A Winner, Short Story Sunday, And Purple Poppets!

Let's take care of business first! It's time to pick a winner for the book giveaway for The Tale of Despereaux by Kate DiCamillo. So without further ado, the winner is BECKY of Becky's Book Reviews (one of her many blogs ;). Becky's very cool and I'm happy to send this book her way. She's an Orson Scott Card fan, which automatically makes her one hip chick in my book! Send me the address you want the book sent to, Becky and I'll ship it out to you. My email is chrisa511 at gmail dot com.

I guess today officially kicked off the RIP Challenge for me with Short Story Sunday. I read the first two stories in the Wizards anthology which were Neil Gaiman's The Witch's Headstone and Garth Nix's Holly and Iron. Nix's story was a bit disappointing. It was a high fantasy story told in a short story format which was it's main problem. Pretty cool concept...2 kingdoms battling for a crown, one uses "holly" magic, the other uses "iron" magic, main character can use a bit of both, but the problem was that I really just didn't care about the characters. I think the story was just too big to fit into 30 pages. This story may have worked better as a novel. Two major characters died in the story, and you can tell that it was supposed to be an emotional scene, but it wasn't, because I as a reader wasn't attached...I may have been though if he would've introduced us to the characters a bit more. And I know that Nix is capable of doing this as I LOVED his Abhorsen trilogy. I'd like to see this story told in a longer format, I really think it has potential.

Gaiman's story on the hand was excellent! It's the story of a boy named Bod (short for Nobody) who lives in a graveyard and is raised by the spirits of those who have passed on. He meets the ghost of a witch who was buried in a potter's field with no headstone. Bod feels bad for the witch for not having a headstone and decides to leave the graveyard after finding an item that may be worth some money in the hopes of buying her one. This story is actually the first chapter of Gaiman's future book, The Graveyard Book, and I am super excited about this one now! The latest news from his blog was that he had begun typing it from the written draft...so progress is being made!

And finally, I predicted in a previous post that it was going to happen! If you let the red and blue poppets hang out together, well....purple poppets will eventually come along, and it seems that they have. Lisa Snellings-Clark has some very cool items up on eBay right now including Little Purple Poppets! I've already bought one for myself of course ;) There are 6 left as of this post, but I'm sure she'll post more if those sell out, so keep checking if you want one. They're quite cool!

A Day Of New Things

Yes, today was a day of new things and those things actually did not include books! Can you believe it? They did however include poppets, a little blue one to be exact - and he (yes, I've decided that he is indeed a male) seems to be fitting right in and has paired up nicely with the others. He seems to be quite gloomy, but I'm starting to think that it may just be a scheme to get all of the little red lady poppets to come around and cheer him up...which they seem to be doing. This may lead to little baby purple poppets. There's an idea Lisa ;)

The other thing that I received in the mail today....well dammit, ok..it did include books! But not the kind you read, the kind you write in. My absolutely beautiful journal, created by Stormfilled made it all the way from the UK to my home here in New Orleans. I'm in love with this thing. I can't stop smelling it and flipping through the pages. Her books are made from some of the most high quality leather that I've seen, very soft and it's supposed to age and become even more soft as it does so. The inside has beautiful blue marbled end sheets with a ribbon bookmark, high quality paper, and my favorite part is the leather tie on the outside to keep it closed. If you're in the market for a journal I highly recommend her. These are literally the most beautiful books I've ever seen. Her website is Blackthorn Workshops and you can get more info on her books there. Amazing work!

Now I just don't know what to do with my new journal. My original plan was to write my NaNoWriMo novel in it, but that delusion has just about gone out of my head. Writing 50,000 words by hand in a month is just a tad ludicrous. My hands are hurting just thinking of typing 50,000 words in a month, much less hand writing them. So, ideas, suggestions? I don't want it to be just another journal...I want to do something special with this one. Maybe I'll save it for another Novel idea down the line when I decide to take longer than a month to write one. I was thinking of a new quotes journal, but that's boring. I have a normal notebook that I use for that. Or maybe I'll save it for the Asian and European tour that I'll never go on. Who knows....

