For the past several weekends I've been watching [iconname]froogle92[/iconname] play the independent game, Night in the Woods, on Twitch.tv and Saturday brought the final segment of the game. If I had to sum it, and the two supplemental games, in one word, it would be 'Wow!' but that would be so horribly inadequate to describe the whole experience.

Not being very much of a gamer myself, I have spent numerous hours watching my brother play various Nintendo games. And since acquiring a better internet connection, I've watched a few playthroughs of games that have intrigued me but I know I will never have the ability to play. However, Night in the Woods is so totally unlike any video game I've ever watched.

Despite their rather realistic & somewhat depressing problems and occasional stress-induced outbursts against others, I found the characters very appealing and because of that the story was very engrossing. It was almost more interesting to find out something about the characters and what motivated them than it was to find out about the central mystery of the story.

In this age of increasingly realistic depictions used in games (I would almost describe it as hyper-realistic but you have to consider when I was a kid, 8-bit was state of the art and it was an innovation when Atari introduced the first wire-frame style arcade games like the first Star Wars), the art style of the game is refreshing and carried very well throughout the entire game. I wasn't too sure about it at first but feel the choice was one of genius and only aided my ability to get into the story that much more. It would be nice to find an 'art of' book out there somewhere eventually.

And finally, I have to mention the soundtrack. I loved it! Most of the time, I don't usually notice the soundtrack of a game unless it's a familiar one (Danny Elfman's score used in the first Lego Batman game for example), an overpowering one (though I can't think of an example of this one right off) or a really good one (such as the first Legend of Spyro game that I actually purchased through iTunes). I did take notice of the soundtrack for Night in the Woods here and there and found it as compelling as the story. I've found several volumes available from the composer, Alec Holowka, available on Bandcamp ( https://infiniteammo.bandcamp.com/ for the interested) and will likely try to get them at some point when I'm able to afford it.

The only downside - and it's not really much of a downside at all; mostly a curiosity because I almost always wonder what happens next in a story beyond what we usually get to see - I have is so many questions about the ending and about some other aspects of the game. At this point, I guess it's unknown if there will be another game but I certainly hope so. I would definitely be up for watching someone play it because the first game is like watching an interactive movie.

Thanks again for playing the game and streaming it, Zera. Should you do any other playthroughs to discover other aspects of the game, I'll be eagerly watching.

Thank you, cast and crew of Grimm, for all of the great characters, episodes and Wesen over the past six seasons. I was a bit late to the party only discovering the show after buying the first couple of seasons on blu-ray a few years ago but quickly grew to love the cop show with monsters (did I mention the great characters?) I never imagined how things would wind up but you did well with tonight's final hour and I'll look forward to seeing it again once the sixth season becomes available on home video.

For quite a while now I've been raiding, er, browsing YouTube for soundtracks. In turning up Basil (Robocop, Conan the Barbarian) Poledouris' score for Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book, I clicked on a link to a Jungle Book audiobook since I was interested in the original book after seeing Jon Favreau's movie last summer. Little did I know what else I could uncover by clicking that link. How about:

Edgar Allen Poe's The Raven read by Sir Christoper Lee
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BefliMlEzZ8

Read by James Earl Jones
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcqPQXqQXzI

Read by Christopher Walken
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7G_fZYv8Mg

This is like having Dracula, Darth Vader and, well, Christopher Walken (you know, because he's Christopher Walken) all reading what is perhaps Poe's single most remembered work. If it could turn up a reading by Vincent Price, it'd be like having the poem read by the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

HAH! Found it! The Raven read by Vincent Price
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7zR3IDEHrM

After finding those, I found a few other Poe short stories with the added thrill of Christopher Lee's voice.

Edgar Allen Poe's The Black Cat read by Sir Christopher Lee
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLmS8t0F4To

Edgar Allen Poe's The Tell-Tale Heart read by Sir Christopher Lee
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_utA6j3Oc8

Edgar Allen Poe's The Fall of the House of Usher read by Sir Christopher Lee
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pic4PS8o41M

Edgar Allen Poe's The Cask of Amontillado read by Sir Christopher Lee
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYtEGQ99J8o

Edgar Allen Poe's The Pit and The Pendulum read by Sir Christopher Lee
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8evwxMR5U0

And a song! I had trouble listening to this and NOT imagining Dracula out on karaoke night.
Ghost Riders in the Sky sung by Sir Christopher Lee
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PWuvHPGsjI

And a reading of Edgar Allen Poe's The Gold Bug by Vincent Price
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1sQ56c9qGk

