Busybusy ..

I wish.

Oh well - There's a sketch of Shijhin, one of my Legends and Destinies NPCs in the Hunters and Others Gallery.. That's something, right? Heh.

Other'n various hunters pestering my Muse and my Muse then pestering /me/ - which isn't happening anywhere /near/ often enough - I am bored. I have plenty of things that need to be done, and absolutely no motivation to do most of them. This happens /far/ too often of late... >.<

After some questions from a /very/ confused player (Not that I blame her - I do /not/ explain myself very well on the first couple of passes..) I decided to start a series of 'demonstration' sketches for the Shadowhunter genotypes.
I've got .. three, I think - the dragon, arachnid, and Serpent crosses.
I need to remember to put an actual /spider/ in the arachnid grouping.. Shouldn't be hard to find space for one dinky little spidder.. Right?

I still have ... two or three subtypes and a bunch of main genotypes to do - can't remember exactly how many that actually is, naturally.
HEY! Marie - y'wanna experiment with a Shadowhunter or two?! You can challenge me with something if you want..

I got pissed off and transferred as many of the female bettas as I figured I could ID (three of them..) into the 10g tank so that I can get the algae off their jars.. *sigh*
My windows (major lightsource in this room) all face west. It gets HOT up here in the summer, and I have all those little jars right in from of the window, where they get the light. Naturally, this means I get algae on the glass. *grumble*

Even with four fish in the tank, that still leaves seven jars and two boxes (acrylic fish-boxes) I have to keep an eye on.. and of course, I get to keep an eye on all ... five tanks and - lessee.. seven or so boxes and more jars than I really want to think about, because Mom's going to go spend a month in Mis'ri. (Missouri..), helping educate my Uncle's horses. I say 'Educate' rather than 'break' because the latter term envokes nasty images. *shrugs*

When I figure out what the hell to do with all the umpteen sketches I'll have - and I've got some old ones I ought to dig up and post - they're educational - I'll post everything in one swell foop...

Well, the Killifish convention (Sunday!) was sort of interesting.
Looks like I missed the fun stuff, but .. *shrugs* was still sort of interesting, even so.

Mom got another pair of killies in the auction - a pair of lucania goodei. Wild caught, out of Florida.
She got 'em for ten bucks. Naturally, we wound up needing yet another 2 1/2 gallon tank... That makes three, with the pair of Notho-whatevers that she got Saturday, and the Rivulus Xip-somethingorotherus she got a couple of weeks ago. That last was a trio - but she lost one of the females a few days ago.

Anyway. No major updates to the site. I got most of what I wanted done done .. whatever day it was that I last updated. It's too hot to think.
Hell, it's been too hot to think for most of the day - and it's worst of all up here. I have the AC running, but it's not doing a hell of a lot of good. *whimper*

Banners!

Oh - I dunno who's got me linked from where anymore.. *grins* but I made a couple of banners for the Lair, if anyone wants to use one..
There's a link in the Guide-book if there's anyone so enclined.

There. Fixed the link page, while I was at it.
Good lord - 230-odd visitors.. Shall I do one of those neat piccies if I get 300? Not that I'll /notice/ or anything - but if I /do/ get that many, maybe I'll draw a present for the 300th visitor..
MAYBE! *eyes various people* Quit drooling. ^.~

I think I'm going to a killifish convention tomorrow. Mom spent today there, and came home with a pair of killies, some plants and some other stuff... One thing I'm pretty sure I am /not/ getting into is breeding/keeping killies - these people are NUTS! They actually insist on documenting /every/ pond/river/watersource their fish come from.. Does this strike anyone as a mite anal, or is it just me?

I think I'll stick to something a little less labor-intensive. Changing water, raising food and making sure they aren't eating each other is /more/ than enough work for me, thanks .. nevermind seperating fish and keeping an eye on all those damn JARS! Graaahhhh.
No, I haven't lost any bettas. Some of them have gotten large enough to ID as male or female - some of them.

Oh - something funny in the Portal's Famous Last Words:
PC: *charging dragon* "For Honour, for King, for God!"
Dragon: "For lunch."