I've had a pesky migraine all day which finally knocked me out at about 7:00. I then proceeded to sleep until 10:30 and am now wide awake. Who knows what time I'll finally go back to bed. I'll probably fall asleep as the sun comes up. Lets hope that's not the case. We have a full moon tonight and it's gorgeous. It's one of the brightest moons I've seen in a long time. The night is especially clear tonight which is strange for New Orleans...it's usually quite muggy, humid, smoggy, and cloudy. But not tonight. Migraine is gone now though...so I'll play in blog land for awhile. If I left short or cranky comments on anyones blog earlier, I apologize...it's the headaches fault...unless your name's tuffy...then it's my fault.

A Quick Post Of Links

Lisa Snellings-Clark is about to re-open the gallery via eBay for the Summer Solstice sale. In preparation, there are goodies up already. Red poppets, more Little Pink Poppets that are amazing (I own one and you should too), and get ready for this.....Blue Poppets!! I'm so excited about Blue Poppets. Blue is my favorite color and I really have always wanted a blue poppet. See, it doesn't take much to make me happy...really...not much at all... There are also stuffed poppets being made and you can see them on this post of her blog.

Megan (yes, my Megan) is fairly new to the blogging community, so I'm sending you all her way. She's written a review for the new Jeff Buckley album. Yes, even though he has passed there are still new Jeff Buckley albums. This one sounds great and if you're a fan, I recommend checking out her review. I'll be picking this one up.

And finally, Scott has a great new book blog named Booky Ooky and he's reviewed a set of books that look incredible. I need to get these. They are the Griffin and Sabine & Morning Star Trilogies. Check out his review for an excellent description of the series and for a fun blog to read.

Bodies Are Good Again And Other Things...

I'm feeling so much better today and the problems of the past week seem to have remedied themselves. Thanks for all of the well wishes. Funny how things work themselves out in times of panic. I was down playing my problem a little bit yesterday and it was worrying me more than I shared, but alas, I am well, and all is good in my temple.

Enough mushy stuff...Fun stuff! I got the best present of the year so far in the mail today! Little Pink arrived in the mail and she blew me away. Lisa Snellings-Clark continues to amaze me with her creations. I was imagining something just a little bigger than a little red and slightly more detailed, but nothing like this. It is absolutely amazing. It's my favorite piece of hers that I own next to my Harlequin named Lucient. Here is her picture. As soon as I find a better place to display her, I'll take a better picture. For now, she's cluttered amongst some Buddhas:
I've had the privilege of knowing Carl V. at Stainless Steel Droppings since January of this year and since then I've been introduced to some amazing artists and authors. Carl's a great blogger and shares his passion of the fantastic with other fans out there and has always done a great job of doing so. Well lately, his posts have become even more impressive! Now we're getting interviews with the authors and artists! First it was a wonderful interview with Colleen Gleason and today's Friday Favorites post brings an interview with an amazing artist by the name of Jason Walker. Jason's art put me at a loss for words. His paintings are so lifelike, so much emotion put into the faces of his subjects. His painting remind me of the sculptor Ron Mueck who is known for his lifelike sculptures. Truly inspiring. He's done work recently on a stop-motion short film called Madame Tutli Putli which looks incredible! His job included transposing human eyes over the eyes of a puppet for the film. Wow! Can't wait to see this. You must read Carl's post. It's great.

Charles Vess has posted on the opening of the Stardust Rising exhibition at the William King Regional Arts Center and I'm acting like a big baby and crying about it screaming "I wanna go." It looks amazing. Included is 35 of his original paintings. Some of the new paintings. Neil's original manuscript, a reproduction of Charles' workspace, the original sculpture of Yvaine that will be produced by DC Comics later in the year, and so much more. It looks incredible and I would give anything to be able to go. If I had a little bit of extra money, I would jump on a plane so quick and be there immediately. Pop over to his blog and read up on it. Great post with wonderful pictures!.

Amy Reads has posted a very fun post this week for all of you fanboys and fangirls out there. It's 50 Things I Love About Superhero Comics. Amy's blog is great :) She's always writing about her love of comics, tv, and pop-culture and puts a wonderfully intelligent twist on it. Always a joy to read.

If you STILL haven't bought Colleen Gleason's new book after all of the advertising I've done for it this week, well here's even more reason to do so. Through her blog, she's posted a link to a Border's coupon to get $1 off the book that's only $6.99 to begin with! So go get it already! It's great!

