hey friends,

i'm not sure if everyone saw my latest submission (the preview for bite), but i will no longer be using fa for my primary art site

i'm not going to enumerate any reasons because i'm sure you've heard all them all already, and i'm a bit hesitant to make any sweeping statements as this treads into very murky moral quandaries that extend far beyond what my intentions are at the moment

however, i am not claiming any moral neutrality, and if you'd like to discuss the issues at hand with regards to fa i'd be more than happy to elsewhere. regardless, i will no longer be utilizing fa as a means of distributing my art. i will not be deleting any submissions, but i will not be making any future ones.


if you would like to continue following my art, it can be found here:

weasyl.com/~catmint

archegonium.tumblr.com


my personal blog is prothallium.tumblr.com


thank you for the 5 years, fa. and thank you, most of all, to my lovely followers who have made sharing my art an absolute joy. you guys rock

places you can find me on the internet:

weasyl: https://www.weasyl.com/~catmint

tumbl: prothallium

art tumbl: archegonium

sketch twit: prothallium


i feel lame only ever plugging so what's happening yall. how was your 2013 with your new retrospection?

i cant say i really have any overarching feelings about 2013. i used to have huge narratives about years and every year seemed so distinct and important in my life. years are starting to blend together now and i gauge time via punctuated periods of stress and boredom. the path i've chosen for my future is narrowing and it's getting difficult to see beyond it.

though i guess this is an example of a yearly growth. i began 2013 with such naive idealism. i came into 2013 with my hands wrapped around something i wasn't sure even existed - i was determined to will it into existence. and now i'm too tired to keep my thumbs pressed to the throat of a philosophical fancy.

i've done my experimentation and this decision no longer feels heavy. md/phd????? let's do it, fuckers. my grades are too high and ive worked too hard to aim for any but the best of my abilities. PLUS, i think when you earn a dual degree they just hand you a mustache comb and motorcycle right at the ceremony?? i'm pretty sure that's how you end up with something as awful as a francis collins

weh. "bookish" and "responsible" have always been epithets of mine but theyve always been latent aspects of my personality - my greatest fear is that this new path will alchemize these into "dull" and that i'll be so wrapped up in thoughts of the future i'll have no time for the present, so concerned with myself that i can no longer connect with those on different paths.

do huge nerds like me need to be slammed into a locker? have you ever slammed a gross nerd into a locker? any recent contemplation on your life n aspirations?

https://twitter.com/prothallium

for sketches that are too unfinished and dumb even for tumbler.com!

aside from my day-to-day blog, prothallium.tumblr.com, i now have a ~just art~ blog for those of you who really do not care at all about neon genesis evangelion, photos of sheep, and me complaining about school: archegonium.tumblr.com!

i post a lot of wips and doodles to tumblr that i never post here, so if yall are interested, i recommend ya check it out!

gonna bump that last journal cuz i was legit ill from low blood sugar after that exam and set the grump bar far too high

i swim for an hour before my cell bio lecture and generally dont eat breakfast before or after so if i do something stressful like take an exam that was 15 questions too long i feel like ive been hit by a truck afterwards and just kinda drag myself through the work i have to do and then lie uncomfortably in bed with a headache until i fall asleep

i went out an bought a jumbo bag of pumpkin shaped reeces peanut butter cups so im gonna see if i can prop myself up through the day on halloween candy until i can actually make myself an actual meal and stop trying to fuck up my poor, under-appreciated pancreas

i also bought a lot of skeleton decorations and a ghost light garland and also a mini pumpkin because they were all like two dollars so c ya haters ive entered the s p o o k z o n e and dont intend to leave until nov. 1st

hey friends!!!! i returned from the frozen north about 3 weeks ago. i'm sitting on my hands re: pictures cuz i know i'm gonna need a big chunk of time to edit all of them and time is something i always have in theory but never do in practice.
hopefully soon ( ´＿ゝ｀）

best parts of newfoundland/labrador: black morph red fox running across the road, arctic hare chilling on the side of the trail and fucking posing for like 5 minutes, that lone vegetarian restaurant in st. johns (what a joy it was to eat something besides bread or potatoes)


also here's a memer cuz i just got back from an exam and i need a chance to recover some blood glucose before i do any work


