Right after that, I ran my bike off a cliff because I wasn’t paying attention. Next thing I know, my bike is exploding, I’m flying through the air, and the cat shows up to inexplicably save me with its magic powers. I thought maybe I was crazy when he first started talking to me, but that all changed when I discovered my own latent magic powers. We flew off into the sunset and that was the beginning of our fantastic hijinks.

Actually, I was a chicken and I didn’t go back to check if it was a magic cat. I was also rather intent on getting that ice cream. I’m pretty sure it was a magical cat though. I stared at him, he stared at me. We had a moment. If I see him again, I’ll know for sure.

I decided the other day that for each new project or craft I want to start, I have to make some sort of blog post first. Later that evening (as I’m working on a project I grandfathered in) I was struck with the inspiration to do a series of little comics illustrating brief moments of life in Japan. And I had a perfect idea for the first comic. It simply and brilliantly conveyed the quirkiness and charm of my everyday life here. I thought to myself, “Geez, I’m ingenious! I sure won’t forget this.”

Famous last words.

In between having this inspiration, and walking upstairs to write it down, the idea completely evaporated, leaving just the barest hint of what it might have been. I had been so pleased with the idea, that I’ve tried all week to recall it. It remains infuriatingly elusive. So instead I made a comic about losing my mind.

On an unrelated note, my apologies to anyone who has tried to comment in the past few months. My notifications system was broken and I didn’t realize it until today. I wasn’t just ignoring you, I promise.

]]> https://jefita.com/2014/05/22/moving-along/ Fri, 23 May 2014 02:16:50 +0000 http://jefita.com/blog/?p=900

Just a short update to prove I’m still around. The move preparations march inexorably forward. Packers show up tomorrow. The appliances and big stuff have already been put in storage. Our most valued possessions have been entrusted to our friends for safekeeping. It’s starting to feel like this is actually real.

I’m once again reminded how much I hate the details of moving. Not the part where I end up in a new place, I think that’s fun and exciting. I even enjoy getting to unpack and arrange all my stuff. No, I hate all the parts that come in between, especially packing. Being a packrat, I have to sort through all my accumulated “treasures”. In the beginning it’s cathartic. I start tackling all the rat piles and purge the junk. Over time though, the continual barrage saps my willpower. Why do I have a large collection of pens with no ink? Twenty empty ribbon spools? Balls of thread clippings? Or enough plastic bags to build an effigy of myself? Blaaaargh!

Now I’m just exhausted–even though I don’t have to pack all the things myself. I still have all the post-packing cleaning ahead of me too. And just in case I thought I might not be ready to leave this place, the upstairs apartment once again gifted us with a bathtub of water via the ceiling above our bed–a bathtub of water mixed with bleach…yup, I’m ready to go.

I’m just going to say it now: things are probably going to get more erratic from here on out. And there will probably be some ranting and raving. Hopefully I will make it out the other side with some semblance of sanity.

Now that I have a definite date, I can feel the stress of the move building. Everyday the vague sense of doom gets just a little stronger. It lurks at the back of my mind and in unguarded moments I have flickers of panic. At some point I am sure it will devolve into full blown panic.

I’ve done big stressful moves before. I moved across the country to live in sin with the Boy-who-became-Mister, and I had no idea if it would work out or not. This is much worse. Moving across a huge ocean to an entirely different continent? Where I don’t even speak the language? With two cats? And I agreed to this because I wanted to do this? I might have been misguided.

Okay, I’m back! I spent last week down visiting the storied Grandma, down in North Carolina. I thought I’d be able to wrangle out a post while I was there, but as is often the case, my ambition and reality didn’t align. C’est la vie.

While I didn’t get any writing done, I did do a lot of plotting…nefarious plotting.The Mister and I have decided to turn to a part-time life of villainy (this may or may not coincide with a pubcrawl next week). As most of our dastardly plans revolve around making a public spectacle of ourselves (such is the wont of supervillains) we find ourselves in need of some dramatic costumes. Otherwise people might mistake us for regular villains. Or drunken louts. One of the two. Maybe both.

