Went on another photography tour of the Louisville Zoo today, where we met a Disapproving Owl, a Pleased Frog, a Gorgeous Tarantula and this charming Hawaiian hawk, among other pretties. As always, more piccies here!

For the bronies I know are out there: cute pony video.

For the people I know who share my musical taste: "Clash" by Caravan Palace is awesome, and it (and the associated album, "Panic", which is equally awesome) is available on Amazon! Grab it!

*dances*

My delicate but recovering muse has produced something which is Not A Pony! (Never fear, another Euphemism Pony awaits coloring on my desk, and, Tallyhawk, your picture is half penciled and brewing...:)

My company has introduced optional Tuesday Morning Yoga at the delightful hour of Stupid O'Clock. It's actually kind of fun -- any activity with six buff men in workout clothes ought to be -- although it's embarrassing how little range of motion I apparently have. What I lack in bendiness I apparently make up for in innuendo...it's so hard not to giggle while a person whose head is between their ankles says phrases like "warrior pose" and "downward-facing dog"....

I've had something of a desk job recently, and I've been trying to get out occasionally and use my legs to remind me that they're still there. Yesterday was stupidly hot and disgusting, and it took til about 11:00 pm for me to deem it safe to go out. I've not walked in this neighborhood after dark before, so I grab the Cute Man, and the little flashlight I use just in case, for very dark places, and off we go for a quick, relaxing, 30-minute stroll around the block.

We get a few yards from the house, and I detect something in my sandal. I sit down on the pavement to investigate and remove it (pebble), and hear the Man, a few feet behind me, mutter something that sounds like "cockroaches".

He's bending over, looking at the pavement. Have I mentioned that I'm sitting on the pavement? "Cockroaches?"

"Yeah!" he says, pointing. "Five or six of 'em!"

I levitate from my sitting position (have I mentioned I was sitting on the pavement?) and stroll over, flashlight in hand. I don't know from "cockroaches", but three or four two-inch-long, black, armored, winged beetles are hugging the curb, looking pissed, waiting for us to move on. Have I mentioned I was, up until very recently, sitting on the pavement? Have I mentioned I had sandals on?

I switch off the flashlight, and we head back out on our walk. "More of them!" the Man says. I switch the light back on, and, yes, the sidewalk has about one to three beetles per square foot. When the light hits them, they make rude gestures and flee into the grass.

Have I mentioned my sandals? I really ought to mention my sandals.

The Cute Man walks ahead of me -- there is a terrible crunching -- the Man *stomps* ahead of me, making sure the beetles have ample warning of our approach. The beetles refuse to move unless hit by the light, and I keep my flashlight aimed at the Man's feet. I see sleek black bodies pouring off the edges of the sidewalk as we pass; I hear tiny cries of "Viva la revolucion!"

And that, Officer, is why we were running frantically along the sidewalk at 11:30 pm, making for the house with all possible speed, with the Cute Man waving his arms, jumping, and stomping like a rhinoceros, and me floating on my tiptoes directly behind him, waving a flashlight around my feet in circles.

Every so often, there comes a Thing -- something so bizarre, so unusual, so wonderful I must put it in my house, no matter the cost. For example, a million years ago, I bought the original of Ursula Vernon's Mammoth Garlic, because I could hear Marty Stouffer in the background of it, narrating their ponderous, delicious migration to the buttery rivers of southern Italy. It was entirely too expensive, and worth every goddamn penny, and I'd buy it again. It delights me every time I see it.

So recently, I entered a store called the Starving Artist, with the vain hope it was an art supplies store. I was disappointed to find that it was, in fact, an art store, full of, well, a lot of hopeful people's First Oil Paintings: Still Life with Grapes, Still Life with Apples, Still Life with Pears, Badly Drawn Tiger, Miscellaneous European Street, Night in Paris, Night in Paris II, Evening in Paris, Late Afternoon in Paris, and Still Life in Paris with Grapes, Pears and Tiger. This being horse country, there were also lots of paintings of expensive racehorses. So you've got to picture the scene: a room with dark, elegant walls and subtle lighting, full to bursting with enormous, pretentious oil paintings, just yearning to be hung in magnificent marble halls.

And then there was...well...this:



She's an original oil painting, as far as we know. She's unsigned, alas. She's on our wall, we've decided her name is Olivia -- possibly Saint Olivia -- and we haven't the faintest idea, either. I think that's kind of the point. We love that someone, somewhere, decided there was a hole in the universe...and this was what should be filling it. :)

Oh, the difference a working scanner makes. Getting images scanned at work reminds me of the bad old days in high school, having to sneak in pages of, er, "naked animals" in to my father's place of business in order to "borrow" their scanner and internet connection....;)

Here is a much better version of Mr Yello and his haiku:



And here are two more Euphemism Ponies. I'm thrilled with how these turned out (it's very difficult to capture the tooth-dissolving cuteness of the really tiny baby ponies) but I am sad because unfortunately ponies this young do not have cutie marks, and so there are no helpful visual clues as to their names. Thus, only you and I will ever know that these two delightful young ponies are named Baby Momma, and Baby Daddy....:)




(Because they'll be good parents when they grow up, of course!)

