Month: February 2006

Meta, Pets, Photography

Harriet Brown Loves a Good Salad

Shelly

100_1310

It cracks me up when Harriet sits like this. She reminds me of an old man slouched in a Lazy Boy, watching tv and drinking a beer. She–formerly known as The Dog Who Does Not Drool–had another slinger fest last night while I was eating a salad. I cannot imagine that mere romaine, radicchio, cucumbers, scallions, or tomatoes were responsible for the waterworks. And, I cannot imagine that the lemon juice and kosher salt I dressed it with were, either. It’s official: my dog is a freak. But, she’s a Boxer, so we already knew that.

Is this week over yet? The wind last night was unbelievable. It made the electricity flicker off and on all night, which meant I overslept because my alarm clock lost it’s mind. Yuck. Traffic is bad enough at 5:30am. By 7am, it’s bumper-to-bumper all the way to Bloomington. I ended up going the back way, to avoid the Hwy 46 wind tunnel, but traffic was still heavy.

But! Guess what I heard this morning, as I was getting into my car? Geese. Lots and lots of geese. The wee geesies are returning, so that’s something to be cheerful about. I think.

Oh, and before I forget, if you’re looking for that perfect gift for the man in your life, why not an heirloom quality mink penis cosy? I hear it’s what all the best dressed men will be wearing this Spring. Surely, my sources cannot be wrong.

In the far less bizarre world of template news (because, you know there had to be some) I have tarted up (or should that be dressed down?) the gallery. The lurking shadow man is gone, as is the ass-ugly grid pattern on the top left. The stripey bits are gone, too, and I’ve changed the fonts to mirror the blog font family. About the only things left that bug me are the upper navigation buttons (I’m just not enjoying the rounded, shadowed look) and the lack of a banner image. I may play around with adding an image to the header, but will probably not get too motivated to de-fancify the buttons. That sounds too much like work to me.

Uncategorized

Instant Review: Pomegranate Juice

Shelly

I mentioned that this was food co-op delivery day, right? I forgot that I’d ordered pomegranate juice. Oh my! It’s just about the yummiest thing I’ve ever tasted. It’s not sweetened, so it’s tart, like really, really good lemonade. Mmmm.

I haven’t had pomegranates in years. Every once in awhile I see them at the grocery store and am tempted, but they’re so much work to eat, that I decide against it. I remember, though, when I was five years old, eating a pomegranate while playing outside. My memory is that it was cold out. We lived in a little bungalow a few blocks from Lake Michigan. There were concrete lions flanking the front steps and concrete statues in the yard, which was entirely enclosed by hedges. It was a wonderful, private place to play make believe games. That day I wandered around outside, by myself, eating my pomegranate and making up stories in my head about the secret lives of the statues.

Pomegranates remind me of that day.

Pets, Photography

When Good Pets Go Bad

Shelly

100_1334

I have no idea who the guilty party is. The inclusion of one of my socks implicates Pandora (she has a bizarre sock fetish, and will carry them around the house in her mouth), but Harriet was the one I found at the scene of the crime. All I can say is that I can think of about a million things I’d rather do than rewind a ball of hemp twine. That’s one job that’s definitely going at the bottom of my To Do list.

So, today was food co-op delivery day, the time of which coincided beautifully with sunrise. I managed to get quite a few good shots, three of which I stitched together into a panorama. I’m kicking myself for not pulling over when I got to Spencer, though, because as I crested the hill leading down into town, the far eastern ridge line was glowing an astonishing shade of fluorescent orange. (More of this morning’s sunrise photos can be seen here.)

Sunrise Panorama

Crankypantsing, Meta

Tha Limpix

Shelly

I haven’t paid too much attention to the Olympics coverage so far, partly because I’ve been busy with other things and partly because there hasn’t been much of interest to me so far. Men’s figure skating is on right now, though, and oh wow. Japan was allowed one men’s skater and good lord was he ever amazing. He fell and screwed up his score, but even so, he was absolutely breathtaking to watch. Just beautiful.

I think I’m done fiddling with the blog template. Finally! It’s very nearly exactly what I had in mind, which is Good Enough. Coppermine is not being so accommodating, though, so I’ve got some more tweaking to do there. I need to delve into the help fora to find info on customizing headers. That dude lurking at the top right has got to go, and the grid pattern and stripes are ugly, too. So, no more unscheduled blog ugliness (ya-hoo!), but if you go to the gallery and are struck blind by the hideousness, I apologize in advance (boo-hoo!). I suppose I could take it off-line while I tweak, but with my luck, I’d forget to re-set it. Yes, I suck, that way. I suck in other ways, too, but we won’t speak of that right now.

Crankypantsing, Meta

Please Stand By…

Shelly

Malaprop o’ the day: “Heresy Kisses.” Have y’all tried the peanut butter ones, yet?

Okaythen!

