kaijupenguin

OMG I'm a size 4 again! Now to keep it this way and flatten my tummy a just a bit more to expose my abs.

Gonna be making green tea cupcakes and tater salad for tomorrow's family BBQ. Hope the weather's gonna be kind so my sibs and I can play some badminton.

FINALLY my laptop is back at home and running oh so quietly! Of course I remembered to purchase a USB hub while I was there and I dropped a week's worth of interning on a 500G external harddrive. I should finally back up my stuff after this scare that my laptop would melt on me.

I'm now glad that I got home without any heavy rain happening. Took a shower and I really should go eat something. Office has been getting busier and I only had a bite from a sandwich before chucking it.

Yesterday I took my MAC to Tekserve for some hardware support. It was virtually an hour wait but I'm not complaining too much since it would've been worse over at an Apple store. Hopefully, getting the fans replaced should end the unsettling whirring and stuff. (oh please!)

So till Friday (if all goes well), I will be computer-less at home. I'll be filling in for my boss till July 4th, sigh. Least I'll be able to check my email and stuff at the office.

So I came into work, 15 minutes late thanks to the 6-train suddenly going express on me. I get in, finding my boss not there. So I sat for a bit. Then I got an email saying she's got some mild food poisoning or something so she won't be coming in. A bunch of people are MIA due to photoshoots or whatnot so I've been sitting here bored and watching episodes of CSI:NY online. I would be gone by now but I got family dinner plans tonight at 7.

If I knew how today would've been, I would've brought my laptop with me and head on over to Tekserve for a doctor's visit. The fan has been very loud and unsettling. :(

Red Lantern cupcakes! I apologize for the crappy quality the photos, my digicam is quite old. Next is orange Lantern when I get my tupperware back.



These babies are red velvet (duh) with cream cheese buttercream. I had so much fun practicing my piping with these. This batch is a lot stickier than the green lantern ones but damn the frosting is damn tasty and for my first try at making red velvet is a rousing success!

Yep I did. I actually made one of my DC theme cupcakes a reality! Since I kinda promised to bring baked goods when I finally go visit Eddie and finally get my tour of the DC office.... and that the biggest title they're working on/really marketing is the Green Lantern, I figure my Green Lantern cupcake will come first.


Both the cake and buttercream frosting is green tea flavored and yes I did individually pipe the candy logo.

I had a great time visiting the office and meeting the cool peeps who work there. And the cupcakes were a hit! A good number of the editorial department weren't very subtle about the hint for some red velvet (red rage lantern) cupcakes. XD I'll have to find out when I CAN stop by again and have time to bake. But hey the great thing is that I get to bake, have people I can give away/be taste testers and the overall look being approved by the DC people.

I'm back from my getaway trip and I had a great time all in all. Due to the Memorial day traffic, even though I took an earlier bus, I didn't arrive in PA for another hour. But luckily I saw Rags when the bus pulled up at the station and it was smooth from then on.

The following morning, Eddie drove into town and Rags, Jess and I all went to a fab kitschy place called Renee's cafe for brunch. Their french toast and omelette concoctions are totally worth traveling from NYC to a small town in PA for! From then we went to the Frank Frazzeta museum and it was AWESOME seeing the pretty paintings.

Most of the time, we hung out at the bar and on Saturday, I got talked into having one drink aside from my usual glass of water. It's called the Flaming Pumpkin (Eddie dubbed it the Green Goblin) and yes the flaming meant "on fire" and not "teh gay". It really did taste like pumpkin pie but sure enough, the alcohol heat switched on the Asian curse and I went red, got really warm and a headache. I downed a lot of ice water and luckily it didn't linger for too long. Also another new thing I got was a crash course on playing pool courtesy of Rags. I still suck but not as bad.

Sunday, it was once again brunch at Renee's! Afterwards, I joined Jess and Eddie for their star wars play date of having a light saber duel over at the open field at the of the block. I took some action shots while they fought and they eventually got me doing my first light saber fight. It was NERDY but real fun until the clouds parted and the sun made it waaaayy too muggy to continue. A few hours of nap time/watching History of the World Part 1 later, we got dinner and said goodbye to Eddie.

