Some brief plans for the week in case any of you care to join me:

Monday:
-Be there at 1100 when they come to pick up my old pick up. Make sure that the tow truck driver stays very far away from my motorcycle. If not? Break him - many times.
-Draw.
-Work on the new and improved Dragonbones.net. Shhhhh - it's a surprise.

Tuesday:
-Open Figure Drawing from Life at DCAD.

And the rest? Well, I haven't quite figured the rest out yet. I'll let you know when I do.

The weekend thus far (rather than the weekend in review- for a change):

Friday:
Immediately following work, I rode to drop off a movie and pick up (rent) the DVD collection of Brisco County Jr.. I remember it being a fun series and Bruce Campbell s kinda a personal hero. What's more, it makes better sense than full blown movies for 'workout entertainment' as they're only one hour shows each episode, so I'm not working out for a half hour or an hour and then sitting for another hour to an hour and a half.

After picking up Bruce's misadventures, I headed back to the house where I met up with lotusanddragon  . We headed over to shellefly  's place to pick her up and than to Philly to assist in the celebrating of jeremym  's birthday at North Bowl. The place rocks - there's just no two ways about it. Great music, the drinks flow, and the lanes are clean and well maintained. That's one hell of a combination.

After bowling, the rest of the gang which included ms_violet  , boutell  , and many more (whose lj names I can't recall because I suck) headed somewhere for a drink, but lotusanddragon   and I headed back to the house since he still had to pack for his trip to Japan. We did that (I kept him company while he did it really) and got a chance for the first time in a long time to just shoot the shit. It was a grand time. We even had a mini-adventure taking a quick trip to his office for some forgotten info while K-T (who doesn't have LJ) read some of the end of the last Harry Potter book to us via my cell phone's speakerphone function. Then a cup of Dunkin Donuts coffee, a moment where I broke his world a little by introducing him to the 'omg shoes' video, some chill time up on the deck, and the limo service was there to take him to the airport. It really kinda felt like the perfect way to send my bro off to another country. I sacked out afterward to some long overdue sleep.

Saturday:
Saturday morning I woke late (figured I earned it) and headed to jafosmite  's concert with X-Fusion at the 100th Annual Arden Fair. I took the Yamaha, and it was a damn good thing - the place was mobbed. I managed to find a completely illegal convenient parking space, locked up the scoot, and headed straight for where I hear the boys getting ready. The show rocked hard, though there's little surprise there. It was fun watching an all new batch of folks rockin out to X-Fusion's music. I was a little disappointed by the fact that the fair closed supah early, so I only had time to do a quick 'fly through' after the show, but I'm betting that's a good thing in the long run as I need to keep all the cash I can these days.

After the fair, I headed to good ol' Barnes and Noble for some time to do some writing, screw around, and browse the newest batch of 'how to draw' books and magazines. This is something that I haven't done in a while, and I missed it. It's something that I enjoy both with friends or alone. When I'm by myself, it's almost like meditation. I can people watch, get my thoughts in order, and often be inspired. I was impressed by my ability to not buy any of the new art books/magazines. Almost, but I managed to put them back. Really, it's not like I would use them - not in any real way. Most art books are great, but they wind up being more or less inspiration sources and that's about it. While I was sitting and parusing my latest batch of books and magazines, I got a phone call from xtingu  . Being a spaz, I went instantly into high alert mode - she was supposed to be out on the playa, and that would mean without cell phone reception of any kind at all. She assured me that nothing was wrong but that she 'just wasn't feeling it' this year and that she was homeward bound and would keep me posted on her travel plans. She said she missed me. I'm a lucky bastard like that. I stayed at B&N pretty late and went home. Once back at the house, I started working on one of the images that I got stuck in my head while at the bookstore and when I realized that it was almost 2am I hit the sack - I had a big day coming up.

Sunday:
Woke up fairly early, but not early enough. I had planned to ride with burningkirby  , Lee (sans lj), and Ballz (also sans lj). However, as I am the planning master, I didn't have any of their phone numbers and I was having net connectivity issues (I had Ballz's street address in my email account). I did finally get connected, but the whole process delayed me enough that I got to Ballz's place about 15 minutes later than planned and I hate being the limiting factor. We made our way via back roads to burningkirby  's compound where we gathered up burningkirby   and Lee and after some very minor repairs to burningkirby  's bike, we headed out. It was the perfect morning for a ride. Cool but not cold. Bright and sunny and just... frickin... gorgeous. miles melted past under our wheels as we rolled west into PA. If I can convince Ballz to send me a copy of our route, maybe I'll post it later. What a great run. I broke the 600 mile mark since buying the Yamaha with ease.

After our ride we stopped back at burningkirby  's place and had some snackages. Then off to Lee's and then I headed back to B&N. Yes, back to B&N. I've decided that I'm a creature of habit. Once I find something I like, I tend to stick with it until I find the next thing that I like. While there I got some more stuff done both in the writing and the creativity departments.

