a RL update, a couple of photos, and 2 memes with pictures . . .
Last Saturday was Ken and my 28th wedding anniversary, which we celebrated with a lovely dinner out. ^.^
And, I have survived the first three weeks at my new job! And now that I know more about what I'm doing, I can try to describe what it is. Basically, I'm working for a Third Party Administrator (TPA) firm to set up all their new clients' retirement plans into their computer system and generate all the legal documents that go into the client file. I also handle any amendments to the plans, making those changes in the system and creating the revised documents. They've also asked me to work on creating procedures manuals for them, which I'm doing already for my position, since I'm documenting all the processes as I'm learning the job. Retirement plans are not something I knew anything about before this, but the work has many parallels to my years as a college Registrar. I still have so much to learn, the processes and the computer system are complex, and it seems every client's plan has some new quirky thing to throw at me, but it's not as boring as I thought it would be - maybe because each case is different and I'm still figuring out how to do things. Also the woman I work with, and who is teaching me my job, is fun and I really like her. We have had quite a lot of laughs over how many crazy, unusual things have turned up for me to do suddenly in these three weeks - things even she wasn't sure how to do! :)
I do miss being at home with my sunshiny windows, but I have a nice little office, and I bought some pretty little plants to keep me company. :D
Meme #1-
primroseburrows tagged me for this:
1. Go to your desktop and press the Print Scrn key (located on the right side of the F12 key).
2.Open a graphics program (like Picture Manager, Paint, or Photoshop) and doing a Paste (CTRL + V). If you wish, you can “edit” the image before saving it.
3. Post the picture on your blog. You can also give a short explanation on the look of your desktop if you want. You can explain why you prefer such a look or why it is full of icons. Things like that.
4. Tag five of your friends and ask them to give you a Free View of their desktops as well.
Since I usually make a wallpaper version of whatever last art I've done to use as my desktop - you get to see Immersion again. ;-)
My current desktop:
And if anyone would like to use this wallpaper, I'll be very happy to share it - you can copy the full-size version here.
Meme #2-
And lol - ages ago - kupukello tagged me to do this, because she was just sure I wanted to "unload my deepest secrets in my journal for everyone to see..." ;-) :
1. List seven habits/quirks/facts about yourself.
2. Tag seven people to do the same.
3. Do not tag the person who tagged you or say that you tag whoever wants to do it
I tried to think of things maybe people didn't know already, but I have no idea really what I've confessed to already in here, so this is my best attempt to reveal some new stuff *grin* :
1. I absolutely love to watch dance, so I've been glued to the television the past two summers for So You Think You Can Dance. I love this show! :D This past summer, I developed a terrible sekrit crush on this young man -
- because boys who can dance are just so freakin' hot he was adorable, both in looks and personality and omg, he was a fantastic dancer!
2. I hate crickets. Hate, despise, can't stand 'em. We lived in a house in VA for three years that had crickets in the walls. You'd be in bed at night and hear "plop" and a cricket had dropped out of the light fixture in the ceiling onto the bed. Then they would crawl up into the baseboard heaters and chirp while you were trying to sleep. It was like my worst nightmare. o_O
3. Besides blue glass, which I think I've already posted about, I collect rocks/gemstones and lizards (not live). I have quite a few of them, and I even have one brass gecko that hangs on the wall in the den and has been known to startle unsuspecting visitors. *grin*
4. I'm addicted to Sudoku. I usually do one a day. My favorite ones are Jigsaw Samurai Sudoku - they look like this and take about a week to finish. :)
5. I have a towel - actually, two of them that are identical - that I'm very attached to. I've had them since around 1980. Yes, they are faded and threadbare, and I first realized the extent of my madness once when Ken used one of them as a bath mat early in our marriage. Let's just say he knows never to touch them now. ;-) Sadly, one of them had a harrowing experience recently with a plumber who used "that old towel" to stop up a nasty pipe and (after a very thorough washing with bleach) has had to go live permanently in the cupboard. Ken was holding his breath at one point, waiting to see if I was going to kill the plumber. lol
6. When I was around 13-14 years old, I used to scare my mother with a stuffed deer head. It was the head from the only deer my father ever killed hunting, and my Mom and I thought it was hateful that he wanted to stuff it and hang it on the wall - but there it was, and since it was there, I put it to good use. I'd wait until my mother was back in her bedroom, take it down from the wall, sneak down the hall, and then knock urgently on her door. "Mom, come quick!!" She'd pull open the door, I'd stick the deer head in her face, and she would scream. Every single time. Even five minutes after the last time I'd done it. And then we would crack up laughing. She was a very good sport about it. ;-)
7. One of my most favorite computer games is Uru - Ages Beyond Myst, from the Myst series. I so love that game - the graphics are just gorgeous and it's very challenging. ^.^ I've played it over and over - and two of the great things about it is you create a likeness for the "person" you play in the game and you get a little camera device that you wear on your hand that allows you to take "photographs" anywhere in the game. So I have one player that looks like me, and then I made one like Harry and one like Draco, and I have a file of around 200 "photos" of places in the game. :D
I was sure I had a photo of my own avatar, however, at the moment I can't find it. But here is a scene with Draco in it:
And one with Harry:
My Draco avatar found this awesome shirt while he was playing the game, and it's just so him, I think. ;-)
And then, of course, I had to use Photoshop to put H/D together at the island house you have in the game. :D
I don't think I'll mention how long I spent doing that. lol ;-)
Oh yeah, about the tagging ... Ha! What tagging. *ignores* (I'm pretty much allergic to following instructions, so do it if you want to. ;-))
As you all can guess, going back to work has drastically cut down on the time I have to do any art right now. But I'm slowly working on two pieces that I hope to have done soon, one for rurounihime's fic, The Road, and one for this month's White on Black challenge on hp_fringeart. :)
And, I have survived the first three weeks at my new job! And now that I know more about what I'm doing, I can try to describe what it is. Basically, I'm working for a Third Party Administrator (TPA) firm to set up all their new clients' retirement plans into their computer system and generate all the legal documents that go into the client file. I also handle any amendments to the plans, making those changes in the system and creating the revised documents. They've also asked me to work on creating procedures manuals for them, which I'm doing already for my position, since I'm documenting all the processes as I'm learning the job. Retirement plans are not something I knew anything about before this, but the work has many parallels to my years as a college Registrar. I still have so much to learn, the processes and the computer system are complex, and it seems every client's plan has some new quirky thing to throw at me, but it's not as boring as I thought it would be - maybe because each case is different and I'm still figuring out how to do things. Also the woman I work with, and who is teaching me my job, is fun and I really like her. We have had quite a lot of laughs over how many crazy, unusual things have turned up for me to do suddenly in these three weeks - things even she wasn't sure how to do! :)
I do miss being at home with my sunshiny windows, but I have a nice little office, and I bought some pretty little plants to keep me company. :D
Meme #1-
primroseburrows tagged me for this:
1. Go to your desktop and press the Print Scrn key (located on the right side of the F12 key).
2.Open a graphics program (like Picture Manager, Paint, or Photoshop) and doing a Paste (CTRL + V). If you wish, you can “edit” the image before saving it.
3. Post the picture on your blog. You can also give a short explanation on the look of your desktop if you want. You can explain why you prefer such a look or why it is full of icons. Things like that.
4. Tag five of your friends and ask them to give you a Free View of their desktops as well.
Since I usually make a wallpaper version of whatever last art I've done to use as my desktop - you get to see Immersion again. ;-)
My current desktop:
And if anyone would like to use this wallpaper, I'll be very happy to share it - you can copy the full-size version here.
Meme #2-
And lol - ages ago - kupukello tagged me to do this, because she was just sure I wanted to "unload my deepest secrets in my journal for everyone to see..." ;-) :
1. List seven habits/quirks/facts about yourself.
2. Tag seven people to do the same.
3. Do not tag the person who tagged you or say that you tag whoever wants to do it
I tried to think of things maybe people didn't know already, but I have no idea really what I've confessed to already in here, so this is my best attempt to reveal some new stuff *grin* :
1. I absolutely love to watch dance, so I've been glued to the television the past two summers for So You Think You Can Dance. I love this show! :D This past summer, I developed a terrible sekrit crush on this young man -
Click to view
- because boys who can dance are just so freakin' hot he was adorable, both in looks and personality and omg, he was a fantastic dancer!
2. I hate crickets. Hate, despise, can't stand 'em. We lived in a house in VA for three years that had crickets in the walls. You'd be in bed at night and hear "plop" and a cricket had dropped out of the light fixture in the ceiling onto the bed. Then they would crawl up into the baseboard heaters and chirp while you were trying to sleep. It was like my worst nightmare. o_O
3. Besides blue glass, which I think I've already posted about, I collect rocks/gemstones and lizards (not live). I have quite a few of them, and I even have one brass gecko that hangs on the wall in the den and has been known to startle unsuspecting visitors. *grin*
4. I'm addicted to Sudoku. I usually do one a day. My favorite ones are Jigsaw Samurai Sudoku - they look like this and take about a week to finish. :)
5. I have a towel - actually, two of them that are identical - that I'm very attached to. I've had them since around 1980. Yes, they are faded and threadbare, and I first realized the extent of my madness once when Ken used one of them as a bath mat early in our marriage. Let's just say he knows never to touch them now. ;-) Sadly, one of them had a harrowing experience recently with a plumber who used "that old towel" to stop up a nasty pipe and (after a very thorough washing with bleach) has had to go live permanently in the cupboard. Ken was holding his breath at one point, waiting to see if I was going to kill the plumber. lol
6. When I was around 13-14 years old, I used to scare my mother with a stuffed deer head. It was the head from the only deer my father ever killed hunting, and my Mom and I thought it was hateful that he wanted to stuff it and hang it on the wall - but there it was, and since it was there, I put it to good use. I'd wait until my mother was back in her bedroom, take it down from the wall, sneak down the hall, and then knock urgently on her door. "Mom, come quick!!" She'd pull open the door, I'd stick the deer head in her face, and she would scream. Every single time. Even five minutes after the last time I'd done it. And then we would crack up laughing. She was a very good sport about it. ;-)
7. One of my most favorite computer games is Uru - Ages Beyond Myst, from the Myst series. I so love that game - the graphics are just gorgeous and it's very challenging. ^.^ I've played it over and over - and two of the great things about it is you create a likeness for the "person" you play in the game and you get a little camera device that you wear on your hand that allows you to take "photographs" anywhere in the game. So I have one player that looks like me, and then I made one like Harry and one like Draco, and I have a file of around 200 "photos" of places in the game. :D
I was sure I had a photo of my own avatar, however, at the moment I can't find it. But here is a scene with Draco in it:
And one with Harry:
My Draco avatar found this awesome shirt while he was playing the game, and it's just so him, I think. ;-)
And then, of course, I had to use Photoshop to put H/D together at the island house you have in the game. :D
I don't think I'll mention how long I spent doing that. lol ;-)
Oh yeah, about the tagging ... Ha! What tagging. *ignores* (I'm pretty much allergic to following instructions, so do it if you want to. ;-))
As you all can guess, going back to work has drastically cut down on the time I have to do any art right now. But I'm slowly working on two pieces that I hope to have done soon, one for rurounihime's fic, The Road, and one for this month's White on Black challenge on hp_fringeart. :)