Old year out, new year in...

Well, goodbye 2007. It's been another mix of good and bad for the year in the old White household:

• Got together with Hottalker friends at Oaklawn race track
• Won award at National Arts Program art contest
• Dad's wife died
• Mom's husband in near-fatal motorcycle accident (fyi, he has a titanium rod in his leg now, and is going back to work this month, good news for them)
• Hubby's dog died
• Quit my job to focus on school
• I finished the first year of school
• Hubby finished first term of school
• Jeep broke down, Hubby fixed, broke down again, Hubby fixed, broke down again... I think Hubby's planning a bonfire....

On that note, the new year may be starting out with a new car (new used car that is). We are planning on picking it up tomorrow, buying it from one of our college professors. Then there's an auto auction in a couple weeks across the road from our house, we hope to pick up another car or two there. We'll see.

Anyway, here's a rundown of the classes I took this year:

• Drawing I ... got an A
• Intro to Computer Graphics... A
• Digital Publishing I... A
• Business & Professional Communications (speech) ...B
• Life Drawing I ... A
• Art Appreciation ... A
• US History to 1876 ... A
• US History since 1876 ... A
• Intro to Psychology ... B
• English Composition I ... A
• Computer Illustration ... A
• Painting I ... A

Not bad for one year's worth of work I guess. And what did I learn from it?

I learned that when reading the name of the class and the description, what actually happens in the class may be something completely different. Take my Computer Illustration class for example- when I think of "illustration", images come to mind of artsy graphics in magazines and print ads, or what we once called "commercial art." BUT, the projects we were told to create in this class wound up being PowerPoint presentations and old-fashioned slide animations. We did have one project where we had to use Adobe Illustrator to draw things, but it wasn't the focus of the class as I had assumed it would be. By the way, the speech class was also about using PowerPoint, and the Computer Animation class (which I haven't taken yet) covers using the current industry-standard programs such as Flash to create animations. So my point is, I was a bit disappointed by the Illustration class.

Same for the Life Drawing class. There are certain proportions of how to draw features of the human body, such as... you can draw a straight line downward from the pupils of the eyes down to the corners of the mouth... it's a measurement that is exact on almost every face. Or that the space between the eyes is the exact length of one eye. It was the type of things I expected to learn more about in the Life Drawing class. NOPE. The instructor I had more or less just had us drawing the model's nude body, with very little instruction from him. I'm going to wait until I get up to UNT before taking another Life Drawing class, maybe I'll get more out of it up there.

I am proud of myself for the English Comp class though. Taught by the head of the English Dept and he was a real stickler for grammar and details (which should be obvious), and I haven't had an English class in, oh I don't know, like 17 years, but I managed to make an "A" on the papers I wrote. I saw that a lot of students made "C"s in the class, so I was happy with my grade. Not that you can tell from the bad grammar I use here on my blog, lol. And not that you could tell from all the red marks he put on my papers to correct my mistakes, it looked like the papers were bleeding, haha. Apparently I'm bad about "modifiers" and "comma-splices" among other no-nos. Oh well. We also got a 30-minute lecture on how NOT to use ellipsis marks (...), I hope he never sees my blog... he'd probably go back and change my grade, haha.

My art classes were inspiring at least. I can't help but feel like a lot of what I learned I figured out on my own during the classes, but the instructors did alter my thinking on some things so they were worthwhile. I'm curious to see if there's any difference at the university level though, if the professors actually teach or if they just point you in the direction and expect you to figure it out. But I have another year of core curriculum to finish before heading up to UNT, so the answer will have to wait.

Yuletide Greetings...

Back while I was in high school 18 years ago, my bro-in-law asked me to draw a picture for him of a cougar. He had taken a photo out of one of his hunting magazines and I drew it in colored pencil. He said he wanted to hang it in his office at work.

Well, each year at Christmas I don't have the slightest clue what kind of gift to get for him. So, this year I decided to paint another cougar for him. This one is an oil painting. Hope he likes it. And this only took two days to paint, so luckily I'm getting faster!

Merry christmas to all of you in cyberland!!

An artist asked the gallery owner if there had been any interest in his paintings on display at that time.

“I have good news and bad news,” – the owner replied. “The good news is that a gentleman inquired about your work and wondered if it would appreciate in value after your death. When I told him it would, he bought all 15 of your paintings.”

“That’s wonderful!” – the artist exclaimed. “What’s the bad news?”

“The guy was your doctor.”

:-)

Had to have a joke, the transmission just went out on my Jeep. Great timing. Hubby's in Oklahoma visiting mom, so I had to have friends come from across town to rescue me. Merry Christmas to us!

Finished!!!...

Wednesday I finally finished the last of the murals for Leapin' Lizards. Gee, it's only taken a month & half to do 4 1/2 walls, since I was there every free moment that I wasn't in school. But you can tell I was getting pushed for time on the last couple, they're not as detailed as the fish mural was, and so they're not as realistic. You can really tell on the princess in the window that I painted last, I had to do her and the banner and paint a table with zebra stripes in another room all in the same day, so they were pretty rushed.

I had already painted the background scenery a week earlier, so I just had to paint a quick banner. Which might I add, is not easy to draw freehand on a large scale like this and try to make it look even on both sides!

So Wednesday when I was finished painting I was recruited to help with the make-ready on the rest of the building. The owner's been paying Hubby to help with the construction stuff, along with a whole host of other folks scrambling to get it all done, so she said she'd pay me to help too. She has 22 kids parties scheduled for this weekend starting Friday (today). On Wednesday evening she had the city Health Inspector come do an inspection, and the inspector was brutal. She gave a whole list of things to the owner that needed to be fixed before the business could be opened on Friday. So Hubby and I stayed until midnight Wednesday, came home for a few hours, and then went back early Thursday morning to continue working. My job for the most part was caulking- EVERY SINGLE NAILHOLE AND EDGE SEAM in the roughly 20,000 sq ft building had to be caulked. Especially the kitchen area, which has a zillion seams everywhere, and some back behind large kitchen equipment that had to be moved, it was such a pain. As I sit here typing my hands STILL have black caulk on them that I can't get off!

Anyway, I can't even begin to describe the pandamonium Wednesday night through Thursday night, with everyone running around like their heads are cut off, trying to get it all done before the Health inspector came back for the final inspection that night. They also had their Fire Inspector come out at the same time to add to the chaos.


And one more note about the Health inspection... it's almost ironic how many UNSAFE acts we were doing to satisfy the items on their list. Here I was after getting hardly a wink of sleep, up on a rickety ladder 25 feet in the air trying to spackle holes in the tops of the walls, and straining ourselves moving heavy equipment in the kitchen area, and running my fingers along edges of sheet metal to smooth the caulk on them (yes I did cut myself, luckily the caulk sealed the cut!)