... Hey, /I/ thought it was funny.. ^^

It's been one of those odd days where nothing ever goes quite like you thought it was going to ..

Just finished a sketch of Syri - Syriini Nightbreeze. It'll go up later - did I remember to mention the sketch of Shard that went up the other day? Probably not - I've been a mite distracted.

I scared myself, the other day - I sketched something even /I/ don't like - and as good as the sketch turned out, I ain't posting it. (She'd probably be a great Dystopia character though - someone twisted enough to /want/ to be a pet.. o.O Did I just sketch someone Joules hasn't had a chance to invent yet? ^_~)

Going to fix the index page for the Lair a little later - wanna make some of the links a little easier to find!

I have fish - the Corydoras habrosus finally came in, and I have four.
They're CUTE .. So little, compared to the pair of .. well, they're cories, but I'm not sure what their latin is. ^^
I have two of those - they're grey with little black spots in patterns all over - like a mackerel tabby-cat, and orange streaks on their lower fins. Lovely little things - but kind of twitchy. Heh.

The bettas are all doing well - the two females in the tank have finally gotten this feeding thing down - I show up in front of the tank and within minutes there they are, lurking around the surface waiting for me to drop goodies in.. Heh.
They're starting to become colourful - the little one is pale, nearly white with shimmering blue iridescents in her body-scales and blue lines in her tail.
The other one is still dark, brownish yellow with the same blue iridescents on her body and tail. They both have blue outlining their body-fins - the pale one isn't as obvious.
The rest are growing, slowly. Time to change some water again I think.....

Any complaints about the new Gallery layout? ;p

Yarble!

Done. I hope I /never/ have to do that again...
Some things go moved around - stuff that was in one gallery is now in another - or has just moved to a different section of the same Gallery.. but it's all there.

Someday, I may get annoyed and pull some stuff - but the thing I like about maintaining a gallery on MY webspace, rather than going by Elfwood or getting someone else to do it for me... I can choose what to upload. No one moderates but me, and I don't have to answer to any smart-arse wanna-bes who compare everything to their pet style...

What is this? I realised earlier today that I am not the only one moving stuff around - either virtually or with actual sweat and effort.. (virtual is my preference, aside from the sore tushie..) Is it just that spring has sprung? I admit, there ain't much /else/ to do when it's pouring rain out and you don't feel like being soaked to the skin gardening...

Still. ....

I am kind of bored.
I've got umpteen things I should be doing .. and what have I done?
I found an egg.

We'll see what it does.

I'll get back into the HTML coding later tonight, when I'm properly awake. Mornings are the wrong end of the day for me..

Oh - Barking spiders.
Apparently, there actually IS such a thing ... it's not just a euphamism for breaking wind. (I'm serious..)
However, between one thing and another, I'm REALLY glad I've never seen/heard one of these before.. I like my spiders SMALL! o.O

*Splat!*

Alright - Three done.
That's RPG charas, Commissions, and Shadowhunters - I haven't gotten into the miscellanious gallery just yet.. that's next on the list.

I did add the coloured version of Avani in - I was messing with backgrounds when I did that, and decided that it worked. ;p

Holy crap.
We finished dinner, my dad made an offhanded remark about the eastern sky looking kind of ominious, and not twenty minutes later, when I go to trot the garbage out, it's pouring.
Dinner was nice, however - I've never had, let alone /cooked/ capon before, so it was interesting on all accounts. (Capon is fowl - I think it's a variation on chicken. We're thinking to score another one for Thanksgiving dinner...)
Got to remember to get the lambchops out for tomorrow.

Oh - anyone who's been poking around the Lair will notice that I mispoke myself in the last post - I decided t'hell with it, and put up the changes. I'm still working on it, so there are some links and stuff that are missing. But when I get done, which I should be, pretty soon... it'll all be nice and neat.
I'm particularly proud of the purple-framed menus. ^_~

HTML hell!

