Faerie Folk Assignment #7 Pictures

The latest crop of FF photos:


Assignment #7:  Flowers & Partners
This was our first partner assignment - there were six of us left, and each person had to choose one of six flowers (plus the flower's meaning) to represent.  We were to portray both the flower we chose and also the flower our partner chose.  Even though not everyone was happy/satisfied with their shots, these were some of the best this competition has had to offer thus far.  Definitely worth checking them out.

My partner was Sun, and she chose the Bluebell for her flower.  Bluebells represent humility, and coming up with an 'evil' spin on humility was damn hard...I didn't pull it off the way I wanted, and I don't love this shot, but I may go back and re-work it in the future.  I had a few ideas that would've taken far too long to pull of (if even possible).

Bluebells have long been symbolic of humility and gratitude. In mythic legends it is said that faeries use the bluebells to trap passersby, particularly children, or cast spells upon any who dare to pick, damage, or destroy the delicate flowers. The nickname "Dead Man's bells" originates from this tale.

Does an evil faerie, tasked with the burden of leaching the sorrow from weary mortal souls, ever truly grasp the notion of humility? Such is Ennui's province after all, and she treks the mortal lands in search of those in the most desperate and dire need. Atop her isolated altar, Ennui occasionally receives patrons - those mortals brave and despairing enough to make the impossible pilgrimage. The intrusion rattles her to the core, summoning to light the true and pure darkness of her taint, and regardless of the circumstance, the misery, the desperate hopeless pain, the Fae of Sorrows turns them away in callous, cold succession, banishing them back to the empty void from whence they came.

The flower I chose was the Yellow Hyacinth which represents jealousy.  I didn't think it would be too hard to come up with an idea for a jealousy theme, but it was much more difficult than I thought.  Even when I finalized the idea, the execution was absolute torture.  A frikkin nightmare.  I can't say that enough -- gave my hand a reeeeeeally good whacking while punching the computer desk out of frustration...o_O.  It wasn't even worth all that....the photo came out pretty well, but it was a lonnnnng time coming in a way-too-lengthy process.  Long and difficult and aggravating as absolute hell.  I really could've used some magical sim fairy dust or something...anyway....

The legend of the Hyacinth flower begins in antiquity: Hyacinthus, a beautiful young male companion of the Greek god Apollo, was murdered in a jealous rage by Zephyr, the god of the West Wind. Zephyr desired Hyacinthus for himself, and the sight of of the lovely men playing a discus game together was too much to bear. The blood that spilled from Hyacinthus turned into a flower, and in mourning Apollo named the flower after him.

The tragic young faerie Ennui lingers dolefully against her window, her weary eyes peering out of her dim quarters into the warm golden evening. In longing solitude she watches, listens to the rustling leaves and the joyous play of her sisters, all of them enchantingly beautiful with full and glorious wings. There is a peace in the quiet of it all, and a sorrow...Ennui's meager wings and disfiguring scar liken her to a hermit, outcast, receding, fading, recoiled in silent and sparse isolation. She aches to be among them, reveling in the splendor of the new yellow blossoms, kissed by the lazy sunlit air. How she reveres them, and how she resents them...the bitter sour of jealousy languishing on a parched tongue. And so she lingers until night envelops the golden evening....

Neither picture was very heavily edited, but I definitely spent more time working the Yellow Hyacinth picture (the candles are flameless, hence the lack of lighting on her face from them).  Assignment #8 will be yet another big challenge, but I'm going to try my best.  That's all I can do.  And I'm aiming for very little or no editing...we'll see how it goes.  Thanks for lookin'. :)

*and Sun, thank you for being so cool and being a great partner.  both of your shots were beautiful*

Recent Competition Pictures

I'm really behind in posting these, BUT here are my latest photos from Faerie Folk.  I'm still hanging in there, but our current assignment is a mutha -- lol I'm horrible at making more than one pic at a time (which is required for this assignment), so we'll see what happens...o_O....anyway.......feel free to check out the actual comp threads to see all of the amazing shots from the competitors (well worth the time, kid you not) and read my accompanying stories - I linked each in the titles below.


Assignment #3:  Fairy Tales
We had to come up with our own fairy tale, and adjust it to be a Good or Evil story depending on the orientation of our model.  Ennui is evil and she has an Asian-inspired background, so I chose a Japanese-influenced setting for the photo and story.  I never was completely happy with this pic and I swear I'm going to re-shoot it someday.  It was a lot of fun to work with though, the setting in particular.

