I went out to get gas today for my Jurassic Park Ford Explorer while wearing a Mass Effect N7 hoodie, and listening to the "Lord of the Rings" movie soundtrack.
I then went back home to reinstall Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion while listening to various video game soundtracks.

I am 42 years old, and I am as much of a nerd now as I was 20 years ago.

Looking back through my gallery, I am surprised by how many years have passed since I last posted anything.

I have not done much drawing at all for some time (most of my creative energies have been going into 3d texturing, prop making, and other physical arts), but I cannot let my account here be entirely inactive.

So I have decided to post up some art relating to my D&D character, which will also make it easier to share images of them for future commissions.

My entry will be late this year, as I've been focusing on getting my car up to show standard for a parade later this month, but I'll have a belated entry soon. Stay tuned! And let's see all those lovely, lacey Dinos! Woo!

Anyone who knows me in what is commonly called the "real world" [citation needed] are probably sick of hearing me say it, but some friends of mine managed to snag an extra ticket and asked if I would like to go with them to PAX West this weekend. It should go without saying that I responded with a very enthusiastic "YES!".
So far, 2017 has been marked again and again by the incredible generosity of those around me. I don't take such kindness for granted, and though I struggle to think of ways to repay it, I will never take it for granted.

I'm a collector. As many of you have seen on my page, I collect many items from WWII, especially those from Nazi Germany. I do this for several reasons - their rarity, their unique designs, but mostly because they represent a time in human history that is worth remembering. A time when the entire world rose up to fight against a regime that felt it had the right to dominate, subjugate and even exterminate others based on an ideology of intolerance.

I DO NOT collect them because I am sympathetic to the racial or political ideals that this regime stood for. Rather, I want to preserve the memory of what they did so that people NEVER FORGET how easily an otherwise educated society can allow itself to be overtaken by fear, paranoia and hatred.
It's especially important in these polarized times to remember how easy it is for a few charismatic charlatans to use the fear and anger of others to motivate them into performing unspeakable atrocities for the sake of God, King, or Country.

Don't let yourselves be pulled into being the tools of others. Think for yourselves. Question those who tell you to follow, and be sure to listen to the voices of the past.

I realize that I haven't done a wrap-up of the events that took place a few months ago. Some aspects, like the final insurance payout, haven't yet been resolved, but a lot has happened since that day and I feel obligated to say something about them for those that only hear about me through my sparse FA activity.

As mentioned, I was involved in an accident on interstate 10 the day after Christmas last year. My memory of the event is uncertain, but the driver in front of me braked suddenly due to slowing traffic, causing me to also brake and try and move to the shoulder. But the driver behind me wasn't able to stop in time and drove my vehicle into the one in front, crushing me between the two SUVs.
I always wear my seatbelt, but the driver's side airbag did not deploy and I lost consciousness for several minutes. Other drivers were able to pull me out, but while doing so, my dog Elly jumped from the car and ran off. It's unknown if she was injured in the crash or not, but she crossed the median and ran about a mile from the scene before presumably being hit by another car and killed. Some very kind friends and coworkers were able to help me locate and recover her later.
It's no surprise that my car was totaled, having lost almost half of it's total length. Considering that, I am very fortunate that I was not more badly injured. Nevertheless, the loss of Elly is a blow that I would have gladly traded bruises, cuts and broken bones to prevent. The thought that I wasn't there to protect her - that she died, scared and alone, on the side of the road still haunts me, as I'm sure it always will. I had her cremated, and her little box of ashes is sitting in her crate, which was her happy place, with her collar and all of her toys.

Since then, I've been dealing with the insurance, which is an often frustrating, and likely unrewarding process. In the end, after the medical costs from the hospital (including a CT scan), tow and wreckage, and other concerns, it's looking likely that I will only break even. I probably won't be receiving a big payment, if I receive anything at all. I'm told that the insurance agencies will soon be passing along the total amounts due to a collection agency for payment. What that means for me, since I was determined not to be at fault, I'm not sure.
I also have occasional symptoms that make me worry about lasting damage, and might require another doctor visit to diagnose or dispel.

Despite all this, I am doing well, and I have been repeatedly humbled and moved by the amount of support I received from my friends and coworkers in recovering from this misfortune. I even have a new car now, thanks to a staggering show of generosity, but I will post about that separately.

I'm alright now, and things seem to be in the closing motions. I'm sorry I didn't post about this sooner, but it's not something that I feel comfortable advertising, especially not when there are so many larger issues going on.

