Damn, am I bored. As much as I hate having to work (ASDFGHJKL; KATHY GO DIE ALREADY. Yes, she did it AGAIN. Yes, I want to kill her >.<), at least it forces me to do something.

Whereas on my days off... I don't really do anything at all. Can't really afford to do anything interesting most of the time. And even though I'm always thinking about cleaning most of the time, procrastination is sewn right into my genes, so it never happens. I haven't done the dishes in months. Yes, I'm aware of how disgusting that is.

So... yeah. Instead, I kinda just... do nothing. It's very relaxing, doing nothing, even if it leaves me feeling very unfulfilled at the end of the day.

Anyone wanna see what I did instead? >.>

I was so sure I had discussed this elsewhere, but do to the reaction seen by some who know me in whiteadelphi's post about it, it seems that I did not. In case you haven't seen it, in a recent issue of Tales of the TMNT (by the angelic savior of TMNT comics that is Tristan Jones), Leo is seen reading One Piece.

You heard me. I know have canon proof of two of my fandoms existing in one space. Hyesssss.

What really makes me laugh is that it's Leo reading it (heehee- and as he got the comic from Mike, both of them are fans XD). I know I'm not the only person who now wants to see him trying to use Santoryuu. XD

Anyways. Seeing that issue brought up again reminded me that I was going to icon it. But dammit, it was much harder than I expected. When I color, I rely heavily on the magic wand tool, which was impossible to do with this page. As it's pure black and white and absolutely not gray, magic wand couldn't tell the difference between what I wanted to select and the rest of the image. So for the majority of it, I had to go in and select in the hard way. >.<

It took five hours to color Leo alone. I gave up after that and went ahead and made the icon (points to userpic). BUT... the problem with icons is that you lose so much of the detail when it comes down to resizing them. And after all that coloring, I used less than a tenth of the picture. ;_;

Therefore, I've slowly worked on coloring the background too. Got a little more sloppy with that, but I am pleased now. And here's the final coloring. ^_^;



And now that that's said and done... I suppose I should go and try to do some chores. >.<; Gah- I am so unmotivated to do so. It's state would by now have bothered most people to be utterly disgusted, but it's only now kinda getting to me. As I stay in my room most of the time (and I don't care that that's a mess XD), I usually don't have to see the rest of the place. So it's out of sight, out of mind, etc. But then also... I have no sense of smell. I'm SURE that something should smell by now. I was surprised to learn from my stepdad that even mold has a smell. Does that mean that water that's been sitting in the sink for weeks does too? Or what about the stuff on the floor?

Smells aside (they confuse me so ;_:), I do want to someday have a presentable home. If I ever make some physical-will-actually-want-to-come-over-to-your-house friends, I would like my place to not make them gag. And since I can't afford a maid, I need to do it myself.

...Can this last for longer than a week or two? (crosses fingers)

P.S. Nickelodeon bought TMNT? Score. Despite what some of the other members of fandoms are thinking, this is probably a good thing. Nick is actually very good to their more serious shows. Pi is pleased. :D

As much as I love making them, icons are frustating work guys. Yesterday I spent six hours coloring one image. Blood is, by the way, more difficult than you'd think to color properly when there is an excess of it. I spent another two hours today working on that alone, sending the image to Angel (who really needs to get an LJ) for approval.

Once we'd both determine that it was in fact good enough to be iconned, I ended up cropping out two thirds of it all. Including said bloody area which I'd spent said two hours perfecting. WHAT THE HELL.

Adding the finishing touches is taking longer than I planned. The text doesn't want to work with me. >.<

Anyways. I guess it's something to pass the time. I'm still coughing up a lung, much to my irritation. I do all right until I have to work, naturally. But it gets kinda annoying when management, hell-bent on this new system, insists that if we don't have things done by a certain time there will be serious consequences.

...I don't think they realize just how dangerous our job was to begin with. I don't care if other stores have less people and somehow are able to get the job done faster- I'm sure there are other variables thrown in there that work to their favor that we don't have. Besides maybe the cart pushers, our job is the most physically demanding. I've seen other associates freak out when we lift things like grills or bookshelves by ourselves. They're supposed to get assistance with those items, whereas if you can't do that by yourself in the back room quickly, you're a waste of space.

I guess I just don't understand what they're expecting of us. And a part of me thinks it's really unfair that we're treated this way. I mean, on Monday the garden center guy (James) was made officially ICS. His first day back there, we got told that if we weren't done with the truck at the time given that we would all be coached. It makes my brain hurt. They keep this up, and people are going to quit. I think I'm currently the only one there who actually needs this job.