And FINALLY, I read that Sean Connery announced that he will not return to play Indy's dad for Indiana Jones 4. He's just enjoying retirement too much. I read this at isnnews.net. This is an awesome site that I visit daily. It started as a Babylon 5 fansite and has now expanded to a Sci-fi/fantasy new site. It has updated news every day along with dvd release news, tv schedules for the day, comic news, magazine news, etc., etc. I suggest adding it to your bookmarks.

Ok, that's all...I promise.

Getting Back On Track

Today's been much better. I've felt much better and it's no doubt thanks to all of you wonderful blogger friends out there. There's been much talk in the comments of last post about how much fun a blogger convention/meet up would be. I would so love that, though I think the reality of it would not be very feasible. What is it about blogging that brings bonds so quickly. I think that for me, personally, I'm quicker to open up and be honest when I'm writing. I express myself better in writing and I'm also hiding behind a computer. I can be more honest when doing that. So all of my blogger friends get to know me more intimately, more quickly than others do. I think that may be the reason why good friendships are formed so quickly in blogland. I think it's also easier to find people with similar interest to you on the internet. There are SO many people available....the whole world's available via the web. For instance...I'm thinking of Carl and Elaine...I feel like they are my twins sometimes. Yet one lives in Kansas City and the other in the UK. What would be the chances of me finding them as friends if it weren't for blogs. I'm happy for blogs and I'm thankful to all of you out there for putting a smile on my face every day, entertaining me, and for letting me into your lives and supporting me in mine. I appreciate it.

Sunday has been a good day for me. The day started with picking veggies in the garden. Our garden is doing so well! We've probably picked about 30 squash since those have started producing and we picked 9 bell peppers today. We also fried an eggplant with dinner tonight and have quite a few of those growing as well. We have TONS of tomatoes on the bushes right now, but they're all green and look like they'll all turn red at the same time. I have no idea what we'll do with all of those. I don't even like tomatoes.

We also went to Michael's today because I wanted to get a picture frame for a postcard I bought in Mexico of Our Lady of Guadalupe. It's on antiqued paper and then put on cheesecloth and it's really pretty. I love religious art pertaining to any religion be it Christianity, Buddhism, Paganism, anything. Just love it! I also have some other postcards that I got from Mexico that I would like to frame, but I haven't found the right frames yet. While I was there, I also found a nice little shadowbox that will be a home for some of my little red poppets :) I think little pink will join them when she arrives. I think they like it in there. My favorite purchase were these four sheets of paper that I found and I have absolutely no idea what to do with them, but they were beautiful! They were 4 for $1 so I had to buy them. Don't you do stuff with paper Elaine? What should I do? I love the Once Upon A Time one...thought of the challenge right away. They have a whole series of these. If you have a Michaels around you Carl, you should stop by....very cool stuff.

So how was everyone else's Sunday? Colleen wrote a post that sounded like a delightful Sunday...laying in bed with Smartfood White Cheddar popcorn and reading Harry Potter! Ooh, and the Friends of English Magic blog posted it's review of the Stardust movie and it is a great one! Check it...

New Additions To The Black Hole

So I seem to have acquired some new stuff and all of it is excellent :D. The birthday festivities continued last night at the casino where I lost $65. Yeah, that wasn't too much fun. What was fun though was this Tickle Me Freud that Chris and Angela game me for my birthday in addition to a Freud finger puppet:Isn't that great?! You squeeze his foot and he laughs and shakes. I've just about worn out his batteries already.

Today, even more stuff came my way. I was greeted this morning with a package from the one and only Lisa Snellings-Clark. In it was a little red poppet and 2 rats. Now my other 2 poppets have a new friend, and there are two rats to pick on them. The first rat is an evil little devil rat with a gold tooth and the other is a limited edition, numbered Edgar Allan Poe rat with a raven on his shoulder standing on a book of Tales. How cool is that! Now I just need to get my hands on a Neil rat.