I've recently learned about the passing of  genecatlow.

He was an upstanding, immensely kind person as well as a fantastic artist. For many people, he was likely one of the first artists they encountered in the fandom, and he was impressively prolific right up until the end.

He was the best class of person, and he will very much be missed. Godspeed, Gene.

Some friends of mine have been using Facebook to help me look for news of Elly. One of them found her.
Apparently she had been struck by a car on the I-10. I'm on my way to pick her up now.
I've lost my baby.

Still no word about Elly.

The ER did some tests, including a CAT scan and were able to confirm that I have a mild concussion, but no hemorrhaging or bleeding. I should be fine in a few days.

I got a lot of support during this, and I want everyone who helped to know how much I appreciate it. I was honestly surprised how many people were willing to help, and how much they were willing to help. It's been honoring and humbling.

I've still got a ways to go before this is all done. I need to deal with insurance, getting a new car (as well as handling what's left of the old one), and I still need to find Elly. Or come to terms with the possibility of not seeing her again.

While coming back from my parent's house after Christmas, I was involved in a three car accident. The person in front of me braked suddenly and I ended up being sandwiched between two SUVS.
My seat belt was on, but my airbag didn't deploy, and I lost consciousness until other drivers pulled me out.
The car is a loss. It was completely crumpled.
My dog, Elly, jumped out and ran while I was still unconscious. She's still missing. She has her tags on, and has been chipped. If someone finds her, they'll be able to let me know. Nevertheless, the friends who came to pick me up, drove around with me, helping look her her.
Right now, I'm heading to the ER to get looked over. I may have a concussion and need to have it treated.

Sorry that the first news in a long while has to be bad, but many people only hear about me via FA, so I figured I should update folks here too.

Just an update for everyone wondering how things went.

The extractions went as planned. Some of them were a struggle, and the dentist needed to apply a lot of coercion to get some of the deeper roots to finally pop free. He needed all two and a half hours to get it all done.
They needed to grind down some bone around the infection site, and suture it closed, but it should heal well, after some days/weeks of discomfort.
I was accidentally overcharged initially, but will be getting some of that back. Nevertheless, I will need to be very creative with my bills in order to get everything payed. Still, the dentist is fully paid, so that's one BIG bill I don't have to worry about. I'm also watching rent, so it should only be smaller bills like insurance and Internet that will suffer.

Thank you to everyone both here and in real life that has been supportive and encouraging while I go through this. It's been a whole week of hardcore adulting and more than a little discomfort, but the hard part should be over now.

Well, this is it. Wednesday I finally go in for surgery.

As many of you who know me in real life are already aware, I've had issues with my teeth my entire adult life. I inherited weak tooth enamel from my father's side of the family, which results in them wearing down faster than normal and eventually just crumbling away.
All the male members of my family as far back as we have stories have needed to have their teeth out. My father, my grandfather, my great grandfather, and even my great great grandfather all needed false teeth before they got far into their 40s. For my grandfather and myself, it came much sooner (not least due to my own love of soda and orange juice).

Lately, a spat of health issues and roller coasters of increased pain brought the resignation that the time had probably come to take the last few steps toward removing them en masse - something I had been putting off for far too long.

When I contacted my dentist, he found that I had been living with an abscess in the left side of my jaw, probably for months at least, and many of my recent health issues could likely be traced to my body fighting that infection. That made it imperative to get the procedure done as quickly as practicable - not least because I'm allergic to Amoxicillin and Clindamycin and was prescribed no painkillers.

Fortunately my work provides good dental insurance, but I still had a considerable amount of money to raise before I could afford the procedure, since complete removal of weak, fractured teeth is a very invasive task that takes a lot of time. And the longer I wait, the more chance the infection has to come back. That's difficult to do on one income, but I had some money already saved, so that helped take some of the pressure off. Stil...I've been living out of a tin can to afford it.

The dentist has all the castings he needs, and I've got my appointment set for Wednesday morning. So this is it.
If I seem to be making a big deal out of it, it's because I've been anticipating this for a long time. There are foods I've had to give up years ago due to how difficult or painful it is for me to chew them. I've lived with the discomfort for so long, that the recovery is likely going to be more of a relief than a hardship.
There's also the risk. Depending on how far the abscess has gone, I may not have enough bone left to do permanent implants (something I plan on for the future). And if they don't clean out all of the bacteria, it could interfere with my recovery.