So often we make extras for our pictures, and many times they are barely seen in the shots.  That was the case with Queen Sen - I spent a good amount of time (read = forfrikkinever) creating her in CAS, but she doesn't show up very well in my submitted picture.  This was an outtake shot of her that was sharpened a little in Photoshop

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Assignment #4:  The Five Senses
This theme has been done in a few other comps, and it always seems easy from the start, but coming up with something really good or unusual is really difficult.  Again, this wasn't any sort of spectacular pic -- and oh GAWD was my real life a mess during that time -- but I love the soft glow on the male model.  Much of that effect was with in-game lighting.  This is another photo that I wanted to do over again SO badly, and some of my outtake/unused shots were better than what I submitted, so I really want to work with some of those in the future. And oh yeah - I chose Sense of Touch.

...wish my hair was that doggone shiny...

An outtake picture that I edited a bit in Photoshop...I had waaaayyyyhayyhayyyy too much fun working with this guy... ;)

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Assignment #5:  Switching Roles!
The concept for this assignment seemed easy enough:  our faerie models had to switch their orientation, so Good faeries had to be Evil, and vice-versa.  I had intended for Ennui to be 'Good' in the first place, but the Good Faerie slots filled up fast and she went eeeeevil.  The execution of the assignment was another story -- there were nearly limitless possibilities of what we could do with our models and pictures, so focusing in on one idea was a huge challenge.  After the previous picture, I wanted something a little more lighthearted, so I thought 'hey, why not go to jail!' or something along those lines.

The rails, ceiling, and top half of the right-hand wall are edited in, and also the "stripe" on the ground, made to look grungy

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Assignment #6:  Chakras
Yee-haw -- there were several comments all around about how difficult this theme was in Blair's last cycle of Faerie Folk, and boy were they right.  The research was absolutely fascinating and I came away from it learning a great deal; coming up with the right image, however, was absolutely INSANE.  I had no idea what in the world I would do for this one.

We were allowed to choose from the seven Chakras, and by the time I saw the assignment thread there were only 3 left:  Manipura (fire/navel), Anahata (air/heart), and Vishuddha (ether/throat).  A couple of Chakras that I would've wanted to try were taken, and I wasn't sure I could do much of anything with what was left.  I decided to go with Anahata because of the air element, and by the time I made my decision and tried to reply, someone had taken it.  Vishuddha sounded a little more difficult, but also pretty intriguing....the element of ether particularly.  After reading a quick bit about it, I knew that's what I wanted to go with.  It was a pain in the ass to get just the right angles and lighting....you have no idea....but I was actually (for once) pretty happy with the final result, and I got a good avatar picture from the outtakes also.  I think my total time working on this from start to finish was around....17 hours or so?  Give or take a couple of hours (and over the course of three days).  That's pretty normal for me -- anywhere from, say, 12 to 20+ hours per shot.  Takes a long time when you barely know what the hell you're doing, no joke.

I laughed out loud when I finally found the right (and very unlikely) pose for this...it's hard to see, but I added the Vishuddha symbol into the vapor coming from Ennui's mouth. Also, the animal symbol for Vishuddha is the elephant, hence the tiny, almost invisible elephant statue in the bottom right corner.

I ended up with a great forum avatar from an outtake face shot

Two more plays a tweaking the coloring; the color for Vishuddha is blue so I experimented with a few other color options (too many to post now, heh)

Midsummer Night's Trance

Hypnotic Stardust

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Annnd I guess that's all for now.  We're on Assignment #7 currently (pictures representing two flowers of our choosing), and I'm literally shaking in my Cat in the Hat slippers -- I'm clueless as to what to do for these shots, and not in a good 'meh, I'll get a burst of inspiration at the last minute' sort of way...it's pretty scary.  BUT hopefully they'll be good enough to survive another round.  There are absolutely no guarantees with competitions.

If you made it this far, thanks so much for browsing!  There are so many more pictures I want to post....I think I'll end up making a companion blog to showcase outtakes, CAS pictures, and the like.  I usually take a couple or few hundred shots per project/assignment, and there's pretty much always something funny or cool that results from the masses.

Tribute to my Mean Little Pleco

Thursday night my Pleco was acting like a madfish -- he was thrashing all over the aquarium and swimming around like crazy.  It's not completely unusual for him to do that, but those little 'episodes' usually last 5 or 10 minutes or so.  Not this time -- the poor guy thrashed around like that for HOURS, pretty much all night long.

