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January 30, 2009
It Works!!
My new phone is AWESOME. Yesterday, I had to check out the room we've been assigned for a Saturday workshop with our classes. They're applying plaster to each other's faces to create masks, and so we decided to do it outside of regular class time and get all 70 done at once. (I know, it's insane, but it seemed like a good idea at the time.) Anyway, I was trying to make a mental note to remember to let my teaching partner know that the room would work--I have no email access from my office right now--and I suddenly realized I could use my phone.
That's why I got it, so I could check my university email without going online, since I have to check it several times a day. So while I was walking back to my office, I sent my partner an email. And while I was in my office, before I went home for the day, I replied to several emails on my phone too. Then later, I sent picturemail to my husband showing him that one of the cats had forgiven me for her vet trip yesterday afternoon. I did all of this ON MY PHONE. And those are just the basic things it can do.
And once I got home, I didn't waste time poking around online. Because I didn't need to. I just checked my phone every so often to see if I had new email. (I had originally set it to notify me with a little tune when new messages came in, but then it went off at 11:30pm, because college students email you whenever they have time, and I decided that I didn't need to be awakened by a happy little email tune at 3am.) So instead of wasting my time in the great internet time suck, I wasted my time reading a historical novel*. All evening. It was glorious.
I love my new phone.
I will probably also start using it as a calendar. Because things are about to get crazy in my world. You see, February is a crazy month for me. Crazy. As in, I just sent an email to a student containing the following paragraph:
I'd love to do coffee with you again. I have to say, February is kind of busy for me, so it may have to be in March. I've got lots going on next month. It sounds really odd when I put it that way, "I can't have coffee with you for the next 30 days, get back to me in March," but February really is that kind of crazy for me.
Yes, I know that February is only 28 days this year. I also know that crazy for me starts tomorrow. Because tomorrow I have four and a half hours of mask making, and starting Sunday we have twelve straight days of Tartuffe, picking it back up, adding in a new cast member (our Valere has gone on to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival), and performing. Then there's ACTF, which is here, and is the whole reason we are remounting the show.
The week after ACTF is the Jazz Festival. On Wednesday, I ran into one of the people who works in the festival office who said they are crazybusy swamped, so I'm going to volunteer my services, in hopes of getting not only tickets, but the much-coveted backstage pass. Given all the things I can do for them--and do well--I'm hoping they'll give me one. Plus, we have houseguests coming for part of the Festival. I'm very excited about that. And after Jazz Festival? Is March.
Oh. And did I mention that February is graduate school and summer internship application month? So I have a number of those to write as well. I don't remember last February much at all, and now I understand why. At least this semester I'm only teaching two classes, not four
Okay. This is my last day completely off for two weeks. I'm going to make art.
*The Spanish Bride by Georgette Heyer. It's a fictionalized account of the experiences of Brigade-Major Harry Smith and his wife Juana during the Penninsular War, the War of 1812 and the Battle of Waterloo. Heyer starts the book off with a list of her research sources. This is why I think more novelists should be scholars as well. So that you know you're not getting made up historical or mythological information. Stephanie Meyer, who could have used existing vampire mythology to support your ghastly YA series but instead decided you wanted to make it up entirely out of your own head because you were either too lazy or to scared to do the work, I'm looking at you.
Posted by sally at 10:22 AM | Comments (3)
January 28, 2009
Say Hello to My Little Friend
I got a new cell phone today. It's a Sprint Lotus. It's a flip phone with a QWERTY keyboard and web access so I can check my email without losing three hours online.
Isn't it beautiful? I am in looove.
Posted by sally at 08:54 PM | Comments (10)
January 27, 2009
I Did Not Walk Yesterday Morning
Because I am both a lover of comfort and also quite fond of my nose. I didn't want it freezing off, which I feared it might do if I walked to the chiropractor's office.
I did however, walk downtown yesterday afternoon for a meeting. But by then it was a balmy 25, which is vastly different. Of course, when I walked home with Dave around 6pm, the temperature had dropped to 11, which was not quite so balmy, but I was full of good Mexican food and coped just fine.
My sudden spate of activity will not be helping get me into my Tartuffe costume, I fear, however. I have a fitting today, and I am willing to bet that it's a bit snug when I try it on. I've put on at least five pounds since I last wore it at the beginning of November. However, on the bright side, a portion of that seems to be in my boobs. That bit will come in handy.
I really don't have much else to say. I live a fairly boring life, apparently.
Oh! I do have something! Julie over at Lost Luggage put up a set of images of a diaper bag that she'd decorated for the friend of a friend. I saw that and I realized what I wanted to do with my Kindle cover. See, Kindles come with a standard black cover that Dave says is leather, but I'm pretty sure is vinyl. Anyway, an acquaintance of his bought a fancy real leather cover for his Kindle and somehow ended up with two. He gave one to Dave, and Dave, because my Kindle cover never quite fit right, gave me his old one.
I'd been trying to figure out what to do with my cover for ages, because it was impossible to tell our Kindles apart without turning them on. It's not a problem now, since Dave's new cover is so different from mine, but I still wanted to do something cool. I'd thought of stickers or fabric, but they weren't really what I was after. Then I saw Julie's diaper bag and realized that treatment was an option for me too. So I have started painting it and working with it like I do my journal pages. The great thing about doing it this way is that I will either end up with something amazingly cool or I won't. If I don't, as I've discovered already with the journal pages, I can keep doing stuff to it until I have something amazingly cool.
That's the plan right now, anyway. And if it works out, I may do the same thing to my other Kindle cover, only with a different color scheme. Just because I can.
