Earache + very, VERY busy day at work + no break before Tae Kwon Do (something I was supposed to have until volunteering to work an extra hour) = absolutely one heck of a day. At least the medication appears to be working. This morning, I was feeling ever so slightly better, albeit basically just as bad as yesterday. Over the course of the day through treatment, the earache virtually disappeared, with it really only being noticeable when my head got into those certain positions, and that's where it's at right now.

So I think I should be okay. I'm just exhausted, and not looking forward to the bundleload of work I've yet to do. (In particular, loads of mafia errands.)

Doctor's diagnosis: swimmer's ear. Which doesn't exactly make sense since none of the causes are things that particularly apply to me and the only real symptom I had was the ear pain, but it's what the doctor says, so we'll see.

I've got an eardrop medication to take, though I'm not sure if I'm taking it correctly. Four doses a day, which means probably spaced 3-4 hours apart, and I have to lie on my side for five minutes after applying the drops to make sure they go in...which I'm not sure they are. Pain's still here, and plenty strong, too.

But I suppose I'm noticing it less and less for most sedentary activities. (It's moving that really seems to set it off now.) So, maybe progress? We'll see. Regardless, long road ahead of me.

And today's a nightmare business-wise, too. I promised I'd come back to ComicFury today, though I made that promise before I had the ear infection. Thing is, I don't want to break it, either. (Small problem: my computer's slowing down, though, so might be in need of a restart soon.) I'll see if I can squeeze it in.

I've also got a bunch of mafia errands to run, including maybe starting back up the text-based RPG. (Which I also promised to get back to.)

The day's half-over, by the way. And I've still got work to do, and I foolishly began some theory updating for mafia in order to try and make my work be, well, better. And I still need to start (re)drawing the first true page of Red Hood Rider.

...All-in-all, a whole mess of a day. I can only hope I get everything.

To top it all off, weebly's being slow again, so this entry might not even make it to you.

So I started today with something very positive: I found a glow-in-the-dark wristband. Not the same one that was THE wristband I held for a third of a year, but one all the same, and one which I'm thinking about wearing.

I stole it from the bathroom. Presumably, it was slated to be thrown away, and acquired by one of my parents at one of their activities. I think that I have a better use for it than whatever fate they had in mind, though, so that's why I took it. That's the good.

...The bad is that I'm absolutely exhausted from all the work I did, yet far more importantly, I have this killer earache. I'm not sure when I first had it. I think I might have had it as early as Wednesday. But I didn't notice anything until Friday. At the time, I wrote it off as being from wearing headphones, so something that'd be my fault.

My symptoms getting worse on Saturday made sense to me, then, because I used them for much longer, and figured that the pain would go away. Yet instead of going away...today, it actually GREW in strength, from already-strong to incredibly-strong. (I'm going to the local walk-in clinic tomorrow about it.) It's my right ear, and it's an absolute nightmare.

Like, the pain definitely is radiating from the ear, but it's so intense that I can feel the pain throughout most of the right side of my head--neck, eye, you get the idea; the pain travels that far. Yet it's focused on the ear. Around it, I can feel it intensely, yet I can tell that the center, the origin, is somewhere inside the ear.

It's worse if I turn my head the wrong way. When I have my head in "good" positions, I can feel the pain, always there, but it'll be mercifully mild. Move my head into the wrong position--to the left and up seem particularly bad--then the result is a SHARP spike of pain that is a sign telling me not to do that.

I can't even eat, in spite of being hungry, because chewing counts as head movement. I chew primarily on the right side of my mouth, and the mouth is right next to the ear, so something about it triggers the pain.

It sucks. Really, really sucks. Just...ow.

So my brother was able to help with the computer issue yesterday. Not sure if the issue is fixed, but I did movie night today and Mardek so it's good enough for me.

Speaking of movie night, tonight was two movies, [REC 4], and The Abyss. I enjoyed both, and while The Abyss is a bit cliched and preachy, going more into the 'fiction' as the movie progresses, the science is rather excellent for the most part.

That, plus the after-movie laughs, was fairly good, and the intermission was one of those made-of-awesome animations that I love to watch.

All-in-all, fairly good day.

'Course, now as I move to post this, I'm experiencing some resistance, so it may not go up on time, but if so, know this was TYPED on Saturday.

Typing this up Thursday night, technically, before I go to bed, but it'll be my Friday blog because I'm just ranting right now. I'm incredibly frustrated right now, because on the computer I prefer to use for gaming, Opera--my replacement browser to Chrome--is now having the EXACT same problem that Chrome there is having, which is the EXACT same problem Chrome has on MY computer: you open it up, and nothing on the computer at all works. Task manager is so slow it can't even effectively shut the program down.

