Blog Should be Called I Will Update If and When I Have Something to Say and Then Usually Several Weeks After! (>_<)

Dressing up to see the great Bowie on the big screen as Jareth! 

So, I think I should probably just change this blog to, I will write a post whenever I have something to actually say or when I actually DO something. The only really big thing I have done is I finished the revamp of Jetty’s Brain Book website. While it does not work on the mobile site which just kills me inside because I did not know until half way through that the Bootstrap template I was using did not work on mobile sites. This sucks because the reason I re-did my site was so that I could get the access to more people through their phones and now that won’t even work. I am hoping that my fund raiser campaigns will be successful for the nonprofit and I can ask the programmer to teach me how to make it mobile friendly and then I will do it myself. Otherwise I will have to redo the whole website like I had to do for the raffle which will be so not fun. There are literally over 500 images and 70 web pages that will need to be remade. However, if I have to I will do it all from scratch. Right now I am gearing up to switch into full Japan prep mode, planning, packing, buying things I need, the whole nine yards. This time around I am hoping to get some intense Japanese studies in before I go. I want to be able to fully hold my own. I am really not very confident in speaking Japanese so I am thinking about switching over a majority of my speech to Japanese for awhile. I have been watching movies and playing Fallout 4- which is an AMAZINGLY fun game. I am also re-watching all the seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, then I will get to the Fuller House episodes everyone else is watching right now. I have been pushing my charity’s raffle  but it really feels like it is not going to be successful and we really need it to be successful because I cannot make the community on my own, I have tried. I need help; it is too much for me. Anyway, I better get back to my work. I trying to get back to using Max after spending the past three years in Cinema 4D for grad school. Time to reacquaint myself with the software that started it all for me. I will post photos or video when I am done. I know I am writing this for me to feel like I am keeping up a legit blog but maybe someone else will read it, you never know. ^_^ 

Here are a few photos of things that have happened: 

I got the Blackstar Album! YAY! 

I found the baby in my King Cake! ^_^ 

My first Christmas present from my parents in many years was a check for $100 which I promptly used to work to rebuild my credit with Bowie, Slytherin, and Stitch presents! 

Long Time No Blog

So, it has been a long, long time since I have posted a blog. The long and short of it: I started a charity and we are not entering our fifth year. We have given out three scholarships and will be awarding our first ever Caregiver grant in February. We are rolling out our art community for anyone affected by cancer this year as well. I just finished my master’s degree in digital art from Goucher College in December. I celebrated my ten year cancerversary on April 4th by heading to Universal Studios Florida to go to Harry Potter Land (the Wizarding World of Harry Potter to the rest of the world) and it was AMAZING. Not just because I made it to ten years when most told me I would not make it even a year. Every single year I am surprising doctors but not surprising myself. The only thing that surprises me is that I have dropped from exhaustion! I am constantly trying to learn new things, evolve my art and make a difference in the world. That makes me so busy that I often times have to make a choice in what gets updated and this site fell the wayside for a long time, but I am working now to get it updated. I am setting up a new faster server and updating all the links. I am also giving it a complete new user friendly design. It is my hope that this site will once again be the go to site for finding help and support for cancer survivors everywhere. I may be only one person who runs a very, very small charity but I still hope I can make a difference.
Hogwarts Express!

Breaking in or breaking out of Gringotts??

Universal Studios Florida was the best way to celebrate my life!

Grandma Kircher 2.0

My grandmother was born Grace Mattie Weiss on June 17th, 1918. She married my Grandfather  and became Grace Kircher. Others called her "Granny" but my siblings and I called her "Grandma Kircher". Granny is such a disrespectful term for someone who did so much for her family.  When I was a child, I lived in the upstairs of my Grandma Kircher's house. I lived there from the time I was a baby until I was in fifth grade when an arson house fire forced us to move from our small town of around 50 people to Troy, IL. As a child, my skin would crawl when I heard to long drawn out "Graaaaaany" of my relatives.