And as bonus stuff, I found the original How to Train Your Dragon book read by Doctor Who
How to Train Your Dragon read by David Tennant
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mmd3BLfmzQ

And Sherlock Holmes read by Sherlock Holmes (or Doctor Strange for those more familiar with the recent movie). Too bad I cant turn up a copy of The Hobbit read in his Smaug voice.
Benedict Cumberbatch reads Sherlock Holmes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgRxmLf5fKs

EDIT 1: And if Sherlock reading Sherlock isn't meta enough for you, here's Dracula (AKA Christopher Lee) reading Bram Stoker's Dracula
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgIblQXwm2g

Feels like I haven't been around here much lately - kind of like that place that some people hold onto where they come by to pick up accumulated mail and water the plants if they haven't died but otherwise they aren't around it much. Since getting high-speed internet, I've found there is more to the internet than fur art gallery sites and there's more to YouTube than ridiculous videos of people nuking inappropriate items in junk microwaves. I've found it's a good place to find episodes of old obscure television shows no one else really recalls being broadcast. It's also a pretty decent place to find video recordings of old story records I had when I was much younger and audiobooks for stories I've read decades after those.

And despite being known for videos, it's an excellent place to find music - all kinds of music like various songs I've never quite known the name to to others I wasn't able to find on any album in any store or searching through the iTunes store when I've used it before. My greatest passion is soundtrack music from movies and have I ever hit the jackpot there. Thanks to several conversion options and a free music editing program that actually feels fairly comprehensive, I've managed to swell my collection of music substantially in the past few weeks but that's come at the cost of participating here so much or creating art of my own. With all of the success I've had though, my music mining efforts will probably wind down and I may get back into art if I can only find that one little breakthrough that gets me back into it again.

Now that I have an honest-to-goodness up-to-date computer, I can use sites that were previously unreachable because they wouldn't load for me. Something about their coding placed it beyond the capability of my old computer and connection. One of those was Tumblr. Now that I can check it out, I'm still not sure of what it really is. Is it a journal? Or a blog? Is it some art thing or something more like Twitter with pictures? I'm kind of confused by it's supposed to be. Is there some special advantage to having one or is it just another place to post stuff? Does anyone have some valuable inupt on this and whether I should bother getting/making one or not?

In other news, I'm bummed that my neighbors across the street for seemingly no reason pulled down a 30 foot tall saguaro cactus in perfectly good health that's stood there for well over the nearly 25 years I've lived here. I kinda think it's against the law but the cactus has already been pulled down. Why do people have to be so destructive to nature all of the time?

Okay, I'll bite. A couple of people have already done this and every once in a while, I get asked a question by someone who thinks they shouldn't be asking me questions. If you're one of those, here is your chance. I ask that please keep it polite and civil and remember that journals can be read by all audiences. I will answer almost anything but I reserve the right not to answer a question for a variety of reasons, which I will provide in lieu of the actual answer.

I mentioned earlier that I've created all the folders I'm capable of with the current system and have sorted the majority of the work I've uploaded here into at last one of them. There might be a few strays that need sorted in that I've missed. I'm trying to go back and update the information on all of the files a little at a time so I should catch those on this last pass.

I do have a question for anyone out there that bothers to read these anymore and even more rarely, decides to leave a comment. I have the capability of scanning some of these files over again and saving them at a better resolution and with color adjustments made. However, it's old work that most probably don't ever go back to look at. Should I bother going through the work of redoing the scans? I was thinking of pictures like this http://www.furaffinity.net/view/32672/ or pictures I did for art exchanges like this http://www.furaffinity.net/view/32826/ I've already remastered other pictures and uploaded them as new submissions but these would be replacing the old files in this case since I have a connection that will allow me to revisit stuff this far back without it taking hours.

I also wonder if anyone would mind if I uploaded work done for me in those exchanges or as gifts and commissions I've had over the years. If anyone I have one with that watches me objects, I'll certainly take note of it here. I doubt some if not most of these are no longer online and would like the chance to share them if possible.

There were several times you were like that one relative in the family that you don't want to invite to holiday dinner or other gatherings but you have to because some other member of the family feels that no one should be excluded no matter how much no one wants them around. There were other times though that you weren't bad and some where you were pretty damn cool. For me, it was mostly in the area of movies.

