I suppose it’s only fair to do a proper update of this thing since it’s been ages. Truth be told, there hasn’t really been a lot happening recently. The main concern lately has of course been the fact that I need to get my website ready to go in order to start applying for jobs. Most people who start applying for work have the advantage of “only” having to have a resume and cover letter handy, but in my case since I’m an artist looking for a creative job, I also need to show examples of my work in a very professional and presentable manner. This means that when I state that my portfolio exists at annfoxart.com, it better be there. I can’t very well send potential employers to a splash page that says “Coming Soon.” That would reflect very poorly on me, obviously, so this makes me getting this site done *imperative.* I’ve made incredible progress on it in the last week alone, such that it has content and functions and is on its way to looking aesthetically pleasing. It has taken an immense amount of willpower to keep at it (I’m struggling desperately with burnout) and I attribute my main motivation to something I did last week.

I can’t recall exactly which day it was, but at one point Jules convinced me I should start looking for retail work as something to do in the meantime while I’m looking for a “real” job. I was feeling really terrible about myself because I felt really useless so Jules told me that taking the first step in just applying for work would help my self esteem, at least enough to be able to maintain a positive attitude towards job searching. So (quite reluctantly) I went down to the crafts store a few blocks away from here and “inquired within” as the HELP WANTED sign outside requested. I talked to a woman who basically told me to get stuffed because I had no cashier experience and didn’t do scrapbooking or work with fleece. Simply put, they weren’t interested in hiring someone they would have to train. What a crock. Instead of making me feel better, it deflated every ounce of self-worth within me. I had no trouble convincing myself I was totally useless and had no desirable qualities whatsoever. Of course, whenever I say such things to Jules it tears him apart, but I felt better telling him how I felt than trying to hide it. Actually, that’s not entirely accurate. I *can’t* hide how I feel from him, he always knows immediately anyhow.

So yeah, that was a major letdown. The following week I went shopping because I needed some toiletries and such and I was looking for We Love Katamari and as I was walking out of Target, I decided I’d apply there. I didn’t really *want* to work there, but I felt that even by just applying, I was at least being somewhat pro-active about the process. I went in and scheduled an interview, but instead of being excited/nervous about interviewing, I used it as a motivational tool for getting my other things done. I told myself that if I didn’t work hard on my portfolio I’d have to work at Target. And, unsurprisingly, it worked. I got a *lot* done in only a few days and I got myself on the right track. Of course now I’m running into annoying problems but that’s to be expected with this sort of project. It never goes as smoothly as one might hope.

So in general that’s going well. By the end of the weekend I should hopefully have the site almost ready for unveiling.

Otherwise, like I mentioned, not much has happened aside from that. Will and I took the scanner in to this Epson service center in Tukwila (like 45 min outside of Seattle) and they replaced the CCD unit in it, so it scans beautifully now. (phew) I could not find any copies of We Love Katamari anywhere around here as most stores only got 2-5 extra copies in on the launch date and sold out immediately so I was very upset about that until Sunday when I quite unexpectedly spotted one in a display case inside an import games shop. Of course I bought it. I stayed up quite late last night collecting all the cousins so I could unlock the Rose level. (roll up 1 million roses!) I’d unlocked that in the Japanese version but didn’t feel it was worthwhile to spend time on it since I was planning on getting the American one anyhow. Today I walked to a nearby park and finished reading Girl With a Pearl Earring, which Jules’ mum gave me for my birthday when I was in Australia. I really, really enjoyed it (it read incredibly fast) so this afternoon I watched the film again to compare the two. I appreciated it a lot more this time than the last but I think I prefer the book despite the fact that Colin Firth plays Vermeer in the movie. :O~~ I’ve worked on my Prince of All Cosmos blanket quite a bit lately, and I’m about 60% done now. It’s going very quickly, which is a lovely surprise.

Jules is feeling a lot better now, and has gone back to work. Unsurprisingly he’s very tired after the long days, but he’s more upbeat and a lot more like himself now. We’ve still been able to talk a great deal even though he has less time now, but the quality and tone of our conversations have improved dramatically since the time he was so ill. It’s so wonderful to return to the feeling of falling in love with him more each time we speak. I know that my own mood has lightened a lot now that he feels better, as I am so empathetic that I can’t help feeling what he’s feeling (especially when it’s strong)…and I know he’s the same way…so when he’s feeling bad and I’m feeling bad, those energies mingle and feed off each other until we both feel exponentially worse. The same is true about positive feelings, of course…but anyhow, now that he feels better I do too. The fact that I’m unemployed does not make me feel worthless and I can work towards having a professional portfolio without anxiety and disappointment (over the situation, not over small details which of course bother me from time to time.) Things are a lot better now.