He's always been a bit of a character.  I bought him over 7 years ago as a tiny little thing not much longer than my thumb.  I had just purchased and set up a 20 gallon tank a few weeks prior, and he was a perfect little addition.  I've had that dude longer than any fish I've ever kept, and he sort of grew into the role of grandpappy of the tank.  Plecos are bottom feeders (related to catfish) and are mostly put in aquariums to eat algae.  They're pretty notorious for abandoning the algae-eating when they get older, and that's what this guy did, favoring veggies and fish flake food over the fuzzy green stuff.  In the beginning he was shy like all Plecos, only coming out at night and darting into the first cave or bush of plants he could get to when anyone walked by the tank.

 Chillin with my Gouramis Cotton and Candy

As he got older, I guess he got used to us.  And he outgrew his two favorite hiding spots.  After a while, he just started hanging out on the bottom of the aquarium and would stick himself (via his sucker mouth) to the glass.  Over the past few years he started getting fairly aggressive when it was time to eat, sometimes knocking my other fish out of the way just to get to a pinchful of tasty flakes (or at least I imagine that stuff must be tasty - they all go to war over it at feeding time).  But he liked to float partially on his back at the top of the water and let me drop food directly into his mouth.  He was barely spooked by people anymore and seemed to like having his picture taken.  Vain son-of-a-gun....

Whenever we visit pet stores, particularly our favorite, I like to look at the Plecos and compare their size to my guy.  At last measurement (a couple of weeks ago) he was right around 12 inches long and meaty as hell -- he's always had a good weight to him; I know this from the time we had to transfer him in to the larger aquarium, and one time when I accidentally netted him - he displayed his catfish heritage BEAUTIFULLY, splashing water frikkin EVERYWHERE and thrashing around like a real trooper.  Strong as hell.

  Waiting for food with Candy

I blogged about him back in April of last year, and he really enjoyed his 15 minutes of fame (har har)!  He's always had him moments -- seemingly loving to be gawked at, then going all diva and refusing any attention.  It's crazy, but we never could come up with a name for him; his personality wasn't as well-rounded and obvious as all of the other fish I've had (you'd be surprised how much personality fish can have o_O), and we just never could come up with anything that seemed suitable.  It didn't really matter...we've still always loved the guy.

  Taking a breather from playing in the bubble curtain...they LOVE that thing....

So it really bothered me Thursday when he seemed so agitated...he's been moving around a bit slower lately, but he's no spring chicken (those guys can live 10 to 15 years in captivity, and even up to 20 in extraordinary conditions).  One of his eyes was a little cloudy, but we decided to change & test the water the next day and monitor it to see if he would need meds.  I took some pics and video of his thrashing around because it was so bizarre....

Unfortunately, that would be his last moment in the spotlight.  We woke up Friday late-morning to find him dead in one of his favorite spots in a corner.  He's always still (when he isn't swimming around like his tail is on fire), but looking at him, you could tell it just wasn't...right.  My hubby prodded him gently with a net, and sure enough, he was gone.

We had been going back & forth for a while over what to do with him because he was simply outgrowing our 55 gallon aquarium.  He deserved to have a nice big open space to swim and nice nooks to hide in.  Even Friday night we discussed it because his wild behavior that evening was terrifying my other fish.

He was much much MUCH too big to dispose of down the porcelain throne (has been for a long time), so we gave him a proper aquatic 'burial at sea', setting him in the pond out back.  I think he would have LOVED it out there when he was living, so it's the most befitting place for him to make the journey to fishy heaven.

It was shocking at first, and then really sad.  It's still strange going up to the aquarium and not seeing him lounging around, sucking on some gravel, or shooting up to the front with his mouth wide open for food.  He was an excellent pet, beautiful, strong, hardy, sometimes quirky, and a real conversation piece -- not one person that has ever come in here and seen him has walked away without gawking at his size.

I'm really gonna miss ol' grandpappy.  May he rest in fishy peace....

The pic I uploaded in my April blog post - awesome blue lighting on the Pleco one night

Dusting off the cobwebs II

Yikes -- this place is more cobwebby than ever!  I'm planning on redesigning the blog again (something lighter..?) and making some hopefully halfway decent posts.  Thank you guys for bearing with me!  And if I haven't visited your blog & commented in a while, I owe you a huge apology.  I haven't forgotten you!!

