In the absence of too much watchable television, and in the hours I am not wasting in a job I despise, I'm trying to be somewhat productive. There seems to be a train of thought that says that, job-wise, I should be doing something else with my time (it's true!), so I paint. I'm not sure how that translates into "not working here anymore", but I am sure that it is at least tangentially related. So anyway, here's some stuff I did/am doing.

( Also missing: complaints about the weather. ) Oh yeah, my room is still a mess. It was good for a while, but I did not finish that first time, so now I'm back to my normal state of "everything's on the floor". It may not be as bad as that last time ::looks around:: or maybe it is. I am not sure. I got a bigger bed, so I lost some floor space. Perhaps I'll handle that on Tuesday. I need to find my wallet, and I am sure it's in here somewhere.

Maybe next time I will discuss my new favorite house-related problem: we need to get a pole or something in the basement, because the shoddy 70's workmanship that gave us such hits as Hold On, Why Are My Shoes Floating Away (basement floods) and Wait, Why Are The Walls Cracked Like (old house shifting)That has manifested a new issue... The Top Floor Is Slowly Falling Down (one day my upstairs room will be my downstairs room). There's a guy coming to look at it tomorrow.

I don't have anything to do, or anything to talk about, but I was bored.. so I was like "I should post something!" This is what I do when I should be doing something productive, like finishing any one of the five pictures that people want me to draw that I am not working on because I get bored easily and I am like "enough of this! I want to do something new already!" or combing my hair that I washed a while ago and that has already dried because, even though it is 2:55 in the morning, it is 90 degrees! Instead, I think I will watch a few more episodes of "Rescue Me" before I get sleepy. There's always tomorrow (day off!) for all of that Getting Things Done.

( Did I mention we got the car fixed? And it only took three years! )

I think I have come to a stopping point with that one picture from behind the door. Since, I didn't set out for it to look like who the actual picture was of (I just liked the composition of it) I can stop where I'm at and say "good enough" without a declaration of paint-and-canvas war. The other one, the one I just started, is proving a bit more difficult. I blame part of this on the fact that I never draw anything out on canvas first, I just block in big areas of color and go from there. Hence, it is now plagued by what I like to call "Why is your head so big and your body so small?!" I was about two minutes away from calling a do-over before I decided to just pack it in for a while.
   So, in the end, I declare this latest spate of painting enthusiasm draw. One "Finished!" and one "Fails!" And now I shall pack away the brushes and try again in another few days or weeks -- whenever the mood strikes.

Tina (the oft-mentioned Heroes-hating sister) is here again. Now, she does not technically live here, yet every time I turn around, here she is. And, for some reason (perhaps because, when I moved up from my beloved underground lair, I took over her old room) she is always lurking around in my space. This is not cool, as she is a talker, and I prefer not-talking. And, unbeknownst to me, in her spare time, she's an art critic! And not the good kind, the "oh Tina, I think I will respond you your criticisms with gut-punch!" kind.

Because I have no room in the closet, and I actually like some of them, my walls are covered in paintings. Because I paint things to hang up in a restaurant attached to a children's museum, most of my paintings are for kids. As such, they look like the kinds of things kids like - simple scenes, bright colors and stuff like that. It's the kind of cartoony art I have previously said I was trying to get out of making.

A few months back I came across a picture I liked and decided to paint it... like an actual adult painting. I figured I'd settle down and paint something that looked at least semi-realistic. I can do it in pencil and crayon, so why not in paint? But, what would appear to be about halfway through, I decided I liked it as it was. It was pretty simple.. still bright, but not something you'd put in a kid's room (though that may have been more as a result of the subject matter than anything else.) It kind of reminded me of an Edward Hopper - just a simple snapshot done in  big blocks of strongly contrasting colors. I hung it on the back of the door. Occasionally I would take it down to show it to someone. It was good enough for me.. though  I knew it was not what it set out to be. I'd always go, "One day I will finish that," but I am slack, so I didn't. Enter Tina.