Be Still and Know

My step-dad wants to talk to me.  It has been a year and a half since I last spoke to him.  He told my youngest sister that he would like for me and my other sister to call him on the phone.  I am not exactly one that enjoys talking on the phone, especially to a man that at this point has no relationship with me.  So, I told my sister that I would be willing to let him take me and her out to dinner.  That way if we don't know what to say, we can just eat.  And, I will get a free dinner out of it.

She told him that I would have dinner, and he seemed happy.  But, that could all be part of his manipulation to win her over.  If he actually does go through with this dinner, I don't want to hear his crappy excuses for his drug abuse, and I definitely don't want to hear how great of a father he thought he was.  If he brings that stuff up, I will shut it down really fast.  And, if he can't handle it, then he is obviously not ready for a relationship with me, and I will get up and leave.  I am not a jerk, at least not totally, so if he is honest and wants to resolve some of his problems with his daughters, then I am open to giving him a chance.  But, I don't have to take his crap, and I won't.  And, he better pay for my dinner.  I know that sounds petty, but it all goes along with how differently he is treating my youngest sister compared to me and my other sister.    They go to dinners and movies all the time, but he won't even talk to me or Tracy.  So, if he can't shell out the money for the dinner, especially considering that my mom has to pay the former (and probably present) drug abuser so much money a month because our justice system is screwed, then you better believe that I will not be happy. 

This will probably turn out to be more stress than it is worth, but I guess I have to give him a chance if he reaches out.

So far my weekend has been spent working hard on all of our Gracefully Inspired stuff.  We have about two weeks left, so we are scrambling around to get everything ready.  The best advice I was given was to keep it simple and organized, and that is what I am trying for.  Our website (which is what I have been working on for the past 2 days) has once again gone through a make-over, but it looks more simple and organized than it ever has.  It isn't too bad considering we aren't professionals.  I still have a ton of stuff to put on it, so I better get back to work.

I really don't understand why there are Christians that do not take their child to a doctor because they believe they should only pray for healing. My mind just can't wrap around that thought process. I believe in the power of prayer, but I also belive in medicine. I feel like there are two groups of people with conflicting paradigms. One believes that because there is science, there can be no God. The other thinks that because there is a God, science is irrelevant. And, then there is me standing in the middle scratching my head in confusion. God and science just kind of go together for me. I mean, if I am going to believe that there is a divine being that created the universe, then surely I can belive that this divine being is smart enough to use the various scientific processes to form his creation and to use it to continue to interact with it. They don't have to be seperate, and I don't know why we continue to think that way.

Here is another thing that boggles my mind.  Do you know the thing that I sometimes hear people say that really annoys me?  I hate it when people have the attitude that they don't like religion because they like to think for themselves.  Um . . . what?  So, let me get this straight.  Are they saying that those with religious beliefs can't think for themselves, or better yet, those that have no relgious beliefs can think for themselves?  Sure.  Keep that closed minded view.  Do they really think their views and thoughts are so drastically different from others with no religious beliefs?  Yeah right!  Do they really think they are strong enough to resist the common and normal human desire to have some conformity?  I don't think so.  Humans like to bond with those with similar beliefs and we have a natural desire to want to share our thoughts and beliefs with others.  Just like a religious person will try to live his/her life according to his beliefs, a person with no religious views will still fall into some type of belief system for his life, and will more than likely share those same views with thousands of other people.  We are not as different as we think we are.  And of course, it is good to try to think outside the box and we will always have people that stand out in society and really push the boundaries, but whether or not the person has religious views is probably not a factor.  Of course I am not talking about extreme cases like cults.  I am just simply addressing those people that think they are so different and brand those that are religious as stupid followers. 

