It's Been A Super Day...

It all began early this morning....

While attempting to uncover a wicked plot to destroy the world with my wondrous magical powers, I had the happy honour of saving Dick Grayson (aka Robin) from certain death at the hands of a couple of nefarious villains. They were using their wily wits and marvelous mind-control powers to bend his perception ever so slightly so that he wouldn't know that they were stealing his lifeforce energy. I must admit that even I was fooled by these miscreants at first. They claimed to be heroes from a far off galaxy and even had the flying saucer to prove it! However, when I felt a shift in the mystical energies surrounding me and their illusions melted away from my mind's eye, I quickly saw through their subterfuge and discovered that they were really demons sent from another dimension not too far from our own. Using powerful magic spells that I had learned from an ancient wizard who had been tutoring me for a few months, I banished the baddies back to their own dimension... but not before the female demon bound poor Master Grayson with a spell of her own. As the demonic vixen vanished, he fell to the ground as if he were dead and his skin grew cold as a strange-coloured mist began to seep from his body. My first thought after "oh my gosh, Batman's gonna kill me when he finds out what kind of trouble I got his ward into this time!" was to cast a counterspell that sealed the seeping energies. After that, I called every high-powered mage that I knew until I found one who knew a solution to the predicament and voila! I woke up to find out it had all been a dream and that it was time for me to get out of bed...

Later, after checking email and news and such, I hopped onto Google and did a few web-searches. One of my stops was the America's Next Top Model website because I watched an episode of it last night and wanted to snag some pictures for drawing reference. Lo and behold, what should my wander eyes find but a bunch of the models' portfolio pictures from an earlier episode where they all were dressed up as superheroines! Needless to say, I took it as a sign and snagged a bunch for costume/drawing references for later! ^_^

Another stop I made was at Alex Ross's website, where I proceeded to "ooo" and "ahh" and drool a bit over the immense beauty that he puts into his superheroic artwork. If you've never seen any of his work, then you need to!

And then I made a stop at a very funny website that sets out to prove how mean Superman really is by using actual comic book evidence. How many times has Superman threatened to kill people despite the fact he has a code versus killing? Superdickery.com has the answer! I was laughing so hard I scared my cat!

As the title says, it's been quite a "super" day. Now I'm off to make an amazing meal for my super-family before they all get the super-munchies! Take care, Blogland, and away I go! ^_~

Tippety, Tappety, Tippety, Tappety

It's Monday lunch.. I'm at the Art Center again... and brrrrr it's cold in here! I can hardly feel my fingertips and my throat is feeling all raw again! Darn being sick! I turned on the space heater near me and I'm trying to thaw out while I eat... might also take a bit of a break to take some pictures of the building with my new camera... and to get a mug of hot chocolate if there's still some in the kitchen here... mmm... chocolate... I'm not a tea or coffee drinker, but I do occasionally indulge in hot chocolate... I hope it has marshmallows... that would be wonderful!

In other news, while I have this quick moment to say it, yesterday I went on a magical journey through the kingdom that is our youngest's bedroom... we went through all of her clothes... and I do mean ALL of them... when we finished, you could see the floor in her closet and her dresser drawers closed without harsh shoving! I know! It's a miracle! What did we get rid of? Two large garbage bags, a huge box full of clothes nobody's worn since kindergarten, and a really big oversize bag that one might usually use to stuff raked leaves in the fall... every one of them is filled to the brim with clothes, clothing, and garments... it reminds of when my sister used to hoard clothes and then clean things out... wow the clothes she used to have! Massive piles of clothes and a closet stuffed full... but at least she wore them all at least once... some of the stuff my youngest had in her room was worn by neither her nor her sister... ever!

Ah well, back to workie-volunteering... more lunch to eat... yum... take care, Blogland... stay warm! Oh, and just for the record, the Art Center is most definitely haunted... something tried to drain the batteries on my camera earlier this morning... it went from full power to almost nothing... now I'm back at full power again... oooooo.... spooky, non? ^_~

Xmas in November

Depressing stuff first... Pat Morita died yesterday of natural causes, though what those causes are is in dispute... at least on the webpage where I saw this sad news... one source said kidney failure, another source said heart failure... not that it truly matters since it was natural causes and not murder... what does matter is that our world has lost another great actor, one that brought so much joy to so many people...

