Oh, that's shiny....and LOOK, a distraction!

I don't really have much to say but I wanted to post something.


Had a sort-of job interview yesterday.  The job has pretty much been offered to me but it's sorta complicated as to if I should take it or not.  Big point being is that it's not consistent with work hours or pay....but too much to type so I'll leave it at that.  But I got a whole new outfit to wear for it.  So now I have interview clothes!  It's a light blue shirt and a black suit!.....yeah , even a nice suit jacket ....feels weird but actually pretty comfy.  MAYBE I'll take a pic and post it one day.


Needless to say we've been going to the Mall of Louisiana a lot recently, for shopping, etc. When getting my suit altered the other day, we ate at Wasabi Jane's in the mall. Since I got a large coke, she gave me this really cool coke cup!  When I told her how much I loved Coke, and the cup, she poured Stephen's root beer into a cup like mine!  What a nice lady!  So now we have 2 cups like that.


Earlier I happened to find a really cool Coke t-shirt at Target.  I think that's the only reason I like the color red, lol.  Maybe I should be a spokesperson or something.......


Anyways, that's all that's up with me...how's your week????




Laters
-Jan

Isn't that cool!!!!???!!!

Can't really see the shirt....but I like the pic.  It's a hand in the peace sign, and Coca-Cola in many different languages.

So, I'm listening to Kenny Chesney and updating you guys....
I've been meaning to update for a week or so....but haven't gotten to it yet...
For you newcomers reading my posts....they are much like my mind....just nuts! There's not usually any organization and I just ramble...I type like I talk, and grammar doesn't always come first here.  But hey, it's fun for me!   ...I have started to make a sort of outline before I write tho, so that helps.


Last Wednesday (July 13th) dad turned 51!  We went to Aunt Ne-Ne's for a pool party with the fam.  It was really fun and I was so happy to finally be able to swim!  LoriAnn had NO fear of the water!  She loved it!  She'd splash herself in the face...or dad would accidentally DUNK her....she'd get back up and want more! So I have a daredevil niece.


Dad had an appearance last Saturday with the people at Middendorf's...the best seafood place EVER. Stephen, me, and pretty much everyone else in the family came to help out....with everything from crowd control to selling merchandise, to helping take care of the kiddos (Jillie and LoriAnn). I had so much fun.  Lorraine and I eventually organized how we wanted everything, and we got to working!  We had a lot of fun talking with everyone and seeing the kids act so nervous around dad, and get so excited to see Ty there. Our plan was to end the event with eating there for dinner...but that was changed.


A man came up to Stephen and me (us selling the merch) and asked us for a pen and paper.....which we didn't really have!  So we were sort of picking with him...cuz he kept asking us for everything we didn't have (but usually people do).  He wound up using a piece of poster board we had for signs, and a permanent marker from dad's table.  Turns out he was trying to write down his number for dad.  The whole time this was going on...I was thinking that this guy looks so familiar...
Well...I finally heard him introduce himself as Mark Hall....and I knew why I recognized him!  If you know ANYTHING about Christian music....you know about the group Casting Crowns.....of which Mark Hall is the lead songwriter and singer!   I shook his hand and didn't even think about getting his autograph! DOH!
It was like opposite day...he was the giddy one that wanted dad's autograph, lol.


Anyways...he had come there to eat lunch and by a weird coincidence dad was there too!  He bought a shirt, dad signed it, and left to go eat lunch.  He and my sis were talking but I had other people to tend to so I sort of tuned them out.  Later she tells me he gave us seats to their concert that night!!!! Wahooo!!!!
We were all so pumped!  After the appearance we ran home and got ready.  Got there for 6pm......they saw our vehicle and ushered us to an awesome parking spot right next to the church it was held in, and sent us all to the 'backstage' area.  They gave us pics of the band to get autographed, we all got a CD, and even a t-shirt!  All 13 of us!  It was so awesome!  By the time we got the autographs, pics with the band, and t-shirts...they were already playing on the stage.....so we were ushered to our seats in front of everyone...to some good seats too!  I felt like a celebrity!  During the intermission the aisle was crowded with people wanted a pic/autograph with dad......still so strange...Yeah, so that was my awesome night! Pics below...except didn't get one yet of the awesome blue shirt I got ;)

Jillie and me waiting for the band!....Casting Crowns is one of her fav bands....

Mark Hall (lead singer) and me...really nice guy! But then again the whole band was.

Singer to the left....OMG she's awesome!  To the right on the guitar...

During the concert!

can barely tell....but he put on dad's t-shirt after the intermission!  Then talked about how we all met up, how cool!

I could only eat the crawfish...everything else was way too spicy

Watched baseball tonight....she didn't think it was all that fun...

Hey guys,


Sooooo...I got the creative bug.  Instead of painting minis.....which is what I've been doing to the past year I think, I decided to paint on actual canvas.  I have future spots in my office for 2 8X10s, and decided to paint one of them, and kill 2 birds with one stone.


