Filling In The Gaps

What could I say?  It was yet another routine Tuesday at the office, which meant that, from around seven to at least ten in the morning the calls came in nearly nonstop.  Thankfully once it hit around ten-thirty or so the queue started to wind down, at least on the customer service side of the equation.  This didn’t mean that the merchant side of things stopped completely, but at least it was far less stressful.

I was a little surprised when it started raining hard a few minutes before I got off my shift.  By the time I got out, the street in front of the office was already flooded in at least ankle-high water.  Needless to say it wasn’t really a pleasant walk to and from the MRT station, especially since I didn’t bring an umbrella (And why should I? The forecast said nothing about rain!).  The rain had more or less blown over by the time I arrived home though, and the skies remained clear as I set out for the afternoon for my usual session at the gym.

Once I got home, I obviously set to work on giving the remaining girls in the Puella Stampede base colors… Well, at least those with official or semi-official color schemes anyway.  This still leaves about five more without base colors though (is anyone surprised at all that all of them are from the Kazumi Magica manga?), so unless the manga-ka comes up with some color spreads for the comic in the next issue of Kirara Forward, then I’ll likely have to rely on fill-in-the-blanks via Color Wheel.  May Haruhi help us all.

A Bit More To Go

And with this, I’m just this bit closer to completing this phase of the coloring process.  At this point there are just three more magical girls (those with color schemes anyway) plus the Incubators left without base colors, and if I push it a bit (and not get distracted by other things) I should be done with them by tomorrow evening.  Not that it means that my troubles are over, since that leaves the girls without any official color schemes still uncompleted.  Mmph, at this rate I might just have to go with fan interpretations, or maybe just bring up the color wheel and fill up the gaps using the thus-far unused colors there.  We’ll just have to see, I suppose.

It was another routine Monday at the office, which means it was very laid back and relaxed due to the large gaps in between calls, especially during the second half of the shift.  I took advantage of the avail time in my own way (by reading through the latest chapter of To The Stars), though some of my teammates, those whose batch I was part of I mean, apparently were planning yet another overnight trip somewhere.  How they manage to do so with the salary we have boggles the mind, really.

Did another routine workout this afternoon, despite my father’s expected grumbling about it.  I was kind of worried about when I was supposed to pay for the monthly membership fee, but in my case it’s still a while away; since I started on the 10th of January, obviously I’ll only have to pay come the 10th of February, which is not only two-odd weeks away, but also the first payday of the month, hmm.  

Anyway, my target for this week is to lose at least a pound.  Let’s see how things go, hmm?

Juncture

And so another weekend ends, which means it’s also the end of cheating on my diet and back to watching calories for the week to go along with my planned exercise at the gym.  My target for this week?  A modest pound, maybe one and a half if I push it.  Anything more than that will be far too aggressive, and would be damaging in the long run too.

Hmm, come to think of it, it’s about time to pay for the monthly membership fee.  Good thing I actually have money for a change, so it won’t be much of a problem, and given the massive difference between the price per session compared to the bulk monthly fee (two-hundred pesos per session versus one thousand two hundred pesos per month), I’m actually getting my money’s worth, especially since I go to the gym every day during weekdays, heh.

After that though, I’m pretty much on savings mode again until the next payday.  Ah, those times where I had all the extra money to spend for myself seem like a far-away memory now.  Heck, I can’t even go visit the dentist now even if I wanted to, since I don’t have the extra money to use.  Even having my teeth cleaned (something I used to do every three months) seems to be a luxury, as the cost of a session will sink my savings very quickly.  Mmph.

It’s during these times that I wonder if I should try one of  those get-money-quick stuff, just to be able to earn extra cash… like blogging for money.  But I figure, nah, it’s just not in my nature to do so.

And so I wait, and so I endure.

Anyway, on the hobby side of things, it might not be much, but I’ve based three more magical girls today.  It’s not as fast as I had initially hoped, but with three of the Pleiades started on everyone (at least, everyone with color schemes anyway) should be done by midweek.  After that all I have to figure out is the possible non-corny color schemes for those who don’t have any, then deciding on a background of course… That’s always hard.

Hey, at least I won’t be idle for the week, yes?

Taking Shape

It was back to school again today, but at this point the class seems to have settled into an impromptu routine, with two or three people getting the first parts of their screenplays read, followed by a break and a viewing of a movie (this time the second half of 100 Days, a local film entry for Cinemalaya).  We’re close to the halfway point of the semester though, which means that it’s about time to take the actual revision process seriously.  And since my own screenplay is up for critique in about two weeks, well, I suppose it’s high time to start fixing it a bit at a time.  I should be an interesting few days, for sure.