Ugh...the scanner is juuuuust about dead. I cannot describe what it has done to this image ("Color matching"? What is this?)...I will try to fix it on the office scanner tomorrow, but in the meantime I wanted to share. (Don't worry -- there are ponies coming too!)

The night after we euthanized our poor Mr Yello, I was dreaming about...well, let's not go there...and woke up with a haiku perfectly formed in my head. It stuck long enough for me to try to draw it. (Believe me, the little yello dog below looks much better in person!)

Around 12:30 this morning, we lost a certain Yello dog.

Mr Yello (aka Aki, aka Akhenaten) was very nearly 12 years old, and had lost most of his sight and some of his hearing but none of his Yelloness. Last Wednesday we noticed he was not feeling well, and when he was still sad on Friday we took him to the vet. Alas, he had cancer. We bought him some time with steroids and hoped to give him two happy months or so, but it was not to be. Last night he stopped eating again, and appeared to be experiencing fairly severe internal bleeding. With the diagnosis of cancer looming above him, and only a short time left anyway, it appeared that the kindest option was to euthanize him.

He went fast and painlessly in the arms of two people who love him very much, and he knew to the last that he was a Good Dog. He was Yello to the very end, and we miss him terribly, and I only hope we saved him some suffering.

Tonight we consumed mass amounts of food in his honor (although, in deference to the other diners at Bella Notte, we refrained from eating out of stainless steel bowls on the floor, and from rolling in anything), and tomorrow we will bury him next to my parents' old dog, Miss Agnes.

Here is one of the last photos of Mr Yello, doing his best to guess what arcane ritual will cause the Cute Man to give him an ice cream cone.



(Yes, he eventually got the cone.)

Look who Billie dropped in my lap! (We both enjoyed the experience, of course) It's Pitcher and Catcher!



They're either "Covering All The Bases" or "Racing For Home", depending on whom I ask. :)

Aaaaaand it looks like the old scanner has given up the ghost (what interesting vertical lines it's drawn through my picture, and what fascinating color balance!). Hopefully it will last through the next pair of Euphemism Ponies (who have already popped out of my pocket, demanding to be drawn) until I can get a new one...:)

The Cute Man and I visited the Indianapolis Zoo this past weekend. Over three days I took 1500 photos! About 70 of them did not suck. Here are a couple of my favorites, and the remainder are visible here!

Sometime around ... gawd, was it six years ago now? ... the entire universe kinda went to shit. It took Falstaff and Billie -- basically, my artistic muse -- with it. My career exploded, my job exploded, my life exploded, I learned a lot of really horrible stuff, I became a different person, moved to a different city, moved again, moved again, and had to start what feels like a whole new life.

Billie and Falstaff started poking their heads in about...oh...eight or nine months ago. Just checking in, says Falstaff. Billie, per usual, proved to be more sticky. I quietly dug out the art desk, and let it sit, hopefully, for a bit. I made sure the pencils were out. And today Billie sat down with me at the art desk, and, while I held the pencil loosely, Billie waved it around and spooed something which looks like a drawing out the end. :)

My beloved Prismacolor markers, alas, are a loss after sitting for six years. I can't find a few of my specialty pencils. My primeval A3 scanner, eight years old now, had to be resurrected from the dead, and doesn't really work properly with Windows 7, won't speak directly to Photoshop, and only communicates via its outdated, crappy software which saves only bitmap files. I can't remember the password to my main art site.

However. Gentlemen -- BEHOLD!



I was attempting to draw Billie as a pony, but unfortunately this young lady turned out to be female (and Billie, while being very equal opportunity, is also extremely male). This drawing is so me it's almost giddily painful -- it's completely G-rated unless you know the pony's name.

Meet "Pearl Necklace", the first, and hopefully not the only, of the "Euphemism Ponies". :)

The "WTF" meter just exploded, but damn is this pretty:

Took 3 gigs of pictures today...but here are my two favorites. :)

Some amusing photos from the iPhone:

Used chimney pipe for sale at Goodwill. Complete with its original, flammable, creosote deposits, and bent inner liner! (You aren't supposed to ever disconnect this type of pipe, really, and you certainly aren't supposed to re-use it!) This is proof I'm now boring on two topics.	We've all seen this before, but this was such an unbelievably blatant example I had to take a picture.
The "Disney Princess" bowling set. These two things go together like peanut butter and pipe wrenches....
Truly, these are The Funky Chicken.	Sprong! I want one of these bastards for myself...dunno how long they'd last with an actual dog, though. They're kinda fragile...but oooooo, so squishi!

WTF Skyrim moment:

So I'm on the main questline, and, while out in the field wrestling dragons, I get told by this dragon-hunting lady (who tells me, at great length, about how for 200+ years her family has done nothing but help hunt dragons) to meet her back at her house.