Designing a villainous costume is certainly fun, but it is also more challenging than one might think. You have to strike a careful balance between menace, flair, and utility. There are many important practical considerations that are often overlooked. I tried to address these questions while designing our outfits:

• Will I freeze my a$$ off in this outfit? (or alternatively, overheat?)
• Am I going to lose any parts of my outfit?
• Can I make most of this out of bargain fabrics and cereal boxes?

And perhaps most relevant in this case:

• Can I comfortably drink in this outfit?

After a week of plotting, I think I’ve hit most of the important elements. Of course a super villain is nothing without minions, so I didn’t forget about properly attiring my underlings either. The state of dress of a henchman says a lot about you as an overlord.

So I’ve got my concepts down. What now? Stay tuned for next week when I realize my drawings!

]]> https://jefita.com/2014/03/26/fashion-tips-for-supervillains-part-1/feed/ 1 https://jefita.com/2014/03/12/how-to-enjoy-spring/ https://jefita.com/2014/03/12/how-to-enjoy-spring/#comments Wed, 12 Mar 2014 20:04:59 +0000 http://jefita.com/blog/?p=857 By popular demand, more comics! Pretend it’s on time.

Ahh, the sun is out, the birds are singing, and the daffodils are starting to push their way up. Spring must finally be on the way right? Hahaha, just kidding, it’s just a tease. A cruel, cruel tease.

I’m going to be honest, I’m pretty close to full blown grumpus. If the weather doesn’t stop toying with me soon, I might lose it. I want sunshine. I want to go barefooted. I want to stop wearing pants. Right now it’s a pleasant 65F outside. I can hear gobs of birds warbling and crooning. It smells like spring. Unfortunately, I’ve already checked the weather, and it’s going to be back down to freezing with 25 mph winds tomorrow. Oh what fun! I think I’ll start working on my blanket nest now.

Grump, grump, grump.

“u” is for “uisukii”

Running just a bit behind this week, aren’t I? I assure you there’s a good reason for it. Totally not because I’ve been spending too much time on my computer playing Banished, building virtual settlements. Certainly not. (Okay, maybe I’m a liar.)

Well, in the time I haven’t been engaged in mismanaging the ill-fated citizens of the village Snellstochito, I have been continuing to work on my Japanese. I got through katakana (the other syllabary) on my own and purchased Japanese for Everyone to continue my studies. So far the choice seems sound. In the first chapter, the words for beer, wine, and whiskey were introduced.

I often wonder whether or not my handwriting in Japanese is terrible.

It’s a little bit odd getting back into the swing of homework, now that I’m the one who both assigns and completes it. It’s a strange duality. An odd bonus to all this is a dramatic increase in the amount of handwriting I do on a daily basis. I’m sure I could save the trees and do it all on the computer, but what’s the fun in that? I enjoyed writing my notes and homework out by hand in college and I can’t imagine doing it any other way. The fine art of margin doodles would be lost. Besides, I spend enough time as it is staring at a computer screen.

After reading a recent article by my pen-aficionado friend Chris, I decided I needed a fancy writing pen for my homework. I certainly have no shortage of drawing pens (20 Microns and counting), but I don’t really have any nice writing pens. It hardly seemed justifiable to buy such a pen when I was only writing grocery lists, but now that I’m doing all this very important learning? Yeah, I can spend $30 on a pen. I’m no longer a broke college student and I can afford pens I didn’t get for free at a job fair.

From top to bottom: Pilot Petit3 Mini Fude Brush Pen (blue-black), Pilot Petit1 Mini Fountain Pen (apricot & clear blue), Lamy Safari Fountain Pen (extra fine)

So I went and splurged on some pens at JetPens.com (which is a dangerous place full of all manner of attractive writing and drawing implements). Somehow I managed to get away with only buying four pens. I ended up getting a reasonable “beginner” fountain pen (a Lamy Safari), a couple of a cute mini fountain pens, and a brush pen. Ostensibly I only needed one pen, but the Lamy bumped me over the $25 free shipping mark so I had to make sure and negate those savings by buying three more pens. I feel I exercised amazing self-restraint by not purchasing the whole rainbow of the little Pilot Petit1’s.

I’m going to pretend I bought this mini fude pen because I need it for kanji practice.

The internet has irreparably damaged my use of the English language.