I went to Whole Foods today to get my mom a wisteria vine. I decided on a wisteria vine and a pound of coffee from PJ's (a New Orleans coffee shop I used to work at) for Mother's Day. While I was in the checkout line, I saw Tori Amos' new CD, American Doll Posse, so I decided to pick it up being the avid Tori fan that I am. It's good...not great, but good. This may be one of those that I have to give a few listens to and I may be calling it the best album ever in a month, who knows, but right now I'm not blown away. To me, Tori lost something in the last few years. I feel like the last great album she put out was Boys For Pele. I'll even give her Choirgirl Hotel. That was a good album...but nothing's blown me away since then. But there are a few really good tracks on this album and I'd recommend it for Tori fans out there.

Lisa Snellings-Clark's Gallery Is Opening!

Just a quick little note to let everyone know that Lisa Snellings-Clark is reopening the gallery via eBay with Poppets and Rats galore. The gallery is officially open tomorrow, but Little Red Poppets are available now for only $9 a piece. I'll definitely be picking up a new friend :) This time around there are Alice in Wonderland poppets, Poppets with Masks, and Rats available! Good luck to everyone!

By the way, I've made the giveaway a sticky post...feel free to advertise on your blog for the book so that we can make this a proper competition ;)

Migraines Pt. 2, A New Blog, Alice Poppets

The migraines have returned, so this will be a short post. I just want these to go away. Doctors appointment on the 30th of this month, so hopefully we can come up with a better solution then. I ended up leaving work early today which really wasn't such a bad thing. I got all of my groups done this morning and had my last family session at 1. So I would've just been twiddling my thumbs for the rest of the day.

There's a new edition to the blogroll and this one is very special to me. The blog's name is Girl Come Undone and it is authored by the same Megan that you hear me talk about on here. Me and Megan have quite a history as can be seen on this previous post. You can look forward to some excellent writing from her on all things interesting. She's a wonderful artist and a big fan of Dave McKean and Brian Froud. Very creative type of person. Enjoy!

Edit: One more thing! I just found the cutest damn things on Lisa Snellings-Clark's blog. Alice in Wonderland poppets!!!

Migraines, Books, and Poppets

I detest migraines. I can't wait until my next neurologist appointment so that I can see about trying some new meds. The ones I'm on now are just not working. I'm still getting migraines every 4-5 days and they're just plain annoying. I'm very unpleasant to be around when I have one and am known to snap at people and not answer my cell phone while my head is throbbing. Sorry Jroy. I need something to make these go away. My meds work, but they take about an hour and a half to kick in. So for now, I'll just blog away and then crash in bed until it goes away so that I can read. Reading is impossible with a migraine. They take away my only true love :(

Speaking of reading...After my oh so long 3 hour work shift tonight, I decided to go to Barnes and Noble and peruse the aisles while having a coffee. I ended up buying the rest of my challenge books. All except Grendel because I couldn't remember who wrote it. Now that I am home, I see that it is in fact John Gardner who wrote it. Grendel is a retelling of Beowulf through the monster's eyes from what I understand. I've never read Beowulf, but am hoping that I can make it through this one without doing so. I would like to read Beowulf eventually though since I know there is a screenplay written by Neil Gaiman that is currently being made into a movie.

So for the banned books challenge, I bought 3 of the 4 remaining books: Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes, Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, and The Best of John Bellairs which contains The Figure in the Shadows. The Figure in the Shadows is the second in a three book series and this book just happened to have the whole series for $9.99. So I'll likely be reading that whole series for the challenge. The reason I picked this book is because there are plenty of Edward Gorey illustrations in the book. Edward Gorey makes anything good :)

And I also bought a copy of Midsummer Night's Dream for the Once Upon a Time challenge. There were about 100 versions of this book at B&N, but this one looked best to me. I was surprised that I didn't already own a copy of this, but alas, I did not. It will be nice to reread this one.

Thank God for the Barnes and Noble member program! I only saved about $5 tonight, but those $5 savings definitely add up.My two little red poppets wanted to send greetings to Elaine's little red poppets in the UK, so I allowed them to and took their photograph with all of my new books. They say "allo!"

We planted a vegetable garden recently which makes me very happy. I love growing veggies. I'll take some pictures when they start growing veggies. We also got a Bougainvillea vine that can weave throughout the patio covering. Looking forward to that as well.

Stumble Upon and Lisa Snellings

I'm feeling kind of blah today, but what the hell...I'll do a post anyway.