So I was jammin to music and wondering what to paint (just about the hardest part). When my fav band Paramore came on....and I had inspiration!  The song "Turn it on" came on, and the lyrics gave me an idea for this painting. I won't explain it to you, I'll let you decide what it means to you. I haven't had a painting actually have a 'meaning' since art in high school....


I took pics along the way with my phone, and I thought I'd share them here.  If you don't really care about the process, just go to the end of the post to see the 'finished' product, lol.  After years in art, and the past year painting minis, I sort of have it laid out how to paint things.  But I've realized (over the past year), that not everyone has painting knowledge like that (and I just wanna write another blog). Yeah, sooo...the pics are from my phone..which means the color can be quite off...so no, I didn't repaint old stuff (usually) it's just the phone being crazy. The last one you will be able to click on to see full size.




*********************************************************************************

Rough draft (got the pic from online)

Sent draft to computer and colored it in a bit with Photoshop.  I wanted a baby blue dress...then realized that it would be the same color of the sky...wouldn't work.

The sky...NOTE: color is horrible in this pic...    It's okay that the left side isn't all the great cuz it's gonna be painted over.

Cliff added

Drew the girl in and overlayed with thin permanent marker.  I should have shown the process i did for this...it is NOT all free hand drawn, lol. I would say this one's color is most like how it is in real life. Decided against wings.... It was gonna be a fairy at first...then a princessy girl...then made it into just a reg. little girl.

Painted in her skin.  Quite difficult.  Lighter colors wouldn't hide the marker, so I had to use Vallejo paint (for minis) because of it's high pigment: I could cover up the marker without having thick paint. Once I figured that out, took 2-3 diff tones to do the shading...made them more like water color.

Decided on purple for the dress..less princess or typical girl color...starting to like light purple now (thanks Liz). Didn't like the line of highlight on the cliff, so I changed that a bit.

Finished piece.  Took my time doing the layers of the hair, and added dirt and small rocks falling off of the cliff with her and some dirt on her feet.  This is not my best painting, but definitely not the worst.  Hope you enjoyed my explanation.

Cooked jambalaya for dinner, Lance dropped by and ate some.  Around 11 Stephen ate his last popsicle...and he was very sad, lol.  So we both started realizing we were hungry....by midnight we were on the road!  Turns out there's a coffee shop called Coffee Call....they do coffee AND beignets! And they're open till 2am!


We went there, I got some beignets and a cafe au lait.  Best part?  It comes already mixed, you just go to the coffee thing and pull the lever....awesome.  So I started to add sugar....and it just wasn't getting sweet.  If anyone knows me, they know I drink coffee milk.....and very sweet. So I must've added like 10 packets of sugar (stirring with a big straw all along)...and it wasn't getting any better.  After eating my sugary beignets, I decided to go for the sweet n low.  Wellllll....4 packets and my coffee was PERFECT!  I am comparing it to Community Coffee.........don't tell dad.


We finished up there and headed to Wal-mart, which was in the same parking lot.  I drank most of the rest of my cup there. Leaving wal-mart and stephen is telling me how I can't actually taste the coffee since I have so much sugar in it.  I disagree, of course, but I digress.....I finally realized what happened.  I got to about 1/3 left in the cup.....and suddenly my coffee was more like syrup.  Turns out the stirring I was doing just wasn't enough, and all of that real sugar just settled to the bottom!  Due to the sugar high I was already on from the sugary beignets and the coffee I already drank, I decided to not get diabetes and threw the rest away.


Um, yeah. So I'm home now and deciding what to do till the sugar gets out of my system.  Decided on the blog ...but now that's almost over.


ummmm....OH
So I found an old email of a free 10 day trial for WoW...which is awesome since I had to cancel my subscription since we're broke.  That ran out today...boooo!!!!  BUT last week I got another email for another free 7 days!  I'll prolly start that Saturday...so how cool!


Umm...I promise I have not been drinking!  But sugar can mess you up! Pair that with not really having a set schedule to take my ADD meds.....and forgetting to take them alot.....and you've got some trouble.  I've just started to notice it, even tho I've been really good the past few days about it.  The stuff I take isn't instant, so you have to take it a while for it to take effect, thus, it takes a little bit of you not taking it for you to notice.


No, I still haven't finished unpacking the house....or my office. That's really the part I need to finish the most...since I'm there most of the day.  But EVERYTHING is so much more fun when you have stuff that's not so fun to do.


Sooo...what else.....
Applied to a part time job for SLP...hopefully I can get an interview with them....
I also applied for a state job in Hammond like 3 weeks ago...still in the process....they just go really slow....I've been approved to actually be reviewed, they've confirmed my XP, etc, etc....
Other than that, the job search has been quite the bust.  I've called so many places, including hospitals, SNF's, clinics, and just random healthcare places.  I'm ready to work people,.....let's do this.


