So, Miss Brown spent some quality time outside this afternoon, digging and generally making a mess of both the (alleged) “yard” and herself. She was spectacularly, grossly, disgustingly dirty. Ugh. So I gave her a bath. After Elliott, who A) loathed being bathed and B) had a long, dense, Chowy coat, the short, single coat of the sporty Boxer model is a finely crafted thing of beauty. Eight minutes it took me, to bathe and towel her off. Now she’s resting happily on the couch, giving herself a “cat bath” to remove the remaining moisture.
The best part is that, while she hates getting wet, she’s a total peach about being bathed. She doesn’t exactly like it, but she doesn’t object to it.
Oh, and have I mentioned how much I appreciate our local license branch? I had to renew my driver’s license and the registration on my car. I was in and out in 15 minutes.
When I moved last fall, I filled out all the various change of address forms with the USPS and with the folks I regularly pay money to. You know, like my car insurance people. I’m still getting mail from them bearing my old address. Late mail, of course, because it appears to have taken the scenic overland route to my house. Now, first class mail should be forwarded for one year, so this isn’t necessarily a big deal. It should be relabeled by the post office before it is delivered. So why, oh why, is my mail making multiple stops on its way home, and why, oh why, is someone ever so helpfully rewriting my name–which was originally spelled correctly, I might add!–multiple times and with multiple misspellings? Shouldn’t the little yellow label, which has my current, correct information on it, have been applied before anyone ever attempted to deliver the envelope?
I love it when Harriet tucks her nose under her “wing.” She makes such a compact bundle. I would’ve wrapped her up in her binkey, because she was obviously a little chilled, but she was lying on it and I didn’t want to disturb her.
So, I stopped on the way home to get gas (only US$2.25/gallon!), and had an odd encounter. First, I nearly got creamed by some asstrumpet in a Camaro who cut through the Bigfoot lot to avoid the traffic waiting in line to turn onto the main road. Can we say rude and illegal? Yep, I thought we could.
Then, when I tried to use my card at the pump, I got a message that blinked “Panic Code 013.” WTF?! I went inside to inform the young man at the counter that his, um, equipment was taking A Tone with me. His response? “I wonder just how panicked we should be?” Smartass! I ended up pulling around to another pump, which worked fine. As I was leaving, I saw that another car had pulled up to the Cranky Pump and that there was an enormous pool of gas all over the pavement. Yikes! I didn’t hear any explosions as I drove off, so I assume all’s well that ends well.
I don’t usually get to see the morning Belt of Venus, because I live in a valley and the view to the west is obstructed by a ridge. I happened to look out the window at work, though, and saw a beautiful pink blush in the western sky. Mmmm. It was delightful.
And, more crepuscular rays. Sorry to keep going on and on and on about them, but the clouds we’ve had recently have created some gorgeous ray action. This photo was taken at the intersection of Starnes Rd and Reeves Rd, near Ellettsville.
In other photographic news, I found some pretty straightforward instructions for making a pinhole camera, using a 35mm camera body. w00t! That means that the film can be commercially developed, which is important, as I don’t have easy access to a darkroom or a way to dispose of chemicals. I’m going to play around with it this weekend, weather permitting.
My apologies for being lazy and letting multiple days go by without posting. I’ve been busy, though, you see. I finally managed to get all the text information from the old website moved to the new gallery. Wheee! And, I’ve deleted all the old files. Now the only things left are some miscellaneous photo directories, and the main index, gallery, blog, and writing page. Talk about a tedious pain in the behindermost. Of course, now that I’ve deleted everything, I’m sure to find that I’ve missed redirecting a whole bunch of image files, which will leave big, gaping holes wherever I’ve linked to them.
We’re suppose to go to a diversity workshop (more like a presentation, I’m betting, which I’m sure will involve the dreaded Power Point. Oh, how I loathe Power Point.). It came down from on-high that everyone is supposed to attend, which means it’ll be packed and hot and airless. I’m so not looking forward to it. Not to cast asparagus upon diversity awareness, mind you. I think the world could use a metric assload of it right now.
Speaking of work, there’s something immensely gratifying about pulling your hair out trying to assign subjects and a call number for a book that nearly defies categorization, then checking the shelf-list to find that you placed it in Just the Right Spot.
Have y’all seen this video?
Holy crap! I’m funny about my T-shirts. I like them folded into nice, small, rectangular parcels. It’s not that easy to get them uniform and tidy, though, so I’m going to have to give this trick a try.
And, while I’m sharing links, remember the rock star feet website? The one with photos of Nick Cave’s shoes? Well, brace yourselves, for Il Mustache lives and breathes. Lordy! I know I’ve said before that–Nocturama aside–Mr. Cave can do no wrong, but now I’m not so sure.
Okaythen!
Here’s some more crepuscular ray action. This was taken on January 31, on Woodyard right after the Smith-Curry Pike intersection (for those playing along at home). The photo is pretty bad, but it illustrates another form crepuscular rays can take. I have a ~40 minute commute, and the entire ride home I kept being teased by gorgeous cloud-sun views. I was unable to get any good shots though. Either I was unable to find a good spot to pull over, or the clouds shifted and the picture-perfect moment was lost. Hmph.
I took this photo last Wednesday. It’d been gross and cloudy, but the clouds started to break up right around sunset, producing some nice crepuscular ray action.
Also called Buddha’s Fingers, Sun Drawing Water, and Ropes of Maui, crepuscular rays occur when an object (building, cloud, tree, etc.) interrupts the sun’s light, casting shadows and creating rays. The same phenomenon can occur when something blocks a portion of a car’s headlights. If you’ve ever been in a forest and seen rays of light streaming through the trees, those, also, are crepuscular rays.