Posted by sally at 09:20 AM | Comments (1)
January 26, 2009
The Best Laid Plans
The Plan
To lose weight and conserve resources by walking places instead of driving.
Specifically, to walk to the chiropractor this morning for my adjustment/massage appointment and then stop at the grocery store for some stuff on my way home.
The Necessary Steps
I have the perfect cold weather walking setup now, moisture-wicking layers and lots of them, plus a wind-proof shell.
I even have a set of YakTrax for my boots. I tried them out last night and they worked perfectly. I have never felt so secure on a snowy sidewalk.
The Issues
Bag to carry groceries. Check.
Up early to make sure I have time to shower and eat before I leave. Check.
Purse with checkbook and--Dammit. It's damp inside from the glass of water I spilled on it last night.
Damp purse covering heater vent to expedite drying. Check.
The Sentence Dave Uttered That Made My Plans Wither Away Like Blighted Cornstalks
"Good morning, Sweetie! It's ten below outside."
Posted by sally at 09:11 AM | Comments (7)
January 23, 2009
It's Beginning
Basil
There are four peat pellets' worth of both basil and oregano sprouts on top of the new kitchen bookshelves. Four pellets each, so if you're local, let me know if you'd like some and we can arrange something when they get a bit bigger. I used organic seeds and everything, so they should be pretty unnecessary chemical-free. Aside from the paint and glue spatters from being right next to my work table.
Kidding.
Unfortunately, the chives didn't sprout, they just got nasty. I need to rethink how I start them. They probably need their own pot to sprout in, rather than peat pellets. The pellets may have been too damp for the chives' tastes.
I am so excited to have new little growing things in the kitchen. Tasty little growing things. I remember going out to dinner with some friends one evening a couple of summers ago (they live in LA now),. Afterwards, as we were all walking back through our garden, Maggie and I stopped to smell the basil plant. Even though we'd both stuffed ourselves, when we crushed one of the leaves and sniffed it, we both exclaimed, "Wow! I could go for some spaghetti!" It's that good, basil.
Oregano
Now I just need to figure out the chives thing and locate some sources for thyme and rosemary seeds. Or cuttings. If they're organic, I'm not picky about who started them.
Posted by sally at 02:01 PM
January 22, 2009
Lincoln's Shins Opens Tonight **UPDATED**
I can't believe I forgot to post this, but better now than Sunday.
Dave's play Lincoln's Shins runs today (Thursday) through Saturday at the Borah Theatre in the UI Student Union Building. Performances start at 7:30, admission is $4.
I haven't read this latest version, and I haven't seen the set, but I've been assured it's well worth seeing.
**UPDATE: If you want details, here's a story* from the entertainment/weekend section of the local paper, complete with photos. That bottom pic? Is also the sole photo ON THE FRONT PAGE OF THAT SECTION. It's the cover, basically. How cool is that?
*There is one error in the story. Dave's award was at the Kennedy Center, since the Lincoln Center is in New York, not D.C.
Posted by sally at 02:14 PM | Comments (1)
January 20, 2009
Lookin' Out My Back Door
Or, rather, my kitchen window.
A beautiful day, if somewhat chilly.
Posted by sally at 11:18 AM | Comments (1)
We Have a New President
Like you weren't aware of this.
I feel hope, real hope, for the first time in a long time.
Posted by sally at 10:08 AM
January 19, 2009
Women With Lambs
Inland Empire Girl posted a meme today that she invited all of her fellow bloggers to join. I tried. I really did. But you've already seen the picture that came up for me when I followed these instructions. I posted it last week.
1. Go to the fourth folder where you keep your photos.
2. Post the fourth picture in that folder.
3. Explain the picture.
4. Tag four fellow bloggers to join in the fun.
So, I thought, what happens if I pick the fourth from last folder? And the fourth from last image? You've already seen that one as well, and it's not for the faint of heart, so don't click on that link if you don't want to see a bloody eyeball.
But the third from the last image in that folder is one I don't think I've posted here before. And it made me smile when I looked at it again.
Taken in March, 2002. In Arkansas. With a group of extraordinary women.
Click to see a bigger copy.
Guess which one is me. I shouldn't be too hard to spot.
I was part of Women's Lambing Week at the Heifer Ranch. The trip was a Christmas present from David. We were there ostensibly to help with the lambing, though all I did was watch one birth. Which was... how do I put this... not the moving and amazing miracle I thought it would be. In fact, it was a little disturbing, as the lamb was still well inside its mother when it shook its little head, the only part that was sticking out. But I tell you what, I now know how to tell if a sheep is in labor.
We did do other work, cleaned out some storage sheds & stables, sheared a sheep. I developed whooping cough while I was there, and so was a miserable mess for most of that week, though I thought it was just a bad case of asthma at the time. (It turns out the vaccine you get as a child isn't life-long. I was exposed right about the time mine wore out, apparently. Wow, that was a hideous three months. Oh. I should mention that I caught the whooping cough in Portland. I just started showing symptoms in Arkansas.)
Anyway, this picture was taken near the end of the week. I can't remember why, but we'd separated out all the lambs from the mamas, and were practically going deaf from all the frantic bleating. Ewes are LOUD. This one ewe hadn't quite been caught, and she ran over to the group of us to find her baby. And then stood there and yelled. I was laughing because I was fully well aware of what the photograph would look like. A bunch of women holding lambs, and dead center, a dirty sheep butt.
I don't care what message you're trying to send when you include them. Animals will upstage you every time.
