ccRask

Last night, I rang in the New Year eagerly and happily surrounded by friends and family.  It's true I was missing some friends and family, though they were thankfully just a text away, and all the people I spent the evening with are lovely people I don't get to see often enough.

2012 was a pretty great year for me, all told.  I was lucky enough to gather an amazing group of friends in my new home in Utah, and get an amazing boyfriend along the way; I learned how to cosplay, and did so with moderate success; I was hired to work at a job and place I love, and I'm hopeful that job will turn full-time this coming year.

In 2 weeks, the second semester starts at work, which means I get a new group of students to discover and learn along with.  In about a month, my mother will go into the hospital for a stem-cell transplant that will, with any amount of luck, rid her of her bone cancer (multiple myeloma) for at least a few years.  I've been commissioned to create a cosplay prop piece, and plan on doing more commissions if I'm able.  And on New Year's Day, my webcomic Acquainted with the Night updated for the first time in about a year.

I'm hopeful about 2013, I really am, and I hope it treats me as well as 2012 did.  Here's to new projects and old friends, to family's health and our own!

So I just wanted to hop in here to give a quick heads up as to my goings-ons...

I realize that I've been absent from my comic for some time.  This is a problem.  I am still working on a way to motivate myself and actually work on something that I see as a huge challenge, artistically and structurally.  I have a history of avoiding things that are a challenge to me, though doable, and I am trying to break myself of that habit.

I'm going to go ahead and list my excuses for it, anyway, because I can and they're fun, anyway.

First of all, this summer Chajiko and I (she is my roommate in Utah) are making Loki and Thor costumes for ourselves.  Have I mentioned we are obsessed with these characters, and everything in The Avengers franchise?  Hnnnghhhh.  Anyway, I am making the armor-y parts, and she the sewing, and she shall be the God of Mischief and I of Thunder.  I have already started crafting the armor, which takes up a fair amount of my time and is new and shiny, meaning of course I work on that instead of anything else.

Now, that has been put on hold for this month (June) because I've headed home for a nice vacation with my family in my original home of Ohio.  I am hoping this means I can push myself to get more drawing done, in the absence of having armor to work on.  So far I've been most productive on the plane, but it's only been a few days.

And, within those days, I have seen the Red Hot Chili Peppers in concert for the 2nd time in my life, which was GLORIOUS and AMAZING and I practically died right there in the venue because they played EVERYTHING; Otherside, Californication, Under the Bridge, Suck my Kiss, Give it Away... it was a perfect concert line up, I could not have asked for better.  I would be content to let my soul flitter happily away from this mortal coil, but I have another of their concerts to attend in California, in August.  Reminding me that I should probably draw some sort of art for/of them before then.  9_6

I also just started reading the Hunger Games tonight.  I'm mostly done with the 1st book.  Reading.... another luxury.

And let's not even talk about all the planning and room arranging I need to do when I head back to Utah in July, in preparation of returning to my teaching job in the fall (part-time though it may be, for now).

....

/flails
/launches into space
/incinerates in the sun

Webcomic . Gallery . Facebook .

So I'm actually updating my journal as promised (not that many people actually notice/care XD).  Lots of stuff has happened between the last journal and now!

But there's got to be an opening
Somewhere here in front of me
Through this maze of ugliness and greed.

And I seen the sun up ahead
At the county line bridge
Sayin' all there's good and nothingness is dead.


Hey, come on try a little
Nothing is forever
There's got to be something better than

In the middle
But me & Cinderella
We put it all together
We can drive it home

With one headlight...


The biggest news is that I GOT A FULL-TIME JOB!!!  There is quite the story to the process.  The premise: I was working at a high school, but only teaching 1 class, and they told me back in January that they didn't have the budget to promise me the same position + more classes next year, as I was hoping.  So, I started looking and applying to jobs for next year.

In doing so, I came across a position that said it was hiring "immediately".  It was for a middle school position, one that was very close to my house, so of course I applied, though I wasn't technically looking for a job until next year.  The mother of my roommate Chajiko, upon hearing this, got very excited and told me she would actually call up the school's principal to see what "immediately" meant to them and possibly put in a good word for me.

When she spoke with the principal, she managed to convince him that I would be a good candidate, based on the fact that she's lived here for years and sent 3 kids through that particular school.  It also turned out that the art teacher there had retired unexpectedly in the middle of the year, and they were looking for someone RIGHT NOW.  She called me after she got off the phone with him to explain, "One hundred and thirty-five people applied to the job-- they were going to interview five.  Now they're going to interview six."

They interviewed me Monday-- I had to get someone to cover my class at the high school to go.  It went well, and they called me that evening to ask me to come back the next day for a second leg; this time, I had to actually teach a class in front of them.  They had guidelines as to what they wanted me to teach, but it was up to me to come up with the actual lesson plan.  I made one up, with a corresponding (brief) powerpoint and examples, in about 3 hours that night, and taught the first period students the next day.  It went swimmingly; by now I'm so used to being observed, and to teaching students I don't know, it really was no sweat.

I expected a call back that night, but didn't get one until the following morning (Wednesday).  They offered me the job, and wanted me to start Monday.  The next few days was a flurry of activity-- filling my administration and co-teachers and students in on what was happening, catching up my replacement (another art teacher at the same school, thankfully), and getting my new room set up and collaborating with the other art teacher at the middle school about what to do to finish up the school year.  And I want to say here, that I feel so loved and supported by all of the people I worked and am working with.  The reaction of my former principal, when I told him of the interviews and that I was waiting for a call back, was "I hope they hire you!".  Everyone was very glad to see me move on to full time, even if it was in a different district, while also expressing that they would miss me and that I was a great asset to their team.  It was all just so positive and so wonderful to hear-- my ears are still kind of ringing with it all.

So that's the big news!  And also why I haven't done very much artistically in the last week or so.  Hopefully things will stabilize a little more in the next few weeks, and I'll be able to draw.  I've had the itch a few nights in a row, but there's so much to doooo!    And what a great thing that is!

Journal Skin by TwiggyTeeluck