Brianna.org

We’re going to a bonfire tonight, where I will gorge on chocolate and whiskey, not necessarily in that order.

I painted a watercolor calaca holding a bottle of tequila in an agave field, standing in front of the burning mountains in California. And some other cute skull faces leering happily at the cigarettes and dates I [...]

I spent the afternoon painting watercolor cards for my day of the dead table. Then I made tissue paper flowers and little chains of tissue paper skulls to decorate with. I have four black candles and a Virgen of Guadalupe candle to add to it tomorrow, and it shall be complete.
I am pretty pleased with [...]

I have to do about five minutes’ work for the café today, and boy am I procrastinating. I even went grocery shopping to avoid it.
I’m trying to avoid sugar, dairy, and gluten/wheat products so that I can test for a wheat allergy, but all that leaves me with very little palatable stuff to eat, esp. [...]

I talked to my mother this morning. Apparently she fell and broke her rib the night they were evacuating Running Springs.
She still owns the house in Valley of Enchantment (Crestline) in a little subdivision called Cedarpines Park. This is the house I lived in before I left home.
“They’ve lost twenty nine houses.”
“I know, Mom. [...]

Today I exercised for an hour. Then I started writing.
I went through all of my false starts for Minotte to see if I could glean any good stuff to help me begin. I’m having trouble with that - the start. I have bits and pieces written, but I need to sit down and just write [...]

I just watched Lilo and Stitch for the first time ever. Yeah. I probably shouldn’t watch any more movies set in Hawaii where sisters are being threatened with seperation. I cried the entire last forty minutes of the movie. And I can’t stand really good animal animation - every time Stitch’s ears dropped I started [...]

“Firefighters, including 25 strike teams and 125 engines, tried to make a stand at Crestline in the San Bernardino National Forest, according to U.S. Forest Service fire information officer Stanton Florea. But hours later, Florea said homes there were burning as well.”
This is a town of 6,000 people. I hate being this far away.

I believe my mother tried to call me early this morning as they left the mountain, but I was too hazy to get to the phone in time. Keep them in your thoughts, that my family has homes to return to, that they all made it safely out of the way of the fire. I [...]

The fire has reached Crestline. It has consumed Waterman Canyon, and the beautiful pine forests of my childhood are going.
My family is safe, and for that I am thankful, but I am having a hard time being far away and knowing that the landscape of my memory is incinerated. The forests, the beautiful forests. The [...]

I am researching medicine shows for this story I’m writing, and this showed up in my search results.

As promised, two examples of the photos I took this week. The film was expired, so I didn’t expect much, and since all of my transfers are done on the spot straight from the camera, the results are a lot more gritty than most professional photographers would accept. I prefer them this way - they [...]

I just got back from an impromptu vacation in J.’s hometown of Richmond, MO, pop. 6,000 where the courthouse on the town square has the words “Obedience to Law is Liberty” deeply chiselled on the west and east facing gables so that you see it regardless of where you’re travelling in town. It’s a fun [...]

I am getting old.
The signs have all been there. Getting nauseated at a scary movie really capped it off though. My body’s relationship with food has changed in the last few months, and things that I could eat with no second thought have been taken off the menu due to their averse effects. Sugar - [...]

I saw Texas Chainsaw Massacre last night - it has the distinction of being the first horror flick to make me nauseated. I give it two thumbs up. It’s disgusting though. You’ve been warned. I’m pretty good at picking the right times in the movie to notice particularly fake looking props or other film anomalies [...]

I have overdosed on caffeine, and it will take DAYS to get back in order. I feel awfully tense.
We had our first day of training for the new cafe - basically we had a cupping to try some Brazilian coffee, some Kenya, and some Atlatil or some other Aztec-sounding word from Guatemala. Then we [...]

I put the Wonder Horse intro to Polaroid manipulations back on Utopian.net. This was a piece from three years ago that showcased my first attempts with my Polaroid Land Cameras, using the same subject.
I have written a little booklet on SX70 manipulations (my word count for today) to pack up along with my SX70 auctions. [...]

I’ve been editing myself as I write today. That’s unusual for me - I’m a firm believer in first drafts. They will be awful, they won’t be complete, but there are pearls in a first draft that are simply there for the polishing. I don’t believe I can write clean copy, and so I don’t [...]

I am a horrible diarist, and only a middling weblogger. I received my first diary at age eight from my beloved aunt, and I proceeded to very carefully write about each of my days (including the 1988 presidential election) for about two weeks.
Then five years later I found the diary and wrote in it [...]

It’s like the internet has forgotten me. I don’t mean in a “woe is me, my hits are low and no one is linking to my site” because that’s been true for like, four years - since the last time I had any content at brianna.org. No, what I mean is that I can’t login [...]

Moveable Type will not let me log in. My implementation is apparently corrupt.
This after spending two months filling it full of data and getting the structure organized so that I could use it as a CMS for Utopian.net :: Moods.
I know I could go online, look up the problem, spend all day troubleshooting [...]