Posted by sally at 04:52 PM | Comments (3)
January 17, 2009
Memorable
It's funny how memory works. Which bits and pieces stick with you and float to the surface. They're not always the bits you expect them to be. For instance, I don't remember much at all about Dave's proposal or our wedding ceremony. I do, on the other hand, remember almost word for word, a very tense conversation in his car on the way back from the beach about how the relationship was getting too serious for me because he used two reallys in the sentence, "I really, really like you." One really was apparently okay, but TWO reallys, my god, TWO was a sign that we were stepping into dangerous emotional territory.
What a dork I can be sometimes.
I don't remember the actual moment of receiving any of the multitude of diplomas I now possess. I remember bits about those ceremonies, like how I could stash cough drops, kleenex and an inhaler in the sleeves of my Master's gown, which made it MUCH better than the gowns one wears when receiving a Bachelor's degree. (And since I'd been diagnosed with pneumonia the day before, all those things were necessary. Boy, do I look like shit in the photos.)
I remember things like time spent weeding the garden and painting walls, but not conversations that should have been important. I do remember holding each of the three cats I've said good-bye to in my life so far as they slipped away for good, but I don't recall actually meeting some of them.
I remember weepy breakups with a whole host of boyfriends and lovers, but very few first dates. Though I do remember the very first moment I saw David, and the first time we saw each other again after living in different places for a span of seven years*.
I remember time spent on airplanes, but not the moments I was heading toward or from. The interminable flights to and from Hawaii and London--and the time spent standing in line at Customs--for instance, are more vividly present in my head than some of the things I did while I was there.
I bring this up because a memory keeps coming to the surface lately that is one of those kinds of experiences. In the grand scheme of things, it was a lovely moment, but not a significant one. Just one of those little moments that make up a life.
Super Bowl Sunday, 1996. I had no boyfriend, and my parents weren't living in Boise, so I had no Super Bowl parties to attend. I wasn't going to go to a bar on my own to watch it, and I didn't care enough about the game to watch it on my own at home, either.
Frankly, for me the Super Bowl has always been about food. When I was growing up, our next door neigbors were both die-hard 49er fans and good cooks. So we went to their house to watch the 49ers play. And we would eat like kings there. It was awesome. But it forged an unbreakable link in my head: Super Bowl party=good food.
As an adult, I haven't been to many Super Bowl parties where the food was all that fabulous. It's sad.
Anyway, no boyfriend wanted to drag me to a bar or a party with his friends, no friends of my own wanted to watch the game, and I had no interest in seeing it alone. Fine, I decided. If I'm not going to do the Super Bowl Sunday thing, I'm going to do the girliest thing I can think of on a Sunday afternoon.
At 2:00 that day, as the Steelers kicked off, I sat in the Flicks, our local arthouse theater, with a roomful of other women and watched the opening credits of Sense and Sensibility. The place was packed, and the audience was entirely female. I hadn't been expecting such a crowd, so I got one of the last single seats, fifth row right side, one in from the aisle. It turned out to be a great spot, though, because I could still see everything perfectly, and at the end, as the entire theater was weeping, one of the women in our row passed a kleenex box down to help out those of us who hadn't brought our own.
I don't know why this memory has kept calling attention to itself lately, any more than why just now another recollection popped to the surface, of a hilarious weekend trip to Cannon Beach with my friends Tom and Kevin, being very, very drunk on the beach, eating pizza and singing show tunes at the tops of our lungs. THAT was a fun evening.
Then there are more sublime moments, standing on an Oregon cliff looking over the Pacific Ocean and watching dolphins race through the water below. The first time my skittish young cat Katala actually relaxed into my arms instead of struggling to get away. An afternoon and evening at a house full of other female actors, occasionally taking dips in a pool that was the exact same temperature as the balmy air outside, so that you couldn't really tell when you stepped into the water. Sitting in the dark in Baja, Mexico, just outside of Cabo San Lucas, on a beach unreachable by most motor traffic, watching the sky and the waves and learning the Spanish term for shooting star--estrella fugas--and feeling like the world couldn't really get much better than that.
It's so strange, the things our minds choose to record and replay versus the things they don't. I wonder which memories about my life now will bubble to the surface as I get older. Will the aching loneliness, the frustration and the pain of my graduate school experience be the things I recollect? Or will I remember moments like this one, sitting on the couch with my feet up on the coffee table, writing about my life while two cats snore contentedly, pressed tightly to my legs on either side.
*I should tell that story here. I don't think I ever have. It's a good story, if I do say so myself. Hard to write a better one, really. It's the kind of story that makes women cry in movie theatres.
Posted by sally at 09:30 AM | Comments (6)
January 14, 2009
Art Journal Pages
Lotus Blossom Opera House, 5" x 8"
I have a new scanner. I have been playing with it this afternoon. I got it for an entirely different reason, but discovered when I tried shooting my art journal pages that they don't photograph well. "Aha!" I thought to myself--no, really, I did, I actually thought the aha--"I have a scanner! I shall scan them!" So, as I said, I was playing this afternoon. I was able to get the colors to be pretty accurate, which is astonishing, given how much certain greens and blues don't replicate. They're not perfect, but II got pretty close. So here they are. I'm pretty proud of them. And I've got tons more in process.