But it's all worked out in the end and the inspections were passed. Last night Hubby and I went to the sports bar to watch Denver lose and I had several Hot Toddys. There's still some small things that need to be finished on a later day. When we go up there again, I'll take some photos of the rest of the building with the games and inflatables and everything. It's a pretty neat place.


And most importantly, it's ready to be opened! Hubby and I are taking a friggin' DAY OFF today and doing absolutely NOTHING! No schoolwork, no construction, no painting!!! Just lounging around in our pajamas, playing Madden football and Pogo games, hot cocoa in hand.

I stand corrected... it is 14,000 sqft of carpet. And, it appears it's not a screwup by Home Depot, it's the contractor she gave $10,000 to who has run off without providing the carpet... hmmmm. Last I heard she was calling the police. Poor girl, we can relate having had crooked employees take us to the cleaners too in the past. I swear, the small business owner has a tough enough time trying to make it in this day and age that's controlled by multi-conglomerate mega corporations, the little guys don't hardly have a chance anymore. Then, to be taken advantage of to your face. For shame.

Almost done with this one...

I forced myself to make this horse more "cartoonish" than I normally would, in the interest of time. They're opening this business day after tomorrow, and the owner's in a mad rush to get everything finished. Due to a mixup with Home Depot the poor woman doesn't even have her carpet yet... and we're talking like 200 yards of carpet that's going to have to be laid Monday! Then she has a rock-climbing wall, inflatables, all kinds of stuff to be put in place. I think her first kids party is scheduled for Tuesday. Spastic may be an understatement.

Not to mention I still have to paint a princess looking through a window in this same room, and paint a banner over the doorway.

Oh yeah, and it's finals week in college.

By the way, that's not red blood spurting out of the knight's head, it's a plume of red feathers, lol.

Steven Spielberg I am not...


As one of our last projects in my Computer Illustration class we had to make an animation. From scratch. Without Flash. You know, making a moving animation the old style way, frame by frame, like what we used to do with the old flipbooks. Except we were making frames on the computer and a GIF Builder program puts them together for you. It was still a lot of work making each individual frame. I only had 2 days to put this together, so it's a bit rough. I would have liked to have moving legs etc. to make it look like the people are walking but just didn't have time for it. The main point of the project was to have objects move across the screen, using between 50-100 frames. Mine took about 69 frames to create.

Also, another instruction in the project was to choose an obscure November "holiday," one other than Thanksgiving. There's some weird so-called holidays in Nov such as "Sandwich Day" and "Have a Bad Day Day". I chose "World Hello Day" for my animation.




Most students were struggling with trying to draw people on the computer, and wound up using stick figures. Screw that... I used South Park as an inspiration and found photos of celebrities instead. Nobody seems to mind mocking them. So, we have PeeWee, Tom Cruise (notice the snob doesn't say hello back), Schwarzenegger, Jackie Chan, Soprano's Garafino, and Alan Alda and Wayne Rogers from MASH. Hey it's the best I could come up with on short notice.

House of art...

Today our painting class took a field trip to the Rachofsky House in Dallas. Howard Rachofsky had this house built primarily for housing his extensive art collection. He no longer lives in the house, it's only there for the artworks.

It was a gorgeous day by the way...

Anyway, the house displays contemporary art. Because we were given a pamplet that has photos of all the artworks, I took few photos myself. But, here's a fun sculpture of molars outside:

The next photo I was taking of this sculpture that was in front of a mirror for a double image, and wound up getting myself in the shot too.

Man, everything inside the house was pristine white, to give it a museum type quality of environment, so that color wouldn't detract from the views of the artworks. We were instructed on the rules of visiting, and believe me we were afraid to even move inside the place!

Not to mention it felt kind of weird walking around a person's house while they weren't home, even if they don't live there. Go figure.

Dragon dragging on...

Worked on the dragon today. Almost done, still need to finish his back leg, tail, and horns. Then he has smoke coming out of his nostrils but I'll probably do that last.

And the next person who pokes their head in the room and says "Aren't you done with that wall YET?" will wind up wearing whatever color I happen to be painting with at that particular moment...

Painting castles & dragons and other ramblings...


Here's a few photos of the mural I'm working on in the medieval room, to sorta show the process. When painting something like this you work from background to foreground-- whatever is closest to you you paint last. The reasoning is, your lines are going to overlap some as you paint, so if one object is in front of another you of course want the lines of the nearer object to be on top. Trust me, you don't want to try to paint the background last around something in the foreground, you'll screw up the edges of the object. Been there, done that.

So anyway, here's some background scenery. Sky first, then trees, and lake. Here you see the grass is one flat color, I paint the predominant midtone color as a base first... in this case a bright green for the grass and brown road...





... and then I put in the details into the grass and dirt road. (Except in front of the wall, I have to paint the wall before finishing the grass that's in front of it) And, I have the base coat on the castle too.





Next, I have the details added to the castle, and starting the base coats on the dragon.




I'm following a picture that the owner printed off the Internet. We haven't figured out why the dragon seems to be giving the knight the "thumbs up" sign... or he might be flipping him the bird, I don't know.

The owner has had some sharp-looking business cards printed for me. And, so far I've had one person ask me about painting something on a motorcycle part for him and the owner's friend asked about painting something in her daughter's bedroom. Some business would be good, I need to get some money rolling in, faster than it's been rolling out.

So here I am starting this mural-painting stuff after all these years. A funny note about that- it's another case of "Mothers are ALWAYS right". Case in point- in 1992 I was at a crossroads, in the same week I was faced with two choices:

1. I had just started a new job selling vacuum cleaners that week
2. My mother said to me, "There's a class you should take on how to paint murals and then you can go around and paint murals for people."

At that time in my life I was very uninspired and didn't really have any confidence in doing anything with art. So, I chose to try to sell vacuums. And I sucked at it (pun intended.)

However, I will never say I made the wrong choice. If I look at all the events that happened after that, one lead into the other, and I doubt any of it would have transpired the way it did if I had taken the other road. It's like in the movie Mr Destiny... you can take one pivotal point in your life and say "What if that happened differently" and the outcome years later might be completely different.... but not necessarily better. I believe things happen the way they do for a reason. Call it fate or predetermined destiny or what you will, but a lot of things happened the way they did because I took the vacuum job. And I regret none of it.

So now that I've ventured down one fork in the road, it's finally time to travel the next. Mom may have been right about the mural thing... it just had to start at a delayed time.

Morphin' wimmen...

My painting instructor came across this YouTube video, "Women in Art". It takes famous paintings of women and gradually morphs them from one to the next, starting in the 1500s and running through contemporary times. It's interesting (to me anyway) to see the art movements change... Renaissance, neoclassicism, romanticism, modern. You can also play along, how many paintings can you name, or artists... Renoir, Degas, Matisse, Frida Kahlo...

Another unusual, and slightly creepy, effect is seeing the eyes move as it morphs from one to the next.

