Thanks for the congrats! At the moment, we’re planning to have our wedding next summer, but I guess we’ll see later =)

I decided to get my hair cut yesterday. When I was younger, I loved long hair, and it took a lot of convincing for my mom to cut even a few inches off. But, my hair has always been really thick, and now, I just find it an inconvenience. It feels so much lighter when it’s shorter! I got it cut to my shoulders and layered.

I was supposed to go to a kite festival with my friend today, but it was unfortunately postponed due to weather. Oh well, I guess that’s another thing to look forward to next week. What else is happening next week? My birthday! It’s on the 13th. Two of my friends have birthdays near mine, so we’ve invited our friends to celebrate with us at our favorite sushi restaurant.

On an ending note, I need help coming up with more ideas for my Photoshop tutorials site. I try to update every 2 months, but it’s been hard lately to think of something to write about. If there are any graphics effects you’ve always wanted to know how to do or know of one that would make a good tutorial, please let me know!

Texas weather can change drastically. On Sunday, we had a nice, sunny day in the 70s°F, T-shirt and sandals weather. Then on Tuesday, it snowed.

I know what snow is like. I used to live in NY and have gone skiing before, but Austin is not a city that gets snow. It snows here maybe once a year if we’re lucky. If it does snow, it’s short and melts shortly after. That’s why it was bizarre on Tuesday. Not only did it snow so soon after having a hot day, it snowed a lot and through most of the day.

My boyfriend decided to work at home that day, so I went home during lunch to eat together. Since the snow had started to accumulate, he suggested that I use my DSLR to take pictures outside. I thought that was a great idea. After taking several pictures, I turned to head back inside when he said to me, “I have something for you.” He then got on one knee.

Will you marry me?

Yes, this happened a couple days ago, but I wanted to give my family and closest friends a chance to know first before posting it publicly =) The common question is, what about the wedding? We’re getting close to the end of our house hunt, so I can’t even think about buying a house and planning a wedding at the same time. The wedding will have to wait!

And, here’s another look of the ring =)

I started this morning off with some shocking news. As I was leaving my apartment for work, I noticed puffs of dark smoke nearby. I entered my car, and I immediately get a call from my friend who tells me there was a plane crash nearby and wanted to make sure I was ok. I could see more of the smoke as I drove closer to work. It hit a building like half a mile from where I work! That’s kind of scary! While I’m glad it didn’t hit us, I hope people in the other building are ok.

(Edit: News now say the crash is intentional, as the pilot had set his house on fire and stole the plane.)

In happier news, Happy Lunar New Year! As with past years, I drew an animal picture for this year. Here it is!

(Larger version on my deviantart.)

I recently knocked off one of my website to-dos, which was to get Ethereal Visions back up, and I gave it a new layout too. A few months ago, the database lost all of its entries for some reason, and my most recent back-up was from 2008. So… I’m missing a lot of links! If you own a graphics site, perhaps submit to it? =) It’s one of few directories that doesn’t require a link back.

My boyfriend was sweet yesterday and surprised me with these roses:

They weren’t for Valentine’s, but this little guy was. I’ve mentioned to him before that he’s never bought me flowers. He’s bought me stuffed animals, video games, even paid for the graphics card in my computer. I think being a female gamer and programmer, it’s easy to become “one of the guys”, even to my friends. They often forget that yes, I’m still a girl and still enjoy girly things ;)

Anyway, enough blogging, time to get back to work!