While I was at B&N, xtingu   called to let me know that she had landed and asked if I could meet her at her apartment. I said sure, packed up my gear, and headed over. We arrived at almost identical times, and commenced a good old fashioned 're-connect' kind of night. We were visited albeit briefly by theseitz   who showed us his supah sexy new iPhone. We sacked out shortly thereafter.

Monday:
We woke up a bit late and had some more really amazing reconnect time. It had been a while since xtingu   and I had the chance to talk more than "Hi - how's the weather?" Okay - I'm exagerating, but you get the point. We'd let our 'life stuff' kinda keep us so focussed that we hadn't spent much time just talking. We'd both missed it terribly and this time (Sunday night and Monday morning) really scratched that itch.

Next, we hopped on the bike and headed up to swingchickie  's place for the afternoon and got some more hang time with the good peeps. swingchickie   and Jack, jeremym   (and the always awesome JD), boutell   and Jenny, opadit   and Steve, ms_violet   and Vince, and of course xtingu   and myself. Jack manned the grill and xtingu   brought some corn salsa that was muy muy yummy.

Then, of course, there were donuts.

Now, xtingu   and I have come back to her place, she's on the phone with her folks and I'm wrapping up what was started as a "weekend up to this post" but has become a "weekend in review".

Hope you had a weekend as awesome as mine!

Ok - I decided not to go to my place for lunch today, but rather to sit here and jot a few notes on my lunch break.

Here they are in no particular order:

MTM's stock (MTMC) seems to be on the rise for the first time in a while. I don't generally follow such things, but I've started paying attention to that particular stock lately. I'm not saying that I'm going to jump right in and buy now that it's on the rise, but it just seems interesting to note.

I've started work on learning how to use CSSs in earnest. Many thanks to www.boutell.com for directing me to www.w3schools.com which is where I've been doing my homework. They have a rather impressive setup there with well written information and even a quiz at the end (which I scored an 80% on my first time through). In order to put my new found knowledge to good use, I've begun a mock-up page for the new and improved www.dragonbones.net over at what will become my new homepage - www.lightinthewoods.com The idea is pretty simple: www.dragonbones.net will become my professional portfolio site, while www.lightinthewoods.com will become 'everything else' - my more personal page. Please understand that there's basically nothing there right now (lightinthewoods) because I'm learning the basics of CSS and I'm playing around with the nuances of the existing page. As with most CSS docs, the idea is to come up with a really good set of style sheets and base more or less everything off of those so that website wide modifications require less effort. I have to say that it feels really good to be learning something since...

...the bank has been slow. I mean dog slow. I mean pine sap in January slow. Yeah. Like that. It's alright now that I have net access when I want it, so I find that at least I can entertain myself, and since I'm not right with the group of folks that I actually work with there's little risk of someone looking over my shoulder and getting upset that I'm not doing something 'important', but I just can't shake that part of me that worries like hell whenever the work seems to dry up. Some old habits die hard. I guess the positive way to look at it would be that this is a perfect time for me to brush the cobwebs off my resume.

We all seemed to have an awesome time this weekend at xtingu 's party for her birthday pie. Six years old. Where does the time go?! Anywho - I wanted to thank those of you who were able to make it and waggle my fingers with my thumb pressed firmly to my nose at all those who couldn't make it. What? You're going to let a little thing like a well planned wedding get in the way of our (more or less) last minute BIRTHDAY PIE PARTY? Silly mortals. (ed. note: in case you missed it, I'm being sarcastic here - were you missed? yes. do I really blame you for not making it? if you don't know the answer to that, smack yourself in the head and ask the question again - something's worked itself loose.)

I wanted to let the folks who took part in my little challenge that I haven't forgotten them. Life got in the way (as I have a bad habit of letting it do) and that challenge went a little bit 'back burner' for a while. I'm getting back to it shortly. Re-formatting my pc and the subsequent re-installation of all my software took a while, but everything seems to be back up and running properly. What's more, I'm sorta re-dedicating myself artistically these days and I'm working pretty fiercely on the concept of 'likenesses'. I'm working more from reference, and within that umbrella, I'm focusing more specifically on portraiture. The idea is to be able to do classic portraits and caricatures within as short a span of time as I can reasonably do. Both of those abilities seem to be regularly in demand, and while they don't appeal to me in a "my soul yearns for this amazing thing" kind of way, they also don't repulse me like  a lot of professional art work does. What does this mean? Well, I don't think that I have the kind of dedication to art to make any kind of decent living through art, so better to do something 'part time' as a side job for extra income. The thing is, if I'm going to take anything on (even part time) I want it to be worth while to me, so it had better either A. pay a butt-pile (it's a metric measurement - look it up!) or B.be something that I enjoy. Portraiture, and more-so caricature both seem to have fairly high levels of both of those elements. You professional art types who read this should feel free to correct me if you think that's not the case, or if you think I would be better focused on something else.

And while we're on the subject of art, there's a poll I wanted to set up. Think that I will do that in a separate post.

Hope you're all well beyond what you could reasonably ask for.