Saint by Diego Candia

Got some new artwork this week by a wonderful artist, Diego Candia. He did the character sketch of Saint here.

Since I am a graphic artist, my husband suggested I design a background to go behind it. So what you see here is art by Diego, graphic by yours truly.

Thanks again, Diego, I love the art. Looking forward to working with you in the future!

Back From Sin City

Well, back from Vegas. Had a great time, but man, I am glad to be back. You know, Vegas is the kind of place that I would never think to go in a million years. I mean, on the surface, it's a crowded, loud city with lots of noise and flashing lights. Pretty much the antithesis of anything I would go to on my own. However, this was a deal I couldn't pass up. Husband there for a week for the Sharepoint conference, and his air fare, food, and hotel was paid for. And it was our anniversary. So it was crazy not to just suck it up and not fly out there with him.

And you know what? It was awesome. It was awesome covered in a crunchy awesome shell. With awesome drizzled over the top.

Awesome. I wouldn't mind going back, if I have to be honest.

The highlight of my trip (actually, the highlight of my WHOLE YEAR) was getting to go out to Red Rock Canyon. I had been looking at those cowboy mountains all week, dreaming of going out there and getting some red dust on my boots. So on Friday, that is what we did. Look down there at the bottom of the blog. I've added a photo gallery, and so far, what is in there is pics from our desert tour. The pics don't do the colors any kind of justice at all...need to do a little correction in Photoshop...but you can get an idea.

Here in the Southeast, our mountains are lush and wet and green. Almost like a foggy rain forest. You can smell the black, soft earth and you will almost always get soaked at least once if you spend the weekend out there in the Blue Ridge. The approach to them is always dreamy and sensuous, with soft, blue, almost feminine curves, reclining all over the horizon.

Not in Nevada. The mountains are a raw, blasted moonscape of blazing reds and whites and yellows. Even the vegetation is jagged. I'm sporting a long gash on my leg from walking too close to a cholla...which is a sort of...I guess it's a cactus. Thing. I dunno, I hope it leaves a scar. I really do, I had so damn much fun out there I'd be proud to have a mark from that brutal, beautiful place gouged into my on my hide forever. Anyways, I guess the mountains out there look like the mountains back here would look if the meat were all burned off them and nothing but the bones were left. Which, I guess in a way,is what they are.

And geeze, I had some Vegas throat. Evidently, some people have problems with the dry air out there and hooray for me, I am one of them. I felt like Spongebob in that scene where he went to visit Sally the Squirrel and totally dried out inside her little glass bubble. That was me. You know if your sinuses dry out enough, they will bleed down your throat and out your nose? Fun times. Two words: Neti pot. I still ain't entirely right.

But thank you, Mr. John Johnson, our tour guide. Cheerfully sarcastic, witty, and passionately enthusiastic about the desert and the area, John was the perfect guide for our small but intrepid little band of explorers. He's a man I made an immediate connection with (if you find the pic of the man in the gallery with the gray hat on, that's him.) and will never forget. If you find yourself in Vegas, take one of his tours. You won't be sorry.

So, some highlights from the rest of the trip: Supper at Olives on the Bellagio Terrace (amazing), buying tons of bubble bath from Lush (also amazing, they have a website www.lush.com ) and taking long soaks in the huge bathtub in our room at Mandalay Bay, the Freemont Street Experience (pretty cool), dodging the porn slappers on the strip (annoying as shit, but it wouldn't be Vegas without them), supper at Red Square in Mandalay Bay (amazing in every way), soft pretzels at New York, New York, dining in a "street cafe" (which was really inside!) in front of the Doge's palace in The Venetian, Jim winning seventy-five big cents in a slot machine in the Paris casino, trying on clothes in the Betty Page store, and realizing not only is the withdrawal limit on a Las Vegas atm machine is three thousand dollars, but that you can change a hundred dollar bill in the bill changers.

I mean, I dunno, ya'll, I'm from South Carolina. We don't have those kinda atms here. I'm just saying.

Cowboy Mountains

So, yeah. This is the view outside my hotel window right now. I'm in Las Vegas while my husband attends a Sharepoint convention.

I may get another chapter up this week, not sure yet. Depends on how the week goes. But in any event, you all will be subject to some grainy, crappy pictures off my cell phone because I forgot to bring the little doflatchie that you use to read picture cards from cameras.

I do have the camera, so I'll post some nicer pics when I get back.

Anyways, what about those cowboy mountains, eh? How cool is that? We don't have that kind of terrain back home. I've never seen anything like it. Flying over here was like flying over a moonscape.

Of course, the Grand Canyon was on the other side of the frigging plane, right? Keep your fingers crossed for the return home for me. I don't normally fly. I hate flying. HATE flying. I mean, trapped in a pressurized metal tube with a couple tons of highly flammable jet fuel strapped to your ass, hurtled through the sky by a guy that might not even be awake. Yeah. Sign me up for that.

But hey, how often do you get a chance to take this kinda vaycay for half the price, since we're only having to pay for me. And it's our 17th anniversary, so, I kinda had to agree to fly.

You know what? You can buy tequilla shots at the airport before breakfast, even! Seriously, you can get eggs, bacon, coffee, and shooters. You know what else? You have shooters for breakfast in an airport, nobody even blinks.

The husband says having shooters for breakfast is "One of the signs."

After my retort, he followed that up with "getting defensive about having shooters for breakfast is another one of the signs."

It doesn't count if you think you're going to die later that day.

Anyways, thanks for my parents, for taking care of my daughter while we're away, and thanks for John and Kaci for house-sitting! And especially, thank you, Jim, love of my life, for 17 wonderful years. And for showing me that waking up with cowboy boots under your bed is a surefire sign that it's going to be a good day.