 My grandpa died before I was born and my grandma was a vital part of my growing up. I remember she would always praise me for my hard work. She would say "You are a Kircher through and through. Just like your Grandpa" She would tell me I should work at Disney and that I needed to keep doing my art, I had a talent. My childhood is filled with memories of my grandmother. For years she was 84 years old, she would walk across the town to go back to her old house to tend her flowers, she would not allow children to play in our yard for fear of being sued, she gave me wafer cookies and shortbread, chocolate turtles and we had picnics with KFC. She had a boyfriend named Albert that she would not admit was her boyfriend, she had children who disrespected her and a story of tragedy I could never understand. She was committed when she was young after losing a baby. She loved to Polka and would at every wedding she attended, even mine. My father was her youngest and I watched even though she slipped into dementia that she knew who he was. She was always happy to see me, even though I am sure she did not know who I was in the end, and once while going through her memory book when asked who the person was in the photo from my wedding, she said "Why that's me silly!"; it was a photo of me in my wedding gown.  I like to think that I am like my grandma in many great ways. My culture and family heritage are sort of a mystery as my grandmother's favorite line when asked about her Native American mother was that she was "a bleu bellied Yankee." My grandmother was fair and made everything she wore a stylistic art form.

My grandma was with me until January 28th of this year, I had her through my cancer, through my wedding, graduation from college and enrollment in grad school. She celebrated at my cancerversary party and used to love to come hang out with my friends. She loved Ray Price and everyone who knew her couldn't help but love her.  She was 94 years old (would have been 95 in June) and made me who I am today. At her memorial, we were asked to get up and speak about her and I did not get up. It was too hard to try and sum up and share the deep love and memories that I have with my grandma Kircher. I am glad that I can share her story through new media she would have loved to see.

My Awesomely Epic Benefit for those who dont know

So, for those of you who do not know the benefit was a complete and utter failure from what I wanted it to be. I worked for 6 months on this event, I stuffed bags, made baskets, baked cupcakes and brownies, designed web pages and advertisements. Basically I did everything I could think of to make this event happen and I only found support from a handful of people along the way and for that I am eternally grateful. I was surprised how many truly honorable people asked for my address to send me a check donation and then I never got it. I think perhaps the post office lost quite a few of my things. But that is not the point. The point is that the benefit was a lot like my wedding. I worked so very hard on it and then other people and circumstances fucked it up for me, but like my wedding I am very glad I did it. It is still hard for me to believe that the benefit is over and that I used $5000 and only made around $500. I had 13 paying people come to the event and ended up giving away the 50 pizzas I ordered. Almost all of the 52 baskets I made ended up selling for the opening cost of $20 or not selling at all (or I bid on them to get them started and ended up winning them.) You could have gotten $100s of stuff for $20 had anyone other than my sister bid online or shown up. However that too is not the point of this little typing escapade. I wanted to write out for myself about the benefit because I know that not many people pay attention to my posts, or my groups or messages. I know most people will not read this note but at least it is out there in case someone a few weeks down the line goes, oh yeah! I wonder how that benefit thingy went. Now they will know, it failed. So, many people keep telling me, it is not a failure and if I reached one person it was a success, which would be true if I had had one single young adult show up. Alas I did not. There is also another point to this note and that is that after spending an awesome day with Sachiko yesterday jus playing and having fun for once. I realized that I have not spent time having real no benefit thoughts attached fun in over 6 months. I need to work on my life for a while because if it was not for the stupid benefit I would be moved by now and out working a job I actually like. BUT I know that it is not in me to give up and so do all of you if you know me at all. So, I have already decided I am still going to accomplish all I wanted from the benefit (save 4 fat checks for the charities, instead I will have to give 4 super small ones but I know they will still appreciate them), and I am going to start it right away. What I am going to do is do my own fundraising for the goal of my benefit. SO, if you did not come to the event or did not bid and you feel bad about it, the best way to make it up to me is to work out how to work with me through my studio to make your Christmas/Chanukah/Kwanza gifts or event Birthday gifts. Or I can make you a custom Chemo pet, I now make them in the shape of animals or some objects too. So, IF you feel any of the above, please think about helping me with this current fundraiser. However, since I am no longer delusional, I do know that most of my friends on here will not read the note and those who do will more than likely not be able to help, but I am just very proud of me for at least attempting to still accomplish my dreams and not moping around in my I wasted $5000 on a stupid event no one cared about blues. So, for me I am already awesome. I am just awesome with no way of accomplishing my dream without the help of others, which means in laymen’s terms I am screwed.

