Monthly Archives: December 2008

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Like month old fruit juice.

Wednesday, December 10th, 2008

Yesterday I was spoiled.  Not simply because of the snow day (our office was closed for the day!) but because of how I spent my day.  Determined to be productive, I set up camp in my long neglected studio, put my favorite records on, and got to work on an art project (a watercolor/ink illustration, if you’re keeping score).  Normally I don’t have the time or energy to work on projects like this, what with the day job and all (don’t get me wrong, I love my day job).  Weekends, too, are often too busy for much creativity, so it was extremely nice to have a free day with nothing pressing to do and nowhere to go.

The reason I say I was spoiled is because I had a taste of what it might feel like to be a real working artist.  I mean, there are people who are able to do this for a living – their work day is going into the studio, putting on their favorite records, and just creating. How fun would that be?  I’d venture to put them in the same category as professional athletes, rock stars, and actors… they get paid to play!  Well, okay, most artists aren’t earning a fraction of what professional athletes, rock stars, and actors earn, but you know what I mean.  You get it.  There are some artists who aren’t starving, and who aren’t working a “day job” and saving all of their projects for the rare occasion of a snow day.  The challenge, I guess, is becoming one of those artists.

Unrelated, I had an anti-genius idea today to create a search engine called “Irrelevant” in which all of the search results are completely unrelated to whatever your search words were.  Wouldn’t that be novel?  And annoying?  And completely useless?  Remarkably, the domain name www dot irrelevant dot com seems to be available.  If I was a different kind of person I would snatch that up.  You can be the snatchers, friends.  You can make my idea come to life.

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Can you eat it? Can you hit it with a drum stick?

Monday, December 8th, 2008

Once every 100 years I cook a meal that was not first frozen or packaged in plastic. Tonight I learned what it really looks like to cook 6 cups of rice (listen, it’s a LOT more rice than it sounds like!) Tonight I made enchiladas, which is maybe a 0.5 on a cooking difficulty scale of 1-10. But they were awesome, and now they are in my stomach, and also in my refrigerator (to be stomached on another day). I need to try cooking more often. I don’t think women should have to cook and clean and do laundry and powder their nose but I think they should at least be able to do one of those things and I am pretty awful at all of them (men should be able to do them too, PLUS shoveling driveways and fixing cars).

I just got a text message from my Dad! I tried an experiment and sent him a message and he did indeed reply. How intergenerational! I don’t think I talk about work very much here but part of my job is that of an Intergenerational Coordinator, which means that I am in charge of programs that bring youth and seniors together. Today I was at our intergenerational choir practice and in the corner of the music room was a drum set just calling out to me. I managed to wait until practice was over, when all of the kids had left the room, and then I sat down at the drums and started playing a simple enough beat. It felt great.

Rachel and her boyfriend have loaned me some random bits of percussion for a project that I’ve hinted at (and will share soon enough). Currently they’ve loaned me a snare drum, a cowbell, a wood block, a tom (a tiny tom!) and a shaker. I want to play them all loudly but I am afraid the neighbors might not appreciate that. So I put a t-shirt over the snare drum and play it quietly.  Quiet IS the new loud.

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Maybe I’ll make the 2015 list?

Sunday, December 7th, 2008

In case you’re interested, NPR has chosen the best graphic novels of 2008.  My brother saw me looking at these and said, “Is that your competition?” Sure, it’s my competition in the way that a kid who tosses the football with Dad is competing against Brett Favre.  But hey, Tony Romo grew up watching Brett Favre, and look at them both now!  Sorry to carry the football analogy so far.  It is Sunday. Anyway.  Go graphic novels, yeah!

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In lieu of a parking receipt.