Remember what I said about rearranging the galleries?
I'm gonna do it. More or less, 'cause I don't want to do it later, when everything's wound up in a big mess. ^^
So - there'll be four seperate sections, each with different stuff in them. (if you've got a pic linked directly, which is okay, but I don't really recommend it, it's okay - the pics aren't moving from where they're saved.)

I'm going to try to keep this from getting too majorly convaluted - with any luck, I will /not/ have to do this again.

And no, it ain't happening yet - it'll take me some time to get everything sorted out to a point with which I'm happy.

Anyone who's interested in the Aquarium News will be happy to hear that none of my fish are dead. ^^
All the bettas that needed it have been transferred to larger jars, and aside from some of the smaller ones not having a clue what they are supposed to do with frozen brineshrimp/bloodworms.. (It doesn't move. It must not be food..) everything's cool... so far, anyway.

Mom's got Ich problems in her big tank - the two female endlers turned up with it, and I was eying the male earlier - looks like he might have it too. Lovely. (For those of you who have no clue what I'm talking about .. look it up yourself! Google's great. ^^) .. On the other hand, the killies are settled in to the point where the three shy ones (For a few days there, it looked like we only had one - maybe two fish in that tank..) are swimming around in the open, and you can tell there are three in there..
The other two are happy - the male is harrassing his reflection and the female is eating anything smaller than she is that looks like food. Not the tetras, thankfully. ^^

Finally finished some copies of my commission advert poster. I'll print out a few extras and take a day to plaster them in appropriate locations.
Caused my family some amusement at the title - I started doing windows-sort-of-stuff with DOS - which isn't Windows, I know.. but that's what I started on PCs with, and the naming conventions stuck. So - instead of Commission_Poster1.*** it's ComPost1.***. ... Compost? Heh.
Well, I realised that later, of course..

Also realised there were some pics I'd intended to scan that never were scanned. Ack! So I scanned Avani, Mariah and Maeva - the latter-most being a portrait that I just finished. As many times as some of this lot mutate - (Good example is Tsune, who started out a literal sex-kitten.. she's changed a little. ^_~) - I shouldn't be surprised when the final result looks ... different.
Somehow though, I'm always a /little/ shocked. ^^

So they're in the main gallery .. I'm beginning to think it's time I revamped again - seperated a few of the characters from just 'rpg characters' to 'Elves' 'Humans' and 'Miscellanious'. ... Seems like an /awful/ pain in the butt - but I have so darn /many/ of them... Mwwrh. I'll think on it some .. in the meantime, there they'll be..

*sighs* So far so good.

Fed the fish this morning. They scarfed down bloodworms like they'd never seen food before... most of them, anyway. I've got one or two I wanna keep an eye on.
Will feed them again later on - give 'em a bit of a snack.

*checks hatsize* Phew - no change. ^^
Lutra/Joules: Glad you guys enjoyed the sketches... we'll see who ELSE decides to plonk themselves down in front of me and cop an attitude until I draw them.. ^_~

Oh - funny thing I discovered..
The Dante's Inferno Test has banished you to the Second Level of
Hell!
Here is how you matched up against all the levels:

Level	Score
Purgatory (Repenting Believers)	Moderate
Level 1 - Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers)	Moderate
Level 2 (Lustful)	Very High
Level 3 (Gluttonous)	Moderate
Level 4 (Prodigal and Avaricious)	Very Low
Level 5 (Wrathful and Gloomy)	Low
Level 6 - The City of Dis (Heretics)	Low
Level 7 (Violent)	High
Level 8- the Malebolge (Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers)	Moderate
Level 9 - Cocytus (Treacherous)	Low

Take the Dante Inferno Hell Test
*snerk!* Ah huh. In case you can't read it - the second level of hell is where they banish the lustful. Heh.

---

Disorder	Rating
Paranoid:	Moderate
Schizoid:	Moderate
Schizotypal:	High
Antisocial:	Low
Borderline:	Low
Histrionic:	Moderate
Narcissistic:	Low
Avoidant:	Moderate
Dependent:	Low
Obsessive-Compulsive:	Low
-- Personality Disorder Test - Take It! --

The only thing that threw me on this was the low anti-social score.. I /hate/ people sometimes.. ^_~
WAaaaaay too much time on my hands. *would offer to /share/ if she could!*

FISH!!!!