Today before heading back to NYC, Jess and I went to the mall to hang out and pick up a few things while giving Rags some guy time and get his last page drawn up. The bus ride I took was smooth and apparently missed the dreaded post holiday traffic and, I didn't have to wait long for a bus to take me back to Jersey either. I'm glad I made this trip and I hope to visit again sometime this summer.

about half an hour ago my boss passed my cubicle and said "Once you have the wall printed and up, get the fuck out of here! Bye!" then beelines for the doors.

I clocked myself out for the day but I'm giving my phone about 20 more minutes or so to charge before I make my bus trip down to see Jessie n' Rags this afternoon. Called sis to let her know that I'll be away and luckily she'll be dropping by to pick up a drill so she agreed to water my strawberry plant before leaving. Yay problem solved!

Time to go!

Freelance ended early today due to finishing by lunch and sent off to clients for review. The coworker who worked on the same project, Alex notified our boss and we signed out for the day and caught a matinee of Star Trek. Truth be told, I didn't know much about the original show but recognizing enough of the characters, I still very much enjoyed the movie. And it is amusing seeing the casting of the young crew. Alex and I were like "Dude that's Syler from Heroes and Harold (of Harold and Kumar) is Zulu!" and were amused. He was even more so since he actually watched Star Trek.

Afterwards, we split ways while I did my workout, finally picked up the insect plant spray and new sports bras & pants. I splurged a little and picked up a couple of polo-collared tops. Came home and watched both of the CSI: Vegas and CSI:NY's season finale. Now I go get ready for bed and catch up on some shut eye.

That all-nighter with Jessie, Rags and Eddie in NYC on Saturday totally screwed up my sleep schedule. But it was worth it!

I've been ok to 'eh' with Rowan Atkinson's Mr. Bean for years. But I've always preferred Mr. Atkinson's acts when he talks normally. The man can delivered great lines with such a straight face it makes it even better.

So yeah here are a few of my fave monologue sketches. I had my daily giggle today so I'm passing it around.

I finally got off my butt and update the online portfolio. The following sections have been updated:

-Online store's up
-Comics section ; House of LSD, sneak peek of "The Waddling"
-Illustrations section ;misc sketches, color work
-Links Section ; www.iandorian.com

I'll be adding the sketches I did for 2008's Xmas cards later this week. For now, I'm going to bed.

NEVER again will I go to the gym without a sports bra especially when doing cardio. I better stop by Target or Modell's and get a couple more so doing laundry late won't be too much of a problem.

*heads off to shower and start the laundry*

I dunno what's the deal but for the past few weeks, I get around 7-8 hours of sleep every night. That doesn't sound much of a problem, in fact it's pretty good. Problem is that I've been having the tendency to get wake up 2-3 times during the night, check my clock and get back to sleep. I dunno what's up with me but one of two thoughts tend to emerge while I'm in dreamland..."You DID set your alarm right?" or "gee I feel like I've been sleeping forever, I should get up". The latter makes me feel like when you're on those 15+ hour international flights, which you'd pass out in the beginning of it, and somehow feeling you've probably slept through a huge chunk of it, you get up and realized that it's only been a couple hours!

I got hired officially yesterday for a 3-week (or so) freelance gig to do some illos for medical product instruction booklets. Yeah it doesn't sound thrilling but I'm REALLY happy about it! Firstly, it's a company that I had enjoyed working with and its location's really easy for me to get to. The bonus is I get to use that gigantic wacom monitor they have! It's great that I can use Illustrator's pen tool really freehand when I make the vector images if needed.

They and my boss over at my internship was flexible and talk about good timing! While waiting for the gig's confirmation, my boss remembered to discuss with me about her summer vacation plans and we needed to juggle some of my days around so I can be at the office every day she isn't. I was told to take a day out of a few weeks off and make them up during her trip. SO now, my client is happy to hear that I'll be at their studio for 3 consecutive days every week of the freelancing and my boss got her bases covered and things are dandy on this note.

Man I feel like I could've done so much more today like clean up the bathroom, kitchen and the floor. Must be the heat wave that's slowing me down. I get up in the morning to get to the gym (went fine as usual) and once I get home, I feel a little...eh.

