Better said by someone else

This is not a political blog at all...but, oh, what the hell.

Source: http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D8Q57VP00&show_article=1

The prosecutor in the case "went after somebody even when he knew no crime
had been committed," Romney said. "Given that fact, isn't it reasonable for a
commutation of a portion of the sentence to be made?"

...(snip)...

As governor, Romney twice rejected a pardon for Anthony
Circosta, who at age
13 was convicted of assault for shooting another boy in the arm with a BB
gun—a shot that didn't break the skin. Circosta worked his way through
college, joined the Army
National Guard and led a platoon of 20 soldiers in Iraq's deadly Sunni
triangle.
In 2005, as he was serving in Iraq, he sought a pardon to fulfill
his dream of becoming a police officer.

...(snip)...
In his presidential bid, Romney often proudly points out that he was the first governor in modern Massachusetts history to deny every request for a pardon or commutation during his four years in office. He says he refused pardons because he didn't want to overturn a jury.

What should I post about when I haven't painted, and I don't have any coins to talk about, and the most exciting thing I can say about my garden is that I ate a blackberry from it this morning? Other people have crazy stories about attempting to teach music classes at VBS or making cute aprons or children who throw unholy fits or about how many miles they plan to run barefoot or expressing deep and considered opinions about Who's Hot in the Beltway.

I ate a blackberry. I found no silver in two rolls of half dollars I looked at. Anything I'd care to say about politics is always sounds better coming from someone else.

I'm working on the saw. Now that I've actually started the work, it's going pretty quickly, and I'm please with it. This is a progression over the course of several hours.

Here I am gesso-ing a panel in my studio. Note the rustic workbench I use. And another view of my workspace. Do you think I get lonely here? No. I have ten billion spiders to keep me company. There are also wasps and barn swallows. That's why I keep that yellow-handled axe close by.

The hollyhocks came back just swell this year. The spent blooms looks pretty ugly, but one must take the good with the bad, I suppose, cuz' there's just no bustin' skulls in gardening. I have, however, cracked a fair number of carapaces. That was a Japanese beetle reference.
And here's the kohlrabi. Want some? I have no idea why one is green and the other is purple. They'll actually kind of cool looking. I should paint their portraits.

Oh, this is for Ed. DJ-G’s max-rappity comment on my previous post reminded me.

Last night Erin was watching a Sesame Street video (“Potty Time with Elmo” or something like that) and there was a musical sequence showing plumbing parts being made in a factory. I was in the kitchen cleaning, and had to run in watch—the music was M. C. Frontalot! Or at least I’m pretty sure it was.

I just Googled him. It was him. MC Frontalot falls into the “nerdcore” subgenre, which I just learned of. I mean, I just learned the name. Thanks to people like Ed and mekimeki, I’ve been feeling the nerdcore vibrations before I ever heard any actual nerdcore.

Ed put one of his songs, “I’m Gonna Be Your Man,” on a CD for me a few years ago, and it rocks sportingly.

Interpret This Dream

I was training in martial arts. My young instructor, Ming Li, felt I had done fairly well. She thought it was time for me to face her instructor, Mama-Ji*.

In our outdoor classroom, on the grass, I was set to face her. Mama-Ji arrived. She was a silent elderly Asian lady, with long gray hair. I was to spar with her.

It was also dinner time, and Mama-Ji ordered pasta for delivery. It arrived, just as we were preparing to face one another. She was delighted to receive her plate of couscous.

She held her plate of food in her right hand, up and behind her, as we faced one another. I got the sense that she saw me as far beneath her, and that no one saw me as worthy to face her. It was expected that I would be no match for her.

She held her plate of food as she used her left hand to strike at me and to block my blows; we struck at one another a few times. I used both arms, and she, her face impassive, just used her left, keeping her food level with her right.

I was very annoyed by this. She was toying with me, showing how she could fight me even without any great effort. I decided that she needed to cut the cr*p and leave off the arrogant display; I was going to push her, so that I could either show her I didn’t want to mess around, or provoke her to really put me in my place so that I’d know exactly where I stood.

I quickly reached out and knocked the plate of pasta from her other hand. This really angered her, but she just glared at me for a moment, then turned and left. I realized that it was offensive for me to have even touched her food. What little welcome I might have had was gone.

I picked up my sword and followed Mama-Ji to beg forgiveness, but she ignored me and went inside. I waited in the stairwell for her to come back out. After a long time, she did (it was night, and raining.) I called out that I was sorry, that I realized too late that I my behavior was offensive. But she paid no attention to me at all, and walked away.

Oh, well, I thought. And I went home.

When I woke up I was a little annoyed that I went back to beg forgiveness. I should have picked up the plate of pasta and hit her with it.

* Mama-Ji is another name for Kali ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kali ), who was featured in the novel American Gods, by Neil Gaiman. I just finished reading it last week.

The River Cities Concert Band, of which Kim is a clarinet-tooting member, played at St. Matthew's Episcopal a couple of weeks ago. http://www.stmatt-ky.org/band_concert_and_ice_cream_2007.htm My two girls can be seen in the photos that are fifth and eleventh from the bottom. There is a picture of all three of us walking across the drive, with the band in the background, near the top. The photos were taken by Dr. Varley Wiedeman, who taught my Biology of Populations class at U of L, about...oh, 16 or 17 years ago.

My family planned to attend a zydeco concert in Willow Park a couple of days ago, but it was rained out. We stayed the afternoon at my parents' house, hoping for a break in the weather, despite the fact that every little bit of rain we received was greatly needed.

I went on a field trip with my dad, while Jill napped. Dad has a couple of tomato plants in his back yard, but the moment a tomato even thinks about ripening, a squirrel takes it. There are lots of squirrels, and competition is fierce, especially if you are the tomato-grower.

So my dad traps them in cages. I watched him pick up one of the cages with a nervous, skittery squirrel, spray its hind end with some red spraypaint ("So I can see if he comes back. I should be able to tell from that.") and put the cage in the back of the car. We drove a few miles away and let him go at the Baptist Seminary.

Everyone needs hobbies, I guess.

I told Dad that if it came down to tomatoes or squirrels in my garden, I might not be as gentle as he. In this Age of Information, squirrel recipes are just a click away.

Solstice

Happy Midsummer's Day!http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_170b.html
C'mon over tonight. We'll find some upright megaliths to dance around. I have a little rum.

Last Friday I finally started painting on the saw. It’s coming along pretty well. I’ll post photos if I can remember to take my camera next time I go over there.

Still thinking about linoleum block prints. I found my single tube of black water-based Speedball printing ink.

The little robins left their nest a few days ago. I was looking out the front window with Erin and we saw a fledgling hoping around the front yard. The other two were still in the nest, I discovered when I went out to check. By that evening, all three were gone.

It amazes me how fast they learn to fly. A few years ago we watched some young cardinals in Kim’s dad’s back yard. In just a few hours they went from helpless-looking, flightless fluffballs to birds that could fly from ground to branch to fence-top.

I ate some kohlrabi from my garden. I peeled it and sliced it raw. Eh. Perhaps I can add it to some soup or stew. You’d think that a vegetable that’s described as a cross between a radish and a turnip would be a lot more enjoyable. That was sarcasm.

For Father’s Day, my super-sweet wife and daughters gave me a membership to the J. B. Speed Art Museum. http://www.speedmuseum.org/

Bird Prints

Here is a discussion about some stunning bird prints...sometimes, artwork just seems to fly right up and create itself:
http://www.wetcanvas.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=401932

In other avian news, we have a robin's nest over our driveway. Erin and I watched the three chicks poke their heads out, crying to be fed. I really hope we get a chance to watch them learning to fly.

For some reason, this morning I keep thinking that I want to do some linoleum block prints (or use a similar medium).

"Daddy, know what rhymes with freejerator? Heejerator!" --Erin

The other day on lunch break I was having a discussion with my pal Possumbooger—that’s not his real name, we just call him that—and he looks at me and “Alonzo,” he says, "Alonzo, what the hell’s new with you?”

