After about 6 months of doing nothing significant with this site, I’ve taken a break from SincereAmore.com to fix it up.

I have so much older artwork to add to the site, so little by little I’ve been adding pieces as I photograph/scan them…but some are so big it’s hard to get decent pics of them. Maybe that’s just an excuse to be lazy and leave them in the back of my closet where they’re safe, who knows. Aside from adding much-needed content, I would like to redesign the layout of the page. I’ve made a few attempts already but haven’t really liked the results, so I guess it’ll stay the way it is for the time being. I do need to divide up the “non-anime” artwork into specific categories as it’s starting to get a little cluttered on that page.

I’ve also considered working on a Moulin Rouge image gallery but that will have to wait for awhile considering I don’t have the DVD and can’t get screencaps yet. Although I would really love to do that, I have my hands full with so many other projects at the moment, I don’t know how I could possibly maintain it while trying to maintain my other sites. I mean, I’ve had Young Frankenstein’s Brain Depositary on hold for over a year and a half while I’ve worked on my two main sites and I need to get going on that. But for the time being I really want to focus on working on my digital portfolio (i.e. this site) since I’ll have to be job hunting soonly. I really need to update my resume.

I had a doozy of a dream last night and it’s been bothering me majorly all day. To anyone who doesn’t know me it won’t seem like a big deal at all, but it’s the psychology behind what triggered the dream that’s the problem.

Basically, two of my best friends (both male) moved in to an apartment together and “neglected” to mention it to me. I was very upset and felt very betrayed, as if they were keeping things from me, like they didn’t want me involved in their lives anymore. It was awful.

Any time I dream about something like this so vividly it is usually an indication of something that’s been unconsicously rubbing me the wrong way and it’s my brain’s way of making me aware of it. The trouble with having such an active imagination at night is that it tends to stay with me the next day, and I can’t shake it. I felt much better once I had lunch, but now it’s afternoon and I’m starting to doze off again…Must.Have.Caffeine. (If only I had money for a Mt. Spew…)

I used to keep a regular dream journal (up until my senior year of high school) but got out of the habit once I had a job and less time. I used to have dreams so vivid that they’d sap all the energy out of my body. Colors, shapes, numbers, smells, sounds…I could remember it all as if it were a real memory. Most of them were pretty farked up too. A typical dream of mine would be so bizarre, I’d wonder where it was coming from. I don’t dream like that much anymore, but I think that’s mostly due to lack of sleep…the less I get at night, the less likely I am to remember what I dreamt.

I can’t say I’ve ever had a recurring dream, but I certainly have dreams with recurrant themes. These are usually instances where I’m trying to ignore or avoid a situation (either consciously or unconsciously) and my brain will replay the scenarios in different ways until I finally deal with the issue. Then they tend to decrease in frequency or disappear altogether.

Living such an active dream life has been such a big part of who I am that I am astounded when people say they either “don’t dream” or can never remember what they dreamt. My first boyfriend actually said he only dreamt a white void. I don’t know if I necessarily believe that, but if in fact he was telling the truth, I feel really bad for him…dreams are such a wonderful things to experience.

Most of the time.

Gah, this yahoo dial/pr0ndigy thing has fux0r3d my email so bad…yahoo no longer allows me to check my pr0ndigy acct through POP3. I really liked yahoo until they took away free POP access and fricken merged with SBC and pr0ndigy to become an Evil Empire.

But I’m not going to dwell on that right now because it makes me too angry, so I’ll mention how happy I am with Blizzard. Every one of their games has been top notch and highly addicting. I finally killed 100 plagued villagers before Mal’Ganis did, allowing me to get to Level 7 of the Human campaign in Warcraft III. I had to do that level 4 times because I got booted out twice when my computer redialed pr0ndigy. (Grrrrrrr! Guess that’s gonna keep coming up no matter how much I try to avoid it!!!!) Anyhow, I’m really enjoying that game, and am really looking forward to the Undead campaign.

I’m also getting pretty well into Dean Koontz’s One Door Away From Heaven. Seems like a pretty typical Koontz book: 3 separate plots with his regular cast of characters…special boy, special dog, special girl, woman-who-empathizes-with-special-girl-and-wants-to-help-her, evil government conspirators. Very X-Files-ish–definitely my kind of story. This man is unquestionably my all-time favorite author, even though From the Corner of His Eye left me disappointed. (Nothing gets better than Intensity though. I will never ever forget Edgler Foreman Vess. After seeing the made-for-tv movie, I can never watch John C. McGinley in any other role without thinking “My God, that’s Edgler!)

I’m looking for a decent price for the Collector’s Edition Moulin Rouge soundtrack but haven’t even found a place where it’s in stock, let alone on sale. At first it really bothered me that the whole movie is a giant anachronism in regards to the music…I mean, obviously Elton John and Madonna weren’t making music at the turn of the 20th century…but about 15 minutes into the movie it stopped bothering me and I enjoyed it very much. I wish I could share my appreciation for the film with other people, but I’m well-aware it isn’t for everyone.

Well, Warcraft III Human Campaign is finished. ‘Twasn’t too hard either, unlike Starcraft’s Terran campaign that I never was able to beat! *sigh*. Those damned humans…hey, at least I can be Undead now!!!

It was so nasty-hot last night I ate half a tray of ice cubes just to keep cool. Then early this morning it rained again. It’s nice when it rains and the air clears out, and everything outside is lush and green, but the humidity comes right back again because there’s so much moisture in the air. It’s a vicious cycle.

