Happy Birthday Est! 16, such a landmark, so happy for you. love you tons, Abner
PS. Thanks Tamar!

This is the first time I used my blog to force myself to draw, lol. Two posts back I told myself I would draw, so I just shut down the computer and did, this was the outcome. It's a little difficult to explain, I'll explain what it all means if anyone asks. Cheers!! Hope you all like it.
PS. I was particularly happy with this cuz I didn't copy it. I drew it on paper from my head and then traced it on computer cuz I love vector.


















Click the image to enlarge and see all the little details

My love will be the parachute that saves you when you're plummeting from great heights; it'll be the life preserver that keeps you afloat; it'll be your GPS when you are lost; it'll be your water when you are parched. My love will be the bungee cord that never lets you hit bottom; it's the saving power that will keep you alive even in the belly of a whale of disaster. My love is everything; My love will be your life. It's all about love!

It's just a very straightforward thing; I need to draw.

I haven't drawn anything in a very long time. I'm out of practice, out of touch, and feeling very uncreative. It's not really that I'm lacking incentive, as I usually draw when I really want to express something, yet I do have things to express. I want to express what it was like seeing my girlfriend after not seeing her for almost 2 months. I want to express how I want to witness but feel a little stifled. I want to express friendship, music, the Family culture. But I'm lacking the imagination a little, and the ideas I have thought of withered back into obscurity, sigh.

So mental note to self here, JUST DRAW ABNER!! Once you get started you'll be fine, you'll make something worthwhile and then will want to do it again and again. Ok Abner?

I'm off to get my sketchpad.

I think anyone who has recently come back from the XD CORE is missing it in some way, it’s just natural. Even I, as much as I said I wouldn’t sorrowfully miss camp and would blend seamlessly back into home life, have gotten all the expected reminiscent pangs that comes from a wonderful 3 weeks. I miss you all of you people, I really do.

And I could go into all the how’s and wherefores of how and why I miss you, and perhaps I will sometime, but this post is not about how to reminisce, it’s about how to counter unhelpful reminiscence. Not that reminiscence is bad, in no way, but when it makes you feel awful and feel bad about everything around you then yes, it becomes a tad obstructive. This post is not to belittle the past and the things of the past, it’s to appreciate the things of the present.

Anyone who knows me well and has received at least a dozen letters from me will know this is a typical Abner trick. And while I hope it works for you and puts a smile on your face when you need it like it does for me, if it doesn’t, no hard feelings. This is just my little cure for when I miss a really good time, I try to think of as many things that I can enjoy right where and how I am, and usually the sheer amount of things makes me happy enough, and if it’s not enough, doing one of the things can do the trick.

So think about it. If you’re at home and missing all your friends from the XD, think about the things around you that you love and enjoy, the things you can do right now that will bring a smile to your face and even remain in your memory for a long time to come.

· Having a really fun and foolish time with the kids. Water fights, food fights. A dimpled smile offering you a crayon masterpiece or all the excitement and passion that goes into that MC spelling “dictionary” for the first time, or that baby taking its first step, or saying an uncommon new word, or the countless other things that kids do on a daily basis that make our lives somehow more worthwhile. Hugs, kisses, hilarious facial expressions, doggie eyes. I think we’re all blessed to have kids around us, so enjoy them.

· Singing in the rain.

· Going on a roof.

· A cool breeze.

· Pets.

· Watching Vas sing in tongues.

· A good conversation with a good person about a good topic.

· Getting an awesome prophecy that just totally makes your day, helps you see something like you never saw it before.

· A friend who’s company you just don’t know you could do without.

· Home inspirations, birthday parties, times when the power goes off and you just bump into everyone, times when a room floods or a roof collapses or a wall caves in that’s just so unexpected it can’t help you from laughing.

· Getting up earlier than usual, grabbing someone else and singing some songs together, just like Sam and Anna’s good ol’ inspirations.

· When something in the word just totally stands out to you and you read it over once or twice and then sigh “Gosh, that’s so true!”

· Sleeping in late, REALLY late!

· Staying up late, REALLY late – talking, chatting, reading a fantastic book that begs for you to turn the page.

· Brothers and sisters on days you really are happy your parents liked having more kids than just you.