Rayme lent me his external hard drive enclosure so I could get my high-quality images off my PC’s hard drives, and that’s when I discovered the 2004 photos were missing. The afternoon of that discovery was horrific and the sort of mood that I described in my previous entry permeated me completely. I was eventually able to set it aside and get a lot done, making great use of the enclosure. Thank you so, so, so much Rayme.

I should prolly get to bed soon since it’s quite late and my eyes have been bloodshot all day anyhow. I drank 3/4 of a pitcher of iced tea today so I’m sure I’ll be visiting the bathroom quite a bit tonight. Can’t help it though, I’m addicted to it.

I really hate it how whenever I get stuck on a problem to which there’s no obvious solution, I just freeze up. My mind gets trapped there, and I can’t move on, I just obsess over the idea that I’m stuck. I can’t do anything to escape it, as things like movies or books or games have zero appeal to me…I feel almost like I don’t deserve to do any of those things because I can’t get past my problem. This leads to extreme frustration and this horrible funk I can’t break myself out of.

I’ve been having problems customizing parts of my gallery tonight, and I’ve spent the last hour or so staring into space. Not fun at all.

At least I have Will here with me, with whom I’ve been conversing about the idea of people being perfect for each other; whether they begin this way or only become this way over time. We concluded that people can only speak from their own experience and no two people have identical experiences, so making a blanket statement about all people is ignorant.

Undergoing a minor crisis right now…I was just perusing my hard drives for my art images and I noticed all my digital photos from 2004 are missing. I found some DVD backups of January-July and I still had my Australia photos from November but it appears all the others are just gone. I must have accidentally dragged the folder somewhere else and it got deleted. I can’t even begin to describe how distraught I am right now.

I’m extremely pleased right now. After a week of angst and frustration over job-related stress, I’ve finally hit a point where I feel I’m finally moving forward rather than stumbling over myself. Peter pointed me towards Gallery, an open-source CMS that handles…well…galleries. It is *extremely* robust, in fact…way more robust than is necessary, but after playing around with it awhile I’ve realized that it is a TON easier to take things out that I don’t want than to try to patch in a bunch of code for things I want to add. (I’d tried out pixelpost as well, which was small and concise but lacked a lot of features I was looking for.) This evening alone I’ve been able to customize it quite a bit, and Will has had the pleasure (?) of hearing my squeals of delight as I realize the software is capable of doing yet another thing I wanted it to. Yay. :D

I’m trying very hard to keep myself motivated enough to get some job-preparation stuff done. I was able to come up with a rough draft of my resume for people to pick apart (Will did an excellent job of *that*) and I’m working on a design for my new website annfoxart.com. After much debate, I decided I would separate my professional content from my regular things since freshlydead has *so* much content on it and organization is becoming a problem. Even thinking about trying to find a clean and logical way to organize all my content made me absolutely exhausted every time I tried, so that was a good indication I needed to find some other way of approaching this. I have decided to keep annfoxart as clean and uncluttered as possible, with *only* completed art on it, and use freshlydead as more of a casual, personal webspace (which it seems to have turned into anyhow.) At any rate, I think for now I won’t upload anything to the new site until the design is finalized simply because I really would like it to stay as professional as possible.

In other creative news, I’m still working quite hard on my Prince of All Cosmos blanket. (I’m now about 1/4 of the way done.) I’ve never crocheted this quickly before, so it’s astounding to me to watch it progress! Amusingly, I’ve had several people comment that they’re interested in that design for themselves so in the end I may end up giving it to someone else. But not until after winter is over, or I’ve made a replacement for myself, since the whole reason I’m making this one in the first place is because I’m cold! XD

I also began a new painting this week of some hobo. Okay, not really, it’s Chris. I got my paints on Monday so I was really excited to get going on it, but because I was having such trouble motivating myself to work on job stuff, I decided to make painting a reward for getting something accomplished. I felt pretty bad after I saw what horrible shape my resume was in so I caved in and worked on the painting for an hour or so. It felt good to do something I was actually motivated to do.