Something Hubby picked up on was how the expressions change, innocent to seductive and back again, etc. Okay, I have to give him credit for that one. Although I don't know if it's a product of his art class or psychology class...

Anyway, here's the video:

Oh, and happy belated Thankgiving to all. It was a nice relaxing day in our household (as I once again got out of having to go to relatives' houses!). I cooked another 23lb birdzilla, courtesy of Kroger who keeps giving me a free turkey every year. Our friend Jim came over again this year, and we loaded him up with half a bird to take home with him.

In all, not a bad day of food and football. Hope everyone else had a good one too!

Mural #2...

The second mural for Leapin' Lizards went a lot faster, it was a fairly simplistic beach scene. I couldn't get a pic of the whole thing because the room was too small (my cellphone camera can't zoom out, and I couldn't back up far enough!) So, here's a couple shots of different areas:

That wave at the bottom comes from the underwater scene around the corner of the wall. I needed some sort of transition from one scene to the other. But, the owner's kids looked at the beach and asked where the people are at, and Hubby said they're running from the tidal wave. Everyone's a critic.

Anyway, here's another part:

The mural I'm working on now is in another party room, it's the scene with the knight and dragon. It won't be finished quite as fast as the beach mural was... the knight is on a HORSE and lord knows I can't help but paint details on a horse! The whole rest of the mural might take about 6 working days but then the horse itself will take me another 5, haha. Everyone's telling me the knight's horse doesn't have to look like Secretariat. It's a sickness, I know...

DNA check...

I came across this article "23AndMe Will Decode Your DNA for $1,000. Welcome to the Age of Genomics" from Wired Magazine. I know I'm pretty far behind on DNA technology (okay truth be told I never read about DNA technology) so forgive me if I'm late to find out about companies doing this. But, I thought it was pretty interesting- for the pawltry fee of $1000 this company will scan your DNA, and more or less tell you what genes, traits and characteristics you inherited from your family. They also match it up with their database to let you know what diseases or conditions your genes make you a risk for. It also shows what risks you may pass on to your children.

But as quoted from the article, "This new age of genomics comes with great opportunity — but also great quandaries. In the genomic age, we will no longer have the problem of not knowing, but we will face the burden of whether we want to know in the first place."

My view is- Hell yeah I want to know! I'm the type that I want to know the bad news immediately, because I'd rather know than not know. "An ounce of prevention..." and all that jazz. My grandmother on my dad's side died from heart problems, and my mother has heart problems. I'm left assuming I'm going to have heart problems probably around my 60's-70's (and assuming I live that long). But if doctors were to know now while I'm, well, sorta young, what my genes show, then they would know how I should best start prevention of those problems.

And then there's Hubby's view- Hell NO I don't want to know! He already knows his body is falling apart from a bone disease, and knows doctors would tell him to stop drinking his beer, smoking, eating anything that tastes good... so he just doesn't want to know about it. To him knowing would be worse than not knowing. Which of course bums me out because I'd rather keep him around a little longer by knowing what other problems may rear their ugly heads, and what to do about it.

Anyway, I thought it was an interesting article of what's on the horizon for preventative medicine. But then it also goes into checking traits of children to know what their talents may be to create a sort-of "strategy" for their life, which I think is going a bit too far. Just because a kid's DNA may show he/she is predetermined to have musical talents doesn't mean the kid would enjoy playing the violin. And you know too many parents out there would do that.

But I told Hubby that if he were to go through the miracle-of-science-reversal to have a kid again, I can just hear him telling his boy "Your DNA shows you're going to be a Denver Broncos quarterback, so get your butt out there and practice!!!" hahaha

Happy Birthday Jaydee!

1931, my goodness... you seem as spry as a man 50 years younger as you run around the country visiting your friends! Enjoy your day. :P

Painting with the fishies...

Sunday I finished the first of several murals at the Leapin' Lizards place. Here's the whole wall...



And next here's a few detail pics where you can actually see the fish. By the way, in the original picture that I was copying this goldfish has teeth. Um, I decided it didn't need to be a mutant pirahna in my painting.

In this next section, this orange goldfish had big blue spots... we all thought it looked like it had measles so again I took "artistic freedom" to not include the spots.

Then here's the dolphins and turtle.

Now I'm starting to paint a beach scene on another wall in that same room. Next will be one of the other party rooms where I'll be painting a knight on his steed fighting a dragon, with a castle and a princess looking out the window waiting to be rescued. Luckily the rest of the murals should be less detailed than this scene was...

School painting too...

Besides spending all my free time painting murals, I've also finished another painting at school. This project was to do a "glaze" painting. Unfortunately you can't see the transparent quality to this artwork. In glazing you use a clear Liquin suspention that you add small amounts of color to. The Liquin causes the oil paint to dry quickly, and so you paint on one day, it dries, and then you paint another layer on the next day, ect. Each layer is semi-transparent, and so you gradually build up the color layer-by-layer. As stated by our instructor, "the light goes through the layers and is deflected like through sheets of glass."

Oh well, it's all lost in a crappy cellphone photo of it.

"Memories Racing By"

On this project we were to bring things from home to paint, hence the horseracing junk.

• I had one horseshoe that I just duplicated around the painting.
• The horse is one of my favorite childhood Breyer plastic horses (I had like 50 of them as a kid, and still have a box of about 25 in the attic).
• The boot I wore while walking hots at the track, averaging 10 miles a morning which is why there's a blowout on the side of the leather (and a permanent bunion that developed in the joint of my foot).
• The bale of hay I painted off memory.
• The saddle sheet was from the Stonerside Stakes at Lone Star, where working for Asmussen we had the filly Gilded Wings entered. I think she came in like 3rd or so in the race. In the bigger stakes races where they print the name of the horse onto the saddle sheet, afterwards the grooms like to keep their horses' sheets as momentos. But, occassionally us girls could coerce the groom in our broken Spanish to give the sheet to us, which was the case here. I have this one and one for Compendium in the Dallas Turf Handicap.

Anyway... enough boring ya'll. Besides painting murals and painting class, I had an essay to write for English class, poster & logos to create for Computer Illustration class... too much to do in too little time! Calgon take me away!

The weird and interesting...

For all you RSS feed reader junkies out there, here's a blog I've been enjoying lately: Dark Roasted Blend

Updated daily with "Weird and Unusual Things", such as:

Office pranks- it makes you wonder if these offices are still in business due to the incredible amounts of time it must have taken to pull some of these pranks off.

Stewardess uniforms from the 50's and 60's, including the hot pants and go-go boots of Southwest Airlines. Warlock you should enjoy that one!

Heavy Machinery Acrobats- Accidents with heavy cranes... stuck, broken, sunk, collapsing, you get the picture. A bunch of "what were they thinking?" photos.

Enjoy

Leapin' Lizards!...