So I think for a moment and I tell him, “Well, Poss, I finally found me a 1988-P half dollar last night. Now I have a complete set of JFK half dollar business strikes.” Then he whistles and nods appreciatively.

“Yeah,” I say. “It’s taken a long time. Now all I have to do is keep on refining it, by which I mean, I’m going to look for nicer versions of the ones I already got.”

“That kind of thing worth much?”

“Well,” I tell him, “determining the value is sort of complex. You have to count the number of coins and multiply it by fifty percent. That gives you the approximate value in U.S. dollars.” *

“Huh,” he says, and offers me a Swisher Sweet. I give him a Shasta soda, and we sit and watched the fog roll by the breakroom window.

* Not exactly true. You can also add the bullion price of silver for the coins minted 1964-1969, plus the value of the year 1987 coins, which you don’t usually find in circulation because they were only made for mint sets. All those things together add a few dollars. However, to paraphrase the mobster appraiser on “The Simpsons,” they might not be worth much, but their sentimental value is through the roof. Now, if I could find me a 1974 double-die obverse…


See some of Possumbooger’s antics: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7sK3AqFYAWQ

Jillian in the back yard a couple of weeks ago. I love this picture and can't stop looking at it.



Yesterday, when I got home from work, Kim told me to go look in the living room. There I found Erin asleep on the floor. Kim said that she just fell asleep among her toys.

Two more for category A

Here are the finished versions of my two most recent paintings, previously posted in unfinished form. The first is about 18x24”, the second is about 8x9”. Both are oil on panel. I invite comments.

I painted on Saturday, and finished both of the paintings that I posted photos of last week. Now I need to let them dry a little while and frame them.

I worked in my studio for a little while, on the saw—I sketched on it, and decided on a composition. I’ve actually hardly done any work in my studio. And I also discovered that it’s a supremely spidery place. I cleaned it a couple months ago, and now it has lots of cobwebs again, and there are spiders all over. My dad suggested spraying, which I might do, especially if end up spending more time there.

After I worked in my studio a bit, I went over to Aaron’s house and painted on his porch. That’s where I finished the two paintings previously begun. As I painted, I got to chat with Aaron and David, and had a beer. Very pleasant.

David, Brooke, Kim, and I played Puerto Rico on Thursday night. It was only the third or fourth time that we’ve played it. I really enjoy it, but it’s pretty time consuming (Thursday’s game lasted, oh, I dunno, three hours).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puerto_Rico_(board_game)

David won.

Dairy manipulation

I've been wondering. How come you get butter when you agitate cream, but get whipped cream when you whip it? Why isn't whipped cream butter?

This is obviously a question from someone who hasn't actually tried to make either, or bothered to look it up.

Works in progress

The blue in this one shows up brighter in the picture than it is in real life. This painting is pretty small, and it's almost done.

This is the one that I started painting while it was snowing, back in early April. It needs a little more work than the small one, but it will be done soon, too. There is also too much glare in this picture, but it's the only one I have right now.

On the pig/in the hats/in the car

They like my hats.
The nice neighbors across the street gave them a car that their daughter has outgrown.

Here we are with one of the pigs outside Mark's Feed Store.

Lost

I will now show myself to be a “Lost” geek.

What a season finale! Whoa! And two hours of it! Jack revealed himself to be just as useless in flash forwards (sneaky “Lost” writers, darn them) as in flashbacks, although he had some fine moments in the present. I’m glad he didn’t cave in during his one-on-one with Ben.

Best part: Unexpectedly, Charlie. As sad and awful as his death was, he did a great job, exhibiting quick thinking and courage. The whole build-up to his final (? <-- obligatory question mark) scene had some good twists and just played out well.

Worst part: Locke killed Naomi. Every bit as egregious and near-inexplicable as when Michael shot Ana Lucia and Libby. Sure, he must have been inspired by a sense of I-must-stop-this-at-any-cost desperation, but obviously it wasn’t enough to motivate him to kill Jack. Or maybe the revolver wasn’t working. Fifteen years sitting in a tropical corpse pit might make it sort of inoperable.

For a show that primarily involves castaways on a tropical island, there sure are a lot of people killed or mangled by motor vehicles. Three more in last night’s finale, not including Jack nearly being run over as he crossed the street to the funeral parlor. And who was at the parlor? Kim suggested to me that it was Ben, and I think that’s probable, although Michael comes to mind as well.

Another annoyance, although it’s really a blessing: The ending really didn’t give us much more to speculate on over the summer regarding the nature of the island. Obviously, it has some sort of effect on the timeline, including events of the past. Not much more than that can be nailed down. Unless Jack’s references to his father in the present-tense was a product of his drug and alcohol abuse.

Who was Naomi working for? Why was Penelope transmitting to The Looking Glass station? In what way does rescue from the island end in regret or doom?

It looks like the whole dynamic of the show has now shifted. Next season seems likely to start with most or all of the surviving characters rescued, or put in a whole new form of peril.

I note that no core mysteries in the show’s mythology were solved. I hope that, when more is explained, I won’t regret ever getting hooked.

At the Louisville Coin Club meeting on Sunday, a gentleman who was sitting in front of me struck up a conversation. He asked me what I was interested in—that’s the general ice-breaker question among coin collectors. What do you collect? What do you focus on? It’s a question that’s a little awkward for me to answer, because I have little money to spend on collecting, and my interests are so varied. I’m not much on being a completist, like many numismatists. Key dates—those coins that are rarest in a series—are usually well outside my price range. I don’t have a key date of anything. But this is actually a digression.

My answer to that question now is that I’m most interested in the detective work. My favorite thing about coins is when I get something that sort of stumps me, and I have to look it up to identify it. I find it a lot of fun to find a coin and have little or no idea what it is, and then have to hunt around for information on it. This always ends in some new little window opening for me on some other culture or bit of history. Ancient Roman coins bore plenty of political propaganda. That Indonesian coin I have depicts a congklak game board, which is a version of mancala. The four small pictures on Icelandic coins are depictions of Iceland’s four guardian spirits—dragon, bull, vulture, and giant.

In regards to being a completist, I have almost finished a complete set of business-strike Kennedy half dollars. I’ve been pulling them from circulation, so that means that they each cost me fifty cents. The only one I still need is a 1988-P, which is ridiculous, because it’s not a rarity at all. It had a huge mintage, but for some reason none of the hundreds of coins I’ve searched in the past year has been that one. The only coins of the series that I had to spend money on were the 1987-P and 1987-D, which were available only in mint sets and not released into circulation. I bought those a couple of years ago. Besides finding that one coin I’m lacking, I need to keep searching for better examples of the ones I have that are pretty beat-up.

At the coin club meetings there is always an auction at the end. Last weekend I noticed an old Whitman folder of Lincoln cents, 1909-1940, missing only key date coins. All the coins were worn; I doubt any would grade higher than Fine. But there were many coins there that I needed for my collection. I decided that I’d gladly buy that if I could get it for less than $8.00. Unfortunately for me, one of the club members brings his young son (or maybe grandson, I don’t know.) Nobody really wants to get in a bidding war with a five-year-old. He got the Lincoln cents for $6.50. A little sad for me, sure, but also very cute.

If you’ve read all of this post, you are either crazy or interested in coins. Not that the two are in any way mutually exclusive. Why don’t you just go read the sports scores or the blog of someone totally hot? Obviously, I just write this for myself. And that one guy someplace who Googles the terms “congklak” and “guardian spirits.”

I spent a short while last night planting watermelon seeds. I turned over some soil, and then piled on some dark wormy compost from the compost cage. I was eager to do it before last night's thunderstorms arrived. Now, with a little luck, we'll have a half-dozen watermelon vines shortly. I also put down a few newspapers as mulch, weighted by bricks, flower pots, and sticks. I didn't have time to finish that, though.

There are buds on the hollyhocks. There are flowers on the blackberries.