1. Why did you join FurAffinity?
the great da migration

2. What does your username have to do with you?
my nickname is "cat" and "cat mint" is a plant that has "cat" in the name and i enjoy "plants"

3. What is your current avatar of?
angry cat superimposed over flowers

4. How many watchers do you have, and how many do you watch?
uh something like 210 watchers, 120 watches

5. Do you have more than one account?
nah son youre looking at the one and only

6. Name 3 of your favorite artists on FA.
fuck fuck fuck i dunno. i luv so many of them.

7. What artist do you admire because of their personality?
hell ( ;・ω・)ﾉ

8. Do you comment, fave, or both?
i dont really do anything god i suck

9. What do you typically post on FA?
weird porn and scary drawings

10.What's your favorite submission in your gallery?
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/10438601/ im really into the body language of this pic. i like how the roughness of the quality of the drawing is reflected in the attitude apparent in the subject

11. What are the things you wish you could draw better?
fear, emptiness, dicks

12. How many hours a day do you spend on FA?
laff transient visits every so often

13. Are you a fast, slow, or medium typer?
pretty fast if i'm just transcribing something

14. What is the most annoying thing people ask you?
something for which i dont have the answer

15. What is the most annoying/offending comment you've received?
"it doesn't have to be perfect" PRECISION IS THE HALLMARK OF GOOD SCIENCE

16. What/who inspires you?
municipal water, that crow that landed on my window sill two days ago and stared at me for 5 seconds before flying away, habanero peppers

17. Everyone has considered leaving FA once or twice. Have you? Why?
nah i'm too tired to really have any strong emotions about furlectron affinity. it provides a service i fail to utilize to its fullest, i post pictures of animal people and people look at em. its aight

see you all in newfoundland (i'll bring you a cod as a gift)

who knew being reclusive and existing on the periphery of a community could be so rewarding!

in all seriousness, though, thank you all for your previous and continuing feedback! every comment and favorite is the best and you all rock.

i'm pretty reserved and largely consumed with schoolwork during the semester, so i want to apologize for being so absent - you are all in my heart, however, and i sincerely appreciate all that you have given me in terms of artistic growth and support and general niceness!


despite the angry façade i maintain, i promise i'm not a scary person (▰ˇっˇ▰) always feel free to drop a note (or even request a trade!)



(=^♡ω♡^=) thanks again (=^♡ω♡^=)


3ds friend code: 3196-3739-2061

hello friends i am back from the marsh! i held a lot of birds and learned a lot about enduring classic rock and parasitic flatworms.

to wrap up the experience i would like to make a few shout outs to people and things that i feel defined this field season:

- ohio: polite midwestern birds and polite midwestern weather patterns, thank you so much. i don't even mind all of the biting flies and mosquitos i killed, we didn't have to use the johnboat a single day and i got to catch so many frogs. i still really fucking hate classic rock, though. jesus fucking christ do i hate the eagles.

- my immune system: no other allergies but a severe swimmer's itch reaction? what the fuck.

- cortizone 10: see above.

- frogs and snakes: luv u

- that field house girl who lent me some pasta sauce: i'm glad i kept my mouth shut while you talked about how much you hated reductionism (via inspired holistic views on conservation). you were very nice albeit slightly socially handicapped and i realized only after we left that you attended a jesuit college and that your holism is probably not solely an artifact of an ecological, rather than molecular, perspective. i would have hated to have unknowingly offended you.

- the fda: why did your anti-smoking campaigns fail to reach rural pennsylvania

- my phone: i was really rough on you these past few weeks, even after all of that internet you gave me. i'm sorry i forgot about you in my pants pocket when i waded through the deep end of the marsh because i was too lazy to walk back over to the other dike.

- milkshakes: vanilla is still best

- that old lady in the walgreens where i bought a tube of cortizone 10: i know you're old and you were probably just trying to be nice, but oh my god i can't believe i was actually basically told my skirt was too short. its 2013 and old ladies are still telling random strangers how they should dress. im a fucking molecular biologist with swimmer's itch i can dress however i want in your shitty little town.

