this week's illo friday topic is 'magic'. i've quickly sketched the queen of magic. can you guess who this is?

please excuse the bg texture, it wasn't done on purpose. being a clumsy person i spill a lot of liquid and my sketchbook has been a victim many times. the pages in my sketchbook, therefore, are very wrinkly.

mou, ikutsu neruto osshoogatsu?

back at work after a really nice, quiet and relaxing xmas long weekend. i'm almost 90% recovered. just in time to celebrate the new year and also to be able to hang out w/ my sista, who will be arriving this friday!! i'm soooo excited.

we are going to be flying over the 'pond' next week to visit our dear friend (and my partner in aozora crime) b. ... which is why i didn't take any vacation days off this week, if you are wondering why i'm one of the very few people at the office.

ps - from the blogger dashboard i found this link. there is a list further down the page of canadian aid agencies that are collecting donations for the tsunami victims: http://tsunamihelp.blogspot.com/

illustration friday again (already) and i struggled a bit with this week's theme: home. click on the image for a bigger version. critiques are happily welcomed.

hack, hack. cough, cough. gag, gag. barf

i've had this dry cough for a week now and after a sleepless night (yes! a sleepless night for the resident narcoleptic). i went to see my doctor today. i don't have an infection and i just have to let this cough take its course. i'm tired of having to sit up while sleeping - yuck!

when i was still in vancouver, i used to think i had the strongest constitution - i rarely got sick and even if i did i rarely had to take a sick day off. now that i've moved to toronto, however, my confidence in my immune system has gone down the drain. this is the 4th cold i've had this year and the 4th sick day i've taken. ugh

illustration friday! i'm going to try to do this as much as possible from now on. this week's topic is 'adoption'

s: have you ever had a threesome?
happy d: no i'm a threesome virgin
s: well, why not tonight? i'll bang 'a' and then i'll bang you as a token of sharing him with me
happy d: ahahaha ... no

today as 'a' was getting his haircut by our gallery owner friend, i experienced (for a short while) the lifestyle of a gallery owner. aaah what a lifestlye. smoking up and getting drunk on champagne, while flirting and horsing around with attractive artists ... on a weeknight.

's' and 'j' live in their gallery space which is on the 2nd floor of an old toronto building with floor to ceiling windows (paned windows b/c the building is old). the space is enormous (we rode bicycles around the gallery tonight) with exposed brick and beams. according to 'j', he wakes up between the hours of 11am to 1pm, does about 4-5 hours of work and then goes on to pursue his other interests - some of which include cutting hair and making art. man, i'm so jealous even if only for the bit about being able to talk about anything you want in your workplace part.

toronto has some of the greatest graffiti ever. this isn't the greatest shot, but it's the only documentation that i have of this stencil art (the renovation of the store is now finished and the barracade is gone).

last night bday-'a' and i were walking towards the downtown theatres when we stumbled upon another memorable piece. it said:

if jesus knew what has happened to his birthday he'd probably wish that he had never been born

tonight my company held the 2nd largest fundraising event of the year. the 'being there for kids dinner' - where dinner tickets go for $400/ea and there are a plethora of auction items, games and raffles to further raise funds for our cause (a lunch date w/ kalan porter was auctioned off for $4000). approximately 3000 ppl were in attendance and the whole event was almost fully staffed with student, community and staff volunteers. the truly amazing thing is that no section of the evening was under staffed.

volunteering as part of the media team, i was the rep who stayed through the entire the meet and greet signing session with the new canadian idol, kalan porter. i must say, i got a little taste of what the whole celebrity industry must be like. the giggly girls i can handle and i actually find rather cute. it was the 30+, 50+ year old women who were going gaga over this teen pop star that really gave me goosebumps. these creepy women stood in line for over an hour to meet the canadian idol and they started acting all flustered when it was their turn to get their kalan porter headshot signed. these women were even sitting on the floor with all the other 10-13 year olds in front of the stage shrieking when he was performing (in between tables filled with c-level execs). yuck!

the other sad thing i witnessed was the management team of the new canadian idol. they seemed like bitter, jaded industry types. the minute all the fans left the media room, they started bad mouthing the fans, using 3-letter acronyms to label certain fans (although as mentioned above some were truly creepy). sad when you realize that these fans are paying for their salary.

last week i was getting a serious case of the winter blahs. the skies were consecutively grey and the temperatures were hovering around 0. to top it off, my day job was crazy. that all changed yesterday with beautiful blue skies (yes the temps were still in the negatives), a peek at a craft show and a nice walk home.

but today it finally snowed! cold temperatures somehow become quite bearable when it snows. i don't even mind the -4 because of the precipitation in the form of small ice crystals. it's so pretty when it comes down and it reveals all the hidden shapes in outdoor objects like plants, buildings and telephone poles.

i skipped into work singing, 'it's snowing! it's snowing!' work was even bearable b/c of the snow. aaaah lovely snow.