As most of you know, I have a soft spot for fairies and cartoon pinups. Don’t ask me why.

In a conversation with a coworker a looong while back, he clued me in to some new artists that I wanted to post here before I forget all about them:

Strangeling: The Art of Jasmine Beckett-Griffith — Gothic, fantasy, and fairy art. I love the big beautiful eyes.

Josh Howard: Comic Book and Pin-Up Artist — Dead@17 is quite Buffyesque. The bulk of the gallery is goth and punk pinups. Some of the styles I like, some I don’t. But he’s got a Hermione, and for that alone, I adore him.

These hippos [pic] are called Dodger and Betsey. Your challenge is to figure out how they got into the parking lot of a Catholic school.

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Write about someone who is pretending to be someone or something that (s)he is not.

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Psst … curious about where I got the complementary color scheme for that oh-so-lovely announcement up there? I found it on kuler, the Adobe color theme tool. I highly recommend it. Pre-fab color schemes by people far more talented at that sort of thing. Yay!!

For the month of October, I’m participating in the ARWA 301 challenge. That means I’m challenged to write 301 words every day for the entire month. I’ve decided to do writing exercises every day and post them on my blog. This both 1) gets me writing and 2) hopefully helps get me over the fear of others reading my writing. You are welcome to post comments and feedback on what you read, but please don’t feel obligated.

For the month of October, I’m going to participate in the ARWA 301 challenge. That means I’m challenged to write 301 words every day for the entire month. Many of the women in the organization have works in progress that they’re going to work on over the course of the month. But as I don’t, I’ve decided to do writing exercises every day and post them on my blog. This both 1) gets me writing and 2) hopefully helps get me over the fear of others reading my writing. You are welcome to post comments and feedback on what you read, but please don’t feel obligated.

As part of this, I’m upgrading wordpress and picking a new theme, so I’ll hopefully feel a bit more motivated to look at my blog. I like the statues. With all the lichen, they somehow feel very old-world Norse or Celtic to me. I don’t even know if they are, but hey. It’s my blog and my imagination, dang it.

I am convinced there is some magical method to leg waxing that I don’t understand. I know so many women who can buy those little drug store kits and seem to have no problem with this shaving alternative. For me, I end up making a huge mess of the bathroom, getting wax all over the floor and the bathmats and the counters. It takes me at LEAST 30 minutes to do just one leg, and just the lower half at that. In reality, I never even get that far, because after 20 minutes I am sweating and swearing and in great discomfort, and I feel like I need to do an Alice in Wonderland-style snakenecked impression just to have a prayer of defuzzing the backs of my calves. So I give up, obey the “24 hour” rule, and two days later I go back grumbling and attempt the whole process again, usually with little further progress, until I give up and decide it is “good enough.” What is the secret, I ask? How am I supposed to pull this off? Maybe I’m not. Maybe I’m just destined to shave my legs every week for the rest of my life. I can’t believe I’ve been so thoroughly unmanned (unwomaned?) by a box of white-chocolate scented putty-like goo …

I’m sitting here waiting for midnight, and realized that as long as I’m not going to be able to sleep, I might as well give this poor old blog some love.

So much has been happening. Work has been incredibly hard lately. I think I’ve been promoted twice (seriously) since I last wrote. I’m now managing a team of developers and a bevy of contractors. I love the challenges of it, but I find it scary and people management is much more bewildering than I expected.

The fabled summer trip ended up taking us to Mexico, where we spent a week on the Mayan Rivera, in a resort about 20 minutes south of Playa del Carmen. It was exactly what I needed. We rented a car one day and drove into the interior of the peninsula, taking the opportunity to see Chichen Itza and Ek Balam. On another day, we did Tulum and one of those adventure parks where you do a couple of zip lines and rappel into a cave, where we got to do some pretty amazing cave snorkeling through a (very cold) underground river. The rest of the time we spent on the beach, where I read copious trashy novels and watched the storms out at sea. Thankfully, few of them came ashore, and we had sun most of the time we were there. I’ve posted a few pictures on Flickr should you care to take a look.

What else? I have successfully taught my first ever beginning belly dance class. I had a lot of fun, and I think the girls did too. I wasn’t as into the technicalities as I probably needed to be, but I achieved my personal goal of making it a fun and supportive environment. I really enjoyed teaching, and found teaching a physical subject to be an interesting challenge. It is difficult to describe how something feels, and to come up with appropriate analogies to illustrate it. Everyone’s body feels things differently. I actually found that sometimes, actually physically guiding the movement for them was the only way to get the movement across. I have a good starting arsenal of descriptions ready now, though, so hopefully the next time will be easier.