If you use any Mozilla browser, I highly recommend that you download Stumble Upon as an add on for your browser. It's a really neat little feature that I just discovered. You check off your interests from a huge list that they have. Then there's a little button that you click that says "stumble." It brings you to a random site that others with your interests have said that they like. If you like the site, you can click on "like it" and if you don't, you can give it a thumbs down and your interests are tailored to that. In addition, anytime you're at a site that you like, you just click "like it" and it becomes available to others with your interests. I've gotten some really cool results such as this, this, and this. Check it.

Lisa Snellings-Clark had a really cool post today. Lots of cool news including more details on the much anticipated PoppetPlanet. She's also announced a new sale that will run from March 17th through the 24th with some new art and poppets by her. I love the green poppet named Gaia on the post. She's also announced that she will be a guest at Balticon, and I really wish I could go. I'd love to meet her, she seems like such a cool person.

I really wish we'd have a good sci-fi convention here in New Orleans. I would love it. They have one here occasionally, but it tends to become an alien porno/fetish convention. Just doesn't do it for me....

In one other small piece of personal news, I feel that I finally reached a landmark in the internship. One of the social workers was out today so I kind of filled in for her and ran a family session by myself today unsupervised. I feel that I did really well. Family sessions are meetings with the family and our patient. They typically last an hour, but mine managed to last for two causing me to miss lunch. Lots of issues to work through, but I feel like I made some progress with them.

Ooh, one more thing. I wanted to plug Orson Scott Card's online magazine entitled Intergalactic Medicine Show. It's only $2.50 an issue and you get tons of stuff for that price. It usually has about 6-7 decent length short stories, Orson does an Enderverse short story for each one, there's young adult short stories, sometimes a comic, usually an audiobook or two, review columns, there's been a Card serialized novel called "Hot Sleep", and each issue has a new clock for your desktop which is really cool in the I-Wei's Amazing Clocks section. In addition, each short story always has incredible art to go along with it. I know he said that sales weren't too good, so I wanted to plug it. Really great deal. 4 issues to date with tons of stuff. At $2.50 a piece, you could get them all for $10. How cool is that.

A Good Start

This Monday has been really good so far! Can't remember the last time I said that. I had a great morning at work. We had a really small group, but the patients we did have talked alot and made some progress hopefully. I didn't have to pull teeth to get them to talk today.

I got home just about 30 minutes ago, and waiting for me at the doorstep was a very welcome package with hands and hearts stamped all over it. Opened it up and it was my "lucks dancer harlequin" from Lisa Snellings-Clark. It's amazing. 1000 times better in person than it looked on the internet, and I loved it on the internet! I'm so happy. She presents her art to the buyer very well. She's great down to the last detail of the packaging. And I got a little note from her with a poppet sketch on it, and a little pink poppet magnet.

Lets just hope that the rest of the day continues to go well. I have class in about an hour. And then I have a brand new episode of Heroes waiting for me when I get home!

Happy Monday everyone....hope everyone has as good of a Monday as me.

Harlequins and Pumpkins

I finally own a piece of art from Lisa Snellings-Clark. I own a couple of her little red poppets but I've been wanting a one of a kind, original piece of art. And that's exactly what I won tonight on Ebay. I won a Harlequin named "Lucient" who is incredible. I can't wait to get him and hang him on the wall. I tried bidding on quite a few of her unique poppets, but they all went way too high for my budget. "Sympatico", one of my faves, sold for $335! They all sold for a pretty penny, and I'm sure they're all worth it. Unfortunately, the pockets just don't go deep enough for me. Congrats to everyone who won some of Lisa's wonderful art!

In other, semi-art related news (music is an art), the Smashing Pumpkins announced their 6th studio album today entitled "Zeitgeist." It is due to be released on 07/07/07. I can't wait for this one. I saw them in concert in 1995 and it was such a great show. I was disappointed to hear that they had broken up awhile back, but now they're back together and a new album and tour is on the way. They have announced tour dates in other countries, most of them being in Europe, but none have been announced for the U.S. Can't wait to see them again. I really want to know who's in the band now, but they are being very mysterious about it. Obviously, Billy Corgan is still the singer, and I know that Jimmy Chamberlin is still on drums, and I'm hoping that James Iha is back on guitar, but who knows. I can live without D'arcy though. I thought she was hot when I was a teenage boy, but so did every other teenage boy I knew. Just hope that whoever's in the band, it's just as good as the Melancholy and the Infinite Sadness days. We shall see.

