Today I went to the funeral of one of my high school buddies. She and her father were found dead in their home early Sunday morning, from carbon monoxide poisoning. She turned 21 just 5 days before she died.

Carbon monoxide is a tasteless, odorless, colorless, yet highly toxic gas. It is often present in the exhaust of furnaces and heaters. It is the leading cause of fatal poisonings in the United States. Early effects of CO poisoning often resemble symptoms of the flu.

Please make sure that your homes, and the homes of you friends and family are equipped with carbon monoxide detectors, and have your furnaces inspected regularly.

Woohoo! blizzard! Come on, snow day!

It was 70 frickin degrees on Tuesday, too. xP

Ha! Blizzard warning until 12PM Saturday, I-90 is closed from Mitchell to the Wyoming border (~275 miles), and a State of Emergency for the entire state.
The Black Hills and surrounding area has 2-4 FEET of snow, and windy! Got a 78 mph gust in Rapid City, 20 foot snow drifts in some places. And it's wet heavy snow, the sort we aren't supposed to see until April.

4-6 inches of snow alone won't make them cancel classes, but if it stays windy and I-29 is closed they really won't have a choice, I think.

Back to homework and studying, though. Just in case.

MORE!!!
Over 200 cars stranded on I-90, some people they haven't been able to reach for over 24 hours, the entire western part of the state in essentially shut down. Because the snow is so heavy it's taking out power lines, but they won't be able to get things fixed until they get the roads open, and they can't do that until the wind dies down. :(

...I'm not excited anymore. I hope this won't cause any deaths.

Oh, Gaia. :P

It's interesting, McCain is projected to win my state, but so far all of the populated areas are going for Obama.
Our democratic Senator and Representative (both incumbents) are projected to and most likely will win.

Actually, it seems to be within 10% through most of the plains states. I wonder what the actual voter turnout will be.

>:I

The photos that we've been waiting on at work finally came on Friday (right before midterms, go figure), so now I'm up to my elbows in 272 photos, labels, and photojackets. Gotta get the work areas on those suckers asap, in addition to the usual homework.
And that's only the first wave of photos, too. ;_;

At least I've got a three week buffer for pilgrim_comic. -_-

It's been raining quite heavily for the past few hours, and looks to keep raining all night long. There's a system moving north-northeast very slowly, stretching from Kansas to North Dakota.
With such heavy rain here and upstream, I hope there won't be any bad flooding, like earlier in the summer. Before Iowa and other places were flooded, the park behind my mom's townhouse filled with water. If the creek had crested a foot higher, the ground floor apartments would have flooded. =/

I think my car is good and clean now, so I should go put it in the garage now. Then I need to finish my homework. I plan on spending tomorrow at the college library, working on my comic. :)

I got so absorbed at work today, I tried to go to my 2 PM class at 3.

o_o

I'm 21 today. =O

Elftown Memes :3

Holy cow, so much to been done, I get the prompt for my first comp essay tomorrow (first draft due next week), first speech is to be delivered on Monday, and first exams and quizzes next week too o_x
But my science labs, they are the awesome sort of lab where you write up your report before leaving, yesssss~~

And, I sketched about the equivalent of TWO pages for pilgrim_comic, including one page that was very very irritating, still need to consult my reference photos for the backgrounds though. What time is it, 8:30? I should go start inking those suckers. =B

Do have a look at dar artist alley and http://darklawstudios.deviantart.com which finally got a badly needed update :3

So I've been looking around on the web, and there are (get this!) EIGHT animu conventions in my region. Holy crap, right? Which got me thinking I could maybe get myself a table in the artist alley and sell some stuff relating to pilgrim_comic.
But then I remembered hearing/reading that original things don't sell too well (unless you have a fanbase). Since I don't have that yet >.> and I really don't want to draw fanart of Naruto and Vampire Knight and whatever else is hip nowadays, I thought I could make something small and cute that people might like to buy.

Ah heck, just go vote and comment in dar artist alley :P

EDIT-- updated the first poll with 4 more options, remember that you can watch a wiki-poll ;)

pilgrim_chap1a

have a look, feedback and concrit is welcome :)

Hoo boy, I have a feeling I'm going to be crazy busy very soon. D:

We've been waiting for quite some time on aerial photos at work to start a new project. Haven't come yet. =I And I start school full time on Wednesday. :II
Maybe they'll come tomorrow >.> so I can at least get 2 near full-time days in.

I need to find all my classes too, and see where the nearest bike racks are. And buy a parking permit. And get my notebooks and stuff together. Bought my books at least. Nearly $600, and that was getting all used. Dang expensive science texts. >.<

...I also need to sort through all those reference pictures I took, and pick out the ones I want for this next scene in my comic.

Time for sleep, then work and errands tomorrow. :U

Huh, I always mean to write about some more stuff, but that just never seems to happen. =|

I got a B in my summer class, a low B, but better than what I was expecting. :3
The only grade sources were VERY short quizzes and exams, so missing just a few questions really lowers the overall grade D:

Argh, I'm back to school full-time on Sept 3, I've really got to get my butt into gear and start working on pilgrim_comic. I want enough buffer to get me through October, dangit!

Also, I'm going on vacation Tues-Fri this week, in part to take reference pictures for chapter 2, yay!

Go figure, the day after my final I woke up with a sore throat. Then Saturday my nose plugged up and Sunday the coughing started. But I'm already getting better on my own.

Hopefully that will be my illness for the year, and I'll stay healthy and avoid the flu again this winter.

Gonna do one quest in Morrowind, then work on pilgrim_comic the rest of the evening. :D

Yay, I've finished with my summer class! Now I can stop getting up at 6:30am to go to school. Instead I can get up at 7:30am to go to work. =P
I think there's just under 4 weeks until fall semester.

Gotta work on pilgrim_comic, and try to complete some marker illustrations. And turn myself into a vampire in Morrowind. Yessss.

Time for some diary spam!

pilgrim_comic

Oh! I've uploaded chapter 0 because I wanted to try the "upload folder of images" method. :P

pilgrim_chap0. have a look, post comments and CC. :D
Of course, it will be quite a while before I finish and post chap1. Maybe I'll put it in two parts.

Holy crap, just got white AND gold ink off the daily chance on Gaia. o.o

Okay. I'm done spamming my diary for a week or so. >.>

Suddenly it is very exciting to live in one of the last states to hold a primary. :D

Yay!! Finally finished with chapter 0! :D
Gonna get it all queued up to post on SmackJeeves.

Now I can turn my attention to chapter 1 and chemistry.

pilgrim_comic and http://pilgrim.smackjeeves.com