links to your friends and does some pretty cool stuff, like give you multiple user pics and stuff!!!!!! It's not that I actually advertise my blog here that much anyway so many people didn't know it was me or that I was alive or any of that nifty stuff. So I began to post memes on the lj blog, silly stuff but of course that led to real posts and voila suddenly i was keeping 2 real life blogs... go figure. Now I trade off, it depends on what I want to say and how I guess...

The Blogspot blogs are fictional. There are a lot of cool fictional blogs out there....I enjoy writing books in this way for other people who want to read them to read them... It is a nice way of reaching an audience and being published without the stress. And with the Star Wars fan fic since publishing is a pipe dream why the hell not? Now my other writings that's different we'll have to see what happens there.

Blogspot is like the adult version of LJ. And I love blogspot's ability to let me really mess with my template and HTML stuff around.....

So blogging does a number of things. It allows me to keep in touch with lots of people easily. It allows me to see what my friends and enemies and all those in between are doing.... spies R us!!!! and it is a place to allow my creative writing bug to go mad...as it were.

so..there's your answer.

Now today will bea fun day, we head off to IKEA and buy a corner shelf thing for the art studio! yay... and I will hopefully get some writing done, and start reseach for my marginalia paper, I have some art stuff to deal with and get going on and then ... I start my standard beginning of new reign signet clerk stuff. That is chase down long term assignments that are still not done and poke the inactive scribes a bit to see if they are still doing stuff or if I need to reassign the works at hand. Pull out the looking for card to try and get some of the completed but not yet found a home for scrolls ... maybe we get them home this reign.. I keep trying. and sort out the general signet office stuff.

Am still working on a handbook/ wording booklet and gathering stuff for an eventual website. I do have a deadline so... the clock is ticking as they say. I am busy and it feels great!

So...until then, be excellent to each other!

So we vanished for the weekend to a safe haven with most excellent friends. We drove three hours on crazy Italian roads and arrived at the Villa and what a villa. WOW comes to mind. BEAUTIFUL. Lots of space, marble floors high ceilings and a stunning garden. We arrived and were treated to HUGE hugs and great wine and not enough time....

The thing I am always amazed at is how much I miss other people and the company of friends, especially people with whom it is so easy to be with. Like family. We got to relax, were spoiled rotten and I was able to talk with one of my best friends and get that oh so very important different perspective on things that one just doesn't get talking to ones self.

Shoes and ships and sealing wax... it was fun. Luy and Lizards and that's all I am gonna say about that!

We had to come home too soon but the drive home was easy. 3 hours was all. The it was back to real life with a bump with some extra added tasks... we also have a truck load of amazing happy memories!

So here's to friends!!! Here is to my friends all over the world, magical and precious! Love you guys!

yeah mushy I know.

Until then, be excellent to each other.

t-blog's totally messed up formatting drives me up the f-ing wall

so yeah the previous post is all messed and no matter how many times I tried to reformat it..ta da same shit!

I really am starting to hate this blog ...grrrrrrrrrr

So... my allergies are starting to calm down and breathing is not a struggle any more...I still think I should have taken out shares in the tissue company, I spend enough money on them... but there you go, shoulda-woulda-coulda.

so until then, be excellent to each other.....

there is plenty of space for all on the terrace!

I have a commission to do. I am grateful and a bit scared. The last time i did a commission when I was done the person who had hired me told me point blank she wasn't payingthat amount for a "stupid drawing of her dog" I think at the time I asked for 80. CDN for an 11x14 portrate of her husky. I was a bit devastated. Since then I shyed away from commissions.

The only art work I have done on demand so to say is SCA scrolls, primarily because it was an easy market, market not that I get paid for that work but still, it was practice in the art of pleasing a customer..sort of.

Now I have the possability of real work like as in I GET PAID for what  I am doing and it's nerve wracking. The  customer is a bit vague about their desires but in the end I guess it will work out. I hope so...

So now I am in full acrylic and computer bit paint mode. It is a nice break from the writing and the scrolls. The writing is a sort of self imposed break as I just am a bit stumped at the moment. I am blaming the allergies. So while I wait for paint to dry I think it's cup of tea time and maybe something to eat. M came back from sicily very very late last night. I got to see season 2's 1st three episodes of lost and okay that show just keeps on getting weirder and weirder.

It is sunny today but cool, we have a long weekend and I have to buy canvases on teh weekend...yay! I aslo need to sort out my studio big time which means also sorting out the basement a bit I need to get at my many boxes of bits.... life just got busy again wheeeee

until then, be excellent to each other!