Mr. Computational Device has been ordered. Thankfully, I was able to find one without Vista pre-loaded on it. Ugh. Now, all I have to do is play the waiting game and cross my fingers that UPS/FedEx doesn’t screw up.
I stopped for coffee this morning, so I’m vibrating. For some reason, the coffee I make at home, even when it’s extra strong, doesn’t do this to me. Hmmm.
And that is the boring, boring, boring extent of my Friday morning news update.
I’m up to ten new two-page spreads in the Equations art journal, which means I’m about 3/4 done with it. Last weekend, I stumbled across a most excellent book of Victorian poetry–nice and flowery and emotive–and I’m using fragments from it. Also, more paper boats, because some of the poems deal with adventures on the high seas. No pirates, alas.
When I started working in this journal, I thought it would visually be similar to the hemp bound journal. Not so much, it turns out. The first few pages started off in that vein, but it quickly changed direction. For one thing, there is more color (pink, even!), some window cut-outs, and generally less clutter. The pages are more spare and formal, which is as it should be, considering the overall theme.
Anyway, neener-neener! You can’t see any of it until next week, when Mr. Computational Device arrives. Actually, it may be more like next weekend, because it will take me awhile to get it set up.
I’m addicted to Survivorman. At first, I was “meh” about it, thinking that it wasn’t very impressive to be dumped in the middle of the desert with a camera crew. Then, I realized, there was no camera crew. Les Stroud, Survivorman himself, is dropped at various locations with a minimum of supplies and given seven days to find his way back to civilization. He packs all the camera equipment and does all the filming himself.
I’m fascinated by it. In the boreal forest episode, he had a handful of cashews and beef jerky, one match, and a multi-tool. That’s it. Sometimes, he has a wrecked vehicle he can scavenge for supplies (e.g. a bicycle or snow mobile), but it’s still pretty damned impressive and entertaining, especially when you remember that he’s filming and lugging camera equipment around the whole time, too!
Still no computer, but slightly less cranky, onna counta I think I’ve figured out what to do, computer-wise. Instead of getting a bare bones kit, I’m just going to get a basic machine. It doesn’t have a DVD burner or a ton of RAM or a card reader, but I’ve already got those things, and I know how to install them (blindfolded and in my sleep, even). I’m also going to get an external drive case, so I can use (and hot-swap) my current hard drives without having to actually install them. It’ll end up being a money saver, because a box with room for a second hard drive will cost more than the price of the hard drive case.
Anyway, I’m planning on ordering it tomorrow, so it should be here sometime next week. Yay!
Also, I am cat sitting Saturday-Wednesday, which should be interesting. It’s a 2x/day drive-by job, not board or live-in, but it’s on my side of town, so it should be pretty easy to do, schedule-wise. I went over to meet the cats a couple of weekends ago, and the male is a total mush. It made me miss my big-headed orange boy. The female is a bit stand-offish, which is typical of cats. She’s a senior, and will require pilling, which should be fun. After months on end of pilling Rory, though, I think I’m well qualified in the cat pilling department!
Yahoo periodically tags mail from its own groups as “bulk.” This means that if you subscribe to any Yahoo groups, there is a non-negligible chance that some of your mail is getting snagged by your spam filter. This is not a new phenomenon, but I was reminded of it while doing a quick perusal of my trash bin prior to emptying it, and I thought I’d take a moment to complain to a bunch of folks who couldn’t care less and couldn’t fix the problem even if they wanted to. Why? Well, that’s the kind of day I’m having, so I thought I’d share the love.
Hugs n’ kisses,
Miss CrankyPants
I stayed up way past my bedtime on Sunday, watching the Survivor finale. I was really hoping Yau-man would win, but Earl was my second pick, so I wasn’t too disappointed.
Howsomever! I was thoroughly squicked out by Alex. I found him just about intolerable on the show, so I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised that he was just as gross in the finale. O ick. I don’t know which grossed me out more, the seductive looks into the camera or the way he attacked Cassandra. The whole thing was foul. I had to laugh, though, when he accused Cassandra of befriending Stacy, then turning on her and voting her out. Hello?! Cassandra never voted for Stacy. Not one single time. And where does he get off complaining about people using others and being manipulative? Did he forget what show he was on?
