So, guess what!

Another forced hiatus.

:P

Hopefully not for very long, but my apartment building's water heater exploded and dumped a ton of hot water into my apartment and cooked everything. Or rather, just ruined the cabinets and flooring and some personal belongings. I'm temporarily homeless and all of my supplies and my art computer are in the apartment still. I think the computer was safe, as it wasn't on the floor (close to it, but not on it)

They're replacing everything and I'm staying with friends until everything's fixed up. They were hoping to have it done by the time I was back in Texas (yesterday) but they're not even close. I didn't expect they would be, last week was a bad time to try to get anything like that done.

So, yeah. I'll be still sketching and inking comics but I won't be able to scan, color, post, until I'm back home.

... Sorry. I seem to have unfortunate luck at times.

~Shinga

...to know what Santa Claus gave me for Christmas...

This year I received several things on my wish list, actually - including something I've been wanting for quite some time, but never really gotten around to get for myself.
Mr Man in all his awesomeness provided me with this particular gift, and believe me when I tell you - I cannot wait to book it. He gave me a gift certificate for a 6-hour long day of spa treatments including lunch.
Awesome? Oh yes.
He also gave me Kung Fu Panda on Blu-Ray, because I wanted to see it, and we failed at obtaining the actual movie when download-attempts were made.

The rest:
* Les Parents conjured up a tripod and remote control for my Canon EOS450D camera.
* Mr Man's brother (and family) gave me the Sex and the City DVD box set, and also a heavenly smelling body butter and face-mask.
* My brother and his girlfriend gave me this awesome handbag made of recycled rubber.
* My cousin, aunt and grandma teamed up and got me leather mittens and knit shawl.
* Mr Man's mother got me my favourite perfume, and accompanying body lotion.

Christmas Eve was spent at Les Parents, with Mr Man.
It was nice and relaxed, great food, and even greater company.

Head Trip - Christmas Fan Service

I'm in Memphis visiting family! Flew in this morning to surprise them. I'll be back Saturday but due to... a surprise emergency involving my apartment Monday's comic might be a bit delayed. But I've already got it sketched up so even on Christmas I'm not slackin' off. ;)

Have a good holiday, you guys.

~Shinga

Ahh i'm sucha bad friend, thanks guys for the lj gifts!! :D

Well I saw Avatar yesterday. ( Read more... )

also WHOO I got Little Rocket Man and Neighborhood Watch on HL2 booya

I think I got my christmas present from the universe early this year. I got a new friend. Now I won't ask for anything more^^

Holidays will be spent with my parents, brothers and grandmother at home, untill I leave next monday for Hamar and Andy. Newyear's eve is set for Tønsberg. Can't wait, this will be a wonderful christmas!

Happy holidays! Seasonal greetings! Saffron salute!
-M.


PS: The "Love" series will continue in January, unless I suddenly find myself with and idle (eric?) moment earlier.

Holiday debuggery

We know there were a few kinks with the holiday promotion. We've been working very hard to get them ironed out. If you have a paid/permanent account, keep on sending those coupons. Here's an update:

• If you were unable to send out multiple coupons at a time, please perform a hard refresh, and you should be good to go.
• If you redeemed a coupon to upgrade your account and the balance at checkout was $0 instead of $9.95 or $15, this means your upgrade did not go through (nor were you charged). We've straightened this out, so you can now apply your holiday coupon toward the purchase of an annual paid account.
• If you tried to redeem a holiday coupon and had trouble using a gift certificate to cover the balance of an annual paid account, we identified the root problem. If this happened to you, you can now use your holiday coupon together with your gift certificate.
• If the number of holiday coupons you have available suddenly goes up (instead of down), this might be due to recipients declining the coupons, at which point your pool of available coupons will be replenished and, therefore, increase.
• If you need assistance with holiday coupons or pretty much anything else (well, LiveJournal related), please open a support request and we'll be more than happy to help!