.. And then some.

Now, usually, when Mom goes out, I tend to expect her to bring back more stuff than she said she was going out for. I do the same thing, after all..

However, she said she was going to go pick up some fish this time. .. Fish. A couple of pairs of Killies. Maybe a pair of bettas. Six in total. Maybe.

What does she come back with? Over thirty fish. All in little plastic bags. Her killies, plus a bunch of killie eggs (she'll hatch 'em later on..) plus a bumper crop of immature bettas. In the end, after a bit of kibbitzing over individuals, we split the immature bettas between us. Thirteen or fourteen fish each. Which means I have a number of little jars sitting in front of one of my windows, and two females (the /obvious/ ones, I /hope/ ..) lounging around in their little bags in my tank.
I'll let 'em go after a day or so of acclimating them to our water.

Mom has it a bit worse - she's got her bunch and a LOT of little jars scattered from hell to breakfast. Plus two pairs of killies. Plus ten Ember Tetras and three endlers. And she's getting ten corydoras habrosus eventually.
Are we having fun yet?

And just think - all I wanted was ONE little ten gallon aquarium, with a few fish in it. o.O

Lions and tigers and catgirls ..

Better run for your life - when my Muse decides to belt me one, she /really/ belts me one ..

And the felines - visitors AND residents - all decided to be suspiciously helpful. This, naturally, is a little worrying - I mean, I /know/ what Xanthi and Tsune are capable of ...

'Herding Cats' is in the Miscellanious section. Tsune is in the main gallery. (And going from the outfits in the former, someone's been raiding Xanthi's closet. *chuckles*)

Yah! There - uploaded the banner and tweaked the colour-scheme to conform a bit!
*pleased as punch!*

Ah heck.
I've been playing a bit - so there're now some links to my right - *points* my website and some of the other blogs I like keeping up on.. I also made a banner - I should have that uploaded and linked pretty soon.. HTML is easy - and this .. all I need to do is figure out where to tuck the tags in. *grins*

Also, I'm working on another sketch .. heh, one of /my/ characters this time.. Tsune decided to come and model for me.
Maybe someday I'll do a cat-girl lineup ... Tsuneko, Xanthippe, Kharraan and Angel... well, it's an interesting IDEA... but I have a feeling getting all four in the same general reality-space would be like .. well.. herding cats. Xanthi and Tsune are easy - they're both mine. But Angel is a resident of.. the Lutra/Joules writing team's jointly perverted mind, and Kharraan is one of Andi's ... not like I've ever had much trouble coaxing any of his to pose for me. Heh.
Well, I'll let that stew. Maybe something'll actually come of it..

In the meantime, I'll continue to fiddle with the usual stuff. ^_~
(AND - I'll try and remember to upload the chapters of Hunter's Destiny I said I'd upload several months ago. Can we tell I've been /really/ sidetracked of late?

Raaaahhaag!
Okay - I /hate/ it when that happens... But it seems to be fixed now - and I figured out where and how you add stuff to the little grey box over there... including a link to the Lair, and my Weather Pixie. *smirk* Only took me ten minutes .... ^^

Anyway - to my immense shock, Fed EX came through yesterday with my heater. (Anyone NOT hear the joke about Fed EX and UPS?)

Oh. Before I forget entirely - Happy Easter. Don't gorge yourself stupid on chocolate bunnies - save me one! ^_~

Naturally enough, she's tucked into the Miscellanious gallery...

Are you two going to try to /publish/ that reality? It'd make for one HELL of a screwed up graphic novel ... or is it a trade paperback when it's mostly words with scattered illustrations? ^^

Now that I've gotten the angst out of my system, maybe I can get back to work on illustrating NPCs... yeh, wishful thinking, I know....

... You /know/ a story has stuck with you when you find yourself depicting characters out of it. When I finish it, you will see what I mean...

