I continue to make little bits of progress in Persona 3. I also continue to stare, slack jawed, at the oddity of this universe. I recently made a monster called an Incubus, and he looks like the little critter in the top right corner here. I promptly used him as fodder to make another monster. SKREEE. Plus the whole shoot yourself in the head to summon your monster still freaks me out. Then we got a dog who can summon their monster too. I'm trying to decide of the dog has a little suit that shoots him in the head, or if he's just special. Said dog, by the way, carries a knife in his mouth. You'd think he'd bite things. But no, the dog carries a knife. In his mouth. Um... buh.

Things have been pretty mellow here. I finally got my hands on an .ISO of The Phantom Edit. If you ever get a chance, I highly recommend bitorrenting it and downloading it. It's very subtle in the changes it makes, but they're there. JarJar is just a young clumsy kid as opposed to a blithering idiot. Anakin is actually a pretty impressive character, edited properly he comes off as more of an extremely bright and determined young boy as opposed to the kid that things that the whole movie is his fun ride. Also the droids had their dialog muted a lot and actually come across as killing machines as opposed to stupid versions of C3PO. And a lot of the redundant 'Okay, we assume that our watchers are stupid so we're going to point big flashy things at all the obvious plot point' bits were removed. I have Attack of the Phantom, the edited version of the second movie, but I need to figure out how to burn Video_TS files before I can watch it.

Sunday I'm hooking up with fiskblack and catching The Dark Knight. Normally I'd see it tonight, but the shows are already sold out. Plus I want to see it on the IMAX screen, and there's only one place to do that. Thankfully even though Pointe Orlando is sort of falling to the dogs, the movie theater is good. Plus, they validate parking!

I'm going to focus on art this weekend. I've been doing the comic last minute (by my standards. I've YET to find myself at 11:30PM madly trying to finish a comic) and trying to build up a backlog. I also FINALLY found the queue option in Semagic. I swear if it were a snake it would have bitten me.

Our yearly beach party thing is in about three weeks. We have our room reserved. We have alcohol purchased. We are ready!

Some rich Douglas Adams' fan is probably exploding right now...

Although I almost expect a not so rich one to go into hock so they can own this.

Garnet is home and seems okay. Her rump is bald, although it no longer has a huge mass on it. It looks like a normal little rat rump, albeit a shaved one... With staples.

My vet was enjoying the excuse to use phrases involving the words "Rat's ass".

There was a complication though. When she went in it turned out to not just be a lipoma, but a a lipoma and a SECOND growth. My guess would be that it was another mammary tumor. So, two for the price of one. I really REALLY hope that's the end of it.

So now she's asleep in her cage getting cuddles and pettings and other spoil my baby rat things. Meanwhile she seems to be strong and relatively okay considering she had a pretty hefty mess removed from her. Now I just watch her and hope that there won't be any complications.

Also, Scott's three day assignment has become a day trip. So he'll be back tomorrow. Yay!

Garnet has been dropped off at the vet. This will be her third tumor removal surgery and the most dangerous. It's a ping-pong ball sized tumor on her fanny, which means it's bumped up against a lot of important organs. The surgery could cause minor nerve damage, or they might open her up and find they can't do much, or it might kill her. But my vet is excellent and cares for her, and she's still young and strong. I'm crossing my fingers. I hope she comes out okay, but if she doesn't make it, at least she went while she was under instead of suffering for weeks, perhaps months, like the tumor would have caused. Still, I'm hoping the outcome is a more positive one.

While at the grocer yesterday I saw they had strawberries and blueberries on sale, so I snagged them as cereal stuff for Scott, then I remembered that he'll be gone most of the week on a trip. Gah. Oh well, the ratties are getting them as well now, and currently are extremely happy with this fact. Lulu, my tubby dumbo, has shown her amazing ability to try and eat something bigger than her head. She grabs the strawberries and hoards it, smacking an other rat that gets too close.

Tomorrow at too friggin early in the morning I pack Scott up and take him to the airport. I'll be home alone until Friday night. I'll probably try to keep busy and draw, although I also hopefully will finally get the house caught up on termite inspection stuffs. Then Saturday we pack up and go see Batman. I'm really looking forward to this movie. Lately I've been watching a lot of Christian Bale's work and he's really impressed me, Christopher Nolan as well.

