Vernaple

Reflect-o Piggy goes to the rave.

admin — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 04:35:30 +0000

So they sell 15 glow sticks for a dollar where I work. We’ve been buying a bunch of these because they keep both kids entertained for about an hour. If you factor in my employee discount, that’s less than 50 cents per kid per hour to keep them amused at the end of the day. The downside? It looks like there was some sort of weird ongoing rave here. The piggy bank attends regularly. Cue techno music.

Happy birthday to me and more lomo pictures!

admin — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 03:01:43 +0000

Happy birthday to me! 29 years old, wow. My first decade of life was formative, I learned all the basics of being a person. My second decade was kind of the same, except it was about discovering how to be my own grown up person. My third decade, again, felt like it was developmental, but like I was working hard to achieve progress at the same time, instead of just learning. Progress toward something? I don’t know. Bert said something the other day about how our lives have been progressively getting better in the 10 years we’ve spent together. My initial reaction was some serious confusion. What was he talking about? In the last two years alone we’ve lost extremely important loved ones, moved a bazillion times, and epically failed at finding high paying jobs and buying a house. But now that I think about it, he’s right. In many ways, things do keep getting better for us, even if there were a few bumps along the way. We have a happy family, we’re at least thinking about some goals, I’m well on my way to getting published before I hit 30, and now lomo is in my life. Here are the latest lomographs, including “Fun With Glowsticks,” “The Trains,” and “Reflect-o Piggy Bank.” Enjoy the pics and leave me happy birthday wishes in the comment section!

I like how you can see another piggy in the background of the above picture.

Can you see the boot? There’s a boot!

It’s hard to see, but Beren and I made a crescent moon out of ice.

Trains!

admin — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 02:45:03 +0000

Long story short, we went to see the train display today. It was awesome, but I am unfortunately too tired to give it the full length post it deserves. So you’ll have to be content with pictures. I did an experiment where I took many of the same pictures with the digital camera as I did with the LCA, so we’ll see how it compares after I get the roll developed.

RR crossing! Look at the rainbows on the sign! They were better in real life!

This was excellent research for when I become a steampunk romance writer, which I’ll do after I get done with urban fantasy (it’ll be big, you’ll see). I felt like I should have had some goggles on!

The caboose was very interesting, since it seemed the most like living quarters.

More train insides:

I got a kick out of thi ssign.

We even looked at the trains that weren’t really part of the official display. No one stopped us.

This is a train seen through the window of another train!

Faith lost, faith restored, don’t work retail

admin — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 02:16:19 +0000

A Sunday working retail, especially one like today, is enough to make me lose my faith in humanity. Do you know how many of those delicious little Lindt chocolate truffles gave their lives today to help me make it through the insurmountable stress caused by rude customers and incompetent management? It was a lot, okay, a lot. And I got the bag that had 25% more chocolate for free in it, and it is all gone now (I did have a little help, but I think I could have polished it off myself). So on the way home, a full 16 minutes later than I should have been going home, I was mentally raging and working on a good, solid, long-lived grumpy spell. No amount of chocolate was going to cure that and, as I said, I was sure there was no good left in the human race. They were all angry puppets with no thoughts for, well, anything. No thoughts at all, certainly none for anyone else’s feelings. It’s like their programs were set to CONSUME, CONSUME, ACT RIGHTEOUS, TALK DOWN TO PEOPLE, BE ANGRY AND THEN CONSUME MORE. So I was sitting in stand still traffic, fuming. As I watched, the passenger side doors on the three cars in front of me opened and three people hopped out and started running for the intersection. I was all, “CRAP! Why are they running? Is it a meteor? A t-rex? Decepticons?!” Then I saw that these people from three different cars, who presumably did not know each other, were going to help push a truck that had overheated in the intersection. Then I was all, “Woah, that was rather nice of them to go to that victim’s aid. I would want someone to help me like that if that happened to me.” Then it was sunny and there was a butterfly. I had to grudgingly restore my faith in humanity. It was kind of hard to be angry after that, which was good because of the trains*.

*See next post about trains.

VernQuarBoWriMo update!

admin — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 02:37:00 +0000

I think I have the titles of both the series and the first book! Go me! I can’t tell you what they are yet, not until I’m sure. For now we’ll call it Wet Fur, as suggested by my creative consultant. Hear that, creative consultant? You don’t have to come up with any more potential titles. Please stop now, really.

The stickiest zen garden ever.

admin — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 02:30:59 +0000

Today Beren was helping me cook and he tried to pick up the sugar container. A fresh 5 pound bag of sugar had just been added to it and it proved too heavy. He dumped it everywhere. With the kids safely in the living room, far from the temptation of the sugar mound, I cleaned it up. Aaaannnnnddd maybe played in it, just a little. I mean, c’mon, wouldn’t you? How often do you get 5 pounds of sugar just sitting in a heap for you to run your hands through? It was therapeutic.

Beren the Photographer!

admin — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 02:22:38 +0000

Beren had an excellent time playing with my old digital camera tonight. His method? Give the shots a dreamy look by applying many fingerprints to the lens and then take pictures of all the toys and a bunch of Maggie eating a tomato. We had a lot of fun. I think Beren has a really good eye for photography. He’s done well, especially since this was his first try, ever. Look at the perspective, and how centered most of the subjects are. He’s awesome.

He somehow turned the flash off to take a picture of a fan in the hall. He was, as toddlers almost always are, in motion, so the picture turned out with a cool blurry effect.

VernQuarBoWriMo v. Oops 52%

admin — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 02:25:44 +0000

Now:

46870 / 90000 words. 52% done!

Previously:

45016 / 90000 words. 50% done!

‘Nother link

admin — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 01:20:39 +0000

Here’s another excellently funny video from Seth Martin and Friends. And there is a backflip in this one!

Gone Fishin’

VernQuarBoWriMo v. Oops 50%

admin — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 02:42:26 +0000

Finally! Done with half a book! I think I had a real mental block against allowing myself to hit 50%.

Now:

45016 / 90000 words. 50% done!

Previously:

43221 / 90000 words. 48% done!