While out working and visiting businesses, Hubby came across a "family entertainment center" being built out of an old indoor go-cart speedway. The woman who owns it is trying to keep her cost down and so she's doing everything herself to get it ready, including painting murals in several "party" rooms (and she has no painting experience herself). She's expecting to open in December and therefore is REALLY crunched on time, so Hubby worked out a deal with her that I will help her paint the murals and in exchange she will let me put some of my artwork on display.

In the room I'm working on right now, they were putting this ocean wallpaper scene on the wall. It was only halfway up, so I finished laying the wallpaper (Mom would be proud that I remembered how to do wallpaper!)

After that, I am now painting another wall in the room to match the underwater scene. Here's where I was getting started on the background:

And here's where I was at with it yesterday after about 4 days of working on it:

By the way, no I've never painted a mural before, this is my first one which is another reason I'm doing it for free. (FYI, muralist prices are often about $12 sq/ft from what I've seen.) But who knows, maybe some of the rich parents taking their kids to parties at this place will be interested in having murals painted in their homes, lol.

One more thing, the owner woman's husband came to the place the other day, and it turns out it's a guy I grew up with who lived two houses down from me all through school. I'll have to take our 2nd grade class photo to show her, hahaha. Boy it's a small world, isn't it? You never know where you're going to run into someone.

Ashley

1995 - 2007

We came home and she was jumping around from excitement, and then fell over and died, just like that. One minute she was dancing around, and a few minutes later we were burying her in the backyard.

At least she died happy.

Pets in costumes...

Happy Howl'oween y'all! You know, I always thought animals wearing clothes was a little bit frightnening in itself-

I think I went to high school with that girl.

Construction worker bulldog

Some people seem to go a little overboard.

Hello Kitty??? Man, no self-respectin' dog should have to stoop so low.

"As soon as you take this goofy head off me say goodbye to your sofa"

This reminds me a little too much of the movie A Christmas Story. "Ralphie, you look like a pink nightmare! Do you want to take that off?" "uh huh"

If looks could kill...

Have a happy safe Halloween folks!

Breeders Cup...

Way to go Curlin

Not only can he run, but he can swim too!

Congrats to Steve and all his connections.

Photo credit Molly Riley / Reuters

Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally...

I decided I need to take my required math class next semester to get it over with... and plus so that Hubby and I can take it together. Maybe between the two of us we can drudge up out of the distant reaches of our memory how to do this algebra stuff. We both excelled at math while in high school and were in advanced classes, and yet we both have had far too many alcoholic beverages over the years and the first brain cells to be killed were the ones that did math.

We have to take a placement test before registering for the math class, so I've been studying this weekend. Yeah, it's all starting to come back to me now. I'm only trying to cram about 6 years of algebra into a few hours of studying. You know, they should have a math class for adult students returning to college... oh wait, they do, it's called "Remedial Algebra" haha.

Being in this math mood I came across this funny video on YouTube. It goes too fast to read in some spots, so just hit the pause button to slow it down...




Love the Bush speech.

FYI, the Aunt Sally thing is apparently something taught to remember the order in which to solve equations... (P)arenthesis (E)xponents (M)ultiply (D)ivide (A)dd (S)ubtract.

I'll warn you now, this is a rambling, complaining post.

None of my artworks were accepted as entry for the college district-wide juried show. So no show for me at the FW Community Arts Center... not YET anyway.

But that's not what I'm going to complain about.

There were close to 300 entries, only 50 were selected. And they were selected by one person rather than a panel, so it was one person's subjective opinion. That's fine with me-- I know that what one person likes is different from another person. Art is in the eye of the beholder ya know. No biggie... just move on to the next project.

What chaps my hide is our instructors' reaction to it. Several of us in my class tried to enter and none of us were selected, but trying to find out the info on who was selected was like pulling teeth. I asked a couple different teachers point-blank if I got in or not, and each one hem-hawed around not answering the question, instead they gave long lectures about how shows aren't everything. They simply wouldn't tell me "You didn't get in", but talked in circles instead about how good I was and the shows don't matter. When I then mentioned going forward and working toward another competition coming up, one of the instructors said "Don't waste your time. Getting into art shows is like playing the lottery."

Excuse me?? A college instructor saying DON'T apply yourself? DON'T put yourself out there to create a name for yourself? What kind of motivation is that???

I can only guess that either A- they want to spare my feelings so I don't feel despair about my work, or B- they didn't have very good experiences with their own work in shows and therefore don't think others should try either.

Response to A- I've been in competition before (showing horses as a teen), and I know I'm not going to win everything. My esteem's not so fragile that I can't handle criticism, it makes a person better. Some people will like my stuff, others will not, that's their opinion and I'm not going to take it personally. I will however draw upon the experience to try to advance my art skills. That's what motivates me to become better at what I'm doing. I know I have a long way to go to become really good, but the motivation of having a reason to get better is what's driving me.

Heck, that's why I didn't work on my art for the last 15 or so years... I didn't feel like I had a reason to. But now that I have the motivation going to finish college and do something with my life, don't tell me not to bother trying! If a tree falls in the forest and nobody hears it... or if an artist paints in the forest and nobody sees it... does it matter? Okay sorry for the bad cliche.

Response to B- the same instructor then said she herself entered 10 art shows but was only selected for 3 of them. That's why she thinks it's like playing the lottery. Well I say, you can't win the lottery if you don't buy a ticket! Being accepted to 3 out of 10 shows isn't a bad thing... the glass is half full after all! So don't tell me not to at least TRY. I will always try. If I don't get in, oh well, I'll try again with another.

Alright, end of ramble. Sorry for all the cliches. I'm going to bed now, and tomorrow's a new day and has new things to look forward to. And new shows to enter.

I don't know, his eyes look like he's about to turn into deranged helter-skeltercat...

Say it ain't so!...

Today Hubby and I were talking about his grown son who's in California. Franklin has been married a few years to a woman who has a couple kids... so Hubby mentioned something about himself being a grandpa and that's when the thought hit me...

does that make me a .... grandma?????

Ugh, I think I just aged about 10 years in a split second.

Something different...

I played around with ink today for fun. This is my dracaena plant, in a wash of green and red inks.

Hubby wants me to show this next charcoal drawing... by Pablo Picasso's very distant cousin, Juan Picasso... (haha)

I think I said before, Hubby's taking a drawing class at school. He's never drawn anything before, but is taking the class to understand more about what I'm doing. I'm surprised at how well he is doing. The above drawing of a section of blanket is from 2am the other night when he had an epiphany of how this shading stuff works. The instructor hasn't been telling them much about HOW to draw, other than saying "draw what you see". Well, I guess that's like a teacher giving you a calculus problem and saying "here, solve this" when you don't have the slightest clue where to start. I suppose drawing is the same way to people who have never tried it... they don't know where to start and how to do it. So now that the class is working on "values" (the lightness and darkness and varying shades of grey in between) I was helping him with it the other night. More specifically he was trying to show folds in fabric. And by george, I think he's getting it. More importantly, he's excited about understanding it.