Lutra, Joules ... I don't remember offhand which one of you two invented Maria, the pet mermaid, but whichever one of you it was can rest assured that she stuck. Throughly.

Anyway - seems to be a fish night... the tank has water, substrate and gravel in it. I haven't gotten to rock-rinsing yet - I'm waiting to test the filter for nitrite/nitrate. Do that tomorrow morning. Might put some of the plants in before then - their bag has sprung a leak, and it might be good to get them into water, even if it's /shallow/ water.. (Only two and a half gallons in the tank - I'll put more in once I know the filter's safe..)

My heater is on route - might have it by Monday. More likely, sometime before the end of the week.....

There - I finished the Lady Martyne. Yes, she's /supposed/ to look like a highly priced courtesan - she runs a brothel, after all. :P

I borrowed the corset pattern (shy the furry collar and lacy sleeves..) from a FF character I keep seeing. VVH did a /very/ funny version of it not too long ago, and I decided to borrow it a little bit. *smirk* Suits her, yes?

Mom found a source for Corydoras Hasbrosus - the micro-cats - and she's arranged for ten of them. Now - presuming I have a tank by that point, and I'm not killing snails again, this might mean she'll share. ^^

Yippee for a break - I feel /much/ better.
And Joules is right - having the 'musekick' on helps. ^_~

Anyway - Kyrial, the Terrible Threesome and that sketch of Esha are all uploaded.
That's all in the Miscellanious gallery, naturally enough.. ^^
I've also discovered a pecularity of Opera that I'm not sure I like - when uploading pics by way of HTML, it doesn't like to upload coloured jpgs. This wouldn't be so much of a big deal, except that there are times when I NEED to be able to do that.
*sighs* Oh well - there's always IEvil .. >.<

Aquarium news - there's a new heater coming for my tank (I arranged that because I don't like guessing at the temps - takes too damn long, and I don't have that kind of patience.)
Still waiting for the tank to dry out - once it's done that, I'll get started rinsing everything..

There's also a 2 1/2 gallon tank I need to clear space for - that'll be the killie tank - and Mom'll have the killies by next week, so there isn't really a /rush/ ... still. Be nice to get it set up and running before we want to put fishies in it..

(is that disconcerting, the way I switch back and forth from perfect (near perfect?) diction t' a sorta slurred speech?)

Well. Tank's been emptied, sloshed out and I've got new gravel and rocks.
I need to rinse everything. Should be a couple of days, provided I can get to everything.

Got Kyrial and the Terrible Threesome scanned. Got a sketch of Eshana scanned, too. Haven't got them cleaned up - will do that later, if I get a chance.

Doctor Unheimlich has diagnosed me with Sylverthorneitis
Cause:	monkey bite
Symptoms:	vague panic attacks, coordination problems, slightly temporary invisibility
Cure:	infect someone else
Enter your name, for your own diagnosis:

Heh. Come get bit.. ^_~

Oh - we got some new fish too - ten Ember Tetras are currently boogying around the big tank downstairs...

The concensus is that my nitrite (Nitrates are down to something like acceptible levels..) problem is due to the old gravel and rocks I'm using. Mind, this is the gravel and rocks from the tank that moved with us from Springhill rd - where we had wellwater.
City water, which is what we're currently working with, is loaded with crap... which is what took out the last aquarium. Algae, practically overnight.
Anyway, the current theory is that the old rocks and gravel leached the nitrites and the nitrate into the new water.. *grumble*
Live and learn. Mom bought a whole bunch of new rock, and I got some too. She got a lot of pink quartz, and a chunk of sliced agate.
Should be nice, once she finds herself some gravel..

There's been some serious discussion of fish. Once I get the water sorted out, I want some micro cats (Corydorus habrosus, if you are curious..) some Ember tetras (Red and gold! Tiny, very pretty..) and maybe some freshwater angelfish.. (Not to mention the glass cats, pencil fish and one or two other things that are NOT coming to mind right now..) The major problem with stuff like freshwater angels and glass cats - they get to be big. Angels get to be about four inches, and glass cats get to be about six inches long. So that might get mildly exciting.... but they're so PRETTYyyy.. .