5/8/07

Again last night I set up my easel at E. P. Sawyer Park, this time with a very small canvas on it (I’m not sure of the measurements, but it’s about 9x10”). The subject was a pair of trees. I’ll have to find out what kind of trees they are. The painting is pretty much finished, but I have to do some touching up after it dries in a week or two. Photos will follow.

After I finished painting and the sun was sinking behind the distant houses and trees, I went over to the studio and worked on the saw. A co-worker gave me a saw that her mother wants me to paint. I’ve had the darn thing for a long time—like, two years, or maybe three—and I’ve just let it sit around. Finally, last night I sanded it, cleaned it with denatured alcohol, and primed it with gesso. All the while, I was wondering if my co-worker’s mom even still remembers it or wants it.

I got home late, and Kim had some very delicious pasta set aside for me. I ate and began watching “The Departed,” but couldn’t finish it before I had to go to bed. Not only did I go to bed much too late, but I also had trouble sleeping. I woke up frequently, had trouble falling back to sleep, and had long, tense, vivid dreams of cops vs. mobsters. Not a good night.

Last week I asked a teller for all her half dollars, and she went back to check. All she had were two rolls—but when she handed them to me, I saw that they were both unopened mint-wrapped 2001-P.

I’m not sure what to do with them. I’ve never had a mint roll before, so they’re kind of neat, but at the same time I realize they have very little premium over face value. Maybe I’ll try to sell a roll at the next coin club auction.

5/7/07
I haven’t had much time for gardening. My peas are growing well, but I need to make a little trellis for them. The kohlrabi is getting bigger, forcing me to wonder: What the heck will I do with it when I harvest it? Kohlrabi? Will any of us really eat it? Will we eat all of it?

I noticed today that I have dill and cilantro volunteers growing. Seeds that fell from last year’s plants. Cilantro is a very nice little plant. Besides adding interesting flavor to dishes, it’s sort of pretty in the garden and required little maintenance. The dill, though less attractive, doesn’t look bad, and it was a lot of fun adding it to various dishes.

When I can, I’ll have to plant the watermelon seeds. I also have gourd seeds, but I’m just about out of room. I either need to make more garden space, or just give up on it for now.

5/7/07
Yesterday was another painting day. I went to E. P. Sawyer Park and continued the landscape I started a month ago. One of the dangers of painting [i]en plein air[/i] in sunlight is that, once the painting is taken indoors and viewed in typically poor interior lighting, the whole painting looks much darker. Some paintings I’ve done in years past looked like bright sunny scenes while sunlight was on the canvas, but when viewed indoors they’ve looked like an oil paint version of those night scenes that were actually filmed in daylight using special filters in old movies.

I tried to be conscious of that while I was painting, and it worked, although I’ll need to make a few adjustments. There are a couple of areas I need to brighten. I also want to work on the sky a little. However, I could stop right now and call the painting done. I’m quite happy with it. I’ll do a little “tightening up,” but it looks good. I’m especially happy with the tree limbs.

I was painting in a weedy area that bordered woods. One really nice thing about painting in such surroundings (and this is one of my favorite things about fishing in an isolated spot, too) is that the wildlife comes out around me. Painting is a quiet and relatively motionless activity, so lots of little critters come and go and don’t pay much attention to me. The underbrush was so thick, though, that it was often hard to figure out what I was seeing or hearing.

There were all kinds of interesting bird calls, and things rustling through the leaves. Squirrels and chipmunks and mice. I saw some huge bird of prey, probably an owl, flying up into the trees carrying something in its talons.

I’ve been working on finalizing a means of putting a price on paintings, and keeping a permanent record of the information. Over the past few years my approach to everything art-related has been inconsistent. Here is a sampler of new, finalized information:

The Ohio River at Otter Creek Park, 2002, 30x36”, oil on panel 775.00

Field on Hwy 22, 2005, 18x24”, oil on panel 365.00

Germantown Houses, 2004, 16x20”, oil on panel 365.00

Tree Sketch—Miles Park, 2003, 9x12”, oil on canvas, 160.00

Untitled Tree (Joe Creason Park), 2003, 9x12”, oil on canvas, 160.00

Category B artwork:

Riverfront Plaza Construction, 2003, 18x24”, oil on canvas, 50.00

Joe Creason Park, 2001, 16x24”, oil on panel, 40.00

I have heard recent allegations that walnuts, especially the fruit of the black walnut tree, and specifically the husks, can be made into a very nice drawing ink. What better to go with my improvised drawing tools than some home-made ink? A co-worker told me that she has walnut trees on her property, and at this very moment, last autumn’s nuts are rotting all over the ground in her yard. That is exactly what I’m looking for, I think. She has offered to bring a bunch in for me. Helga, too, has reported that there is a walnut tree in her new yard.

I painted outside last Friday. It seemed a very iffy proposition at first, since it was very cold and windy. Finally, though, late in the morning, with the temperature climbing into the 40s, I decided to throw myself into it.

I selected a spot over at E. P. "Tom" Sawyer State Park. It was sheltered from the wind, in a low-lying area among the trees. It snowed much of the time I was out. Mostly it was light flurries, but sometimes it was snowing pretty hard. Despite the weather, there were bumblebees flying around me. Nuts.

The painting looks good so far. I worked for about three hours before some minor family crises sent me after my wife and children. I'm eager to work some more.

Even more haunted by jawas

The other night Kim was watching “Dancing with the Stars,” and it suddenly caught my attention. One of the stars, formerly a member of ‘N’Sync, was dancing to the Star Wars theme. But not the regular version; he was dancing to the Meco 1977 disco version of the theme.

Far out! My brother Kevin and I used to lie on the floor and listen to that on our parents’ stereo console.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meco

I had never realized that the album was such a hit back then. Our friend Mike, from up the street, heard the album. "That's not Star Wars!" he informed us. He had the actual soundtrack. He was right, but his album lacked a cool picture of two astronauts bumping booties on the cover.

When I visited my pals in Harvard, IL, last week, I had the opportunity to play Lego Star Wars on the computer with their 4-year-old. I sucked at it. Every time I died, he would look at me and tell me to stop kidding around. He thought I was messing up on purpose. After watching him and his father play, I realized that he only died when he was horsing around, and his father would tell him to knock it off.

I also got to sit and play Storm Troopers with his action figures. He has lots of Star Wars toys.

And speaking of Storm Troopers,

http://www.brandonbird.com/stewart.html

(Thanks, Loraine)

Unfortunately

Erin just became potty trained. She pretty much just did it herself. Of course, that doesn’t mean there aren’t accidents.

A conversation reported by Kim:

Erin: “I peeped in the chair.”
Kim: “Oh. OK. Were you sitting in the rocker?”
Erin: “Yeah. Unfortunately, I peeped all over.”

"Peeped" is an Erin-ism, by the way.

Yesterday, the high temperature was in the mid-80s. Erin played in the sprinkler. Today, it wasn't supposed to get much out of the 40s (I think), and the lows may drop below 30 over the next few days. Maybe this will help my allergies a little. I wonder if I should cover my tulips? Or the coreopsis, or the coral bells?

Transporter question

Here is a question that I find thought-provoking and a little troubling.

Imagine that someone invents a teleportation device, sort of like the ones they use on Star Trek. This transporter can “beam” you over long distances, and do it cheaply, so that anyone can put a dollar in a slot, step onto the transporter pad, and in a fraction of a second they’ll materialize at a chosen destination. Lunch in Madrid, dinner in Tokyo, a play and dessert in London.

But here’s the catch: The technology works by totally vaporizing you with lasers, which analyze you down to the molecule and record the information. The data is beamed at the speed of light to the destination, where a machine takes the data and rebuilds you from a storage tank of material, duplicating you exactly, down to the molecule. The process takes a tiny fraction of a second.

In essence, one machine kills you, and another machine builds a duplicate that is in every identical to the one that was vaporized.

Would you use this transportation technology?