Sunday, December 7th, 2008

My last boyfriend and I broke up over the phone.  The last time I saw him was at General Mitchell Airport in Milwaukee, and at the time I didn’t know that we would be broken up within a month, but I was certainly upset enough just saying goodbye.  Well, the very interesting thing about that morning was when I pulled my car up to the toll booth as I was leaving the parking ramp, the attendent took my money and said with a very genuine smile, “Have a blessed day.”  Not a mumbled “have a nice day,” or an obligitory “thanks for your money, ” but, “Have a blessed day.”  My parking attendent gave me a blessing!  Maybe she says that to everyone who passes by her stand, but I like to think this was a sincere prayer for me.  Somehow she knew that my stoic face was hiding emotions much more turbulent.  Somehow she knew things would only get harder, would eventually splinter and then break.  Somehow she knew that a little encouragement could go a long way.  Don’t underestimate the impact you can have on a stranger’s life!

The reason I was thinking about General Mitchell Airport at all is because I’ll be returning there in January, this time to fly to California with a good friend who is interviewing for an externship.  The interview is actually in Los Angeles, but rather than spending our time in smelly LA we are going to stay with friends in San Diego.  I haven’t been back to San Diego since 2006 when I decided that I was too homesick to function.  I’m looking forward to the brief respite from winter, of course, and to seeing my friends and my beloved #2 state, but I am really not looking forward to flying.  The way I see it, we’ve been flying planes for something like one hundred years now.  It should not take hours and cost hundreds of dollars to get from one time zone to another.  It should not be an overwhelmingly unpleasant experience.  This is the 21st century.  But I won’t complain… we’re going to the warm-land!

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Girl deciduous.

Wednesday, December 3rd, 2008

What I’m about to write is super cheesy, but also, I think, super beautiful.  I learned today that I am a tree.  (It’s a metaphor).  I am a tree and this is winter, and my leaves which seemed so good (and are!) have all been stripped away.  Winter is miserable.  It’s cold and gray, and these naked, skeletal trees such as myself only serve to point out exactly how depressing are the months when our earth is tilted away from the sun.  But all through the winter, something is happening to the trees.  Something is happening inside, where you can’t see it, beneath the bark.  Things are changing.  Life is happening.  And in all due time the seasons will change.  Spring will arrive (it always does) and that life will burst forth.  God is faithful!

Edit: Dang it!  Someone had to go and correct my knowledge of tree types, hence the title change.  I liked Girl Coniferous better, but what can I say?  I am a leaf-loser.

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August is over, on to December.

Monday, December 1st, 2008

Oh no!  Well, I finished my twice compromised challenge and completed my one chapter before November’s end, and I have every ambition to keep on with the graphic novel. But!  Another project has crept up on me and seized my attention.  This would be a short-film involving animation AND live action (I wish that didn’t immediately conjure up thoughts of Roger Rabbit, as this will be a much quieter film) and I have no idea what in my schedule will be sacrificed to make the time for this project.  I don’t plan on taking a class next semester, so that frees up some weeknights.  So what will it be about?  Well, for those of you detective-types, the title of this post is a clue (the titles of posts are always clues!)

This is my problem – I let myself get distracted so readily by other projects.  My painting moratorium has really been great for purposes of focus, but when it’s not painting it’s something else.  Not that these distractions are bad things.  I just finished my collaboration with Molly which was well-worth the time (and which I will share here about one month from now).  I’m working on a music project with my brother that is really fun (will also share in early January) and planning an installation exhibit with Gwen.  Off to the back-burner are my plans for a daily webcomic, an improved online gallery, and any chance at a social life.

Speaking of living in a cabin in the woods (the implied transition), I finally picked up Bon Iver’s For Emma, Forever Ago.  I like it, but deciding to purchase it reminded me that I have a fairly large queue of albums that I’ve been meaning to get, and this time of year is a dangerous one for that kind of thinking (“Let’s consider it a Christmas gift to myself!”) Also dangerous, apparently, is publishing a brand new website in one fell click of the mouse… I might have crashed our server (or it might have been a coincidence?)  Check it out, though, I redesigned our website for my company!  (Which much help from Arek, thank you!)

And finally, a question for those of you who blog.  I don’t quite see the difference between tags and categories.  Are categories a more general thing and tags more specific?  I get a little OCD when it comes to organizing this blog… I’d prefer to use whichever is the more general, but I haven’t used categories all along and don’t really get excited about going back into each entry and adding them. But I’ll have to go back anyway to clean up my tags, so now is the time to make changes.  Help!

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