Thanks to The Loft Cinema, I got to see a bunch that I hadn't had the chance to see in an actual theater before like The Last Unicorn, Princess Mononoke, Porco Rosso, and Army of Darkness. I got to see a couple I had but not for a long, long time like Tron and Disney's Sleeping Beauty. And I got to see Shin Godzilla, the first Japanese Godzilla I got to see in a theater since Godzilla 2000. I also got to see Deadpool and Zootopia with susi - one for the second time around and other other for the first of two times I saw it.

Finding Dory was another film that stood out. Usually when I go see a movie, at some point I'll begin to wonder about lunch or some errand I'll have to do after the movie no matter how good the movie is. Finding Dory was so good beyond that that I was totally lost in the film until the last of the end credits and only then did I think about what else I had to do, which was to turn around to the next showing of Suicide Squad.

Movies were also a big part of my Christmas. I gave my mother a list based on several entries to my wish list, some on there for years, and she got me everything I sent her. I was totally not expecting that second season of Agents of SHIELD and the blu-ray set of Star Trek: The Animated Series seemed like an outside shot. I was also pleased that I got to see The Flight of Dragons for te first time in years and the best copy of it I've seen yet. This gives me hope that eventually I'll get to see that Man from Atlantis set that's been lurking on the list for well over five years now.

While movies were a big thing this year, the area of computers got a big boost just in the last month. Thanks to susi , I was finally able to make use of a new computer he built for me with the help of others. Thanks to all of you who donated to the cause. The wolf also made sure I had the proper connection to go with it. What a difference high speed makes now that I can use it for my things here at home. It sure beats sneaking quick peeks and other furtive forays when no one was looking at work.

I also want to thank dragonsintheattic once again for the awesome gift of ArtRage4. I've been a bit distracted with the folder system here on FA but that's winding down soon and I'll be ready to tackle some much needed shading on the first project I've been working on. At least I've been getting the hang of the program, its shortcuts and finally where to find the tool settings just before I started the folder project. How novel that the tool settings are in the pod marked "settings". And here I thought I read the manual before starting.

I'm not sure if I'm looking forward to 2017 but it will likely have its ups and downs just like any other year. It would be nice if it took things easy on the deaths though. Give that Grim Reaper some paid time off or something.

I'm slowly trying to teach myself ArtRage 4. I'm getting there picking up a few of the shortcuts for the tools I'm using and I'm finding other things out about the program as I'm trying to work on the first image I've chosen. I'm more used to Photoshop's interface and where certain functions are located, such as different types of selections. Perhaps one of these days things will be second nature but for now, it's still very much a learning process.

I reached sort of a stopping point on the image so I decided to work with a different task for a while. On Friday, I set up an account on Furry Network ( https://beta.furrynetwork.com/dharken/ for the curious). An interesting (is one way to put it) interface that definitely wouldn't have worked with my old net connection or computer. Things seem to be moving kind of slow there so I don't know just how active I will be about uploading there. I put a few things up but haven't had a chance to get back to it yet.

On Saturday, I started working with the folder system here on FA. I think I have the hang of how it works now. I made an outline to figure out what folders to make and how then I should distribute the work I've uploaded here. I used up all 50 folders in the outline. If there are plans to add more folders in the future, I could definitely make use of those. So far I have the Dragon Lady folder group taken care of and have started on The Dharkens. For the record as of this day, I have 69 pages of submissions here on FA. I'll probably be working on the folders for quite a while yet especially with having work coming up again tomorrow.

Yesterday I ended up spending the day fixing the contrast and text on the Holiday Mood series I did back in 2011 and uploaded the results to Inkbunny and Weasyl. I also went back to the original submissions here on FA and uploaded what new versions I had in place of the old. http://www.furaffinity.net/view/7084489/ as an example. I may yet upload a few of these to SoFurry and Furry Network but for now they're only three sites and FA is the only one with all of them. So this one isn't so much in progress as it is done. I do plan on uploading other images I've fixed up in the years since I've uploaded here in place of the old if I have them. It remains to be seen just how many I'll keep doing this with for ones that I haven't already reworked. I guess it will all depend on how much time I have in the future.

I have a thing over on Furry Network now.

I blame a combination of a new internet connection both making it possible to view a new site and running out of submissions on the ones I was already on.

I just couldn't waste my time on YouTube like everyone else I guess.

...I'm doing something, say drawing, and I get a sudden flash of someone I knew decades ago and my mind won't stop until it's wondered all about their life since - what they might be doing now and such. It's a sudden fierce obsession that can sometimes take hours to dispell and my mind has to dust off all of these memories I've buried in some not quite forgotten corner of the mental vault. Chances are pretty good that just about every one of them hasn't spared even a notion about me since the last time we were physically together.