People who know me well know that I’m a pretty hard-core materialist. I consider the “self” to be the sum of our material being. Our experiences, thoughts, and emotions arise from our physical bodies. As such, it seems to me that the “self” would be unchanged by being destroyed and then immediately rebuilt. If I am derived from my physical makeup and experiences, then “I” am not really destroyed, I am just swapping old molecules for new ones.

But I can’t get past the fact that the first machine kills you. I don’t know if I could bring myself to use such a machine.

How many of the atoms in my body were there a year ago, or ten years ago? Would the transporter simply speed up the rate of turnover? If there is a soul, would it leap to the new body?

On Saturday, March 24, I drove to Harvard, Illinois to visit some friends. I had a very good trip. It had been a year since I had seen them. We pretty much just hung out, and for me, that’s a lot of fun. Their kids are cute and fun to play with; we spent a lot of time outside since the weather was so nice; they gave me food and a place to sleep; and I got to play a couple of new games. As seems typical, I also walked away with some loot (Kelly gave me some miniatures, some miniatures bits for assembly, and some little plaster treasure chests he had made from Hirst Arts molds.)

They have three cats, yet I managed to sleep on the couch without sneezing. At all. I don’t know why some cats make me spout like a sputtering fire hydrant, and some have no affect.

I was greeted, upon my return to Louisville, but lots more green than when I had left. Spring causes the gardening painter within me to pop forth like so many aesthetic sneezes. Spring also causes the sneezes to pop forth like dandelion buds. Spring triggers lots of sneezy art poppings, and my garden is my palette just like my palette is my garden. To celebrate, I ate the yellow off a dandelion. I recommend it. The green parts are bitter, but the yellow is sweet.

I have planted some onions, peas, and kohlrabi. Inside, in trays, I’ve started rosemary and basil. I have some cilantro in a pot that I need to move outside.

All the perennials are coming up. Asters, glads, tulips, hostas, coral bells, hollyhocks, daylilies, and coreopsis. Hooray! I still need to plant tomatoes, watermelon, and gourds after the weather warms a bit more. And just as much as warm weather, I need more room. The perennials I planted last autumn used up a lot of my garden space, and the watermelon and gourds aren’t exactly small-area crops.

I plan to paint on Friday. I don’t know where I’ll go to paint. The trees right now are wonderful to look at. I need to decide very quickly where I will go, so that I don’t waste time on Friday by hunting.

Tree Sketch

Ink sketch of a tree, which I posted about a few days ago. 12x16"

I don't have a distinct memory of Brian being born, but I can recall seeing him shortly after he came back from the hospital. I remember learning the word "incubator," and knowing that he had to be in one for a long time. I remember playing with his hands as he lay on the couch next to my mom. It took a long time for me to stop seeing his as a little brother. But he's more grown up than I am in many ways, and seems like more of a grown man than I usually feel I am. And now, in a month, he's getting married.

I hope you get to have some good cake, Brian. Happy Birthday.

Art update

Last Friday afternoon I spent some time over at E. P. Sawyer Park, where I sketched with ink. I used some plant stems instead of a pen, which is a practice I started in Wyoming. There, I used dry stems of wildflowers and grasses. I can’t recall if I started that out of necessity or curiosity, but it worked well, so I continued.

At E. P. Sawyer, I selected a nice spot next to a small stream in a woodsy area, and grabbed some nearby dry grass stems. I made a point on one, and it worked, but it wasn’t entirely satisfactory. It wasn’t rigid enough. It tended to buckle and fling ink. When I looked around for something better, this sort of plant stem was the only thing in view that seemed the least bit suitable. I didn’t want to spend a lot of time hunting.

I sat on a fallen trunk and drew, with the focus being a large bush. My legs fell asleep and my butt hurt, but I’m willing to suffer for my art. A little, anyway.

It was chilly, but not cold enough to be a problem. I had dressed warmly.

The final result was pretty good. I want to do some more ink drawings now. I’ll post a picture. My mother-in-law bought the drawing from me.

Today I spent a number of hours getting painting supplies ready. I had to do some rummaging and cleaning in the garage. There was a lot of paint to sort through, and jars, solvents, and brushes. I prepared two canvases (actually, quarter-inch hardboard panels), which took a lot of sawing, sanding, gluing, cleaning, and priming. One is a small square and one is medium-size. I didn't measure it, but I think it's 18 x 24.

I'm going to watch some more of the movie "The Fast Runner" now, but I'm very tired. Neither Kim nor I slept much last night. I stayed up late to watch John Yarmuth on the Colbert Report (I probably should not have bothered, although his later interview with Ted Koppel was good), and then both Erin and Jill had us up at different times, working to keep them happy.

It was a fantastically beautiful day outside today. Most of my work was outside, and I am grateful.

Hard lesson from experience

Don't run with a vomiting child. If you feel you must, carry them low to the ground. It's easier to clean up a lot of vomit in one place then a lot of vomit in a lot of places.

What, you think I should re-title this blog "Mark's Art, Coin, Garden, Vomit Miscellany"? Maybe just "The Vomit-Blog"?

I just spent two hours cleaning all kinds of stuff. The carpet and the linoleum, and various neighboring items, are now cleaner than they were before they got splashed. Once again, I found myself chuckling deeply ("chuckling" is a funny word. In this context, it sounds very throw-uppy) at the situation.

I've got off pretty easy, though. I felt ill a couple of days ago, but it never got worse than merely feeling nauseated. That has left me free to clean up after everyone else.

Paintings, A & B

I'd love to hear comments about my category A and B paintings. Friday will be a painting day for me. One thing I need to work on is a landscape on a saw that I was commissioned to do a year ago. Money from that, or any near-future art income, absolutely must be used to ship a painting to Jim and Emily (I promised them a painting as a wedding gift, and they've been married for fifty years now.)

Riverbank at Riverside Park, in western Louisville. Category B, though it’s not too far off from category A. Again, it needed more variety in the green, as well as in the yellow dirt of the bank, and to a lesser degree in the river. There is a lot of subtlety and delicacy in both the colors and the brush strokes in the clouds—the clouds are the best part, though I doubt that shows up well on the Web. This is a wide, but short, painting, measuring about 18x36. Oil on panel. (Please give a hand to my lovely assistant, who was watching me and who asked if she could help hold it.)
I think this is an interesting category B. The lights and darks are strong, and the colors are rich and varied, in this scene from Joe Creason Park. The paint is applied in varying thicknesses, giving it some nice textures. The biggest problem is the wall of vegetation in the foreground, which screws up the composition for me. Really, it's not the composition that it messes with, it's the illusion of space--I want a landscape painting to feel as though it has some depth, inviting the viewer back into its illusory space. But the vegetation pushes one away. I think this is an unusual mistake for me. I normally have a good eye for composition and depth. There are also a few other little color choices that bother me. Interesting, but a little disappointing. I would like to see how it looks framed. (about 16x20, oil on panel)

This painting, a scene along Hwy 22, is from a year-and-a-half ago. It is my most recent real, finished painting. I put it in category A. It's kind of a weird painting because its subject matter isn't what one would call picturesque. I was drawn to the scene, however. The part that I worried would be the hardest to get right, the powerlines and poles, are the nicest parts. I think they are nicely rendered, and there is a good sense of light on the poles. (Size about 18x24, oil on panel)

"The Ohio River at Otter Creek Park"--definitely a category A, one of my strongest paintings. This is a scene I've painted several times, and I'll probably paint it again (this is the only one I've painted in the summer--the rest were in the autumn.) I showed it at the Watertower annual show a few years ago. My only regret is that I don't have a little more variety in the green. This is true for many of my paintings.

Waterfront Towers under construction. An unfortunate category B; I love the idea, and some of the drawing aspects of this are quite nice and interesting. Where it falls apart the most for me is in the areas that should have been the easiest. The red portion of the building at right never looked good, the paint application a little crummy, the color choices are questionable. Also, many of the elements on the ground ended up having a over-simplified, cartoonish feel to them because I was trying to fill them in later based on incomplete sketches and memory. Irritating, because there are some very nice things going on here, too. (about 18x26, oil on canvas)
A scene in Germantown, near Gnadinger Park. Category A. Once again, I wish I'd put in a little more variety in the green. But I like it. I like the shadows and colors on the houses, and the sense of afternoon sunlight.
A small (about 8x10) oil painting of a tree. Category A; I'm very fond of this one. The shifty asymmetry of the tree is a lot of fun; there is a strong sense of light and dark, and the colors in the grass glow.

