chefjenny

Just FYI, I've started a new personal blog. You can find it here:

http://letterstomyfamily.com

And I've got a feedburner for the RSS here:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/LettersToMyFamily

 So maybe I'll just utilize the livejournal as my garden journal anymore, eh?  I need to keep one, and I already have this account, and... well, it's my favorite thing to talk about here, anyway.

Woohoo indoor seeds started. Plants for the garden this year: Tomatoes, tomatillos, rhubarb, squash, pumpkins, leeks, cucumbers, edamame, bok choy, fennel, peppers, garden beans, rosemarysagebasilchiveschilantrolemonbasil. Will start lettuce, carrots, and scallions in May. Struck a deal with Phil, that he'll help out in the garden this year if we put the lawn zombie underneath the apple tree.

AND! Starting flowers from seeds. Perennials. Echinacea, yarrow, and columbines. One annual - Thumbergia, AKA Black Eyed Susan vine. Grew these the first year we owned this house, and they were gorgeous.

Very much looking forward to Spring!

Foo, I know it's been increasingly long gaps between posts here.  Truth is, I'm not high on time for LJ anymore.  We've started this business, right, this online gaming company that we're trying to turn into a not-for-profit fundraising site as well.  Things are going pretty swell in that department, but I admit that most of my (meager) blogging talents are going into that blog now.


We update once a week (although I believe next week we'll be having two posts a week, one a regular update, and the other teaser information for the products we're developing).  I know I'm not the only DnD enthusiast on my friends list, so I'd really love it if you guys would stop over and check us out :)

 If you use RSS through google reader or some other RSS aggregator, you can add the feed :   http://www.level30yinzer.com/blog/?feed=rss2

You can also add our RSS to your friends page, by adding the following feed:  http://syndicated.livejournal.com/level30yinzer/.  And a big big thank you to whomever syndicated that feed, I appreciate not having to buy an account here just for that one thing.


We also have a fan page on facebook, http://www.facebook.com/pages/Level-30-Yinzer/192131417821 for those of you who “do” facebook. We'd love to see you stop over and become a fan :)

And and and, I'm on twitter, partly as part of the business, but also for my own twitterfication.  Maybe twitter is an absurd social media, but I admit I kind of enjoy it.  You can follow us @Level30Yinzer

So, most of my time is divided between my job-job and Level 30 Yinzer.  In fact, right now I'm blowing off scanning and developing maps for our first delve to write this post.  

Apart from that (and believe me, I'm glossing over a lot, but we're really putting a lot of work into that site), life is pretty settled.  I have an interview for a supervisor position on the 23rd (and before you go wishing me luck, EVERYONE ELSE in the department has an interview too, and there are tonnes more qualified people than I.  It's good for me to just apply).  

I'm ordering garden goods--I even took some of my birthday money and bought myself a fig tree that I plan to keep in a pot and bring in for the winter.  This weekend is seed shopping and potting, which is tres exciting :P

I decided not to take part of the CSA this year, but I'm really looking forward to spending some dollars at farmers markets.  Pickling things was such a fantastic success last summer, that I'm totally stoked about all that again.

I guess it's sort of the quiet time of year for me, after Christmas but before Spring really arrives.  Plenty of time to dig in at home, and take care of business.

I do miss my livejournal friends, so I'm going to see what I can do about stopping in more often over here.  Sorry that I seem to have wandered off the LJ path, though.

All hugs and laughter!

First, the neat stuff: I posted a re-done splash page for the comic (see it here!). While it's easy to focus on its imperfections, I prefer to look at page 1 and then page 2, and marvel at how much better I've gotten. So that's a bit of a victory for me.

Secondly, I'm back to considering what I'm going to do about my weight. On the one hand, I'm not unhealthy by any means--my heart is strong, my blood pressure is good (even on the low side of good, in fact), I don't generally suffer from being overweight. Nonetheless, I don't like the size I'm at. I want to be slimmer, I want to be stronger, and I want to have even more energy, especially since we're trying to have kids.

( But of course, it's not that easy... )
Well, there's other problems to solve here, and logically I know I should just make itty bitty changes and let it all come together slowly.  But it's such a  bleak future when all I have to look forward to is being hard on myself without anyone else that understands what I'm trying to do.

Mreh.  Ok, well, back to the first paragraph, at least in other areas of my life I'm making fun and easy progress :)

So, I confess: facebook has replaced a lot of my livejournaling. I feel like a lot of the time a short status update seems to convey more than a long, rambling post about what's going on in my life. However, there are times when a longer journal post must be made. We can consider this something of a quarterly report, then.