I travel to her town, and immediately upon my arrival the townspeople start screaming as a dragon attacks the town. Oho, a plot event! I think, and chase the dragon around for a bit. At one point, between torching houses and children, it lands on the road in front of me, and *BAM* -- a yak is sucked from behind me, passes through me, and lodges under the dragon, disappearing into it. Okay.

I kill the dragon, and the yak, still alive, wanders nonchalantly out of its ribcage. A couple of chickens fall out, too. I sit there for a second, waiting for the next Event to happen, but all that happens is that suddenly a small child runs up and shouts, "In all my years, I've never seen such a thing!"

While I am pondering how many "all my years" a child might have, another child runs up and says the same thing. "In all my years, I've never seen such a thing!"

I walk out from behind the dragon corpse. There are six adult NPCs lined up in the road, staring at the flaming carcass. As if on cue, as I approach, one says, "In all my years, I've never seen such a thing!" Another NPC walks up and joins the perfectly formed line: "In all my years, I've never seen such a thing!" I flee toward the quest NPC's house, a plaintive voice calling from behind me: "In all my years, I've never seen such a thing!"

The quest NPC (remember, big dragon-killing lady) is standing right inside her door, which makes it quite a surprise when I materialize inside her, merged with her head. She steps back, and I start to point out the enormous, char-grilled lizard on her doorstep. She instead begins talking about a party I need to attend, walking carelessly into a secret room that she's just leaving open for some reason, pretending to be an innkeeper while wearing tight leather armor and carrying a seven-foot, two-handed claymore strapped to her back. No mention of the dead dragon, even though the corpse is on her porch. She hands me a party invitation, and I'm off to my next quest, with no mention of the enormous, evil thing currently stinking up the town....

In all my years, I've never seen such a thing!

Oh, how I love my camera!

This is Qannik, a juvenile female polar bear at the Louisville Zoo. She kept throwing things into her pool and then diving in after them.

  

More photos, as always, here!

I had a lot of fun in Florida the past two weeks! My photos, let me show you them:


  

...more are, of course, available on my Flickr stream.

(I think I went to Disney World at some point...but, honestly, all I remember is snuggling with the Cute Man, visiting some good friends, and then visiting various zoos and going berserk with my beautiful new f2.8 Tamron lenses...:) *squee*

Aaaaand the book is now available on Kindle! E-books ahoy!

You can also get the E-book directly from Dogwise.

Sure wish Author Central would at least say we sold one copy :) I know people have read it, but it's still a weird feeling to open up the site and get nothing. Ah well. :)

Someone appears to have actually read the book and liked it, and thought well enough of it to say so. *squee*

Both my parents and the Cute Man have, of course, offered to write reviews of it, but they could be considered to be somewhat biased :)

The Guest Coordinator of the Very Small Television Show, by the way, did eventually get in contact with me. They had apparently heard that "a wolf" "in Florida" (can't find anything on Google about this) had been "climbing over fences and eating Chihuahuas", and thought the book would be great for people wanting to defend themselves against ravenous wolves. Um...maybe not.

In the meantime, Mr. Bitsy, the co-author, has set up two (?) book-related publicity talks at conventions, wherein he will wax poetic upon wolves and hybrids...whoo :)

Some piccies from today (under a cut due to snakes and spiders):
( Snakes and spiders! )

More (also things that are not snakes and spiders) can be found on my Flickr page. :)

Dieting is such a bag of crap.

I start dieting because I'm a fatass. That means my ass is fat. I want the fat to leave my ass. What gets smaller first? My fingers, so now I need my wedding ring resized. My ankles (wha?). My wrists, so now I need a new wristwatch.

Ass? Still there.

(Working on it, though. ;)

If there is a life form out there who has not yet eaten the Sherlock television series on the BBC (which I originally, foolishly, shunned because how good could yet another stupid rehash of Conan Doyle's tired old prose possibly be?) GO WATCH IT WATCH IT NOW

THE REICHENBACH FALL JUST ATE MY BRAIN

*explodes and dies*

Artists out there --

I, as yet, suck goats at using Illustrator. I need a logo designed for a "whimsical chimney sales and information" web site I'm building for work. It's named Chimneyland, and I'd like the logo done in Illustrator so that it can be scaled to any size. Red should be a predominant color.

Can anyone out there design such a logo? You can see the crappy one I came up with at the Chimneyland web site if you'd like some inspiration.

We will cheerfully pay real money for this! Can anyone help??

From PostSecret:



Also, bull penis jewelry.

Just because this tickles me...the Book(tm) is first on the "featured new titles" page at the publisher, Dogwise. :) When the ebook does come out, my bet is it will come out there first.

On Amazon, the book keeps bobbing up and down in the rankings (it made it to 33,000 or so!), despite the "author central" sales tracker reporting that it hasn't sold a single copy. (???)

Wolf Park has apparently sold at least one, though, which is heartening. :)

Now I just need to hope that the first review of the book is not, "WTF is this?" :)

(I actually got an email today from the "guest coordinator" of a Very Small Television Show. Even if it never goes further than that...I still got an email from the special guest coordinator of a Very Small Television Show. :) Squee!)

Now on to Book Two!