I have two types of paintings. Some of my paintings are on the wall, and some are leaning in corners. Most of the category A paintings are on the wall, and most of the category B paintings are leaning.

Category A consists of paintings of which I’m quite fond. They may be far from flawless, but I feel that the good significantly outweighs the bad. I just think they look good, and I’m happy to show them to people. The oldest example, and still one of the best examples, is my lobster painting.

Category B consists of those that are problematic. I don’t like them very much, but there is something about them I like enough to keep. Usually I’ve struggled with them, wrestled with the paint, and finally given up. Sometimes it’s a drawing problem; sometimes it’s paint application or color; sometimes I just realize too late that I’ve made an error with the composition (this is rare, as composition is pretty basic, and I think I’ve always had a very good eye for it.)

There’s also a category C, which is paintings I started, realized they were going nowhere, and ditched. That is a much rarer occurrence than it was many years ago.

Category B is awkward. They are my children, but they never grew up. Now they hang about as wastrels, having squandered their potential, surviving through their limited charms. I can’t toss them out. I feel uncomfortable selling them. I’m a little embarrassed about them in front of company. Sometimes, though, I look at them and say, ooh, that part’s not half bad.

I will post pictures from both categories.

Paint Space

Last Friday I drove over to Carrie’s house to clean out space for my painting studio. It’s a brick garage area adjoining her house.

Kim, bless her lovely heart, gave me the studio as a Valentine’s Day gift. Even more generous of her was the time she allotted for me to go paint. Two days marked per month, as a bare minimum, and her insistence that that was, in fact, a minimum—that I paint more often than that.

She arranged with Carrie for me to go over and look around and pick out a spot to set up. She has a lot of room.

The area I cleaned was, and still is, used for firewood storage. It had lots of dust, sawdust, leaflitter, and cobwebs. I tried to get the adjoining bathroom in working order, but had problems with the pipes. The cold water now works in the sink, but I had to turn everything else off due to leaks. Carrie said she’d have a plumber check it out since she already planned to call one for other purposes in the near future.

The cleaning darn near killed me. I was sneezy and congested on Friday night, but it got much worse the next day. That is the usual pattern for me. Mow or rake or clean one day, and I sneeze and feel a little bad. The next day I’m usually miserable, then more or less back to normal the day after.

Saturday and Sunday I felt like my lungs were over-full vacuum-cleaner bags. Bags from a vacuum-cleaner that had accidentally sucked up several live cats. Speaking from the point of view of my sinuses, lungs, and nose, it was a nasty, nasty weekend.

Today, Tuesday, I am mostly better. I still feel a little rattle when I breathe, and I’m coughing a bit. My nose whistles from time to time.

Fortunately, I think my studio space is in workable shape. I can take stuff over there and paint.

Lost & Chunky (don't read this if you are eating)

ABC’s “Lost” came back last night! Man, what an episode! Or at least, I assume it was. I only saw the first fifteen minutes. At the first commercial break, we heard Erin whimpering in her bedroom. Kim said, “Would you mind checking on her? Try not to let her see you.” We try to check unobserved, of course, so that we don’t get dragged into a list of demands (“I sirsty! Warm milp!” or “Read me a book!”) by a child who would probably fall back asleep within a couple of minutes if left uninterrupted.

I quietly peeked into Erin’s bedroom. In the dim light I could see her dark round eyes staring back at me. She was crying just a little.

I entered the room. Something was wrong. She was upset, and there was…a smell.

I leaned over her, then had to turn on the light to understand the magnitude of the situation. The lower half of her face, her hands, her pillow, her comforter and blanket, her pajamas, one of her little dolls, and most especially her hair around her shoulders—all were caked in vomit. The smell was dizzying.

I steeled myself, deep pity and fatherly sympathy shoving aside the revulsion. I picked her up and carried her across the hall to the bathroom. It was horrible, but the total grossness of it made it rather funny, too. (Erin was quite unhappy, but she didn’t seem to be feeling very bad—no fever or acting weird). Man, was it disgusting. Curdled milk and corn, with a smell that seemed to be fountaining up through the atmosphere. As I tried to clean her up, angular chunks of it were falling all over, sticking to my hands. This was even funnier to me because of all the disgusting things she ever has to deal with, Kim hates throw-up the most. Like, way, way the most.

Kim and I gingerly got her undressed. Kim started the shower, and I rinsed Erin off a little. Then Kim got in the shower with her and cleaned her thoroughly as I cleaned in her bedroom.

I took her comforter and her fitted sheet outside and shook them out over the grass. Then I inspected everything and shoved the whole lot into the washing machine. Clorox wipes were used on the bathroom floor, the commode, and the sink.

When I was done, Kim had Erin dressed in her little bathrobe, and was curled up with her on the love seat. Erin was very sleepy and very cute and looking much cleaner. She went back to her bed a little while later and slept well for the rest of the night. Poor little thing. I think she’s all right, but I need to call home again in a few minutes to check on her.

More Festiva

My speedometer is dysfunctional. I don’t know which plays the biggest role, the recent cold weather or the age of my car, but it is becoming harder and harder to gauge with accuracy the speed at which I’m driving. After I drive for a while the problem is less extreme.

The speedometer continuously makes a noise like a raspy, squawky version of the opening synthesized notes of Van Halen’s cover of “Dancin’ in the Streets.” Also, as soon as I accelerate to about 35 m.p.h., the needle squeals hoarsely and rockets up to 85 or 90 m.p.h. It will stay there for a few seconds and bounce back down, the shoot back up again.

This is merely the latest. Let me try to think of some of my car’s other little quirks:

-Most or all lights in the dash don’t work. Sometimes a few come on.

-Shoulder belt no longer opens or shuts automatically. I must sit down and then pull it over my head.

-Horn only works occasionally, and sounds very sputtery and feeble when it does.

-The windshield washer fluid squirters only work some of the time. They stopped working altogether for a few years, then started again, although if the temp is below freezing they won’t work.

-The driver’s side window won’t roll up or down without lots of assistance (putting my hand on the window and rocking it back and forth while jerking the handle) if the temperature is below 50 degrees.

Festiva Rodeo - How I Get My Thrills

When I walked out the door to go to work this morning, there was snow on the ground. Less than an inch, but enough to cover everything—cars, grass, and pavement—in a fairly smooth layer of white.

Our driveway is a hill leading up to the house. My seventeen-year-old Festiva was at the top, and our newer Saturn parked behind. This is a frequent and annoying situation, since I am always running late for work. I have to either back the Saturn out, then back out the Festiva, then pull that Saturn back in, then get back in the Festiva; or I have to just back the Saturn up a little and then maneuver the Festiva over the grass, which is bad for the lawn, especially if the ground is wet. And the car juggling is even more annoying when I have to scrape frost off the windows of both cars.

I put my lunch in my Festiva and then backed the Saturn down the slick driveway and onto the street. Then I sat in Festiva again, started it, and put it in reverse. I didn’t give it any gas, I just took my foot off the brake—and the car didn’t move at all. I realized I had forgotten to move the concrete block from beneath the front left wheel (did I mention that my car has no emergency brake?). So I killed the engine and got out to kick it out of the way.

I half-closed the door and kicked the concrete block. The car started to roll backwards down the hill. I had accidentally left it in reverse instead of park.

I always turn the wheel when I park in the drive, just in case the car does in fact start to roll by itself. I’d rather have the car roll over the lawn (and possibly into our tree or our mailbox) than for it to roll straight backwards into the other car, or across the street and into the neighbor’s house. Therefore, my car was rolling at an angle into my lawn.

