It took me 4 hours to prep the music and all my notes for two events this weekend. A 50th anniversary party in Woodside on Friday and a wedding in Monterey on Sunday. I had to prep for Sunday’s event tonight because on Saturday I’m going to Elk Grove for my grandma’s surprise birthday party. It’s a busy weekend, and a lot of driving, but I’m ready to crush and have a little fun!

I spent 4 hours on the road today when I drove my grandma from San Jose to Sacramento then I had to come back right away to watch my friends perform downtown at an open mic talent show. I didn’t get any work done but it was still a good day.

I helped my dad replace a kitchen faucet this afternoon then we watched the Super Bowl. Rams vs Bengals. Good game. The commercials were meh. I wasn’t very productive after the game so I inked a little of my Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle drawing before bed. Half of Raphael’s torso and his sai.

I was in Elk Grove today hanging out with my cousins and went out for dinner. They surprised me with a slice of cake at the restaurant. After dinner I drove back to San Jose. Tomorrow I go back to work on the Eastridge mural.

I drove to Elk Grove, Galt then Sacramento to visit family. I ate a delicious German dinner, watched Spider-Man: No Way Home in the theater, again, and spent the night at my cousin's house and forgot to write a blog post.

After a month of long days & nights working on the mural I was happy to spend a quiet Christmas Eve sleeping in and watching movies in bed. Tomorrow I'm going out of town for the weekend to visit family before coming back to work on the mural.

I thought I was going to finish the green background today but nope! I only outlined half of the green areas in the 9.5 hours I was there. I wanted to stay longer but I have to meet my cousin at the Martin Luther King Jr. Library in the morning so she can check out my artwork on display. She's driving in from out of town. I'll come back to Eastridge Saturday night and hopefully finish all the green.

I spent a good chunk of the day looking for the perfect typeface for a logo I'm working on. I went through all my pre-installed Adobe fonts then all the additional fonts available for download. I picked twelve then narrowed it down to eight. I mocked them up then emailed them to the client (my sister in law) and she picked the winner. The logo still needs a bit of polish but it's getting there.

Tonight I started vectorizing a sketch I made for my sister in law's house cleaning business. I drew the pencil sketch weeks ago but I'm finally getting around digitizing it now. I started by building the shapes in Illustrator on the computer then drawing them in Fresco on the iPad. I drew most of the tattered ribbon tonight and plan on  having a finished sample by tomorrow.

Today was the last day of our weekend get-together. We had such a great time and shared so many laughs! I don't remember the last time my stomach hurt from laughing so hard! It was the perfect weekend before coming back to a busy week.

I'm out of town tonight thru Sunday. Not gonna be posting much during that time so... chip, chip, cheerio!

I spent a few hours this afternoon in a meeting, getting an overview of the online tools & services I'll need to learn for my new jobby-job. It's a lot of stuff to wrap my head around and get familiar with but I'll figure it out. During the meeting, when I went back to feed the parking meter, I noticed a big crack on one of the tire's sidewalls. I was planning on driving my car to Ukiah for the weekend to together with a bunch of my cousins. For a while I thought I was going to miss it. Luckily my brother it also going so I'm hitching a ride with him tomorrow afternoon. The tire replacement will wait till next week. And in other news... I'm just about done processing all the 1.0 pre-order & custom-order requests that came in yesterday. All the the confirmation emails have gone out and most invoices too. I'll try and wrap that up over the weekend while I'm away. It feels good to be busy again and I'm excited to hang out with my cousins these next few days!

My grandma and I finished our puzzle tonight! It took us longer than usual to do a 1000 pieces because I had to work on the Valley Verde paint-by-numbers project last week then an impromptu 3-day trip to Las Vegas. Now that it's done I can start working on my booth for the Rose, White & Blue event this Sunday, the 4th of July. I want to make a table top display for my buttons and prints so that'll be my goal for Saturday. 

I flew in from Las Vegas this morning. My grandma is still here and she'd been working on the puzzle while I was gone so I jumped back in. We got a lot done tonight. Hopefully we finish it tomorrow because I need to use the tables we're doing the puzzle on. I'm going to work on my merch table setup for the Rose, White & Blue event this Sunday and figure out the best way to display my new prints and buttons along with my t-shirts.

Another busy day, but I made sure to make time to work on our 1000 piece puzzle with grandma. We got a lot done. Tomorrow I'm flying to Las Vegas to hang out with my brother foe a few days and go watch the Jabbawockeez perform with local DJ group The Bangerz at the MGM Grand. I'm super excited! I'll be back Thursday to start prepping for the Rose White & Blue Festival on Sunday, the 4th of July.

Today, my grandma and I started working on the new puzzle I got us last week. It's been a tradition over the last few years when my grandma comes to visit that we do at least one 1000-1500 piece puzzle together. Although it feels like much longer, we usually finish it in a couple days. Grandma likes to start by going through all the pieces and pulling out the edges and starting with those. She tries matching them to one another by color while I reference the poster, or box, to try and figure out where the pieces go. Today we came close to completing the edges after a couple hours. Grandma split when it was time to watch her novela! 

After spending the night with my cousin at his parent's house, my aunt & uncle. We spent the morning catching up before going to the park for my other cousin, his sister's, birthday party. (I have LOTS of cousins) After hanging out there for a bit I drove back to San Jose. At home I watched a little TV before cleaning up and doing dishes. I was too tired to do laundry so I'm putting it off till tomorrow.

This is a makeup post for Saturday. I was out of town and spent the night at my aunt's house where we had a surprise party for my grandma. We're vaccinated so we felt safe getting together after 14 months of sheltering at home due to covid. It was great to see everybody and even though it's been so long it felt like we never skipped a beat. Just like old times.

I got my second vaccine shot this afternoon and got a nifty button! I didn’t experience any side effects either. I’m looking forward to hanging out with my fully vaxxed friends & family in a few weeks after the vaccine has taken full effect.

The tax prep is still dragging along nicely. I did a bit of work tonight. Mostly reworking the forms & spreadsheets I use to keep records. I do my best to log everything but I’m constantly trying to improve & streamline the whole bookkeeping & tax preparation process.

Happy Star Wars Day!

I’m all done installing the 3D wall panels at Redwall Studio! I went full vampire mode and worked at night and slept during the day. It came out pretty badass. Check out the notes I made before I began installing the panels on the wall.

We got up up early Friday morning for another sunrise hike. This time at Diamond Head State Monument on the southernmost coast of Oahu. Afterwards we spent the day driving around the island and stopping at different places to eat food.

Another day hanging out at home. This time there was a documentary film crew at the house interviewing my cousin (actually my cousin’s wife but we consider her a cousin too.) It was fun talking to the them, watching them setup and asking them a bunch of questions about the process. They also bought us all a ton of Thai food that we ate for lunch & dinner. Tomorrow, my cousins and I are going hiking.

Another kick-back day with my cousin. Mostly just hanging around the house. Tomorrow, we got some plans to do some fun stuff outside.

For the record, I have not gotten lei’d since I got here.