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*(Pardon me while I have a Monty Python moment. Crepuscular rays have that effect on me.)
The ink and paper I ordered still haven’t been delivered (they should’ve been here on Friday), so I’m sort of stuck for journalling. I’ve got pens a-plenty, but I’m really preferring working with a dip pen. Hrmph. So, I worked on some backgrounds. The first one is just plain old stamping, using a carved eraser and a wine cork with cheap acrylic craft paint.\r\n\r\n
The second one was less involved, but I think more interesting. I started with diluted blue acrylic paint. After it dried, I sloshed on some super diluted gesso. Because I was working on a slanted surface, the gesso ran all over the place, including onto the carpet. Yikes! So I grabbed my roll of paper towels to blot the mess, and noticed that they left lovely basket-weave lines in the blotted gesso. I like the pattern, and it should provide guidelines for writing. I can’t write level to save my life, so I’m happy. Yay for serendipity!
I also bound another book this morning. It’s small and chunky and terribly cute: 3 x 3 3/4 inches and 48 pages (12 signatures of 4 pages each), Coptic bound with linen thread. The pages are Cartiera Magnani hot press watercolor paper, which is yummy.
The covers are made from denim from an old pair of my jeans, cut twice as wide as the width of the pages and a little taller. I ran them through the wash cycle a couple of times so the edges would fray. I was careful to keep the original seams at the centers of the fabric pieces, so that when I folded them in half around the boards, the seams would be along the spine edges. I then glued them to the boards (actually, two pieces of watercolor paper, because I wanted flexible covers), weighted them, and let them dry overnight.
I started watching the SotU address, but just couldn’t stomach it. Like a good horror movie, I think it’s best to watch our fearless leader speechify in the company of others, so I’m going to do so Friday. I’ve already had enough bad and bizarre dreams lately. There’s no reason to deliberately ask for trouble.
About those postcards Dawn mentioned in comments. I need to pick up some ink at Wal-mark**. I hate shopping there, but sometimes it’s necessary. Hopefully, they’ll have what I need. One word of caution (well, two, actually). First, there is a huge difference between how images look in print and on screen. The luminosity won’t be the same in the printed versions, so I’ll have to do some test printing to see if it’s even worth pursuing. They may end up looking like total crap. Second, I suck at getting things mailed out, so I won’t guarantee to get anything in the mail in a timely fashion. I’m just sayin’…
So, Dawn (or anyone else–here or abroad, as I don’t mind mailing overseas–who would like a postcard depicting rural Indiana), if I can make decent prints, which images are you interested in? I also might also be persuaded to do some postcards of artwork (same caveats apply).
Oh, and Denise, if you’re out there… That silly voice you do? The little voice in my head has adopted it, which is equally entertaining and disconcerting. Yesterday, in a staff meeting, it kept talking to me, and it was all I could do not to laugh out loud. Make it stoooooop!!!
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* My current stack of car CDs includes a large sampling of questionable ’80s music (as opposed to the unquestionable kind, of which I have yet to see any evidence indicating the existence). My apologies if this has given anyone big hair and skinny tie flash backs. Just be thankful I wasn’t a Wham! fan, or you might really be sorry.
** The local patois is truly a marvelous thing. I think, culturally and dialectically, southern Indiana is not entirely unlike Appalachia. That sounds like a stretch, until you consider how close we are geographically to northern Kentucky.
It occurs to me that one might not be all that very surprised that Alito was confirmed. While lots of folks are a-froth about it (and I am, too, because it just plain sucks for women and for those who give half a damn about our country and our constitution), I’m not at all surprised that Democrats capitulated on this one. The problem isn’t so much a partisan one, as a lack of partisanship. Yes, we can point our fingers (remember, it’s the middle one that counts!) at Democrats, complaining that they don’t have backbones. That’s likely true. What is also true is that they are capital P Politicians first and foremost, and in that sense, they live cheek-by-jowl with their Republican brothers and sisters–cut from the same cloth, as it were.
I have a thing about using up the dregs of stuff. Shampoo, conditioner, tissues, mayonnaise, paper, tooth paste, soy sauce, gas (well, no one wants to use up the very end of their gas, but if my tank gets below half full, I get nervous), and ink are all objects of my particular “cannot use it up” obsession. Don’t ask me why, because I have no explanation for it. It’s not like not finishing it–whatever it may be on any given occasion–off is gaining me anything, because it might as well be completely gone for all the good it does me.
Right now, it’s ink, in particular, that is giving me fits. The black cartridge for my Epson printer is nearly kaput, thanks to Pandora, who keeps stepping on the on switch whenever she walks over the top of it. Which she does about eighty times each day. Every time she turns it on, it goes through a self-cleaning cycle, which wastes ink. One of these days I’ll get around to moving and/or covering it, to keep the cat from walking on it. In the meantime, I have to go buy a new black cartridge.
I’m also almost out of India ink, as well. I’ve been using my dip pen a lot lately, and have managed to burn through most of a 2oz bottle of brown. Lord only knows where my bottle of black is, but it’s of no use to me, as I cannot locate it. Hrmph. So, I ordered a bottle of black, two of brown, and a bottle of cleaner, which I’m also nearly out of.
In ancient art news, wouldn’t you just hate to be the person who trips, falls, and destroys three–three!–Qing vases? That must engender the sort of shame one never, ever, lives down. I mean never. My question is, why on earth were the vases in such a vulnerable position? Protecting its objects from harm is a museum’s first priority, so displaying them in such a way that someone can trip and take out three of them at once seems a bit careless to me.
red paper boat 
