This is the beginning of the crow series that I mentioned before.

deliciously juicy things...

So a blog buddy posted about a contest and the listing of things that make you feel juicy and squishy over here www.mymosaiclife.com and I am inspired to add my two bits (inflation! sheesh!) and get all long winded. Again. I know but you guys know how I am and this all comes in spits and spurts.

So you can go the the page link at top for things that make me ridiculously happy that I haven't updated for the warm up. Then you can come back here and continue with the things that have hit me between the eyes, ears, nose, mouth and skin today. All the senses are involved!

SIGHTS: my Cotman watercoulour palette wet and ready to go with a stack of fresh taklon brushes, views of Lake Michigan in any weater/season. And my digital collection of German castles, the collected works of John Singer Sargeant, Maxfield Parrish, Waterhouse; shades of lapis lazuli and greens. And my purple dresses from India... any deep purple really.

ooh and candle light
moonlight

SOUNDS: Sting's voice in Mad About You on the Berlin Symphonicities album, Matthias Reim's voice, Konstantine Wecker's piano playing and the ethnic dance music of India/Egypt/Turkey that makes your hips think that they belong to a belly dancer

TASTE: dark chocolate, Tazo's Passion tea, cold water and a savory spiced dish of meat and noodle or noodle and chees, fresh strawberries and juice runs down your mouth nectarines.

TOUCH: My purple dresses from India; suede, micro fibre or chenille lap blankets; wet grass on bare feet, a neck rub, kitten furrrrrrrrr

moving as music dictates

SMELL: lavendar, freshly brewed espresso, cooking bacon, fresh cut lawn, warm bakery yummies wafting on the morning breeze

yep.... these kinds of things invigorate the blood and get me ready to create. They take down the stress levels and make life all kinds of bearable.

A MacGyverism

So frustration of all frustrations is having my lap top back and my wrists giving out. I have been to how many stores looking for a cheap little gizmo that will raise it to a comfy angle. Well there are options. But none of them cheap. And when you go looking for a computer accessory you go with a big happy target on your back that just beggggggggggggggggggggggggs for a sales associate to follow you every where. For the low low price of 30.00 to 90.00 you can find something that will angle your lap top to a more comfy angle. NOT!

So...my solution is a 5.00 discontinued, very pretty, 1" 3 ring notebook without paper in it. I am thinking  that a 1.5" notebook would be even better. Can you say "Duh!" Boys and girls? I knew you could.

A Crow for Sting

I got up today thinking that I had to work because I always work on Wednesday. And I was a good little cog in the machine and covered shifts in an emergency so I thought that I would still work with a few hours of over time as my reward. Imagine my surprise when I got to work and found out that I wasn't supposed to be there. Not unusual for things to change and people not tell me. I am after all I am a good little cog in a not so vast corporate machine. But still...

Not complaining at all. I like surprises like that.[EDIT NOTE: The previously posted and currently redacted explaination for my day off needs amending so...As it turned out the problem with my cog in the gear box was not at all a top down thing. I know that we can say I am paranoid. But that was a totally lame Watson maneuver on my part. Total case of a monkey wrench henchman.] So in the grand scheme I am not really too far behind in earnings. And I do have a day for me and my projects that no one knows about. Which means no one can commandeer my free time with demands of their own. And it feels like rain.

It has been so incredibly hot that this cool 68 degree morning feels like a breathe of Heaven. It is the perfect day for painting watercolors at my favorite cafe table with a small collection of my favorite Schlagerkunstlern (German pop music artists). And it is the perfect day for working on the motif that has been in my head before the real fall weather gets here.

Crows.
Not just any old run of the mill "Nevermore" spouting crows or counting crows. But the whimsical "make it your own" stuff that I am leaning to these days. A crow with a pun... ya know cause it bugs the Jeebus out of Old Uncle Willie*. A crow with that "gypsy soothe-sayer familiar" kind of familiarity that may or may not end up wearing a Mr. Clean ear piercing. A crow with uncharacteristic "Don't shoot the messenger" contrition. And a crow for Sting.

So since I skipped all sorts of headaches in learning figure drawing I had to find reference material. And I did. Oodles and oodles of reference material. And I accidentally found the blog most recently added to the list: junipurr. Please go have a look. This is a spectacular print making blog. And I wonder why this person is not designing rubber stamps. I would love to have some of her work to create with. But that is for another post.

So I have decided that the crow theme either means I am looking forward to Fall or feeling murderous... I think I will let the augury tell me which.


*William Shakespeare, the King of Edwardian Puns, absolutely went balistic when he found his writer friends using and in his opinion abusing puns. He said it was the lowest form of humor and only the dull witted relied on them to garner applause.
Kinda the poster boy for one finger accuses another while four point back at you huh?

Not all Sadness

I know I've seemed a little heavy on the down side of life. Lest you think it is all sadness and sorrow let me tell you that the creative juices are indeed flowing and I have been doing some water colors. I told you about www.moo.com and when the order gets here I will show you how awesome the awesomeness is. And I am still playing with mediaplayer and editing photos to put my own spin on things.