My apologies for doing unspeakable things to my various templates, but I’m just not happy with them. I switched the gallery template back the clunky grey whatsit over the weekend, and today I tweaked the blog template so that it is at least somewhere in the same color realm. In the process, I managed to delete my header php file, which made all sorts of ugly happen.  Eeep!  Now that I’ve got it back to where it is, at the very least, unb0rken, I’m thinking I may swap out the grey frame with plain ol’ white.  The grey, while better than the stock color that came with the template, is not really very elegant.  I also tweaked the sidebar, because the stock one lumped all the blogroll links into one stream.  I like being able to have them divided out into categories, so I did a little Frankensteining to massage everything into a format I can live with.

But hey, I now know more than I ever wanted to about both style sheets and php (including how to tweak Coppermine so that the image captions are left justified, instead of centered). Aren’t I a lucky duck?

Art, Photography

Easy-peasy Monoprints

Shelly

100_1308

I sometimes use this method to create backgrounds. It can also be used to create full-blown works of art.

Start by laying down a sheet of freezer paper, shiny side up. Secure it with tape. Then, apply acrylic paint to the freezer paper “plate.” You can move it around with a brush, fingers, etc. This time, I used a credit card to smooth the paint and mix it slightly. When you have the paint where you want it, lay your paper face down onto it and burnish gently with your hands. Be careful not to move the paper, or the design will smudge and smear. Gently pull the paper away and lay it flat to dry. You’ll need to re-“ink” the “plate” with additional paint between pulls. If you want to change palettes, you can scrape and wash the remaining paint off the “plate” or you can just toss it and start over with a fresh sheet of freezer paper.

Uncategorized

Flambé is NOT the Answer!

Shelly

Squick Alert!

I watched Cabin Fever last night. Which was probably not a good idea. Not that the movie isn’t good. It is! It’s Friday the 13th meets Texas Chainsaw Massacre, with David Lynch-style surreality and Troma-style absurdity. It’s funny, smart, and creepy as hell. It’s one of the very best horror movies I’ve seen, and I’ve seen a lot of horror movies.

Anyway, I suspect that’s what lead to a night of strange dreams.

I had some weird-assed dreams last night. In one of them, I was hanging out with a group of friends near the loading dock of one of the buildings on campus. There was another group of students across the parking lot from us, with two Husky puppies, which were playing. One of my friends dropped a piece of sausage from his sandwich. I could tell that the puppy saw the food fall, but he was too interested in playing to come get it just yet. Eventually, he trotted across the parking lot to get the sausage, but a guy suddenly appeared from behind a delivery truck, reaching out and grabbing the dog. He swung the dog around in circles on the end of a leash. Where the leash (or the guy!) came from, I haven’t a clue. C’est la logic of dreams. When the dog hit maximum velocity, the guy let go of the leash, catapulting the dog out of scene. My friends and I were both seriously creeped out and royally pissed off. Realizing that the guy was a dangerous psychopath, we decided to leave. On the way, one of my friends doused the guy with lighter fluid (again, where on earth did it come from?) and set him on fire. My response was, “Dude, flambé is NOT the answer!”

And then, of course, I woke up.

Art

The Raising of an Old Hope

Shelly

Vessels: The Raising of an Old Hope
Vessels: The Raising of an Old Hope
oil pastel on 90lb Stonehenge paper with bones, hair, brass brads, and copper wire
11 1/4 x 9 1/2 inches

I meant to play around with making a pinhole lens for my 35mm camera, but I didn’t end up getting to it. The weather turned kind of gross–cold and grey and snowy–so I stayed inside and made art. Not that it was terrible out or anything, not like what the east coast is experiencing (25 inches of snow?!), but I just didn’t feel like doing much of anything. Instead, I spent the day drawing while watching some awful movie about a 16th century Venetian courtesan on WB (ah, apparently it was called Dangerous Beauty) and a biography of Anne Boleyn on PBS. That was an odd juxtaposition!

And, now, the weekend is over. Hrmph. They always speed by too quickly, and there is never enough to show for the time spent.

Art

Vessels: Six Secrets

Shelly

Vessels: Six Secrets
Vessels: Six Secrets
Prismacolor and Caran d’Ache Neocolors II on 90lb black Stonehenge paper with vertebrae and copper wire
11 1/4 x 9 1/2 inches

Someone in one of my art groups asked about drawing with Prismacolors on black paper, and I remembered a stash of black Stonehenge paper I’d gotten a while back. My intention was to use it for oil pastels, and I will, but there’s plenty of it to play around with. It’s been years since I’ve played around with Prismacolors. They’re fussier and more time consuming than oil pastels, which is probably why I don’t use them much. And, while they’re somewhat finger blendable (I just cannot seem to keep my fingers out of whatever I’m working with), once you’ve built up enough layers, they aren’t as easy and fun to move around on the paper as oil pastels.

While I was working, I watched the last DVD of Freaks and Geeks. Good grief! I laughed, I cried, it was way better than Cats. Truly. It reminded me so much of the preppy high school I went to in 9th grade.