· Computer games, preferably multi-player with your gaming match sitting next to you, so tense and pressing the keys so hard the keyboard breaks in half and the tables legs collapse … but it doesn’t matter, cuz you won and now have the new highscore.

· Getting mail.

· Sending a birthday card.

· Doing something you know someone really likes, needs, or wants that just makes you feel so good inside afterwards.

· Eating ice-cream, or potato chips, or fantastic salsa, or pizza, or falafels, or rice cereal, or … or even just drinking a cold glass of water!

· In your mind coming up with an entirely new look to your room, or the kitchen, or even your old 1984 clunker of a car with no expenses spared – new wallpaper, new brushed metal counters, new tail fin. Best done with another imaginative person.

· Getting new mailings, especially like in my case where no one had picked them up for the last 3 months and there was a stack a meter high of paper to shift through. I enjoyed David Komic and Laban for over an hour.

· Coffee.

· Chocolate.

· More coffee and more chocolate!

· Sex, or dreaming of sex.

· The Lord, cuz he’s fresh everyday and always has something interesting to say or do and something that can cheer you up, if you just ask him or fight off the despair long enough to praise him, and find how wonderful it makes you feel.

Well I could certainly go on, but think of some for yourself, and above all, make sure to go to the Lord when you’re feeling down, he knows exactly what you need! Love you all and miss you and am praying that the Lord is doing special things in your lives.

PS. If anyone wants to add something that makes them feel happy to do or think about, add it to this post via a comment.

It's just past midnight and I just finished watching Sweet November, which I'm ready to call a classic. If you don't like romantic movies, too much deep talking, or cringe when someone says "Let's think about life", then please forgive me, but as for those who know me, they'll understand why I like this movie.

I could write a lot of different things about this movie, but there's one main thing it made me think about - what if today was my last day.

Forgive me yet again if that's a thought you'd rather ignore, but try to think about it a little. If today were your last day how would you be? Not what would you do - although I wouldn't mind hearing that from anyone, as I find questions that are bound to be answered with variety interesting - but my question is how would you be, act, react, think? Think about that for a moment …

…

Now think, what if by some unusual work of God you experienced a "Groundhogs" miracle and woke up with that reality every day, each day having it feel as impactful as the last. Whoever you are and however you look at life, I can tell you one thing for sure, under those conditions you would be different than you are now.

Just think of the passion you would live with. Think of all the people in the world who you would genuinely tell you love them, tell them you appreciated them and cared about them and what they would be and have in life, and told them you wished them the best - and I think they would be convinced. Think of all you would want to do, wished you had done and subsequently wished you could do that exact second, wished you could have shared, expressed, changed for the Lord. Think how you would think differently walking down the street, how you would probably go crazy, knowing it was your last day to tell everyone about the Lord. Think even about the things you wished you could enjoy, experience, and do - yet in my case I would probably think of these things yet trade them for more important things. Again, think of the person you would be, the passion you would have for life.

That thought from one of the XD classes was amazing: "We are all old because we could die tomorrow." And though I wish I could by some extravaganza experience a groundhog life like this, I know I won't, because that's not the way God made me, and life. Yet I know he would smile to see me live with the same passion for life, the same impact on those around me, I know he would be happier with the amount of souls I won on a day like that then the amount I usually win.

I was once trying to cheer a friend of mine up who I think was a little discouraged with the mundane feel to her life. I said off the top of my head "Trying doing something today that you could remember forever." She told me she didn't have that sort of imagination, and I tried to give her a few ideas. We came up with a few interesting things, shared a few laughs, and then went on with our day, in my case, a little happier - and hopefully in her case too.

But think of it this way, if you could do something every day, or even every 2 days or every week - yet preferably every day - you did something that someone else would remember forever, that would change someone, help them, uplift them, I can assure you one thing, your life would have meaning, you would be the type of person I would say in remembrance, "They were worth knowing, a real reflection of Jesus."

And an easy thing would be to win souls, because that's the greatest achievement you could work towards. But I wouldn't mind some variety too. Helping a JETT being inspired about himself and the things in the spirit is a high achievement in my books, praying for someone with all your heart would make a difference in another's life, or even just helping others when and how you can is something great.

I hope I can do that, and actually, think I'll make a chart right now for that. Ha, actually that's a good idea. It would be better even than a diary: fulfilling to fill in, truly a joy to reread, an accomplishment to fulfill.