Thanks to everyone who's been helping us out (financially, emotionally, etc, etc) the past month since we've moved. Couldn't have done it without you!  Even letting us borrow a car with a/c in this horrible La heat, even just to run to the store.....we've been so appreciative.  And humbled.   I know this, I will never scoff and people hating the heat again.  I time EVERYTHING around when the coolest part of the day is now, lol.  Hence our midnight wal-mart runs, etc.  It's just not fun to be in a sauna to go anywhere.  But enough complaining...if that's what that was.


This is getting to be a looooong post.  Imagine if you were here!?  I don't know if you would have ears, I might have talked them off by now!


Oh, stuff for dad is going well.  The whole Swamp People thing is.....different, lol.  I was with mom and dad in Sam's the other day...and a lady wanted a pic of him and mom.  That day I was sort of the designated picture taker.  They'd ask for a pic...i'd say "I can take it if you wanna be in the pic with him"  Then they'd giggle and have the biggest grin, lol. Well, anyways, this lady was like, oh nooo....but I want you in there too.    Wait...what?  Me?    This lady took a pic of me, mom, and dad.  ...That was a first.  Sooo strange.  Suddenly the spotlight was on me too, cuz when I went to go sit by dad....I noticed that EVERYONE in the checkout lines were staring at us!  Not a comfortable situation for me.  But, yeah...that Sam's trip showed me just a little bit of what life is now like for dad.


OMG Jan, you really need to stop rambling!  ....did you notice I added another Label to my blog.  Rambling...for posts like these.


OH, and last thing...one day soon, I will take a little vid of a walkthrough of the house and post it to my youtube channel.  I'll post the link on this blog.


Random cute pic of my Kira girl!:

Before I give you 'my' horoscope for today, let me explain.  I DO NOT think that signs and horoscopes are real....However...  I do believe that there is some truth to them.  I don't mean all the stuff about stars aligning and what-not.  I think the different signs are just different personality types.  So for each personality, you have certain ones that are more or less compatible, and have certain tendencies.


My sign is supposed to be a Leo...I've never really felt like one, so a while back I researched all of the signs and it seems I am dead-on a Pisces.  Stephen happens to be dead-on with his actual sign: Virgo.  Of course, people can be mixes of two or three signs, but just so happens I am only one.


So a couple of months ago I downloaded a horoscope app for my phone.  I get a daily horoscope that I read about 50% of the time.  Well lately, it's just been crazy...     It's like it knows what I need to hear, lol...like it's sent specifically to me!  Neat..   Anyways.  That's my take on horoscopes and signs.


Here's some of mine from this week...


Pisces Jun 26 2011
You may be feeling defeated, Pisces. You have put great effort into something, and yet it feels as though your hard work and your opinions have not been respected. You may be at a point where you just want to let go of the reins and let the chips fall where they may. But you still have control here. You can still make a huge difference in the outcome of a special endeavor. Sometimes - out of insecurity or disillusionment - you give up too easily. In this case it could mean an unnecessary loss. Grab those reins and get back in the saddle. 


Pisces Jun 28 2011
There is a window of opportunity that is slowly opening now, Pisces. Right now it is only open a tiny crack, but through it you can feel the breeze come flowing in. It feels good, doesn't it? You can expect more of those good feelings if you will only pry open that window the rest of the way and jump through it with abandon. You will soon have a chance to make a huge difference in your life, but you will need to seize an opportunity the moment it is presented to you. Don't make excuses, make progress. 


Pisces Jun 29 2011
It can't hurt to smile, Pisces. Even though you may be feeling pressure when it comes to your financial security, and you are worried about how you'll pay a bill or make ends meet, you can never go wrong by embracing a happy attitude. In fact, if you can try to imagine your future as being more secure and carefree, you will draw someone into your life who can help you get back on track - either through mentorship, financial assistance, or by offering a connection to a better job or source of income. 


Pisces Jun 30 2011
If you are stressed now over a money matter, then giving in to that stress can only make it worse. When you worry and imagine the worst, your anxiety draws more trouble to you. But when you exude happiness and a hopeful outlook, you repel negativity like a force field. That's not to say that little things can't go wrong, but in time your positive energy will win out, and you will change the course of things. Even though you may have some troubles or challenges now, there is hope and good fortune on the horizon. Think of that instead. 


Pisces Jul 1 2011
You may be feeling as though you have no control over your own life, Pisces, but in fact - other than the universe - you are the ONLY one in control. That means you have the power to change your life. Of course that also means you have full responsibility for what you do and for what you don't do. That's probably what you are afraid of now. You may be worried that if you attempt to get a derailed aspect of your life back on track - and you fail - that others will look at you as a failure. But the only way you can fail now is not to try. 


Anyways, just thought I'd share.


Speaking of Pisces....Liz is also a Pisces (IRL and personality)
Me and Stephen were shopping in Winn-Dixie the other day and I saw this...had to take a pic of it and send it to her cuz it's her fav color and reminded me of her...awwwww....(pic doesn't do the color justice, btw)


I know I'm crazy....but that's why ya'll love me right!??! hehe


laters
-Jan