Monopoly Guy!!!

I'm a winner! Big Time!! I kicked butt (not literally)!

I played Monopoly with my brother and sister for over 2 hours, and I bankrupted them by building hotels on those 2 purple properties and the gray properties! Do you know how much a hotel on Oriental Ave. costs for the poor soul who lands there? $550. Neither Bettina nor Adam could pay me, (I'm being the "meanie" landlord here) so I won! Bettina eked out a close 2nd, with some green houses on the pink properties, but they were no match for my red hotels!

Okay, one last bit of gloating before I get too full of myself; here's a picture of the cute old man on the Monopoly box, which I'm quite proud of.

(You see? I'm a stuck-up, thinks-she's-all-that braggart! Hey, I don't get much chance to brag in the real world, so I'm doing it here. Ha!)

My Doodle Collection #2

Hello, hello, hello! Annette Levy here! Check out my doodle collection #2!

<---This right here, with the mannequin parts in different poses, was the first page I filled out in my sketch book. My aunt got both the sketch book and the mannequin for my 16th birthday. Thanks a million Lisa!

--->

This one over here was done in early June, when I was reading "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain". It talked all about how objects have "negative space", and if you notice the spaces around a subject, it's easier to draw. Imagine a Bugs Bunny cartoon where Bugs runs through a wall, and all you can see is the hole he made in the wall; that's exactly what negative space is! There's a nothingness, yet there's something there, you know? Whatever.

<--- Now old Charlie over here I copied from Google Images. (I dearly hope you know who Charlie Chaplin is, although he was famous many decades ago). I didn't know how to do his eyes, so I just filled them in. I hope it doesn't make him look spooky. I'm especially proud of how I did his jacket; I used a graphite pencil and some blending tortillions. You can buy those sorts of tools at any good arts-&-crafts store.

---> I made this cutie just a couple months ago, I think it was one of those times when I wasn't feeling happy with my art. So I made a seahorse, and that made me feel much better. Seahorses are so cool, aren't they? Did you know that there are over 32 different species of seahorse?

(so says Wikipedia.)

<--- Out of this collection, this is my latest one, drawn only a week ago. Pretty kitty was started with just a simple "smiley", like this:

^,^

And then it just grew from there. Drew it from imagination as well as the seahorse. I don't own a cat because that would scare the feathers off of Sasha and Sammy, and Hazel too, but that doesn't mean I don't love cats as much as the next person. They're so coy, and plushy!

Well, that's all for now!

Signed, The Funny One.

My "1,000 Word Story"

Hey dear readers! Last night, I had the most amazing time with the coolest of writing websites,"Write or Die"! I wrote a 1,000 word segment in less than 45 minutes! I showed it to my brother and sister, and they thought it was funny and cute. If you feel like it, you can check out my story below. For all of you "would-be", "wanna-be", or "sooner-or-later-will-be" writers, take it from me, you have just got to check out "Write or Die", as soon as you possibly can!

The Girl Who Wrote 1,000 Words in 45 Minutes

One day, a girl decided to write exactly 1000 words. She had no idea what to write. But once she wrote the beginning, it got easier and easier. She just decided to write about the first thoughts that would undoubtedly pop into her mind. She wrote and wrote, and suddenly found that in no time she had written over 60 words!

"Wow, that was really much easier than I thought" she said to herself. "I wonder how many minutes it took me. Too bad there's no timer to keep track." She listened all around her and typed as she was listening. She listened to her mother talking on the telephone, and her dad made a funny fart.

"Mm-hmm, Mm-hmm, Mm-hmm" The girl heard her mother say. "What if I could hear what my Aunt Lisa was saying on the other line?" the girl wondered to herself. "Whoa! Almost 150 words now!" She thought in amazement. "Okay, I've got to stop myself. It's silly for me to keep word counting like this, it only distracts me from the actual typing that I should be doing" the writing girl thought to herself as she typed every word she was thinking almost automatically.

Then she thought, "This is really kind of cool." Her fingers seemed to fly across the keyboard, each seeming to be part of a team, with no leader to speak of. She thought to herself, "Which finger would be the leader or brain if that was at all possible, or practical? Hmm." Maybe the Thumb? Nah, too short. The Middle Finger, perchance? "Too rude," she pointed out.

"Why should I be pointing out things to myself if there's no one to talk to besides myself? Am I two different people? Maybe it's the two hemispheres of my brain that are talking to each other". She imagined. "What a funny way to think about such things, although at one point or another, I seem to believe it myself."

The girl who was a writer heard her brother enter the house, and now he was in the living room, talking with the girl's twin sister. But suddenly, he was behind her, asking to go on the computer. "Probably to play some game online," She thought to herself. "No Adam, I'm writing." She snapped after he had distracted her. "Fine." Adam said grudgingly. "I didn't mean to be so short with him," the girl worried to herself, hoping she hadn't upset him even a little bit. No, he was with the twin again, looking through library books, apparently happy and occupied.

"Okay, back to me." The writer refocused her mind and started another train of thought. "If the thought I am typing right now was a train, and all the words were freight cars, I would have over 460 words right around now." She thought, amazed at herself. "How long have I been sitting here I wonder." the girl wondered.