And yes I am still gaming. Though I guess the one thing that I have to say about that experience is that it isn't so much a game so much as it is a virtual life. Now the problem I have with people taking that seriously is that we are all cartoons. We have not very realistic avatars that are deceptively lithe and healthy and do not look like some of us in life. Now... were I not a hearty 180 pounds I would probably look like my avatar. If I knew of a store in real life that encouraged you to come back and make many purchases by giving you free clothing I would dress like my avatar in a heartbeat. And if I could fly, dye my hair the special shade of purple that I found and visit with the click of a mouse any place in the world without getting on a plane and still able to be home before dinner... I so would live in that world. And that is what makes that world a GAME.

Though the game aspect is simply a package for what the site is... networking, social group and dating website. Damn how I wish I had know that there was a chance someone was going to want to date me. What I mostly want to do here is design, dress my avatar and have a better experience playing Barbies than I had with the pushy girls in my neighborhood. And yes, sister, you were one of the pushy girls. Sorry. But there is no "wrong" way to play Barbies.

But I have to say that the design aspect TOTALLY ROCKS MY WORLD. I found out that you can take snap shots of the room that you are in. So I will do that when I finish decorating and show you guys. And OMG! wait til you see the counselor Troi-like hair and gypsy clothes that I found. I am so happy with what I put together yesterday that I don't even mind the fact that I totally WAR FICK the Blaue Frau costume I was making. So in a little while there will be more pics.

In the mean time here is a little something to throw some color on the page. Not your tradional 3 Kings, Drei Ritten are Babylonian archers. I'm all about the colors, the craftsmanship and the amazing

fortitude of the art itself. From a Christian perspective I guess you could argue I am supporting an anti Jesus agenda by posting this. You could say that I am promoting the anti Jewish agenda too. But sometimes art is just about the art. And this is just about the art, the skill, and the longevity of materials that hold up better than some of the stuff we use today. This is from a long dead civilization that fell, ultimately, under the weight of its own arrogance. You know, the kind of thing that others exploit. The craftsman who made this incredible mural worked for his dinner just like the rest of us. And that is who I celebrate in posting... the artist who toils without hope of recognition. He is unknown while his ruler's name continues through time. Just like the rest of us. We are not the rulers and trendsetters here. We are those who toil. We are the cogs in the machine of commerce and policy. No matter what we do we are the foundations of all civilizations. For what would Nebuchaddnezzar have been without his archers to secure victory? He probably would have been somebody else's goat boy. What is any ruler without his people?

We need to celebrate each other's accomplishments. This king is dead just like the artist. But the artists legacy is thousands of years older than the dead king's kingdom and policies... and I like it that way.

The Big Goodbye

I think in many ways I should not have gone to Borders today. Aside from the commitment to starving this week to cover my purchases, it was an emotional experience that I did not really need to have today. But Borders, asI said, has been my refuge in the storms of the last 15 years. And I needed a refuge. So I went.

There is no bathroom. The cafe is closed and the store is as picked over as a subdivision wide yard slae at 3 pm on a Sunday. It was painful to find bareness in the shelves. The books that I wanted were gone. The items I mentally tagged for Christmas gits were gone. I managed an immersion German course. 10% of 50.00 isn't much but it helped. And I got Sting's live in Berlin; you know, because I can't be in Borders and not buy something of his. But there were coffee stains on the floor everywhere. Cleared shelves moved off to the side. Nothing was in its place in the CD section. The place was... picked over. There is no other description.

The customers were sombre. The staff kept a stiff upper lip but they too were subdued. It felt like a funeral or a wake... or the day after a frat party. It was a great run but now...

Now what? I have only one other interest for which there is an outlet. But it is no refuge. No haven. It is no where to make friends and swap ideas. While the craft industry is not losing ground, Michaels will continue to exist. But it is a solitary place. I will buy supplies there and go off on my own to create. There is no grand discussion of philosophy or art in those aisles.

I was going to take a camera with me and hopefully show you Carl, best in store voice guy ever. And commemorate the secure feeling of being surrounded by stacks of wisdom. I wish that I had not gone in.... so that the memory of the Summer afternoon sun gleaming off of rows of crisp new book spines would be foremost in my mind. It is a loss on top of other losses that saddens me to the core.

But like a pet that passes this is a minor loss. That is what people will tell me because they are not sensitive to the small things that others love. It isn't that they lack care and compassion. It is that in the grand scheme of their perceptions, losing a pet or a bookstore is not the same as losing a child or a spouse of 75 years. Loss is loss. And every life is differnt in the degrees of importance that somethings achieve.

I am single so the loss of those "se ya around" friends is significant. I haven't my own home so the loss of a refuge is significant. And the wealth of information, stimulation and inspiration can not be compared to anything else. I am a geek. It is akin to losing a leg and being a runner before the age of decent prosthetics.

Comic Con 2011

No I didn't go. Are you kidding me? I live vicariously through Uncle Wil. So the two things I am taking from this year are this: Uncle Wil and Nate finally met (I feel all Miss Pac-man-y all of the sudden) and Nate doesn't want me to have swamp ass.