Garden Grows, 6" x 12"
This one and the next two are from my current art journal, which is where I play with materials and try out new techniques. It's for figuring things out in and recording my process, which is completely different from the journal I'm creating pages for. But since it's a working notebook, I wanted to try the proccess in it first. Then I discovered that I can't use it for its intended purpose if I do it that way because different pages take different amounts of time depending on when I decide something's "done" (aka ready to be written on), and I like to have things in chronological order. Plus, I can't try out new techniques on these pages because they're already altered, and I need fresh pages for the new stuff, to see how it works on paper, not necessarily how it works on paper and paint and more paper and ink and glue and maybe some fabric. So I made six pages* in that book before I figured out how I wanted to use these kinds of pages, and then I created my variously sized free sheets.
Chinese Medicine, 6" x 12"
I've already written on this one. I felt a really strong urge to use it, so I did. The page acted as my writing prompt, too, which I'd like to be able to do with these. Except for the pieces in my notebook, which are one on each side of the page, I've kept the backs blank. Yes, they have paint smears, and some of them even have color washes on the backs (to get them to flatten out a bit), but I chose to not seriously alter both sides because I want to be able to write on the backs as well, and didn't want to limit myself to single page entries if I felt like writing more. That doesn't mean I might not do something to the back side of a page later on, I reserve the right to continue to play with these things for the rest of my life.
Water Chaos, 6" x 12"
This page shows how versatile the dirty page approach can be. First I used it to use up two colors of paint that I didn't just want to dump down the drain. Then I doodled on it with colored pencil. Then I used a silver sharpie. Then I glued a piece of lace onto one side. Then I used two colors of spray paint and rubbed across the lace with a colored pencil which I used to do some more doodling. For a while, I thought I was finished, and then I cut out a hibiscus flower stencil and used the spray paint again. Then I used the flower as a stencil again with some aqua acrylic paint and a sponge brush. Then I glued on the paper. Then I used magenta acrylic paint watered with coffee to darken it a bit. Somewhere in there, I may have done a sparkly gold wash with really watery acrylic paint, but I don't recall for sure.
In each step I was guided by what "felt" right, but I didn't use any words or images as I have in most of the other pieces. and the scribbles went on before the majority of the paint, and I used a dry brush for the base instead of a wash of some kind. and I added the paper next to last instead of making it the first step. And it turned out awesome. At least, I think so. It's now one of my favorite pages, and I've been itching to write on it, but I wanted to scan it first.
Leaves, 5 ¾" x 9"
And with the previous photo, the pic at the beginning of this entry and the following three, you can get an idea of how varied these can be in size and shape. Not to mention, color, content and mood. The one constant in all of them is the use of spray paint, because I like how it softens all of the rough edges. Other media I have used in these so far include wapping paper, bookbinding fabric, art paper, fabric, words and images from calendars, catalogues, magazines, cards, etc., colored pencil, acrylic paint, coffee, sharpee (in silver and black), #2 pencil, and inked stamps.
I really am just letting my creative impulses guide me. With the consequence that I am already developing a very diverse set of pages to write on.
Garden Home, 4" x 9"
Grandmother's Wallpaper, 4 ½" x 12"
I've included the above two pieces to show their relative sizes.
Time's Whirlwind, 6" x 9"
This one started out being, "Shit! I've ruined it! What am I going to do?" and wound up being one of my very favorite pieces. I love the way the colors blend into each other and the interactions of the various shapes and textures. It's a perfect example of how fucking something up can actually be freeing, since you can't mess up something that's already been destroyed, all you can do is play with it and see if you can get something interesting to happen.
It reminds me of some of the Italian Futurist painters, though I don't claim to be anywhere near as good as they were. I just always liked their stuff.
So, those are the finished pages I've done so far. I still have tons more in process. The goal, as I believe I've mentioned before, is to have bunches and bunches to work with so I can choose something to suit my mood and then write on it, perhaps not daily, but as close to daily as I can manage in this crazy life of mine. So hopefully I can just keep finishing up some pages while starting new ones, making it an ongoing sort of thing.
I don't know if you can tell, but I'm just having the best time.
*And almost a week after starting to play in this way, some of those pages aren't where I want them to be before I write on them.
Posted by sally at 04:59 PM | Comments (2)
Sock Drawer
This morning I must have got distracted by something while getting dressed, because I left my sock drawer half open. When I went back to get socks to actually put on, I found this:
I panicked while I ran to get my camera, because cats in built-ins leads me to the thought of cats in the walls or floor, and while Wolves in the Walls is a wonderful book*, calicos in the walls is a nightmare scenario featuring ripped up boards and holes in the lathe and plaster and potentially dying animals. And we've had quite enough of that last thing around here for quite a while, thank you.
But she was still in the same position fifteen seconds later when I returned with the camera. And once I'd grabbed that shot, I stuffed the camera into the drawer and got this:
Because I am nothing if not devoted to my readers, who need to know about these things. Then I opened the drawer and gently removed the cat who was trying to make a nest in my socks.
*Seriously, wonderful. If you have a child in your life who is six or younger, they will adore this book. Get it for them. And while you're doing that, you can also get them The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish and Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus.
Posted by sally at 09:19 AM
January 12, 2009
It's Not All Bad
I went to the chiropractor again today, following an hour long deep tissue massage (oh. my. god. so. good.). On the way home, I stopped by the recycling center to drop off all of the stuff I've been carrying around in the trunk of the car since last Friday. (Tin cans, aluminum cans, catalogues, junk mail, milk cartons, soap bottles, wine bottles, that kind of thing.) At our recycling center they have a free book bin. People dump books there and you can take out anything you like for free. Usually it's old text books and stupid paperbacks that the owner can't imagine anyone else wanting either, and they're usually right. But it's always worth a look. Just in case.