Less than a week till my b-day, till I’m a full-fledged legal adult. Gah, what a scary thought. Adults always seemed old to me…and now I am one. I don’t feel old…my mind still thinks I’m 19 years old. I don’t know if it’s my attitude or relative lack of world experience that keeps my mind back in that age, but I sort of feel comfortable there. Intellectually, I’ve felt like an adult for as long as I can remember…I mean, geez, I was reading things like The Silence of the Lambs when I was 11 years old (I actually read it twice that year alone)…but the intellectual world is different than “real life.”

I don’t think it’s denial that I don’t feel my age since I do have adult responsibilites: a full-time summer job (albeit, an internship), tuition payments to make, car repairs, etcetera etcetera etcetera, but my attitude towards life isn’t adult-like. It could be the fact that I’m an artist and a dreamer and will never have a typical adult view of the world…and frankly, I don’t think I want one. I think I’d rather enjoy life and make beautiful things than become a lethargic and repressed adult sitting in a boring job, worrying about mortgage payments. Yeah, I know, things like that are sometimes unavoidable, but I’m going to try to stay away from that stuff as much as possible.

Grr and stuff… At home we get our dial-up service from Ameritech/Prodigy which merged with SBC and became Yahoo Dial, so they sent us new software to install to upgrade the account. The only thing that changed overall was the login id was now USER@prodigy.net instead of simply USER.

The thing that really pissed me off was that it forced you to install their browser (along with a bunch of other really fruity crap) to “update” the account. If you try to do this through I.E., it gives you an “unauthorized to view this page” error. Well, I got all that taken care of, uninstalled all the unnecessary crap, then realized that my e-mail account had to be updated as well. So I went through and reinstalled all that again just so I could check my email. Sheesh! That whole business had me so frustrated by the time I finished that I cried!!!! (It didn’t help much that I was in an emotional state to begin with, and the temperature and humidity were unbelievably high…) Oh yeah, and I forgot to mention the fact that my parents’ computer kept trying to steal my computer’s ip address…GAH!!!

So I did Tae Bo to vent my frustration and felt much better.

Our Best Buy is finally carrying Farscape DVDs…it’s about time. Tomorrow Volume 1 of Season 2 is coming out!!!!

Speaking of Best Buy, when I was cleaning my room on Saturday, I came across an ad I saved from Best Buy in 2000. Look closely at the computer screen: this PC is apparently running MacOS. Wonder what crack-head graphic artist thought they could get away with that one?

Really really busy at work this week…I have to convert a bazillion Word documents into HTML. Currently working on 1 of 2 Intranet sites for Miles Kimball.

My web host (and close friend) Jonathan is showing his true geekiness this week in St. Louis at Y.A.P.C. (Yet Another Perl Conference). He’ll get a chance to meet fellow geeks from around the world…and maybe they’ll even have light-up bouncy balls there too. *crosses fingers*

We played Celestial Factions (a friend’s own RPG) last night and it absolutely poured the whole time, and it’s continuing to storm now as I type this (~3:00 AM). My poor dog Blueberry scratched her way upstairs from the basement and sat on my lap shaking for about an hour before I finally put her back down.

It’s pretty late and I’m feeling a little sleepy so I’ll continue this later on.

Thought I’d try my hand at a little Web Log. I didn’t really want anything fancy, so they layout will be pretty basic and to-the-point. :-)

My latest obsession: Moulin Rouge! Can’t stop singing those songs…I have 4 different versions of Elton John’s “Your Song” on my computer playing all day long while I’m at work. Such a simple but elegant display of love through song. And, my God, Ewan McGregor really can sing! (Way to be, Obi-Wan!)

Your Song

It’s a little bit funny this feeling inside
I’m not one of those who can easily hide
I don’t have much money but boy if I did
I’d buy a big house where we both could live

So excuse me forgetting but these things I do
You see I’ve forgotten if they’re green or they’re blue
Anyway the thing is, what I really mean
Yours are the sweetest eyes I’ve ever seen.

Sheesh, I wish I could inspire someone enough to write something like this for me!!! Usually I’m the one being inspired by someone else, so it would be a nice turn of events to be the source of inspiration for once! (Okay, so I’m more of a hopeless romantic than I thought!)

I haven’t bought the DVD yet…I’m trying to save for next fall’s tuition and my birthday is only a few weeks away so it’s possible someone might buy it for me. For the time being I’ll have to be satisfied with my DivX copy of the film and my downloaded mp3s of the OST. sigh

On a related note: this will be birthday #21. Not that it’s really a huge deal, but I will at least be able to legally buy my own Zima now. Maybe I’ll even try some sake!

Oh yeah…and one of my co-workers got me hooked on Diamond Mine…what a truly fabulous way to waste an entire afternoon…and evening… And speaking of games, I’ve played a bit o’ Warcraft III. (One of the creatures in the “Undead” race that is invisible actually says “I ain’t got no body” when you click on it!) Technically, I shouldn’t be able to play it yet as I’m not a beta-tester, and the game doesn’t go on sale till July 3 (the same day MIB2 comes out!) but I have it nonetheless. The less questions asked, the better. :-) Regardless, it’s a damn cool game. It runs much better on my machine than Dungeon Siege.

I finally took some pictures of the giant blanket I’ve been working on for the past 2 months. The major problem with photographing something so big in a small house is that there’s no way of getting the whole thing in one shot without things getting in the way or majorly distorting the perspective. The ceilings are almost too low to take the picture from on high.

It’s been really rainy and/or humid here for the past two weeks. It seems like nature decides to start pouring down on us in the very early mornings recently (i.e. 3:00 AM) so I have to be alert enough to jump out of bed and throw the window closed so it doesn’t flood out my monitor, which is directly below the window. It’s kind of a pain in the arse, as it disrupts my sleep enough that I’m tired for the entire next day. Grr and stuff.