Wash by Liezl Buenaventura

Here's another awesome sketch by Liezl Buenaventura. I especially love the pose here, he looks so very....Wash! The coffee cup is a great detail. You know our boys can't function without their cuppa.

Thanks again, Lizz!

Rabies, Mud, and Palm Trees

Well, no sooner am I back from Pennsic War up in Slippery Rock, Pennsylvania, but I had to take off to Isle of Palms here in South Carolina for a family gathering.

I had one whole day to do laundry. I started when I rolled out of bed Monday morning and didn't stop till I went to bed late that night.

I'm kind of sick of being inside a moving car. I'm just saying.

The week before that involved me getting bitten by a feral cat and the cat having to be quarentined for rabies observation. That's always a laff riot when you're already freaking out about driving a day and a half away from your kid. I didn't particularly want to have to send the cat to the shelter in the first place, nor was I all that interested in getting a call while I was that far away from home on vacation that I needed a a series of injections before I started foaming at the freaking mouth. Fun times.

In case you're curious, no, I don't have rabies.

So I'm typing this sitting in the kitchen of a rental house. At least here, I have Internet access, which I didn't have at Pennsic.

I used to go to Pennsic every year, but then I got sick and needed surgery, and then 10 months after that, I got pregnant, and then after that, my daughter was too small to leave...in other words, I had some adventures along the way and life intervened. Which is fine, it's been a great ride. But the husband decided that this year I needed to get out of the house, go reconnect with friends, and visit my old life a little bit.

Well, I was terrified. You'd think I would have wanted to go, and did. I wanted to go, but I didn't want to leave, if you understand me. If it hadn't been for a friend riding with me, and me being her only way there, I would have bailed out.

I have to tell you this...for the past six years, I've been having this dream about Pennsic. Those who have been to Pennsic know that Pennsic can pervade your very heart and soul, and while you may not be there at Pennsic, Pennsic never quite leaves you once it gets into you. My dream was this: I would be going to Pennsic just long enough to tell everyone I wouldn't be there. Just drop in and let everyone know (never mind that in reality, it takes me a day and a half to get there) I was sorry to be missing them again that year.

Yeah. I know, it's nuts, but hey, dreams don't always make sense.

When I showed up at the Pennsic gate this year, in a flash of crazy synchronicity, Cinderella's "Coming Home" started playing on the radio. And for at least a day or two, I could not shake the feeling I was dreaming again. Every time I'd been there for the past six years, it had been in a dream. Now that I was standing under the Pennsylvania sun, the Queen Anne's Lace waving in the breeze and the sticky, cow-manure scented mud cloying around my boots, I could not shake the feeling that I was once again dreaming. Although I had no message to deliver this time. This time, I didn't have to tell anyone I wasn't going to be coming.

So I walked down to the camp of a wonderful friend who I had never met. We'd been corresponding since the year I'd gotten sick. We'd talked on the phone and via email. She was one of the first people I told I was pregnant. I knew all about when her son went to Iraq, and when he returned. We were wonderful friends...we'd just never met.

I walked into her camp and she ran to me and it was like embracing a family member whom I'd been long separated from. That alone was worth the trip.

Yeah, I cried like a damn sap.

But then there was many others who I had yearned to give a hug or a handshake to, and old friends who I never imagined I'd be separated from so long to see. My week was a wonderful blur of connecting with friends old and new. I'll never take friends for granted again.

And for my daughter, who stayed home with her Daddy, well, she fared far better than I did during the week. Daddy kept her busy and the week sailed by for her. I was the one who cried on the phone while talking to her, not the other way around.

I'm glad I finally got to make my long trip. I was never so glad to have gone. And even so, I have never been so glad to return home.

I count my wealth by the love in my life. And I am filthy rich. Life is good.

A Very Brief Break

Hi, folks. Haven't updated in a bit. Just not ready to post it, and too much on my mind last week or so to be able to focus on it. I'll be out of town for about two weeks, off and on. Once I get over this hump, it will be back to business as usual.

It's been a really screwy week and a half for me. I'll explain when I get back. Like I said, have had too much on my mind.

In the meantime, I have another print coming, which I am looking forward to seeing, and some other stuff in the works for you.

Thanks for reading, it means a lot to me.

Have a good couple of weeks,

'Gina

Header Pics And Other Musings

NOTE TO NEW READERS: The header has been recently updated with art by Diego Candia, soo this post no longer pertains to the artwork shown in this header. I may post the old header elsewhere on the site at some point.

Hi, folks. Working on the next bit of story, not done with it yet. I was housesitting last week, at my folk's. Their internet connection is not great. In fact, the last chapter was actually cranked out on my netbook, then posted Sunday night, from my own place, after the Sunday Night Irish Jam at the Publick House here in town.

So I'm a week behind getting my life in order and getting ready for vaction. We're in what my group affectionately calls Pennsic Crush.

Basically, that's a euphemism for "Running Around Like Beheaded Chickens Getting Ready For A Vacation That Will Pretty Much Beat Us Senseless."

I'm going here in less than two weeks. I may or may not get the requisite number of posts up before then. If I don't, I apologize in advance. But I'll be gone first week in August, so, don't worry, I haven't forgotten you all. I'll catch up.

In the meantime, as promised, here's the key to the header pictures. And for the person who asked, yeah, I actually fixed the pic of Saint so he is shaggier now. I just need to get it uploaded.



1. Lily
2. Saint
3. Fiona
4. Bender
5. Tommy
6. Luis
7. Wash
8. Jesse
9. Storm