These last few weeks have been a blur. Other than the Writer's Block and fluff posts, writing while on the road has been tough. So here's a non-chronologically ordered summary of my life.

1. Galina emailed me and finally forgave me for not attending her wedding. That meant a lot to me. Galina was my Jewish Russian best friend from Jr. High and much of high school. She had a big influence on my life. It pleased me to no end to hear from her.

2. My road trip with Misty B. was super awesome! In Minneapolis, she introduced me to a designer who asked me to be in her runway show on May. The designer gave us a great tip on a website with inexpensive dancer shoes.

3. I went out to dinner with Harlequin, stayed at Karen's place (what a hostess) and found some amazing clothes at Sarah's marvelous Naked Lady party. It was so nice to see so many familiar faces at the party. Can't wait until the next one.

4. Volunteered at the WARM exhibit's pick-up day and read my first complete book since I closed the print shop.

5. Work has been treating me well. My main promo agency has been providing me with gigs galore. I picked-up two new venues for art modeling, one unsolicited. Been sending my headshot to a few film opportunities. If Sunday's film gig falls through, I'll have a day off. Otherwise, I won't have one until next week.

6. Amazingly, Rasputin Catamite has been updating every week. The Rasputin Barxotka archive is finally back on a much smaller, and less violent scale to appease the censors. As per request of Gino, there's a one-month non-recurring subscription option available until the site is updated again on a regular basis. As soon as I download my Flash software, SIF will be back. No Killerdyke.com content because Loki has been working even longer hours than I have at the farm.

That's it for now. I have to ready myself for today's promo gig. I'm looking forward to going to the GRAA International Sampler Fundraiser afterwards with mom and tasting yummy foods from around the world.

Loki put a medicine cabinet in the downstairs bathroom, at last.  What a medicine cabinet it is with excessive space and mirrors!  Sober mouth-smuttery points for you, Loki!  You earned them.  :D

Okay, I am so happy!  I got paid for not doing anything today and yesterday because a big corporation forgot to ship a promo kit and I was on call.  As if that wasn't super enough, I am going to get paid more very soon.  Loki too!

My freaking rockstar promo agency just merged with a whole mess of other agencies.  As a result, it just gathered a bunch of new clients, but doesn't seem to have enough staff to handle the increased workload.  As a result, I will be working a minimum of five days a week, for the next two weeks.  This week, I will have technically worked six days doing either promos or modeling gigs by the end of Saturday.  As if that wasn't cool enough, I just got added to yet another art cooperative's rotation.  I am still waiting on another one, but the prospects are looking awesome for me.  To add to the fun, I just canceled my Pilates class because Thursdays are too loaded with networking opportunities, and my in-home exercise and diet programs are actually working.

As for Loki, the workload at the farm has been unlike anything I've ever seen, so Loki is making more money than normal at this time of year.  WOO!

So now, I leave y'all with some RuPaul action.  Remember, "YOU BETTER WORK!"

ROCK!

(Thanks to Fallen Eden and Axiom in Use, for their assistance in this project.  We welcome anyone else who might be interested in helping.  Yes AJ, we still want to use your friend.  Please help us set up a meeting time.)

You may love what you hear, you may hate what you hear, but it's the work of three bands, a team of artists and crafter who have worked their asses off for the cause of bringing three sock puppets to life. Introducing the music of a band that never was, but somehow is.   Other related projects on MySpace include: the Oven-Mitt Leviathan, RasputinSpace and Ace's page.  Oh and while we're on the subject, here's Upir's Mark wearing their new summer clothes by AJ.  There will be more to come.

Fruits and Veggies

• The black cherries are ripe and begging to be turned into syrup for ice cream.
  
• Zucchini is producing like crazy.
• Our lettuce died.  All of it.
• Our celery is not too impressive, but it is making a valiant effort.
• Roman chamomile - WOW!  Chamomile doesn't normally put me to sleep, but this stuff is something else
• Thyme and rosemary were great with our stew featuring our baby potatoes
  
• The green beans are crazy!  We picked two pounds in one day.
• The tomatoes are very slow. 
• Acorn squash has baby fruits
• I found chokecherries!
• First all of our apples, and now this.  The stupid deer ate all of my sumac tops, so no pink sumac lemonade.  BOO!  This deer season, revenge is coming.
• The wild turkeys are utter bastards.
• Where the heck are all the rabbits?  Maybe the coyotes got them.  :)
  
• Why are there vultures in Central Minnesota this year?
  