Feeling Discouraged Recently

I think most people who never know it by looking at me or reading most of what I post but I have been getting very discouraged recently with the benefit I am putting together. I have been having a lot of stress related issue in my health and have been having lots of benefit related nightmares, including not getting any donations, not having any volunteers to help and just me running around and then the worst not having anyone show up. It is very rough on me since I am the only one working on this benefit. It is my baby, I designed it, I have evolved it, and it is my responsibility. However recently it has come to my attention that I have never really explained how this whole benefit came into existence. This benefit came into existence because I wanted a way to get my website out to as many young adults as I could in case they needed it in the future and also to make sure that cancer survivors both near and far from me could know it was available to them. From there, with the help of my friend Erin, I started brainstorming ideas and in the end I decided to do a Silent Auction Awareness night where I would pass out awareness information. Well I knew I wanted to donate a portion of the money to a charity but I had 4 of them that I thought equally do a great job in the area of young adults, so I picked those four to be on the list. Now, as the event grew and I started soliciting donations I realized that people are not comfortable with the money going to my website, even though I ask for no money at all for the benefits of my website, and there is no membership or signing up of any kind. Anyone can come and go as they please. So, in the process of researching I decided it might be best to look into being a nonprofit because I am not making any money off my site and that way I could keep gathering information and resources for survivors and not have to worry about people’s reluctance to donate. Well as I did more research I got discouraged that I could not be a nonprofit because there are so many rules and I do not meet all the criteria, as I delved further though I think that I can and I am certainly going to look into it because I think it may be the best thing for my website to be. Obviously I cannot just have a free to use website, I must be registered in order to be worth anything. What few people realize is that before the benefit I worked countless hours on my website and the second reason for the benefit was to get money to get my website fixed in the areas I cannot do myself. I am not a web designer, I have very minor experience in programming and coding for websites and yet I built the whole website but I have big plans to make it more accessible and cover more areas but I cannot do it by myself and I cannot get anyone to help me for free so I need money, and I don’t have it by myself. So, there it is in plain English if you were curious, this benefit started out as a way to 1.) Raise awareness for my website and 2.) to raise funds to have a professional help me add and fix areas of said website. In the past 3 months though it has evolved into being something much more than my website and even though 60% of the funds will still go to my website, I am the only individual (besides Sharlene) to donate to the benefit, and I have donated TONS of stuff, both under the studio name and the website name. So, by the time the benefit is over, I will more than likely break even on the benefit. Which is fine, but I should not feel bad for giving only 40% to charity and I do, and that is not fair. I have been busting my ass on this benefit, I think about it nonstop, I design, plan, call and approach donors all day long. There is not a single day where I am not trying to make this benefit a huge success and where am I spending the most time you might ask, the charity baskets that’s where and those are 100% going to each charity, so I get NOTHING from them. I repeat NOTHING! I am entering contests out the whazoo to try and win stuff for the benefit, I am applying for Spirit Jumps, I am writing to celebrities, making wish lists and gift registries, bank accounts and press releases and yet I feel like every time I get a few steps ahead I end up 10 steps back. It is so frustrating to feel like I am not doing a good enough job when I am giving everything I got. It is very, very discouraging. So there it is in a nutshell, I feel like I am wasting my time. I should be building a half way decent portfolio and finding a job and instead I am pouring my heart and soul into something that will more than likely fail. Depressing really if you think about it. Oh well, back to work I suppose but first an oatmeal bath for these full body hives I am suffering from! :(

