On This Day:
Wednesday November 28, 2007

This is the 331st day of the year, with 34 days remaining in 2007.

Fact of the Day: toilet paper

The first successfully marked toilet paper was by Edward and Clarence Scott of Philadelphia, who sold it on rolls. The group of papers known collectively as the sanitary grades include toilet tissue, towelling, facial tissue, and napkins. These grades are made from various proportions of sulfite and bleached kraft pulps with relatively little refining of the stock to preserve a soft, bulky, absorbent sheet. This sheet is further softened by machine creping, in which the wet sheet is pressed upon a smooth drying roll and subsequently removed by running against a flat stationary metal blade (doctor blade). The sheet is piled up upon itself, thus producing a creped effect. Facial tissue is dry-creped; that is, drying is complete on the drying roll before the creping doctor blade. Towelling is generally of heavier weight than the tissues and is usually creped while still wet. Napkins are of somewhat heavier weight than tissues.

What is it that attracts kids to toilet paper? Molly’s big thing right now is to unravel as much toilet paper as is possible in the shortest amount of time possible, leaving me the biggest mess possible to dispose of.

Thanks Molly.

And it’s a good day that Molly doesn’t get some assistance from her helpful brother, Fox. Thankfully he outgrown that throwing the roll around and watch the paper unwide. Now he just likes to wipe his nose on the roll and set it back down. Be careful with the rolls of TP in our house.

Art is a big thing in the house. Fox can take or leave drawing. Chloe was scribblinb up a storm by his age. But never fear, Chloe is still our artist with a passion. We all love to color with crayons.

I find that I have a lot of strange phobias. I absolutely can’t stand using crayons that don’t have a sharp point. Each time a come across a rounded point, out that little sucker goes! Crayon boxes don’t last long round these parts.

Did you know that the 120 Crayola Crayon set now includes 23 reds, 20 greens, 19 blues, 16 purples, 14 oranges, 11 browns, 8 yellows, 2 grays, 2 coppers, 2 blacks, 1 white, 1 silver, 1 gold.

Nothing beats a fresh pack of crayons. Who doesn’t love that smell of wax the first time you break open the celephane and inhale?? Ahhhhh bliss!

Came across this art I did for a commission a while back. We’re cleaning off one of our many computers hard drives and I stumbled on this. It was my character from DreamWalker ala’ Mucha.

sigh…done pre-kids…I had so much time to squander back then.

Chloe did some doodles of daddy:

Barry says that he’s going to use the first one as his avatar on the 01 sites.

Chloe’s got him spot on! Way to go my li’l 4 year old!!!

I don’t get a lot of time alone. Ok, I don’t really get ANY time alone…except on my drive to work. These are my few moments of bliss where I can plug in my schweeet Vision M 60 gb mp3 player and chill out to some wonderful tunes.

I’m talking the good old stuff–some of it done before I was even born. Yes, there’s a time for Britney’s “Gimmie More” and who doesn’t want to bring “Sexyback” but there’s something about listening to old Rolling Stones “Paint it black” or “Brown Sugar” turned up loud enough to make your heart skip beats.

I’ve figured out how to make some of the awesomest playlists ever. I’ve got my running stuff, my cool guys set (men only, lots of retro-lounge lizard stuff: Nick Cave, Frank Sinatra, Morrissay…), seasonal, pure Elvis for Chloe…

It’s nice to get re-acquainted with music again. I like my Yahoo Music! for the most part. I get to download and playthings that I personally wouldn’t buy, but it’s cool to be current. There’s some cool stuff being done in music. I really like Amy Winehouse. I hope she snaps out of it soon. Love Fiction Plane. I’ve even begun rebuilding my classical library. Only thing I don’t particularly like Yahoo Music for is their Jazz. I loves me my Jazz!

Work on Womblees goes on. It’s all scanned in. I added 4 pages in the beginning and I think it makes it stronger. Right now I’m flatting each page before I go in a color. Must say I don’t really look forward to coloring so I’m dragging my heels big time.