Boring painting...

Yet another crummy cellphone photo of the last painting I did for class. I need to invest in a real digital camera one of these days, these photos look so dang yellow and the colors are just... BLAH. The bear is purple, not grey like it appears in this photo.

Next photo is the still life scene we were looking at in class. Our painting instructor had us all bring stuff from home and she piled it all across a long shelf...then we picked out an area to paint. I brought the bear, and I think a lot of the other students hated me for bringing this "challenge" since they opted not to paint the furry hair.

Plus, the objects were moved around a bit, cloth was draped differently, wine bottle in top left corner disappeared... so it doesn't look exactly the same... just another obstacle I guess is improvising.

Occassionally I get bored with realism. Like right now. Problem is, I can't help but try to make things look real. I want to do different brushstokes, more expressionist wild strokes, or impressionist spots of color, a little variety from what I normally do. Something more contemporary. But dang it I keep coming back to the same old style. I could give my own psychological analysis of why I think I keep coming back to the realism, but I doubt y'all really care that much.


I should have at least made the bear look evil or something. Stuffed bears ARE evil ya know.

Anyway, I need to make a conscious effort to do something more interesting with the next project. Break out of this painting funk I'm stuck in.

On Football...

My team's leading on the fantasy football league. I'm 4-1-0, tied with another guy but ahead by points. I won't complain any more about Farve, for the most part he's usually been doing much better this year.

I did have to swap a bunch of players on my team though, due to byes and injuries. I picked up running back Marion Barber who's been doing an awesome job for Dallas breaking past tackles left and right, and wide receivers Kevin Curtis, Braylon Edwards, and Patrick Crayton that were available on the trading block.

This almost makes it sound like I know a little bit about football, huh?

HA!! HAHA!! Not really.

All this fantasy football stuff proves is that with an automatic draft and a lot of luck even I can lead the league. Not that I expect it to last long.

I do like watching football. To a point. I didn't grow up in a football-watching family (gasp, sacriledge! Growing up in Texas with a dad that didn't watch football??? Say it ain't so!). But I learned one thing early... guys like it when you watch football with them.

But like I said, I like it to a point. Even after years of watching, I couldn't recognize a "prevent" defense if I tried, even though I've heard Hubby yell about it a thousand times. And I'll admit my eyes get a bit glazed over after about 10 minutes of listening to encyclopedic knowledge about each player and how the teams stack up against each other that week. Ah, so the Seachickens are playing the Tampa Suckineers? Doesn't matter much to me. I don't follow those teams. But I realize to men it's like war, scrutinizing which are the best plays to run in their battleplan, what's the best way to attack and trick up the other side to be the best, to be the winner.

So why DO I watch football?

1. If it's important to your man, it should be important to you too. If the ref makes a bad call against his team, walk around the house and complain about it. If his team loses, don't tease him ( oh LORDY don't tease him about it) but mope around all night just the same as him. And trust me, you're married into being a fan of his team... I'm a Cowboys fan but I'm also now a legally-binded Broncos fan too. Til death do us part.

2. I like rooting for a team. I like cheering them on. I don't need to know the stats of each player or even their names for that matter. But it's fun to watch the plays and yell and carry on during the game. It's like rooting for a cause, cheering on the "good guys" against the bad guys. It's just fun.

I can't speak for all females, but that's my view on it.

Spiders, Lizards, and Snakes, oh my!...

This post is going to make me sound like a wimpy girlie, so let me state for the record: I like the outdoors. I enjoy wandering out around fields and streams, seeing the sights and what kind of creatures I might come across. I DO NOT however like for the outdoors to come indoors.

It's like the pact that Hubby says he has with sharks-- "I don't go where they live, and they don't come where I live." I THOUGHT I had the same pact with snakes.

Until the other night...

I went out into the garage to the dryer, and when I turned around to come back into the house- there was a BIG GREEN SNAKE on the threshhold of the door, looking right at me. It had to be 4 feet long. Or 3 maybe.

"DEAR!!! Come HERRRRRE!!!" I shrieked shrilly.

So of course he comes and laughs at me, saying "It's just a little brown snake."

"It was a green snake, and it was BIG and looked at me in a menacing way!"

"Brown snakes can be green too, and it's harmless."

By this time it had slithered into the hot water heater closet, and Hubby said it would find its way back out, which I suppose it did. Or I hope it did. In the meantime I'm wondering where my posse of protective cats were and how the snake got past them. Some line of defense they were.

Then the next day....

I'm walking into our kitchen, and in the center of the room about 3 feet away dangling halfway down from the light fixture was a HUGE, BLACK, HAIRY jumping spider. He was about eye-level and wiggling his long spidery legs everywhere.

Now, spiders take me to a whole new level of wimpy girlie, bothering me a lot more than snakes. Do you remember in the movie Ferris Bueller's Day Off when the sister (Jennifer Grey) kicks the principle in the face and then runs away screaming? That was me....

AAAaaaaaaaAAAAaaaaaaAAAAAAAaaaaaahhhhhhh! as I ran around the corner and out the front door of the house.

Unfortunately Hubby wasn't home, so I had to fight this battle myself. I grabbed a big can of Raid and bravely went back in the house. The spider had decended to the floor, so I aimed the Raid and gave it a quick spray which I thought would cause it to curl up on the spot. But this was no ordinary spider, it was a mutant spider that had built up a resistance to insecticides. I am not kidding on this, it RAISED UP ON ITS BACK LEGS AND RAN FULL SPEED TOWARDS ME WAVING ITS FRONT LEGS IN THE AIR THREATENINGLY. So I'm backing up and spraying the Raid directly at it the whole time, and the damn thing is still running at me!!! I must have sprayed half the can at him before he finally began his death throws. I then turned tail and ran out the door again, squealing at a pitch only the dogs could hear. I don't think I've ever hit that note before.

And then last night...

It's 2am and I finally go to bed and pull back the covers... and a little lizard runs across my pillow. Startled, I again give out a short shriek.

So what did I do next?

Well actually, I chased it down under the covers and scooped it up in my hand, and took him outside and set him free on the porch. And do you know what the difference is? Oh c'mon people, little lizards are cute! How could I be afraid of a sweet little lizard??

But still, I wish all this wildlife would stop coming in to visit!

Is there a beautician in the house?!?...

Note to self:

If the stylist cutting your hair says, "Do you want to try something fun in back?" the correct answer is NO.

The correct answer didn't occur to me however. "Sure, I'm open to trying something new."

Bad answer.

I now have a very short bob haircut.

Worse yet, in the course of the conversation the stylist mentions she hasn't finished beauty school yet. In other words, she's a beauty school dropout.