Also, on Monday, my new monitor arrived! :D I’ve been taking advantage of its size to work on my graphics applications (my 12″ Powerbook screen is pitifully small for that sort of thing) and I must say I’m very pleased. It’s a Dell UltraSharp 2005FPW 20.1″ Wide Flat Panel LCD. Basically, that’s the Apple cinema display in a Dell housing. OH MY GOD THE COLORS! :O~~~ I’ve never worked on a monitor that looks this nice! And since it’s DV, I can do dual display with my Powerbook, which gives me *that* much more room to work with. Because I got it off eBay I was able to get it for a fantastic price. I’m very very pleased with the purchase. :D

The scanner I bought, on the other hand…I scanned one thing just fine and any attempts after that produced a 1px magenta line down the length of it (always in the same place.) It wasn’t a driver issue as Will and I both tried different drivers on both our computers and it produced the same results. *sigh* I think this weekend we’re going to try to take it to an Epson service center.

In other news, Will and I went to get our Washington driver’s licenses on Saturday. I was going to get an emissions test done for my car but they said my car “couldn’t be tested” (I guess because it’s too new) so that’s one less thing to worry about now. That evening we went to his family reunion. He was a bit nervous about going alone because he didn’t know very many of them so he asked me to go with. It didn’t take much convincing and I was all dressed up in the clothes I’d purchased at Banana Republic earlier in the week. The shoes were an aquisition from earlier in the day, which Will helped me pick out at Payless. I had a lot of fun shopping for the shoes with Will because he has a weak spot for cute shoes and his tastes are similar enough to Jules’ that I could ask him “Would Jules like these?” and he’d be able to give me an accurate answer. (Same thing with clothes of any sort as well as…pantyhose.) Heh. I had a wonderful time; his family is all very nice, friendly, and outgoing. Many of them assumed we were a couple, so it was fun trying to convince them we were just friends/roommates of the opposite gender. :D The food was fantastic and there was free wine, so that just enhanced it. :3

In general I’ve felt pretty depressed this week. Jules has been really sick so he’s been home from work and on medication, and he hasn’t been himself at all, so that makes things difficult. I’m trying so hard to stay focused and positive but it takes all I can muster to do that…and often the melancholy wins. I feel a bit better today now that I’ve got a good start on my website and a little more polish on my resume so it feels like I have a direction to follow now.

Bored and alone on a Friday night. I’ve been crocheting all afternoon. It’s difficult going from 24 years of doing things with my family and/or friends each Friday night to sitting in an empty apartment, wishing I could be with people. Friday night gatherings were always something I looked forward to, sometimes the highlight of the whole week. Such is life no longer. *sigh*

It turns out Jules does in fact have glandular fever (what we usually call “mono” here) and there’s the real possibility that I was the one who gave it to him since the incubation period is 4 to 7 weeks and the carrier is often immune. ;_; I mean, it’s just as likely it was anyone *other* than me who gave it to him but even the remotest chance…I’m so unbelievably sorry Jules.

Much to our surprise, this turned out to be a really wonderful and productive weekend. At first Will and I both felt a little disappointed that we hadn’t been able to accomplish anywhere near everything we wanted to, but when we looked back on what we *had* done, we felt quite satisfied. Since it’s been awhile since I wrote, I’ll start with the major events of the past week.

On Wednesday I waited all day long for my packages to arrive, and after much teasing from the UPS truck, they finally came by at 5:30 PM. Excitedly, I unpacked the canvas frames and the roll of canvas, spilling packing peanuts all over the living room carpet. It took me nearly a half hour to clean it all up afterwards. I stretched two canvases that evening, which was a good start. I didn’t really want to do anymore since it was already getting late and the staple gun and hammer were making quite a bit of racket. (I’m still considerate to my neighbors.) At that point Will asked if I wanted to go with him to the Japanese bookstore so he could get a study booklet for the Japanese language proficiency test. Of course I went along, as it’s always exciting to look around at that place. Interestingly, the travel section was right next to the test materials so I looked at an Australian tourist book and was delighted to find locations that I’d actually been to in Perth and even found Dunsborough on one of the maps! :D After Will had chosen a book, we went into the attached Asian grocery store and bought a bunch of instant noodles (udon, yakisoba, ramen, etc) which I’ve already eaten all of (damn it’s good.)

I spent most of Thursday evening working on the pattern for my Katamari Damacy blanket (image in previous entry) while Will played Sakura Taisen 5. I actually find myself really getting into that game and I’m picking up bits of Japanese (well, at least recognizing phrases that get used often enough) so that’s been quite entertaining.