Okay, time to call the termite guys.

Happy birthday, tugrik! Have a wonderful day!

Back from Hellboy II. Despite the mixed reviews, I liked it. Non spoiler stuff, but they make an effort to give all the characters some measure of depth instead of just focusing on Hellboy himself. I loved their translation of a lot of fantasy creatures, and after seeing this and Pan's Labyrinth, I'm really curious to see what he does with The Hobbit if they let him direct.

Also, Ron Perlman has a nice bod, even though I suspect that six pack was made out of foam latex. (I never cared much for men that I'm positive I could take in a fight)

Not much going on these days, so I present you with a random linkdump to share my latest internet findings...

Belfry WebComics -- They recently did a huge code and database upgrade. As a webcomic artist, this site is particularly useful to me. If you would like a place that allows you to brows your favorite webcomics in a nice organized fashion, I highly recommend Belfry. Oh yeah, the listing for Little Tales is HERE. Would anyone with an account like to give me a nice review?

Bearhands -- These are nigh useless in Florida, but they're still adorable mittens. Little paw shaped gloves with slits in them so you can easily slide your hand out and use your fingers. I could almost see someone at a convention playing with these.

Find Sparta -- You probably remember the Mean Kitty Song, this continues the adventures of Sparta the kitty in a very fun YouTube choose your own adventure game.

30x30 -- The website of my friend Chuck, whom I've known since I was fifteen. He does art for Hilights Magazine and the Philadelphia Zoo among hundreds of other things. Really amazing and creative guy, and showed me the groundwork that my art is based off of today.

Elen's Photography -- Rats are amazingly hard to pose and photograph, so seeing what this woman does is great. Her ratties are so cute too!

Hey Scott? THIS is the lawn ornament I mentioned last night.

Frankenrat (Garnet) and Bride of Frankenrat (Leblanc) are home with their staples removed. Garnet's lipoma is growing larger and faster, even the vet noticed that it was larger than what it was three weeks ago during initial surgery. We discussed things and I explained that beyond medical risks, the biggest problem right now was the money, and further talk got her to give me about a 65% price reduction. She also told me a lot about lipomas and how the tumor removal might be easy as pie or there might be problems, but she assured me that she knew how to work around them if it came to it.

( TMI about the tumors maybe. Cut in case people are squeamish. )

I gave the vet staff a thank you card and the chocolate I bought for them in St. Augustine. They'd already ripped into most of it by the time I left, and everyone was really really wonderful to me. As I watched two people leave their dogs to free range tear around the office I suddenly understood why. The ratties travel in a small animal carrier, and when I bring Feep in, she's properly contained in one (a larger one) as well.

Other than that, things progress as they progress. I fell into google maps street view today. I've always wanted to go to Oklahoma and see the old places I used to live. Except that would mean actually going back to Oklahoma and being in uncomfortable proximity to family. Now, I can just click around and virtually drive the old streets. I'm getting looks at the slum lord apartments my mom managed, and seeing how, 25 years later in some cases, they're still there, and probably close to crumbling any day now. Still, it was impressive, and the memories all came back to me after a few clicks. I even got to see the duplex window my sister smashed out a billion times to sneak out and sniff gasoline with her friends from the street view. Um... Yay. (you see why virtually going back is better in some cases?)

My attempt at not being nocturnal is failing. I think my internal clock just really REALLY wants me to be nocturnal. Blar. Still, I'm fighting it by trying to stay awake today despite sleeping minimally last night. At least I'm almost done with the next Thursday page.

Yesterday's webcomic sums up how my weekend went, except we also caught Wall-E at the Cinema Grille (the one in the 'Differences in Taste' comic) and enjoyed it a great deal. I'd like to give a review of it, but doing so would require me to give spoilers. So I'll just say it surprises you on many levels, and it is now my second favorite Pixar movie (the first being The Incredibles, because as an artist I could really relate to the theme of how someone with a talent often has to deal with the scorn and jealousy of people, the whole "Everybody is a SPESHUL SNOWFLAKE!" thing. Blarf.)

Anywho, time to get to toning, and then lunches!