And also, I have to say:  My name is Cel, and I am a Wholly Guacamole addict.  Had to get that off my chest....very freeing.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

I just wanted to wish everyone a Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and a joyous New Year.  Stay safe, have as good of a time as you can possibly muster, and try to do at least one generous, unselfish thing for someone else.  Reach out to someone less fortunate, or someone who you don't normally think much of, and try to shine at least a little bit of a bright light in someone else's life.

Take care, God bless, and be well!

**giant hugs & noogies**

Sending Yaz Heartfelt Prayers & Good JuJu

By now a lot of people know that Yazzie is in the hospital.  As of now she seems to be doing well, out of surgery (which went well) and hopefully on the road to a speedy recovery.  Her fiancee Chris has been very diligent in sending us all information as he gets it, and so far so good!

Two Competition Pictures

So far, Faerie Folk is going along really well. There's a ton of talent in this competition, and I think the next (3rd) assignment will be even MORE of a challenge. It's really helped me to begin shaking off the photo/Photoshop cobwebs. 

Assignment #1: Showing how or character became evil (or good if she's on the less dark side)

It is an age when Chaos rules the world of mortals; this brother of Order, not wholly evil yet a brazen assassin of balance. By his maxim he is not only important, but critical to the resplendent flow of Qo Nàhe, the boundless immeasurable stream of existence. The Guardian Architect spoke of this to me once, and once again in twilight's somber song.

"...Discord navigates the waves of Qo Nàhe...with impulse and hollow regard he sows the seeds of disarray, of anarchy...the radiant blade will lie in wait. His dominion bears down on all, the drowning weight liken to a thousand storms...and from bedlam skies will toy with mortal fate..."

In the era of my innocence the words mean nothing. Even as the heavy burden was laid on my shoulders, my fate to suffer for the misery of Man, these lines of prose pass through unconcerned ears and an infantile heart. I neither comprehend nor give fretted thought to the beautiful aria dissipating through my memory, fading like effervescent si'lescàya petals on a waiting tongue...

...and so he chooses me.

The breath of Chaos Architect enveloped me as I emerged from a bathing spring, and its brisk unsteady wind was unfamiliar, curious. I closed my eyes and suffocated in its caress, all about me slicing, permeating, penetrating, almost salacious in pained pleasure.

With numb weary I weep bitter tears, and the jade poison seeps past my lips snaking the same trail -- I understand now, and my defiled heart surges rapidly within.

He has tainted my essence, made corrupt my sacred burden, and his unyielding grip asphyxiates. My duty abound, I am called to relieve another mortal soul besieged in darkness...and to my everlasting despair I come to realize my role as an instrument of the Architect; as my song of lament draws the pain of melancholy from one tortured being, so too does it draw the Architect himself to me and to my task, and he comes swiftly. With gleaming blade in hand he mirrors my benevolence with his bitterness, piercing a mortal spirit with jade venom and untold, undeserved misery. I linger helpless.

By his edict I can do no right without bringing ruin. I am consolation, and also catastrophe, forever a pawn in the game of Chaos, and an agent of ill will.

...Mankind forgive me...

Assignment #2: We were each assigned a word that symbolizes faeries in some way, and had to represent that word in a pic. I was given "Rebirth"

Ennui, the mournfully beautiful Fae of Sorrows, has endured two births: the first as she passed into the world as a delicate infant, and the second as the weary song of the Guardian Architect pierced her innocent soul.

The wax and wane of the Nie hala Lûn, or Indigo Moon, foretold her rebirth as the sorrow-filled fae, and since that time Ennui has faithfully carried out her tasks. If not for the baneful Chaos Architect, she would live a blessed, albeit melancholy life. Her heart aches for the mortal souls who carry heavy burdens because of her taint, her body soiled with the viscous misery of those she inadvertently hurts.

Though anguish stains her now, Ennui dreams of the age when she can cleanse herself under the Ériol soah Lûn, or purifying Azure Moon, emerging from a glowing cerulean pool and washing away the tarnished shades of her spirit. On this ethereal night, Ennui will cast off her ruin and bask in the sparkling essence of her final birth, reclaiming her true, pure task as the Fae of Sorrows.

I'm loving this sim so much...I wish I knew how to make CC so we could have more fantasy-style items!