Friday I worked on my resume a little, got most of it up to date. I still have a bunch of tweaking to do with the wording and then I have to choose a way of formatting it…I think I’ll have it printed on really nice paper using only one color (black) to keep the cost down. I’m not sure what sort of theme I want to use yet but I’m sure something will come to me. After some frustration with that and subsequent feelings of self-pity, I walked down to the crafts store a few blocks away and bought $50 worth of yarn for my new blanket. I worked on the blanket until Will got home. He was planning on talking to Hiroko so he didn’t have enough time to meet up with Chad and Rayme for dinner (we had planned on going out for curry) so he and I just walked down to Ann’s Teriyaki and had generic Asian food served by a perpetually sour-demeanored woman. We both had bubble tea, but mine wasn’t mixed very well so I was rather disappointed. :( I’ve successfully cut back on the amount of bubble tea I’ve been drinking since I don’t want to ruin it for myself by getting sick of it. Once a week or every two is sufficient for my cravings. After dinner Will went to talk to Roko and ended up leaving the apartment rather abruptly (not sure why) so there I was by myself again. I ended up watching Ten Things I Hate About You since it’s set in Seattle and I was interested in seeing if I recognized any of the places in the film (and I did!) Sticking with the Seattle theme, I put in Sleepless in Seattle and got about halfway through it before Will got home. He sat down and watched the second half of the movie with me while we enjoyed some wine together, then we chatted for quite awhile about random things while he pieced together a video of the gathering of people that took place here over the past month. It turned out beautifully. :D I talked to Jules until sometime after 4AM, then got a little bit of sleep.

We had planned on getting up at a reasonable hour on Saturday so we could get a bunch of stuff done, but it didn’t end up happening that way. Jules called me back at sometime after 8AM because he said his mum wanted to talk to me a bit. Of course I couldn’t resist a chat with Dr. Mumcaster (as Will affectionately calls her.) I love listening to her speak excitedly about how her book is going and answering her questions about life in Seattle, but most of all I love hearing her tell me how much she loves me and misses me. She is the sweetest woman on earth, so kind and generous to me. She really did a great deal to make me feel at home in the Lancaster family when I was staying there, for which I am eternally grateful. I was so worried about getting in her good graces before I took the trip, but it really didn’t take much for her to warm up to me. It really is an honor to be able to know her in this way, and I really, really look forward to getting to know her better. She gives good hugs too. :3

After a bit of a chat, I went back to bed for awhile, then showered. At 1:30 I went and knocked on Will’s door (he was still asleep!) and by the time he’d gotten ready it was too late to do a few of the things we’d intended (ie, getting Washington driver’s licenses) but we made do anyhow. We went and deposited Will’s half of the rent money in my bank account, then walked down to the library and signed up for library cards. The branch near our house is brand new (built within the last year) but the books in it seem to be sort of leftovers from the main library. They told us that everything can be taken out for three weeks (including DVDs!) and things can be renewed *twice* and you can have up to one hundred items out at any given time. O_O Talk about awesome. After that we drove into the city and ended up having lunch at a Japanese place in Capitol Hill. I had yakisoba, which was good, but I really wished I’d gotten sushi as I watched some of the other patrons enjoying it. Oh well. After lunch we picked up Rayme and Chad and went to this place called Re-PC so Will could get some RAM for his PowerMac 9600 (so he could put OSX on it) as well as a power adaptor for the router Chris had given us. We went back to the guys’ apartment and watched some Battlestar Galactica and since it was an episode I’d already seen I browsed through a Monty Python autobiography sitting on the coffee table. We went out for curry after that, which I was astounded to be able to finish since it had only been a few hours since lunch, and then Will and I headed home since he was planning on talking to Hiroko again. I crocheted until my arm started aching, but it was okay because I made some excellent progress.

Sunday I talked to Jules for a bit in the morning (Skype was messed up to the point where I wasn’t getting any sound so he had to call my cell phone to wake me up!) but he went to bed relatively early since he had work the next morning and he wasn’t feeling too great. He thinks he may have glandular fever, which I had never heard of before that. It sounds like a really nasty thing to have, and I genuinely hope that’s not the case. He was going in to get tested for that this morning, so we’ll see how that goes. Poor guy. ;_; We had a discussion about my job situation which ended up really upsetting him but after awhile he seemed to understand why I was feeling the way I was. I *hate* doing or saying anything that makes him feel sad but I know that me not being honest would upset him even more so I try to be as candid as I can.