What I hate even more about this is while I remember all of this past stuff, some going back almost 40 years, I can't remember where I put my cellphone I had in my hand just a couple of minutes before or whether I paid a bill without checking half a dozen times to be sure or what shortcuts I'm using for what program and sometimes forgetting what type of computer I'm on because I use both iMac and PC almost every day.

I've attended/viewed a number of streams since my first watching Rika some days ago and I have to ask, how do you make digital artwork and coloring look so easy? Please note, I said look not that you actually make it easy. For things I'm more familiar with that might astound people, very few in number that they be, I know it only appears to be easy but it isn't under the surface (oh boy, do I EVER know that one).

Thanks to a very generous friend, thank you dragonsintheattic AKA Ssthisto!, I've been working with a new (to me) program. Not only are the rules different for it compared to working with pencil and paper but they're also different from photo editing and manipulation in Photoshop, which is something I'm a bit more used to (no?) thanks to my job. Don't worry, I'm sticking to this and giving it a fair chance but it's taken me hours to do what I've seen done in minutes in at least a couple of streams.

My apologies for no new content for however long it's been now. Thanks to Gungewolf, I have a new much, much, much faster internet connection and with it a new computer. As with any new thing, there's a period of getting used to it but my main problem is getting a lot of things set up and restored the way I had them on my old computer.

I've also been taking advantage of my new found speed to fix a few things among my galleries online. As soon as I'm able, I'm going to be trying to sort all of my work into folders here on FA once I get some of the other less populated galleries taken care of. After that and things with the new comp are set, there should be some new artwork coming and hopefully a couple of surprises.

Now that I have MUCH faster internet and because I still haven't been able to figure out the enigma that is digital work, I'm curious about watching someone else work to see how they do it. How does one go about watching a stream if an artist announces one? I tried looking at a site last night after seeing an announcement but the site mentioned paying after a trial period. I couldn't tell from the language if only the artist paid to use the site or if it was the artist and viewers that shared the expense.

So if I find a stream option I can afford (i.e. free), does one have to buy into the stream, basically purchase a sketch to watch? I'm talking openly announced streams on that one. Is it permissible to ask questions of the process the artist is using? I've read some accounts of people being extremely rude, disruptive and abusive during some streams, so obviously one of the big rules is 'don't be a dick' but are there more than that? I assume some artists set rules about their own streams. Do they usually post the rules somewhere?

So many questions already but I have just one more: How many people reading the subject thought I was going to be the one streaming? I apologize to you. I may have faster internet but when it comes to the artwork, I'm not much more advanced than the ancient Chinese or Egyptians who invented paper and papyrus.

Thanks to several generous people, particularly the efforts of one persistent wolf, I have traded in my horse and buggy for an SR-71 Blackbird. Actually I've gone from barely reliable dial-up to a screaming fast DSL connection. And what a difference it makes. They don't even have it this good at work and I'm using 100% of this power here. In addition to this modern mechanical blessing, I can once again listen to my iTunes library while powering my way through my submission backlog - soon to be 'what backlog?' Man but some of you are prolific producers of art. Any of you care to share a scrap of that creative energy if you have some to spare?

Oh yeah, it's also awesome to once again look at a page of thumbnails instead of the Tertris-solitaire version, though I hope I won't be looking at any appreciable amount of submissions soon. Then it will be on to tackle the other sites that have backlogged because I've either concentrated on this one or something about them stopped working for my old computer.

All the thumbnails in my gallery pages are stacked in a single line down the middle of the page. I've already had plenty of issues using this site as it was, now this. Some days, and there are getting to be more of them as time goes on, I wish I'd stuck with majoring in biology in college instead of switching to art and this is just piling it on all the more.

So I'm off this Black Friday, taking the first work day time off since the beginning of the year when I was more or less banished from work until I was over a cold. In preparation for the long weekend, I saved some vidoes from YouTube (putting a skill/process I learned in the line of work a couple of months ago to semi-professional use) about creating art and coloring digitally plus a couple of polymer clay sculpture things.

Several of the ones I found checking for furry art centered themes were labelled as tutorials but upon watching them, it turns out to be someone working only to music and no audio explantion of what is being done. There's no view of the tool bars or menus, just on the work and what's being done is sped up so I have no real clue how long any of the actions really take. Overall it leaves me with the impression I might get more from watching some guys build a space vehicle out of scrap and trash found lying around speaking in a language foreign to me (which would be most of them). I did find a couple of videos where things were explained but the best one was limited to drawing furry heads and really wasn't centered around digital art specifically.