As I previously said, I finally got around to playing fatal frame 2, and I was not disappointed.  The game is a little dated, but it was actually refreshing to play that style of a game.  The forced camera angles that were so common in survival horror games of the playstation and playstation 2 generation gave a cinematic feel, which is so perfect for the spooky atmosphere.  It was almost a treat considering that most games now use that over the shoulder camera angle.  Don't get me wrong, that has its perks as well, but the game can easily lose some of its artistic appeal.  For example, there were moments when the camera angle would suddenly shift to focus on a door or closet at my back, and I couldn't help but get creeped out a little bit wondering what would crawl out toward me.  Normally, nothing came crawling, but the developers didn't need to create anything more for those moments because what I created in my imagination was far scarier. 

If  I had to pick the better game between Fatal Frame and Fatal Frame 2, I guess I would have to pick the first one, but only due to gameplay.  There seemed to be more of a variety of ghosts in the first game and they were more difficult.  Plus, the first games obviously have the orginiality.  However, I personally liked the second game better.  The story settled with me more than the first.  If I remember correctly, I was pretty annoyed by the ending of the first game.  The earlier stages of the game were pretty disturbing for me as it progressed through the various rituals performed by the sadistic patriarch of the family.  But, by the end of the game, it is revealed that those rituals were necessary and it almost made it seemed like this family was good.  My mind just couldn't make that transitition easily.  The second game follows the same path, however, there were characters that kind of said wait a second, this isn't good and there has to be a better way.  it made the entire story easier to swallow, which also allowed the characters to shine a little more.  And, for some reason the exact thing that I thought they definitely wouldn't do for the ending, well, they did.  And it hit me hard, not because it was totally unexpected, but because it was what I really didn't want to happen.  Overall, I was much more invested in the story of the second game than the first.

So, I can say with a little more confidence, now that I have played 2 games, that I am a fatal frame fan.  I guess I just need to get the 3rd game now.  I heard it is the least scary, which is a little disappointing, but I am sure it is still enjoyable.  We were at the game store over the weekend, and they actually had a copy (I have never seen a copy in a store until this point), but unfortunately they had it on hold for someone.    So, I guess I will just have to order online again.  And this time I am not going to wait years to buy it. 

Sadly, my vacation is over and I am back at work.  I am definitely one of those people that would prefer to stay at home than work.  I would love to just be able to be creative at home.  But, my time away from work was very relaxing and I feel revived.  It was exactly what I needed, and I really don't mind being at work right now.  I may feel differently once i have to bust my butt to get things caught up, but for now, it is all good.

Gracefully Inspired was accepted into a big craft show/flea market type thing during labor day weekend.  I spoke of this earlier, but at that time we weren't totally sure that we were accepted.  So, more than ever before, we need to stay focused and be productive.  It will be a lot of work, but this will put us in contact with a lot of people, and hopefully it will be a good indicator of what will sell or won't sell.  And of course this will hopefully get our name out there.  All we really need to do for jewelry is make more of it because we have displayed our jewelry many times before.  However, we really don't know how to display our photography and artwork, so that will be a big priority for me over the next few weeks.  We are super excited.

I beat fatal frame 2, and loved it.  I will write more on it in a little bit.  I will be updating this thing a little more regularly now that I am back to work, and I will also update my drawings soon. 

So I haven't done a whole lot other than what I posted about in my previous journal.  I had to go to a court hearing today with my sister, but that is about it.  Life is fine and dandy.  I do have some game reviews and movies reviews to post, and I will do that as soon as I finish up fatal frame 2 (almost done).  For now, sorry for the lack of updates, but some will be coming soon, and hopefully some drawings too.  I am just too busy with games and movies right now.  

My time off work so far is so relaxing.  I am just sitting at home watching horror movies, playing video games and sleeping in.  It is the perfect break.  Of course, it would be nice to actually travel on my vacation, but we hope to do that this fall.

I have more to say, but for now I need to go.  I will write more later.

I am finally getting around to playing Resident Evil 5, and as expected, it is fun.  I can't say it is quite as good as the 4th one, but it is still enjoyable.  And, I actually really like having Sheva by my side.  She has saved my butt more than once, and of course who doesn't like a sex strong female character.  Normally in survival horror or action games we have to drag around a helpless person, so this is a nice contrast. 