Apparently some library somewhere wanted to junk a bunch of old holdings. Because when I glanced over at the free book bin, it was overflowing with interesting looking hard-backed tomes. I couldn't help myself. I wandered over and managed to get my hands on this:
Oh yeah. I got the whole thing, all fifteen volumes. I checked before I left the recycling center. I'm glad I did, because I almost went off without S. I also ended up with the 1960 collection of The Americana, some kind of journal, I think, which I accidentally snatched up in my frenzy.
Anybody local who's reading this should know that I managed to limit myself to the Compton's and to not take any of the Encyclopedia Americana or any of the other interesting reference-type books they had. I had to make a fast decision and I didn't want to be greedy. So if you're looking for large aged volumes with interesting illustrations, there may still be some there.
And now the living room smells wonderfully of old books. God, I love that scent.
Posted by sally at 02:10 PM | Comments (2)
They Said No Thank You
I didn't make the short list for Columbia. They sent a very nice letter saying thanks, but no thanks, which I thought was kind of them. They didn't have to.
And I'm okay with not getting hired. Even when I applied for the job, I wasn't sure I wanted to be working full-time, and since I've been able to do more art stuff over the break, I know I don't want to work full-time. When I teach full-time, there's no time for me because I give it all to the students. I don't have time to cook or clean or hit the gym, and I certainly don't have time to do art when I'm teaching full-time. So it really is okay.
Of course it makes the "Where do we go now?" question harder again. Because we could go anywhere.
Dammit.
Posted by sally at 12:52 PM
January 11, 2009
Lovely Space
If you've been reading here for very long at all, you'll know that I have space issues when it comes to where I create art. I have an office, which is where I store all of my supplies, but I don't have any workspace but the floor in there, and no sinks or areas for wet work. And of course, being me, I think wet work is much more interesting than dry stuff like sewiing. (I would like to take a moment here to point out that I have actually found a way to incorporate water into my sewing, the projects that involve it are the ones that interest me most.) So I've taken over the kitchen table and breakfast nook/dining room area.
This has worked okay for me except for the whole small table, no counter space, must move supplies into and out of office when I need them part of art making. When I set a project aside so I can think about it some while beginning another, the supplies get put away and that project ends up stacked either at the edge of the table or on the floor against the wall and generally forgotten. Because if I don't see it, I don't think about it, and if it's behind a stack of supplies I'm using for what I'm working on now, I'm not going to see it.
Which is why what Dave did on Friday is such a wonderful thing.
As you can see, he had a lot of assistance.
Ever since we bought the house I have envisioned built-in bookcases under the dining room windows. Dave built them this summer, and installed them on Friday. They are perfect. The shelves are different heights, so there's room for taller things, and I can grow herbs on the top shelf. (Provided, that is, that I can find herbs. I may not be able to get anything other than seeds right now.) Here's what they look like in use.
I haven't really taken the time to fill them like I intend to. Orignally, I was going to use them for actual books. But on Friday night, I stuck my projects and supplies on the shelves just to get things out of the way, and it was so handy to have the various items there that I decided to use the shelves for my art supplies instead. I can see what I'm working on now, even when i'm not working on it. I don't have to go into my office to get brushes or paint or glue or stamps or ink every time I want some. My project notebooks and various art journals are handy instead of under piles of other things, and I can clear everything off the table except the object I am actually working on, which means less chaos as well as less likelihood of my spilling something on a project I didn't really want to spill on. It's wonderful.
Later on Friday, as I was icing my shoulder (which, by the way is MUCH better, last night it didn't hurt at all when I was doing things like putting on or taking off coats and shirts), I found a blog called The Altered Page. The artist who runs it has a series of entries featuring images of various artists' studios and their explanations/descriptions. Which is where I learned that I am not the only artist who has taken over a dining room more or less permanently. That is a fairly common solution for artists, it seems. What a comforting discovery. It's always nice to know you're not the only person with a given issue/solution, and that other people have managed to succeed in similar circumstances.
The cats--Imogen, at least--love the new shelves too. Imogen has enjoyed the view from them, and Quickly has been spreading herself out more on the kitchen table, now that she can. In fact, the only downside to the whole thing was knowing that Poly, who would stand on the back of a chair and the windowsill at the same time to look out those windows, never had a chance to sit on the shelves. Were he still with us, we would already know which bit of space needed to be set aside for his personal use, because he would have shoved things out of the way to be in it.
So that's why I haven't posted recently. Because I've been busy playing in the space Dave gave me, thanks to the new shelves. I've got a bajillion art journal pages in progress, and I finished several yesterday, including writing on one. I'm actually quite excited about the whole process, because I've been using my "pony*" to make a whole bunch of pages in different sizes.
The goal here is to have a big selection of pages that I can flip through until I find the one that suits my mood/ideas, and then write on it. So I have large pages and small pages and rectangles and pages that are closer to square--though no actually square pages, I should fix that. They'll be all different colors, and some will have images and some will just be abstract, layers of color and texture, and when I feel like I have enough completed pages, I'll decorate a couple of covers and bind them all together. This way, I can add new pages to the selection as I feel like it, and not have to 1) wait for the pages to dry before I work on some more, or 2) write on a page that is completely inappropriate for however it is I'm feeling in that moment because it's the next page in the journal. AND, I can put things in chronological order, which will feed my anal tendencies so they're getting some attention too.
Right now, I have pages in all stages of progress. A couple of them are finished, a couple are in the time to doodle phase, some are waiting for paint, some are waiting for more images, some are drying, some are waiting for me to figure out what they need next. It's wonderful. Now I just need a place to store them.