Okay... now that that's out of the way, I can move onto happier things...

Happy Thing #1: Our kids are coming home early from their mother's house!
Yes, I know that she's technically their mother, but since my hubby and I have them more often and take care of them a thousand times better than she does (at least in my honest opinion) I feel quite safe calling them my kids too... The circumstances surrounding our wee ones arrival are kinda sucky... their mother's hubby needs to be readmitted to the hospital again and our youngest was bitten by her mother's dog, though apparently it was a nip that punctured the skin not an awful bite... this remains to be seen... there's nothing like getting a phone call a little after 9AM from your hubby's ex and she's asking when the youngest child last got a tetanus shot... *sigh*

Happy Thing #2: My parents, who live a great distance away from my current place of habitation, sent some Xmas money my way early so that we could do our proxy-shopping for them before all of the maniacs come out of the wood-work to buy stuff... and in one day, I managed to spend the portion of the money that was intended for me... so here's what my parents got me for Xmas:

- breakfast and lunch during my 5 hours at the mall yesterday... yeah, mom, I know you said no food, but the chinese food there brings me a ton of joy and I get to eat it so very rarely... I can still taste the delightful teriyaki chicken mingling with the green peppered beef and fried rice... yum!
- 1 bag of stringless sugarsnap peas in the pod which I shall be eating shortly... I know, I know... again with the food... but peas in the pod remind me of home and the memories that they bring to mind while I eat them are worth a thousand times more than every penny I spent buying them.
- 1 brown, wide-brim, 100% wool hat... no no.. an awesomely comfortable and completely must have hat that can be worn in the winter or the summer... I love wider brimmed hats and this one reminded me of something that Indiana Jones might wear if he was a she.
- and 1 Vivitar ViviCam 3785, also known as my very first digital camera... I'm seriously thinking about naming it because it chirps in the most adorable way possible when I turn it on and off... it can take pictures, like the one I've posted just now, or it can take little mini-movies... and it could quite possibly be one of the coolest things I get this year!

So, much thanks goes to my loving parents who are, by far, the best parents a gal like me could ever hope to ever have, in this life or the next... be assured, dear mum and dod, that your long-distance daughter will be having a lot of fun with her early Xmas gifts... especially the camera... muwhahahahahahaha! ^_~

So Long And Thanks For The Turkey!

Happy American Thanksgiving, Blogland! Today is the day of days to say "fie on thee, oh bird flu!" so that we may stuff ourselves full of deliciously delectable delights... turkey isn't my favourite bird to eat... I'm more of a chicken-person and I would have preferred to have ham for our meal since a well roasted ham reminds me of being back home again, where I got to have some of the best hams I've ever tasted... one of the benefits of coming from a family in the business of butchering, I wager... still, tradition has been broken this year for my hubby's family since the turkey would not fit into his mother's oven... she had to bring it over last night so that we could cook it up today, complete with instructions and extra foil for the top (just in case we didn't have any)... it smells wonderful, I might add, and since I have a wicked cold brewing inside me right now that smell is driving me ravenous! Having a cold makes me feel like I'm starving all day long! I hope that she'll let us take some home with us... we have to bring it over to her house once it's cooked up so that we can enjoy the rest of the feast that she's making... yum!

Oh, and for a completely useless bit of knowledge... it has been brought to my attention that our toilet is older than my parents... the maker's mark on it says it was born on December 12th, 1952! The silly part of me wants to name it and throw it a party for having survived so long... the maintenance fellow who came over to fix it for us weeks ago says the toilet is original to our apartment and that if anything else goes wrong with it, they'll have to replace the poor thing... other than needing a new seat and having to reattach the water-stopper in the tank every so often (maintenance replaced the old stopper because it broke and this new one doesn't fit quite right, though sometimes jiggling the handle puts it back in place)... as long as nothing horrible happens, the toilet should continue to serve us well for a quite a while yet...