- ardeidae: you guys rock. thanks for the great egret plume


would any of y'all like to see some marsh wren pictures? i have a few silly ones i took as studies for sketches (i'll be uploading the sketches for sure)



also i have a 3ds + new leaf now! my friend code is 3196-3739-2061 !! please send me yours if you want to be pals!

hello friends! i am an entire year older today. OTHER NOTABLE MAY 4TH BIRTHDAYS: will arnett, keith haring, lance bass

school is just about done, i have two more exams, and then finals, and then about a week of nothing before i head out to the marsh! snagged a field assistant position with a grad student studying marsh wrens. should be a really nice break from the lab work i'll be spending most of the rest of the summer doing, and freshwater marshes are second only to swamps on the list of Best Ecosystems

i'm hoping i'll get to work on some field sketches, the day is done ~11 which should leave plenty of free time to lay around and collect cicada carcases (*⁰▿⁰*)
(what i'm actually probably going to do is get a head start on next semester because i'm a fucking putrid nerd)

i'll be commuting via train daily to my lab once i get back, which should hopefully afford some needed sketch time and lead eventually to some Pretty Sick Furrie Art (๑´ڡ`๑)

for now, if you'd like to see some shitty doodles mixed in with other bullshit (and also super swell art from artists i love), my tumbler.com is http://prothallium.tumblr.com/

see you, friends

(´っ｀) you saved me some food, though, right?


https://www.weasyl.com/profile/catmint


...right?

and chipped a quartz cuvette

when you enter a field
i've found the most overwhelming experience not to be realizing how little you know about it
but how little is known about the field

biology is so infantile. in the 20th century we split the atom, we went to the moon.
yet it was not until the 50s that we knew what kind of molecule directed protein translation

we are a decade into the "century of biology"



reductionism has been so successful for physics and chemistry
but it's not enough for biology
the whole is far greater than the sum of the parts in biology


reading papers about the visual cycle

my digression into the world of biomedicine continues

should i eat an apple or have some tea?

bought a lot of expensive korean ramen and hello panda which i've been eating nonstop trying to get this poster done

(my dad thinks i'm a snob for making it in illustrator - all of his students have made theirs in powerpoint)

been caught between the endless tugs of "make it accessible" and "shove over a year's worth of experiments and data onto a single piece of paper"


in other news: i went to arizona and utah! zion killed it, but i gotta say.... not much really goin on in arizona. dont let its proximity to new mexico fool you! (i'm sorry, arizona. i shouldnt say bad things about you considering the prodigious amounts of frybread i consumed within your boundaries)

also: north rim of the grand canyon > south rim. sORRY south kaibab and all of you other famous trails, but after a week of hiking the south rim you have no idea how fabulous seeing trees on the north rim was, omg

when my father returned home from the lab yesterday, i told him that this afternoon was the afternoon of the transit.

i asked if we should poke a hole in a box, like you would with an eclipse, even though the success of this i quietly doubted. he stared past me for a few seconds and told me yes, poke a hole in a box, we cannot stare directly at the sun so yes a box is fine. he then disappeared into the other room and as did i to my room.

i did not poke a hole in a box, having neither a box nor the belief that doing so would be fruitful.

a few minutes later he called me from the kitchen. he had mentioned something about having a solar lens as he disappeared, but i put no further thought on the matter, as my father has lots of things, none of which he can find or actually possesses. when i entered the kitchen, my father was at the table fumbling with a cheap solar lens and his yearling camera. next to him sat two pairs of solar glasses, from france.

august, 1999. we stayed with my mother's friends in france, i have no idea where. her friend's husband was a right bastard, my mother would say. of the bits i remember from france, one very clear memory i have is of sulking behind a couch after having been scolded by him for touching the solar glasses that were being kept on the mantle. i wanted so desperately to touch those fucking glasses. silver lenses, cheap paper glasses and their silver lenses.

we watched the eclipse on the side of the road in a field. my father had a nikon, film. it would be the last nikon he ever purchased - it broke the following year, in ireland. he got it fixed, but then it found a new way to be broken, and every time it was fixed it found yet another way. his next camera would be canon, digital. he also bought a second generation ipod to store his photos in. i have no idea where that ipod went, but i remember being utterly enthused with it. my brother was jealous, but this fact he hid behind the very real issue that it could only hold a few hundred songs, let alone photos.

the transit of venus was not yesterday, as we soon learned, but rather, today. i'm not sure we'll be able to see it today, though. hopefully soon the clouds will thin.