I now have a very short bob haircut with a hack-job in back that looks like she used a dull battleaxe on it.

Let's see, hair grows at the rate of a half-inch every month... *sigh*.

Too much truth to this...

I just had to copy this from the sports-talkers board... this was a good one TruForm...
------------------------------
1947 vs 2007

Scenario: Billy goes quail hunting before school, pulls into school parking lot with shotgun in gun rack.

1947 - Principal comes over, looks at Billy's shotgun, goes to his car and gets his shotgun to show Billy.

2007 - School goes into lock down, FBI called, Billy hauled off to jail and never sees his truck or gun again. Counselors called in for traumatized students and teachers.
-----------------------------
Scenario: Johnny and Mark get into a fistfight after school.

1947 - Crowd gathers. Mark wins. Johnny and Mark shake hands and end up best friends.

2007 - Police called, SWAT team arrives, arrests Johnny and Mark. Charge them with assault, both expelled even though Mark started it.
----------------------------
Scenario: Jeffrey won't be still in class, disrupts other students.

1947 - Jeffrey sent to office and given a good paddling by the Principal. Returns to class, sits still and does not disrupt class again.

2007 - Jeffrey given huge doses of Ritalin. Becomes a zombie. Tested for ADD. School gets extra money from state because Jeffrey has a disability.
---------------------------
Scenario: Billy breaks a window in his neighbor's car and his Dad gives him a whipping with his belt.

1947 - Billy is more careful next time, grows up normal, goes to college, and becomes a successful businessman.

2007 - Billy's Dad is arrested for child abuse. Billy removed to foster care and joins a gang. State psychologist tells Billy's sister that she remembers being abused herself and their Dad goes to prison. Billy's mom has affair with psychologist.
--------------------------
Scenario: Sheri gets a headache and takes aspirin to school.

1947 - Sheri shares an aspirin with a student.

2007 - Police called, Sheri expelled from school for drug violations. Car searched for drugs and weapons.
--------------------------
Scenario: Pedro fails high school English.

1947- Pedro goes to summer school, passes English, goes to college.

2007 - Pedro's cause is taken up by state. Newspaper articles appear nationally explaining that teaching English as a requirement for graduation is racist. ACLU files class action lawsuit against state school system and Pedro's English teacher. English banned from core curriculum. Pedro given diploma anyway but ends up mowing lawns for a living because he cannot speak English.
--------------------------
Scenario: Johnny takes apart leftover firecrackers from 4th of July, puts them in a model airplane paint bottle, blows up a red ant bed.

1947 - Ants die.

2007 - Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, Homeland Security and FBI called. Johnny charged with domestic terrorism, FBI investigates parents, siblings removed from home, computers confiscated, Johnny's Dad goes on a terror watch list and is never allowed to fly again.
--------------------------
Scenario: Johnny falls while running during recess and scrapes his knee. He is found crying by his teacher, Heather. Heather hugs him to comfort him.

1947- In a short time, Johnny feels better and goes on playing.

2007 - Heather is accused of being a sexual predator and loses her job. She faces 3 years in state prison. Johnny undergoes 5 years of therapy

APRIL! Stay out of the beer!...

I'm in ur kitchen...

stealin ur beerz!

Leave it to April to be caught snatching beer... but Crook was probably the mastermind...

:)

Art & stuff...

Our college art department faculty has an exhibit of their artwork at the Fort Worth Community Arts Center, so tonight I dragged Hubby to the reception. I didn't have to tie him up kicking and screaming, but he DID pay me back... by telling one of our instructors "Angela likes to watch porn".

What??? Where did THAT come from??? Granted, I'm taking this out of context from the conversation which was a humorous one with a cool teacher, but still... I was so shocked I couldn't even defend myself. According to them I turned 5 shades of red. Very funny people, very funny. Paybacks are hell ya know.

Moving right along...

On another note, I've thrown together an artwork website - riderang.bravehost.com . There's some glitches I need to fix regarding the window sizes of artwork when you click on them, so ignore that problem for now. This HTML crap is a pain sometimes.

I had posted those crummy cellphone photos of my artworks the last few weeks, but in preparation for the juried art competition my painting teacher took some better photos and gave them to me. So if you want a better look at these pieces, click on each one and it will show a larger view and with MUCH better color, more true to the original artwork.

The Night Mares
soft pastel on matboard
32" x 40"

Break Between Work and School
oil on canvas
18" x 24"


This next one I did specifically for the juried competition in November. Being that it's a student competition, I decided I needed a subject that all college students could relate to and understand. So I came up with this:

Study Break
soft pastels on matboard
40" x 32"

There's not a college student out there that hasn't had a night like this, either cramming for finals or trying to complete a project due the next day. In spite of all the "study aids" (i.e. energy drink, candy, music etc), in the wee hours of the morning they still succumb to their fatigue. What starts as a short break results in being zonked out.

Again, that will be the November show at the Fort Worth Community Arts Center. I may not drag Hubby to that reception...

:)

Lecture boredom...

My English prof, although he seems to be a nice enough man and appears fairly intelligent, must be the most boring lecturer on Earth. Things that most normal instructors would take 5 minutes to explain he instead drones on with for over an hour. In most classes I'm pretty good about paying attention to everything said by the instructors, trying not to miss a thing. In English however, I find my mind wandering thinking about my next class... what I'm going to make for dinner that night... or about the squirrels playing a happy dance outside...

But at least I stay awake, and in the upright position. In fact, I've noticed something about the sexes- the girls in the class are all polite enough to at least feign interest, sitting up and looking at the prof as he talks to us. Fortunately he can't read our minds to know we're no longer in the same atmosphere.

The guys on the other hand... they don't even try to act interested. Today, sitting at desks right in front of the instructor, two guys lost the sleep battle. One tried to put up a fight, he rested his head on his hand and for 10 minutes he did the "rubber-necked head bob", each time his head tilted over and then he'd jerk it back up just to nod off again. The other guy didn't even put up a fight, he put his head down on his arm and got a good 40 winks.

Amazingly the instructor never said a thing even though the students were right under his nose. Man, what happened to the days of the teacher who drops a book on the desk to give a sleeping student a heart attack??

This prof's just no fun at all.

Sorry for the absence...

Been finishing artworks for the upcoming college exhibits, putting together a website for selling art, doing domestic chores like laundry, etc etc.

One of the art instructors is suggesting that I try to get a scholarship to go to school at SMU. She says their art dept is "more traditional" and a better fit for my style than the other local colleges who are more contemporary. At $30,000 per year I'd have to get a FULL scholarship to have any hopes of going there. I'm also a bit torn because 1) it's near downtown Dallas, about an hour's drive on a good day without traffic (which is never, heh), and 2) Hubby's planning on attending UNT in Denton so I planned to go there too. However, I'm old enough to know I need to attend the school that makes the most of my education, the more sensible choice... rather than one that's closer and easy to carpool to. And SMU would sure look good on a resume. I'll apply and see what happens. It doesn't hurt to try, right?