I was quite pleased with Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows. I finished it the weekend after it came out, as I was unable to get a copy in Mexico. Yes, I even looked at having Amazon ship it to me, but it was going to cost $40 and would maybe reach me before I left to come home again, so I opted to hold out until I was back in the states. It was murderous. I’m still reluctant to hold forth on the book too much lest some poor unenlightened soul stumble across this. So more later.

Steve’s family came in this weekend and we had a good time. We took the nieces to see the stage production of Hight School Musical that Zach Scott is doing. I have to admit … I really liked it. It was adorable. A wholesome Grease for the tween generation. I leve the theater bopping along with a big stupid grin on my face. Love or hate the corporate entity, there’s something indefinable about Disney Magic.

No, I haven’t given up on the summer trip thing. I’ve just been slow to get anywhere. It’s now looking like one of two options:

1. A cruise to Bermuda
2. A trip to Cape Cod

Can I just say that I win either way? Since my traveling companions have to be on the East coast the first week in June, that’s looking like the date. Earlier than I’d like, but I can’t really complain…

I grew up spending summers on Cape Cod. I’ve taken Stv once, but never my other friends that we’re traveling with. So it would be neat to share that with them.

On the other hand, I’ve never ever been to Bermuda, and a warm beach sounds really appealing.

Hmm.

Sooo much to post. Let’s see. I just got back from a whirlwind trip to Houston to see the musical Wicked, which I *really* enjoyed. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen an original musical production with 1) hummable tunes and 2) a feel good story. Most of the good stuff lately has been either a revival or the stage-ification of a successful movie musical. My faith has been somewhat restored. The weekend was a lot of fun, but left me feeling frazzled — I didn’t get home until 10:30 last night and haven’t had time to reset yet!!

We went to two museums while we were there: the Houston Museum of Fine Art to see the Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibit of French masters (1800-1920) which are temporarily housed in Houston and not going anywhere else. And then we went to the Museum of Natural History to see an exhibit on Imperial Rome. The former was one of those things I felt like I should see, although I wasn’t feeling particularly inspired to go. It’s funny. The impressionists, realists, pointillists … you’ve seen their work your whole life, in art books, popular culture, countless calendars, address books, mouse pads, note cards … the list goes on and on. So when you experience them in real life, for the most part, it is underwhelming. Just hard to process that this time the canvases are real, not posters on a doctor’s office wall. The big things I notice are the textures, and sometimes, the intensity. I love oil painting as a medium. The element of texture in art is something I really respond to, and seeing these works in person I can get much more of a sense of the layering and the … landscape of the work itself, the hills and valleys of its surface. As for the intensity … sometimes especially in the works of Van Gogh and Cezanne (at least for me) it’s the colors, and with Van Gogh, there’s raw emotion that punches you in the face as soon as you look at the canvas, at least his later works. Not something I could live with. But also not something you can get from a poster print.

The Imperial Rome exhibit wasn’t everything I hoped it would be, but then, I’m not sure exactly what I was hoping for, so that’s probably not a fair statement. There were a lot of household goods, a reconstructed banquet room, along with the standard assortment of busts, statuary, coins, jewelry. They had itty-bitty fingers. I know that’s a profound thing to walk away with. What really is striking to me when I read about Imperial Rome are the marked similarities between US culture and Rome at its height. Since we all know how THAT ended, it’s thought-provoking. I actually know someone whose history teacher in high school lined notable events in the US against a time line of Rome. It is amazing how much of it lines up. Scary stuff…

Other news … let’s see. Thirty Happened. And know what? It isn’t bad at all. I finally figured out what it was that was so terrifying about it for me. It wasn’t the turning thirty. It was what thirty represents. The next five years promise a lot of *major* change in my life. Possibilities include: taking my career to a management phase, Stv going to graduate school to get his PhD, children … I’m sure I could think of a few more, but those are the major players at the moment. And turning thirty makes me look at those things and know that they’re coming in the very near future. It’s scary. For now, I’m taking things one decision at a time — any more than that and I’ll drive myself crazy. We’re still waiting to hear back from UT. Stv had his interviews there about two weeks ago. So we’re holding out for the thumbs up/down. Please say a little prayer for him … heck, while you’re at it, say one for us both!

I have book I have to read for work that I still haven’t finished. Unfortunately, for this kind of thing there are no cliff notes. So more updates later.

I promise. Really!