I went back to sleep once he decided to go to bed and got up a couple hours later, had some food, and watched some Mythbusters. In the afternoon Will and I went shopping as I needed a cart to hold my paints and palette. We ended up taking a look inside this shop called Ross “Dress for Less” and I found some “irregular” pants really cheap (they looked perfectly fine to me, so big deal) but I saved like $50 off the retail price. I love buying clothing cheaply and rarely ever get anything unless it’s on a clearance rack. Cheap pants make me very excited. :D And some of you may be amused to note I bought womens’ jeans for the first time in about 10 years. Hah. (I was a bit surprised to learn I was a smaller size than I’d thought, but that just goes to show how little I know.) It had begun to rain just as we left that shop and the sun was shining brightly so there was a *gorgeous* double rainbow arcing across the sky. The air smelled so clean and fresh…it was absolutely divine. I’m so glad that both Will and I can truly appreciate how extraordinary something like that is…we both remarked on its beauty. After we both took some lovely photos, we went into the mall and ate at Red Robin, which was delicious. We had a genuinely nice and quite skilled waiter, which was lovely…it’s so impressive to me to see someone who can juggle so many things in their mind simultaneously and still maintain a friendly and professional air…that’s certainly a job I’d be terrible at myself.

In the evening Will played a bunch of Sakura Taisen 5 and I watched while I crocheted. As usual, we enjoyed some wine together and I ended up getting pretty sleepy around 3AM so I headed to bed and he continued playing.

This morning I talked to Jules very briefly as he had to get up early the next morning to get that blood test done, then got up a few hours later, had some lunch, and watched more Mythbusters. More crocheting of course. Since it’s Labor Day, everyone had off of work so the group of us had all planned on getting together. After showering, Will and I headed over to get Rayme and Chad and we went to Cold Stone Creamery for some yummy ice cream. As usual I got more than I could handle, but it was this thing with heaps of chocolate and fudge and more chocolate so I managed. (I think it was called “Chocolate Devotion”) I started shivering after that, heh. :3

We went back to their apartment afterwards and watched a bunch of episodes of Battlestar Galactica, pausing for a bit to go get some pizza for supper. The breadsticks at this place had so much pesto and cheese on them they looked like they were moldy and decomposing, but DAYAM they tasted good. The pizza was terrific as well. Mmm. I crocheted a bunch more (until my arm was in tons of pain again) and I started getting a bit sleepy since the apartment was so warm and we were surrounded by the constant hum of fans. Before we left we remembered to bring our vacuum cleaner with us (let’s hope it works as Rayme had gotten a shirt caught in it earlier today and the apartment was filled with the scent of burnt rubber!) Will and I came home and he’s been playing ST5 ever since. We rearranged the livingroom so I could have all my painting stuff in one corner (it’s much nicer having all those canvases out of the way.) I organized my paints in my new storage cart (yay!) and excitedly remembered that I’d ordered more paint at some point this last week. I should be getting 16 tubes of new paints later on in the week, whee. :D

Oh yeah, I also ended up ordering the scanner I wanted from buy.com since none of the local office supply stores had it. That should be arriving on Thursday…I had it sent to Will’s work so I don’t have to sit here and wait for the truck to arrive. (Thank you so much Will.) I’m looking forward to scanning a bunch of stuff, as is Will. Getting this new scanner is making me really want to get other new peripherals like a nice tablet (since the one I have now is serial and doesn’t work on Mac) but I’m really pining for a larger monitor as doing any graphics work on a 12″ laptop screen is torturous. (GAH!) I have my eye on this 20.1″ widescreen Dell LCD display which is rather expensive but also delicious. It seems to just be the Apple Cinema Display in a Dell housing. :O~~ I don’t know if I’ll get that now though, even though I really really want it and it’d be really useful for working on my graphics stuff as I’m preparing for a job…since I only have a limited supply of money. *sigh* I did get a credit increase on my Sony card this week, though, so I *could* charge it, but I really don’t want to get myself into credit card debt if I can help it. I don’t know. It might be a good investment though, since I will most definitely get some good use out of it (both on this Mac and my PC once I finally build it.) Not sure though.

Here’s the design for the next blanket I’ve begun to crochet. I used Illustrator to create this image and then Will helped me use OmniGraffle to make my pattern/grid. I must admit, that program works rather nicely and did *exactly* what I needed it to. Props to you, Omni guys.