Quick Post on a Lucky Day

Perhaps my fortunes in 2007 are headed in a better direction already... Last week, I took my Xmas money down to a local art store, where I found a great book and something else I wanted (a sketchbook-sized tabletop sketching easel) for an exceptional price (roughly half off.) Okay, so technically that was still 2006, but only by a couple days. New Year's is an arbritrary date, anyway - many cultures would have us in the new year past the solstice, and others would wait for spring. But I digress (as usual)...

A few days later, in a paper store, I stumbled across a set of grayscale Pitt brush pens. I've only recently tried brush pens, and while I can't say I'm exceptionally proficient with them, I do like what they seem to be capable of. I'm also completely useless at color theory, to the point where I'm more than a little scared of using it. (Ever wonder why most Skyhaven critters are flat flood-fill or basic filter effects? Now you know...) I've read that it's a good idea to work up to color via developing an eye for values first via grayscale. So finding those pens at a good price counts as another encouraging mark in the "Lucky" category... or at least it does if your life is as starved for decent luck as mine tends to be.

Today, on a routine cat litter run to Target (they have the best price on the largest buckets of the stuff, which is a good thing when you have four cats), I wandered past the toy aisles. I do this on occasion, as I like to keep my eyes peeled for any decent dragon or griffinlike figures to add to my collection. It's often slim pickings, especially with my minimal budget and extremely picky tastes on fantastic creatures. Today, I hit the mother lode. I'd known that they were making all sorts of merchandising spin-offs of the popular Dragonology book, but for some reason I'd never encountered it... until today. There, proudly displayed on the end of the aisle, was a veritable cornucopia of dragons. I used a decent chunk of my remaining Xmas money stocking up, though I did restrain myself. I did not, as impulse first dictated, sweep the entire shelf into the cart and run madly for the checkout line. I only purchased one figurine, one wooden assemble-your-own-dragon kit (okay, they only had one kind left, so no points for restraint there), and one blatant marketing gimmick in the form of a precut-to-assemble cardboard dragon with a little booklet. Aside from the last one, a European dragon, the others were Asians. I seem to have good luck with Asian dragons, especially for the past few years. For some reason, I keep running across them in the strangest places: the toy bin, rock & gem shows, the ocean, even in my dreams. My books on animal guides would call this significant. Significant or not, I call it cool.

In any event, later on, I got a phone call. Remember that job I interviewed for almost two months ago? The one I never got the kiss-off note about? Well, there was a reason I never got that note. Somehow, after all this time and after seeing an ad for a very similar slot in the paper (after I interviewed... it doesn't do wonders for your confidence when the unadvertized job you interview for takes out an ad as soon as you walk out the door, I tell ya...), I'm still in the running. I go back in for another interview next week... almost two months to the day after I went out there the first time.

Did the dragons have anything to do with this breakthrough? Is my luck really changing in 2007? I can't say I have the answers to those questions, but I can say one thing. I really, really should've bought that Megamillions ticket today when I had the chance...