Catching up
Hey everyone! I'll just go ahead and say that Remi and I are still alive and kickin'. It's just that ever since starting my job back in mid-October, I haven't found the time or-- more accurately-- the motivation to keep writing here. It's pretty sad, actually. I was riding a streak of inspiration (artwise) just prior to starting there, and then ever since-- poof! Gone. The work is kind of... a good way to describe it might be "soul-sucking", to be honest. Which is completely to be expected, I mean. It's accounting, 8-5. Routine and comfortable but also a bit monotonous. I don't know. I do love the people I work with, though. I'm not exactly complaining.
Anyway, I couldn't let the entire month of November pass without writing or posting anything, so I've come with some photos taken throughout the month.
These are cupcakes that I baked and decorated in celebration of this year's Breeders' Cup World Championships in thoroughbred racing, which took place November 4th & 5th. Every cupcake was topped with the name of a horse competing in the fifteen-race event (I should make it clear, however, that not every horse that competed in the event was represented on a cupcake; that would have required a lot of cupcakes!).
It was a lot of fun seeing what names were chosen by the people at work. What was even more exciting was watching as one of those horses crossed the finish line first in its respective race that weekend, and then sharing the news with the person who had "chosen" (and eaten, lol) that horse at work the following Monday. It did happen for a few!
43 cupcakes waiting in the break room to be consumed...
Some remembered the names they had selected, some didn't. Either way, I had a great deal of fun doing it. And the folks at work seemed to get a kick out of it. Plus, hey, free cupcakes for them (and a few for myself). :)
One morning at work, not long before I arrived, a rattlesnake was spotted by a trashcan just outside the front doors. It was killed and put in the trash (I took a peek and saw it in there), but I heard the next day that the guy had gone back for the snake shortly after and had proceeded to take it home and fry it up! He brought some to work for the rest of us to try... LOL
I tried a piece. LOL, I wasn't sure about it, but I just couldn't walk out of there knowing that there had been rattlesnake in the fridge and I had turned it down completely. It wasn't that great. There was very little meat on it, if any. It's funny, I sent a text to both Josh (the taxidermist I still sometimes work for) and Mom, and got replies from both simultaneously. Josh's message read "Fried rattlesnake is good." Mom's said "That is downright GROSS!!! Ewwwww." Haha!
And speaking of creepy-crawly critters that have shown up at work, look at what we found out in the hallway! We've also had a couple of teeny-tiny millipedes, and half-dead roach, and I'm told there's a bobcat that comes around every so often, though I haven't had the privilege of seeing it... yet.
It isn't that we're way out there in the country, or anything like that, but we do happen to have a great big patch of undeveloped land right next to our building that seems to be home to some wildlife yet. I like it. Downtown Dallas is right there, its tall buildings easily within view and probably not more than five miles off, yet we've got hawks and bobcats and snakes and... yeah. lol
A photo I took while driving to work one morning. If you can see it, that's downtown Dallas in the distance.
This is some of the traffic I deal with. This would be less of a problem if I could only discipline myself to get up earlier and leave by, say, 6:30 instead of 7, but it's just so hard to get out of bed... Especially now that it's so cold in the morning. The other solution would be finding an apartment and moving closer to work, bypassing the worst parts of my commute entirely. Which, by the way, the apartment search is still progressing. I have looked at SO MANY places, but nothing yet. I'm being selective, partly because I can be (i.e., not in any real hurry to move), and partly because I am positively outraged at the pet policies I keep running up against, which-- Well, you don't want to get me started on that. Really.
This is the turkey the company gave to me for Thanksgiving! Every employee who wanted one got one. Wasn't that nice? I thought it was. It's still in our freezer, come to think of it, since we already had a turkey for the holiday, but I have no doubt we'll find another time to cook it!
So, I may be working full time as an accountant, but I still do some work at the taxidermy shop-- on occasion and only on weekends. It really isn't all that often, but I still enjoy it and it's better than nothing! Pictured here is an impala I did a few weeks ago.
The same weekend I did the impala above, I was working on this nyala.
And because I have access to the shop and its supplies (and because I had OK'd it with the shop owner), I was up there about a week ago putting together the coyote shoulder mount I've been wanting to do for ages! I'm really happy with how it turned out. He hangs out with me at work every day, keeping watch over my workspace from on the wall in my office. :)
This is the kind of thing that I wish I could motivate myself to keep posting here: small, seemingly-random observations, sources inspirations and the like. Because here's the deal: I've drawn inspiration from these Taco Bell sauce packets before (a la this drawing), and I wouldn't mind doing it again. But this time, I don't know. These came with a couple of tacos Mom brought me when I was working late at the taxidermy shop one night, and although I realize they're meant to be funny, the way I interpreted them was very sad. What can I say? I'm a sucker for angst, and I read a lot of it in fic!
So here's what I've got. The first packet is about one of two things: 1) a break-up, or 2) unrequited feelings. Do you see it? In the first scenario the speaker is ending his (or her, but for the sake of convenience I'm sticking with the masculine pronoun) relationship with someone. In the second, someone has just confessed their attraction to him, and he's having to gently let that person down. Either way: angst.
Then, the text on the second packet follows the first. After the words on the first packet are spoken ("I love you. I'm just not in love with you.") the person being rejected is distraught or angry, overcome by some intense, negative emotion, and he/she storms out. The speaker from the first packet, worried that the other person will do something reckless in his/her grief, catches the person and asks for one thing: that he/she promise to touch base with him in the morning. So that he'll know the other is alright and hasn't hurt himself/herself. Admittedly, "Promise you'll text me in the morning" is pretty weak. A text, really? A phone call would be much better, I think, but whatever. I make do with what I'm given.
...You know, I might as well just quit it with this whole his/her, himself/herself thing. Here at LJ, it's no secret that what I read is strictly of the m/m variety. lol
The last thing I would like to post is truly ridiculous, but it brings me some amusement, so I'm doing it. I'm calling these my D/s deer. Which is just silly, because they're not mine (I didn't buy them, although I'm tempted to go back and do just that very soon...), they're for sale at Target and there weren't many left. I was shopping there this afternoon when I breezed right past these deer-- yes, they're the kind you see everywhere this time of year, always in pairs, one sitting and one standing-- but something about their poses relative to each other struck me as interesting, and suddenly it was like oh my goodness, would you look at that, it's a dom and his sub.
You've got the one standing tall and proud, the other on its knees with its face turned up to the one standing... subservient, adoring, completely given over to the other. Naturally, I positioned them, snapped a couple of photos, and wheeled my cart away, greatly amused and a little contemplative. Naturally.
So that's that! And is it just me, or has LJ taken away the preview option when posting entries? This is going to be my first time ever posting an entry without previewing it at least once! Yikes.