I finished coloring a commission which is good but I didn't get much progress on my comics. I really need to step it up and get more pages done. Also I felt over the weekend and today, I kinda slipped with my eating habits but luckily I'm still keeping up with the exercising and hopefully my hours of cardio this week will keep the calories from doing too much damage...just have to make sure I take less calories and carbs for the next few days to balance things out.

Thursday's my last complimentary session with my trainer, I hope I don't disappoint with the evaluation at the end. I've been keeping my routine AND even tacked on more cardio time since last week. I'll be hell frustrated with myself if I didn't make any good progress.

Posting my recent illustrations into site tomorrow that are more commercial than comics. I've mentioned I was working on some earlier this week and yesterday I finished the last one which is a Tiffany & Co. theme.

Ah k, since joining the gym, I've been trying to be good about it. I spend about 1 hour-1 hr 15 (not including locker room time) doing toning exercises and cardio. I weighted myself on thursday and was perplexed that I seemed to have gained 4 pounds since my weigh-in on day one with the trainer. BUT at the same time my shirts have been fitting better. Chatted with crazylobo for the bit that night about it. he said more than likely, it's the muscle I've gained and I'm not burning my excess fat as quick. XP I mean I could tell that my arms, legs and abs feel firmer but it's kinda moot if there's a layer of cushion hiding it.

So looks like I'll need to add on more cardio time one way or another. I'll add another 30 mins of cardio on my regular days and on days I go to the office, 1 hour or so of cardio after work.

It's feeling rather intimidating seeing the majority of the women there looking so great and I'm just... eh. SO annoying that my waist area is the last to slim down.

it's a rush but I'm working on illustration samples for product advertising/storyboards (?) Got some misc images but my cousin, who forwarded me the notice about this opportunity asked me to also do something that shows whether I have any sense of fashion advertising/packaging. Since the company in questions is Tiffany & Co, she suggested to make them jewels sparkle and show it off. I'm doing my best over here in less than 24 hours on concept. I'll pretty much be bringing in some tracing vellum to work with me to make the clean pencil lines. I hope the office is gonna be rather slow so I can get it all ready for me to scan, color and assemble once I get home. I want to finish this ASAP enough that position hasn't been filled yet.

Oh and since it is good to do product research... it wasn't a good idea to stare at the Tiffany's website with too much concentration. I found some awesome pieces for reference but I couldn't help but go "Oooh such pretty sparklies!" at a lot of them. (sigh)

I'm spent.

I ended up staying about 1 hour 45 min past my usual time at the office. My boss had to cancel her days off last friday and today since things are rather haywire (aka FUCKING LATE!) She had to bring in her kid over and let's just say that this 3-year old munchkin is a real handful. I spent about...80-90% of the day watching over him and in the back of my mind, I was grateful he was giving me a bit of a work out... not bad for tailing him all over the office while he rides his scooter, giving him piggy back rides and oh yeah, picking him up and throwing him in the air (higher!) I did feel like I was back in my old job. So all in all, I helped out my boss with getting things delivered, picked up and baby sitting the kid so she can get some work done. Not exactly part of the list of responsibilities when I applied but least the kid is a lot more comfortable around me this second time he showed up. :P I would say that despite that I knew that she'd need me to stay on a bit longer, I couldn't wait to get out!

When I did, I decided to treat myself to a nice dinner at Les Halles. I know a couple of you are wondering did I get my froi gras or at least a dessert, nope. Much as I'd like to, I'm watching my calories. Instead I came home, took a quick shower and had a bowl of sliced cantalope. And I found episodes of What's Michael and Mr. Ajikko on youtube that me nostalgic. Sadly I'd post a clip of each but these anime have no fansubs and only if you understand Cantonese, they would make any sense. What's Michael is all about cute kitties and doggies antics and how it tends to give the humans a heart attack. Mr. Ajikko...the granddaddy of cooking animes! I would (try) to watch these two cartoons every Sunday morning in the late 80's and early 90's.

Till my web comic, House of LSD returns online after sitting through years of lying dormant. One thing off my check list. It'll be double helpings on its first week. Starting tomorrow (Monday) and updating again on Friday!

houseoflsd.comicgen.com

Oh and Happy Easter!