This is extremely belated, but I'd like to thank shatterstripes for posting this little random art tip. Its made drawing heads at weird angles a lot easier for me, and I'm finding myself getting a little irked whenever I see detachable Barbie doll heads on characters now.

Here's a question for the LJ brain pool...

Whenever I update Little Tales, I also post an update to the LJ community at the stroke of midnight (Eastern time). But as I am no longer nocturnal, this usually leaves me hovering over my computer half asleep and wishing I could go to bed already.

Does anyone know if a means exists for me to 'queue up' a LJ post and have it automatically pop up at midnight even if I'm not at my computer?

Only comic book geeks will get this probably.

But I'm really REALLY nervous about the upcoming Spirit movie. I mean, how the heck did they figure to turn THIS into THIS?

The whole Frank Miller's Sin City II wannabe thing ain't doing it for me so far. The only redeeming thing so far is that Frank Miller appears to have a direct hand in it, and I'm hoping distantly that as a comic book artist, he respects the work of one of the most influential people in the genre.

We saw Wanted today. (Thank you for your wonderful company, lilibugg!)

Non spoiler review is as follows...

Angelina Jolie needs a sammich.

RATTIES! NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

It is a lot better and deeper than you expect. It is not the deepest most amazing movie you will see, but there's more there than you probably thought there would be.

An alternative title for the movie might have been "Bullet time out the face".

A few brief things...

We went to St. Augustine for wine and chocolate. Most of the town isn't as fun as it was five years ago, and our favorite places to go aren't there anymore. So we mostly go for the novelty of the drive and to get presents. So now I have port and thank you chocolate for the people at my vet for taking such good care of Leblanc and Garnet. There's a Hobby Lobby there too, but their supplies are more intended for crafters rather than artists. More beads and flower arrangement rather than tech pens and ink.

We also purchased Persona 3, I scored a used copy that was $5 cheaper than it would have been new, and it looked like it had never been touched. This game is the ultimate teen angst emo game I have ever seen. Right down to the method for unlocking your power consists of SHOOTING YOURSELF IN THE FREAKING HEAD!!! Repeatedly. Your friends too. Plus the game seems to be 70% relationship school sim, and only about 30% 'must save world from EEEEVIL!' gameplay. After seeing this, and then the review for The World Ends With You, I continue to think that the Japanese are strange strange people.

Garnet and Leblanc are both still on the mend. Garnet gets her stitches out this week, and Leblanc will next week. Meanwhile I'm doing what I can to ensure they have lots of healthy food to help them heal up, and enough toys and things in the cage to keep them busy. The latter is the hardest part as rats are very intelligent and inquisitive by nature. So being in a space smaller than they're used to with most of their playmates missing is hard on them. At least Garnet has Leblanc for company now.

As an added bonus, here is a picture of them attempting to sleep in the same little bed. Garnet is the white one (She's actually a 'Siamese' rat, but with her nose tucked away you can't see her little brown nose smudge) and Leblanc is the gray.

( Pic! )

Scott just saw The Amazing Screw On Head. Heeeheeheeheeeeeheeeheheheheee! I love Netflix!

(Also, LeBlanc is home and very pissed that she has staples. I gave her the pain meds and she's still wired. She's going to give me heart attacks, I can already tell.)

LeBlanc made it through surgery just fine. I pick her up in a couple of hours. Meanwhile she's getting cuddled and consoled at the vet. Alas, she also has staples in her little body for awhile.

Garnet goes in next week to have her stapled removed. Unlike last time, she didn't yank these out, although she tried very hard to!

I am considering the idea to try and set up a fund to help with my vet bills via the webcomic. Offering prints for a certain donation amount, and selling an original. It depends on if I can scrape together the time to do one next week, or if the comic will continue to eat my face.

Went to the doc again today, my bloodwork came out not just fine, but beautiful. I are a healthy healthy Gen. I also feel a lot better than I did when I went in, including energy levels, so whatever was wrong with me took care of itself. I always watch my thyroid because my mom's exploded when she was a kid. But I also don't seem predisposed to have any of the problems that run in my family beyond bad eyesight. Gall Bladder problems run in my family as well, but I've never had so much as a twinge there. Count my blessings and all that. Maybe I was just having a change of the season slump. It happens sometimes.

