decisions...

are those choices that I am not good at making. I have an opportunity to teach an extra class at the College of New Caledonia this fall in the New Media Program, "Web I". The problem is that I am a bit rusty with my HTML. Oh, I could brush up over the summer you say, yes, that is true, but then I also had other projects in the making for the summer. It would be good for me to do this because I would use the creation of my own website as the guinea pig to refresh me. I would make more money in the fall, I would enjoy being with the students, but my shoulder would hurt from the extra use. That repetitive strain injury always returns if I spend too much time on the machine. What to do?

who am I?

trying to keep up with all the login information and passwords for my 'online presence' is making me crazy! Someone needs to come up with a better way. It is almost as bad as having a plastic card in your wallet for every store you shop at!

waste not...

One of the assignments I had the 'Design History' students work on this semester yielded some interesting results. They were to find and present a controversial art or Design piece. That is where I was introduced to the Cloaca Machine. Created by Belgian conceptual artist Wim Delvoye, this machine can be fed like a human, it then produces waste like a human which Wim packages and sells investment shares in. Yep, if you are an art collector, you can invest in sh*t art'. What a comment on the whole pretentious art collecting scene! Apparently the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) has one; and Wim has been successful in selling shares. You know what they say, 'do what you love and the money will come'.

an encouraging nod

Not only was my artwork chosen for the cover of this show program, it was also selected out of 46 pieces to participate in a year long tour to northern communities. The piece you see above is part of a tryptic (a group of 3 drawings) that form one piece.

entry to 'An Uncertain Climate'

This painting will be on display in PG from April 19th until the 27th. The show focuses on artist reaction to the changing climate in our world. This piece called 'Munificence' is about the rape of the earth at the expense of the future.

landscape I painted in Wells BC

My immediate response to the changing colours, diversified by the pine beetle killed trees, intensified by the sun.

smokin' in the boys room?

I used to put it off as long as I could; going to relieve myself in the high school girls washroom. Most of the time it was a cancer pit of second hand smoke and the last place I ever wanted to be. I've been told the boys room was also a location where young men could participate in unapproved activities. Just as some things continue to change, so others never do. My son came home with an interesting tale about the boys room at the middle school where he attends. Apparently there was an empty box of liquor chocolates on the back of a toilet seat around Christmas time, and I imagined several young boys wandering around the school "feelin' real naughty". It struck a humorous cord for me. How much liquor is in one of those boxes anyway? I would think the most you could come out with would be a stomach ache.

quarter moon

This was the view out my truck window as we sped down the highway. When this couple on a bike passed us, we were in for a surprise! The things you see when you don't have a camera!

rattling around

One day the 'Dad-guy' came to me and said that he heard something rattling around in his head. It seemed to be a real source of distress for him. Several days later he came home with ear-waxing candles and asked me to light him up like a birthday cake. If you have ever used these, you know what I am talking about. The pointy end of the hollow 'candle' slides into your ear. You lay on your side with the candle upright and your helper lights it. As it burns, it creates a suction in your ear which pulls the wax out of said ear, and into the hollow chamber of the candle. For those who like to 'see' what came out, you just cut the candle open, as I did in the photo on the left and have a look. Yes indeed, there has been no more complaining about the rattling sound in this house.

well, well

Water, well, pump it up, clear, cold, useful.
Suddenly without, no doubt a hardship that strains the most patient one.
Count the days, when will he raise that precious cold fluid from the ground.
If I'm not around, I've gone to town to fetch it, pail, by pail.

You guessed it, we've been without water, off and on for over a week. It began with silt coming through our lines, blocking every screen on every hose, on every appliance. The big kid and I went out to our snow-infested front yard and began to dig out the well access. It took Kevin several days of replacing hardware, replumbing, reorganizing, repressurizing, but finally yesterday we had a reliable flow of water to the house again. It would seem though that the well is a wee bit short on water. Not entirely unusual right before the thaw, but this is lower than usual. After several heartfelt prayers, it began to rain last night and rained until about 3am. Yep, the well level is up for now. Hopefully that will be enough to hold us over until water flows free once again.

the size of it all

Here are a couple of photos to show you how much snow we have. The bottom right hand corner is the shed that collapsed. The shots of the dad-guy and the big-kid are taken in the front yard where dad-guy moved all the snow away with a bobcat.

too much of a good thing

I am feeling a slight twing of guilt as I sit here composing this post. The dad-guy is currently outside digging snow off of our shed which collapsed 2 days ago. We have had an incredible amount of snow! 2 days ago a small amount of white precipitation floated, lazily from the sky. It was that last flake, it caused the feat of engineering which formed our tent shed to finally collapse. Dad-guy has spent most of his weekends moving snow around, trying to prevent such a tragedy, even to the point of renting a bobcat to push the 8 feet high mounds of snow away from our house. Should spring come in like a lion, he reasoned, we could be floating away. How disappointing to now have to rescue and perform triage on the various pieces of equipment that were stored is the collapsed shed. Weather is a force that cannot be predicted or controlled, perhaps that is why it has been a popular topic of conversation for as far back as humans go.

Poem

I wanted to post one of my son's poems. His writing is humerous, with a bit of a serious twist.

The humuncus

Humuncus, humuncus how I hate thee if only you would leave me in peace.
Get out; get out, out of my head no more chanting, no more teasing,
Don’t pull on my strings, stop looking through my eyes
This is why we hate the humuncus,
He leaves me; but will you be next???

guilty conscience

I had the funniest thing happen last night. I was awake and couldn't sleep so I headed downstairs for a drink of water. Halfway down the stairs I heard a 'ka-thunk', tinkle, tinkle. Looking in the livingroom I see our small dog, Bandit, at 2 in the morning sitting next to the leather chair, trying to look innocent. I could almost hear him saying, "yep, yep, yep, just sittin' here at 2 in the morning, thats what I do when you are asleep." I promptly put a laundry basket on the leather chair, and tried not to laugh. His conscience was active, even though he was in a deep sleep, the sound of my feet coming was all he needed to bolt him into action.

the front

In reference to my gum-chewed hair cut, A few of you said you needed to see the front of me, so here I am. Keep in mind that my hair has now been growing for 2.5 weeks since my cut. So you can imagine how short it was. The painting next to me is one I finished a few weeks ago of a building in Wells, BC.