Oh! For Lutra, and the great Fish debate.. I've been asked to recommend killifish. This for example, is a bluefin killie. (Subtle! Moreso than most..)
You can keep killies in a gallon bowl - and of course, there are innumerable killli-clubs.
I’m not a killi-person myself - I prefer other types, but I said I’d pass it on... ^_~

Webpage. No beans. You can see for yourself, where most of my time and energy has been going... and no, I haven’t finished Lady Martyne yet. :P

*mutters* Right - well, after discovering that I've /three/ snails dead, not just one, I decided to test the water. I'm not precisely certain /how/ (I imagine the high temps I was running for a while might have had something to do with it, though..) I've got high nitrate levels. VERY high nitrate levels. *grumble* Nitrate will kill fish. Or at least, grow lots of algae. *sigh*

Okay - gotta get some stuff to treat the water. Not amused.
Already treated for cloramine, ammonia and balancing the PH. What I'm using is bottled 'drinking water' - which is soft, high acid water. Most fish haven't got a problem with soft, high acid water. Cichlids prefer lower acid, hard water - some fish like higher levels of alkaline. Most don't. It all depends on what you have. Our tap water is high nitrate, and grows algae pretty much instantly. It's what killed our /last/ tank. (It's also pretty thick - we have two filters on the tap - one a sludge filter to catch the larger crap, and under the kitchen sink to get whatever the big one missed..)
Remembered to replace the filter.. *sighs* Might have been good to do that sooner - so I set up a reminder. Every two weeks... might help.

Working on an NPC sketch - I think it's Lady Martyne. Got the right kind of face for it, at least... Not happy with it though. Need to do some other stuff for a while... grab some of my people out of the deep, dark corners they're hiding in for fear I'll do horrible things to them on paper... *chuckles*
Could be worse - I could be doing terrible things to them in WordPro. Heh.

And, the Great Fish Project continues.
I had to run some errands today, and decided to go by Kraemer's - one of the local pet-places. (Birds, rodents and fish - with the occasional lizard and or turtle. More of a 'garden' store, really..). I bought Mom a ten gallon tank to use as a breeding tank while I was there.

And Mom is going to a Killie Association meeting sometime next week. (Killifish, for the completely unaware, are brightly coloured little egg-layers. And when I say bright, I mean BRIGHT!) *sighs* Us and our projects. She's pretty sure she's going to come back with more fish. The 29 gallon is supposed to be our 'show' tank - but it's currently showing off her plant collection. Heh.
Anyway, she's going to set up the ten, breed the pair of platinum green bettas and see what we get. (Aside from about a million little cups on every flat surface we can get our hands on, that is.. and that after the fry get big enough that we can tell the males from the females..) On the upshot, they're /really/ nice fish...

Me - I have to get the temp in my tank straightened out. The heater's currently got it at low /eighties/, which is obviously not cool. *sigh* I'm tweaking it, but I think I killed a snail. >.<
I should also get in there and get the plants nailed down a little more throughly.. some of them are back to floating topside, which ain't cool either.

I /was/ looking at fish though.. if I can find some platies that aren't RED .. (what IS it with all the red platies!?) I might consider some of those.. or some white clouds.
Also - this might explain Joules' Tetra of Immortality ... Neon tetras are apparently very long-lived fishies........ if you can keep 'em alive. ^_~
Don't want hatchet fish. Water ain't hard enough for cichlids.. not that I can find any nice cichlids anyway. Not sure I want /agressive/ fish - so redtailed sharks are out. They're pretty though.
Still contimplating the glass cats and trying to find some nice Corydoras. What we had, apparently were the micro-cats.. little ones that only got up to an inch and a half or so... wouldn't object to a few of those.
*sighs* WAY too many choices. ^^

On the webpage front - no beans. Haven't had the chance to scan anything, although I have /plenty/ that ought to be scanned. *bemused* Maybe that'll change, later on today..