found the photoshop disc!
unfortunately, however, it's had too many activations (it's gone through a couple generations of computers, so that makes sense) so I only have it for 30 days (unless I can be coy and keep it from closing heh)

i'll try and get everything drawn and scanned and edited asap - though my flash drive is currently occupied as the sole bearer of my internship presentation that i had a wonderful time filming last night.. i'm going out of town for the next few days for a wedding and missing the event were it will be shown, so it's literally out of my hands atm with the coordinator of said event


not sure if i should get cs5 or just wait for cs6 to be released, but i will have photoshop at some point! this extra ram will not have been in vain

on top of photoshop, i'm thinking about getting a new scanner. my current one was bought at the same time as my old mac, so the software isn't compatible (our snow leopard desktop has it as it was firewired from my old mac). the firewire that came with the scanner doesn't even fit this mac - it's that old (i do have a firewire with both the old and new plug, but it's aggravatingly short..)

so, that's it. the dust is starting to settle.. it's a rough transition when a computer dies, even if it was super old ヽ（´ー｀）┌



on a different note: i have my window open right now and there's a huge bumblebee trying to get in
stop
no.. fuck

hey yall

just got a new computer! it's beautiful and i'm in love with it

what's even better is that i found the scanning software for my scanner, so, once i download a driver, i'll be able to scan things directly to my computer (none of this thumb drive nonsense)

still on the lookout for the photoshop disc.. once i get that i'll be good to go!


os x lion is unbelievable i cant believe i worked with tiger for 6 years omg

because i just took a 6 hour nap and ate a dinner of peeps so sleeping will not be happening anytime soon

0. We all know what we call you, what about the folks at home? Whats your name?
my name is catherine but people and the internit call me cat! usually my internat names all have "cat" in them so if youre ever curious as to how i chose "cat-mint", i am uncreative

1. How tall are you?
5'4

2. Natural hair color? (if you can remember it)
brown but a kind of lighter, golden-y brown

3. What about eye color?
brown

4. What orientation are you?
i think boys are swell!

5. Are you single, taken, or undecided?
hah

6. What do you do in your spare time?
tumblr probably takes up too much of my time but i dunno drawing and biking are fun things to do

7. What's your job?
intern in a lab! it's not really a "get paid for the hours of work i do for these jerks"-job kind of job, more like an indentured servitude :/

8. What's one thing you like about yourself?
i like the shape of my nose! i have a nice nose shape.. ski slope

9. Alright, now what about something you dislike about yourself?
romanticized neurosis

10. What're some things your friends noticed about you when they first met you?
wow probably sarcasm i really suck

11. Of what faith/religion are you(if any at all?)
for my confirmation class i had to go on a retreat with the kids of my grade from the catholic school and i wrote a sarcastic letter to god thanking him for existing and when i read it in front of my group (i didnt realize i would have to do this when i wrote it) everyone looked at me like i was literally satan and i didnt have a good time

12. Do you drink?
teetotaller no im just really lame

13. Do you smoke?
god i think i'm allergic to cigarette smoke?? i dunno it might just be some psychological thing i developed but whenever i'm around it i get an awful headache and i kinda go into panic mode?? like just an ever-increasingly difficult to suppress spiral towards losing my shit its really the worst you can smoke all you like but please dont do it around me, the smell of tobacco is awful and it does not go away

14. What are your fears?
failure

15. What are your dreams/goals?
academia! phd, tenure.. research and lectures

16 .Ever had any crushes/ex's in the past/present?
gosh

17. Who's your best bud?
i love all of my pals

18. Alright, you got the cravin' for munchies, what'cha reachin' for?
probably salt and vinegar chips...... anything salty. i'm heading down the road to hypertension type 2 diabetes can suck it B-)

19. Favorite drink?
water! or orangina or root beer idc

20. Favorite color?
slate but i like every color except maybe purple

21. If you had any super power, what would it be?
flying.. but that's not really that super, that's like a complimentary pair of headphones kind of super power

22. Favorite movie?
the andromeda strain

23. Least favorite food?
white pepper is pretty foul i think if you put that on anything it'll be my least favorite food

24. Quick! You have only one meal left before you die!!! What is it?
my dad's red sauce.. made with tomatoes and peppers from our yard.. it doesnt even need to be with pasta just give me a bowl of it and a spoon and that'll be fine

25. What do you drive/wish you drove?
i ride a bike! it's a nice bike but having a nicer bike would also be nice

26. Most disliked bug?
a tie between house centipedes and stink bugs that are flying

27. Most hated pet peeves?
not sure i understand what this is asking but i dont really hate any pet peeves?? i just hate people