Regardless, this is a big deal to me, and I'm both looking forward and scared of it.

My friend BossLanky, creator of Mistress Pepis, is taking some commissions.

More details here: http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/7852459/

Examples of his work are here: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/21213240/ and here: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/18881719/

Here's a question for any amateur writers still watching my long-forsaken FA page.

How often do you use a Thesaurus, if at all?

If I plan on doing any significant writing, I always have Thesaurus.com open in another window to help me vary my vocabulary. Often times, it's a big help in steering me away from using the same words or phrases over and over, but other times I find myself trying to use out of fashion or overly grandiose words to spice up the passage, but instead gives the whole segment the feeling that I'm trying to impress the readers with my literacy.

I've never been a professional writer, and I likely never will be, but since I've been trying to complete many of the stories I've had laying around for so long, I'd be glad for some feedback or advice.

Went to bed early last night, got up early today so that I can begin tackling some of the many small projects around my house (such as paying rent).

I just realized that I've spent the last six hours watching a complete course on world history (actual world history, not Euro-centric history).

I'm not even upset.

This was a tough one.

The older I get, the more reflective I become each 24th of July toward the progress I've made in my life. Seeing as I trend rather high on self-reproachment, I invariably feel that I haven't really lived up.

But every year older is (hopefully) another year wiser.

I know cellists across the globe groan whenever they have to play it, but I still think Pachelbel's Canon in D is one of the most moving pieces of stringed music ever written.
I was glad to have it played at my wedding, and to this day it still does a wonder in helping melt away my anxiety.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkqQ9hlAOco

(And before anyone thinks it would be cute to link it, I've already seen the guy with his guitar making fun of the "Pachelbel cord" )

I just learned that Wikipedia has a list of modern and near modern slang terms for LGBT people. Reading it causes me no end of amusement.

If only we put as much effort into solving world hunger, we'd be a lot better off.

I know it's been a terribly long time since I last uploaded anything of substance here. With FN ramping up, I've been reorganizing many of my submissions for reposting there (complete with higher res scans and new descriptions).

But when it comes to new content, I've not been generating very much. Most of my creative energy has been going into things other than drawing. One of those things has been a renewed interest in writing. I mentioned this is my previous journal, but I'm just going to reiterate it here with a bit more explination of what I would be posting.

I generally write short fiction of a type that probably won't go over well on FA (non Furry and non erotic), but I also occasionally jot down tidbits of a very erotic nature, or non erotic but still Furry-related short stories.

Would this be interesting to anyone?
More than likely I would post these either on SoFurry (which has a larger audience for written works), but I would link them here as well - perhaps with a sketch to help illustrate one of the characters or situations featured in the story.

The caveat would be that the vast majority of them would be unfinished. Generally speaking, I write the most when I simply sit down and let myself go in a single inspired flow, letting the characters and situation take me wherever it feels most natural at the time. This way I can often get a dozen pages or so into a story before sleep, or work or something pulls me away.
The downside is that I may not return to it until days later, by which time I've no longer got the same spark. In order to try and recapture it, I'll read through what I have already written and start editing it along the way. Before long, I've muddled my own text with rewrites and clarifications, added additional scenes that I have to try and splice into the original text and generally just bog the whole thing down until I give up.

Other times, I'll have specific scenes worked out in my head that I really want to preserve and so I'll jot them down in, roughly, chronological order and leave them until I can fill in the gaps later.
I have one such story going now that I would really like to post (it's based on one of the sketches in my gallery, which itself was based on a picture by Adam Wan), but it's super fragmented and would leave a lot of people wondering what happens in between.

I know the majority of you don't have a strong opinion either way, and would be happy to see me post just about anything. But I'm genuinely curious if anyone would legitimately read anything I post.

This weekend I've been doing quite a bit of writing. I've not done any serious writing in a while, so it was a good exercise.

If I posted some more of my writing here, would anyone be interested in reading it?

In case you haven't already seen the Kickstarter for this one, a gentleman is making a set of Dromaeosaur action figures, featuring feathered versions of Velociraptor mongoliensis, Velociraptor osmolskae, Atrociraptor mashalli and Tsaagan mangas (a Chinese Raptor).

These are really awesome looking figures, and I can't wait to see this become a reality. So if you haven't checked it out yet, it's down to the last few hours.

Dino lovers everywhere should jump on this!