There are TWO good movies coming out this week! Wanted and Wall-E! Scott has a sermon to write and might not be free to do anything until Sunday, so we may only catch one of them this weekend. Still, wanna see!

And finally, I downloaded the demo for the Penny Arcade game, then bought the full version. I with they'd made a bigger deal about how you can customize your avatar. You can make a 'you', be it male or female, dress it in Victorian steampunkish clothing, and not only do you have a polygon avatar, but also in the animated cutscenes, you have a cartoony one that acts as though it was seamlessly part of the game all along. The combat is a little annoying, but the game is extremely forgiving in that regard. Plus, Ron Gilbert worked on it, you know, the guy who CREATED the Monkey Island games?

Anywho, I have groceries to put away, dinner to ponder, and a game to play a bit more. And in two hours, I go pick up my little frankenrat. I've decided to call my two little stapled up girls Frankenrat, and Bride of Frankenrat until they heal up. Sigh, at least Garnet will have company in the recovery cage now.

A couple of weeks ago I ordered some bulk brown rice from Honeyville, and just to experiment I also bought some powdered egg whites and dried apples. When I was a kid my mom would occasionally try to make up for the fact that she never instilled good nutritional values into me by buying the latest trendy health food. I was one of the first people to try fruit leather before the fruit rollups hit the market, and she also would buy little packets of dried apples for me to eat. They sell them at the grocer, but they're not freeze dried, and so they end up with the texture of jerkey. The large can of apples I got are like eating candy in a way. Properly freeze dried and they have the same flavor. I figure if I'm going to have some kind of snack to graze on when I have a low blood sugar moment, these will do me very well. Plus, they taste good in Scott's cereal in the morning.

The egg whites are going to take some experimentation. The ratio is tricky to measure properly, and this morning's breakfast resulted in something kind of dense. The mixture seems watery but turns very solid when cooked. I'll keep working at it, and seeing what I can do to give it some flavor as well. It's a LOT cheaper than buying cartons of egg beaters and buying small bags of brown rice for Scott's daily bento.

Dried eggs and milk and such don't bother me. I was raised on powdered milk (it was cheaper, and you had more per purchase ratio) so other powdered food things are about the same for me. They taste relatively similar, and in some instances are healither than their counterparts.

I may put in another order, now that I know the apples taste good I may buy more. And Scott expressed an interest in their rolled oats. We'll see how fast I go through the can of apples for now, and I'm still waiting on my rice.

Yesterday I took LeBlanc and Garnet back to the vet. Gsrnet to make sure she was okay after her loud freakout on Monday, and Leblanc because of the tumor she's suddenly developed. It was tested and is indeed cancerous. So she goes in Friday for removal surgery. As she's almost two and still healthy, it's best to get it done NOW before she gets older and her health fails. There are still risks, but there's fewer now then there might be in a month. On the good side, the labwork for Garnet came back and her tumor was benign, so hopefully it won't come back.

I am thinking of doing a limited edition print to try and raise money for vet bills. Let's just say that I've spent quite a bit on the girls. The vet is trying to cut me as much slack as possible, but it's still a hit.

On the good side, the visit from the washer repairman and the air conditioner repairman turned out to not be as damaging as I'd thought. Considering our unit is running 'three years pasts its lifespan' it's in excellent shape and doing fine. I've been advised to just keep using it until it breaks, and then shuck out 5K to replace our system entirely. Urblrngh. Well, at least I know how big that hit will be when it comes.

Our washer just needed a knob, and the repairman, after showing me his insane price list, cut me a lot of slack and just charged me for a visit and his out of pocket for the part. I SUSPECT that what he did was tell his employer that I turned him away, claiming I fixed the problem myself, and pocketed my payment. He also gave me his card and told me to call him if I ever needed any further repair work done. Meanwhile the knob that had snapped off was replaced with a metal one instead of a plastic one, and should never break again. Woot. Plus, I don't have to wrestle and stain with pliers if I want to do laundry now! I've only tried it one or two times, but each time I was afraid I'd strip the bolt.

And now I'm going to see if I can grab the last bit of a movie file, prepare to go to the store, and put some work in on Friday's comic.

