Author: Shelly

Art, Crankypantsing, Pets, Photography

Potato-Tomato

Shelly

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Happy Monday! I woke up this ayem with a stiff shoulder and sore back. I hate it when I get a sleep injury. It’s really not a good way to start the week, I think. It could be worse, though. One of my coworkers got a speeding ticket this morning. I know the area where she got it, and it’s only a fluke that I haven’t gotten one in that spot, myself. The speed limit goes from 45mph to 35mph to 45mph, so it’s easy for your speed creep up without realizing it.

So, here’s a question. I do a lot of journaling, of both the arty and just text variety. Journaling, by definition, is a personal activity. Intensely personal, at times. Twice, though, I’ve come across folks selling pages from their journals. The thought gives me brain ache. It’s one thing to share select pages from a journal by posting them on-line, but to tear pages out of a journal and sell them? It seems to me that what is being sold, then, is not in fact a page from a journal. And, why would someone want to buy a page from someone else’s journal? Maybe if you’re some sort of Leonardo, it would be understandable, but that’s not the case with the journalers in question.

I realize this may just be an issue of semantics, but there are days when I feel like semantics is the only thing that really matters. If we cannot communicate effectively, there’s not much point in communicating at all. Hrmph.

Photography

Sunrise

Shelly

First, the sunrise:

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Next, the morning Belt of Venus:

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Because of the configuration of the valley and western ridge, my location is not well suited to viewing the morning Belt of Venus. This is the first time I’ve seen it from my house. Of course, this meant that my camera batteries decided to die at just that very time, so I only got one very bad shot of it. By the time I’d gone inside and found a fresh set, a cloud bank (barely visible along the horizon) had crept up and obscured everything.

One of the things I enjoy about having a dog is that she forces me to get up in the mornings. I could have slept in, but I would’ve missed a lovely sunrise. Instead, I was outside playing with Harriet at the crack of dawn.

There are dozens of small signs that spring is on the way. It started in earnest a few weeks ago, with the return of the geese. I watched another flock fly overhead this morning. The birds’ songs have taken on a less urgent tone, as well. From the increase in numbers of birdsongs, it’s clear that the geese aren’t the only ones who are returning. And then there’s the sun. The days are lengthening, but the change in the sun’s location is probably the most dramatic indication that spring is here. At mid-winter, the sun rises within a dip in the eastern ridge. Now, it’s moved northward, rising over Farmer Brown’s house.

All that, I might’ve missed, if it weren’t for having a dog.

Crankypantsing, Pets, Photography

Happy Saturday

Shelly

Blech. I feel like I’m wading through Jello this morning. Or, what’s left of this morning, anyway. I stayed up way past my bedtime last night, so I slept in, which was perhaps not as good an idea as it first appeared to be. Have you ever gone back to sleep, then woke up later feeling even groggier, and with a headache? Yuck. I’m all for sleeping, but this hardly seems worth the effort.

Last night was fun, though. It was a friend’s birthday party (hat themed, WTF? I wore a tin-foil beanie). Parties at her place are sometimes a craps shoot for me, because her house is small and I get claustrophobic when it gets crowded. I managed to score a chair at the back of the living room, though, so I stayed put. Let the entertainment come to me, was my theory. It worked well, too. There were all sorts of people I didn’t know–again, a craps shoot–but everything was fine right up until I left. At that point, some drunken shithead tottered up the stairs to the living room, taking pictures, which I’m NOT OKAY WITH, ASSHOLE! I told her not to take my picture, to which the only acceptable response is “Don’t worry, I won’t.” Instead, she said, “Why would you care, you don’t know me.” Grrr.

It’s weird to not drink at a drinking party (I was driving). I always get self-conscious when I drink, because I’m sure that anyone who isn\’t drinking must think I’m acting like an ass. I’m relieved to find that I’m not at all irritated by my friends’ inebriated behavior (I was mightily entertained last night, in fact). Rude, drunken strangers get on my last nerve, though. I guess that’s why I always preferred to go to parties instead of bars. Far better the drunks you know than the drunks you don’t, right?

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I’m also, I fear, working on some sort of respiratory disease. I suddenly lost my voice yesterday afternoon. It came back, but faded in and out. Now, it’s fading out again. I’m sure sitting in a room full of smoke last night didn’t help. Nor did getting full-on coughed on by someone who is getting over some sort of respiratory plague. He’s probably not contagious at this point, but if I come down with the plague, I’m blaming Wayne. Just because.

