July 12, 2010

ARGH

Overwhelmed.

Posted by Red Monkey at 8:14 PM | Comments (0) | Blog | Stumble

May 19, 2010

Five Years

Seems every time I get on a roll and back to regular posting, something invariably pops up to silence the posting! This past week was so busy that I missed Red Monkey's blogiversary. Apparently after five years of blogging, that's just not as earth-shattering as it once was.

Soon after I wrote the long post about teaching, I was contacted by one of my former students. She's an English teacher herself now. I was yet again surprised at just how emotional that contact made me. Don't get me wrong, I love being a graphic designer and can't imagine not doing it. But I do miss teaching as well. Obviously I need to be twins ....

Things will remain quiet here for at least another week. I started a drawing last week which pretty much is eating every moment of my non-working day. Without thinking, I made the main element of the drawing the size of an 8.5x11 sheet of paper. Umm, yeah. That means my drawing table is covered in sheets of 8.5x11 paper for the rest of the drawing. I've got the bulk of the drawing pencilled out, but there are still a half dozen important elements or details to work in. Once that's all roughed out, I can take the individual sheets down (no, I didn't plan this well at all) and ink them individually, then scan them. The only thing that kept me from just starting over with a reasonably sized single sheet of paper was that I'm working pretty fast at this scale - plus these sheets will be easier to scan and stitch in Photoshop.

I'm thinking when it's inked and assembled in Photoshop, I will probably trace it out onto the large artboard I've been hoarding for the past three years, so I have an original that's worth keeping as well.

Even that project was slowed down, however as we were gone last weekend for our niece's birthday party in Ohio (she's two - and according to her "walking amuck").

Then of course, there's the day job ... the house ... the spouse ... the critters ... family ... church ... various obligations ....
It's been pretty darn busy around here, with little quiet time for writing.

But there's a big post brewing ... about permanence ... about change ....

Eventually.

Posted by Red Monkey at 5:45 AM | Comments (1) | Blog | Stumble

April 2, 2010

By Special Request

Well, because someone asked for some current pix of the dogs, I give you ... umm ... current pictures of the dogs.

Scraps is actually sharing his beloved "nest" with his baby brother, Tieg.

Tieg is sooooo innocent sometimes

For some reason, Tieg thought he'd actually get the rest of that burger.

Look at the big boy! He's almost a year old now.

I went to sit down in my recliner ... and just managed to notice a wee bit of a snout poking out just before I sat down!

And all three of the babies - Tieg is the chocolate and tan dapple and the baby of the bunch. Scout is now six years old - she's the black and tan piebald in the jacket sitting on the arm of the chair. And Scraps is the black and tan dapple lounging in the back. (He's eight now.)

There you have it ... all three of the babies.

Posted by Red Monkey at 10:29 PM | Comments (4) | Blog | Stumble

March 16, 2010

New Look Complete

Well, it took far less time than I thought (or I would have done this ages ago). I believe I've converted most, if not all, of the existing pages to the new look. The About Me page needs to be completely re-visited (like the entire rest of the coyotethunder section) and I hope to do that this weekend. There are several tweaks I still need to make to the overall design (one is adding the full illustration of the red monkey back into the sidebar), but these should be easy and will probably happen over the next few weeks.

If you see something that doesn't look right or is using the old style, drop me a comment, use the contact form or email me: red dash monkey at this domain.

I don't know whether I'm excited that this is done before I go in for surgery or disappointed as it's a project I won't be able to do whilst off work!

Posted by Red Monkey at 7:05 PM | Comments (2) | Blog | Stumble

March 15, 2010

New Look Coming

About two years ago, I designed a totally different look for Red Monkey and have had too many other projects going to ever implement it. Yesterday I got a bee up my butt and coded most of it for the main page. I need to finish up the footer and then decide what I'm doing on the archive pages (I'm thinking of dumping the category pages as they're just too damn long and useless - unless someone knows a *good* MT plug-in for pagination?). I'm guessing I'll have it up by the end of the week.

If you want a sneak peek at the work in progress ... check it out here.

Posted by Red Monkey at 5:17 AM | Comments (1) | Blog | Design | Stumble

January 9, 2010

Apparatus

If you ever get bleach in your eye, rinse it out with room temperature water for 5-10 minutes. Then, go to the doctor or urgent care or ER, where they will evaluate your eye and continue the irrigation with a bag of saline. They give you some antibiotic drops and possibly a tetanus shot and send you home.

How do they irrigate your eye? I'm glad you asked. One end of a tube is attached to the IV saline. Then they slip this "contact" lens onto the eyeball:

It was an exciting Saturday.

Particularly after we finally got home and then had to dig and then push the truck out of a snowbank because someone wasn't paying attention to that either.

Posted by Red Monkey at 5:04 PM | Comments (5) | Blog | Struggles | Stumble