*I don't think I've mentioned my "pony" here before. It was my birthday present this year. This. We call it my pony because it's huge and expensive and heavy (like a pony), and every time Dave told me he'd got me a present, my response was, "Is it a pony?**" even though I knew what it was because I had to show him what I wanted. As an example of its wonderfulness, last night, it allowed me to cut about fifty pages in various weights and treatments of paper into the sizes I wanted in about ten minutes. I love it. It's one of the best presents I've ever received.
**That used to be my standard response any time Dave told me he got me a present. Now, because I have a pony, I ask if he got me a puppy.
Posted by sally at 10:10 AM | Comments (3)
January 09, 2009
Busy Day. Once It Got Started
I slept until 9:45 this morning. Unmoving unconsciousness. When I woke up, I had a cat lying on my chest and one between my knees, and I snapped into awakeness. I went from out cold to fully alert, with no grogginess at all. Apparently, I was tired.
Anyway, now that I'm up, I've got all sorts of stuff going on. I have a chiropractor appointment this afternoon to get my shoulder/back fixed. I say it's a back issue because I've done absolutely nothing to my arm/shoulder, yet I'm having pain when I try to raise my arm past shoulder level. And it extends into my neck, which suddenly has limited mobility.
This is the result of a couple of falls on ice (once last winter and one the year before) and one on the entryway floor on Tuesday because my boots were wet. This problem has been coming on for a while, it's not like I spent much of last week falling on my ass. It was the spill in the entryway that brought me to the point where I have pain raising my arm. But my right arm was involved in absolutely zero of these falls. Which leads me to believe it's an alignment issue. I've even got a couple of vertebrae pinpointed as the trouble spot, given which muscles seem to be affected. And this morning I finally got a recommendation for someone in town who isn't the creepy guy I saw a couple of years ago. So chiropractor this afternoon. And possibly also a deep tissue massage, since he's got massage therapists in his office. Mmmm...
I've also located some ornament storage boxes in the area that aren't at WalMart, and since the roads are driveable, I can get to them today and maybe get the Christmas tree taken down. (The snow is almost gone , if you can believe that. We had over three feet on Monday, and now we have clear sidewalks and roadways and maybe five inches left on the ground. It melted FAST.)
I had a lot of fun yesterday with the new art journaling technique. I played with paint and color and spray paint, and as my teaching partner put it, discovered that I have "attachment issues" when it comes to paper. I hate covering my cool papers up with stuff so they can't be seen anymore, and so I get very very hesitant about taking additional steps. But they're shaping up nicely. Most of them. I haven't looked at them yet today, since I've been busy doing other things, but playing with them is next on my list after I post this.
Speaking of art, here are the two ATCs I've been trying to photograph for a couple of days now. I finally remembered to do it during daylight hours. Flash didn't work because the surfaces are too shiny, and interior lighting alone was too dark, but daylight plus interior lighting equals photographic excellence, so here they are.
These are the result of an unfortunate accident where I inadvertently squeezed the top off a bottle of clear embossing ink and dumped the stuff everywhere. Instead of throwing the cards away, though, I opted to pour the contents of my mixed embossing powder container* on them, just to see what would happen. Then I used the heat gun, and this is what I got. I think they turned out pretty cool, all things considered.
(I did the distressing on this with a plastic knife and brown and black distressing inkpads from a distressing kit I got last summer. I wasn't sure I wanted to breathe in the toxins I'd release if I set it on fire, but I wanted that burned, crumbly-looking edge. I'm quite pleased with the results.)
(The heart and the arrow are made of the lava gel I got the other day. Once I'd embossed the piece, it made me think of lava floes and beaches and my trip to Hawaii, and I knew I needed to use real lava on it. I didn't have any handy, unfortunately, so I had to buy the gel. But now that I've played with it a bit, I know I can find other uses for it, so it won't exactly go to waste.)
I have some other cool stuff to share as well, but I don't have time to edit the pix right now, so I'll post that later. It has to do with making my work space more studio-like. Wait until you see.
*It's where I dump the powders that get mixed as I'm working, if I'm using more than one color of powder on a piece. I can't be the only person who does that. I don't want to throw them away, but they're not just one color anymore, so I pour them into a teeny tupperware box and use them when I'm wanting to mess around. I get some cool results that way.
Posted by sally at 12:13 PM | Comments (2)
January 08, 2009
Out Playing, Come Back Later
This is just to say that I am out today, planning next semester (which starts Wednesday, eep!) with my teaching partner and then playing in the kitchen/my studio all day. I discovered an AWESOME art journal tutorial yesterday, and it set me on fire. I began three pages last night, and I need to continue with them today, so no poking around on the internet today for Sally.
Though I may come back later to post some photographs of ATCs I finished last night. You see, yesterday was kind of like Christmas all over again. The snow finally melted enough that we got ALL SORTS of deliveries of stuff we'd ordered online. So a bunch of stamping stuff arrived, along with some embossing markers--which I haven't yet tried, some clear colored lacquer--which I have tried, PVA for my bookbinding and some Liquitex Black Lava acrylic texture gel, which I've been wanting for ages. I actually was able to finish up a couple of ATCs because it finally got here. (The big chain store that rhymes with Pikels was OUT in December, so I ordered it from Dick Blick instead.)
So anyway, I started playing with my new toys/substances and got all excited about the things I could do, and since I'm about to have to start teaching again, my time will be much less my own, so I'm going to do a lot while I still can just take the time to lose myself in it.