It's the simple things in life that make me smile.  I am sitting here at work with a grin on my face because I am eating a big, I mean BIG, bowel of watermelon for lunch and I just ordered Fatal Frame 2.  Yes, you read that right.  Fatal Frame 2, not 4.  I am so far behind in the series, and although I consider myself a fan, I have only played the first game.  These games just seem to be hard to find, at least in my area,  I have been looking for games 2 and 3 for years with no luck.  For some reason I always just buy another game and put off buying these games online.  But, I finally just broke down and ordered the game, and now I feel like a kid on Christmas Eve.  Geesh I get so excited about stupid things. hahaha!    Anyway, with my vacation from work scheduled for next week, I am getting a little excited about the thought of just kicking back and relaxing while I re-play some of my old games.  And, hopefully Fatal Frame 2 will be shipped by then.

What games am I considering playing again?  Hmm . . good question.  Well, obviously it is time for me to re-play the silent hill series because I think it has been almost 2 years since I have played through an entire game (not counting Homecoming or Origins which are newer).  I have a really bad habit of starting a game, and then not finishing, so it is definitely time to revisit the series.  The fall season always seems like a good time for Silent Hill.  There is just something in the air, especially if the mornings are foggy.  So, maybe I will put this series off for a few more months, but I am getting anxious to play them again.

I may even go back to the playstation and pull out those games, like Dino Crisis.  hahaha!  I have so many options.  I am going to have to think about this for a while.  I like it when I can have a moment in my day to think of pointless things like what video games I will play next week.  I am truly blessed to be in a situation like this where this is my biggest worry.  Of course, I can't deny that I am a little worried about a confrontation I have to have tomorrow morning, but right now in this moment, I am worry free.

I am having a craptastic day.  I am dealing with someone that doesn't want to take responsiblity for her own actions, and instead is placing the blame on someone else.  What is even worse is that she is bascially claiming that I agree with her.  Unfortunately, this other person taking the blame has spent the last few days thinking that I didn't support her, and that really upsets me.  As a person in authority in this situation, I really, really, really need to pray for wisdom because right now my temper is smokin.

I think my scanner is dying.  I am so sad.  I can still use my mom's, but it is sad to see mine go. 

 I am still working on that portrait I started at work the other day.  Over my weekend I was either super lazy or super busy, no inbetween.  So, I did no drawing.  But, now that I am so mad that I could spit nails, I should be drawing like a madwoman tonight.  It relaxes me.  I knew I should have brought my sketch pad today.   And now I am annoyed on top of mad because I just realized how crappy that drawing is that I have on the header of my website.  Ugh.

A good thing that happened today is that as I was entering the elevator at work, a woman I don't know came up to me and told me how inspiring I am.  I walk around the building on my breaks to help get some exercise since I sit on my butt all day, and she must see me through her window everday.  I am pretty happy that I inspire her, but I just hope she takes this inspiration and walks herself.  I can't explain how relaxing and wonderful my walks are on my breaks.  Fresh air and exercise is a must during a dull workday.

My weekend starts in one hour!  *does a little dance*  My sister and I may go to a movie as soon as I get off work.  She really wants to see The Collector, but she also tries to avoid movies with nudity, so she is contemplating on whether or not to go.  I wouldn't mind seeing it, but I guess I will just have to wait and see what she decides. 

I have been drawing a portrait today at work during our slow moments, and I am actually kind of happy with it, which is rare.  I am happy with the fact that I drew something half way decent and did not use a grid.  Normally when I draw portraits, I am giving them as gifts, so I try to make them as perfect as my skill level allows, and that normally means I either use a grid or will do some very basic trace lines to make sure the features and proportions are correct before I start any shading.  It is kind of like a safety net I guess.  However, I am nto really sure I need to keep doing that, at least not all the time.  I need to at least do some practice portraits without the aid of a grid.  A grid only hinders the development of my own style.  I also practiced working on my edge lines and have tried to make edges in or near shadows softer and edges near light sharper.  I dont' think that is something I have really thought about before while drawing, so this little portrait has definitely been good practice.  I will post it once I finish it tonight, alont with another weird drawing I did the other day. 