On a different note: Last week in fantasy football my hopes for a perfect season (sure!) came to an end. Brian Westbrook on the opposing team pretty much pummelled me single-handed with the other arm tied behind his back...

Oh yeah, and they FINALLY finished repaving our road. They started back... when? I can't even recall. But they not only repaved the road but they tore out all the curbs and put in new ones all the way down the street, and in front of our house they tore out the pathetic sunken sidewalk and made us a new one (we were the only ones to get a new sidewalk). Then, they even put in new sod for us along the sidewalk... cool! That had been a bare spot of grass before. I guess I'll refrain from complaining about our "tax dollars at work"... for a little while. :)

At least Dallas whomped... yay!

Hmmm, somebody seems to have logged in and changed my post about the Broncos... now I wonder who that could have been? One of the cats I presume?? Must have been Crook, so-named because when she was a kitten hubby claims she was the one who opened the refrigerator door and ate the last of my cookies... hmm, yep, must have been her...

Art & football...

Here's my first painting for my Painting I class:

"Break Between Work and School"

This is the second time in my life I've painted with oils. The first was high school. I've always been more of a drawer than a painter, mostly due to the expense of paint and canvas. But from this I now know I like oils better than acrylic paints... seen in person the oil creates beautiful colors. Acrylic is literally PLASTIC paint, and therefore always has a plastic look to it. Oil on the other hand is deep, rich colors, with somewhat of a transparency of light. Again this is a crappy cellphone camera photo, so all you can really see is flat shapes and shadows, but no color variations compared to the real deal. The shoe for example has nice shades of light greens and browns that you can't even see here, in this murky photo it all just looks like mustard yellow. :(

And no, I didn't attempt to put the "Coca-Cola" name on the label... first, because I had to finish this painting today so I didn't have time, and secondly because I didn't want to take the chance of screwing it up! Trying to paint cursive letters ain't easy!


And on football...

I like having this Palmer guy for QB, my team won again 154-107. A good old-fashioned ass kickin! But I have to play the league owner's team this next week... it may be tougher.

Essay...

Here is the link to the essay I wrote for my English class: riderang2.bravehost.com

It was supposed to be an autobiographical narrative... a story about myself. So, I chose to write about why I quit college and what brought me back.
As I state on the page, this is the first English class that I've had since 1991, and our professor hasn't given us any instruction as far as how to write... so bear with me. If anyone finds any glaring grammatical errors and such please let me know... I have to turn this in tomorrow!

A rose by any other name...

During the summer one of my classes was Art Appreciation. On the last day of the semester, my instructor had me show my artwork to the class and speak to them about it. (Which as a side note, just goes to show how much working at New Breed changed me, shy quiet little me can now stand in front of a lecture hall and talk without looking like a deer in the headlights from stage fright)

Anyways... afterwards I was walking out and one of the other students asked me, "What's your name again? I want to remember for someday when you're famous." I told her, and she then repeated my name "Angela White... Angela White..." like she was trying to stuff it into the recesses of her brain to try to remember it.

That's when I realized, I'll never stand out as an artist with such a common name.

If you Google "Angela White" you get 4,330,000 hits. If you look at the Image results, I can honestly say none of those people are me... especially one black/white photo that is definitely NOT my body (although I wish it was!)

If you Google "Angela White art" it narrows it down to 2,540,000 hits. I don't even know what page my stuff finally comes up on.

Plus, I mean really, think about it. Let's say you tell your friends you went to a museum and saw a Picasso or a Rembrandt, they know exactly what you are talking about.

But if you tell your friends "Today at a gallery I saw a White"...
they'd ask "A white what?"

It's just too common, destined to be easily forgotten. And my maiden name isn't much better, being Clark. Don't bother Googling that one. I don't think the O's in the Google name go up that high.

So what do I do? Leave it, or change it to a signature people will remember? Actors and writers have their professional names... maybe I should sign my artworks with an alias? Something folks will remember... Moondoggie... CrazyCatLady... The Artist Formerly Known as Angela White...

Don't get me wrong, I'm not planning on being famous... but it would help for people to at least recognize the name. It makes for good business, good marketing. Brand recognition if you will.

Hmmm, so if I were to create an artist signature, what should it be?

Suggestions anyone???

And no, I'm not going to use "Walker Talker"... that was just my Hottalkers screen name derived from being a hotwalker at the track. I considered "RiderAng" which has been my handle since first logging onto the Internet in 1996... but Google pops up every single message I've ever written on every message board out there, including inquiries on fixing Jeep problems, bitching about scams, you name it. Not a way that I want the world to find me.

But my future career hangs in the balance of a good memorable name... so what should it be...

Yea!...

I won my fantasy football match with Hubby. I'm trying not to rub it in too much.

(I won! I won! I won! I won! I won! I won! I won! I won! I won! I won! I won! I won! I won! I won! I won! I won! I won! I won! I won! I won! I won! I won! I won! )

he he he

Other than that, had to write the rough draft for my first English essay tonight. I might post it here in the next few days... too tired tonight... but heck, after taking 5 hours to write it I'd at least like for someone else to read it other than just my professor. Hubby said he liked it, but spouses are required to say things like that... it's in the marriage handbook.

Another artwork finished...

Here's the piece I was working on the last few weeks. This is a really super-crappy photo of it. I'll have to have a friend with a quality digital camera to get a better pic of it... this shows no color range, doesn't show the blurred effect I gave it.... doesn't show the evil red glint in the front horse's eye... but you get the gist of the work from this photo.

I'm going to call it "The Night Mares"

It is chalk pastel on matboard... size is about 32" X 40" so it's the largest piece I've made so far.

I guess the horses at the racetrack inspired this work. Race horses are not your typical docile riding horses, they are often mean nasty creatures that will bite your arm off if you're not watching at all times. I've been kicked in the back, had my nose about broken... but it's not their fault, they were raised that way. Bred and trained to RUN, not allowed to be a horse :(

Sometimes you just don't have anything to say!

(Hubby says I should say "buy artwork!"on my blog, but I hate to do that. I am however putting together a website to "go public"... for whatever that's worth... maybe I'll get some commission work from CraigsList, haha)

I'm also working on another artwork. Had it in my head for a while, started creating it... didn't like where it was going, stopped working on it for a few weeks... now completely changed it and like it a whole lot better. That happens sometimes, if you don't like something you're doing but can't figure out why, put it down for a while and leave it alone. Then when you come back to it the solution jumps out at you. Heck, there was one picture that I put in a closet for 6 years because I didn't like it... then one day I looked at it, figured out what was bothering me, fixed it and finished it. As my instructors would say, "Art is a PROCESS!" For some artists the process is like a locomotive, fast and furious.... but I'm more the slow-boat-from-China type. Too slow, too careful, too meticulous about it.

