Illustration Friday - Match

Not really a lot to say here, but enjoy!
...I guess, I should actually say something about this since I've been asked a couple of times and a couple of things aren't super clear by the sizing of the pic. I did this picture a few years back as mainly an exercise in shading: the back wall of the room was done in a 'tattooing' style of shading where I did tight little spirals of black to fill that area and to give the walls some texture, on the jacket of the foreground figure I followed the lines and wrinkles of the fabric to give a flowing cloth look to the material and finally on the hat I used a tight cross-hatching to emulate the material there as well, for the rest of the picture I used a 'comic book' cross hatching for shading.
As I was creating the illustration, just for fun and not for any real or overt symbolism (of course there's probably some kind of psychological interpretation here -- I'm probably one sick puppy and just don't know it yet), I decided to do a couple of things to make the picture more surreal. If you look at the railing on the balcony, the shading is reversed. The woman's shadow doesn't match her pose in the doorway and (again not real clear in the sizing here, but) the foreground figure's thumb is actually on fire lighting his cigarette. Thanks for viewing and for the comments.

Not Sure How To Title This Post...

This morning at 7am, Jane had a little bit of bleeding. We rushed to the ER to get her checked out. Actually we went to her OB/GYN's office first, but they've been incompetent through this whole thing with providing here wrong information, on-call doctor's not calling back when she's phoned with concerns, scheduling blood test appointments at times when doctor's or even qualified/experienced nurses/phlebotomists aren't around, scheduling ultrasound appointments without sending the paperwork through to the proper specialist, not communicating results from her previous ultrasound appointment which were apparently not good, general lack of communication and general apathy. Anyway we called them for advice this morning, waited for about an hour and a half, then called back to see what was going on, waited again for about an hour, finally getting a call back to come in for a blood test. Then once we were there, waiting for someone to be available to draw some blood for another hour, getting told over the phone that taking a test today would not yield results for another day.... Get the point?!

We finally just went to the emergency room to have it taken care of. Anyway, the sad news is that the ER doctors confirmed what we already suspected. Jane suffered a miscarriage today after approx. 8 weeks (almost 9) of pregnancy. Jane, obviously was upset and it hit Hylah a little hard since we were all excited about the pregnancy and the previous ultrasounds and blood tests were showing normal hormone levels and fetal development. My main concern was that Hylah and Jane were OK and although I was disappointed by the results today, I just wanted to make sure that they were taken care of.

The good thing, I suppose, is that there never was any heartbeat that could be detected. So, I kept telling Jane and Hylah that this one wasn't meant to happen. That her body knew that it wasn't right. That we would try again as soon as we were all ready to move forward. I don't know, this is all still a little raw so I'm just typing my thoughts as they come to me, but I just wanted to put it out there to get things off of my chest.

We just got home a few moments ago and Jane, after a long hard day in the ER is sleeping and Hylah is over at the neighbor's house playing with the boys next door. I just bought Jane some flowers so hopefully that will lift her spirits a little when they arrive tomorrow.

All for now.

Interface of the Future

Wow! That's all I can say about this. You'll just have to check it out.

Click for Info and Video

Swayze Wants Attention

Patrick Swayze Defends Gibson (From imdb.com)
Hollywood star Patrick Swayze is the latest celebrity to defend Mel Gibson, following his controversial drink driving arrest last month. The Lethal Weapon star issued a apology last week after it was revealed he had made anti-Semitic comments in a drunken tirade on a Malibu, California highway. While some Hollywood producers and agents have stepped forward to condemn Gibson's drunken slurs, the actor's pals -producer Dean Devlin and actress Jodie Foster have offered their support to the troubled star. Swayze says, "Mel is a wonderful human being. He is not anti-Semetic. People say stupid things when they happen to have a few (drinks), and especially if you don't drink any more, or have limited your drinking for a long time and all of a sudden you decide to have one too many with the boys - you are stupid." The Dirty Dancing star is confident the incident will not affect Gibson's career, adding, "When you are a pit bull, and you love what you do and you are going to continue to grow, that talent will find its way out. Talent deserves to be honored. Hands deserve to be slapped if you do something stupid as well, but don't take it too far."

"Besides, he was just doing research for his new leading role in the new movie 'Drunk Driving Jew Hater'."

(I added that last part)

Don't get me wrong. I've been and, I guess, still am a Mel Gibson fan although I haven't actively sought out his movies for a few years now, but if you're going to show your ass in public like this, expect it to be spanked (hard or soft as the case may be).

Illustration Friday - Capture

Had to dust this one off for this topic. It's an illustration that I did about 14-15 years ago and although it doesn't necessarily represent a capture, I thought it was close to this week's topic in feeling. Enjoy!

Bun Update

As I mentioned earlier, we had a slight scare regarding the pregnancy a couple of weeks ago. Now, considering that we just found out a couple of weeks ago, having a scare that soon in the pregnancy was pretty troublesome. Well it turned out to be nothing.

The pains that Jane was having have subsided and she was being monitored by her doctor with blood tests and ultrasounds for days following our initial visit. The blood tests all show that her hormone levels are rising normally and, since the original pain is now gone, plus the lack of any other symptoms indicating an ectopic pregnancy, everything seems to be coming along normally.

We went in last Wednesday to have the follow-up ultrasound and, this time, we were actually able to see something. An egg sack was forming and the little yolk was developing normally so the ultrasound tech informed us that this stage is consistent with a 6-7 week pregnancy (closer to 6). Sorry, couldn't detect a heart beat yet, that's probably about 10-12 weeks away yet.

Now we just have to get our house in order, since we've been lagging on getting the last boxes unpacked since the move - we've just been enjoying our summer up until now. But, Hylah will be starting 4th grade soon and we need to make room for new clothes and other associated Back to School paraphenalia. Plus, pretty soon Jane won't be able to do any serious heavy lifting or moving around furniture and I'll even have to start taking over the daily cleaning of the litter box.... That's gonna suck....just kidding on that last part - Geez! What kind of guy do you think I am?!