On This Day:
Tuesday February 12, 2008

This is the 43rd day of the year, with 323 days remaining in 2008.

Fact of the Day: fish in winter

Fish don’t go into a state of true hibernation in the winter, yet their metabolisms do slow down. Advice for fish in backyard ponds is to stop feeding entirely in November-December and to not resume again till at least March (or until the water temperature has reached 50 degrees F), and then to start with very low-protein, easily digestible foods until May or so.

Fish become much less active in the winter, don’t grow, and hardly need to eat. The only need that remains the same is that for oxygen, and when fish do die in the winter, it’s often because their supply of oxygen is used up before the ice over their habitat melts.

This weeks Toonweekly theme was: Star Wars Cantina creature
I LIKE Star Wars, dare I say I LOVED the first 3 movies (ok, I’m old school, sure) the other ones…not so much. Of course I remembered the Cantina scene…who couldn’t?!? Han Solo shot first.

Go visit my new pals at the toonweekly site. Hell, start participating!!
http://www.toonweekly.com/

We were to design our own new characters that were to be in the cantina scene. Pretty fun. So I did a couple of cool looking alien creatures that are beaugarting another chick alien creatures drink, while a jedi tries to hit on her.

I wish I could lay claim to the color job on this piece. Lucky for me, Barry took pity on me and after my feeble attempt at trying cool lighting…he graciously colored my piece. I’m very lucky to have access to one of the most talented people I’ve ever met.

Here’s a little bit of trivia about Barry. Back when we were in university at BYU Barry wrote an incredible play called ‘Blessing’.

Well, said play won LOTS of awards–oodles and tons. Barry and his talented cast and the director got sent to Arizona for a competition. This was the Rocky Mountain Theater Festival. He won and guess who he beat out–Yep. Trey Parker and Matt Stone. There ya have it.

Now, some folks take Star Wars a little too seriously. They know what color light sabers Jedi Masters have, what color acolytes have, which one is evil…
Relax, Bro. Relax.
3 people have now pointed out to me that Old Ben was the only Jedi in exestence at the time of the first Star Wars.
Folks, I don’t care. It ain’t real. Move on…
So anyway, here’s mine.
Suck it up, and move on.

Jericho returns TONIGHT!!!
Currently HBO’s The Wire is my favorite show. But I am all a twitter that Jericho returns tonight on CBS at 10 Eastern. Watch it. I WILL come to your houses, and Iwill sit your ass down and make you watch this series. Or we can be more civil about it and YOU can go to the CBS website and get caught up on the series.

http://www.cbs.com/primetime/jericho/

I have great hopes for it’s return and the numbers is should pull in. Well written, well acted (Oh! Gerald Mcraney–next time step to the left!!)

Skeet Ulrich…You tastey li’l fella.

Just do yourself a favor and give the show a try. Watch the first season. You’ll be glad you did.

What is MY favorite all time TV show? Mystery Science Theater 3000. Cool thing here. It’s no longer being produced (damn you Comedy Central and SciFi Channels!!) but Mike Nelson does something similar with his RiffTrax web site.

www.rifftrax.com

Spend an hour or two just entertaining yourself with the teasers. You’ll get some joy.

Happy thoughts!

I picked up a pretty damn good set of books. GettyImages released a series of books starting with 1900 and going up to 1990′s. They are fascinating to look thru. As an artist they provide incredible reference as a human it shows you the incredible human spririt–somestimes the photos are extremely graphic (WWI things are tragic indeed) to sublime (children with looks of utter joy over little things we take for granted). I highly recommend investing in some of these books. Each decade book gives you insight into all classes of life from all over the world. Insights into politics, entertainment, travel, science…hell, go for the gold and grab ‘em all! The images are out of this world and the historical value is a treasure.

Barry and I spent most of the day cleaning out closets that were far too fully loaded with junk. Most of it has indeed been crap. We are hoping to have a garage sale next Saturday (the 16th)and get rid of a large portion of our crap. So our crap can then go with you and be YOUR crap. Happy to pass it on.

It was really fun to come across old photos, clothes (which I’d dearly love to fit into again someday, but also realize the futility of such a thought and decide I’ll just leave most things for the girls). We came across a lot of old toys that we had acquired in hopes we’d make money off them at some later date, or just cuz we thought they were cool. Most are now still on their boards for the kids to grow into and decide their fate–sell, trade or play with.

We came across an old sunglasses, headphone wearing, plastic covered Coke bottle that would dance when a loud noise was made. The kids got a BIG kick out of that. It was fun to show Chloe and Fox our High School year books, my wedding dress, and other various pictures. They couldn’t believe that Daddy had all that hair at one time, and that I wasn’t always as round as a basketball. And why does Mommy have on a tie that looks like a piano keyboard in this picture–luckily enough I could run to my closet and show the kids I still have said tie.

For me, it was fun to walk down memory lane, but the BEST part was getting to show the kids little bits of our past that made us who we are. Me–it was the piano sheet music I use to use, cool 80′s clothes that I still have, and oodles of Barbies. Barry=comics. Boxes and boxes of comics that will remain in the closet.

We also realized that old cards and letters, the ones we wrote to each other, or the little love notes we’d tuck into books or clothes for discovery at a later date, are they other ways they will get to know us and remember us when we are no longer with them. It was kinda sad, but very fun. Until my nose started having fits due to all the dust that was flying around in the room. The house is a complete and utter mess with boxes strewn everywhere and piles of clothes, toys and assorted crapola waiting for the garage sale.

Fox loves to take a running start and dive into the big garbage bags full of clothing we are going to have at the garage sale. We have a mountain of clothes in gargage bags sitting in the corner of our kitchen.

This week’s ToonWeekly was themed…Midieval. Such a wonderful topic to do and I screwed the pooch with this one. I guess I was trying to hard for political/familial struggle and ended up with…yuck. I like the girls hair–kinda wanted an art deco flow to it, but that’s about it. Too sacharine. Next week’s will kick butt–creatures that shouldda been in the Cantina scene in Star Wars. I already saw one friends and it is totally breathtaking.

Happy thoughts.