It’s my 30th birthday on Tuesday and we are off to New Orleans to celebrate!
Kindle books for the plane: Blackout by Connie Willis and Conquistador by S Stirling.
Totally stoked about this trip!! Now must back up computer and pack.
Something a little different this week. This is a mixed media piece in ink, watercolor, and pastel, instead of the usual oil.
Oh, and it’s our new kitten! She’s only four weeks old, so we’ll be adopting her in another month to two months. Cat names I think you really have to get to know the personality, but for now I’m thinking maybe Toblerone is a good name.
I worked on these still lifes and landscapes in between painting cats.
They are for sale- please contact me if interested.
What’s black, white, and cat all over?
That makes no sense, but it’s OK. Things don’t have to make sense on Cat Painting Tuesday.
See this?
These are cheap sports bandages- like Ace bandages but the store brand. The self-adhesive kind. Bad.
As you can see, after one use, they knotted up into ropes that can’t be undone. Perfect to chew on if the sore muscles drive me crazy, but not so good for wrapping.
So, Dear Reader. Don’t do what I did. Buy Ace.
Another day, another struggle with the coin dryer.
This is Julia’s cat, Zoe.
I have been wondering for a while how the trash men empty our dumpster. It is locked, like all the dumpsters on the alley. I wondered if there was some secret way the dumpsters opened, like maybe when they pick them up with the trash truck the side magically opens up or something.
Ever inquisitive, today I stalked them and found out the answer.
It is nothing so complex. They have a key. They just unlock the dumpster, pick it up with the truck, put it back down, and lock it again.
So that got me to wondering- surely they can’t have a key to every dumpster in the city.
Well, they don’t. They have a master key. And actually, so do I! My key opens every dumpster in the city. Everyone probably has a key like this.
Now, isn’t that kind of amazing?
This information also explains how the homeless people still manage to get into the locked dumpsters and strew the trash all over the place. They, too, have access to these magical master keys.
Cats are wonderful.
So are pedicures. I had my first one on Sunday. I could not resist getting them painted although I insisted on a “Boy Color.” As well as a flower because gender is just a construct and I do not like to be limited.
You know I didn’t have the $88 million for the original Damien Hirst. Because I lost all my money in the Madoff ponzi scheme.
Needless to say I want this jeweled skull kit even more than I want a thousand fluffy kittens to bring me peeled grapes and bonbons:
Sadly, the horrible and non standards-compliant website design makes purchasing it impossible. I guess that’s what you get for hiring graphic design majors instead of qualified web developers with a resume a mile long. Ha! Just kidding.
Let’s take a little trip down memory lane. Here’s my more economical jeweled skull from a couple of years ago.
Sigh.
iartistlondon, if you have a browser that supports it.
My ginger army. Of cats.
I see we are in for another round of “Is a college education worth it since the economy is a catastrophe and the majority of jobs are in retail?”
What can anyone say about this ongoing, pointless debate that people have been having since universities were first created back in the 1100s?
Answer: Nothing. But that doesn’t stop articles from being written about it.
Kyle Daley, 23, of Walnut Creek, Calif., graduated from UCLA a year ago with a bachelor’s in political science and is still looking for a job. Recently he put his resume into an old wine bottle and threw it into the Pacific Ocean.
I am sorry, but who is going to hire a litterbug?
If I found his resume, I would go to his house and give him a stern lecture and some pamphlets from Greenpeace.
Today we went to the Greek street festival which has resulted in lots of NO PARKING AFTER 4 AM TOWING ENFORCED and ALLEY CLOSED signs on our block. There are many flags that match the bright blue outdoor carpet they have put down. The Greek Church is on the corner. By craning my neck around I can see the cross on the cupola from where I am sitting, elegantly sipping a glass of Retsina. (Not really, it is a glass of decent Cabernet.) We are in the thick of things- we can hear the music, loud loud loud, see the drunk people staggering around, smell the charcoal smoke from the grills, see the raffle booth from the house. Maybe we will go buy raffle tickets and try to win plane tickets to Greece or an iPad. This leads me to the point of this post: Fries. We got some wonderful ones at the festival.
I love fries. Here are the best ethnic varieties.
1. Curry and Chips: England. Just how it sounds. Curry sauce on fries.
2. Greek Fries: Homemade potato chips soaked in lemon vinaigrette and oregano, covered in feta.
The meat sticks are souvlaki. Beef or pork, I’m not sure.
3. French fry omelet sandwich- Spain. Take your ordinary frozen french fries, fry them in a gallon of olive oil and twelve pounds of salt. Then take half a dozen irradiated eggs. These do not have to be refrigerated. Add an inch of oil to the pan and make an omelet- add fries to omelet. Put omelet on a baguette sliced in half lengthwise. Serve with side of french fries. Get angry if people don’t clear their plates. (Fries can be replaced with an entire garlic plant)
4. Country Fried Taters- favored food of American White People. I enjoy them with ketchup and Ranch. My mother makes good ones but mine are blackened lumps of death.
This Tuesday we go out of the realm of mythology and instead I present to you: Bookstore Cat.
I seem to have a knack for finding cats wherever I go, and last Saturday was no exception. We were in Normal Heights looking for a dresser- which we did not find- but we did find a used bookstore. I think it was called 4th St Books. I do not know why all the businesses in this city have such literal, dull names.
The bookstore was completely insane since it had just reopened after renovations and none of the books were alphabetized yet. It was also jam packed with 12 foot high, floor to ceiling bookshelves. My head was spinning from all this while trying to find the usual suspects I always look for at used bookstores- Euan Uglow: The Complete Paintings, and anything by Diana Wynne Jones. Anyway, I rounded a corner and almost jumped out of my skin- this giant ginger was leering at me from a high shelf. Needless to say, I had my camera at the ready.
If this was my cat, I would call him Chairman Meow.