What I’m watching:

Journeyman
Chuck
Reeper
The Wire (have I ever mentioned that I love BrightHouses’ HBO in demand stuff? Bliss. Have I also ever mentioned that The Wire is one of the most overlooked, best written, acted, ensemble casts in a mighty long time?? Go…watch it. Catch up on this awesome HBO series!!
Superman: Doomsday This took me back a bit. It was a lot more violent then I was expecting. I was fine with the Sups sleeping with Lois thing. But Sups took a couple beatin’ in a big way. Worth a watch, but I don’t think I’d let the kids watch it anytime soon.
I’m trying to get into Pushing up Daisys. Just ain’t doing it for me.
Gave up on Bionic woman.
Want to get back into Heroes, but we haven’t watched but the first 2 episodes of this season.

I had a birthday…hold applause I hate ’em. Yeah, yeah most people have that fake gushing mock teasing lilt when they say they hate their birthdays…but no…I really do hate birthdays.

Well, I liked them up until I turned 35 and after that they just suck. Yep. Suck. Seriously. I hate ’em. This year was/has been tough. Not just the birthday thing…but the whole damn year. I will be sooooo glad when this is over. I hate to tease karma by saying “things can’t get any worse” cuz my bitch friend karma WILL make things worse and I desperately need some good stuff.

At first Barry had forgotten my b’day. I was none too pleased. But he did get the evening off after putting in yet another full day plus at the office. He got me a beautiful new digital camera that I love. It’s 12 mega pixels and in HD. I loves me my new camera. It’s black and purrrty!

We went out for chinese food. It was yummy and the company was wonderful. The kids were pretty good that night.

Still hate birthdays.

Yep…onto other stuff.

I gave Barry his Halloween present. The book is officially tittled:

Wombolees

Here’s the cover colored.

It’s more mock up then actual ‘go with it” official cover. I need more space in the black area for the logo. But each cover will have the same black area with the image inside. I’m pretty happy. I redid the drawing part of this cover 4 or 5 times. I like her look better here.

I do want to recolor it. Change the colors a little and add color holds to the wombolees.

Gave him the first 36 pencilled, inked pages. I think he liked it. I’ve begun coloring on it. Kinda fun to do. Still wish I could do watercolors, but digital is the way to go.

Moving on:

Things I thought I’d never hear Barry say:

“Excuse me, I have to go put on my make-up”.

I cackled over that one for a long, LONG time.

We all got all purrty-ed up for the Halloween Fest 2007. Barry went as Hellboy, Chloe was a mummy, Fox was a Vampire, and Molly carried on the tradition of being a pumpkin. She’ll be it again next year as the costume will still fit ; o )

I went as a dark coffin bride…at least that’s what the costume said. I just thought it was cool.

And you thought my halloween illustration was just for fun. Nope. It was a sneak peak at what everyone was going to be for halloween.

While packing up the costumes I came across an old play outfit that we had to put on Molly.

At first she hated it, but then I think she got to liking it. When it came time to take it off, she kept trying to run away from me. We had to laugh because with each movement her little puppy tail waggled.

I need more pictures of the three kids together. One mugs for the camera, one wants to eat it, and the baby just wants to avoid the flashy light thing.

My Mom gave me a hard time about Chloe going as something so spooky. Princess. She should be a princess!

Stuff and nonsense! Personally I think she’s an even cooler chick for wanting to get into Halloween and NOT go with the herd and be something different, but Mom wanted to see Chloe in something more … princessey. Blah!

Mom made the comment a couple of times about girls dressing up as Princesses for the Disney Halloween party and Chloe out to do it, too. I don’t think my Mom’s given into the idea that our family does things a tad bit different.

But I did compromise and we had a pre=halloween princess session. Chloe did love getting all dressed up in her princess splendor.

Gotta admit, the kid cleans up right purrtty like.

Fox went as a Vampire. This kid is the cutest, rough and tumble fella there is.

I had so much fun getting him ready. He wasn’t really into all this clothing and stuff, but when I let me check himself out in the mirror, he was having a blast! Then he found out you get candy and he was in heaven!!!!

Me and the ghouls.

I wore these bitchin’ false eyelashes…I’d never worn falsies before. These lashes had these rhinestones atop of the lashline. Hard to wear, but MAN! Did they sparkle!

Barry sure got a lot of odd stares when he opened the door to give kids candy!

Molly in her pumpkin finery!

Molly just wants to get onto the candy phase.