And now, I have to get ready to go to another birthday celebration. This one involves Mexican food, though, instead of drunks wielding cameras, so it should be thoroughly enjoyable. Mmmm… Veggie fajitas… Chili rellenos…

Miss Brown says, “Bring home a doggie bag, pleaseandthanks!” (Actually, she was drooling for tater tots, but I’m sure she’d drool for Mexican food, too.)

Crankypantsing, Pets

Speaking of Math…

Shelly

I may be math challenged, but my dog is likely some sort of math jeenyous. According to this article, Miss Brown can run and do calculus at the same time. I am uber impressed.

When running from A towards C, the ball at B appears closer and closer as the dog gets closer to C, but its speed of approach to B diminishes (reaching zero at C). At some moment of its run, its speed of approach while running on the beach equals its speed of approach when swimming directly to the ball. If the dog jumps into the water at this moment, the strategy yields the same y value as that provided by the travel-time minimization model (where r is the dog\’s running speed, and s is its swimming speed).

I get a brain ache just trying to figure out what that means.

In art news, I worked on a bunch of ATC-sized mini-collages last night while I flipped between The Amazing Race and Independent Lens. I’m not a drama or theater buff, but the documentary on Oakley Hall III on Independent Lens was fascinating. I hope they re-run it, because I’d like to see the whole thing.

I haven’t scanned/photographed the collages yet. Hopefully, I’ll have time to do it tonight. I think I did 9 or 10 of them, and all but a couple are completely finished. Not a bad evening’s work, I think.

Crankypantsing

A Strange Epiphany

Shelly

I bounced another check last week.  This is an on-going problem for me, not because I’m trying to be brimful of fail, but because I am, as I’ve always described it, math challenged.  I can add up a column of numbers ten times and come up with ten different answers.  And, yes, that’s while using a calculator. It’s a gift, I tell ya’, a gift I’d like to return to sender, CoD, thankyouverymuch.

I’ve sucked at math for as long as I’ve been aware there was such a thing as numbers.  I’ve been called stupid by various teachers and lazy by others. It took me three attempts to pass basic college math.  *Three*.  It wasn’t that the material was exceptionally difficult, and it wasn’t that I didn’t study or do my homework.  I truly tried.  I tried so hard that I just wanted to cry.  It was an awful experience.

So, once again reduced nearly to tears onna counta my Bad Math (those bloodsucking bastards at my bank charge $30 for NSF returns!), and completely unable to figure out where this particular math problem took a bad turn, I decided to do some Googling.  And, I’ll be damned!  There is actually a math learning disability called Dyscalculia.  Now, I know it’s easy to claim that you’ve got a learning disability, but gee, on the check-list of potential symptoms, I’m batting 1000.

It’s funny, because I never would’ve guessed that some of them were related.  When I meet people, I can’t recall what they look like.  There’s nothing quite like interviewing a bunch of potential employees, then not being able to visualize the one you want to hire.  Worse yet, not being able to recognize them when they return for training.  I can’t wear a watch, because I’ll look at it every two seconds.  Why?  Because my brain was unable to actually compute the time the previous thirty times I checked.  I can ask five times in one conversation “When is the party/meeting/whatever?” and still be unable to recall it two seconds after hanging up the phone.  I transpose numbers all the time.  Sometimes, I mistake letters for numbers and vice versa.  Or, I simply won’t see a number at all, especially if it’s the first digit in a string of numbers.  I often can’t make heads or tails of schematic drawings or diagrams illustrating physical actions (e.g. illustrated tutorials without accompanying text).  My brain and body just aren’t able to decode and mimic what my eyes are seeing.

Anyway, that was my epiphany for the day.  I now return you to your regularly scheduled activities.

Art, Bookarts

Book Binding Tutorial

Shelly

Someone in one of my art or journalling groups (I can’t for the life of me recall which one) asked about hand binding her own journals. She’d tried following a Coptic binding tutorial, but couldn’t make sense of it. I told her I liked to use a bastardized version of Coptic binding to make my own journals, and that I’d try making an illustrated tutorial showing how I do it. So, that’s how I spent my weekend. I don’t know how successful it’ll prove to be, or whether it’ll be any clearer than some of the other tutorials out there. If anyone wants to try it and give me feedback, I’d welcome it.

Single Needle Chain Stitch Binding Tutorial

Now, if I could only recall which group the discussion occurred in…