• The squirrels are all over the place.  Our cats are tormented because they can't go outside.
• The bats are happy, yet there are no mosquitoes.
• The spiders are breeding like mad.
• The songbirds are only showing up in the early morning.
• The wild plums are looking good.
• The red raspberries are out.  Loki is making me eat them in mass.
• The smudging sage is ready for harvest.
• The cooking sage looks dead.
• The catnip has been delightful this year.  I cannot wait to make some jelly.
• Our violets are ready for a salad
• I'm still immune to poison ivy.  (Bless you Injun genes!)
• The yummy wild rosehips are going to be plentiful this fall
• Our rhubarb is getting big, but we are giving it one more year to spread.
• Our asparagus has flopped, but we found some wild asparagus amongst the pines.

Nik Arnoldi, the guy who draws all of that cool stuff on Ace and Bog, came to Rice on Friday, to help Loki and I with getting some stuff done at the store, as well as working on some art.  His visit was an absolute delight.  Apparently, he also seemed to like our taste in food, coffee, and tea.  To Loki's credit, he managed to make it through the entire weekend eating a meat-free cuisine, without gagging, or making monumentally stupid comments in front of our vegetarian friend.  He did call Nik "weird" for not eating meat, but he more than a made up for it with a huge loaf of homemade bread and good conversation.  we did talk about hunting and animal husbandry, but Nik did not seem to mind at all, and in fact asked all sorts of cool questions.

On Saturday, Loki roped him into chopping some wood in the freezing cold.  Nik seem to have an absolute blast doing that. I suppose it was one of those good chest hair growing activities, that really seemed to get city boys, such as him in touch with his inner Neanderthal. The cats provided an endless source of amusement for him, but they didn't seem overly amused over the fact that he could get them to shed their dignity by wiggling the stupid yellow feather-boa-on-a-stick thingy at them.

Nik, Loki, and I invested a great deal of time working on art and scripting.  Unfortunately, Loki was unable to work on drawing and writing as much as he would've liked to, because he had potato trucks to load on  Sunday morning.  Nik and I, stayed up until some insane hour sketching each other.  We are totally hardcore, so we said screw it to the pencils and lights, and work straight to ink using nothing but candlelight and the light from the wood-burning stove.  Nik wasn't used to the dim and unpredictable lighting, so I'm sure his eyes felt like someone had scraped them with sandpaper, but he performed admirably during our sketch jam.  I'm used to putting myself through that kind of insanity, so I fared a little bit better in the ocular department.  Nik made an absolutely kick-butt portrait of me using a red ballpoint pen and a black brush pen. 

My gel pen portrait sketch for him sucked royally, but thankfully it made a nice base for the neat digital painting that I've posted here for your viewing pleasure.  I cannot even begin to express my happiness with that piece.  The facial structure is a little bit goofed up, which is pretty understandable considering both Nik and I were bobbing our heads up and down as we were working on each other's portraiture and technically weren't even posing.  Drawing someone who is trying to draw you at be exact same time, is an exercise in madness, but considering the staff of VAS Littlecrow consist mostly of mad(wo)men, this activity did not seem terribly out of character for either one of us.  Still, GAH!

I haven't really had the opportunity to work on black-and-white life portraiture in a very long time, so considering the obstacles Nik and I've put ourselves through in doing these pieces of art,  I am delighted that the resulting work is, as they say in Minnesota, not too shabby.  I have other pieces that I will share in the near future, but y'all just have to wait for them, because they are still works in progress.

Anyway Nik is awesome company!  His last name is not pronounced Ar-nole-dee, but he doesn't care, so do not fear the mangling!

MP3 Legalez w Polsce - TAK!
( Only of interest to people who can communicate in Polish or people who can't get enough free music from around the world. )

Toons and Tunes

Loki's latest "Ace and Bog" cartoon made me giggle. Not the most family-friendly bit of art, but it totally reminds me of why I don't smoke gizzy anymore.

If you have a high-speed connection and aren't familiar with the Gorillaz, you should visit their site at your earliest convenience. It's pretty trippy stuff by Jamie Hewlett and it's kind of old, but it still gives me a good feeling in the morning.

Also, for those of you who gloss it over on the newspaper, do yourself a favor and read For Better or for Worse. This is one of the most underrated members of the daily comic mainstream, but most magical slice of life comic strip to ever be produced. The realistic characters and their imperfect lives is the main draw for me in this family friendly strip. I have been following it since my early teens, and it's still fresh. I was kind of bummed to read that Lynn is going blind.. thus making her cartooning more difficult (I can totally relate to that and it really sucks.) Yet, FBOFW is the longest running strip to be drawn and written by the same author, so that is awesome.

Just received this in my inbox:

Follow Up on Boriken Ceremonial Park Occupation
( Click here for the latest bit of information of the Taino protest. )

Life: I survived my last two I1 demos. Hurray. I have enough tomatoes for canning now. Not very exciting, but it works for me. It's 46 degrees in August. YUCK. Oh well. I'm alive.