Monday, July 30, 2007

badge

i won a badge!
(ok, so i was beaten into third place by a couple of folks whose talents are entirely lavatorial - go see ian b's blog for more details, the link's on the right there - but hey, bronze is still a podium finish...!)

meantime, eddie and joe both won medals at the end of their school-holiday football course, as their team for the week, bradford (?!), triumphed in the final tournament. eddie was doubly triumphant as he collected the player of the week trophy in his age group...

i'd love to be able to post photos of the presentations of these prestigious awards, but sadly neither sue or i remembered to take a camera along (iif i'm honest, the boys' successes took us a bit by surprise!)

anyway, and more importantly, look at my badge!

Sunday, July 29, 2007

billy

sue's taken the kids off to norfolk for a few days while i get stuck into the final few pages of advent comic for the blackburn folk, and also some stuff for greenbelt.

this will be part of a big interactive 3D map thing...

Thursday, July 19, 2007

coming up for air...

in my last posting here i sort of hinted that an interesting post might be forthcoming at some point in the future... well sadly, this isn't it - sorry to disappoint you. i've been working stupidly hard - several 1am finishes and a couple of mammoth eighteen hour days that saw me up and drawing till 3am have left room for little else.

in fact everything that isn't work has unravelled a bit over the past few weeks.

since january i've been on a diet - actually, it's not so much a diet as a decision to eat a sensible, normal amount instead of the unecessarily large quantities i was stuffing down before. i lost over a stone and a half, but i'm aware that these past few weeks i've let that slip - puddings and snacking have crept back into my daily routine.

the monastic things that we've been dabbling with have also taken a back seat - i've been less intentional about my times of solitude, given less time and thought to silence [suddenly i'm playing music and/or the radio all day again instead of making time and space to the quietness]

today though, i finished a couple of jobs that have been ongoing for a while, and now i have a few hours this afternoon to pause and breathe, to stop 'doing' and just enjoy 'being'.

so i just ate lunch away from the computer and out in the garden/building site; it's the first time in ages i've done that and it felt good. feels like i'm coming up for air before plunging back under again [monday is deadline day on another three - thankfully quite small - jobs]

meantime the new trembling blue stars album ['the last holy writer'] and in particular a song called 'november starlings' is nursing me through... "the world is beautiful and it's waiting... hope returns and keeps returning..." amen to that.

on the desk lately...




Friday, July 6, 2007

all work and no play...

...is making for a very dull blog.

like most self-employed freelancing types, i hate turning work down. as a rule, you take it while it's going.
but in the past 24 hours i've had to say no to three spearate illustration jobs - i'm just too stacked up with existing work.
and then as if to rub it in, this morning a tax bill arrived for roughly the amount that i'd have earned if i'd taken those commissions on! grrr.

still, i'm grateful for the jobs that i have got - better to have it than not, and i learnt a long time ago not to moan about having too much work...

anyhow, here's some things to look at while you wait for a more interesting post...