My first ever blog through MS Word, Natural Skin Shop Suggestion

So, I have been meaning to update this silly blog more often than I do and so I decided that if I set it up to my Word software then I will have no excuse as I am on Word almost every day, they only way it could get more easy is if I could link it up to my Facebook or my Droid (now that would be AWESOME!). Lots of big things going on in my life recently. Trying hard to find a job in the gaming world. I have been doing lighting and camera work on my scenes and they seem to be turning out quite well. I even purchased a website to send potential jobs to so they can see it without having to hold a hardcopy demo reel in their hands. More convenient is always the best way. The only problem I am running into is the 360 views of the scene are too long, but when you watch them they don't seem like they are too long, so I did a walkthrough of my living room to sort of live action storyboard my most recent animation and it took 33 seconds. Well all of my videos are ending up being about 30 seconds and since a demo reel should be between 2 and 3 minutes I am going to have a hard time. I am either going to have to narrow them down or cut them. Well I will be posting them to my website so everyone to see and maybe give some feedback, otherwise they are all on my Facebook right now, so friend me and check them out. J Had my Dr. Appointment on the 13^th and everything is fine. I worry a lot about finding a job because I know that jobs Google search names and the first thing that comes up for me is about cancer and legally it isn't supposed to matter but subconsciously it does. So, everyone think happy thoughts for me to get a good job soon! ^_^ The benefit is going great and if you haven't checked out the web page please do: http://www.jettysbrainbook.com/benefit.html. It has lots of ways you can be a huge help! I have been working so much on it that I am having stress related migraines! However, I know it is going to be great so it will all be worth it in the end. We were supposed to go on vacation to check out job sites but the friend who watches our house is MIA, I hope he is ok. So, until he turns back up we cannot go anywhere L I've been pretty involved in trying to win things for the benefit, although I have been sick it seems to be a good way for me to still participate in fundraising. One great place I have been visiting and participating in is the Natural Skin Shop's Blogger Wars (if anyone is interested in entering it is here: http://naturalskinshop.blogspot.com/p/blogger-war-contest_6396.html) I have been to the website several times since I first became a fan on Face book and my person favorite post was about dark circles under the eyes. Since I am going to include this as a submission here is the legal part "Disclosure: By writing this post I am qualified to win products and/or cash prize. All views and opinions with regard to the products or company itself are my own and were not influenced, nor reviewed, by the company prior to posting." I know that seems weird but it is necessary just in case I say something un flattering, like Kevin Smith on the Chasing Amy extras *Check it out if you don't know what I mean, he has an opinion on DVDs that he shares :-P* Now, I know I won't win simply because I only have 2 followers and no one really reads my stuff but it is my own fault since I never update, but I want to enter anyway. For the benefit and because I think this website could be a big help to cancer survivors. When I was sick I had serious issues with my skin, for the first time in my life. I never really broke out in high school, they only time I came close was small ones when I worked at KFC because my face was so disgusting all the time. It was hard my face was always dry and my lips were always cracking. I used more chap stick than an Olympic skier. I also used very pricey Oil of Olay lotion on my face because it hurt so badly. It was rough. When your hair is falling out and you are feeling down having nice skin can be a big plus in a sea of negatives. The tips and tricks are my personal favorites, easy ways to tackles some of life's more prevalent problems (puffy eyes and dark circles for me! :-P) http://www.naturalskinshop.com/Ginger_s_Tips_Tricks_s/513.html The products are naturally wonderful and they offer a wide variety of products for any need. There store can be found here if you have a specific need you would like to check on: http://www.naturalskinshop.com/ Plus if you sign up with your email you get 15% off your first order! I hope you will all check it out and I promise to write on here more often. J Love Love Jettychan

New Awesome Site for Skin care and health!

There is a great new blog and shop out there that can help you will all your skin needs. I just became a fan and entered in their scavenger hunt. You can become a fan here: http://www.facebook.com/NaturalSkinShop?ref=ts
Natural Skin Shop is hosting a Scavenger Hunt for the next seven days starting today. Make sure to check back each day as there will be a new clue every day. On Monday, June 21, 2010 we will announce a $1000.00 grand prize winner and 3 runners up. This will be a random raffle drawing the more entries you get the better your chances of winning.
So, if you are interested please, become a fan and enter the contest as well. With me planning the benefit I have been entering contests all over the place in the hopes that I can win and donate it to the benefit. It would be fantastic if you all entered as well. Get the word out there. There are some amazing tips on this blog; I particularly like the one about dark circles under the eyes, because I suffer from that very badly. So, if you want to know all the new and awesome information about skin care, make up, and just all around health for your skin, check out the blog: http://www.naturalskinshop.blogspot.com/ It also has a link where you can buy the recommended products and other cool items for your skin! If you want to view the store, check it out here: http://www.naturalskinshop.com/Skin_Peel_s/1.htm
I hope you will all check it out and join me in the hunt! Love Love Jettychan