Still, I feel it was money well spent. All of them are nice pens, and I am definitely happy with the Lamy. It writes so pleasantly. It’s easy to forget about these little things in life that are so inexplicably satisfying. As much as I love drawing, it is sometimes frustrating and difficult. Writing however has that same tactile appeal in a much more relaxing way. I suppose it’s a little odd, but I look forward to doing my homework because of this. It’s a bit disappointing I don’t have cause to write for anything else. Maybe I should take up snail-mail.

True story. Except in reality I spit all over my keyboard. It was kind of gross. This wasn’t my first near-bug-eating experience, but at least I didn’t find out what the bug tasted like this time. (If anybody needs to know what a stinkbug tastes like, I got ya covered. Hint: it’s a lot like they smell.)

Moral of the story? Oreo’s are terrible and you shouldn’t eat them. I knew this already, but now I have a traumatic experience to help me remember.

Also, if you half-ass re-sealing the package, there is a non-zero chance you will end up licking a bug.

In light of approaching Valentine’s Day, here is a short story of love…and betrayal! Because that’s more exciting.

The other day I unearthed my box of colored pencils, and was struck by a poignant sense of guilt. For more than a year they had sat alone in the dark, unused and unloved. I had abandoned them. How could I be so cold?

But we were so good together!

Once upon a time, I deeply loved my colored pencils. This love affair started when I was quite young. My grandmother had a set of Prismacolor colored pencils that she would let me play with. Having already been bitterly betrayed by watercolor, their soft and rich consistency instantly won me over. Over several years, I carefully built up a beautiful collection of my own, pencil by pencil. (At $2-3 a pop, the box above represents a lot of money invested in colorful little wooden sticks.) I lavished them with attention and adoration. I made wonderful pictures with them. They were my favorite. They were the best…until fate crushed our love.

One day a set of fancy Copic markers came along and swayed my heart. These markers fulfilled my unrequited desire for watercolor that my pencils could not touch. A new love blossomed and I cruelly left my old love by the wayside with nary a look back. Oh, how my heart is fickle!

All those broken leads are rough on a girl’s heart.

It’s okay, my pencils, you will always have a special place in my heart. You’re still just as lovely and vibrant and I miss your warm cedar smell. Let’s just say I was the one who changed. Someday I will bring you out and we will do beautiful things again. Maybe you and the markers can learn to be friends. Sure, I’m trying to assuage my guilt a bit, but I really do feel bad about neglecting you.

Other people empathize with their art supplies, right? Right?

It seems like everybody is getting sick lately. Despite my efforts to avoid it, Mr. Boy managed to give me his head cold, icky crud. It’s that lame kind of in-between sick where you feel like crap, but not bad enough to stop you from feeling guilty about taking a day off. I feel like I should be working, but my brain feels all blurry and my face is full of mucus. I finally decided I probably shouldn’t work, because I don’t really want to make germ filled plushies. I just imagined my innocent little creatures going out into the world like so many tiny small pox blankets.

My guilt being assuaged, I decided to fill the gaps between napping sessions by continuing to fill my moleskine sketchbook. Since my attention span is a bit short right now, I’m filling a page with tiny little 2.25″ square drawings. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it yet, but I am still quite in love with my new markers. It doesn’t take much encouragement for me to break them out and doodle. Even if I don’t feel like doing anything else.

Anyways, Mr. Boy said something about a “chibi Hellboy” and somehow I ended up with Hellboy chumming it up with an octopus. I’ll pretend it’s because I’m sick. Then I tried a self-portrait. I didn’t mean for it to look like I was disgusted at the mushy cephalopod friendship above. It turns out it’s somewhat difficult to draw yourself disapproving of your own hair cut. (I got pissed off at my bangs the other day and because I’m a cheapskate, I trimmed them myself. I have sort of “seventies, Farrah Fawcett” bangs as my friends kindly informed me. I suppose it could have turned out worse. I could have ended up with a Flock of Seagulls do.)

Now I have four more little squares to fill up. Instead of coming up with the rest of them on my own, I’m offering up some little mini commissions.  Judging by the duration of Mr. Boy’s illness, I’m going to be at this for a couple of more days at least.  So for the low, low price of only $5 you can tell me what to draw in my little book for the rest of the week. If you are interested you know where to find me.

I think it’s about time I go back to sleep on the cat. And I swear the next post won’t have anything to do with markers. For reals.