Lisa Snellings-Clark's Romantic Sale and the Snow Queen

Here it is, one of Lisa's seasonal sales. She has some amazing things up for auction on Ebay right now, and you can also buy little red poppets for $9! That's an amazing price! I bought yet another one for myself, and one is being shipped to Megan. So many cool things. She has some new jesters from the Harlequin series and they are beautiful. I debated about telling the public about this because I want all these things for myself but her art is beautiful and everyone should know about it. So you can see all of her auctions here. Please support her, she's a one of a kind artist. And she donates part of the sales to the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. She also talks about something called "Poppet Planet" in the little red auction. Sounds fascinating. She says poppets will be available there as well.

Also wanted to mention a very good post on Endicott Redux's blog entitled Healing Tales and the Snow Queen. In the blog, she talks about fairy tales as a healing medium for children who have been abused and of the many tellings of the tale of the Snow Queen. Very well written and some beautiful art.

One of them days

Today has definitely been "one of those days". I think the thing that set the day off for me was that I didn't take a shower this morning as someone else needed to at the time that I usually do. So I took my shower last night. For some reason, I am just unable to function without a shower in the morning. So I went to the neurologist this morning and she's upping my meds a little more for my migraines. Hopefully that will work. Went straight from the doctor to PJ's to get my coffee so that i could make it through the internship.

The internship was surprisingly slow and boring today. I did have one patient call another a "skank ho" and throw a chair at her, but that was all the excitement for the day...and that was not good excitement. Ended up leaving early because I had nothing to do and now I'm just playing in blogland until I have class tonight at 5:30. And as I type this, spellcheck tells me that "blogland" is not a word.

Two things did cheer me up very much though! Carl V. writes about the seduction and temptation of books quite humorously and honestly in this post. I laughed my way through that one because it's all so true! And then Lisa Snellings-Clark posted this wonderful picture to the left that just made me smile. Faceless poppet by Lisa and Horse by Ravyn.

Much Better Day

So today was much better orientation wise. I learned stuff that actually applied to my internship. I learned how to get out of the many different situations I may be in if clients try to kill or harm me (which doesn't happen often if at all). I also learned how to put people into restraints. The restraint room was freaky looking, but very needed occasionally from what I understand. It's just a plain white sheeted bed away from the walls in the middle of the room with lightbulb above it. And that's it. People are restrained at the ankles and wrists and across the chest so they don't injure their backs. I always thought restraints were ridiculous and cruel, but they're really not. They're needed sometimes and only used if nothing else (therapy, medication, a shot) doesn't calm them down and they are trying to inflict harm on themselves or someone else. It is never used as punishment and someone constantly watches them while in restraints.

I'm really excited about working here. I know this is the right profession for me because this is the first job I've ever had that I wasn't nervous going into. Everyone keeps saying that the adolescent unit is very rough, but hey, I like a challenge. I was told that they are very defensive, call you every name in the book every day, and like to try to get to you; but at the same time, they can be the best people to be around and there's never a dull moment. The way I look at it is this...lord knows I had my troubles in my adolescents. I was on drugs, got kicked out of school, was arrested for tearing up someone's garden, and I made it out o.k. Some kids don't make it out o.k., and I want a chance of being that person that does help them out. As soon as I cleaned my life up and got to the position that I'm in today, I knew that I wanted to work with kids in a psychiatric setting. To me, there's no other profession that would be more rewarding personally. I just have to make sure I don't attach myself to these kids too much. But from what I've heard, they'll make it hard for me to attach to them ;p just kidding, I'm sure I'll love it.

Finally, on a totally different note, I posted yesterday about one of my favorite artists, Lisa Snellings-Clark and her magical poppets. She just posted a blog today that has one of her new poppet sculptures, a painting that she did, and a picture of her big poppet sculpture next to one of her little red poppets (one of which i own :). You can admire her latest beautiful work here.

A New Orleans baby

Here's a picture of the first king cake baby of the season nestled among some of my Buddhas and sitting next to my favorite little poppet by the wonderful artist Lisa Snellings Clark...more to come about her in the next few days as she will be having a sale on poppets in February that I will link to.