"Hey, now I'm just being repetitive, I'm saying 'the girl' and 'she' and the 'writer girl' too often. I'm starting to run out of anonymous identities for myself!" she realized. She decided she would just finally type her name and declare it as her name so she wouldn't have to beat around the bush when it came to telling what she was thinking. To put it another way, (because that last thought was probably too convoluted to understand completely,) she introduced herself formally, although there was no one to introduce herself too, because everyone around her knew what her name was.

"Oh well, I'll just introduce myself to myself then." Annette decided, finally using her real name after writing over 600 words. "Hi Annette, my name is Annette. How do you do?" the writer imagined herself saying. "I really am getting quite used to having my thoughts being typed out as I'm typing them now, it's almost become second nature to me!"

Amazed at her newfound talent, Annette then wondered, "I wonder if I'm making any sense at all. I haven't checked my grammar or thought any of my, well, thoughts completely through. I think I'll make perfect sense to myself though, why wouldn't I? I'm the one who's writing all of this." Funnily enough, Annette didn't have the time or patience to see that what she thought actually made little sense after all.

But what did she care? She was having an excellent time. watching her fingers fly across the keyboard. "I've already said that, but what the heck." She shifted in her seat and proceeded to type away some more.

She only had less than 250 words to go to reach her lofty 1000 word goal that she had set so hastily. "I must be writing for a very very very long time. I wonder if I've written for an hour yet? Maybe I've written for 2 hours even." she imagined. Annette then caught a little of what her mother Shira was saying on the telephone. "She's talking about me and Bettina's blogs." she thought proudly to herself. "Adam's behind me right now," thought the girl writer, whose name was Annette (don't wear it out).

Shira in the meantime seemed to have gotten disconnected in the middle of her conversation and had gotten back to her chat, shmoozing about both her daughters most recent favorite book, "Twilight".

"I just wanted to mention right here, if nowhere else, that I love the name Edward." Annette typed, thinking about the character from "Twilight" and also from the movie "Edward Scissorhands". "Oh I love both movies so much." she thought.

"Oh wow! I'm almost done with my 1000 word goal! I'm now on word number 942! I'd best choose my last words very carefully." She thought and she thought, but the longer she thought, she realized too late that what she was thinking was being automatically typed by her furious fingers. "Stop!" Annette commanded, and her fingers slowed down. They only moved to carefully type out the last words, which were,

"The End. Goodbye."

Pet Post #1

Welcome animal lovers! Today, I'd like to introduce 3 of my family members to you. Please welcome Sasha, Sammy and Hazel!

Here, they are all eating banana. I find that it's easier to photograph animals if you give them something to eat. Sasha and Sammy are our first cockatiels, and we've had them for about three years. We got them from a breeder rather than a regular old pet store because A: it's more cost effective, and B: the animals seem healthier. When we bought Sasha and Sammy, the breeder told us they were girls, but since then we've found out that they are really both boys. Usually you can tell the difference between a girl cockatiel from a boy cockatiel by the amount of yellow in their faces: boys are brighter, and girls are grayer, unless you're dealing with young'uns, in which case they're all gray-headed. Even though Sasha and Sammy look alike, their personalities are usually good indicators of who's who (just to be safe, my sister and I know the differing markings, so we can reliably tell our birds apart).

<---Sammy is the out-going one. He's a messy eater, and he's easy to put back into the birdcage.

Sasha on the other hand, is the cautious one. He's a much neater eater (hey, I made a rhyme!), and much more difficult to put away. He only goes back on his terms, if you know what I mean.--->

Neither Sasha nor Sammy are able to talk, but they can whistle and make "kissy" noises, and when they are hungry or want to be let out, they can really scream! But mostly, Sasha and Sammy are very mellow, and very sweet. They watch movies with us, read over our shoulders (while sitting on our shoulders), and best of all, they love a good neck rub! Sasha especially shows his appreciation when he gets a good scratching behind the ears (the red cheek-spots are actually a cockatiels' ears). The look of bliss on his face: priceless!

But enough about that. Now here's Hazel the Hamster!--->

Technically she belongs to brother Adam, but the whole family simply adores her, especially my mom; she loves to give Hazel a bit of spinach or something and kiss her on the head. Actually, that's what she does for Sasha and Sammy as well. Anyway, Hazel is the 4th hamster we've ever owned, and we've had her for a little over a year, but sometimes it feels like we've kept her for longer than that. She has the brightest eyes, the perkiest ears, and the glossiest fur. We got her from a pet store, because an employee told us she was pregnant, and so for 2 weeks after buying her, we didn't take her out of the cage or touch her even once! We never found any tiny hamster babies in that amount of time, though, so we figured that we got "jipped" by that pet store, or just the employee. Since then, Hazel has become, in my opinion, our most darling hamster ever. She scares Sasha and Sammy though; if she gets anywhere close to them, their crests go straight up and they both fly away. Hazel is also the most creative of the hamsters we have owned; she makes the coziest-looking "nests" out of the paper-towel and newspaper that we supply, and she looks simply precious when she's asleep.

My pets inspire me in my art: Here are a few sketches of Sasha, Sammy, and Hazel.

Pretty good, no?

I love my feathery and furry friends very much, and I hope that we keep them for a very long time.