Do you ever have one of those days that should be skipped? When you know you should just go back to bed and try again tomorrow? Well, it’s early yet, but today seems to be heading down that path.
I got up this morning–after being kept awake half the night by Mr. Upstairs stomping around his apartment–to find that some jerk had parked a U-Haul behind my car. What the hell?! So I had to wander around the apartment complex, looking for a likely suspect. Knocking on strangers’ doors is not on my to-do list, and having to do so at 6am is enough to make my head implodiate. I did finally find our neighborhood asschapeau, though, by knocking on doors of apartments without curtains.
Speaking of Mr. Upstairs, I had to call and complain about him again. The office person said that the complaints do go in his file, and that after so many (she didn’t quantify “so many”) they will take action. She didn’t say if action meant fines or eviction or what, and I didn’t ask, because I was too cranky. It was good to find out that he really is being given written notification of each complaint, and that they are anonymous. Not that he couldn’t figure out that I’m the irritated party, but still.
In better news, Miss Brown received another compliment on her deportment. I believe the exact words were “What a good dog!” Ha! She is charming, for sure, but believe me, it is all a carefully calculated act. Also, while outside on her tie-out, she played peek-a-boo with my across-the-hall neighbor, who said it was very cute. Neighbor said she went out on her patio, and Harriet had her head craned around the end of the privacy fence partition, watching her. She called to Harriet, who ducked back around to our side of the partition. I was watching Harriet from inside my apartment, and it was pretty darned cute.
And speaking of my across-the-hall neighbor, she solved the Mr. Raccoon mystery! She puts out food for the stray cats, and Mr. Raccoon has been thieving it for years. He’s apparently quite brazen, and will hang around her patio and even peer into her window at dinner time.
Also, three more two-page spreads in the Equations art journal. If I keep this up, I may finish it before next Giftmas!
Still no computer. Still cranky as hell.
Other than that, it was a (mostly) lovely weekend. I got a lot of arting done. I can’t play show-and-tell, so you’ll just have to take my word for it. I’ve been mostly playing around with re-creating the patina on crumbling old plaster walls. It’s actually pretty easy, and involves gesso, Caran d’Ache Neocolors II (other water soluble crayons may work just as well, but I haven’t tried them), and baby wipes. It takes a little practice to blend, then partially remove the color, but it’s not difficult. It helps to periodically refold the baby wipe, because unused portions will remove more crayon than those that are have been clogged with pigment.
I’ve also found that paper grocery bags are excellent foundations for this technique, because of the way they are folded and, after use, slightly crumpled. Even after ironing, the crumples show through the layers of gesso and crayon. The only drawback to using them is that they are not archival. There may be similar papers available that are, but I suspect that it would be difficult to find one that had the same weight and fibrous quality as used grocery bags.
Teach Hiúdí Néill by Seán Ó Domhnaill, published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic license
Frustration is: Six two-page spreads in an art journal and no way to share them. So, for now, you’ll just have to make do with beautiful photos of real crumbling walls.
Happy damned Monday, everyone!
[ETA: This originally was illustrated with different photos, which of course have disappeared from Flickr.]
Derelict Ireland, Scattery Island, County Clare by Mark Waters, shared under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license
In my Flickr trollings, I stumbled across this lovely image of two old, abandoned cottages in County Clare, Ireland.
Did you know that you can do an advanced search in Flickr, and constrain your results to images that are Creative Commons licensed?
You can also blog some images directly from Flickr (depending on how the owner has configured permissions), though the result is less than perfect. The default image dimensions are small, and the attribution leaves a little to be desired. So, if that drives you nuts, and if the license allows you to make derivatives, you can save and upload the image to your own space and make it whatever size you want. Just make sure to attribute it properly, and to provide a courtesy link to the photographer’s Flickr profile.
red paper boat 