Faerie Folk Cycle 3 Entry and Recent Sim Pics

The last competition I joined was Evie's awesome Unique: Kawaii comp back in August, and before that it was Akasha's Gothique Beauty Cycle 1 (which finished in June). I'm so rusty! But I'm took a leap and signed up for Faerie Folk. Some of the best sim artists in the community have gone through that competition, and it sounds like a blast...I'm just really nervous! But hopefully it'll be a lot of fun.

The sim I submitted is a fae that I named Ennui Sorrowsong. Ennui (pronounced "ahn-WEE") is actually a term used to describe feelings of weariness, boredom, or discontent, but can also refer to general melancholy. I dunno, for some reason I've always liked the word, so my poor faerie got stuck with the name.

This Cycle of Faerie Folk centers around Good and Evil faeries: our sim could either be Good or Evil (Ennui is evil, though I had initially planned for her to be Good. We were over the limit on Goods), and for Assignment #1 we'll have to show how she/he became that way. I have no earthly idea how I'll portray mine just yet, but the brainstorming is a trip!

Ennui's Bio:

On the seventh night of the Nie hala Lûn (the hallowed Indigo Moon), the Guardian Architect whispered a mournful song into Ennui's heart, one that beat delicately within her, untainted by the horrors of suffering. The beautiful pale little fae opened her sorrowful crystalline eyes and stepped out into the stillness of the frigid night, hair burned dark by the glimmering low-hung Indigo Moon above. Its wax and wane foretold her rebirth, and also hope for the world of men; for it would be her charge to seek out those with weary hearts pained in weighted hopelessness and anguish.

From that eve and onward, Ennui has existed as the Fae of Sorrows. With a Dusk of Dying rose between her trembling lips, its thorns ever drawing fresh cold blood, she would sing a beautifully somber lamenting aria of misery and of mercy. The eternal burden placed upon Ennui is a great one: to absorb the grim despair of woe that afflicts the mortal soul, to swallow his grief, relieve him of worry and draw it deep within her own essence. For her sacrifice, she bears the scar of empathy for every crestfallen tear that becomes her own.

Though Ennui bears her burden with genuine grace, there are those that seek to use her for their divine will. The Architect of Chaos blew turbulent, silent winds of discourse and tainted Ennui's spirit; for every grief-stricken tear she draws into herself, she inadvertently causes a tear to fall. For every ravaged heart and besieged soul she frees of torment, she causes a parallel, unforeseen heartache someplace in the mortal world. She is viewed as an evil soul, but Ennui's most tortured desire is to restore Order and reclaim her unsullied birthtask.

Until then, she continues her dreary song, made more melancholy and desperately beautiful with tiny thorn-drawn blood droplets...

When I installed LN last week, one of the first things I did was to go around and check out some of the Bridgeport character. It was late, so I played around with making over Morrigan and Wogan Hemlock. Nothing dramatic - just adjusting a few features and adding some CC. I think they still look similar to their original vampy selves. You can check them out HERE at Sim Exhibition if ya want.


Finally, I have to say that dressing up a sim for my blog banner was cool as hell. I guess she's the current 'Bijou Sweeney', or something like that. I was testing out some backgrounds and other shtuff a couple of weeks ago and ended up editing one of those shots in Photoshop. It's only a test shot, so the poses suck -- BUT the editing came out okay (just a few filters). If the background looks at all familiar, it is: it's the set from one of my Gothique Beauty pictures (Arabesque as a black swan). The sexxy vamp dude is a dark version of my Cristobel Mourningstar sim, and now that I have LN, he's next on my list to be legitimately vampified:

Click to enlarge!

Halloween Wishes and Old Sim Art

"Shadows of a thousand years rise again unseen, voices whisper in the trees, 'Tonight is Halloween!'" --Dexter Kozen

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Happy Halloween to everyone! If you're going out tonight and celebrating, please be safe, smart, and at least a *little* responsible! ^_^ No new Halloween sim-art to share, so I'll just post an old competition pic from 'America's Next Top Non Mortal' (much better enlarged):

                   *My cat-doll sim Motley and her beau Cristobel Mourningstar*

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Take care guys, and have a wild & wacky Halloween!

Anyone Ever Completely Overhaul Their CC?

I cannot WAIT to get my mitts on Late Night.  I've really been wanting to reorganize my CC and mods and junk before getting it and installing it, but my god, every time I look up there are ten thousand new pieces of custom content that I "must" have.

New Blog Design and a Few New Games

I'd wanted to update this place for Halloween, but RL shiz got in the way and I'm only just now getting around to it.