I don't know how to end this post, so I'll add some trivia. I thought my blogging career was over long ago, but hopefully it'll be a little revived. If any of you are new visitors here, please write a lot of nice things in the chatbox to crowd out the silly people, the like to fill it with the unattractive.

And I'll end with a little tribute to any and all XDers - although I hope I write one more in full or personally if I haven't already - I love all of you and I want to say thank you for helping to change my life, I'll remember you all forever.

Something I read that I liked, for the writing. Clear, concise, emotionally descriptive. But what this really said to me was "thank God I don't have to live a life without the Lord, because being in love can keep you alive, but only the Lord can give you a reason to live."
Read this, and then tell me if I'm wrong.

2669-B by Dibujando

In the early hours, when he is still asleep, she begins counting the tiny black and white tiles plastered to the ceiling of their flat. Some are chipped, some are covered by a layer of dust, and some are not tiles at all, but cockroaches in disguise. By 143 he has stretched his arms and kissed her neck, by 206 he has tied his shoes and lit a cigarette, and by 262 he's always gone. She knows that the smell of coffee will dissipate by 329 and that if she can bother getting out of bed to call her worried mom for once, or even just go to the damn bathroom, he will be back by 2338.

If she counts slowly.

--

Sometimes, late at night, when she has named all of the constellations she knows without the familiar sound of his second-hand car pulling into their garage, she likes to sit and ponder, with a bottle of Jack Daniels, where she went wrong. She wonders if by living here with him she’s wasting away the best years of her life, years she could have spent at college in order to get a job and buy a house, a real house without tiled ceilings. This is always as far as she gets in her musings, because she usually begins to cry, or sometimes she simply passes out on the stain-resistant carpeting only to wake up in their bed the next morning.

"When are you going to take up writing again?" he asked her once as she examined the threadbare sheets, a beer bottle in her left hand.

"When are you going to stop being such an ass?" she replied stiffly, and the house was silent for 74 tiles. That night she slept facing the wall, and he never brought it up again.

She is 19 years old.

--

"Every black tile is a reason I love him. Every white tile is a reason we will never end up happily ever after"

She writes this on the back of a napkin with a cheap ballpoint pen and tapes it to the wall where she can see it. Afterwards she watches a documentary on the Milky Way, because contemplating revolving balls of gaseous heat and the infinitesimal reaches of frigid space makes her own problems seem so insignificant.

She wants to escape into the galaxy she is watching on the Discovery Channel. Her own planet’s gravity is pulling at the bags beneath her eyes, and her hands and feet feel heavier than normal, so that every movement is an effort. She is a statue. A marble girl.

She decides she will simply never move again, and the napkin flutters in a non-existent breeze, mocking her.

--

When he presses her up against the clean white walls and kisses her like he never plans on stopping, she thinks Earth might sort of be ok.

--

[Taped to the fridge.]

2,669 - B
2,668 - W

--

It is at night when he is running his thumbs over that secret dip in her clavicle that he is most contemplative.

"Do you love me?" he asks, his mouth muffled against the skin of her shoulder

She runs her knuckles against his forearm and wonders about the galaxy that may or may not exist between them.

"There are 5,337 tiles," she finally answers, “and 2,669 of them are black.”

"I know." He rolls them both over so that he is beneath her and she cannot see the tiled ceiling or the stars before pulling her down to whisper in her ear.

"Sometimes I count them."

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I submitted a design to this site, help me win this contest by rating for me! You'll have to make an account, but it's really simple. Pleeeeeeeeeease!! Just click here!
http://www.teetonic.com/rate/without_you

Oh, actually the reason I found this site is cuz I had the idea to make something similar and I was just looking around on the net for something like this. Stay tuned for what's coming!

Especially when you get to create a sports car! This is my latest PPC project, the new TA DVD's. This is just a mockup of the front cover, still working on stuff, it'll be quite different. And I have to make a whole bunch. Basically U. Jim, Peepers, and Bunny will be in that pose on all the covers and the backgrounds will change according to the 2 shows on the DVD, but they will also change with different clothes and stuff.
Well people, tell me what you think. Is the cartoon style ok? I like tge solid colors, do you? Like the new TA logo? Tell me whatever you like. Cheers!