Crushing honesty.

I would love to be able to tell people that their art work simply isn't that great, without being mean, or being a troll. I'd love to offer some constructive criticism, but I'm worried that if I do, it could either upset the OP or possibly upset mods.

The problem is, I have a private art-school education (part thereof, I dropped out due to stress.), and my standards for what constitutes "good" are therefore rather higher than others' standards might be. That's not to say I haven't seen any good art on here (I have), just that most of the stuff people are fussing over is exceeding average, and doesn't seem to have a huge amount of talent.

Now, I know I haven't posted any art work on TH aside from my avatar, but this is actually due to copyright issues - just before the reset, I learned that anything I post on TH can automatically become property of TH. And because I want to maintain the intellectual property rights of all my work (yes, it's good enough that I consider this to be a genuine issue) I haven't posted any since the reset. I also have poetry that I haven't posted, although in general the standard of poetry on the site is a lot higher than the standard of artwork - but that could also be because other artists, like myself, are wary of posting for their own copyright reasons.

But yeah I just wanted to get that off my chest. I'm not going to post on any art work, but if I ever do, and the post is not filled with unicorns and rainbows, now you know why.

On to business.
Speaking of art work, I still haven't finished that painting for Ann! Time is getting short, I sort of want to have it finished before my court date on the 18th. I mean I know pretty much exactly what I'm doing with it now, but I still have to actually sit down and do it.

I applied for the job with Turners and Growers today. Do I think I'll get hired? No. Do I think I'll even get as far as being contacted for it? Also no. There's a number of reasons for this, but the main ones are, I had to tick "No" for First Aid Certificate, Fork Hoist Certificate, and Driver's license. Now if I was hiring manager, I'd want applicants who get as far as interview to have at least two of the three. I used to have both First Aid and my driver's license, but seeing as I haven't done a refresher for First Aid (going to organise it in my own time, with my own money, once I have the available finances), and my license is revoked until at least October, I'm kind of screwed.

However we're going cold-calling on Wednesday so there may be a job in a factory somewhere that Vicki knows of, just waiting for me to apply for it. We'll hope. I desperately need a job so I can save, pay off my debts, and move out of home. I really want to be independent again. I also want to go back to studying, but the reality is that it's just no feasible at the moment, and that those courses I wanted to do through Open Polytechnic, I won't be accepted for because of my criminal convictions. Balls on a plate. Eventually I will be financially stable enough to return to studying part-time (in order to catch up on my GPA deficit), and then after that, I will be old enough to get a Student Allowance that covers the same amount of costs as a WINZ benefit, meaning studying full-time will finally be feasible, financially and otherwise. Long-term planning, like.

I am nervous about court.
I have been charged with "Unlawfully takes a motor vehicle (not amounting to theft)", meaning I've been charged with taking it, not stealing it. My current plea is not guilty. And I guess I just have to wait and see. Court is next Monday, so I have just over a week. Hopefully, if I am found guilty, the sentence will be relatively minor. Hopefully.

I'm hungry and Mum's not home yet. I wonder what's for dinner? I can't exactly just cook my own, because then that could alter whatever plans other people have. Farking other people. If I lived in my own place, I could get hungry, cook something I enjoy, then eat it. Something like, meat, vegetables, eggs. And maybe a carb like bread, but I found when I was living on my own I had less carbs with my evening meals because carbs such as pasta, rice, and potato take a lot longer to prepare than everything else and so require more organisation. Rice is all goods if you have a rice cooker, but I don't. It's actually on my list of things to get for next time I move out.

I'm rambling again. Too bad, not many people read this anyway, and those that do, don't regularly comment. Therefore I don't feel bad about using up server space with long-winded blog posts. Anyway, I have to get it out somewhere, and I'm not talking out loud very much of late. Nothing worth saying, really, but I can be honest here without fearing retribution.

I have another dragons task on RuneScape. They take a long time, and I need to take a beast of burden familiar in order to fit the spoils of more than 5 kills into an inventory in a single trip, but the money isn't too bad (I'm saving for the Armadyl Chestplate & Chainskirt at the moment), and the slayer xp is actually pretty amazing.

I finally got 90 firemaking and will be going for 92 once I get 75 slayer (and access to Kuradal as a slayer master, wooo!). And then I shall continue to attempt to raise my total level by any means possible. Currently my total level is 1911, I have 275 quest points, and my combat level is 114. Go me, I guess. Sort of considering going for Completionist Cape eventually, but it seems like it would take a lot of time and effort, and to be honest, I genuinely hate dungeoneering. I'll start doing it in teams in free to play soon, but right now I honestly can't be bothered with it. Oh wells.

I've been considering cycling to gym. I've got to get my bike out of the galvanised shed in order to do this. But then again, I might not actually go tomorrow. I haven't been on Mondays for a few months, and I don't want to be inconsistent, and seeing as I can't be there next Monday, I've decided it may not be a good idea to be there this Monday. Once I have my court outcome and/or sentence, I'll be able to return to doing M,W,F consistently. And feel good about it. I'm feeling pretty good about coaching at the moment, we're all agreed that our kids need to do loads more conditioning, so we're doing heaps of conditioning with them. Want to wiiiiin.

Also cycling to gym will lead to weight loss, and I'm very overweight (apparently my BMI is "morbidly obese" although looking at me, you'd probably just think "overweight" or "fat", not "dying because of her weight", but also even when I was at a healthy size, my BMI was still "overweight" - I have quite a bit of muscle mass, everbody's always surprised at how strong I am, so once I've lost weight I need to get an accurate body fat percentage done.) so any extra activity I can sneak into my routine is a positive thing. Mum said I should start small, like riding around the block, but it's my personal opinion that as far as fitness goes, you don't make progress unless you're willing to really PUSH yourself, so I'm not going to allow her "slow and steady" mindset to rain on my parade. I mean, she's been going "slow and steady" at the exercycle for nearly two years now, of 20 minutes a day, doing the same old thing, and I don't see any difference to her body shape. At all. She reckons she's smaller and the scales says she's lost weight, and that may be true, but to me she still looks exactly the same, and that's what happens if your body gets in a rut fitness-wise - you do the same thing all the time, your body stops responding to it. This is why mixed training programmes such as crossfit are universally more effective than things like running on a treadmill for an hour a day. Yes, running on the treadmill will get results. Initially. But once it gets easy, if you don't change what you're doing, you're not going to continue to get results, and fitness is a continuum. You don't "get fit" and then just stay there, you want to be always increasing your cardiovascular fitness, constantly increasing your muscular endurance, your power, your strength, your flexibility.
That's MY KIND OF TRAINING! YEH BOII!

At least, once I get off my arse and actually put these things into practise.

It's 20 past 6, Mum will be home soon, dinner soon, yaaaay, kbai.