That exasperation only builds when you realize that this is on top of other things. It'd mean all my work on Mardek would be wasted. It'd mean switching to either a different browser and/or computer to do my daily/weekly Kongregate games (not to mention, mafia games), the Friday game which I never had heard of looking PROMISING for that exact thing adding in further frustration. Given what I've already lost, it's another frustration on top of a frustrating day.

So I suppose you could say Thursday went fine, but the MOMENT things turned to Friday, it all went to hell. The day sucks, and I haven't even gone to sleep yet, yet alone, worked.

And it gets worse when I say that honestly, I think I messed up on my Red Hood Rider page so much that it would be easier and simpler to just start over on it, and take a slightly different approach. (Instead of the background scenery first, drawing HER first and adjusting the scenery to match.)

It's just...not fun stuff right now. I need to vent a lot of steam.

Friday at least is looking better, albeit starting roughly with me waking up an hour early THINKING I heard my alarm go off when it was just me DREAMING about it going off, and getting digestive track issues for half the morning, but it turned around and was fairly pleasant overall. Came up with the idea for a new Rogue, one I've been needing too, although technically it's not so much a new idea as it is repurposing an old antihero idea of mine and turning him into an anti-villain.

I haven't the slightest clue how I'm going to do all that needs to be done today since tonight is going to be family night I believe, but somehow, I'll manage. Still think I needed to vent a bit, though.

Frankly, this'd be a difficult task if I was just literally tracing my reference images. Yet alone, trying to get an image of my own from scratch! Everything I'm doing is going wrong. I messed up on the size/positioning, which makes the anatomy/proportions a nightmare to deal with. Right now, Ruby has a gigantic head in relation to her body. I've got one leg looking good in relation to her arms, which look good in relation to the body, it's just that everything is too low and in comparison to the head, too small. The other leg I simply can't make work, though, and this is all before the detailing comes in.

I've got a long, arduous road ahead of me to complete the first true page.

It was surprisingly easy to find the relevant reference images. With a finely-tuned search, maybe I could have gotten better ones, but I got what I needed--SERIOUSLY got what I needed, with a handful of comic images that perfectly capture the dynamic entry I have in mind, save for their arm position.

That's where things get tricky.

The arm position I have in mind is closed rather than their open-armed stance, which is a much rarer find. Even the singular manga reference I found (it turns out searching for manga results is harder) doesn't have it be that way. I mean, I guess I could alter the stance she's in to fit (it's just a change in the arms), but I like the hands in front for her entrance since it helps convey a bit of a message before the comic itself tells you the page after.

And I only got two good references for the close-armed stance: one of which is only two, separated, halves, the other of which is the wrong gender and angle and has boxing gloves. (Mind you, the gender issue applies for the entry images I got which're, unsurprisingly, all male, but that's an easy fix.)

It's gonna be tricky, but I can do it.

...Later.

It's 5:45. I'm getting a little bit tired.

Knocked out two pages rather than just one, and I think I've got a good timeline. Next page I already have in my mind. The page after that is setup for the beginning of the end of the narration box portion of the Prologue. The mental timeline I've formed looks good. Perfect even.

And if the timeline works out as I think it will...the whole 'episode' will fall into place beautifully. It's already five, meaning I probably won't get much more done before the urge to go out and do something else strikes me again, butstill...this is going much better than I was expecting it to! I'm loving what I'm doing!

So because I was farming/grinding for nearly two hours in MARDEK, I got a little bit tired of playing games today. It getting close to 4:00 (my cutoff, since I wanted to retreat to my room for the End Session song of the day), and with no other things to do (aside from maybe a mafia errand or two that has no immediate timeframe), I came here.

I don't really have that much to blog about. I'm going to be here for at least an hour and a half (to the conclusion of the Five at Five), but might stay longer. Yet I need to stay busy the entire time. I could occupy that time with a REALLY long blog post, but that requires inspiration I have precious little of.

Instead, that largely leaves as my option, Red Hood Rider stuff. I know, I know. My blog is so saturated with it that people might conclude that webcomic is the primary purpose of this blog with everything else secondary. (Heck, given that there's a Red Hood Rider tab at the top now--albeit one currently empty--they wouldn't be too far off.)