Posted by sally at 09:09 AM | Comments (4)
January 06, 2009
Thank You
A sincere and ginormous thank you to the person who sent me a subscription to Everyday Food Magazine. It arrived at the most opportune moment, and I not only put together a set of menus that I can make at home all week, but tonight I had the arugula and radish salad from a back issue*. Only, because I live in one of the lamest places in America, I went to two grocery stores and ended up with hearts of romaine because NO ONE IN THIS STUPID TOWN HAS ARUGULA. Dave said, "Is it seasonal?" And I said, "I don't care, because in a real city, I would be able to get arugula at three in the morning if I wanted to."
Anyway, the salad was fabulous, regardless, and the magazine is exactly what I needed. So if you were the person who sent it, thank you. (Was it you, Amy?)
*Also, I have now cleaned out all of our pantry and much of the fridge, as part of the prep work. I had to see what we had vs. what I needed, and what we had, I discovered, was a bunch of Very Frightening Old Food.
Posted by sally at 09:06 PM | Comments (2)
It Is Supposed to Be Raining -- **UPDATED**
It is not raining.
It is snowing, and it has been since I got up this morning.
What the hell, NOAA?
**Update, 3:50pm - It is finally raining. And raining very hard. Boy am I glad we live on a hill on a hill. (By which I mean that our house is up a hill from the street, which is at the top of the hill.) Urban flooding, anyone?**
Posted by sally at 12:27 PM
January 05, 2009
What to Do?
I had a meeting this morning.
When I got up, I looked out the window at the furiously falling snow and thought, "I wonder if we should cancel?"
When Dave went out to shovel the front walk, we discovered that the front stoop had at least four inches of new snow on it, and I thought, "I wonder if we should cancel?"
When I checked my email, I discovered the university had sent out an announcement that they are closing campus today, and I thought, "I wonder if we should cancel?"
My cell phone just rang. We have cancelled the meeting.
There are all sorts of things I could be doing now, of course, but the things I WANT to be doing involve leaving the house, and frankly, I am So. Very. Not. Interested. in doing that. The guy across the street has been shoveling his driveway and sidewalk for the last hour. Dave just hit the sidewalk again, there's that much new snow coming down. Being outside in that right now does not appeal. Even though I need storage for the Christmas ornaments so we can take the tree down and stamps so we can mail our "end of year" letter and new light bulbs for the torchieres so we can see in the living room again. And food so we can, you know, eat.
We walked downtown on Saturday night. The place was DEAD. I know it's partly due to the fact that we're in-between semesters right now, but the weather has got to be playing a part in that. Nobody wants to leave their houses. And nobody wants to drive right now. The roads are horrible. Ice under snow, and huge, huge ruts in the ice. It's like a really lumpy skating rink. And this little town has a mainstreet that's nestled in a valley between the hills. Guess how much fun it is to drive a car downhill on ice. Guess.
Mind you, I maintain that we still need the snow, what with the rapidly draining aquifer and all, but I'm not really enjoying this that much anymore.
And whee. The snow is now expected to turn to RAIN. We have a flood warning in effect now too.
Posted by sally at 09:28 AM | Comments (1)
January 04, 2009
Also, How Cool Is Eddie Izzard?
Posted by sally at 12:09 PM | Comments (5)
Better Bread Pudding*
(My comments/adjustments/explanations are in italics.)
4 large eggs
2 cups plain Silk - The recipe actually calls for 1%. I'm wondering how it would be with Silk creamer instead. A bit richer, certainly.
1/3 cup raw sugar
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp. real vanilla extract
3 cups dried white bread cubes (4-5 slices) - I used about 5 cups, because I like crusty bits sticking out the top, plus, that's what was left of the loaf post-New Year's Day French Toast.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. - I tried 325, as the recipe said, but ended up having to raise the temp to 350 and cook it for a good 20 minutes longer than listed here. At 325, the center was still liquid 50 minutes later. It may be our oven, it may be because it's so cold outside, it may be because I used Silk instead of actual milk, I don't know. I do know that 325 did not work for us here.
Butter or spray 9x9 baking dish.
In mixing bowl, beat together eggs, milk, sugar, cinnamon & vanilla.
Pour dry bread cubes into mixture and stir to be sure bread soaks it up to get nice and soppy. - The original mixture called for putting the bread into the baking dish and adding the wet to the dry, but I can't stir things very well in a baking dish, so I chose to add the dry to the wet and stir it up until all the bread had soaked up as much of the custard as possible.
Pour entire mixture into baking dish.
Bake 35-40 minutes, or until knife inserted near center comes out clean.
Cool slightly before serving.
6 servings - We have more than this, but then again, I added two extra cups of bread cubes.
Recipe from DHARMAWORKER on SparkPeople.
*This was actually billed on SparkPeople as "The BEST Bread Pudding," and while I wouldn't go that far, having had the BEST bread pudding at the Eagle's Nest in Dietrich, Idaho, this is awfully good bread pudding.
Posted by sally at 10:08 AM | Comments (2)
January 03, 2009
The Colors of Winter
I looked out the window at one point this afternoon and almost went blind. BRIGHT white snow and a BRIGHT blue sky. Like this.
Happy January.
Posted by sally at 04:32 PM
January 02, 2009
Soup Dreams
"How'd you sleep?" asked Dave this morning, as he usually does.
"I had odd dreams. I don't remember any of them, just that they were odd."
Visions of rooms with no windows. Office-type corridors. Narrow, twisty, carpeted, white-painted hallways with a single wooden stripe at hip level, suggesting wainscoting that never really happened, just white and white, above and below a strip of highly varnished brown. And the taupe-grey berber of the floors. Hallways that ended in conference rooms with round tables and plastic Eames-style chairs. With bulletin boards on the walls full of bright, glossy notices and posters that nobody ever reads.
