Birthday post

My mother asked me a few months ago what I wanted for my birthday. I snarkily replied: "A house." Be careful what you wish for, because you might end up spending 12 hours on your birthday refinishing floors. We took possession of our bungalow on the 9th of June, and since then we have:
-Built a chicken coop, complete with hound-resistant fencing buried 12 inches down and 12 inches out...
-Torn out all the carpet in the house, including about 400 sqft that was screwed (!!) down with 1" wood screws
-Ripped down all the "wood" paneling
-Coaxed out 2 bedrooms worth of linoleum (pry bar)
-Patched and painted the great room
-Patched and painted the 2 downstairs bedrooms
-Built a 6'x6'x4' garden bed
-Sanded through vinyl backing and mastic to reveal handsome wood floors. We started today with 18 grit sandpaper and are currently on 24...tomorrow, brace yourself as we do 38 through 100 and try to put finish down before the lady starts her insane 3 week class on Monday morning.








Check out some pictures, trust me I have more of them than eloquence after wrastlin' with that drum sander all day.

Eyes heart spring...

Its visitor season again, and my college friend Robert just returned to Minneapolis after a delightful week-long visit to Portland. I admit, my bee is arrested in the inchoate stage and I have done no work on him/it. (I also admit that I openly discriminate against haploid individuals. I would caution you not to inform the bee but--come on, he's haploid..) I have been busy with traveling, packing, entertaining and a nasty flu. Its been more than a year since I was sick with a traditional ailment and I confess there's something comforting about being sick and knowing there's no danger of it spiraling into something uncontrollable, losing 30 pounds and my sanity in the process. Health is so precious and tenuous and moments like this one make me cherish it even more. So now seemed a perfect time to share a few photos taken on my various spring adventures.

Sheep are Sheep

This stately dame is 2nd in my series of 26. Please, suggest other animals before it's too late. My tentative list, so far:
Alpaca
Bee (green sweat-In progress)
Cheetah
Dik Dik
Echidna (Eel?)
Flamingo
Goose
Hyena
Ibex
Jay (Completed)
Kangaroo Rat
Lamprey
Mongoose
Nautilus
Okapi
Pangolin
Quail
Rat
Sheep (Completed)
T (Tapir?)
U (Anyone?)
Vulture
Wolf
Xenopeltis Unicolor (Sunbeam snake)
Yakare Caiman
Zebra finch

Please welcome the new members of our flock!

We picked up chicks in Boring, Oregon last night. Give a hearty welcome to our new family members! On the left is Lambchop, a Silver-Laced Wyandotte. Behind her is Starbuck, our blond warrior chick, who is at the top of the pecking order and very protective of the other two. She is a Buff Orpington. The one in front, my favorite, is a Araucana/Ameraucana named Isabella (She will be giving us blue eggs!). I have been told we are to expect 20 eggs a week from these ladies starting in September.

Forgotten Souls...

I just took down that show in Hillsboro. I didn't sell anything, but all my business cards disappeared and many nibbled at the 3-piece tree. I forgot to post these two paintings when I completed them at the end of February. In fact, I had forgotten painting the butterfly at all. The one on the left is entitled "blood and lust"--I was trying to put those two things on the wood and do something abstract for a change. Both are quite small (4x4"), my attempt at marketing as I heard that "Small is the new big". The butterfly looks sinister even though I made an attempt at cuteness (again). Why does this always happen?

Catch-up

Here's a painting I finished a while ago but didn't post. Mr. Flufferkins/Henri has inspired a series, watch for the hilarious results!

In a blue jay way

This is a re-used canvas from a piece I started in 2002, while I was taking a class on the Pre-Raphaelites. The original idea was to have the gold border frame a transcription of one of D.G. Rossetti's sonnets from The House of Life, which is, of course, the best piece of literature ever to have been exhumed from a Victorian woman's grave. I painted the background over the old text with my leftover paint from a cock-fight piece I am hating right now, and then decided I needed a blue subject for the foreground. His fat little body and earnest expression inspired me. Please suggest names, he longs for an identity. But not Jay.