On the hobby side of things, I spent most of my free time today putting some base colors on as many puella magi as I could.  I’ve managed to do twelve so far, which is almost half of the number of the girls actually in the line-up, but I think I’ve hit my limit for the day, as can feel my eyes already twitching from strain.  That’s what I get for sitting in front of the PC for a few hours, I guess.  I’ll see if I can continue tomorrow, so I can show the progress of the project on Pixiv again.

Aside from that… Well, it’s my cheat day today, so I obviously ate to my heart’s content today without worrying about the calories I consumed.  Come tomorrow it’s back to counting calories though, as it’s also back to the gym come Monday.  Ah well, at least it helps my metabolism stabilize somewhat.  Hm, I wonder how much I’ve lost over the week?  I never was able to go to Makati today, so I guess I’ll do so tomorrow, on the way to paying for the phone/internet and water bills.

So, what’s left for me to do?  Sleep, obviously.  It’s the Sunday shift again tomorrow, which means all sorts of stress, which means a good night’s rest will do me wonders.

Activity Save Failure

I can’t really say much happened today.  While it was my day off, I had to start my morning washing the pile of laundry that had accumulated over the week (which disturbingly was more than the amount last week), although since I woke up later than usual (nine instead of eight in the morning), half of the work (well a quarter of the work since all tatay did was dunk the separate the pile between whites and colored, then dump them into basins filled with soapy water) was already done for me.  There was still a bit of soaping, scrubbing, and rinsing to be done though, but because of my father’s contribution it wasn’t even an hour before I was finished, and the clothes hung on the clothesline to dry.

As for the rest of my day?  Eh, I was trying to figure out how to base-color the puella magi stampede without crashing SAI in the process (at this point, it’s eating up 98% of the memory allotted to it).  In the end, I had to go with coloring each of the girls one at a time, then toggling their visibility to reduce memory load, then move to the next one in line.  It’s slow going, but at least I won’t have to worry about having the program go down on me unexpectedly.

After that?  Ah, well mid-afternoon I dropped by the gym again, and did my usual routine for an hour and a half.  Been gradually increasing the speed on the treadmill, though I have to wonder if I’ve lost my target for the week.  I guess I’ll find out once I drop by a Mercury Drug store with one of those weight machines again.  I needed to drop by Makati anyway, and I know of some outlets with those machines, so might as well…

And what else?  Just generally goofing off, I suppose.  I read through Imperial Armour 11: The Doom of Mymaera, and did my quota of surfing through the net (which meant I was able to browse through the latest chapter of Medaka Box while I was at it).  I was even able to get some gaming done, mostly on Katawa Shoujo.  I really should post my progress on that one.

Surprisingly I went through the day without the expected afternoon siesta… which might explain why I’m feeling sleepy at this hour.  Ah heck, might as well oblige again, like yesterday.  

Tired For No Reason

As stated on the post title, I’m feeling… exhausted really, or at the very least really sleepy.  So instead of the planned coloring of lineart, it’s bed for now.  I can’t explain why, but yeah, the bed looks awfully tempting at this moment… So I’ll oblige it.  And it’s not like I have anything exciting to share today, so…

Also I have to wake up early tomorrow early for laundry anyway, so might as well turn in.

Funds Allocation

It’s payday yet again, but as usual it looks like I’m not going to be able to enjoy the fruit of my work at the office since the last cut-off.  Even now I’m thinking just how much will I have to deduct for the bills that I’ll have to contribute in (at least three thousand three-hundred pesos), as well as set aside the rest for my savings, in preparation for the things I have to pay for at the start of next month (like the monthly membership fee for the gym).  That leaves… not a whole lot, actually, and when you add in the expected credit card bill, hmm, to say that it’s tight is an understatement.  

This pretty much means that I won’t be able to pay back my sister for what she did last month (footing my half of the household bills), but at least I’m going to be able to contribute this month, right?  I’ll try to pay her back eventually, but first thing’s first: I have to get the money in the bank, which means I’m going to have to make a brief detour on the way back home.  I wasn’t able to do so this afternoon, since I sort of forgot about it while I was preparing to head to the gym.

Speaking of my sessions at the gym, one of the other regulars asked me why I was keeping to the treadmills for now, instead of doing the usual circuit on the other exercise machines that everyone else was doing.  My answer?  I’ll do the circuit on the machines eventually, but only after I hit a specific weight — in my case about ten-odd pounds to my ‘ideal weight’ for my height — since at that point no matter how hard I run I stop losing poundage (as I experienced in Washington DC).  The extra effort that the workout machines will bring might be just the thing to help in that final push.

Oh, and there’s another reason I avoid the weight machines: my arms usually feel either numb or stiff afterward, and with the amount of drawing I’ve been doing lately, ah, that wouldn’t be optimal at all.  Especially now that I’ve been adding base colors to the members of the stampede bit by bit, though it’s slow going since I have to make sure everything is in-line….  