The car started moving the second I kicked the block, so I yanked the door wide again with the intention of finding a surface against which to push to hold the car in place. However, in the fraction of a second it took for me to open the door and reach for the doorframe, the car was rolling too fast for me to have any hope of stopping it that way. Worse still, the ground was icy and my work shoes have no traction.

So I found myself caught behind the open door of a car that was rolling driverless down an icy slope. I sensed mortal peril as I tried to regain control of the situation. I grabbed the near edge of the steering wheel with my right hand and threw my right leg into the car as I hopped backward with my left, trying to keep pace with the car. For an instant my goal was not to stop the car, but simply to get inside it, since if I were inside it, it would not run me over.

I’m not sure how I did it, but I think I used my right arm to yank myself most of the way onto the driver’s seat—I must have pulled hard, because my arm hurt afterward. It was dark, so I couldn’t see, so I started stomping blindly where I hoped the brake was as I hung on to keep centrifugal force from throwing me out.

Luckily, I hit the brake, and was able to raise my left leg in time to block the door from swinging shut on my arm or ankle. I had skidded to a stop in the middle of the lawn and had not run over the mailbox or hit the tree. I briefly glanced down and moved my extremities to make sure I hadn’t hurt myself without realizing it.

It was dark and snowy and 6:30 a.m., but somehow the neighbor from two doors up had managed to witness this little event. He was walking toward me as I exited the car.

“Are you O.K.?” he called out.

“Oh, yeah, I’m fine. Thanks for asking. I—uh—accidentally left the car in reverse when I got out to brush off some snow. I’m O.K…thanks.”

I stopped trembling after a minute, pulled the Saturn into the driveway, drove the Festiva off the lawn and came on in to work.

Correspondence

I emailed Anderson Cooper, of CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360°”, to let him know that I really enjoyed last night’s two sets of interviews: The first with James “The Amazing” Randi and the business manager for psychic fraud Sylvia Browne, and the second with CNN’s reporter Michael Ware regarding his experiences in Iraq.

I then emailed thedailyshow@comedycentral.com:

“Dear Mr. Stewart,

I've heard several people suggest that professional magician and professed skeptic James Randi would be an excellent guest on your show. I agree completely--as a fan of both your show and Mr. Randi, I would love to see you interview him. I think it would make captivating and highly amusing television.

Thank you,
Mark Tabler”

Update Mishmash

It has been a long time since I posted, so I’ll just do a little stream-of-conscious bibbleblab.

I attended a coin club meeting the weekend before last. Not much to report on. That Jim guy (I think that’s his name) gave a presentation on collecting varieties and resources for identifying varieties. I bought nothing at the auction. I renewed my membership by paying ten dollars.

One of Kim’s mom’s clients gave us a small freezer, which we put in our garage. We got it for free, which is a pretty sweet deal, especially considering that it’s very new.

Before we could move the freezer in, we had to clear space in the garage. The garage was a wreck—like downtown Tokyo after a couple monsters had finished a tough man competition. Or perhaps a better metaphor would be junkyard jenga—it was impossible to pull out or move any item without at least two other items falling over. I therefore had to spend quite a while throwing out old boxes, rolling things up, stacking boxes wisely, and generally condensing the lot. Although I haven’t finished making the garage presentable—not by a long shot—I did manage to make room for the freezer, and give myself some very reasonable hope that I’ll have room to paint on my easel.

As far as actually producing artwork, the closest I’ve come recently is some sketching in my sketchbooks.

I’m trying to get my D&D game back up and running. I have so many old notes, many of which are simple ideas or musings that contradict one another, that simply sorting them is a job in itself. Now that I think of it, my condition of my D&D campaign bears a strong correspondence to my garage. I must endeavor to keep it simple. My players would probably be amused—and would probably also groan—if they saw how many variations on plot ideas and background and history were jotted down, elaborated on, connected to other bits of background or plot, changed again, then discarded. I haven’t made any New Year’s resolutions, but here’s one: Get my game going again, and streamline it.

We’ve played two games of the board game Puerto Rico so far, and it’s pretty good. The rules look complex at first, but game play is actually quite simple. Behind that simplicity, however, is a lot of subtlety. There are many little gears turning in that game, and it’s hard for me to think of strategies.

We also played Settlers of Catan again on Sunday. We had an expanded 5-player game. Kim won. I started slowly and remained behind the whole game. I had fun, though.

I watched “Little Miss Sunshine.” I approve heartily.

Now that it is nearing the end of January, verging on Spring, a young man’s (meaning mine) fancy turns to gardening. And love, sure, but gardening is what I do also. I bet there’s a good way to combine the two. I digress. What should I plant? My ideas are bigger than my garden space, at least for now. I foresee a time when that may be different. When the girls can play by themselves a bit longer in the back yard without eating sand or demanding to be picked up, I may enlarge my garden quite a bit. Presently, though, I think I’ll plant a small early Spring crop of…maybe cabbage? Radishes? I dunno. Later, I’m going to try watermelons. I’ll probably try to use a trellis for that. More tomatoes, of course. Hmm.

Randi's Million Dollar Challenge Rule Change

I see that the James Randi Education Foundations has changed the rules in its Million Dollar Challenge, as discussed in this Wired.com news article: http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,72482-0.html?tw=wn_index_1

It looks to me like a great change. In the past, when I've read about the tribulations of dealing with applicants, it has seemed truly exhausting. Amusing at first, or in concept, like skimming the headlines of "Weekly World News" in the cashier's lane; but then, if you actually try to read it, it's a major chore. It becomes more sad than anything else.

Randi seems to be becoming more aggressive, and he certainly doesn't mince words. I, like Randi, have long been a fan of Carl Sagan. Sagan held similar views, but from what I've seen he was always very diplomatic and careful to be seen as explaining and describing rather than attacking. I'm much more Sagan-y than Randi-ish in my tastes, but I have to confess I get lots and lots of joy from watching Randi engage in skirmishes. I think the rules changes will lead to more (very deserving) exposure for the JREF.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

A couple of nights ago I finished reading The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon, and I thought it was quite good. It wasn’t quite what I was expecting. I expected a less earthy story, and thought it would be more offbeat in a cutesy way. Instead, I was treated to a convincing tour of messy human lives in a messy human world, but the tour guide was someone who has a harder time understanding it than I do.

Shortly after I started reading it, I asked Kim if the central character, an autistic teenager, reminded her of me. I asked because I’ve expressed some of the same viewpoints, and I recognized myself somewhat in that character. Also, in past conversations with Kim and other friends, we’ve discussed how autism in some ways just seems to be a more extreme form of being a man—like humans occupy the whole spectrum from non-autistic to austistic, with the typical woman being in the non-autistic range, and most men ranging from slightly to notably autistic, and the people diagnosed with autism simply being moreso. (Of course, as I said, this is just autism “in some way.” I don’t know much about autism. I’m not a psychologist, but I play one in book reviews.) We had good fun one evening with a test from a magazine in which we had to look at photos of faces and identify which emotions they were exhibiting. Kim, Helga, and Barbara got most or all answers correct, whereas the two Chrises and I faired poorly; my score was dismal, and I was forced to ague that the test sucked and I was right and everyone else was wrong and why couldn’t they see that and it was all pretty stupid anyway? And another night, or maybe it was that same night, I said I couldn’t understand why a woman would have been insulted by something that Pat had said, and Helga called me a Vulcan.

Anyway, where was I? I’m out of time. It was a good book.

Art, Coin, Garden Miscellany News

Art: A few days ago I created a lame sketch of Kim. It's nothing at all to brag about. I can, however, brag about Erin, who creates wonderful page-filling watercolors and encourages her sister to do the same.

Coin: I received a gift certificate for the Louisville Numismatic Exchange. The horrible thing about that is that it's so finite. I look at it and think, "I can spend this, and then it's all over. I'll be able to get nothing else." It makes it very hard to decide what to get. Over the past month or so, though, my coin-collecting obsession has ebbed, as it does from time to time. Now spare me-time goes to a few other Web sites, reading, and brushing up on various game rules. Numismatics will come back with a vengeance soon enough.