The college district is having a student contest and exhibit, to be displayed at the Fort Worth Community Center. Money prizes. I need to finish more works for that. Show will be on display in November. Deadline is October, hope I can finish a couple...

Odds & ends...

Sorry, been busy this week/weekend. Continued busy in the forecast for tomorrow.

Fantasy League
We wound up doing an automated draft rather than live draft (fine by me!) My team:

• QB- Carson Palmer
• WR- Reggie Wayne
• WR- Andre Johnson
• WR- Hines Ward
• RB- Frank Gore
• RB- Willie Parker
• TE- Antonio Gates
• K- Neil Rackers
• DEF- Baltimore

Backups- Brett Favre, Clinton Portis, Braylon Edwards, Deion Branch, Kellon Winslow, Jacksonville Defense.
I'm not thrilled with Favre and Portis.
I'm scheduled to play Hubby's team in Week 1. I'm predicting I'll start the season 0-1-0.

Horse Trailer
Still not sold.

Street
Still not paved.

Me
Still bitching about it.

Mike's Garage Band
We went out Friday night to see my friend Erika's husband Mike play at a local sports bar. As it turned out Erika couldn't make it, but Mike kept us entertained. He plays a mean lead guitar. It was a mix of Folsom Prison Blues and Lynard Skynard with a good measure of songs they wrote themselves thrown in. I took a picture of Mike playing, but it was fuzzy so I would have pointed him out as the "blurry guy in the grey shirt" versus the blurry guy in the hat. Anyway it was fun.

Other stuff went on too this week, dog almost died and a whole assortment of other things. All I'll say is I hope next week goes a little better!

Another day, another class...

First day of school today. The first day is so boring, we simply listen to the instructors cover the syllabus for what we can expect in their class. And from the experience I've had in the other classes I've had it won't be anything like what actually transforms throughout the semester.

I swear my English professor reminded me of Ben Stein in Ferris Bueller's Day Off (Bueller?....... Bueller?........ Bueller?.........) Very dull, and he's the Chairman of the English Department. We will have to write 4 essays for the class. This will be a long semester.

My Painting instructor is just as drab. (Stop talking, just let us get started painting!)

My History instructor I had for a summer class, so I know he's cool. Even has a MySpace page (as if that's the epitome of cool, HA!).

So these were the Monday/Wednesday classes, tomorrow I get to meet my Tuesday/Thursday profs. More fun. Not.

Going once, going twice.... TRASH!...

We've all decided one thing- it's way too friggin hot for a garage sale weekend! A few people trickled in, and some just did a drive-by but obviously didn't see what they were looking for. The guys made beer money for the weekend, and that was about it. It really surprised us... I remember in the 80's my parents had a garage sale. People were ringing our doorbell at 5am wanting to buy up all the furniture and large items, and by the end of the weekend had sold almost every little knick-knack we had. This time however, not even the neighbors' furniture sold! Draperies still in their unopened package didn't sell. Our motor scooter didn't sell! It was pityful.

Soooooo, us and the neighbors wound up trading stuff. We started cleaning up and we'd say "Hey do you want this _______" and they'd say "Here take this _____". Heck we should have just done that in the first place... taken all the crap from our attic and given it to them and they give us all their crap. An even swap, move it from one house to another. Then we wouldn't have sat out in the heat for 2 days...

The whole garage cleaning and sale reminded me of this children's poem by Shel Silverstein:

HECTOR THE COLLECTOR

Hector the Collector Collected bits of string,
Collected dolls with broken heads And rusty bells that would not ring.
Pieces out of picture puzzles, Bent-up nails and ice-cream sticks,
Twists of wires, worn-out tires, Paper bags and broken bricks.
Old chipped vases, half shoelaces,
Gatlin' guns that wouldn't shoot, Leaky boats that wouldn't float
And stopped-up horns that wouldn't toot.
Butter knives that had no handles, Copper keys that fit no locks,
Rings that were too small for fingers, Dried-up leaves and patched-up socks.
Worn-out belts that had no buckles, 'Lectric trains that had no tracks,
Airplane models, broken bottles, Three-legged chairs and cups with cracks.
Hector the Collector Loved these things with all his soul.
Loved them more than shining diamonds, Loved them more than glistenin' gold.
Hector called to all the people, "Come and share my treasure trunk!"
And all the silly sightless people Came and looked...and called it junk.

All the decent stuff that we didn't swap we have in a pile for the Kidney Foundation to come pick up... and the rest in the trash. I hate throwing away usable working items, but there's nothing else to do with them but contribute to the waste management piles of the world. Sad.

Progress I hope...

Busy week. Getting ready for a garage sale this weekend with neighbors. This house we live in once belonged to Mom, and most of her stuff is still here so she & I are going through it deciding what she'll keep or sell. Loads of fun, pulling crap down from the attic and out of closets. And naturally, from rifling through stuff you always come across things Moms don't ever throw away, like drawings you did when you were 5 years old:

She even went as far as to LAMINATE this one.

People always ask me how I learned to draw, and I always tell them "years of practice!" I should show this as proof it doesn't happen overnight. Who the hell was the contractor on this house? And what's up with the jaw on this horse?? Is he chewin tobacco??

Hopefully it means I've gotten a little better in 30 years... here's a portrait I finished this week, my neighbor commissioned me to do this drawing of her sister & horse (sorry for blurriness & lousy yellowish color from camera phone, girl and horse don't really have jaundice):

This one is Prismacolor colored pencils, approx 15"x 20" or so.

This semester I'm taking a Photography class (a requirement for the graphics degree anyways)... thank goodness, I need to learn to use a real camera so I can show better photos of my work here on the web. These cellphone photos are just horrible, bad color and don't show detail. Oh well.

You mean it gets HOT?...

Back to the silly prattle. After 15 years my curling iron finally had to be retired. (Wow, that's roughly 5475 days of faithful service!) So I headed off to Wally World to get a new one.

The scary part? When taking the new one out of the package I found this rather large tag attached to the cord:

I think this goes into the "DUH" catagory. What the heck were people doing with this thing to warrant putting this advisory on it? Trying to curl their eyelashes???

Here's other product warnings found on the Internet:

"This product not intended for use as a dental drill." -- On an electric rotary tool.

"Do not use while sleeping." -- On a hair dryer.

"Not intended for highway use." -- On a 13-inch wheel on a wheelbarrow.

"Warning: May contain small parts." -- On a frisbee.

"Please keep out of children." -- On a butcher knife.

"Do not use for drying pets." -- In the manual for a microwave oven.

"Warning! This is not underwear! Do not attempt to put in pants." -- On the packaging for a wristwatch.

"Do not attempt to stop the blade with your hand." -- In the manual for a Swedish chainsaw.

hehe