Tweaks

• There were some initial glitches displaying results on My Guests, but we've worked them out. We hope you'll check out who's been checking you out!
• Some of you reported formatting issues using the Rich Text Editor (i.e., line breaks were being removed incorrectly). We've implemented a fix! Thanks so much for your patience.

Give a little extra!

We're pleased to report that we've already sold over 100 virtual red ribbons in honor of National AIDS Awareness month. Remember, for each charitable vgift you purchase for $2.99, we'll donate 100 percent of gross proceeds to IAVI.org (the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative) to fund the development of an HIV vaccine. Once again, we thank you for your generosity.

Celebrate with holiday vGifts!

Stop by the Virtual Gift Shop and share some holiday magic with your LiveJournal friends.

Photos of the week

We're back with more dazzling pictures from around the world. Congrats to marlenemcc, who has been awarded a virtual blue ribbon as the winner of our fourth photo contest. We hope you'll click over to LJ_Photophile poll and tell us your picks in pics!

For more fantastic user content, we'll meet you under the cut. ( Read more... )

Curtains

Thanks, again, for reading. Here's wishing you the very merriest of holidays. We'll see you next year!

It's the 23rd of December now where I live, and I thought I'd post an early "Christmas gift", since I won't have time the following days. :9 It's a short story from Blekinge, Sweden, and of course Christmas-themed.

I don't know how this day was dealt with in other countries, but in Scandinavia Christmas time, and especially the night to Christmas Eve, was a time when trolls, ghosts, and other ungodly creatures had even more power than usual in this world. Following tale is one example of this.

( The Knight of Elleholm )

Happy Holidays! :)

Highlights of 2009:
* Mr. Man (Eddie) :)

* Getting my sakura-tattoo ...finally! Marking the beginning of the rest of my life.

* Somehow managed to get an extension on my contract at my work place - twice, no less.

* Kvinesdal Rock Festival (Norway Rock Festival) with wistomaniac, nilfy & Snarky.

* For once, celebrating my birthday properly. This included people at work lining up at my reception desk singing Happy Birthday to You.

* Parties and gatherings with work (Ladies' Christmas party especially)


It's been a good year.

Head Trip - Meanwhile, Back in Memphis... pt 3

This about wraps up the 'catching up' comics for now.

2009 has not been an entirely kind year to me and my family. ;)

(How the hell did I manage to post this twice... but the first post only being half done...)

'tis the season!
The season for stress, high blood pressure, anxiety attacks for those of us who dislike huge crowds, and the spending of money on presents.
Was downtown with Les Parents today - shopping Christmayhem presents.

Am deadly tired now.

Looking forward to a nice relaxing Christmas, though.
It will be spent at Les Parents' house, and the rest of the vacation will be spent packing and moving the last of my stuff to Eddie's our apartment.

Anyways, have a good one.

This is one of my favorite children's stories in Gaelic, the sing-song cadences of the memory list amuses me. I was going to post it as a response to goldenmoonrose's request to tell her a story, but thought it might be a bit much for a response.

( Morechan and Minachan )

Stories of this sort are thought to have been composed as memory building exercises - to help children become accustomed to keeping things in memory. i think that they're just a lot of fun and the simple sing-song repetition appeals to little ones (how else could they stand shows like Barney and friends?)

There are a number of other such memory stories that I can think of in English - The Twelve Days of Christmas, The House that Jack Built, The Rattlin' Bog, There's a Hole in the Bottom of the Well, and one about a little old lady coming home from market. What other memory building stories are out there?

eta - I just remembered another one - There was an Old Lady. Also found this website - http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/folktexts.html#c scroll down to Chain Tales. There's a whole slew of them!

I work in an afterschool program, and, during snack time, the kids are always demanding that I tell them stories. I love it, but I'm beginning to run out of stories. I try and tell them obscure ones, ones that aren't well known, that they haven't heard before. They tend to enjoy the gory ones, the darker/scarier ones, and ones with clever heroes (like Jack and the Giant or Odysseus). Their current favorite is Blue Beard. They love anything: ghost stories, fables, fairy tales, mythology. Any recommendations for specific tales or sourses?