Garden: It's only January 11, but the warm mooshy weather gets me in the mood for diggin'. Due to said weather, my hollyhocks are sprouting, and the daffodils and crocuses (and perhaps some tulips) are coming up. That could be trouble. I'd sure like some bitterly cold weather to kill off both garden vermin and whatever is making me sneeze (besides my head cold). I've been talking big to Erin about my garden plans this year, but I need to remember that I tend to bite off more than I can chew. My big new plan for this year's garden: Watermelons.

Skepticism: The poinsettia didn't kill me, nor did I retch, hallucinate, or get the vile squelchies. I sat by my phone for hours and hours awaiting a call from those "Mythbusters" guys, but they must not read this blog.

Dreams: I couple of nights ago, I dreamed I was on the Moon with two other astronauts. I was collecting soil samples, and found a bunch of mud at the bottom of a crater. Inside the mud were greenish spots that looked like algae. It was amazing. We were very excited that we might have found both water and life on the Moon.

Games: 1) I got the board game "Puerto Rico" for Christmas, but I'm not up on the rules yet. Looks pretty cool, though, and maybe I'll get a chance to play it soon. 2) Also, after a three-year absence, I'm working on getting back into my Dungeons & Dragons campaign. We'd pick up right where we left off. I've mentioned it to my fellow gamers, and it was met with a very positive reaction, and now that I've brought it up I'm sure it's expected so I guess I better get cracking. 3) Kim and I played "Seafarers of Catan" for the first time last weekend. We played with Brooke and David. It was fun, and I'm looking forward to playing it again with some of the game board variations. David won. Kim had a remarkable showing. I performed very poorly, which has happened with alarming frequency in recent "Catan" games.

Movies: Brian, Kevin, and I saw "Children of Men" last Friday, and it was very good. Though I found the story engaging, I was equally impressed by how the movie was put together technically. It was a finely crafted film. Some of the sequences were very clever. And if you ever wanted to see a tense action/thriller movie in which most of the good guys never so much as touch a gun, this is it. (Spoiler: Actually, none of the good guys touch a gun, I think. But you don't realize this until half way into the movie. That's when you find out some of the good guys are bad guys.)

This may be my last post.

There is a poinsettia on the table between my desk and my co-worker’s. In order to demonstrate the non-toxicity of poinsettias, I licked some sap (after some leaves had been blasted off in one of our innumerable rubber band battles.) My co-worker told me that the poinsettia came with a large label stating that the plant was highly toxic to people and animals. “That’s bull,” I said, and ingested some. It tasted like icky lettuce, with a hint of broccoli.

I’m confident that I shall be fine. But if I convulse and die, thank you for your time.

Abducted

Our family tradition is to spend New Year’s Day in our pajamas. Monday morning I was able to sleep quite late (9:15) after an evening of year-end carousing. Well, it wasn’t so much carousing as socializing and eating lots of really tasty treats, though I did have a glass of wine. Kim’s mom watched the girls on New Year’s Eve, and she spent the night and watched the girls as we slept in. That was a very nice set-up for us.

So I got up and stayed in my pajamas, and after a while I showered and put my pajamas back on. Then Kim had the idea of going to the grocery to get something for the crock pot (something for which I’ve recently expressed a desire). She wanted to go to Kroger.

By now it was early afternoon. We worked on lunch, and then I called my parents to wish them a Happy New Year. My mom answered.

“Hi, Mom!” I said. “Happy New Year!”

“Well,” she said, “Happy New Year to you! Where are you?”

“I’m at home.”

Slight pause on her end of the line. “What are you doing?”

“We’re just hanging around in our PJs. I just was calling to say Happy New Year. Nothing much.”

Another slight pause. I could tell that my mom was making some kind of mental adjustments. She asked, “At home? Are you feeling OK?”

I thought for a second, wondering what was throwing her off, and answered thoughtfully,

“This is Mark. We’re just spending our New Year’s Day at home, not doing much…”

“Let me talk to Kim for a minute, and then I’ll tell her to put you back on,” she said.

At this point, as I handed the phone to Kim, I realized that something was up.

Kim and Mom spoke for a minute. Kim’s half of the conversation consisted of laughter and a stream of suspiciously vague comments: “All right. Hee hee. Yeah. Yeah. Hee hee. Oooh. OK. Right. Hee hee. OK. Yeah. Yeah.”

She handed the phone back to me. “What’s going on?” I asked.

“Nothing, I don’t know what I was thinking, I guess I just had too much to drink last night and I’m a little hung over. Hah hah.”

“Ooooooo-kay,” I said, knowing full well that the glass of wine I’d had the night before probably rivaled in quantity the entire amount of alcohol that Mom had consumed over the past sixty years.

I talked with her and then with Dad, and hung up. I asked Kim what was going on, and she just shrugged and tried to play it off, trying to keep a straight face while saying that she supposed Mom had just overindulged the night before.

“C’mon,” said Kim, “Are you ready to go to the store?”

Suspicious conversation by spouse and mother. Hmm. And Kim trying to get me to leave with her. Hmm. Kim’s mom had agreed to come back, after going home for a little while, to baby sit—arrangements for which I’d heard no discussion. Hmm.

We walked out to the car. Kim hurriedly got into the driver’s seat. “To the store, huh?” I asked was we backed out of the driveway. Just before Kroger, Kim changed lanes and got onto the Gene Snyder Freeway.

“Wherever we’re going, my mom almost spilled the beans, didn’t she?”

“What do you mean? We’re going to Kroger.”

Then we got on I-71 north, toward Cincinnati. And I noticed a packed gym bag in the back seat. “Are you going to take me out to the woods and shoot me?” I questioned. She just laughed. Then I asked, “Should I have done a better job saying goodbye to the girls?”

“Ohh, honey, no, it’s OK,” Kim answered.

So I just sat and watched the scenery as I wondered where she was taking me. Amy and Dan’s house? Someplace in Cincinnati? General Butler State Park?

It turns out that one of my guesses, General Butler State Park, was on the money. We exited at Carrollton—and pulled into the Kroger. Kim told me that we had a lodge rented for the night. We shopped in our pajamas at the Carrollton Kroger, then went to the park to check in.

Within two hours I went from lounging on the sofa contemplating lunch to standing in the rain in my PJs, scrounging for kindling, just outside Carrollton, Kentucky.

Our little cottage was nice and cozy. And Kim is so sweet. There is nothing in the world that can compare to being kidnapped by a gorgeous, sexy, thoughtful, interesting woman, dragged off to an isolated cabin with a fireplace, and forced to wear pajamas or nothing. I love my wife so much.

One highlight of this past weekend was a visit from Grandma Meki, Minimeki, Mekimeki, and Mrs. Meki. What an adorable bunch! Minimeki is especially cute when she looks at you, smiling broadly, then bursts into fearful tears when she realizes she has no idea who or what you are. We enjoyed her visit to our ogre cave more than she did.

Photos

Regarding the first two photos: There was a shot of them that looked better posed--it's just a better picture of them--but I'm fond of the caught-in-the-middle-of-action appearance of these two. Lord knows, it's more realistic. Photo 3 is Big Sister dragging Little Sister into her dress-up game. It's scenes like this that provoked the invention of the camera in the first place, I think.

Multiple pictures: Gingerbread, Airplant

Christmas Eve. Erin was told she could pick out some cookies to leave for Santa. Naturally, she picked the most impressive work of art generated that day, my ramshackle ginger manger. She also left a cup of milk, and a note (written by Mommy) which Erin signed herself. The next morning, all that remained were a few sizable crumbs. I bet it tasted really good.

A gingerbread fellow by crafty Brooke. Note the scarf (gumdrop-knit).
...And one by Kim. Seurat-inspired underpants make him flashy; the Gummi Bear gift he brings makes him welcome.
...And by Son of Brooke. Long, long minutes of work went into this guy. I especially like his blood-red smile and black-rimmed, cicada-like eyes. If I work a gingerbread golem into my D&D game, I'll keep this in mind.