In Rogue Isles news, my City of Villains character, Ravel, is almost at 14th level which means I can get true flight soon instead of using the slow-as-treesap-on-a-wintery-day hover power! Yay! No more hospital trips for her because she flies too slow! ^_~

Ah well... time for me to sign off... my hair isn't going to brush itself, after all... plus there are places to go, things to eat, and stuffing to be thankful for... and I think a rip-roaring game of Heroclix is about to start on our living room floor... take care all! ^_^

Lunch!

I'm at the Art Center where I volunteer and it's lunchtime for me... the yummy egg-salad sammie (to use a Rachel Ray word) has been eaten and I still have an apple and some candy to eat... now I am being left alone for 15-20 minutes on what has been the busiest Monday I've ever seen here... I get to answer phones about things I have no idea about... I get to use my charm and winning smile to tell people I have no clue about the Nutcracker Ballet tickets that are almost sold out and that the person in charge will be back in 15-20 minutes... and my bosslady figures that they'll be all irate... it's been 5 minutes and I have had 4 calls... all for the ballet...LOL... I can hardly wait for 2pm when I am done and can go home and nap... all this hustle-bustle in a cold old building is doing wonders for my sore throat/developing cold... take care until later, Blogland! ^_^

Where Do Weeks Go?!?

Okay, so I blogged on Monday that I was going to get back to blogging tomorrow, but obviously I didn't since it is now a few days later... so here's my week in a bloggy nutshell...

Monday I woke up too early yet again to get ready to do some volunteering at the local Art Center... when I walked into the building, I was put to work by one of the paid ladies who work there as soon as I walked in the door... we rushed around trying to take down an old exhibit to put up the new one because the weekend employees didn't do it and luckily received some help when another couple of volunteers showed up... at least I think they were... one of them mentioned she was getting $20 an hour to work at the center and complained about the work she was having to do... and all I could think of, well it must be freaking nice! When I mentioned that little volunteering me was doing this without pay (jokingly of course because if you can't say something nice don't say it in front of the people you want to say it about unless you want to start a fight) the lady looked like I had slapped her in the face and called her a liar... *sigh* then the lady who usually has stuff for me to do, aka my "boss", comes in a bit late and asks me to ask if the exhibit people are going to need me all day... when I ask, the paid lady who wrangled me into working on the exhibit in the first place says to her, "Oh, no. I suppose not. Thank you for lending her to us." The tone in her voice was like I was a little slave girl being passed off to the next master... I was not amused... treat your volunteers with some respect, lady... sheesh! So then I was put on bulk mail duty, which means sticking address tags on envelopes and sealing them shut and counting them up and pretty much being left to my own thoughts on any other day... but today was special, you see... one of the paid girls who usually answers phones was out sick because she had just had an operation to remove her gall bladder... I know that pain and totally understood that she'd be gone and I would need to answer one of the phone lines when my boss was on the other line or was busy in the meeting... but WOW did it ring and ring and ring! Mondays are never so busy, but people called for this, that, and the next thing or came in looking for tickets to the Nutcracker performance that's coming up soon or to drop off more art for the exhibit that was going up and it was all we could do to keep up... my poor boss needed to have something done for noon and was still working on it when I left at 2pm to go home... she'd been working on it all day because of all the interruptions and I don't think she'd even had lunch yet...
After leaving that place, that the week calmed down a little... Tuesday, we went over to my hubby's parent's place to have supper... it was a delicious repast consisting of melt-in-your-mouth steak, chicken fingers, green peas, scalloped potatoes with carrots in it, cola to drink, fresh green peppers and celery to munch on, and eclairs for dessert... I only had half of an eclair though... the filling of these ones didn't agree with my tummy... so I ended up having a bunch of garlic dill pickles for dessert instead... hehehe... there would be no kissing my hubby after that, especially since he's allergic to garlic... but the pickles were just too yummy not to eat!
Wednesday was report card day at the middle school, so my hubby and I went from class to class doing the whole parent-teacher conference thing with most of the teachers on our elder daughter's list... overall things went well and everyone agrees that she's a wonderful girl... though I don't mind saying that her Social Studies teacher is a bit of a scritch... although normally I would take off the "scr" and replace them with a capital "b"... she's got a bit too much of that "teach the smartest kids first, and the rest should just speed up or fail" sort of attitude... I hate teachers like that and I can totally see why our girl doesn't really like her and is doing poorly in that class... our method to get our darling daughter to work harder? We told her that if she doesn't, that she'll have to repeat the class... which would mean spending another year in that class... needless to say, our girl totally wants out of that class, so I imagine she'll be studying harder now!
Thursday, Ravel formed a supergroup and filled out the paperwork with Arachnos for a evil lair... Ravel is my supervillainess in the game City of Villains and today I plan to decorate it so that I can invite all of my evil allies over to see... they shall join me or perish! Muwhahahahaha! I might even take some silly pictures of Ravel and her zombie minions in the base just for the heckuvait... I'm silly like that... Now if only I could find some minions to do the housework for me in real life... how sweet would that be? ^_~