A (Nearly) Complete Set

I have to admit, this last bit of line-art took some work.  I think half of the details (pretty much everything from the waist down really) was just guesswork on my part, but it’ll have to do, until the time Aoki Ume comes out with an artbook detailing the new characters from the mobile game.  I was supposed to include some of her attack summons (essentially clouds with very sharp teeth), but I’ll just have to add those later on.

With this, I figure that I’m around halfway done with the Puella Magi stampede.  I may include some more, but I think twenty-seven characters is plenty for the time being.

Now to see how everything lines up together. It should be interesting to see.

As for non-fanart or hobby-related things… My tita (one of my father’s younger sisters) and her German husband dropped by for a visit this morning.  We talked for a bit, catching up basically, but I was curious why my cousin wasn’t with them.  Apparently she was resting at their hotel, since she was still exhausted from their visit yesterday to our other relatives in Cavite.  It was too bad, as it’s been a really long time since I’ve even seen her, much less hold a conversation, and I was also interested in how she was right now (a few months ago she attempted suicide after her boyfriend broke up with her), but it seems that she’s doing fine now.

Aside from that, well, nothing else to share really.  The same usual weekday, I suppose.

The Silliest of Things

I think I’ve accepted the fact that, whatever I do, I’ll always be a disappointment to my father, and an object of derision for my younger sister.  That’s what I get for wasting two-odd years and causing God-knows how much anguish to my mother, I suppose.  

If anything, their already-low opinion of me only deepened after I quit my well-paying job at E*Trade to start studying, only to run back to my parents once my savings gave out.  Although I’m working now, the fact that the salary I’m getting isn’t that hot only seems to strengthen the perception that I can’t look out for myself, and that I can’t be trusted to making a sound financial decision even if my life depended on it.  Given my constant savings troubles, I’m tempted to agree with the latter assessment.  

Which brings me to the most current wrinkle in my family’s interpersonal relations.  As I mentioned a while back, after I learned about how heavily overweight I was in the wake of the holidays, I decided to enroll in a gym.  On top of the initial membership sign-up, I’m also going to have to pay a monthly fee for as long as I remain a member.  When one considers my relatively meager salary it’s a huge expense, especially when one considers that I have to contribute to paying for the bills of the house (a responsibility I had to pass on the previous month because of flagging savings), but I think it’s well worth the investment, especially in light of how much I’ve lost since I’ve signed up.

Unfortunately my father doesn’t share that assessment, and my sister’s mostly agreed with him (surprise, surprise).  The thing is though, instead of confronting me directly about the issue, my father’s fallen to his usual habit of denigrating what I do when he thinks that I’m not paying attention.  The other day, he was spouting how wasteful it was to pay for gym use when one can just jog in the morning (which I can’t do, since I have work), and how gyms are unsanitary since you don’t get the needed oxygen, and instead inhale the flatulence of the people who share the gym floor with you…  And this morning, while I was in the loo, my father and sister were talking about how the airconditioning in gyms are usually filled with mold, which meant that you’re not getting any healthier, but sicker the more you go…

Uh, what?  Clearly the logic used by my father to formulate these arguments don’t match up with anyone else’s.  And let’s not go into my sister’s support in all this.  Hello sis, I know that you’re taking up yoga and belly-dancing classes so you can lose weight before your wedding, so you’re in no position to criticize me.

Sorry, I just had to let this all out, else it would just eat me up inside.

Anyway, on to less weight-related stuff.  Although I have a sketch ready and scanned, it still looks like I won’t be able to finish the line-art for Elise tonight, but hey, at least I was able to decide on a running pose.  After that, uhm, background composition and on to the coloring stage, I guess.

Oh, and at this point I’m supposed to start revising the screenplay that I used the previous term for this semester’s workshop.  Ugh, this will take a lot of work for sure, if I’m going to trim 20 pages off its number.

Delays and Potholes

I don’t know, while I want to finish the sketch for the last puella to be added to the stampede, I just couldn’t decide on the pose to use for her.  The fact that I also have to do some guesswork with regards to her choice of footwear doesn’t really help either.  It’s just one of those days, I suppose.  If I can just decide on an outline though things should fall into place very quickly, but until then, well…

It was a little slow at work today.  I have to admit though, it was partly my fault: I kind of fibbed about my systems still not being restored (when in fact they were ready for use as soon as I logged in), if only to avoid taking in customer service calls, and on a Sunday shift no less, for a while longer.  Of course this meant that I spent my shift working on applications, but eh, every little bit of stress I can avoid is a good thing in my book.

Oh, and I found wedding documentation in the shared documents folder in my desktop PC, and evidence that my younger sister has finally decided on a reception area and a date for her wedding.  Man, does that make me feel old.

Anyway, lets see if I can get a decent pose in at least before I head off to bed.