28. Dislike in life?
tendonitis/carpal tunnel wow dont fall out of a tree and break your dominant arm twice in one summer when you are 6 if you plan on growing up to write really small and crosshatch

29. Most annoying?
fine, curly hair is a bitch but it's a love-hate relationship.. would be nice to run my fingers through it without it tangling

30. Most disliked TV show?
i dunno! most of the tv show watching i do happens on the internot so i only really see shows that i know i like

hey y'all

so uh

my computer died last night. my imac of 6 years finally gave out.

fortunately there was nothing of consequence on it (apps are all submitted, no essays or projects that havent already been turned in on it) except maybe my art, but thankfully traditional art doesnt disappear when a computer dies.

my brother thoughtfully loaned me his spare macbook to tie me over until i can get a new computer (been drooling over the new macbooks omg), but, unfortunately, this computer doesn't have photoshop or any kind of drawing/image processing software, so you're not likely to see any art until i can get that worked out :(
which sucks, as i was hoping to upload some old stuff i've had floating around this weekend


my computer had been having issues for a couple months now. the past few weeks were especially rough, it seemed i had to shut it down via the power button every other day - it would stall and make weird clicking sounds. last night i turned it off, and it didn't turn back on...

i think what i'm most upset about losing, even more than photoshop or my files, are all of my fucking podcasts. god damn it (but it seems my brother put every episode of the wire on this computer...)


i'll still be around, especially on tumblr (prothallium!), but no art :(

i now have some free time and you can only play pokemon black for so many hours before you get a retina burn of the ds screens

post your refs and a description of what youd like! you can draw me something of cat or something idrc

if you really want it in color or crosshatched, specify! i'll choose what style to use based on the description otherwise

thanks guys /)UuU(\

the number one thing 2011 taught me: dont hold your math skills to the standard of a biophysics major who you had a crush on

the number two thing: biology is the superior field to all the fields ever, including interdisciplines of biology (molecular biology is exempt from this as it is a branch and the best branch of them all)

also:

the desert is really fucking dry. the heat is managable but god damn being dehydrated all the time really sucks. i had one gatorade the entire time i was in the desert and it was cold and felt like drinking jesus' tears

hindu weddings are the best kind of wedding everyone else can just go home sorry

diy shows are kind of like the desert except instead of being covered in your own sweat youre covered in other peoples sweat

if you sit still enough by the edge of the forest while eating your lunch the deers will come graze within a couple yards of you

and swamps continue to be the best kind of ecosystem!

happy new year, yall

please be my friend on it i have no idea what im doing

i feel like my mom when she tries to use an ipod

the last pokemon game i owned was pearl and even that was too much crey

my peak ability with pokemon was ruby and now all kinds of shit is happening omg

first question: if it is winter in the game right now why is the girl character wearing cut off jean shorts

i rode my bike downtown to buy pushpins at staples. while i was locking my bike, a homeless man walked past me and shouted something and a young looking middle aged lady pushed her 10 year old daughter into the store where they quietly bickered about laptop cases.

i bought two different kinds of pushpins and rode home feeling accomplished.

later that day i would knock over one of the boxes of pushpins (as was inevitable) and spend an inordinate amount of time picking them up

ok y'all, dogs are super cool friends to have and taking them for walkies is probs the best time ever, but if your dog is aggressive towards cyclists, do not walk it on a fucking bike route. actually, if your dog goes fucking nuts at anything so much so that it charges it repeatedly and it's barking and choking itself with its own collar, do not fucking take that dog out of the house, or near anyone or any other dogs. your dog is fucking dangerous and it will hurt someone eventually and if your dog charges me on my bike and so much as even touches me I will call the police on your irresponsible ass.

just because your dog isnt a doberman or pit bull doesn't mean it can't be dangerous and it is your god damn responsibility to train your dog or to be aware that your dog is not safe to be around other dogs/children/cyclists.

i can't tell you how many times ive been charged by a dog while riding, only to have it's owner stand there and tell me it's not a dangerous dog. i know some dogs have a thing about wheels and turning things (like bike chains), but if those dogs are unrestrained around bikes and attack one, they will most likely be killed and seriously injure the cyclist.

god