I changed my website again.  It is clean and simple, but I am not sure if I am satisifed yet.  I am sure I will continue to play around with the different templates, but for now this will do.

My brain is on a sketching overdrive, and it feels good.  For the moment at least, I have found a decent balance between wanting to draw and having to draw for Gracefully Inspired.  I still don't really have my own style, and what I tend to draw is not exactly something appealing to most people, so I still have some work to do to find that balance of drawing what I feel inspired to draw and drawing what other people are inspired to view.  For now I will just be happy with having a strong will to draw, and if people don't like it, well there isn't much I can do.

This is the first year since I have been listening to Tori Amos that I will have to miss her tour.  It is kind of sad to me because she is an incredible live performer, so I think I am going to put together a playlist of some of my favorite live performances, and I will post it here if I can when it is done.

It looks like Gracefully Inspired will be doing a rather large craft/art show/flea market type thing in September (hopefully!), and if we are accepted pretty much every waking moment for the next month will be filled with artwork, photography and jewelry making.  It is a three day event so we will have to really boost our inventory.  We have been quite sucessful even with very small turnouts to any of our parties, so we are really looking forward to a large event.  Plus we have some gorgeous photography to show off thanks to my sister, Rachel, who is on of our contributing artists.  Since I am the only artist, I guess the artwork section will have to be created by me *shudders* and I have no idea what I can draw between now and then that will grab people's attention.  Regardless, I am really excited.

I am even more excited about the fact that I will be taking a week off work on Aug. 12th.  I desperately need a long break.

Does anyone have some good movie suggestions?  I have been in the mood for a really good movie.

Today is my anniversary!  It has been 5 years!  Sometimes it seems hard to believe and other times it seems like it has been no time at all.  So, even though I am no veteran at marriage, I will say that marriage, or any relationship for that matter, takes work.  Lots of work.  Our marriage has definitely had some hard times and my family in general has gone through some very intense, stressful moments.  However, committment is a good thing.  It feels good to come home to someone, even if I am ticked off at someone.  It feels empowering to know that I actually have to work through my weakness with someone, and I believe that my marriage has made me a better person.  I have a feeling the next five years will be even more exciting than the first, considering that we are gearing up to start a family (as soon as I get my health in order), and will hopefully be in a position to buy a house (we still have two more years or so of helping my mom). 

You may be wondering what we are doing for the big 5 year anniversary.  Well . . . we aren't really sure yet.  I get to go to one of my favorite restaurants, Red Lobster.  Yum! Seafood!!!!  And probably in a month or two we may take a little vacation, possibly to Niagra Falls (where we took our Honeymoon.  Totally cliche, but so much fun!) or some lake.  For now, I am just content with getting some seafood. 

Our craft/art show got rained out.  It was pretty disappointing, but there are some things we just can't control.  We are already looking at getting others started and we are trying to apply to be a vendor at a rather large show in our area, so hopefully it will all work out. 

I am reading Needful Things by Stephen King, and I need to take notes. hahaha!  After only reading one chapter, i am already impressed with the little details he adds to develop his characters and settings. 

Here I am at work at 5am (volunteered to work the early morning shift), and I left my book and drawing pad at home.  So, blabbing in this blog is going to keep me awake for a little while.  I don't know what I will do later this afternoon when I am dozing off at our craft/art show. 

I think I am going to find some priting paper and hopefully find a pencil so that I can do some quick thumbnail type sketches of some ideas that I have.  I rarely do that, and I should because I think it would help my pictures look so much better, at least the ones that I actually plan out.  Most of my drawings are done at the spur of the moment, which is why they look so hurried and crappy most of the time.  My planned out pictures rarely seem to come to fruition, which is a shame.  I got some decent critiques on how to draw wolfs, so that will help me with a fan art picture I have had in my mind for a while.  It is Bran and his direwolf Summer.  And, of course I have a ton of other drawings that I still have to do, especially of my own characters.  And I found a ton of references that I can use to help me with my character, Jillian, so I am pretty happy about that. 