RARGH. On the plus side though, some people are understanding. I've decided I need to get sick more often (Just not for so long- COUGH. Go away NOW), if I get this much special treatment. My first day back I felt like shit and was told I looked as much. Everyone but me had hours of overtime they needed to kill and when they were told to do so at lunch, Aaron basically told them they could shove that idea where the sun don't shine, seeing as that would leave me to pull the entire backroom by myself for two hours.

When I noticed that the four hours I'd requested off for a wedding were in the second half of my sift instead of the first, I asked a support manager (the awesome one, not the asshole) if he could change it for me. He gave me the whole day off because he said I looked like I needed it (te wedding was nice, by the way).

Donald bought me some more Mike's Hard Lemonade without me even bothering to ask.

Billy stopped by my house to give me a ride to work on Friday even though he's out of work for the week.

And astonishingly, Kathy, of all people, offered to give me a ride home two days in a row. The world is... a very strange place.

So in the mean time, I sleep. And hope my cough goes away soon because otherwise I may actually have to see a doctor. My wallet will be very displeased with me if this occurs.

...I'm attempting self-medication with reading lots of fanfic, but this has backfired. I found out earlier that fantasyfan17updated her One Piece/Naruto crossover (FF.net has nearly fifty of these... and hers is pretty much the only good one) yet again and have been dying of laughter.

Because I totally need to pimp out more fic to people, I may as well start with this one. The first chapter actually features Zoro and Shikamaru- and I didn't even suggest the idea. As a matter of fact, I didn't even know she was writing the thing until an hour or so before she posted the first chapter. On top of that, I don't even think she knew I'm a Shikamaru fan. Which made it both a surprise and amazingly perfect. (gushes)

The second chapter has too much win for words. Franky and Rock Lee. I die. XD

And this latest chapter I actually did suggest, but she did it wonderfully. Ah, it's a very good thing these characters will probably never actually meet. Because Nami would so do this.

Daniiiiiii! Have I told you how awesome you are lately? :3

There are times I wish one could just quit being [insert personality flaw here] like one quits an addiction. While I imagine people can change things about them for the better though, I don't think they can actually just stop being that was all together...

Alas. Quite sucky. In the mean time, I must learn to get over it and keep it from effecting any other activities, like work, etc. Our new manager both irritates and pleases me, but I'm hoping this will change once he's been here longer. The new system is going to take getting used to. It would work better with more people. I really, really want there to be more people again. I recall a time when there were fewer than there is now, but I also remember that back then not as much was expected of us. Translation: this is the worst that it's been back there so far, in my opinion. Everyone with good leadership qualities is gone, so there's no order or anything. And we're worn out every night. The other day my jeans had rubbed my skin so raw that I was bleeding a little.

On that subject, my body seems to hate me. Tonight I found six new bruises on my left leg, two on my right, and one on an elbow. WHAT THE HELL BODY. I don't even remember hurting myself in any of those places.

Rargh. Moving on to cheerier things.

I seem to have finally abandoned most of my TMNT writing endeavors, much to my shame. I do still plan on finishing Cork... someday. But at the moment, I've started a lot of One Piece projects, as well as dabble in Avatar fic if a prompt so inspires me at avatar_contest.

I'm iconning just about all of my fandoms though. I should have a multi-fandom post sometime in the future, though I can't guarantee when. I tend to take hours on some icons, such as the one I made for op_ic (a One Piece icontest) this week. Coloring manga is a lot of fun, but making a really good one requires much patience. And naturally I was stupid and tried to color an image of Brook facing away from the viewer. Basically I had no guidelines except for certain parts of his body.

...Though he has no body, being all bones. SKULL JOKE. XD

...Yes, I'm aware that maybe three people on my f-list get that joke/know what I'm talking about. And that they're all rolling their eyes at the stupid skull joke while the rest WTF. Sorry. >.>;

But yeah. Icons! Said Brook icon won the Mod's Choice this time around, and I am blushing like a fool because of it. I'm not showing it off at the moment because I'm making corrections on it right now (which I didn't even notice until looking at it again), but if anyone's curious just go to op_ic and take a peek.

And since I'm still wanting to get some more coloring experience in, if anyone reading this has a scene from either the One Piece or Naruto manga they would like to see colored and iconned, say the word. :D