LOL I'm so sleepy right now that I barely know what I'm typing....howevah, I think I have *just* enough wake-upedness to finish this post!

The blog design has been updated (sorry that the full background doesn't show on smaller resolutions), and I've added a few new widgets (after culling a few others) -- a couple of games, a cute new animal friend, some other stuff...my brain is so fried....we've got pumpkin carving (no pun'kin chunkin' tho...)!
And there's a cool/weird World Clock at the bottom, plus a nifty lil' gadget that lets you paint like Mr. Jackson Pollock himself (it's the big ol' blank white box - just hover your mouse on the background to start painting, and click to change colors).

I'll try to have some new sim pics up vedy vedy soon, and a couple of new blog posts as well.  And some type of short story, maybe 5 panels long?  ....Have you ever been so sleepy that you practically forgot your name?  Lolz...yeah.....

...well, at least I think this guys is just sleeping....yyyeeaahh, let's....let's just...leeeave him alone, eh?  Give a dude some privacy.

Anyway....hope you guys all have a wonderful day and a beautiful week and a kick-ass Halloween!  And if you have Late Night coming in the mail....it's almost heeeere!!!  And if you don't have it coming, it's still almost here!!!  Hot tubs & hot vamps FTMFW!!!

*And congratulations to the Texas Rangers for climbing their way to the top and making it to their very first World Series appearance in franchise history!  Bout time!*

See you guys in the funny pages!

^_^

"Many things--such as loving, going to sleep, or behaving unaffectedly--are done worst when we try hardest to do them." --C.S. Lewis

Small 'Sim Exhibition' Update

Just a tiny update -- I've been working on recreating my (custom) family from TS2, the Lowekeys.  I'm finally finished and satisfied, and I'll hopefully be posting in-game shots in the near future.  I'm really looking forward to playing them again -- I actually teared up a bit when the oldest left for college (psh, and when she was born, for that matter - my very first TS2 born-in-game sim...).  These guys are really near and dear to my old simming heart, and initially I hadn't planned on recreating them for TS3, but what the hey.  Why not.

Pics are posted on Sim Exhibition (you know, that site that you probably didn't even know existed that I reeeeally need to update more in addition to this place...)

Some Photoshop Practicing & A New Pic Series

Since I got my computer running again, I've been trying to get back into Photoshopping.  I've done several practice pics so far, and I'm looking forward to (hopefully) starting a new short series of pictures (my ultimate goal is to create several different series).

After working on some regular in-game shots, I decided to try something more 'abstract', so I went with every simmer's favorite little green icon.  What I really want to work on is a small series of themed plumbob pictures, all with the little guy (or gal) as the central focus.  I have a bunch of ideas for themes to try, but actually creating them is another story...this picture was a couple of days in the making and I'm still nitpicking a ton.  I used a normal green plumbob icon and added several layers of brushes, coloring, grain, fog, filters, etc.  This is the first image of the series, but it's all still a lot of practice, tutorials, hair-pulling, teeth-mashing, etc.....

Thanks for looking! Hope to be able to work on more of these soon (when I finally figure out what the hell I'm doing FOR REAL).

Dusting off the cobwebs a bit....

We've been working on getting the PC running all evening, and it looks like things are good to go so far!  I'm going to spend much of tomorrow reinstalling all of our programs and games and such, and hopefully I'll have a halfway decent post to make soon.

I know this place has been an absolute ghost town lately -- thank you guys SO much for putting up with listening to all my boring-ass computer talk and lack of updates.  I'll find some way to make it up to everyone as soon as I can. *blushes*

Happy 8/9/10!

I didn't get a chance to post this at 11:12am, lol (8/9/10 11:12....).

Hope everyone is doing well!  I've been out of commission for a while with computer issues.  I have to get a new graphics card much sooner than I had planned -- the damn thing died on me last week when I tried to install Ambitions (rip 8800gts...you were beloved...).  I had to drop out of Evie's Kawaii competition and put all of my other (crappy) projects on hold, and trying to do anything on this laptop is aggravating at best.  Hopefully things will be up & running this week...*crosses fingers til they break off*

So what's going on with everyone?  Any interesting projects or creations or other RL shiz?  I have to live vicariously through you guys for a little while, lol.

I promise to update more often after all this shit blows over, and I want to start on some new sim projects.  The people who visit this hole deserve at least SOMETHING to entertain them, so I WILL deliver on that as soon as I can!

Take care guys!  Enjoy 8/9/10!