Perhaps I'll never get my brain wrapped around this whole digital art thing. I have managed to teach myself how to manipulate photos well enough to impress the villagers I work with (and for) but that feels like a magician who relies on one or two of the simpler oldest tricks in the book.

For anyone with an Inkbunny account and not already watching me who would like to, I've added a new sketch to a series I've been creating of my gryphon character, Jesse, that isn't allowed over here.

https://inkbunny.net/Dharken

Just a week after seeing Disney's classic Sleeping Beauty in 70mm and Shin Godzilla a day after that, I can now add the cult classic, Army of Darkness, to my growing list of older films I've been able to see in a theater in recent years. I've seen the film dozens of times (including three earlier this year - and a variety of cuts) thanks to VHS, DVD and Blu-ray but somehow I missed it back in 1992 during its initial theatrical release. Once again, I'd like to thank the Loft Cinema for another opportunity to see a film in its proper forum that I'd missed out on before.

But why did I only find out about it through a link on Patricia Talman's Facebook?

http://www.dragonsexcalendar.com/pr.....-sex-calendar/


I would have thought I'd have run across something like this in a journal on this site.

This is for those who roughly once a month flood/dump their entire body of work from that time in a day or two. I doubt any of those that I watch who make a regular practice of posting in this fashion will ever read this, but I'm doing it for a sort of frustrated catharsis. Do you think any of you doing this could ease up? Maybe post less work twice a month? I could understand if going somewhere without any internet service, like the middle of Alaska, but I doubt everyone doing the flooding/dumping is heading there. Maybe spread things out over a few days instead of making one massive dump in a matter of a few hours? At least give me the chance to keep up instead of wiping out nearly an entire weekend's progress clearing submissions in just the few hours I've been at work. I don't have much of a life as it is but I do get tired of spending what little is there not even keeping up with all of this. And if you are going to keep on flooding/dumping, could you at least keep the file sizes down? I'm getting a bit tired of some of these files taking up an entire television episode to download.

And there, I've said my piece just in time to try to get some sleep and tackle what little I can again tomorrow before work.

That's the number of pages I consider I've officially read for recreation since taking up reading novels again a little over two years ago following the purchase of the novel adaptation of the then recent Godzilla movie. Most of those pages have been in Star Wars or Star Trek books but I did pick up a few fantasy novels and a couple of Tony Hillerman's Navajo mysteries. There are a few books I found worthy of mentioning just in case any readers out there might not have seen or considered them.

Dragon's Wild, Dragon's Luck, Dragon's Deal and Dragon's Run by the late Robert Asprin and Jody Lynn Nye. This quartet of novels chronicles the adventures of Griffin McCandles, an orphan who finds out he's actually a dragon from his uncle. Shortly after, Griffin and his sister quickly find themselves a new life in New Orleans with the help of one of Griffin's old college friends. Not as madcap and punny as his Myth series, Mr. Asprin's wit and ability to tell a story with likeable (and some not so likeable) characters still shines in these last works and continued fairly seemlessly by Jody Lynn Nye. It'll be interesting to see if she continues the series in future novels having written the last on her own.

Star Wars: Death Troopers and Star Wars: Red Harvest by Joe Schreiber. Can be best summed up as the Walking Dead meets the Star Wars universe. I read through Death Troopers and its prequel sequel (set some 3,000 years before Death Troopers) in hours. I couldn't put them down. Some of the dramatic tension in the first wasn't quite so tense because of a couple of the characters involved and the novel's timeframe in the old Star Wars expanded universe but that hardly mattered while reading and only occured to me when I would take breaks.

Star Wars: Darth Maul - Lockdown by Joe Schreiber. As with Death Troopers, I couldn't put this one down either. Locked in a prison as part of an assignment from Darth Sidious, Maul really shines tearing his way through the place and just about everyone or everything that gets in his way. It's hard to believe this guy is the same one that gets bisected by a student Jedi even if that student is Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Anonymous Rex and Casual Rex by Eric Garcia. Perhaps one of the most unlikely of scenarios for a series of detective novels ever, but that's what makes it work so damn well. The stories are told from the point of view of one Vincent Rubio, private investigator and literally a velociraptor in human's clothing (and disguise) investigating cases involving other dinos in disguise. It seems Transformers aren't the only ones that are more than meets the eye. Describing these books does them no justice. Just give them a read but keep them away from the kids. It's a detective story and there are some mature parts. I still have yet to read the third novel in the series but I'm looking forward to it.

