Hello again my wonderful friends and watchers! Merry Christmas to you all! I hope you've all had a wonderful and blessed Christmas holiday. Happy New Year to you all as well! Look out 2012, here we come!



Guess who will soon have a bundle of joy to call her own? ME! That's right, we're having a baby! I'm so ridiculously excited, I can hardly wait to bring home my precious little girl. Isn't she beautiful?!




What, you didn't actually think I meant a human baby, did you? -snorts- I freakin' hate kids. LOL That hasn't changed, believe me! If I were actually preggers, this would probably be a plea to be shot.

That adorable little ball of fur above is Mika, the half-sister of our other Siamese, Kibi. (They share the same father.) Mika is one of my Christmas presents from Supercop, although she won't be ready to come home with us until about a week or two after Christmas. She's about 3 weeks old in those pictures. We're not even sure what point she'll be, but I'm hoping for a blue point. Either way, I'm thrilled to be bringing her home, I've waited a long time to get another Siamese. Just over 6 years, actually. (Kibi and Mugen turned six at the end of November/beginning of December.) We really can't wait to get here home!

I'm even happier that Mika is a relative of Kibi's, as Kibi is the sweetest cat we have ever had the pleasure of meeting. Some of that has to do with how we raised her, but she was sweet and well behaved to begin with. That comes from good breeding and a good breeder. The woman we're buying Mika from isn't actually the same person we bought Kibi from. It's a mother-daughter duo. The mother owns Kibi's sire and the daughter owns Kibi's mother. (Sounds confusing now that I put it in writing.) My point is, I know Mika is coming from a good home. And they know she's going to a good one, not only because we have an existing relationship with them, but Supercop and I also spent about an hour visiting with them a few weeks back when we first went to see Mika and her siblings.

TL;DR: We're getting a new kitten and we're psyched!!!



As some of you may know, my sister, Ty Hallmark, is extremely active in the Baltimore/DC theatre scene as both an actress and director. She's been acting since I was a kid; it has always been her passion and joy. We - her family and friends- have always known she was amazing so you can imagine how unbelievably proud we are to learn she has been nominated for a Baltimore Acting Award for Best Actress in a Play (Resident Non-Equity).

The competition is fierce, though, so this is where you come in. Ty is currently in 4th place and we need your help to put her back on top! Anyone can vote, however, the setup is a little time-consuming. You've got to put in a valid email address before you can start the process and you actually have to vote on ALL the other categories. It's a bit tedious, I know, which is why I'm asking this as a favor to both me and my sister. Please, please help her Christmas wish come true by going through the full voting process as you see HERE.

Ty is a member of the Chesapeake Shakespeare Company, so what I did was vote for any members of her company that were nominated or used the No Nominee option at the top until I got to the Best Actress in a Play (Resident Non-Equity) category. I believe it is the 9th category listed, and the names are in alphabetical order by first name, so Ty is at the very bottom. (Screenshot) After you've completed the voting process, you'll get a confirmation email to make certain you provided a valid email address. If you didn't, they will remove your vote.

So please, take a few minutes of your day and please vote for my sister! She deserves this award!! You've got until December 30th to get your vote in, so please don't forget!

THANK YOU!!!!!    




Just a random update on life and whatnot. I'm still loving my job, but unfortunately, they had to cut everyone's hours starting last week. Our biggest client/biggest project is not paying us, forcing our company to place a lien against the property. The cut in hours is temporary, and they hope to have us back to normal by March. Not sure if that's when the client is supposed to pay us or if that's when the project is expected to be complete and the companies that will be moving into the shopping center start paying rent and whatnot. All I know is they owe us several hundred thousand dollars and we are not happy about it.

However, to offset the unpleasantness of cutbacks, my employers were kind enough to give us the entire week after Christmas off as a bonus. Paid, of course. Not bad, eh? I've never had a Christmas bonus in my life; none of my other employers gave two shits or a fuck about the employees or their morale. I'm still amazed that I've been so fortunate to work for Ferris Engineering. I've never been so happy working. It's truly a blessing.

In other news, I've been baking my little ass off this past week in preparation for Christmas. Every year, my mother and I give our friends some homemade, gourmet gifts of lemon tea bread and "Cowgirl Cookies". I also had to make a large batch of cookies to bring to work for our Christmas potluck lunch. Supercop and I made four batches of of sausage balls for both of our jobs, as well. It's safe to say, I'm fucking BEAT. After spending one solid afternoon/evening baking this past Wednesday, I ached all over. My poor feet hurt so damn bad I could hardly stand by the end of the night and I've no doubt burned off a lot of calories thanks to the very physical aspects of mixing and folding in different ingredients. (It's hard work, believe me!)

That's about it. Not much going on outside of work. What free time I have usually is spent reading or napping, since my body still refuses to adjust to a normal schedule. (No matter what time I go to bed at night, be it 7pm or 11pm, I'm always exhausted in the morning and ready to nap by the time I get home.) I did read the entire Mistborn series earlier this month, along with Elantris, to really see what all the fuss over Brandon Sanderson was about. I've got to say, the man is a literary genius. The books were all phenomenal, I could hardly put them down. If you haven't read them before, I highly recommend you check them out.

I hope you all have been doing well in the past few months. Again, sorry to be such a stranger. I do pop in frequently to vote on submissions in #Quality-Bleach (which is now a SuperGroup, btw!) but since that takes only a few minutes of time, I'm not here for very long. There is at least one submission that I need to put in my gallery that has been finished for quite some time; hopefully I'll be able to do so while I'm off this week. More and more, my commissions are being kept private. _Sorry. I'll still have a few now and then of my public characters, though, so I'll be around.

Take care, everyone! Merry Christmas to you all, and have a Happy New Year!



-Yuya-