My gingerbread man. Far superior, in his dire menace and googly eyes, to my artsy-crafty competition. He has white razor claws used to fell trees.

Here's that airplant--when the buds first appeared, Kim and I were a little weirded out. I thought I was going to be turned into a pod person. But it turned out very pretty, bloomed for about a week, and then the flowers wilted.

As a Christmas gift, Kim's sister Pam transferred to DVD many hours' worth of digital video that we had shot. Best gift ever! Now we can review lots and lots of proud-parent photage of our offspring walking, rolling over, screaming, staring at the camera, and eating as our voices coax them to "do it again! C'mon, do it again!" Great fun for us, and perhaps for some of our close friends and relatives (albeit to a lesser extent). Maybe not something we want to put on for any and all company. Erin falling asleep while eating corn, though, is classic Funniest Home Videos stuff and will be shown to everyone.

And on the topic of being cute while eating, on Christmas day Erin had to endure sitting at the table for dinner while the center of the table was filled to brimming with sweets. She ate a segment of cheese, broccoli, and carrot pizza that Pam had made, but then announced she was done. I beseeched her to eat a couple more bites, or to at least eat a piece of the broccoli. She consented to eat one more mouthful of pizza, but then said "All done!" she put her elbows on the table and leaned way over, her head dipping close to the gingerbread men that we had decorated. Glancing back and forth between them and me, she very cutely asked, "What next, Daddy? What next, Daddy? What next, Daddy?"

Christmas was all good. There is more to tell than I have time to type. It was great seeing friends and family over the weekend.

Jill's birthday party was a fantastic success! Kim did lots of work to get things in order, baked a cake, decorated, and even vacuumed up the seven or eight pounds of Cheerios, bread crumbs, and desiccated mixed vegetables that had been hoisted overboard by Jillian during her many recent meals at the table.

It was so nice to see family, and Jillian received many adorable gifts. I also think she had a lot of fun--she's a little bit of a party girl.

I just ate some Amish friendship bread that Beth gave us -- it was delicious.

When I have little time to post, I feel that everything I say is trite. Maybe everything I say is trite anyway.

Jill's Birthday!

Today, the winter solstice, is Jill's birthday. Lately, she has been super-sweet in an attempt to wring more presents from us. But I keep telling her that she gets no additional presents until she learns to walk and stops crying whenever she gets hungry.

It's been weeks and weeks and weeks since I've posted, and I have a million things about which to post! But I have no time, so unless you come by to visit and speak to me personally, you won't get to hear about: 1) my involvement in a doomed bayonet charge on the Western front--damn the Kaiser!; 2) every single cute thing said or done by Erin and Jill; 3) how I successfully poisoned an enemy of my boss, Vladimir; 4) all the pretty presents I've received from heads of state and family members; and 5) other half-truths and lies.

My air plant bloomed. I'll post pictures later. I had no idea those things grew flowers on them. I've have it for three or four years, and suddenly, boink, purple flowers shoot out the top.

Have I ever mentioned that Kim is totally, scorchingly awesome? In every way I'd ever want?

Four Notes

1) My baby is an octopus monkey. We ate at El Tarrasco last night, and in a two minute period Jill grabbed and sucked on a bottle of the green hot sauce (cap still on it, thank goodness), a knife, a fork, the salt shaker, the pepper shaker, a napkin, and my coat. She actually paused briefly after sucking on the pepper shaker; she made a face, not an unpleasant one, and smacked her lips for a moment. I suppose that was the only thing that had flavor. I'm not saying any of this because I think that anyone with children will find this incident extraordinary in any way. I'm just saying it so that if you sit at table #6 at El Tarrasco, you'll know that every single thing in the booth was sucked on by a baby.

2) We watched two episodes of Survivor at a friend's house on Thursday. They have a big screen HD TV. I don't think I ever got the full effect seeing these things in the store; they never seemed that impressive. However, watching this mega-size, mega sharp contraption in a friend's basement was pretty, like, ultimate. As I later mentioned to David and Brooke: "I've seen eye candy, but now I know what it's like to have candy lick my eyes."

3) I watched the Rankin/Bass "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" on TV last week. Erin got to watch it, too. I really like the elf who wanted to be a dentist. It had been many years since I had seen "Rudolph," and I enjoyed seeing it again. The quality of the animation was technically poorer, but more endearing, than I remembered. I'm thankful for this show; I've long felt that, in the song, there are many story elements that are omitted. It's like I can only remember every other verse. There are lots of blanks in the song that the Animagic TV special fills in nicely.

4) I realized on Sunday that "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" is the only Christmas song to which I know all the words. In fact, there are very, very few songs to which I know all the words.

The Schmidt Sting Pain Index

Interesting and amusing:
Ratings for stinging insects

I shall avoid places that have bullet ants.

Xmas

Contrary to popular opinion - as well as unpopular opinions expressed by me - I don't actually hate Christmas. I'm actually rather fond of it, and I get misty-eyed when I reminisce about Holidays past. And now it's great having two little girls of my own around at Christmastime.

My Holiday sarcasm and biting comments are simply the way I punctuate my joviality. I consider the snide comment to be the comma in the Season's Greetings. I mean, "Season's, Greetings." Maybe it's just the apostrophe.

Sve the Vwels!

I am proud to say that I have started a vowel conservation program for our office. Employees are now encouraged to reshuffle, save, cut, and paste vowels (all letters, actually, but vowels are most important) when generating business documents, instead of simply backspacing over them or deleting them.

In time, we shall lessen out dependence on foreign suppliers. The Far East supplies about 60% of our vowels, and as China and India continue to swell into correspondence-generating powerhouses, we can expect their vowel exports to diminish.

Unfortunately, office management has ignored my urging to simply eliminate 50% of vowels from correspondence. They don’t think it looks professional to write something like, “Th reprtng of th totl numbr of unsatsfctory approches s a rqiremnt.” I’m still working on it.

New Presidential Dollars to be Released in 2007!

The U.S. Mint will be issuing a new series of coins, beginning next year, commemorating the U.S. Presidents. Similar to the State Quarters Program, the series will feature the faces of each President, not including those still living.

My initial reaction to this announcement was deep disgust. After mulling it over for a while, it is still disgusting to me. Deep down inside me, the noble numismatist is saying, "Those stupid motherf***ers! Those stupid, awful motherf***ers!"

Ten years from now, we will have circulating coinage featuring Richard Nixon. I find the thought of that fairly humiliating. Likewise do I find it annoying that we'll have coins featuring such noble leaders as Andrew Johnson and Warren Harding. If Bill Clinton and George W. Bush both drop dead of strokes next week, we'll have them on our coins, too.

I think we should rid our coins of presidents altogether and return of the Liberty motif that existed prior to the issuance of the Lincoln cent in 1909.

Think of it. You will be receiving and spending coins that are honoring Nixon and Reagan, and very possible both Bushes (the first Bush stated that a person of my religions beliefs should not be considered a citizen), and Clinton. There's something there to be reviled by everyone--Conservative, Liberal, Libertarian, Anti-Oval Office BJ, Anti-Idiot, Anti-Burglary, Pro-Choice, Pro-Life--everyone.

If we can't go back to Liberty, can we at least keep Sacagawea? She was nice. She's maternal. It's a pretty design.

Chipper

This morning I wore my long underwear and wore my heavy coat, and I felt jolly and jaunty on the way to work. I was actually humming and whistling "Sleigh Ride" for most of my drive.

This contrasts with yesterday, when I wore plain old boxers beneath my work clothes and a non-heavy coat with a broken zipper. I also had to stop for gas yesterday, and had trouble with the gas pump, which prolonged my exposure to the unpleasant December morning air. I had avoided watching any weather reports that morning, and that was good, because had I known it was 15 friggin' degrees I would have been more miserable than I already was. That's why when I arrived at work yesterday I was cussing at people, Christmas, winter, cars, and everything that crossed my path.

This morning, I was skipping. Although Christmas still sucks.