The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury. A true science fiction classic that I found so engrossing, I read it in just a few hours. Written in the years before the Viking lander and other probes of Mars, the story still has a lot to say about its true subject, humanity.

The Greatest Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. I picked up this collection of four novels and most of Sir Doyle's short Holmes stories after seeing the first two seasons of BBC's production of Sherlock starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman. It was really intriguing and entertaining to read the original stories that inspired the episodes that made up the TV series and see just how different the two are. I had previously read The Hound of the Baskervilles so it was also interesting to read it again its proper chronological place in Sir Doyle's body of Holmes stories.

Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter by Seth Graeme-Smith. Almost as different from the movie as buttermilk is from skim milk. While I found the movie entertaining and still do, I found the narrative style of the book very compelling and will be likely to re-read it in the next few years if I can ever wade through the literally hundreds of other books waiting for me to read them.

It's Superman by Tom DeHaven. This was a surprise find in one of the local used bookstores I frequent to play catch up on various older and out of print novels during the decade (or two) that I stopped buying books. It's definitely not the Superman story I was expecting, which works all for the better. Mr. DeHaven bases his story of the journey of Clark Kent from the fields of Kansas to the metropolis of Metropolis on the original Golden Age Superman and takes off in a most unexpected and delightful direction simmered in the flavor of the early to mid-20th century. As a fan of The Rocketeer, The Shadow and Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow for their deco-era adventures, this book was one surprise I'm glad I found.

There are a few more I could mention but this ought to do for this evening.


*does not include the half a collection of Edgar Allen Poe's complete works Ive read but yet to complete and another book I proofread.

I've finished the reorganizing of my art file. I feel that for some of the older work, especially the stuff I did before the age of the internet, that I thought I should have but probably never scanned. Now that I'm done with this and nearly done with a rather big household chore, I'm making a list of what I might work on based on gaps I've seen or other possibilities I think are missing. Hopefully things will work better than they were before I started the organization project.

We'll see how it goes.

So it's that time of year again where I have, with a great deal of help from the Earth (since it's really doing all of the work on this particular count), survived another revolution around the sun. Today looks to be nothing special since I already received the usual little celebration at work (Krispy Kreme doughnuts as I requested), received the one gift I'm going to get (money from mom - hello bills), bought my own birthday present that's actually a something I can use (the first season of Legends of Tomorrow), and bought my own cake (a piece of red velvet and a piece of chocolate for when I get around to eating them).

Most everything else I could want (if I can afford it) comes out in the next few weeks and as for books already out, I have several hundreds of those already waiting on my bookshelves for me to find the time to read them. I just started the third book of the Kelvin of Rud five book series by Piers Anthony and Robert E. Margroff so it'll be a while yet until I can proceed to the next likely candidate. [I want to finish the series. It was a trilogy when I started but I discovered the final two books at a local used bookstore a couple of weeks ago. Thank you trade credit.]

I'm currently (except for taking the time to type this) working on organizing and renaming the pinup images in the Dragon Lady folder. I've sorted the majority of the pictures into themed folders for easier reference, sorted them into an order of sorts and will be renaming them in the coming whenever I get to them. It's still going to be a while. I had some surprises in the other folders I've already done of images I could scarcely remember working on. There's so much potential in all of it for more work if I could only find the time, energy and will to do it if I could have all three at the same collective moments. And that's not so easy when you tend to feel like your best is behind you and the world has bypassed you with so much as a passing glance.

Even after three fairly full days, I'm still organizing and renaming files in my personal art folder. And from all indications I could be doing it for a couple more weeks if I go back to some of the folders I've ignored so far. I have yet to tackle the monster that will be the Dragon Lady folder and have been working with my Rhoan-verse of characters. There are certainly plenty of those to do. However did I do all of this work? I know it's been nearly ten years since I first sketched Carrie which led to a whole series of other characters around her. I've come across work that's raised some personal feelings but for the most part that feels like a whole other lifetime ago these days so it really feels like a curiousity more than anything else. I guess time does heal all wounds.

From a neutral note to a hopefully positive one, I've come across a lot of work that while always in the back of my mind somewhere has definitely gone to the backburner. Many of them are series of illustrations that went unfinished - series like the Studs series, Karyn and Veronica's customer service relations, Jesse's busy night, and various tries at comic stories. I'm hoping to continue or redo some of these once the reorganizing is over but I don't dare stop what I'm doing to draw or I'll never get the reorganizing done. While I have a ways yet to go, I've gone too far to stop now.