I got the artwork section done on this site, and linking it to the deviantart portfolios does look a lot better.  The only thing I really need to figure out now is what to use for the homepage image. 

Well, for the moment, I need to go get stuff ready for our show, and then I need to give a co-woker her yearly evaluation, so I guess I will come back to this little blog if I start to fall asleep.

DeviantArt created portfolios and I have to admit they look pretty nice and will be a great tool for those that wish to share they artwork to possible employers.  Although, I am nowhere near a point with my art where I would try to show artwork to an employer, I have decided to create a portfolio and directly link it to this website in the place of my artwork page.  It looks a lot more professional and is easier to maintain than the photo galleries provided by this website.  And, there will be no ads!  It won't be quite as easy to get back to other areas of my site, although it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out how to click the back button or to click on my site's link, and it is still a lot better looking than the photo gallery that I was using.

I am eating watermelon right now, which is making me the happiest girl in the world. Thank you God for creating watermelon.  I love it!

Our craft/art show is tomorrow, so hopefully I will update this thing again with good news from the show, but unfortunately, it looks like it is going to rain.

I had a very enjoyable weekend, which is good because this week will be very busy for me.  Gracefully Inspired has organized our first craft show, and it is on Saturday.  So, I will be busy pulling together all the last minute planning and work.  It should be fun, and we have at least 10 other vendors that are planning to attend.  Of course, they may not all show up, but we are pretty proud of the work that we have done so far.

I watched a movie called Let the Right One In, and it was surprisingly good.  The actors and art direction really set the mood in the right direction, and it turned out to be one of the more unique vampire movies I have ever seen.  Of course Hollywood plans to remake it, although I don't know why.  This film just recently came out (I think).  It doesn't need to be remade, unless the director wants to make it closer to the book, but I doubt it.  Oh, and the fact that it is a book makes me pretty excited.  Now I have one more book to add to my growing To Read List.  Anyway, if you like foreign films, check out this movie.

I finally added a few sketches to my sketch area on this site.  Hopefully I can upload a few more this week.

I am not sure how some people can constantly live an angry hateful life.  I had a peek into my own anger, fear and paranoia the other day, and I have to admit that it is quite scary.  It is like a beast that you just hope will lay down and be still, but you know the moment you lose control of it, it will devour you.  It made me wonder just how far my level of angry could go, and it also makes me wonder if these people that are always hateful and angry are just one step away of snapping and doing something drastic and harmful.  I have a feeling the answer is yes, and in return that only fuels my own anger and paranoia even more.  It is a vicious cycle.

I having one of those days where I want to rip my hair out.  So, I am going to take a small break from work to get away from various people unwilling to deal with their consequences and blame me for their hardships when I don't have some magic pill to give them that will take it all away.  On most days I am great at my job, but today is not one of them. *takes a quick break to go buy some chili.  Soup always makes me feel better*

Okay, now that I am back and happily slupring my chili, I am ready to write.  I am still piecing together my little story.  Nothing is on paper yet of course, but I am at the stage where I am finding outside inspiration.  At the moment, the main storyline will revolve around two girls and their deep friendship that takes a hard hit when one makes a life changing decision that hugely impacts their lives.  Of course, that is a very basic summary, and it seems kind or ordinary, but hopefully the decision that is made and the sticky situations these girls get themselves into will be what is more exciting.  It is good to have some element in a story that most people can relate to, especially when the other major conflicts and influences in the story stretches one's imagination as I hope mine will.  Anyway, what was I originally talking about . . . oh yeah, I mentioned outside inspiration.  My big inspirations are probably going to be Silent Hill, the book Neverwhere, the series A Song of Ice and Fire, and Garbage's song No one loves you.  Obviously these are some of my favorites, and I hope they can aid me a little bit as I not only continue to develop characters but start to move into the area of environments, creature design and complex relationships.  And I will also continue to draw out some scenes or portraits because that is helping as well.