Speaking of things evil... I found a couple of really awesome songs by a singer called Voltaire... one is about being evil called "When You're Evil" and the other is a lullaby for a child to help make them be not so scared at night called "Goodnight Demon Slayer"... both are incredibly funny and can be found on the internet, though I seem to have misplaced the link at this time... *sigh* Just run a Google search, I'm sure they'll pop up somewhere on there...

Ah well, I've stolen enough of your time... I need food so that my body will have the fuel needed to wash dishes... I hate washing dishes... take care, Blogland! ^_^

Technical Difficulties...?

This is a test of the Spectral Soliloquies Broadcasting system... this is just a test... if this were a real Broadcast, I might be fishing but since I am not, since is only a test... thank you for your patience and we now return you to your regularily unscheduled blog...

What a Monday....!

More on that tomorrow... ^_~

Hellllllooooooo Blogland! I've been a baaaad girl, haven't I? I meant to blog daily or at least weekly and now it's been since September! What's been keeping me away? Lots of things... but mostly downloading updates for City of Heroes/City of Villains (aka COH/COV), my favourite set of massive mulitplayer online roleplaying games or MMORPG... you see, our computer system was under the control of an evil device known as dial-up internet which meant that our downloading took forever to complete... we were supposed to be beta-testers for City of Villains and could not be simply because it took us eons to download the updates and such to participate... then when the game was released, it took us a whole week just to get half of the download needed... it was going to take us another week to finish... it was awful... so we checked into DSL deals and found that we could lock in a deal that gives us DSL for the same price as we were paying for dial-up... needless to say, we snapped that deal up and now we have the miracle of high speed internet! There is much rejoicing in the land! Yay! Now the phone's free to ring and the internet works a thousand times better... which makes playing MMORPGs a lot easier...hehehe...

In other news, I need a shower.... badly... lol... I meant to take one last night but the Wizard of Oz was on tv and I just love watching that musical... plus, I was drawing a lovely picture and I didn't want my muse to jump ship on me and find some other artist to inspire... unless, of course, my muse wanted to inspire my hubby who is an artist... I love him enough to share my muse once in a while when his is on a coffee break. ^_~

Eeep... speaking of my hubby... he just came back from work super early and wow is he ticked off!!! Apparently the dumbasses at his workplace scratched him off the schedule and didn't call him ahead of time... so we both could have slept in and enjoyed the day... *sigh* We really need to find him a different job... an illustrator/graphic designer of his calibre should never be forced to work in what we refer to as "retail hell" -- it's just not sane.

Ah well, chat with you laters... and hopefully sooner rather than later, right? Maybe even tomorrow, since tonight we begin playing our superhero campaign again with our gaming group... and I'm sure that I'll have one heckuva tale to tell about that! ^_^