I mean, it's not SUPPOSED to be, but I DO have Red Hood Rider stuff I can talk about, lack any other ideas, leaving me with the option of either talking about something I'm passionate about, or making a short not-blog blog-post which boils down to a lengthy, wordy, "Sorry, got nothing to say". (Sort of like what this blog post would be if I decided to NOT do the Red Hood Rider stuff.)

Right now, I'm thinking that I'll probably start the second page some time today. I should also see if I can get at least one more page scripted, since progress there continues to be slow. If I don't feel like tackling the first page (even though the image I have in mind is awesome, it's going to be incredibly hard for someone of my limited artistic ability to pull off unless I find THE reference image I need--the image I have in mind is actually fairly common to see in BOTH manga AND Superhero comics, it's just that I have no clue what search words to use to find it), then I might tackle the notes, though that remains a herculean task as well.

You know the saying. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. It's going to be hard, tedious work no matter what I choose to do.

In the mean time, though, I think I mentioned yesterday that I'm calling the first page finished in spite of its flaws. (Well, if not, I'm telling you now!) So I figured, might as well show it off.

...I hope to god that when I finally get to the digital version, I can actually fix my many screwups here. (Also, in future pages, it'd probably be a good idea for me to figure out a way to get my text better-written. I know, it's a small detail, and irrelevant given that ultimately I'll be using text on top, but it being, well, ruler-straight rather than crooked would be a nice start. It should also start and end with equal margins, being center rather than right-aligned on the top at least.)

Butyeah, while I screwed up epically with regards to connecting bottom-half and top-half (to the point where, frankly, the only way I see it being fixed is to have one half completely redrawn and while I wanted perfection, that much effort to get it is too much), this will do well enough. A good reference image, and I should be able to get it looking nice.

Next page will be even harder, though. It involves an angle I dread drawing: straight at the camera, full profile--and worse, it's dynamic. Extremely dynamic. In fact I might even try a google search of 'dynamic entry' to find the references I'm looking for, dynamic. It's an instantly-recognizable, highly-used pose, but one incredibly easy to mess up, especially with the proportions.

Definitely will need every bit of luck I can get wished on it, but I think if I can pull it off, you'll love it.

I might have had more to talk about, but I knew what I wanted to talk about, the thing I was having trouble remembering, was music-related. Well, I figured out what it was.

While I was working, I was mentally running through a few tunes, and the "I'm on Fire" tune (specifically, the backup singers' part) that Alfonso and Whitney in Dancing with the Stars did their Paso to came into my mind. Not something I hear on the radio, with it not being an End song, but something which I've heard enough to know decently well enough to get in my head.

I figured that I'd do an exercise in using a beautiful tune and changing the order of the notes along with the timing to form another one. The first order I came up with I scrapped because it was too close to the Macklemore&Ryan Lewis song which has a small part that sounds similar (the, 'This is the moment' song; that's the only lyric I can remember right now but should be enough to identify what song I'm talking about), so instead I came up with a new one.

In the original, it goes:
O--a, o-a o--a, o-a o--a, o-a-o--, more or less.
The version I came up with was,
A, a, a-o-o, a, a, a-o-o, a, a, a-o-o, o, o, a-a.

...Sound familiar?
...It did to me!

Take a good look at it.
Look at it reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeal close.

...You probably don't see it.
But I did. And if I wasn't working at the time, I would have facepalmed.

I thought I would avoid doing this, given I was working with an established tune, that is distinctly different, and yet, somehow, I managed to do it anyway. The version I came up with is, rather obviously, a variant on THE tune. THE tune turned something completely different from a completely unrelated song (trust me, THE tune has nothing to do with that song given that until today they were two entirely different things), into a variant of itself.

That thing must be ingrained in me as some sort of fundamental, basic, primal rhythm within me. I found it rather interesting at the very least, and it makes me wonder why I have some sort of tune stuck in me, which as far as I can tell lacks a firm origin in established music (a couple songs come close, but none are an exact match). That tune, THE tune, has been something existing...I think well before this blog even started.

I'm not sure when it began to come to my mind. But ever since coming, nothing's quite the same. I always compare things to it, be it others' work ("that sounds kinda similar to THE tune! But...it's not quite right, that can't be where I got it from..."), or my own in either, "that...that actually doesn't sound like THE tune!", or more commonly, "...Wait. Isn't that...DANG IT, NOT AGAIN!"

So on the one hand, it's cool, on the other hand, it can be kinda annoying. It's like my mind's being haunted by a one-hit wonder I haven't even produced yet. (But at some point, somewhere down the line, I probably will out of sheer annoyance at having it stuck in my head so much.)