The Rose&#39;s Grove

What's your favorite color?
Answer the examples, too, please. :D

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My favorite color goes back and forth between green and blue. I'm a horribly indecisive person. ;)

As for the examples, I have no biological siblings, but I do have two teenage step-brothers. My favorite class at university has been... hmm. Either Scandinavian mythology, or the comparative study of death, which I'm taking right now.

As for Seattle... I love my city so much. It's this fabulously wacky combination of ultra-urban yuppie corporate culture right in with the hippy, granola-eating, Whole Foods-shopping, hiking and backpacking and boating, farmer's market kind of culture, and I love how well those two coexist without ever quite managing to merge, if you get my meaning. It doesn't hurt that we're a major city for the arts and theater, either... or that I think I'd be petrified to live anywhere that was too far away from open water. I've only been 'inland' in all my travels one time - Las Vegas - and I was terrified by how flat and dry everything was, and how distant the horizon was.

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I'm in Pittsburgh. The only way I stay sane is the rivers.

Dad was a sailor, and I miss the ocean. :(

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OHMIGOD, I absolutely love your icon!

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*laughs* Thank you. If you want to use it, go ahead. I don't have a credit for it.

(I've got a bunch more Firefly icons of looove.)

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REALLY?? Thank you so much!!!! You are completely wonderful!

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*laughs again.* I'm not wonderful, I'm a Firefly fan. ...

WAIT, those are synonymous! :D

Go ahead and snag whatever icons of mine you like, just credit those that have credits attached, please!

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Dad was a sailor, and I miss the ocean.

I know how that goes - my dad's side of the family is very into boating, I was on boats all the time when I was younger, but since college I haven't had much time to go out. I get really wibbly sometimes about how much I miss it.

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I was never on the ocean itself much, but I miss the salt air and the... just... you know?

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I've been on the actual ocean... hmm... three times. Once on a cruise to see gray whales when I was pretty young, once on a pontoon-boat cruise in Hawaii, and once very close to the coast up here, just outside the sound, desperately hoping to see orca whales. It's a lifelong ambition of mine to see them in the wild, and though pretty much everybody else in my family has seen them multiple times, I always fail. :(

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Which Hawaiian island? I lived on Oahu, before it went hardcore tourist--from 1986-1990.

I don't remember much, but yes. :D

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Ooo. I've only been to Kauai - two of my friends and I went there after highschool for our graduation trip. We stayed in a condo that one of the girls' grandparents owned, used their car... we were generally spoiled and had a fabulous time. :D It must be really different living there, but still, what a beautiful place!

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It's gorgeous! Expensive, though.

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OH YEAH. can I snag this meme? Puhlease?

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Psh, of course - that's what memes are for!

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I totally respect the relationship that you have with your mother; that is, as far as I can tell from a few LJ comments. Are you as close to your father as you are to her? Or is that too personal?

I really wish I could remember wher I saw this meme so I could give credit -- I really like it. It is sort of a crazy relationship that we all have with our flists. They know so much about our inner lives and sometimes very little about our external lives. Interesting.

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I also wish I knew how to type "where" correctly. XD

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What doesn't come across is that because we're so close, we end up getting into a lot of dumb fights, mostly my fault because I don't have the kind of censor that most people have with their parents, and all my oversensitive neuroses come out when we're together. But I guess that's the trade-off for being more on a friend level than a parent/child level at times. The parent/child issues still have to come out somehow... ;)

My relationship with my dad is very different - my relationship with him when I was young was a little strained because he was the one out of the house for work, and tended to be busy with his own things, and very serious about everything. He's lightened up a lot in the last... wow, ten years, I guess, and we started getting a lot closer after my parents divorced. In a lot of ways my family mimicked the traditional gender-divide, because my mom was home all the time running an in-house daycare, whereas my dad worked out of the house, was the more disciplinarian parent, etc. We also have to go to more effort to schedule time together, since he's remarried and has to arrange schedules around my teenage stepbrothers, my stepmom, church... We don't communicate as well as my mom and I on a lot of things, but the up-side to that is that we have fewer fights because we don't see each other as much so I at least put in a good effort not to rock the boat when we do.

It is, isn't it? It's kind of like anonymity, but yet not - sometimes I feel like I'm more willing to talk about the insanely personal stuff in my life here than I am to deal with it with my friends who know me in person (tricky, since a lot of them are on my f-list, too). It's safer, somehow. Particularly since I'm one of those people who can talk about just about anything in writing, but often gets freaked out in person.

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sometimes I feel like I'm more willing to talk about the insanely personal stuff in my life here than I am to deal with it with my friends who know me in person

I absolutely agree with you there, although I don't know a single person in RL (really!) who has an LJ, so I can get away with bitching and moaning here as much as I want, and about anything I want. It's quite nice, actually. I never have to censor myself or worry that someone's going to see what I've written. It's actually made me more aware of how certain situations make me feel (usually I am very good at ignoring my feelings, good or bad, preferring always to stay somewhere in the middle if I can control it) while I'm experiencing them. Since I started my LJ two or three months ago, I've noticed that I'm always analyzing situations I'm in and my response to them so that I can remember to tell myself (and you guys!) later on. Kindof strange to watch your brain change like that, actually. ^_^

I like the new icon as well. How did you get that pretty white circle of light in the lower left corner?

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That makes sense. For me, this is sort of an extension of the journal-writing I did in private when I was in highschool and early college - I've alwayas found it really useful to figure out what I think and feel by writing it down, getting it all "out there"... except now it really is out there, where people can see it. So it's a different kind of experience, in some ways, but still familiar. *g*

How did you get that pretty white circle of light in the lower left corner?

No exciting technique, I'm afraid - I just used one of Myrasis' "Unfocused Light" textures, set to Screen at 78.4% opacity. The same brush (upside down and shifted around a lot) is what gave me the glow on Inara's face. I think I got the textures from

freshmakers - a lot of good stuff comes through there.

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Dur. Texture, not brush. There's also another of the textures from the same set arranged over everything set to Color at 21.6, which darkened the blues in the sky and took out some of the pink in her skin.

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Thanks for the tip -- I really like that look. Your icons are getting better and better. ^_^

I actually haven't made ANY icons for like two weeks, unfortunately. I was so busy with my trip, and since I've gotten home, I've been absolutely frustrated with this fic. It's like I forgot how to write well between the last fic and this one. Argh.

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It's like I forgot how to write well between the last fic and this one.

Oh god, do I ever know that feeling. Sometimes whatever it is just comes so easily, so naturally... and then sometimes it's like pulling teeth to get a damned sentence looking right. Just keep pushing through! I'm sure you'll hit the groove eventually and it'll start working again.

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Thanks for the encouragement. I definitely know that's just how it works sometimes, but it's nice to hear it from someone else -- it's sometimes hard to remember when you're as frustrated as I am right now.

I've got it off to someone who offered to beta for me just for this one thing, and I very clearly spelled out for her the things I am concerned about, so we'll see if she has any helpful suggestions.

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And no matter how much we do fight, you know how much I love you!
Is that a new icon???? I love the colors so much, that is perfect!
I told Jeff this picture would be on LJ. He loved it!! Such a goof!

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Which icon? This one?

Oh dear. Yeah... 'goof' pretty much covers it. XD

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yes, the beautiful full of grace icon!

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Yup, it's new! I finished it just last night - I'd been planning on something with that picture for a long time, but it was only last night that I figured out what I wanted to do with it.

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The icons just keep getting better and better!

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bluerose16.livejournal.com

What's your biggest pet peeve? And it can't be something like racism or whatever, it has to be some little behavioural thing that people do that drives you absolutely nuts.

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