Today is something of a quiet little milestone for me.

March 3rd I launched Little Tales. Four months ago. In four months' time, I have created fifty comic pages. Scripted, penciled, inked, scanned, lettered, and toned. Start to finish. I have not missed a single deadline during that time. I've been rushed a few times, but I've never slapped up a notice telling people to wait a day, or uploaded past deadline. Three days a week at the stroke of midnight, I have a new comic up. I am damn proud of that accomplishment. I can't wait, four months from now, to feel even prouder when I hit comic #100 and can say the same thing.

These past four months I've learned so many things. The main thing I've learned is that webcomics are kind of about trust. People are creatures of schedule and habit. So when you produce something irregularly, or have constant gaps in your output, your readership won't trust you. But if you be there when you say, that's about 70% of the work right there. Little Tales gets a huge amount of hits right after the stroke of midnight, so I know there's people there waiting for the new comic. That thought alone drives me on and makes me extremely proud and happy.

I'm putting the finishing touches on page seventeen of The Man Who Was Thursday, comic number fifty. and I can't wait to get started on comic number fifty-one.

I could so see yechezkiel and xallanthia with THIS SINK in their house. Bwahahahaha.

Little Tales got a faceload of hits today, and I didn't even make a gaming joke! I'll save the Warcraft comic for later. I also found out that Feep has fans after getting a donation with the note to spend the money on treats for her.

A small irony is that I found a review online of today's particular comic page that blew it off because it was "furry" (who cares that I don't draw porn) and "just another (bad) webcomic". I wonder if he realizes that it's folks like him that inspired me to draw that. Ahwell. Probably not.

The rats are trying to give me heart attacks. LeBlanc with her tumor, and tonight Garnet decided she'd had enough of the staples in her and started to rip them out, which resulted in her injuring herself and having a brief screaming fit. Scott rapidly brought her to me and I removed the staple and cuddled her for about half an hour. All seems well and forgotten now, but I'm a nervous wreck because I'm waiting for her to try it again. Of course as I type this she's curled up into a little ball and dozing as though nothing at all was wrong. Little brat.

I'm also kind of thinking of not getting any new rats when my current colony dies out. I've lost my original gang of Payne, Yuna, and Rikku, not to mention Freya who I only had for a couple of months. LeBlanc is almost two, which is a good run for a rat, and with the exception of the boy, they're all over a year old. Garnet has what the vet claims is an inoperable tumor, which might not be a problem, or might take her in a week. It gets hard sometimes, particularly when they're so prone to sudden respiratory illness and tumors. I don't think I'll stop owning them completely for the rest of my life, but I might take a break for awhile and let my heart recover. It's hard sometimes to own these things that are so fun and intelligent and playful, and yet have such short lifespans.

In less downer news, why did nobody tell me of The Phantom Edit? I must find this! And the companion one for Episode II. I also came across Grim Fandango: The Movie which is a several hours long video (cut up into bits) of the gameplay, done very well. It shows you almost all of the dialog and conversational bits. I might run this in the background like I do with my streaming NetFlix whilst I do my inking.

And now I need to go and ink my little heart out. Thinking of doing a little something in color just for fun.

Today my nose got drafted to do some work in the church hall.

After mass we do a mellow hangout kind of thing in there. Since some people fast before communion we're often hungry and sometimes in need of a sugar boost to tide us over, so they have coffee and tea and snacks. When I came in I noticed several volunteers were poking and prodding about the kitchen area looking for something. They mopped the floor, peered behind appliances, and generally seemed confused about something.

One of them popped out and started asking Scott for help. He immediately drafted me and I wandered in.

"We think there might be a dead mouse here." The youth director noted to me.

I shook my head. "No, it smells burnt, not rotting." I started wandering around and although the director kept going to the extremities of the kitchen, I could tell the smell was focused on the oven. "Here. It's coming from here."

At first he kept shuffling around to either end of the room, but I stayed at the oven. Finally he relented and joined me, insisting that he'd searched it and cleaned it.

...then he popped open the grease trap. It was full and filthy and scorched. I smugly walked out of the kitchen.

I keep forgetting that I have a particularly good sense of smell, but this is the first time in my life where I actually put it to use! Particularly to the service of my church!