Jan and the Cons

We're in the final week of January...and winter has officially stepped up it's game. With the arrival of Winter Storm Juno, it's been a little intimidating to say the least. When I first heard about Juno (before Juno became Juno), all I heard was that it was gonna hit the Northeast pretty hard. Thank you, Ohio, for being in the Northeast, but not being in THAT Northeast. I'm really hoping that all the people who are being affected by the storm are going to come out of this ok, and not be without provisions for too long. Officials have really been talking up this storm, so hopefully people heeded the warning seriously and prepared for the worst. But Ohio has certainly seen it's seasons of severe power outages caused by severe storms, but winter is never fun to deal without modern day conveniences, no matter where you live.

That's not at all to say Ohio hasn't seen it's fair share of snow as a result of Juno. Right now we are covered in a fluffy blanket of snow, with temps in the single digits again. I. Seriously. Hate. Winter. Seriously. As long as Ohio doesn't get blasted between now and let's saaaayy, oooohhh, next Monday, then we'll be good. This weekend is Ohayocon here in Columbus, and I nerdily dub it my "social event of the year". Last year I had pre-ordered my pass, but couldn't use it because Ohio had consequently gotten hit with a pretty crippling snowstorm of it's own right before the con. I mean, counties all around were shouting out level 2 snow emergencies, and not to mention I was pretty much trapped in my house. Our lane was completely impassable. So when I heard about this "Historic Blizzard" coming in to hit the Northeast, I just pretty much rolled my eyes and cursed. But, thank you Ohio, for not being in the way. Maybe we can still be friends.

So here's to hoping, and keeping my fingers crossed that the badge I had pre-ordered over the summer for Ohayocon 2015 doesn't go to waste thanks to another storm, or blizzard, or general impassable conditions.

Wow!

So the weather here in Ohio has mellowed out (for the time being anyway), and if it has to be winter, this is surely my kind of winter. The temperature has stayed within the range of 28-36 degrees. It has purely been enjoyable. Not too frigid where every second spent outside is sheer torture, and not too warm for all the snow to melt to expose the depressing environment of a bare Ohio landscape in winter. Not saying that I want it to stay this way for long, every day I tick off a day on my calendar and count the days until spring.

Still plugging away at the ol' life. Things have certainly gotten interesting in my end, and hopefully once some time has passed, I'll be able to share a few things. Needless to say, the things I'm going through right now, well, it's teaching me a lot about life. A LOT. I've never felt so overwhelmed and helpless, but thankfully I'm surrounded by loving family to help me through such times.

In other news, I've finally joined Pinterest, and am honestly a bit hooked! I had received a tablet for Christmas, and it's been fun to just occasionally pop up my board while I'm sitting on the couch, looking for other things, and it's just fun to save that quick little thing for later.

This is an older doodle, but something that I still enjoy rediscovering.

2015!

Well, it is 2015, 2014, what happened to you man, you used to be cool!

Seriously, it's 2015. It came here too quickly for me.

I've been meaning to post about this for a while, but about 2 months ago, my HP scanner had died. It was seriously one of the saddest things that happened to me in 2014, as silly as that sounds. My parents gave me that scanner 10 years ago for Christmas, and it's been an indispensable part of my of my studio ever since.

I'm sooo weird when it comes to replacing my electronics. For some reason I have to sit and mull over the loss of the piece and then gear up to replace it. Over the summer, my PS3 had died, and even though I was in the middle of playing 3 games on it, it took me 4 weeks to justify replacing it. Money wasn't even an issue, I could've gone out the next day and purchased a new one, but didn't, because that's just how I roll.

But anyyyyyywwwaaaaay, as I was building up momentum to buy a scanner, I was doing research on the standard specs for a scanner, and was shocked to see that my scanner that was a decade old, was actually on par with the scanners nowadays!

In my perfect mindset, if I have to be forced to put money down on a new device, the device needs to be a true upgrade (as long as the price is within reason, of course), with either phenomenal specs or something that will really increase my productivity. I was hoping to find a scanner with a bed larger than my deceased HP, which was 9x11.5" or so. All of the ones I was finding were about the same which was a disappointment, or looking at large-format Epson scanner that starts at $2,500. Yup. No kidding. I thought I'd be stuck with no solution to easily scan my 11x14" sketchbook and watercolor pages.

and then, I found this on Microcenter's website!

 It is an 11x17 scanner, that is actually under $500! I don't know if it's visible, but there are 2 8.5x11" sheets of paper fitting perfectly in the scanbed. I put the little bit of extra money down and got the nicer model, but omgeee! A beautiful baby in my digital arsenal  to help me import my larger format sketches.

So here's a large sketch, fresh out of my 11x14" sketchbook!