A ruined--or under construction? It's hard to tell--portion of the building. Some bits seemed like newly-poured, curing concrete, others like tumbling down gothic stone walls and columns. Out there, we all wore thick wool coats and thin knitted gloves and saw our breath in the air*. There was a poetry reading I didn't want to miss. And my friend Rebecca was coming with me.
Then, images of a different kind of room. Octagonal. Wood floors and high ceilings, mauve walls and wood wainscoting. Everything vaguely Victorian, including the leaded glass windows and my brown wool dress and the piled up hair and leg-of-mutton sleeves on the waitresses and the academic-looking, frail old men in their high-collared, dark suits.
And suddenly I remembered the dream.
I was in that room to eat soup. It was a restaurant in a Victorian-style house, a Queen Anne, I think, and the whole dream had that sort of flavor to it. Right down to the fact that I was wearing white gloves and may have also had on a cape over my brown wool dress. Anyway, I had gone there for lunch. I knew their soup was good, and I knew the restaurant.
Everyone was very formal and distant, no unnecessary interactions with the wait staff, even. You sat down, removed your coat, and they brought you water and the soup.
I sat down, saw my white gloves on my hands folded in my brown wool lap. Behind me, an elderly man I'd noticed started slurping his soup up frantically, an animalistic, greedy sound. It would have been considered rude anywhere but here, but I understood without looking why he did it. If he wanted to eat the soup and not get any on his clothes, he had no choice. He was eating as quickly as the hands were feeding him, there was nothing he could do to control them.
That, you see, was the thing you needed to know about this restaurant, which I apparently did, because it wasn't a surprise for me. You came in, you were shown to a seat, you took off your coat and sat down at your chair with your hands folded in your lap. And then a pair of muslin sleeves with white gloves fastened to the ends would raise themselves off the table where they had been lying, attach themselves to your shoulders, pick up a spoon and go to work, feeding you soup. Fortunately, it was only ever a cup, because they whirred like a windmill shoveling the soup into your face until it was gone**. And then they put down the spoon and the bowl and collapsed back onto the table. And presumably, you collected your things, paid for you soup and left, after that.
Only that part didn't happen in my dream. Oh, no.
I sat down, primly folded my hands in my lap, and heard the old gentleman slurping frantically behind me. Then a cutaway*** to a shot of him, so I could see him with the white sleeves attached to his shoulders, the gloves working away with the spoon and the bowl, while he more or less passively received the soup. He was, of course, trying to keep up with the service so as not to drown or get coated in soup.
It must have been very good soup for people to be willing to put up with such an oddly haunted restaurant. Or perhaps that was part of its charm.
Anyway, I waited. The soup cup was placed in front of me. Nothing. Where the hell were "my" arms? Oh. I lifted my book and my purse off the table. Under the book was nothing. Under my purse, a brown, triangularish satchel-like affair, as heavy as the book, which was a bit like a largeish dictionary, was a single, badly crumpled muslin sleeve, with a very limp-looking glove attached.
I called to the waitress, annoyed that I had nothing to serve me the soup. She set about to find me another pair of gloves, because the ghosts were apparently very particular about this sort of thing. But in the middle of her search, as a new pair of sleeves and gloves came over to serve me, a funny thing happened. I decided to feed myself. Why shouldn't I eat my own soup, I remember wondering. Why do I have to put up with all this nonsense? What's the worst that could happen?
I remember the waitress got very upset, and the new sleeves on my shoulders flailed a bit as I picked up the spoon, but I brushed them aside and they fell to the floor, lifeless. There was some general fussing, and a high-pitched screaming in my ears, but I must have eaten the soup, for when I set the cup down---on the book, oddly--there was only a small dribble of a creamy-cheesy remnant in the bottom.
Things get a bit jumbled from there. I think I picked up my purse and got ready to leave, but the dream sort of faded out at that point and I was back wandering the halls of the library again.
*That part was sunlit. Everything else was glaring, white, artificial lighting.
**There was apparently a knack to eating soup this way without spilling, I don't know whether I had mastered it or not, only that I felt competent and up to the task.
***Do you think there were cutaway shots in dreams before Sergei Eisenstein, or is the cutaway in my dreams a result of my being raised in the Age of Moving Pictures? Are we so comfortable with it on film because our heads were doing it before, or have we developed the technique in dreams because that's what we know?
Posted by sally at 08:23 AM | Comments (2)
January 01, 2009
So Far, So Good
And the New Year came in with the pop-pop-pop of bottle rockets, the POP! of an expensive champagne cork* and the pfff of falling snow**. A lot of falling snow. In December, we'd already surpassed the amount of snow we got all last winter. Today, it's snowing hard. Again. Driveways and sidewalks are already filling up again after a week of moderate thawing. Hopefully it will continue (except for the brief, thorough thaw that will allow me to get to Pullman quickly and easily for an appointment tomorrow).
2009 is starting quietly here. I finally wrote our holiday update letter last night, and today I'm fixing the mailing address labels. I never actually got around to writing the letter for 2007. Not only is the new letter a long-ish tome, but I have to make two years' worth of changes/corrections to the mailing labels. Which means some moves, some divorces, some new babies and entire families to include.
Aaand that's pretty much it for right now. The snow sure is pretty, though.
*We were actually awake this year, unlike the previous few, when we couldn't quite make it to midnight.
**Go listen to it sometime. That's how falling snow sounds.
Posted by sally at 11:36 AM
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