I would appreciate it if watchers switching over to Furry Network would leave me links to their accounts. I will be transitioning there myself once it's officially out of beta, but I'd like to get my watch list built up there as much as I can.
I've been on FA for a long time, and in that time, I've amassed quite a list of artists and friends that I follow. Many of them are no longer using their FA names, or have created new accounts with different titles.

Once again, if you are moving to FN, please leave me a link so I can follow you there as well.

Edit: My FN account is beta.furrynetwork.com/dopr/

Driving home from work, one of my favorite songs comes on the radio. Start headbanging along with it while I turn into the parking lot.
Rando in the parking lot stares at me as I rock out to the rest of the song in my parking space.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sL_K5Z1DeCc
"Summer" (presto) from Vivaldi's "Four Seasons"

Damn I love that song...

Joan Jett may own "I Love Rock and Roll" (apologies to "The Arrows"), and Johnny Cash did the definitive version of "Hurt" (Trent Reznor agrees), but I still prefer Dolly Parton's version of "I Will Always Love You" to Whitney Houston's.

I'm a rebel.

A fairly pointless journal, but I thought it might be interesting for some people to reflect on events from their younger days from an adult perspective and perhaps see just how creepy some of those events are.
This journal may, or may not, be inspired by some creepypastas I've been listening to. Although, unlike most creepypastas, these are actual events that I remember.

When I was elementary school age, about 8 or so, probably younger, I would walk too and from school. Living in a small town where everyone pretty much knows everyone, neither my parents or myself had much fear that anything would happen. Nevertheless, the lessons of "don't talk to strangers", "don't take candy from strangers", and "don't accept rides from strangers" were regularly addressed.
One particular day, while walking back from school, a guy in an older sedan (probably later 70s) stopped in the road next to me while I was walking home and told me that my aunt had sent him to pick me up. My aunt lives in the same town, but I had no memory of there being any kind of get together planned for that day. I also thought it was weird that she would send anyone to pick me up when I lived so close to the school anyway. And this was someone I had never seen before. Why didn't my Grandpa Jack do it?
I was wary, but not really scared or creeped out. It just seemed weird. I turned him down, saying that I didn't really need a ride and he randomly mentioned being one of my aunt's coworkers (as if he felt he needed to explain why he wasn't familiar to me without me having to say so) and once again said that he had been sent by my aunt to give me a ride. I declined again, deciding to walk to the other side of the street rather than keep talking to him. He drove off and I never saw him again.
I don't think I mentioned the strange driver back then, but I brought it up once years later and it very much unsettled my parents. Looking back on it now, the implications are fairly unpleasant. I highly doubt my aunt would have sent anyone to drive me home when I lived only a few blocks away, and considering that I never saw that man again, he likely wasn't from the area.

Around that same age, my best friend at the time was named Michael. My mother worked with his dad, Bill, and Michael and myself went to the same summer daycare, so there was no trepidation about our spending a lot of time together. He was really the only friend I had around that age, so I was eager to hang out as much as possible. His dad was also fairly successful, so Mike had all the cool toys growing up - the Ninja Turtles Sewer Playset - the TMNT Blimp - even "The Black Seas Barracuda" set from Lego (which, to this day, I still desire to own).
I never felt ill at ease at Mike's house, and most of the console experience I have from back in the day came from when I would hang out with him (he had a NES, SNES, Sega Genesis, eventually an N64...all the good stuff). Occasionally his dad would drive us both to the only McDonald's in town (this is back before McD's had playplaces) for hamburgers that still came in yellow, non-biodegradable Styrofoam containers.
It was only weird once, and it took me many many years before I looked back at it and realized just how weird it was.
While riding in the back of the car, Bill (Mike's dad), asked me out of the blue if I had any hair "down there". I said that I hadn't. To which he replied: "Oh, you blondes...it always takes a while to tell.".
At the time, I wasn't creeped out by it. It seemed like just another gross pre-teenage, growing up sort of question - like being asked if you thought girls were pretty yet (when at that age they're usually still gross). So once again, I didn't think anything of it for over a decade. Looking back at it though, what the heck kind of question is that to ask an eleven year old?
I never had any other incidents with Bill, and Mike was my best friend right up until I moved away from that town. Bill passed away in 2015, likely from complications to his diabetes, and I don't hold anything against him. Perhaps his comment was meant innocently, but looking back at it from an adult perspective, it's just...creepy.

So do any of you have any memories that, in reflection, were strange or creepy? I'm not too concerned with TMI, but respect should be given when it comes to details like names and addresses (I hope I've been appropriately vague with mine).
I like telling stories.