So, Oklahoma isn't as boring as I thought!

I took a vacation from work this week, and had a chance to go visit some of the state parks up in the NW corner of the state with my boyfriend. Jen and I hit Boiling Springs Park, Alabaster Caverns, Little Sahara, and the Great Salt Plains. Little Sahara kind of was a letdown (it's a very, very little Sahara, in fact), and the Boiling Springs has been isolated to a concrete-sided rectangle that looks like some sort of utility pool with a bubbly bottom, but hey. I still saw freaking bubbly sand and... piles of sand. Overall, it was a very sandy trip.

The wildlife was awesome, though... in the Caverns, we saw a crap-ton of bats, which is unusual for the part of the cave that is open to touring. Our guide had us stop half way through to debate whether or not to cross in front of a rat snake that was coiled around one of the railing bars, too, which was nice. Also ran into some frogs down there, and up around the Great Salt plains we saw some deer (on the side of the road), turtles (in the middle of the road... later we drove by again, and they were smears. ), snakes, aardvarks (which I didn't even know lived in the state), armadillos, skunks, a porcupine (again... didn't know they lived here. This one was very dead in the road, too... Couldn't have been fun for the porcupine or the car, either), and last but not least, a freaking coyote. Alive, no less!

Very good trip!

You may or may not have noticed, but I'm being really freaking slow about my art trades. They're coming!

I'm saving up for a Cyntiq right now, and should have one within the next couple of months. With my work schedule being what it is as far as illustration production, once I get home I rarely want to do anything hard in the way of art. That means that breaking out the traditional media and cleaning it all up after goes straight out the window.

I piddled around with doing some designs without a tablet, but I just can't illustrate on the computer with a mouse. So, the art trades will be out and about after I get the new tablet.

Obviously, don't rush on mine, since the return trade is having to wait. Sorry about that! I didn't anticipate the level of I-don't-want-to-do-anymore-drawing that would come from the job. XD