I've started getting seed and plant catalogs in the mail (tis the season for it). I am delighted that going into the heart of winter I can be looking forward to spring. This year we're tearing out even more grass from the backyard to expand our veggie plot. I have open, in front of me right now, a catalog from white flower farm, my gaze resting on a beautiful photo spread of heirloom tomatoes. I do plan to grow many plants from seed this year, as well, as that was quite successful last year. I've already conscripted Phil to help expand the garden--we'll see if he feels like digging is a better replacement for mowing, though.

Our business grows slowly at this point. A lot of what we're up to right now is jiggling fiddly bits. We're still improving the website design, incorporating logos and color. We've set up a posting schedule for our development blog (www.level30yinzer.com/blog), so that will update regularly on Mondays. Phil is trying to keep a solid writing schedule, which is mostly successful (and mostly interrupted by holiday revels, which we are thankful are over now). We still plan to launch mid-May, but we're considering looking to hire some freelancers before then to help with product launch. We have a lot of fun ideas, but it turns out turning ideas into actual stuff takes *gasp* work. Still, it's work we're mostly delighted to do. Especially since we set up the sweet home office.

Mostly, my position with this business is of the organizational type--setting up infrastructure, web access, design standards, editing, etc. But I do have one creative contribution: I plan on drawing a web-comic based on a proposed DnD game Phil intends to run. I know, writing a webcomic based on fantasy games is a total trope, but it's more about having fun for me, and having possibly another way to draw people to our site. I'm enamoured of all the characters and cast planned, and the first story arc has shaped up to be a fun and compelling piece of work.

However, a large part of that plan hangs on me learning to draw. If you visit our splash page for the comic currently (www.level30yinzer.com/comic) you'll see some very mediocre art. Part of the reason that's there was to test the comic publishing system, but part of it also is simply a learning curve. I'm thrilled to report that I've definitely made significant progress, with the help of programs like GIMP and a whole lot of google image searches for reference, and I feel like I'm finally reaching a decent standard of drawing that's worth putting up on the website. We have a great story, and I'm glad we won't have to entirely use the great story as a crutch for poor art.

Webcomics are a lot of work (again, thoroughly enjoyable work), so while I tentatively hope for a twice-a-week updating schedule with that, it's going to depend wholly on whether or not I even have time to produce two comics a week. That's a big "we'll see," at this point.

All right, so there you have my current projects in a nutshell: business planning, comic planning, and garden planning. I hope everyone else has as much fun this year as I plan to.

So, our blog is up and running for real-real (www.level30yinzer.com/blog). Here's an excerpt from our most recent post:

Well, we just had an excellent chat with Yax of dungeonmastering.com, and if we do say so ourselves (and you know we do), things are shaping up rather well. You see, about a month ago we signed up for a course called Gamer Lifestyle, which is produced by Yax and Jonn (of RolePlayingTips.com). The course so far has been informative and well-organized, and absolutely full of relevant and helpful information. Part of the package was a phone session with Yax to review our plans and ideas, and to help refine our direction. It was a smashing success!

Visit The Blog to read more

On the whole, things are heading in a very very positive direction. Tomorrow we're going shopping for office furniture, so we can turn this cold corner I'm in right now into a proper home office. Very exciting times :)

So I think I'm a feeling a little bummy today. I'm uninterested in the internet in general, and trying to make time go by at work, but I feel so laconic that I wish I could just curl up somewhere and watch paint dry. That's about my level of excitement today.

Phil has been doing really well since he got fired. He's writing now, and he gets to be a freelance writer full-time, the lucky bastard. We're trying to set up our website, and we're working on turning our venture into a not-for-profit organization. If we ever make money beyond the bills it incurs, we're thinking of donating to a charity, rotated on a quarterly basis. We're much more enthusiastic about the idea when presented this way.

I mean, there's nothing really wrong with life right now. I have no major source of stress, no particular huge upsetting life changes. I just feel so *big sigh* meh.

I'm sure I'll bounce out of this, and I'm sure it's largely hormonal, too. But mreh mreh mreh.

So learning to draw requires a lot of practice.  Currently I'm tracing hands, drawing hands free-style, looking at hands in magazines and trying to draw how they're posed, looking at hands in other comics and trying to re-create them, and generally focusing on how hands are proportioned.

Because hands are hard to draw.

As I sit here, drawing a toothpaste ad because the model in it is holding a toothbrush, it occurs to me:  I do this because I am bored at work.  My job doesn't seem to take up as much time or cause me as much trouble as some of my co-workers, so I find myself with a lot of time on my hands.  So, now I feel like I'm actually being paid to teach myself to draw.  Which is neat, but evil at the same time.

Also, I made sausage stuffed apples last night for dinner, and OH MY GOD SO GOOD.  Hollowed out apples filled with spiced sausage cooked with apple, onion, and greens, and baked for about 40 minutes.  I totally would have eaten wayyyy too much if I hadn't had somewhere I needed to be after dinner.  But still, om nom nom indeed.